PART II.

----Rushing along, leaving innumerable chimneys behind pouring out

sempiternal smoke; the air filled with a perpetual clank of hammers, the

crashing of enormous wheels, and jangling of colossal chains; every

human being within sight being as black as a negro, and the gust from

the shore giving the closest resemblance to a blast between the tropics.

Our steamer played her part handsomely in this general effort to stifle

the population, and threw columns of smoke, right and left, as she moved

through the bends of the river, thick enough to have choked an army of

coal-heavers. I am as little of a sentimentalist as any man; I have

always pronounced Rousseau an impostor. I regretted that the pillory has

been abolished in the days of the modern novelists of France; but I was

nearly in a state of suffocation, and some allowance must be made for

the wrath of asphyxia. As I looked on the fuliginous sky, and the

cineritious earth, on the ember-coloured trees, and half vitrified

villas, the whole calcined landscape, I involuntarily asked myself, what

is the good of all this hammering, forging, and roasting alive? Is man

to be made perfect in the manner of a Westphalia ham? or is it to be the

crowning glory of a nation, that she is the great nail-maker to the

civilized globe? Is her whole soul to be absorbed in the making of

chain-cables and cotton-twist? Are all her aspirations to breathe only

linsey-woolsey, Yorkshire broadcloth, and Birmingham buttons? Are the

cheeks of her maids to grow pallid, for the sake of clothing the lower

portion of a Hindoo mountaineer in flannel, and the forehead of an

African savage in book-muslin? Or are our men, by nature the finest race

in the world, to be crippled into the physiognomy and faculties of

baboons, merely to make shawls for the Queen of Madagascar, or slippers

for the great Mogul?

I was startled, by an universal run towards the head of the steamer.

Men, women, children, lap-dogs, and all rushed forward, followed by an

avalanche of bandboxes, which, heaped half chimney high, had heaved with

a sudden lurch of the helm, and over-spread the deck with a chaos of

caps, bonnets, and inferior appendages to the toilet. In the cloud of

smoke above, around, and below, we had as nearly as possible run ashore

upon the Isle of Dogs. The captain, as all the regular reports on

occasions of disaster say, behaved in this extremity “with a coolness, a

firmness, and a sagacity worthy of all admiration.” He had made nine

hundred and ninety-nine voyages, to Margate before; it was therefore

wholly impossible that he could have shot the head of his ship into the

mud of the left bank of the Thames on his thousandth transit. The fact,

however, seemed rather against the theory. But as I was not drowned, was

not a shareholder in the vessel, and have an antipathy to

courts-martial, I turned from the brawling of the present, to the

bulletins of the past, and thought of Dog-land in its glory.

THE ISLE OF DOGS.

“_On Linden when the sun was low._”

Ten thousand years the Isle of Dogs,

Lay sunk in mire, and hid in fogs,

Rats, cats and bats, and snakes and frogs--

The tenants of its scenery.

No pic-nic parties came from town,

To dance with nymphs, white, black, or brown,

(They stopped at Greenwich, at the Crown,

Neglecting all its greenery.)

Dut Dog-land saw another sight,

When serjeants cried, “Eyes left, eyes right,”

And jackets blue, and breeches white,

Were seen upon its tenantry.

Then tents along the shore were seen,

Then opened shop the gay Canteen,

And floated flags, inscribed,--“The Queen.”

All bustle, show, and pennantry.

There strutted laughter-loving Pat,

John Bull (in spirits rather flat,)

And Donald, restless as a rat,

Three nations in their rivalry.

There bugle rang, and rattled drum,

And sparkled in the glass the rum,

Each hero thinking of his plum,

The prize of Spanish chivalry.

At last, Blue-Peter mast-high shone,

The Isle of Dogs was left alone,

The bats and rats then claimed their own

By process sure and summary.

The bold battalions sail’d for Spain,

Soon longing to get home again,

Finding their stomachs tried in vain

To live on Spanish _flummery_.

A cloud of smoke, which the wrath of Æolus poured upon our vessel, as a

general contribution from all the forges along shore, here broke my

reverie, by nearly suffocating the ship’s company. But the river in this

quarter is as capricious as the fashions of a French milliner, or the

loves of a figurante. We rounded a point of land, emerged into blue

stream and bright sky, and left the whole Cyclopean region behind,

ruddied with jets of flame, and shrouded with vapour, like a

re-rehearsal of the great fire of London.

I had scarcely time to rejoice in the consciousness that I breathed

once more, when my ear was caught by the sound of a song at the

fore-part of the deck. The voice was of that peculiar kind, which once

belonged to the stage coachman, (a race now belonging alone to

history,)--strong without clearness; full without force; deep without

profundity, and, as Sydney Smith says, “a great many other things

_without_ a great many other things;” or, as Dr. Parr would tell

mankind,--“the product of nights of driving and days of indulgence; of

facing the wintry storm, and enjoying the genial cup, the labours of the

Jehu, and the luxuries of the Sybarite,”--it was to Moore’s melody,--

----“My dream of life

From morn till night,

Was love, still, love.”

THE SONG OF THE MAIL-COACHMAN.

Oh, the days were bright

When, young and light,

I drove my team,

My four-in-hand

Along the Strand,

Of bloods the cream.

But time flies fast:

Those days are past,

The ribbons are a dream:

Now, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

The Bristol Mail,

Is but a snail,

The York stands still,

The Liverpool

Is but a stool--

All gone down hill.

Your fire you poke,

Up springs your smoke,

On sweeps the fiery stream:

Now, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

Along the sky

The sparkles fly,

_You_ fly below,--

You leave behind

Time, tide, and wind,

Hail, rain, and snow.

Through mountain cores

The engine snores,

The gas lamps palely gleam:

Oh, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

You see a hill,

You see a mill,

A bit of sky;

You see a cow,

You see a plough,

All shooting by.

The cabins prance,

The hedgerows dance,

Like gnats in Evening’s beam:

Oh, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

You hear a sound,

You feel a bound,

You all look blue.

You’ve split a horse,

A man’s a corse.

All’s one to you.

Upon the road

You meet a load,

In vain you wildly scream.

Oh, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

You come full front

Upon a hunt,

You hear a yell;

You dash along,

You crush the throng,

Dogs, squires, pell-mell.

You see a van;

The signal man

Is snugly in a dream.

Oh, there’s nothing half so quick in life

As steam, still, steam.

You see a flash,

You feel a crash,

From toe to chin.

You touch a bank,

You top a tank,

You all plump in.

You next engage

The three-mile stage,

And long for my old team,

Your trial’s o’er, you trust no more,

To steam, steam, steam!

The romantic disappears from the world every day. Canals and docks now

vulgarize this tract of the shore, and the whole scene will yet undergo

the fate of Billingsgate. But it has a story as romantic as that of

Romeo and Juliet; excepting the masquerade, the moonlight, and the

nightingales of Verona.

The Isle flies from me, and I must give but the outline.

The daughter of the old Baron de Bouvraye, one of the followers of

William the Norman, and lord of the country for leagues along the

northern shore of the Thames, was the court beauty of the time. With the

Norman dignity of form, she had the Saxon beauty of countenance; for the

Baron had wedded a Saxon heiress. The charms of the Lady Blanche de

Bouvraye, were the theme of the whole race of troubadours; and the most

popular poem of Guido de Spezzia was written on the incident of her

dropping her wimple at a court ball. It was said that she had a thousand

lovers; but it is certain, that suitors crowded from every part of

Christendom to claim her hand--a number probably not diminished by the

knowledge that she was to succeed to the immense possessions of the

barony.

But, to the sorrow of some, the indignation of others, and the

astonishment of all, the Lady Blanche laughed at the idea of love.

William, not accustomed to have his orders disputed, commanded the

beautiful heiress to fall in love with some one or other at a moment’s

delay. But she laughed at the herald who bore the command, and bade him

tell his master, that though armies might be commanded, and crowns

conquered, Blanche de Bouvraye would be neither. William was indignant,

and ordered the herald to prison for a month, and to be fed on bread and

water, for the audacity of bringing back such an answer. But the lady

was unchanged. The Baron remonstrated, and demanded whether she was

prepared to see his line extinguished, and his lands go to strangers.

She laughed and said, that as the former could not be while she lived,

and the latter could take place only after she was dead, she saw no

reason why she should concern herself on the subject. The abbess of the

famous convent of the Celestines, near the ford of the river Rom, where

the town of Romford has since grown up, was sent to argue with her. But

her answer was the question, “Why had not the abbess herself married?”

Her father confessor was next sent to her. But she sportively asked him,

“Where were _his_ wife and children?”--a question which, though put in

all innocence, so perplexed the good father, that, not desiring to be

the penitent instead of the confessor, he returned with all possible

speed to his convent.

Yet the Lady Blanche’s eye often exhibited the signs of weeping, and her

cheek grew pale. All was a problem, until a handsome youth, the son of a

knight on the Kentish shore, was seen one night touching a theorbo under

her window, and singing one of the Tuscan love songs, which the

troubadours had brought into England.

This was enough for the suspicions of the Baron. The young minstrel was

seized, and sent to join the Crusaders then embarking for the Holy Land;

and the lady was consigned to the Baron’s castle in Normandy. As

Shakspeare said four hundred years after,

The course of true love never does run smooth.

It would take the pen and song of ten troubadours to tell the adventures

of the lady and the youth. In the fashion of the age, they had each

consulted an astrologer, and each had been told the same fortune, that

they should constantly meet, but be constantly separated, and finally be

happy.

In Normandy, the Baron’s castle and the lady had fallen together into

the hands of the troops who had rebelled against William, when a band of

the crusaders on the march, commanded by her lover, rescued her. The

lady was next ordered to take up her abode in a convent in Lombardy, of

which her father’s sister was the abbess. The vessel in which she

embarked was driven up the Mediterranean by a storm, and wrecked on the

shore where the army of the crusaders was encamped. Thus the lovers met

again. By the Baron’s order, the lady returned once more to Europe; but

when in sight of the Italian coast, the felucca was captured by an

Algerine, and, to her astonishment, she found in the pirate’s vessel her

lover, who had been wounded and taken prisoner in battle with the

Saracens, and sold into slavery. Again they were separated; the lady

was ransomed by her father; and the lovers seemed to have parted for

ever.

But the stars were true. The lover broke his Moorish chains, and the

first sight which the lady saw on her landing at Ancona, was the

fugitive kneeling at her feet.

I hasten on. As the vessel in which they sailed up the Thames approached

the baronial castle, they saw a black flag waving from the battlements,

and heard the funeral bell toll from the abbey of the Celestines. The

Baron had been laid in the vault of the abbey on that day. Their hopes

were now certainty: but the lady mourned for her father; and the laws of

the church forbade the marriage for a year and a day. Yet, this new

separation was soothed by the constant visits of her lover, who crossed

the river daily to bask in the smiles of his betrothed, who looked more

beautiful than ever.

