CHAPTER VI.

The exhausted family toiled with difficulty over the remaining passage

to what had been the mainland, and reached a village on the former

coast, under a roof of which they entered, and lay down on the floor of

the first room they came to. Their supply of water was almost out; the

materials for producing more were gone; and there seemed little chance

of finding any in the neighbourhood. "Death was here;" and yet the

exhaustion of their frames led them to sleep before they died, and to

seek and enjoy a taste of that oblivion which was soon to fall upon them

with an impenetrable shroud. All but Ellen were soon asleep; but she,

the most wearied of all, could not close her eyes and admit rest to her

overwrought frame. There was a burning thirst in her throat, which the

small portion of water she and the rest had shared--being all that

remained for them--had failed to slake. She had not complained of it;

but she rejoiced when she heard them asleep, that she could rise and

move restlessly about. The night was hot, and yet the west wind

continued to blow strongly; the moon shone, but scarcely with so bright

a light as usual--there was a film upon it, or perhaps, Ellen thought,

it was the dimness of her own weary eyes. She came softly up to Paulett,

and watched his frame, half naked in the unconsciousness of sleep, and

upon which none of the ravages of want and exertion were now concealed.

The flesh was wasted; the strong chest showed the bones of the skeleton;

the arms which had so strained their powers were thin, and lay in an

attitude of extreme exhaustion. His sleep was deep; his lips open; his

eyelids blue; he would wake in want; and soon he would be able to sleep

no more, till the last sleep of all came in torment and anguish. Poor

Charles lay by him, his head on his father's body for a pillow, his

limbs drawn somewhat together, his clusters of brown hair parted off his

pale thin cheek; and Alice, the darling Alice, with more colour in her

face than any of them, slept in deep repose, destined, perhaps, to live

last, and to call in vain on those whose cares had hitherto kept her

healthier and happier than themselves. The mother groaned with anguish;

she measured what these were about to suffer, by all she began to suffer

herself; and the sight of them seemed to sear the burning eyes which

could no longer weep. She sat down on the floor by Alice; her head fell

against the wall; she caught at a little rosary which hung near her, and

pressed it in her mouth, the comparative coolness of the beads giving

her a little ease; her face fell on her bosom.

When Paulett woke out of his deep sleep, and as soon as he stirred, the

little Alice came on tiptoe across the floor to him, and said, "Hush,

father! my mother is asleep at last."

"At last, my Alice! What! Could not she sleep?"

"I think she could not sleep. I woke up, and there was my mother; and

Charles woke presently, and she said Charles should go out and try to

bring back some cold stones in a cup, and then presently she sat down

again, and went to sleep."

He rose softly, and taking the little girl by the hand, came up to

Ellen's side, and looked upon her. She was lying at full length on the

floor; her head was toward him, but her face was turned upon the ground,

and her hair further hid it; her right arm was fallen forward, and the

back of that hand lay in the palm of the other. He did not hear nor see

her breathe. "Is it so, my Ellen?" he said. "Art thou at rest? Is there

no farewell for me?" He kneeled and stooped lower and lower. His lip did

not venture to feel hers; he longed that she might be free, yet shrank

from knowing that she was gone. But no; she had not ceased to suffer; a

low sigh came at last, and her parched mouth opened.

"Water!" she said; then lifted her eyes and saw Paulett, and remembered

all by degrees. "Is not there a little? Oh, no--none! Nay, I shall not

want it soon!" She turned her face on Paulett's breast, and soon after

tried to rise and push herself from him. "Leave me, dear husband; kiss

me once, and leave me; try to save _them_!"

But Paulett folded his arms round her. "Not so, my Ellen; the chances of

life are so little, that it is lawful for me to give them up, unless we

can all seek them together. Alas! all I can do is but to see thee die!

Oh, if I could give thee one minute's ease!"

"Alas! you must all die like this," said Ellen, who was perishing like

one of the flowers that had died in the drought for want of rain. Water

would have saved that life, spared those sufferings. That burning hand,

those gasping lips, those anxious eyes, revealed what the spirit passing

away in that torment would fain have concealed. "Alice, come near me;

hold my hand, Alice. Are you thirsty, poor child? Oh, do not grieve your

father! It will be but a short time, my little girl--be patient." Ellen

tried to kiss her; her husband kneeled and raised her head on his

shoulder, bending his face on her forehead, and murmuring the last

farewell--the last thanks--the agony of his pity for her suffering. The

poor child threw herself on her mother, gazing upward in want, and

grief, and bewilderment, in her face. "My Charles," said the mother,

feeling about with the other hand, but she did not find his head to

bless it. "My Charles," she repeated in a fainter tone, and her eyelids

drooped over the hot eyes.