The eve of the wedding-day arrived; and fate seemed now to be disarmed

of the power of dividing the faithful pair; when, as the lover was

passing through a dark grove to return to the Kentish shore for the last

time, he was struck by an arrow shot from a thicket, fainted, and saw no

more.

The morning dawned, the vassals were in array, the bride was in her silk

and velvet drapery, the bride’s maids had their flower-baskets in their

hands, the joy-bells pealed, a hundred horsemen were drawn up before the

castle gates,--all was pomp, joy, and impatience,--but no bridegroom

came.

At length the mournful tidings were brought, that his boat had waited

for him in vain on the evening before, and that his plume and mantle,

dabbled with blood, had been found on the sands. All now was agony. The

bank, the grove, the river, were searched by hundreds of eager eyes and

hands, but all in vain. The bride cast aside her jewels, and vowed to

live and die a maid. The castle was a house of mourning; the vassals

returned to their homes: all was stooping of heads, wringing of hands,

and gloomy lamentation.

But, as the castle bell tolled midnight, a loud barking was heard at the

gate. It was opened; and the favourite wolf-hound of the bridegroom

rushed in, making wild bounds, running to and fro, and dragging the

guard by their mantles to go forth. They followed; and he sprung before

them to the door of a hut in a swampy thicket a league from the castle.

On bursting open the door, they found a man in bed, desperately torn,

and dying from his wounds. At the sight, the noble hound flew on him;

but the dying man called for a confessor, and declared that he had

discharged the arrow by which the murder was committed, that he had dug

a grave for the dead, and that the dog had torn him in the act. The next

demand was, where the body had been laid. The dying man was carried on

the pikes of the guard to the spot; the grave was opened; the body was

taken up; and, to the astonishment of all, it was found still with

traces of life. The knight was carried to the castle, restored, wedded,

and became the lord of all the broad acres lying between the Thames and

the Epping hills.

He had been waylaid by one of his countless rivals, who had employed a

serf to make him the mark for a cloth-yard shaft, and who, like the

Irish felon of celebrated memory, “saved his life by dying in jail.” The

dog was, by all the laws of chivalry, an universal favourite while

living; and when dead, was buried under a marble monument in the Isle;

also giving his name to the territory; which was more than was done for

his master; and hence the title of the Isle of Dogs. Is it not all

written in _Giraldus Cambrensis_?

----Enter Limehouse Reach.--The sea-breeze comes “wooingly,” as we wind

by the long serpent beach; the Pool is left behind, and we see at last

the surface of the river. Hitherto it has been only a magnified

Fleet-ditch. The Thames, for the river of a grave people, is one of the

most frolicsome streams in the world. From London Bridge to the ocean,

it makes as many turns as a hard-run fox, and shoots round so many

points of the shore, that vessels a few miles off seem to be like

ropemakers working in parallel lines, or the dancers in a quadrille, or

Mr. Green’s balloon running a race with his son’s (the old story of

Dædalus and Icarus renewed in the 19th century); or those extravaganzas

of the Arabian Nights, in which fairy ships are holding a regatta among

meadows strewn with crysolites and emeralds, for primroses and the

grass-green turf.

But what new city is this, rising on the right? What ranges of enormous

penthouses, covering enormous ships on the stocks! what sentinels

parading! what tiers of warehouses! what boats rushing to and fro! what

life, tumult, activity, and clank of hammers again? This is Deptford.

“Deep forde,” says old Holinshed, “alsoe called the Goldene Strande,

from the colour of its brighte sandes, the whiche verilie do shine like

new golde under the crystalle waters of the Ravensbourne, which here

floweth to old Father Thamis, even as a younge daughtere doth lovinglie

fly to the embrace of her aged parente.”

But Deptford has other claims on posterity. Here it was that Peter the

Great came, to learn the art of building the fleets that were to cover

the Euxine and make the Crescent grow pale. At this moment I closed my

eyes, and lived in the penultimate year of the 17th century. The scene

had totally changed. The crowds, the ships, the tumult, all were gone; I

saw an open shore, with a few wooden dwellings on the edge of the water,

and a single ship in the act of building. A group of ship carpenters

were standing in the foreground, gazing at the uncouth fierceness with

which a tall wild figure among them was driving bolts into the keel. He

wore a common workman’s coat and cap; but there was a boldness in his

figure, and a force in his movement, which showed a superior order of

man. His countenance was stern and repulsive, but stately; there was

even a touch of insanity in the writhings of the mouth and the wildness

of the eye; but it did not require the star on the cloak, which was

flung on the ground beside him, nor the massive signet ring on his hand,

to attest his rank. I saw there the most kingly of barbarians, and the

most barbarian of kings. There I saw Peter, the lord of the desert, of

the Tartar, and of the polar world.

While I was listening, in fancy, to the Song of the Steppe, which this

magnificent operative was shouting, rather than singing, in the rude joy

of his work, I was roused by a cry of “Deptford!--Any one for Deptford?

Ease her; stop her!”

I sprang from the bench on which I had been reclining, and the world

burst upon me again.

“Deptford--any one for Deptford?” cried the captain, standing on the

paddle-box. None answered the call, but a whole fleet of wherries came

skimming along the surge, and threw a crowd of fresh passengers, with

trunks and carpet-bags numberless, on board. The traveller of taste

always feels himself instinctively drawn to one object out of the

thousand, and my observation was fixed on one foreign-featured female,

who sat in her wherry wrapt up in an envelope of furs and possessing a

pair of most lustrous eyes.

A sallow Italian, who stood near me, looking over the side of the

vessel, exclaimed, “FANNI PELLMELLO,” and the agility with which she

sprang up the steps was worthy of the name of that most celebrated

daughter of “the muse who presides over dancing,” as the opera critics

have told us several million times.

The sallow Italian was passed with a smile of recognition, which put him

in good spirits at once. Nothing vivifies the tongue of a foreigner like

the memory of the _Coulisses_, and he over-flowed upon me with the

history of this terrestrial Terpsichore. It happened that he was in Rome

at the time of that memorable levee at which Fanny, in all her

captivations, paid her obeisance at the Vatican; an event which

notoriously cost a whole coterie of princesses the bursting of their

stay-laces, through sheer envy, and on whose gossip the _haut ton_ of

the “Eternal City” have subsisted ever since.

The Italian, in his rapture, and with the vision of the danseuse still

shining before him at the poop, began to _improvise_ the presentation.

All the world is aware that Italian prose slides into rhyme of

itself,--that all subjects turn to verse in the mind of the Italian, and

that, when once on his Pegasus, he gallops up hill and down, snatches at

every topic in his way, has no mercy on antiquity, and would introduce

King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, dancing a quadrille with Prince

Albert and Queen Victoria.

THE PRESENTATION.

The month was September,

The day I remember,

(’Twas the _congé_ of Clara Novello),

I saw troops under arms,

Dragoons and gendarmes,

Saluting sweet Fanny Pellmello.

At St Peter’s last chime

A chorus sublime

(By-the-by, from Rossini’s Otello),

Was sung by Soprani,

In homage to Fanny,

The light footed Fanny Pellmello.

As she rush’d on their gaze,

The Swiss-guard in amaze,

Thought they might as well stand a Martello;

All their muskets they dropp’d,

On their knees they all popp’d,

To worship sweet Fanny Pellmello.

To describe the _danseuse_,

Is too much for _my_ muse;

But if ever I fight a “duello,”

Or quarrel at mess,

It will be to possess

Such a jewel as Fanny Pellmello.

On her brow a tiara,

Like the lady’s in Lara,

Or a portrait of thine, Biandello;

With a twist and a twirl,

All diamond and pearl,

In bounded sweet Fanny Pellmello.

All the men in the cowls,

Were startled like owls,

When the sunbeam first darts in their dell, O;

As she flash’d on their eyes,

All were dumb with surprise--

All moon-struck with Fanny Pellmello.

As she waltzed through the hall,

None heard a foot fall,

All the chamberlains stood in a spell, O;

While, silent as snow,

She revolved on her toe,

A la Psyche--sweet Fanny Pellmello.

_Whom_ she knelt to within

I can’t say, for my sin;

Those are matters on which I don’t dwell, O;

But I _know_ that a Queen

Was nigh bursting with spleen

At the diamonds of Fanny Pellmello.

Were I King, were I Kaiser,

I’d have perish’d to please her,

Or dared against all to rebel, O;

I’d have barter’d a throne

To be bone of thy bone,

Too exquisite Fanny Pellmello.

If Paris had seen

Her _pas seul_ on the green,

When the goddesses came to his cell, O,

Forgetting the skies,

He’d have handed the prize

To all-conquering Fanny Pellmello.

Achilles of Greece

Though famed for caprice,

Would have left Greek and Trojan _in bello_,

Cut country and king,

And gone off on the wing

To his island with Fanny Pellmello.

Alexander the Great,

Though not over sedate,

And a lover of more than I’ll tell, O,

Would have learn’d to despise

All his Persians’ black eyes,

And been faithful to Fanny Pellmello.

Marc Antony’s self

Would have laid on the shelf

His Egyptian so merry and mellow;

Left his five hundred doxies,

And found all their proxies

In one, charming Fanny Pellmello.

The renown’d Julius Cæsar,

With nose like a razor,

And skull smooth and bright as a shell, O,

Would his sword have laid down,

Or pilfer’d a crown,

At thy bidding, sweet Fanny Pellmello.

His nephew Augustus,

Not famous for justice,

(Unless when the gout made him bellow,)

His nose would have curl’d

At the pomps of the world,

For a cottage with Fanny Pellmello.

The Emperor Tiberius,

(A rascal nefarious,)

Though all things on earth he would sell, O,

Would have bid Rome adieu,

To the Alps flown with you,

And play’d shepherd to Fanny Pellmello.

That Bluebeard, young Nero,

(Not much of a hero,

For a knave earth has scarce seen his fellow,)

Though his wife he might smother,

Or hang up his mother,

Would have worshipp’d sweet Fanny Pellmello.

Nay, Alaric the Goth,

Though he well might be loath

His travelling baggage to swell, O,

Would have built you a carriage,--

Perhaps offer’d marriage,--

And march’d off with Fanny Pellmello.

Fat Leo the Pope,

In tiara and cope,

Who the magic of beauty knew well, O,

Would have craved your permission

For your portrait, by Titian,

As Venus--sweet Fanny Pellmello.

The Sultan Mahmood

Who the Spahis subdued,

And mow’d them like corn-fields so yellow,

Would have sold his Haram,

And made his salām

At thy footstool, sweet Fanny Pellmello.

Napoleon le Grand

Would have sued for thy hand,

Before from his high horse he fell, O;

He’d have thought Josephine

Was not fit to be seen,

By thy beauties, sweet Fanny Pellmello.

----But the Thames, like the world, is full of changes. As the steamer

ran close in under the right shore, I observed a small creek, as

overgrown with sedge, as silent and as lonely as if it had been hid in a

corner of Hudson’s Bay. It was once called Julius Cæsar’s bath, from the

tradition, that when marching at the head of the Tenth Legion, on a

visit to Cleopatra, then resident in Kent! he ordered his whole brigade

to wash the dust from their visages preparatory to appearing before her

majesty and her maids of honour. But this was the age of romance. An

unwashed age followed, and the classical name gave way to the exigencies

of things. The creek was called the “Condemned Hole,” and was made the

place for impounding vessels caught in the act of smuggling, which were

there secured, like other malefactors, in chains. It may not unnaturally

be concluded, that the spot was unpopular to the tribe of gallant

fellows, who had only followed the example of Greek, Saxon, Dane, and

Norman; and who saw the beloved companions of many a daring day and

joyous night (for if the sailor loves his ship, the smuggler adores her)

laid up under sentence of firewood. By that curious propensity, which

makes the fox so often fix his burrow beside the kennel, the surrounding

shore was the favourite residence of the smuggler; and many a

broad-shouldered hero, with a visage bronzed by the tropic sun, and a

heart that would face a lion, a fire-ship, or any thing but his wife in

a rage, was seen there taking his sulky rounds, and biting his thumb

(the approved style of insult in those days) at the customhouse

officers, who kept their uneasy watch on board. With some the ruling

passion was so strong, that they insisted on being buried as near as

possible to the spot, and a little churchyard was thence established,

full of epitaphs of departed gallantry and desperate adventure--a sort

of Buccaneer Valhalla, with occasional sculptures and effigies of the

sleepers below.

Among those the name of Jack Bradwell lived longest. The others

exemplified what Horace said of the injustice of fame, they “wanted a

poet” to immortalize them; but Jack took that office on himself, and

gave the world an _esquisse_ of his career, in the following rough

specimen of the Deptford muse of 1632:--

EPITAPH.

Fulle thirtie yeares, I lived a smuggler bolde,

Dealing in goode Schiedam and Englishe golde.

My hande was open, and my hearte was lighte;

My owners knew my worde was honour brighte.

In the West Indies, too, for seven long yeares,

I stoutlie foughte the Dons and the Mounseers.

Commander of the tight-built sloop, the Sharke,

Late as the owle, and early as the larke,

I roamed the sea, nor cared for tide or winde,

And left the Guarda Costas all behinde.

Until betrayed by woman’s flattering tongue,

In San Domingo my three mates were hung.

I shot the Judge, forsook the Spanish Maine,

And to olde Englande boldlie sailed againe.

Was married thrice, and think it rather harde,

That I should lie alone in this churchyarde.

But the march of mind is fatal to sentiment. A few years ago all

vestiges of Jack were swept away. A neighbouring tanner had taken a

liking to the spot, purchased it, planted his pits in it, and carried

off Jack’s monument for a chimney-piece!

----But what hills are those edging the horizon, green, soft, and sunny.

I hear a burst of sonorous bells--

Over this wide-watered shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar.

No; Milton’s bells are monastic; the solemn clang of some huge

cathedral, calling the brethren to vespers, and filling the air with the

melancholy pomp of the antique cloister.--These are gay, glad,

tumultuous, a clang of joy. It is the Queen’s accession. Flags are

flying on every ship and steeple, and I hear a distant cannonade. The

guns of Woolwich are firing in honour of the day.

And what palace is looming on my right? Greenwich Hospital. A façade

worthy of Greece; ranges of Corinthian columns; vast courts expanding in

front; groves and green hills in the rear; and on the esplanade, a whole

battalion of one-legged or one-armed heroes, formed in line, and, as we

arrive, giving three cheers to the “glory” of her Majesty.

I leave the chroniclers to tell, that this noble establishment was

founded by William the Dutchman, of freedom-loving and French-hating

memory; that the call for public munificence was answered, as such calls

always are, by England; and that at this hour it pensions nearly forty

thousand as brave veterans as any in the world.

What magnitude of benevolence was ever equal to this regal and national

benefaction? In what form could public gratitude have ever been more

nobly displayed? Or by what means, uniting the highest charity to the

most just recompense, could comfort have been more proudly administered

to the declining days of the British seaman. In the long course of a

hundred and fifty years, what thousands, and tens of thousands, must

have been rescued, by this illustrious benevolence, from the unhappiness

of neglected old age! To what multitudes of brave old hearts must it

have given comfort in their distant cottages, and what high

recollections must the sight of its memorials and trophies revive in the

men who fought under Rodney and Howe, St. Vincent and Nelson! Those are

the true evidences of national greatness. Those walls are our witnesses

to posterity, that their fathers had not lived in vain. The shield of

the country thrown over the sailor and the soldier, against the chances

of the world in his old age, is the emblem of a grander supremacy than

ever was gained by even its irresistible spear.

----But the steamer has made a dash to the opposite bank, and we glide

along the skirts of a small peninsula, marked by a slender stone pillar,

where the border of Essex begins.

At this spot, a couple of hundred years ago, a mayor of London had been

hanged; for what reason, Elkanah Settle, the city laureate, does not

aver, further than that “wise people differed much on the

subject,”--some imagining that it was for bigamy; others, that it was

for having, at a great banquet given to the king by the corporation of

spectacle-makers, mistaken the royal purse for his own; but the chief

report being, “that he was hanged for the bad dinners which he gave to

the common-councilmen.” The laureate proceeds to say, that at this spot,

whenever the mayor of London went down with the Companies in their

visitation of the boundaries, the barges all made a solemn stop. The

mayor, (he was not yet a lord,) with all the aldermen, knelt on the

deck, and the chief chaplain, taking off his cap, repeated this

admonition:--

Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,

Of a sinner’s death beware.

Liveth virtue, liveth sin

Not without us, but within.

Man doth never think of ill,

While he feedeth at his will.

None doth seek his neighbour’s coin,

When he seeth the sirloin.

No man toucheth purse or life,

While he thus doth use his knife.

Savoury pie and smoking haunch

Make the hungry traitor staunch.

Claret spiced, and Malvoisie,

From ill Spirits set us free,

Better far than axe or sword

Is the City’s well filled board.

Think of him once, hanging there,

Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,

_Chorus._--Beware, Beware, Beware!

The various corporate bodies chanted the last line with unanimous

devotion; the mayor and aldermen then rose from their knees, and the

whole pageant moved on to Blackwall to DINE.

Who has not heard of Blackwall? more fashionable for three months in the

year than Almacks itself for the same perishable period; fuller than

Bond Street, and with as many charming taverns as Regent Street contains

“Ruination shops,” (so called by Lady J. the most _riante_ wit of the

day,) those shops where one can purchase every thing that nobody wants,

and that few can pay for. Emporiums, as they name themselves, brilliant

collections of all that is dazzling and delightful, from a filigree

tooth-pick, up to a service of plate for a royal visitation.

Blackwall is a little city of taverns, built by white-bait, as the

islands in the South Sea are built by the coral insect. The scenery is a

marsh, backed by the waters of a stagnant canal, and lined with

whitewashed warehouses. It is in fact a transfer of Wapping,

half-a-dozen miles down the Thames. But Blackwall disdains the

picturesque; it scorns exterior charms, and devotes itself to the solid

merits of the table, and to dressing white-bait with a perfection

unrivalled, and unrivalable in the circumference of the terrestrial

globe.

Blackwall deserves to be made immortal, and I gave it a passport to

posterity, in an Ode.

ODE TO BLACKWALL.

Let me sing thy praise, Blackwall!

Paradise of court and city,

Gathering in thy banquet-hall

Lords and cockneys--dull, and witty.

Spot, where ministers of state,

Lay aside their humbug all;

Water-souchy, and white-bait,

Tempting mankind to Blackwall.

Come, ye Muses, tuneful Nine,

Whom no Civil List can bribe,

Tell me, who come here, to dine,

All the great and little tribe,

Who, as summer takes its rounds,

O’er Whitechapel, or Whitehall,

From five shillings to five pounds,

Club for dinner at Blackwall.

There the ministerial _Outs_,

There the ministerial _Ins_,

One an emblem of the pouts,

T’other emblem of the grins;

All, beneath thy roof, are gay,

Each forgetting rise or fall,

Come to spend _one_ honest day,----

All good fellows, at Blackwall.

There I see an old Premier,

Very like a “Lord at nurse,”

Rather _near_, rather near,

Dangling a diminish’d purse.

Grieving for the days gone by,

When he had a “house of call,”

Every day his fish and pie,

Gratis--_not_ like thine, Blackwall.

There I see an Irish brow,

Bronzed with blarney, hot with wine,

Mark’d by nature for the plough,

Practising the “Superfine.”

Mumbling o’er a courtly speech,

Dreaming of a palace Ball,

Things not _quite_ within his reach,

Though _quite asy_ at Blackwall.

There the prince of Exquisites!

O’er his claret looking sloppy,

(All the ladies know, “he writes,”

Bringing down the price of poppy,

Spoiling much his scented paper,

Making books for many a stall,)

Sits, with languid smile, Lord Vapour,

Yawning through thy feast, Blackwall.

By him yawning sits, Earl Patron,

Well to artists (_too_ well) known.

Generous as a workhouse matron,

Tender-hearted as a stone:

Laughing at the pair, Lord Scoffer

Whispers faction to F--x M--le.

_Asking_ an “official offer,”

_Ainsi va le monde_ Blackwall.

But, whence comes that storm of gabble,

Piercing casement, wall, and door,

All the screaming tongues of Babel?

’Tis the “Diplomatic corps,”

Hating us with all their souls,

If the knaves have souls at all.

I’d soon teach them other _roles_,

Were I Monarch of Blackwall.

Then, I hear a roar uproarious!

----“There a Corporation dine,”

Some are tipsy, some are “glorious,”

Some are bellowing for wine;

Some for all their sins are pouting,

Some beneath the table fall;

Some lie singing, some lie shouting,--

Now, farewell to thee, Blackwall.

----Stopped for five minutes at the handsome pier, waiting for the

arrival of the railway passengers from London. The scene was animated;

the pier crowded with porters, pie-men, wandering minstrels, and that

ingenious race, who read “moral lessons” to country gentlemen with their

breeches’ pockets open, and negligent of their handkerchiefs.

----Stepped on shore, and, tempted by the attractions of one of the

taverns, ordered a bottle of claret, on the principle of the

parliamentary machines for cleansing the smoke-conveying orifices of our

drawing-rooms. The inconceivable quantity of fuliginous material, which

I had swallowed in my transit down the river, would have stifled the

voice of a _prima donna_. The claret gave me the sense of a recovered

faculty, and as I inhaled, with that cool feeling of enjoyment which

salutes the man of London with a consciousness that sea-breezes are in

existence, I had leisure to glance along a vista of superb saloons,

which would have better suited a Pasha of Bagdad, than the payers of the

income tax in the dingiest and mightiest city of the known world.

Yet all was not devoted to the selfish principle. In a recess at the end

of the vista was a small bust--a sort of votive offering to the “memory

of Samuel Simpson, formerly a waiter in this tavern for the space of

fifty years,” this bust having been “here placed by his grateful master,

Thomas Hammersley.”

I am proud to have seen, and shall be prouder to rescue, the names of

both those Blackwall worthies from oblivion. They have long slept

without their fame; for the bust is dated A.D. 1714, the year which

closed the existence of that illustrious queen, Anna, whose name, as

Swift rather saucily observed, like her friendships,

Both backward and forward was always the _same_.

An honour shared in succeeding ages only by the amiable Lord Glenelg.

But inscribed on the pedestal was an epitaph, which I transferred to my

memoranda.

EPITAPH.

Bacchus! thy wonders fill the wondering world!

Thrones in the dust have by thy cups been hurl’d.

Yet, still thou had’st for mankind _one_ surprise:

There was _one_ honest drawer! and here he lies.

Sam Simpson, of the Swan, who, forced to wink

At drinking hard in others, did _not_ drink.

A man who, living all his life by sots,

Yet fairly drew, and fairly fill’d his pots.

Steady and sure, his easy way held on,

Nor let his chalk score _two_, when called for _one_.

If man’s best study is his fellow man,

Reader, revere this hero of the Can.

’Twere well for kings, if many a king had been

Like him who sleeps beneath yon Churchyard-green.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” saith Solomon; and as the late

Lord Mayor said, “I am quite of Solomon’s opinion.” Here is Crabbe,

fifty years before he was born. Here is his pomp and his particularity;

his force and his facility; his pungency and his picturesque. Is the

theory of transmigration true? and has the Blackwall tavern-keeper only

reappeared in the Rutlandshire parson? Let the antiquarians settle it

among them. I leave it to occupy the life of some future Ritson, to

poison some future Stephens with his own ink; and to give the whole race

of the Malones the shadow of an excuse for their existence in this

world.

But, I hear the snort of the locomotive; I see the cloud of steam

rushing towards the pier. The bell rings, the chaos of trunks and

passengers is rolled on board. I follow, and Blackwall fades in the

distance, as the poets say, “like a dream of departed joys.”

----Came in sight of a promontory, Purfleet, flanked by an immense row

of dark-roofed ominous-looking buildings,--these are the gunpowder

depôts of the navy and army of the empire. I pretend to no exclusive

poltroonery; but I must acknowledge that I highly approved of the speed

which carried us past them. If they had blown up at the moment, in what

region of the atmosphere should we have been, steamer and all, in five

seconds after. Yet, how many things might have turned our whole cargo

into gas and carbon at the instant? a flash of lightning; the wire of a

Voltaic machine, apparently as harmless as a knitting needle in the

hands of an old spinster; the spark of a peasant’s pipe; the scrape of a

hob-nailed shoe! Within a hundred yards of us there lay, in “grim

repose,” a hundred thousand barrels of gunpowder. We might have lighted

them from the sparks of our funnel, and committed an involuntary suicide

on the most comprehensive scale.

But we should not have perished unknown. As the maid, in Schiller’s

famous Monologue, sings,--

Even in the solitudes

Of the Transatlantic woods,

Where the elk and bison stalk,

Men of that dark day should talk.

Old men by their fireside sitting,

Maidens in the sunset knitting,

Still should think of that dark day.

Till the world itself grew gray.

If the magazine at Purfleet were to explode, the Thames would be routed

out of its bed, and carried into Tunbridge Wells; Woolwich would be a

cinder, Gravesend an ash-pit, Chatham a cemetery, Blackwall a nonentity,

the Tunnel a tomb, and one half of the mighty metropolis itself but a

recollection.

Yet human beings actually _live_ at Purfleet! actually eat, drink, and

sleep, with this volcano beside their pillows; Essex picnics are eaten

within sight of this earth-shaker. Nay, balls have been given; and

creatures, calling themselves rational, have danced quadrilles, with the

salient temerity of the incurably insane. What a short-sighted and

saltatory thing is human nature!

Among the changes produced by the new importation of passengers, it was

my fate to be placed beside the Authoress; who did me the honour of

thinking me worthy of her notice, and who rapidly admitted me into the

most unbounded confidence, respecting the merits of her own

performances, and the demerits of all the world of authorship besides. I

listened with the most profound submission; only filling up the pauses,

when she stopped to take breath; by a gesture of acquiescence, or that

most valuable of all words, “Yes.” She “had met me,” in a hundred

places, where I was not conscious of having ever been; and “recognised

my style” in a hundred volumes which I had never read. In short, she was

charmed with me; and confessed, after half an hour of the most

uninterrupted eloquence on her side; that “though evidently cautious of

giving an opinion,” I should thenceforth be ranked by her, among the

most brilliant conversationalists of the day.

Must I acknowledge, that I forgot as expeditiously as I learned, and,

excepting _one_ recollection, all was a blank by dinner time.

But we _had_ met once before, in a scene, which, on afterwards casually

turning over some papers, I found recorded on those scraps of foolscap,

and in those snatches of rhyme, which argue, I am afraid, a desultory

mind. So be it. I disdain to plead “not guilty” to the charge of

perfection. I make no attempt to exonerate myself of the cardinal

virtues. I write poetry, because it is “better behaved” than prose; and

in this feeling I give the history to a sympathizing world.

THE POET’S AUCTION.

As I stroll’d down St. James’s, I heard a voice cry,

“The auction’s beginning, come buy, sir, come buy.”

On a door was a crape, on a wall a placard,

Proclaiming to earth, it had lost its last bard.

In I rambled, and, climbing a dark pair of stairs,

Found _all_ the blue-stockings, all giggling in pairs;

The crooked of tongue, and the crooked of spine,

_All_ ugly as Hecate, and old as the Nine.

Tol de rol.

There were A, B, C, D,’s--all your “ladies of letters,”

Well known for a trick of abusing their betters;

With their _beaus_! the old snuffling and spectacled throng,

Who haunt their “_soirees_” for liqueurs and souchong;

There was “dear Mrs. Blunder,” who scribbles Astronomy--

Miss Babble, who “owns” the “sweet” Tales on Gastronomy;

Miss Claptrap, who writes the “Tractarian Apologies,”

With a host of old virgins, all stiff in the ologies.

Tol de rol.

There sat, grim as a ghoul, the sublime Mrs. Tomb,

With rouged Mrs. Lamp, like a corpse in full bloom,

And the hackney-coach tourist, old Mrs. Bazaar,

Who lauds every ass with a ribbon and star;

Describes every tumble-down Schloss, brick by brick,

And quotes her flirtations with “dear Metternich;”

With those frolicsome ladies who visit harāms,

And swallow, like old Lady Mary, their qualms.

Tol de rol.

There was, dress’d _à la Chickasaw_, Miss Chesapeak,

Who makes novels as naked as “nymphs from the Greek;”

Mrs. Myth, with a chin like a Jew’s upon Hermon;

Mrs. Puff, who reviewed the archbishop’s last sermon;

Miss Scamper, who runs up the Rhine twice a-year,

To tell us how Germans smoke pipes and swill beer.

All the _breakfasting_ set: for the bard “drew a line,”

And ask’d the Magnificoes only, to dine.

Tol de rol.

There stood old Viscount Bungalow, hiding the fire,

As blind as a beetle, the great picture-buyer;

With Earl Dilettante, stone-deaf in both ears,

An opera-fixture these last fifty years;

Little Dr. de Rougemont, the famous Mesmeric,

Who cures all the girls by a touch of hysteric;

And Dean Dismal, court-chaplain, whose pathos and prose

Would beat Mesmer himself at producing a doze.

Tol de rol.

And there, with their eyes starting out of their sockets,

A tribe, whose light fingers I keep from my pockets,

_Messieurs les Attaches_, all grin and moustache,

With their souls in full scent for our heiresses’ cash.

Four eminent lawyers, with first-rate intentions

Of living the rest of their lives on their pensions,

With six heads of colleges, hurried to town,

To know if Sir Bob, or Lord John, would go down.

Tol de rol.

“Here’s a volume of verse,” was the auctioneer’s cry.

“What! nobody bids!--Tom, throw that book by.

Though it cost the great author one half of his life,

Unplagued (I beg pardon) with children or wife.

Here’s an Epic in embryo, still out of joint,

Here’s a bushel of Epigrams wanting the point,

With a lot of _Impromptus_, all finished to fit

A dull diner-out with _extempore_ wit. Tol de rol.

“Here’s a sonnet, inscribed ‘To the Shade of a Sigh.’

A ‘Lament’ on ‘The Death of a Favourite Fly;’

And, well worth a shilling, that sweetest of lays--

To the riband that tied up a ‘Duchess’s stays.’

Here’s a note from a Young-England Club, for a _loan_,

Lord B----’s famous speech on ‘The Sex of Pope Joan,’

With the bard’s private budget of H--ll--d House stories,

Of Tories turned Whigs, and of Whigs _turning_ Tories.

Tol de rol.

“What! nobody bids! Must I shut up the sale?

Well; take all the verses at so much per bale!

I come to the autographs:--One from _the_ Duke,

Assigning the cause for cashiering his cook;

A missive from Byr-n,--a furious epistle,--

Which proves that a bard may pay “dear for his whistle;”

With letters from geniuses, sunk in despair

By the doctrine, that ‘Poets should live upon air.’

Tol de rol.

“A scrap from Bob Burns, to d--n the Excise,

Where they sent him to perish--(a word to the wise;)

A line from Sir W-lt-r, in anguish and debt,

To thank his good king for _what never came yet_;

A song from the minstrel of minstrels, T-m M--re,

To laud his ‘dear country’ for keeping him poor;

With a prayer from old Coleridge, in hope that his bones

Might escape all the humbug of ‘National stones!’

Tol de rol.

“Here’s a note to T-m C-mpb-ll, (indorsed, ‘_From a Peer_,’)

To mulct Income-tax from his hundred a-year;

Pinn’d up with a note from his _Chef_ to his Grace,

That he ‘must have five hundred, or throw up his place;’

Here’s an epitaph written by Haydon’s last pen--

Poh! Genius may die in a ditch or a den!

The country wants none of it, female or male,

So, as no one bids sixpence, I’ll shut up the sale.”

Tol de rol.

PRUSSIAN MILITARY MEMOIRS.[6]

“_Vieux soldat, vieille bête_,” is a French proverb, implying an

exceedingly low estimate of the mental acuteness of the veteran soldier.

We do not know that English soldiers are quicker witted than French

ones; better educated we know they are not, except, as we love to

believe, in what pertains to push of bayonet. But in how much more

flattering terms is couched the popular opinion in this country,

concerning the capacity and wit of the man of musket and sabre. On this

side the Channel, to be an “old soldier” implies something remarkably

knowing--a man quite “up to snuff,” and a trifle above it. “He’s too old

a soldier for that,” signifies that the “_he_” is a very sharp and wary

dog, the last fellow to be taken in or made a fool of. “He came the old

soldier over me,” is a common cant acknowledgment of having met more

than one’s match--of having been overreached or outwitted. Other similar

phrases are there, familiar to most ears, and unnecessary to cite. They

concur to show a prevailing belief, that a long habit of scarlet--we

mean no pun--and familiarity with pipeclay, or else the many

vicissitudes and much experience of life they argue, polish the

soldier’s faculties to a particularly sharp point, and remove from his

character each vestige of the unsophisticated, as effectually as he

himself, with sand and oil-rag, would rub all stain of rust from

scabbard or barrel. There is exaggeration in this notion. It is not

unusual to find in veteran soldiers, a dash of _naive_ simplicity, even

of childish credulity, co-existent with much shrewdness and knowledge of

the world. For this incongruity, let physiologists account; we shall not

investigate its causes. The remark applies to soldiers of most

countries; for, with certain shades of difference, derivable from

climate, race, and national customs, the soldier is the same every

where. The original material is various, but the moulds in which it is

fashioned are to a great extent identical. Divide the whole population

of Europe according to trades and professions, and in the military class

shall the least diversity be found.

We strongly suspect that Baron von Rahden, whose “Wanderings” we noticed

in a previous number of this Magazine, and from whose agreeable pages we

propose again to glean, is a fine example of the compound character

above described. On duty, none more matter-of-fact than he, none more

prompt and keen in conduct and language; but, suspend the activity of

camps, and dangers of the fight, remove him for a moment from his

battalion’s ranks and the routine of service, and behold! he builds up

all idyl about a peasant girl and cow; or, better still, and more fully

confirming our opinion, treats you with all gravity and deep conviction

to a spice of the supernatural. Of his ghostly gambols we will forthwith

give a specimen.

It was in the month of October, 1812, that a party of young cadets, of

whom the baron was one, left Breslin for Berlin, there to pass their

examination as officers. The ordeal to which the aspirants hastened was

severe and dreaded, and the journey was no very soothing preparation for

the rigours of the examiners. German roads and diligences were far less

respectable then than now, and the lumbering carriage in which the

cadets, in company with Polish Jews, market-women, baskets, bags, and

blankets, prosecuted their journey, was a bone-setter of most inhuman

construction. Its wooden lining was clouted with nails, compelling the

travellers to preserve a rigid perpendicular, lest a sudden jolt should

diminish the number of their teeth, or increase that of the apertures of

their heads. About midnight this modern barrel of Regulus reached a

large town, and paused to deposit passengers. The halt was of some

duration, and the cadets dispersed themselves about the streets. One of

them, designated by the Baron under the initial Von L., did not

re-appear till the post-horn had sounded its fourth signal, when he came

up in haste and agitation and threw himself into the carriage, which

immediately drove off. The next day this youth, who had been silent and

gloomy since the halt of the previous night, was taken grievously ill, a

misfortune attributed by his comrades to a plentiful breakfast of sour

milk and sausages. On their return from Berlin, however, Von L., whose

health was still delicate, and depression visible, showed, on passing

the scene of their midnight halt, symptoms of uneasiness so strong as to

excite suspicion that his illness had had some extraordinary cause. That

this suspicion was well founded, he, at a later period, confessed to

Baron von Rahden, who tells the story in his friend’s own words.

“Being very thirsty,” said Von L., “I lingered at the great fountain on

the market-place, and there I was presently joined by a young peasant

girl, carrying a great earthen pitcher. We soon became great friends. It

was too dark for me clearly to distinguish the features of my little

Rebecca, but I nevertheless readily complied with her tittered

invitation to escort her home. Arm in arm we wandered through the narrow

by-streets, till we reached a large garden, having a grated door, which

stood half open. Here the damsel proposed that we should part, and

nimbly evaded my attempt to detain her. She ran from me with suppressed

laughter. I eagerly followed, soon overtook her, and, by flattery and

soothing words, prevailed on her to sit down beside me upon a bank of

soft turf in the shadow of overhanging trees. Here, for a short quarter

of an hour, we toyed and prattled, when I was roused from my boyish

love-dream by the distant sound of the post-horn. I sprang to my feet;

at the same instant, with a peal of shrill wild laughter, my companion

disappeared. My light and joyous humour suddenly checked, I looked about

me. I was now better able to distinguish surrounding objects; and with

what indescribable horror did I recognise in the supposed garden a

churchyard, in the turf bank a grave, in the sheltering foliage a

cypress. And now all that related to the maiden seemed so mysterious,

her manner occurred to me as so strange and unearthly! How I found out

the gate of the cemetery, I know not. I remember stumbling over the

graves and rushing in the direction whence the postilion’s horn still

sounded, pursued by echoes of scornful laughter. Shuddering and

breathless, I at length rejoined my comrades, but the impression made

upon me by that night’s adventure has never been effaced.”

So much for the Baron’s friend. Now for the Baron himself, who relates

all this, be it observed, with a most commendable solemnity, implying

conviction of the supernatural nature of his comrade’s adventure. “With

reference to this unnatural occurrence,” he says, “I frequently met my

friend during the war and the early years of the peace, but never

without that incident recurring to me, and the more so, as from that day

forward, melancholy settled upon Von L.’s manly and handsome

countenance. He strove, with indifferent success, as it appeared to me,

to combat his depression by dissipation and worldly pleasures; but the

expression of his dark eye was ever one of severe mental suffering. He

never married or partook of the peaceful joys of domestic existence.

During the War of Liberation he distinguished himself by daring courage

and reckless exposure of his life, was repeatedly wounded, and died

suddenly at the age of thirty, in the full bloom and strength of

manhood. He is still well remembered as a gallant officer and thorough

soldier.

“Whilst on a visit to the town of N., a few years ago, my evening walk

frequently led me, in company with a much esteemed friend, to the

churchyard where Von L., after his short and melancholy career, had at

last found repose. During one of these walks, my companion related to me

the following story:--At the hour of twelve, upon three successive

nights, the sentry, whose lonely post was adjacent to the cemetery, had

challenged the rounds, as they approached through the deep shadow of an

arched gateway. To his question, ‘Who makes the rounds?’ was each time

replied, in deep sepulchral tones, ‘Captain von L.’ and at the same

instant the visionary patrol vanished. So runs the guard-room tale.”

Which the Baron is sufficiently reasonable to treat as such, although he

assures his readers that, even after an interval of three-and-thirty

years, he does not write down the details of his melancholy friend’s

adventure with the mysterious _aquaria_ without something very like a

shudder. In a collection of _Mahrchen_ this very German story might have

been accepted as an endurable fragment of imaginative _diablerie_, but

coming thus in the semi-historical autobiography of a hero of Leipzig

and Waterloo, and Knight of the Iron Cross, it certainly subjects the

writer to the application of the uncomplimentary French proverb already

cited.

As a boy--and during his German and French campaigns, he was but a

boy--Baron von Rahden showed an odd mixture of the manly and the

childish. Cool and brave in the fight, bearing wounds and hardship with

courage and fortitude, the loss of a trinket made him weep; an elder

comrade’s rebuke rendered him down-cast and unhappy as a whipped

school-boy. Scarcely had he joined his regiment, when he was admitted to

the intimacy of a Lieutenant Patzynski, an experienced officer and crack

duellist. It was a mode amongst the young officers, when sitting round

the punchbowl, to enter into contracts of brotherhood. The process was

exceedingly simple. The glasses clattered together, an embrace was

given, and thenceforward the partakers in the ceremony addressed each

other in the second person singular, in sign of intimacy and friendship.

Emboldened by the patronage of the formidable Patzynski, and heated by a

joyous repast, Von Rahden one day approached Lieutenant Merkatz, who was

considerably his senior both in rank and years, and proffered him the

fraternal embrace. “With the greatest pleasure, my dear boy,” replied

Merkatz, who had observed with some disgust the forward bearing of the

unfledged subaltern, “but on one condition. You shall address me as

_Sie_, and I will call you _Er_.” The former being the most respectful

style of address, the latter slighting and even contemptuous, only used

to servants and inferiors. Cowed by this unkind, if not undeserved

reproof, Von Rahden retreated in confusion. Subsequently he met many

unpleasant slights and rebuffs from Merkatz; but they did him good, and

his persecutor eventually became his warm friend. This, however, was not

till the recruit had proved his manhood in many a hot fight and sharp

encounter. “Forward,” said the stern Prussian soldier on the field of

Lutzen, when, borne back bleeding from the foremost line of skirmishers,

he met Von Rahden hurrying to replace him. “Forward, boy! Yonder will

you find brothers!” In the smoke of the battle, not in the fumes of the

orgie, were the esteem and friendship of Germany’s tried defenders to be

conquered. After the battle of Kulm, Von Rahden bought a French watch,

part of a soldier’s plunder; and his pride and delight in this trinket

were, according to his own confession, something quite childish. His

comrades, with whom he was a favourite, bore with his exultation.

Merkatz alone showed a disposition to check it. He had assumed the

character of a surly Mentor, resolved, apparently, to cure his young

comrade of his follies, and drill him into a man. He now assured Von

Rahden that if he did not leave off playing with, and displaying, his

watch, he would knock it out of his hand the very first opportunity.

This soon presented itself. Whilst bivouacking in the mountains of

Bohemia, the two officers chanced one night to be seated near each other

at the same fire, and Von Rahden, forgetting his companion’s menace,

repeatedly pulled out his watch, until Merkatz, with a blow of a stick,

shivered it to pieces. “Although, in general, when my comrades’ jokes

displeased me, I was ready enough to answer them with my sabre, on this

occasion I was so astonished and grieved, that I burst into tears, and

retreated to my couch in the corner of the hut, where I sobbed myself to

sleep.” This whimpering young gentleman, however, was the same, who,

only a few days previously, in the hottest moment of the battle of Kulm,

had led his men, encouraging them by voice and deed, up to the very

musket-muzzles of the parapeted Frenchmen, and who, twice already, had

been wounded amidst the foremost of the combatants. At the fight of May,

too, although that was somewhat later, his bravery was such as to

attract the notice of Prince Augustus of Prussia. The men of his

battalion were weary and exhausted by a hard day’s combat, when,

suddenly and unexpectedly, they were again ordered forward into a fierce

fire of artillery. They murmured and hesitated, and for a moment refused

to advance. “Upon this occasion, I was fortunate enough to contribute,

by boyish and joyous humour, for which the men all liked me, and by my

contempt of danger, in restoring courage and confidence. Shot and shell

flew about us, and the younger soldiers were hard to keep in their

ranks. I ran forward thirty or forty paces to the front, and several

shells happening to fall close to me without bursting, I laughed at and

cut jokes upon them. At last the men laughed too, and came willingly

forward. Such little incidents occur in far less time than it takes to

tell of them. So it was here; but we had effected what we wanted--the

men were in better humour. I had no idea that Prince Augustus had

observed my behaviour, which was certainly rather juvenile; and when I

saw him standing near me, I was ashamed and drew back; but he called out

to me, and said, in a loud voice, ‘Very good! very good! Lieutenant

Rahden,’ and then spoke a few words to Count Reichenbach. From that day

I found great favour with our illustrious general of brigade. The first

proof of it was the Iron Cross.”

Von Rahden’s final reconciliation with Merkatz took place under the

enemy’s fire. It was the day after Montmirail, and Blucher’s _corps

d’armée_, after gallantly protecting Ziethen’s beaten troops from

Gronchy’s cavalry, itself retreated towards Etoges. At about half a

league from that place, whilst marching along a road that ran between

vineyards, the French tirailleurs attacked them, and cavalry patrols

came in to inform the Field-marshal that Etoges was occupied by the

enemy. But the Baron shall tell the story himself.

“In darkness, surrounded by foes, ignorant of the ground we manœuvred

upon, a handful of men against a powerful force, and our old Father

Blucher, with the elite of his generals, in danger of being taken--all

this made up an alarming picture. But the greater the need, the prompter

the deed. In an instant it was decided to throw out skirmishers into the

vineyards, whilst the battalions, formed close and compact round the

Field-marshal, should cut their way along the road. Count Reichenbach

gave his orders accordingly; and his adjutant, Lieutenant Merkatz, who

sat chilled and weary upon his horse, turned mechanically to me, and

desired me to extend my skirmishers on the left of the road. This was

beyond a joke: I had been skirmishing the whole day, perpetually under

fire, and hard at work since nine in the morning. Tired to death, I had

been heartily glad to rejoin my battalion, and now I was ordered out

again into the cold dark night, and on the most uncertain service. All

my old grudge against Merkatz recurred to me, and, as it was not my turn

for the duty, I answered him in loud and marked tones, ‘Order out

somebody else, and don’t be too lazy to ride to the next company.’ When,

however, Count Reichenbach turned round, and with some displeasure

desired me to speak less loud in the neighbourhood of the

General-in-chief, I became more complying, and only argued that my large

cloak, which I carried rolled over my shoulder, would hinder me in the

vineyards. ‘Give me the cloak here,’ replied Merkatz: ‘I am freezing

upon my horse.’ What could I do? Time pressed: so venting my ill humour

in a few grumbling words, I threw my cloak to the adjutant, and hurried

with my skirmishers to the vineyard. I had taken but a few steps,

however, when an arm was thrown round me. It was that of Merkatz.

‘Listen, Rahden,’ said he; ‘before we part, perhaps for ever, become my

brother for life, and let us forget all past unkindness.’ I replied by a

hearty embrace, for I had long esteemed Merkatz as one of the bravest of

my comrades, and, elated at the atonement he now made me for having

refused my friendship at the commencement of the previous campaign, I

pressed forward cheerfully into the fight.”

The French cavalry had been several hours in possession of Etoges, had

removed the railings from the wells, and sawn the timbers of a bridge

which crossed a broad and muddy stream. As soon as the Prussians set

foot on it, it broke down, and an awful confusion ensued. The panic was

aggravated by the darkness, and by the fire of the enemy, who blazed at

the Allies from behind trees and houses. In attempting to jump the

stream, Von Rahden fell in, and all his efforts only sank him deeper in

the mud. A number of soldiers, who had also missed the leap, struggled

beside him, involuntarily wounding each other with their fixed bayonets.

Von Rahden gave himself up for lost. “I uttered a short prayer, gave one

thought to my distant home, and awaited the death blow. My senses had

already half left me, when I heard a well-known voice exclaim,

‘Lieutenant, where are you?’ With a last effort I raised myself, and saw

Schmidt, my sergeant of skirmishers, peering down into the ditch. He

held out his musket. I seized it with the grasp of desperation, and the

brave fellow dragged me up. Barefoot, and covered with mud, I followed

in the stream of fugitives. So great was the hurry and disorder of the

flight, that if the enemy had sent a single squadron after us, thousands

of prisoners must have been taken. It seems incomprehensible that they

did not pursue; but I think I may safely affirm, that a young Russian

officer, whose name I do not know, saved the army by his presence of

mind. In a loud voice, he shouted several times, ‘Barabanczek!

Barabanczek!’ which means a drummer. A number of drummers and buglers

gathered around him and beat and blew a charge. The French did not

suspect the stratagem; and supposing that reinforcements were coming up

under cover of the night, they would not risk, by a pursuit, the

advantage they had already gained. My friend, Merkatz, was amongst the

prisoners taken upon that disastrous evening; but he soon managed to

escape, leaving behind him, however, his own horse, and my warm and much

prized cloak.”

A terrible campaign was that of 1813-14; and the man who had made it,

from Lutzen to Paris, might well style himself a veteran, though his

whole military career were comprised in the short ten months of its

duration. What incessant fighting! not occasional battles, with long

intervals, varied by insignificant skirmishes, but a rapid succession of

pitched and bloody fields. No rest or relaxation, or pleasant repose in

comfortable quarters, but short rations and the bivouac’s hard couch as

sole solace for the weary and suffering soldier. The hardships of the

allied armies are briefly, but frequently and impressively adverted to

by the Baron von Rahden. As if the ravages of lead and steel were

insufficient, disease and exposure added their quota to the harvest of

death. “Although in the height of summer,” says the Baron, speaking of

the month of August, 1813, “we had had, for three days past,

uninterrupted rains, and the fat black soil was so soaked, that our

progress was painfully difficult. We could bivouac only in meadows, and

on the uncut corn. In fallow or stubble fields we must have lain in mud.

We were very ill fed; the commissariat stores were far in rear, detained

in the mountain passes, and for several days our only nourishment

consisted of wild fruits, potatoes and turnips, which the men dug up in

the fields. Our clothes and equipment, to the very cartouch-boxes, were

wet through, and not a ray of sun, a tree or house, or even a bivouac

fire, was there for warmth or shelter.” With vermin also, bequeathed to

them often by their Cossack allies, the Prussians were grievously

tormented. “In our camp, by Chlumetz, in Bohemia, where we passed some

days, we had rain and other bivouac calamities to put up with. The straw

served out to us had already been slept upon; and the consequence was,

an invasion of our clothes and persons by certain small creeping things

of a very unpleasant description. Whether they were of Austrian or

Russian extraction I am unable to state; nor did it much matter: we

succeeded to them. Looking out of my hut one morning, I saw a man issue

from one of the straw-built sheds occupied by the soldiers, and run,

wringing his hands, to an adjacent wood. I followed him, to prevent

mischief, and recognised an old friend and fellow cadet, Von P. He was

in the greatest despair. The soldiers had turned him out of their

temporary abode. The poor fellow swarmed with vermin. I succeeded in

calming him, fetched him clean linen, and after a careful examination of

his clothes in a neighbouring oat-field, he returned with me to my hut,

which he thenceforward inhabited. Should the Russian commandant of the

Polish fortress of Czenstochau chance to read these pages, and remember

the above incident, let him give a friendly thought to his old brother

in arms, who will soon again have to speak of the brave Von P., of the

Second Silesian Regiment.” If, in the rugged Bohemian mountains,

hardships were to be anticipated, in the plains of Champagne things

might have been expected to go better. If possible, they went worse. “To

speak plainly,” says the Baron, referring to the campaign in France,

which commenced very early in the year, “filth and ordure were our

couch; rain, ice, and snow, our covering; half-raw cow’s flesh, mouldy

biscuits, and sour wine lees, our nourishment; for heart and mind, the

sole relaxation was shot, and blow, and stab. Some one has said, ‘Make

war with angels for twenty years and they will become devils.’ To that I

add, ‘Six months of such a life as we then led, and men would turn into

beasts.’” Little wonder if soldiers thus situated greedily seized each

brief opportunity of enjoyment. The cellars of Ai and Epernay paid heavy

tribute to the thirsty Northern warriors. We are told of one instance

where a whole division of the allied army was unable to march, and an

important military operation had to be suspended, in consequence of a

Pantagruelian debauch at a chateau near Chalons, where champagne

bottles, by tens of thousands, were emptied down Prussian and Muscovite

gullets. The sacking of their cellars, however, was not the only evil

endured at the hands of the invaders by the unlucky vine-growers. Wood

was scarce, the nights were very cold, and the sticks upon which the

vines were trained, were pulled up and used as fuel. Sometimes, in a

single night, many hundreds of thousands of these _echalas_ were thus

destroyed, every one of them being worth, owing to the hardness and

rarity of the wood required for them, at least two _sous_. Their second

visit to France hardly entered into the anticipations of the reckless

destroyers, or they would perhaps have had more consideration for that

year’s vintage.

From a host of anecdotes of Baron von Rahden’s brother-officers, we

select the following as an interesting and characteristic incident of

Prussian camp-life three-and-thirty years ago. It is told in what the

Baron calls his poetical style:

“My captain, a Pole by birth, was brave as steel, but harsh and rough as

the sound of his name. He was deficient in the finer feelings of the

heart, in philanthropy, and in a due appreciation of the worth of his

fellow-men. Although a good comrade to us young officers, he was a

tyrant to his inferiors. His envy and jealousy of his superiors he

barely concealed under an almost exaggerated courtesy. Such was Captain

von X.

“It was the eve of the battle of Leipzig, and a violent gust of wind had

overthrown the fragile bivouac-huts, at that time our only protection

from the cold and wet of the October nights. The rain fell in torrents,

and, in all haste, the soldiers set to work to reconstruct their

temporary shelter. The more cunning and unscrupulous took advantage of

the prevailing confusion to consult their own advantage, without respect

to the rights of others. The objects which they coveted, and

occasionally pillaged, would, under other circumstances, have been of

little worth: they consisted of straw, branches, and stakes, invaluable

in the construction of our frail tenements. As in duty bound, our

military architects first built up the captain’s hut, within which he

took refuge, after ordering me to remain outside and preserve order. As

junior officer of the company, this fatigue-duty fairly fell to me, in

like manner as the first turn for an honourable service belonged to the

senior; but, nevertheless, I felt vexed at the captain’s order, and

could not help wishing him some small piece of ill luck. My wish was

very soon realized.

“Our major’s hut, more carefully and strongly constructed, had resisted

the hurricane: it stood close beside that of the captain. The major was

long since asleep and snoring; but his servant, a cunning, careful dog,

was still a-foot, and watched his opportunity to get possession of a

long bean-stick, to be used as an additional prop to the already solid

edifice under which his master slumbered. The unlucky marauder had not

remarked that this stake formed one of the supports of the captain’s

dormitory. He seized and pulled it violently, and down came the hut,

burying its inmate under the ruins. There was a shout of laughter from

the spectators of the downfal, and then the Pole disengaged himself from

the wreck, cursing awfully, and rushed upon the unfortunate fellow who

had played him the trick. Pale and trembling, the delinquent awaited his

fate; but his cry of terror brought him assistance from his master, who

suddenly stepped forth in his night-dress, a large gray cavalry cloak

thrown about him, and a white cloth bound round his head. The major was

an excellent and kind-hearted man, loved like a father by his men, but

subject to occasional fits of uncontrollable passion, which made him

lose sight of all propriety and restraint. Without investigation, he at

once took his servant’s side against the captain, in which he was

certainly wrong, seeing that his worthy domestic had been caught in the

very act of theft. He snatched the bean-stick from the man’s hand: the

captain already grasped the other end; and, for some minutes, there they

were, major and captain, pulling, and tugging, and reeling about the

bivouac, not like men, but like a brace of unmannerly boys. Myself and

the soldiers were witnesses of this singular encounter. Accustomed to

regard our superiors with fear and respect, we now beheld them in the

most childish and ludicrous position. Astonishment kept us motionless

and silent. At last the captain made a violent effort to wrest the pole

from his antagonist: the major held firm, and resisted with all his

strength; when, suddenly, his opponent let go his hold, and our major, a

little round man, measured his length in the mud. In an instant he was

on his feet again. Throwing away the bean-stick, and stepping close up

to his opponent, ‘To-morrow,’ said he, ‘we will settle this like men:

here we have been fools; and you, captain, a malicious fool.’

“‘I accept your invitation with pleasure,’ replied the captain, ‘and

trust our next meeting will be with bullets. But, for to-day, the pole

is mine.’ And he seized it triumphantly.

“‘Certainly; yours to-day,’ retorted the major. ‘To-morrow we will fight

it out upon my dirty cloak.’

“The morrow came, and the battle began, not, however, between major and

captain, but between French and Prussians. Silent we stood in deep dark

masses, listening to the music of the bullets. ‘Firm and steady!’ was

the command of our little major--of the same man who, a few hours

before, had played so childish a part. Skirmishers were called in, and a

charge with the bayonet ordered. The foe abandoned his first position.

Animated by success, we attacked the second. Our battalion hurried on

from one success to another, and my gallant captain was ever the first

to obey, in the minutest particular, the orders of our famous little

major. The noble emulation between the two brave fellows was

unmistakeable. In their third position the French defended themselves

with unparalleled obstinacy, and our young soldiers, in spite of their

moral superiority, were compelled to recede. ‘Forward, my fine fellows!’

cried the major; ‘Follow me, men!’ shouted the captain, and, seizing the

sinking standard, whose bearer had just been shot, he raised it on high,

and dashed in amongst the foe. With a tremendous ‘Hurra!’ the whole line

followed, and Napoleon’s ‘Vieille Garde’ was forced to a speedy retreat.

“The major gazed in admiration at his bitter opponent of the preceding

day. Calling him to him, he clasped him in his arms. For a moment the

two men were enveloped in the cloak upon which they were to have fought.

Words cannot describe that scene. Suddenly a cannon-ball boomed through

the air, and, lo! they lay upon the ground, shattered and lifeless,

reconciliation their dying thought. The fight over, and our bivouac

established in a stubble-field, we paid then the last military honours.

Fifty men, all that remained of my company, followed their bodies, and a

tear stood in every eye as we consigned the gallant fellows to one

grave.”

With bitter and ill-suppressed rage did the military portion of the

French nation, after a brief but busy campaign, see themselves compelled

to submission, their emperor an exile, their hearths intruded upon by

the foreigners who, at Jena and Wagram, Austerlitz and Marengo, had

quailed and fled before their conquering eagles. Resistance, in a mass,

was no longer to be thought of: the French army was crushed, crippled,

almost annihilated, but its individual members still sought

opportunities of venting their fury upon the hated victors. By sneer,

and slighting word, and insulting look, they strove to irritate and lure

them to the lists; and their provocations, even the more indirect ones,

rarely failed of effect. On the duelling-ground, as in the field, steady

German courage was found fully a match for the _brio_ and presumption of

these French _spadassins_. After the capitulation of Paris, Von Rahden’s

regiment was sent into country-quarters at Amiens, and they were but a

few days in the town before the ill-smothered antipathy between Gaul and

German broke out into a flame.

“When we were fairly installed in our quarters, and the first little

squabbles and disagreements between towns-people and soldiers had been

settled, chiefly by the good offices of the authorities, we officers

gave ourselves up to the pleasures of the place, amongst which a large

and elegant _café_ was not to be forgotten. In this coffee-house the

tables were of marble, the walls covered with mirrors, the windows and

doors of plate-glass, in gilt frames. All was gold and glitter, and the

_dames de comptoir_ might, from their appearance, have been fashionable

ladies, placed there to lead the conversation. All this was very new and

attractive, and well calculated to dazzle us young men. Accordingly,

from early morn till late at night, hundreds of officers, of all arms,

sat in the _café_, drinking, playing, and sighing.

Happening one forenoon to be orderly-officer, I received several

complaints from soldiers concerning the younger son of the family upon

which they were quartered. He had returned home only the day before, had

shown himself very unfriendly towards the men, and did his utmost to

irritate their other hosts against them. Upon inquiry, I found the

complaint to be just, and that a young and handsome man, of military

appearance, was doing all in his power to excite ill-will towards us.

After several warnings, which were unattended to, I was compelled to

arrest and put him in the guard-room, menacing him with further

punishment. This done, I joined my comrades at the _café_.

“That day our favourite place of resort presented an unusual aspect. A

regiment of French hussars, on its march westwards, had halted for the

night at Amiens, and upwards of twenty of the officers were now seated

in the coffee-house. There was a good deal of talk going on, but not so

much as usual; and the division between the different nations was

strongly marked. To the right the hussars had assembled, crowded round

three or four tables; on the other side of the saloon sat fifty or sixty

Prussian infantry officers. The situation was not the most agreeable,

and there was a mutual feeling of constraint. Presently there came to

the coffee-house (by previous arrangement, as I am fully persuaded) one

of those Italian pedlars, for the most part spies and thieves, of whom

at that time great numbers were to be met with in France and other parts

of the Continent. Stopping at the glazed door opening into the street,

he offered his wares for sale. Soon one of the hussar officers called to

him in excellent German, and asked him if he had any pocket-books to

sell. He wanted one, he said, to note down the anniversaries of the

battles of Jena, Austerlitz, &c. Although this inquiry was manifestly a

premeditated insult, we Prussians remained silent, as if waiting to see

what would come next. The pedlar supplied the demands of the Frenchman,

and was about to leave the room, when one of our officers, Lieutenant

von Sebottendorf, of the 23d infantry regiment, called to him in his

turn, and observed, in a loud voice, that he also required a

pocket-book, wherein to mark the battles of Rossbach, the Katzbach, and

Leipzig. The names of Rossbach and Leipzig served for a signal. As by

word of command, the hussars sprang from their chairs and drew their

long sabres; we followed their example, and bared our weapons, which for

the most part were small infantry swords. In an instant a mêlée began;

the French pressing upon Sebottendorf; we defending him. At the same

moment the hussar trumpets and our drums sounded and beat in the

streets. As officer of the day, those sounds called me away. With great

difficulty I got out of the café, and hurried to the main-guard, which

was already menaced by the assembled hussars. I had just made my men

load with ball-cartridge--we had no other--when luckily several

companies came up and rescued me from my very critical position. Nothing

is more painful than to be compelled to use decisive and severe measures

in such a conjuncture, at the risk of one’s acts being disapproved and

disavowed.

“Meanwhile, in the coffee-house, a somewhat indecorous fight went on,

the mirrors and windows were smashed, and the scuffle ended by the

officers forcing each other out into the street. All these affronts

naturally would have to be washed out in blood. In a quarter of an hour

our battalions were drawn up in the market-place: the general commanding

at Amiens, and who just then happened to be absent, had given the

strictest orders, that, in case of such disturbances, we were not to use

our arms till the very last extremity. We were compelled, therefore,

patiently to allow the French to march through our ranks, on foot and

with drawn sabres, challenging us to the fight, as they passed, not with

words, certainly, but by their threatening looks. Amongst them I saw, to

my great astonishment, the young civilian whom I had that morning put in

confinement, and who now passed several times before me, in hussar

uniform, and invited me to follow him. In the confusion of the first

alarm, he had escaped from the guard-room, put on regimentals, and now

exhaled his vindictiveness in muttered invectives against me and the

detested Prussians. Of course I could not leave my company; and, had I

been able, it would have been very foolish to have done so.

“In a short half-hour the French and Prussian authorities were

assembled. The hussars received orders to march away instantly, and we

were to change our quarters the next day. Before we did so, however,

rendezvous was taken and kept by several hussar officers, on the one

hand, and by Lieutenant Sebottendorf, his second, Merkatz, and six

others of our regiment, on the other, to fight the matter out.

Sebottendorf and his opponent, who had commenced the dispute, also began

the fight. They walked up to the barriers, fixed at ten paces; the

Frenchman’s shot knocked the cap off the head of our comrade, who

returned the fire with such cool and steady aim, that his opponent fell

dead upon the spot. Another hussar instantly sprang forward to take his

turn with Merkatz. I looked about for my young antagonist; but no one

had seen him since the previous day, nor did the French officers know

whom I meant; so it is possible that, favoured by the confusion of the

previous day, he had donned a uniform to which he had no right. There

was no more fighting, however. After long discussions and mutual

explanations, matters were peaceably arranged. The officer who had

caused the strife, alone bore the penalty. He was carried away by his

comrades, and we repaired to our new cantonments. The brave Von

Sebottendorf had vindicated with fitting energy and decision the fame

and honour of the Prussian officer.”

The month of February, 1815, witnessed the return to Germany of Von

Rahden’s battalion. A soldier’s home is wherever the quarters are best;

and it was with many regrets that the Baron and his comrades left the

pleasant cantonments and agreeable hospitality of gay and lively France,

for the dull fortress of Magdeburg. The Baron shudders at the bare

recollection of the unwelcome change, and of the subsequent reduction

of his regiment to the peace establishment. Nor, according to his

account, did any very hearty welcome from their civilian countrymen

console the homeward-bound warriors for stoppage of field-allowance and

diminished chance of promotion. They were received coldly, if not with

aversion. Instead of good quarters and wholesome food, bad lodgings and

worse rations fell to their share. Stale provisions, the leavings, in

some instances, of the foes from whom they had delivered Germany, were

deemed good enough for the conquerors of Kulm and Leipzig. Fatigue

duties replaced opportunities of distinction, economy and ennui were the

order of the day, and, amongst the disappointed subalterns, for whom the

war had finished far too soon, but one note was heard, a sound of

discontent and lamentation. It was the first opportunity these young

soldiers had of learning that the man-at-arms, prized and cherished when

his services are needed, is too often looked upon in peace time as a

troublesome encumbrance and useless expense.

Suddenly, however, and most unexpectedly, came the signal for renewed

activity. On the 29th of March, intelligence reached Magdeburg that

Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and, after a triumphant march of twenty

days, had resumed his seat upon the imperial throne. Joyful news for the

ambitious subaltern, eager for action and advancement; less pleasant

tidings to the old officer, who believed his campaigns at an end, and

hoped tranquilly to enjoy his well-earned promotion. Cockade and sabre

instantly rose in public estimation; and those who, a day previously,

had cast sour glances at the neglected soldier, now lauded his valour

and encouraged his aspirations. Forgetting the toils and perils of

recent campaigns, old Blucher’s legions joyfully prepared for another

bout with the Frenchman. Once more the march was ordered Rhine-wards;

and, on the 18th April, Von Rahden and his battalion crossed that river

at Ehrenbreitstein.

An accident, the overturn of a carriage, by which he was severely hurt,

separated the Baron, for some time, from his regiment. He rejoined it at

Liege; to the great surprise of all for his death had been reported, and

his name struck off the strength. The officers gave him a dinner,--the

men welcomed his appearance on parade with a triple hurra. Happy in

these proofs of his fellow-soldiers’ esteem he looked forward joyfully

and confidently to the approaching struggle. It soon came. In the night

of the 15th June the alarm sounded: Bülow’s corps hastily got under

arms, and marched to the assistance of Prince Blucher. Front three in

the morning till one in the afternoon they advanced without pause or

slackening; then a short halt was ordered. The sound of Blucher’s cannon

was plainly heard. He was hard pressed by the French: but a burning sun

and a ten hours march had exhausted the strength of Bülow’s troops; rest

and refreshment were indispensable. It was not till eleven at night that

they reached Gembloux, and there met the old field-marshal’s disordered

battalions in full retreat from the disastrous field of Ligny.

Of the battle of Waterloo, the Baron of course saw but the close.

Nevertheless he had a little hard fighting and received a wound at the

taking of Planchenoit, which was full of French troops, principally

grenadiers of the guard. “The order was given. ‘The second regiment will

take the village by storm.’ My brave colonel was the first man in the

place; but he was also the first killed: a shot from a window knocked

him over. Notwithstanding this loss, in an instant we were masters of

the village. At its farther extremity was the churchyard, surrounded by

a low wall, and occupied by two battalions of the old Imperial Guard.

Hats off! He who has fought against them will know how to admire them.

Like a swarm of bees, my regiment, whose ranks had got disordered during

the short fight in the village, dashed forward with lowered bayonets

against the cemetery. We were within fifteen paces of it. ‘Shoulder

arms!’ cried the French commander. More than once had the guardsmen

found the sign of contempt profit them, by confusing their antagonists,

and startling them into a hasty and irregular discharge. This time it

did not answer; in five minutes the churchyard was ours. Scarcely had

we won, when we again lost it. Thrice did it change hands, and the

ground was heaped with dead. The third encounter was terrible--with the

bayonet, just below the lime trees that shaded the cemetery gate. We

officers took the muskets of the fallen, and fought like common

soldiers. Some of the French officers followed our example; others,

standing in the foremost rank, did fearful execution with point of

sword. Here fell my dearest friend, thrust through the heart; I sprang

forward to revenge his death, when a bronzed hero of the Pyramids shot

me down.” The wound was not very severe; and, although the ball could

not be extracted, the Baron, after a month’s stay at Brussels, was able

to rejoin his battalion, then quartered in Normandy. Thence, early in

August, he marched to Paris, to take share in the grand ceremony of

blessing the colours of the Prussian regiments.

“On a splendid summer’s day, (2d September, 1815,) 25,000 to 30,000

Prussians, comprising the whole of the guards, six infantry and six

cavalry regiments of the line, were formed up in the Champ de Mars in

one great square. In its centre was an altar, composed, military

fashion, of drums, and covered with red velvet, upon which lay the Iron

Cross. The Emperors Alexander and Francis, our noble king, and all the

generals of the Allies, stood around and listened bareheaded to the

impressive thanksgiving offered up by Chaplain Offelsmeyer. Here the

colours of the various regiments, surmounted by the Iron Cross, and

having the Alliance ribband--white, black, and orange--and the ribband

of the medal cast out of captured artillery for ‘Prussia’s brave

warriors’ fluttering from their staves, received, in the hands of our

king and his imperial friends, a high and rare consecration.” As the

blessing was spoken over the lowered colours, a numerous park of

artillery fired a royal salute, and then, in review order, the troops

defiled before the King of Prussia. “When the infantry of the line had

passed, the officers were allowed to fall out and look on, whilst the

guards and grenadiers marched by. It was a splendid sight, especially at

the moment when the two emperors, at the head of their Prussian

grenadier regiments, lowered swords, and paid military honours to our

King.” The honours of the day were for Frederick William the Third; and

the sovereigns of Russia and Austria, Baron von Rahden tells us, reined

back their horses and kept a little in rear, that they might not seem to

appropriate a share of them. “Only one soldierly figure, astride, proud

and stately, upon a splendid charger, had taken post on the same line

with the King of Prussia, some twenty paces to his right. Alone, and

seemingly unsympathizing, he beheld, with thorough British phlegm, the

military pageant. It was the Duke of Wellington, the bold hero of

Eastern fight, the prudent general in the Peninsula, the fortunate

victor of Waterloo. Accident and the crowd brought me close to his

horse’s breast; and, with the assurance of a young man who feels himself

an old and experienced soldier, I contemplated his really lofty, and

proud, and noble appearance. I should find it very difficult to describe

the Duke as he then was. Not that one line has been effaced of the

impression stamped upon my memory whilst I stood for more than half an

hour scarce three paces from his stirrup. But tame and feeble would be

any portrait my pen could draw of the flashing eagle eye, the hawk’s

nose, the slightly sarcastic expression of the pointed chin, and

compressed, seemingly lipless, mouth. His hair was scanty and dark;

neither moustache nor whisker filled and rounded his thin oval

physiognomy. His high forehead, that noblest feature of the masculine

countenance, I could not see, for a long narrow military hat, with a

rather shabby plume, was pressed low down upon his brows. For two

reasons, however, the impression the English leader that day made upon

me, was not the most favourable: I was vexed at his placing himself thus

intentionally apart from, and on the same line with my king; and then it

seemed to me unnatural that his deportment should be so stiff, his bust

so marble-like, and that at such a moment his features should not once

become animated, or his eye gleam approval.”

This was not the last sight obtained by the Prussian lieutenant of the

British field-marshal. In 1835 Baron von Rahden came to London. During

the siege of Antwerp he had served as a volunteer under General Chassé,

and had drawn a large military _tableau_ or plan of the defence of the

citadel. This he had dedicated to the King of Holland, and now wished to

confide to an English engraver. To facilitate his views, Chassé gave him

an introduction to the Duke. We will translate his account of the

interview it procured him. He went to Apsley House in Dutch uniform, his

Iron Cross and medal, and the Prussian order of St. Anne, upon his

breast, the latter having been bestowed upon him for his conduct at

Waterloo, or La Belle Alliance, as the Prussians style it. He was

introduced by an old domestic, who, as far as he could judge, might have

been a mute, into a spacious apartment.

“I had waited almost an hour, and became impatient. I was on the point

of seeking a servant, and causing myself to be announced a second time,

when a small tapestried door, in the darker part of the saloon, opened,

and a thin little man, with a stoop in his shoulders, dressed in a dark

blue frock, ditto trousers, white stockings, and low shoes with buckles,

approached without looking at me. I took him for servant, a steward, or

some such person, and inquired rather quickly whether I could not have

the honour to be announced to the Duke. The next instant I perceived my

blunder; the little stooping man suddenly grew a head taller, and his

eagle eye fixed itself upon me. I at once recognised my neighbour on the

Champ de Mars. Rather enjoying my confusion, as I thought, the Duke

again turned to the door, and, without a word, signed to me to follow

him. When I entered the adjoining room he had already taken a chair,

with his back to the light, and he motioned me to a seat opposite to

him, just in the full glare from the plate-glass windows. We conversed

in French; I badly, the Duke after a very middling fashion. With

tolerable clearness I managed to explain what had brought me to London,

and to crave the Duke’s gracious protection. In reply the Duke said that

‘He greatly esteemed General Chassé, who had fought bravely at Waterloo

under his orders: that he was pleased with his defence of Antwerp,’ &c.

At last he asked me ‘by whom my plan,’ which lay upon the table beside

him, and which he neither praised nor found fault with, ‘was to be

engraved.’

“‘_Chez M. James Wyld, géographe du roi_,’ was my somewhat over-hasty

answer.

“‘_Géographe de sa Majesté Britannique_,’ said the Duke, by way of

correction.

“A few more sentences were exchanged, doubtless of very crooked

construction, as far as I was concerned,--for I was a good deal

embarrassed; and then I received my dismissal.

“The _Géographe de sa Majesté Britannique_ told me, some weeks

afterwards, that the Duke had been to him, had bought several military

maps and plans, and, as if casually, had spoken of mine, which hung in

the shop, had said that he knew me,” &c.