Paulett saw nothing but his suffering wife, heard nothing except her

painful breath. At that moment the door opened, and Charles stood there,

paler than ever, with glittering eyes. He held the cup towards his

father. "Father," he said, "there is water coming down from heaven!"

Paulett looked up and cried, "O God, it rains!"

A TENDER CONSCIENCE.

I have a story to tell you, my dear Eusebius, of a tender conscience. It

will please you; for you delight to extract good out of evil, and find

something ever to say in favour of the "poor wretches of this world's

coinage," as you call them; thus gently throwing half their errors, and

scattering them among a pretty large society to be responsible for them;

provided only they be wretches by confession, that dare not hide

themselves in hypocrisy. In all such cases you show that you were born

with the genius of a beadle, and (strange conjunction) the tenderest of

hearts. I believe that you would stand an hour at a pillory, and see

full justice done to a delinquent of that caste; and would as willingly,

in your own person, receive the missiles that you would attempt to ward

off from the contrite wretch, whose sins might not have been woefully

against human kindness. Could you choose your seat in the eternal

mansions, it would be among the angels that rejoice over one sinner that

repenteth. You can distinguish in another the feeblest light of

conscience that ever dimly burned, and see in it the germ of a beautiful

light, that may one day, by a little fanning and fostering, shine as a

star, and shed a vital heat that may set the machinery of the heart in

motion to throw off glorious actions. But let not the man that shams a

conscience come in your way. I have seen you play off such an one till

he has burst forth--up, up, up, aiming at the skies, nothing less, in

his self-glorification; and how have you despised him, and exhibited him

to all bystanders as nothing but a poor stick in his descent! These

human rockets are at their best but falling stars--cinders incapable of

being rekindled. Commend me to the modest glow-worms, that shine only

when they think the gazing world is asleep, and dwell in green hedges,

and fancy themselves invisible to all eyes but those of love.

There are persons, and of grave judgments too, who verily believe that

the quantity of conscience amongst mankind is not worth speaking of, and

treat of human actions as entirely independent of it. And this fault

honest Montaigne finds with Guicciardini:--"I have also," says he,

"observed this in him, that of so many persons and so many effects, so

many motives and so many counsels as he judges of, he never attributes

any one of them to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all those were

utterly extinct in the world; and of all the actions, however brave an

outward show they make, he always throws the cause and motive upon some

vicious occasion, or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to

imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes

mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of reason. No

corruption could so universally have affected men, that some of them

would not have escaped the contagion, which makes me suspect that his

own taste was vicious; from whence it might happen that he judged other

men by himself." You, Eusebius, will be perfectly of Montaigne's

opinion. We would rather trust that there are few in whom this moral

principle has no vitality whatever. The wayside beggar, when he divides

his meal--which, perhaps, he has stolen--with his dog, acts from its

kind impulse; and see how uncharitable I am at my first impulse, to

suppose, to suggest that the meal is stolen--so ready are we to steal

away virtues, one after the other, and in our judgments to be thieves

upon a large scale. And so a better feeling pricks me to charity. I

doubt if we ought even to say that the parliamentary reprobate, who

openly confessed "that he could not afford to keep a conscience," had

none--he was but dead to some of its motions. If it were not that it

must be something annexed to an immortal condition, would you not,

Eusebius, say that the beggar's dog conscientiously makes his return of

service and gratitude for the scraps thrown to him? See him by the

gipsies' tent: how safely can the infant children be left to his sole

care by the roadside! It is a beautiful sight to see the sagacious, the

faithful creature, watching while they sleep, and lying upon the outer

fold of the blanket that enwraps them. Has he not a sense of duty--a

sort of bastard conscience? And what is truly wonderful, is, that

animals have often a sense of duty against their instincts. If it be

said that they act through fear of punishment, it is a punishment their

instincts would teach them to avoid; and, after all, this fear of

punishment may be a mighty ingredient in most men's consciences. We

learn that immense numbers of ducks are reared by that part of the

Chinese population who spend their lives in boats upon the rivers; and

these birds, salted and dried, form one of the chief articles of diet in

the celestial land. They are kept in large cages or crates, from which,

in the morning, they are sent forth to seek their food upon the river

banks. A whistle from their keeper brings them back in the evening; and

as, according to Tradescent Lay, the last to return receives a flogging

for his tardiness, their hurry to get back to the boats, when they hear

the accustomed call, is in no small degree amusing. I cannot but think

that there must be something like a sense of duty in these poor

creatures, that they thus of themselves, and of good-will return to the

certainty of being salted and dried. This may sound very ridiculous,

Eusebius, but there is matter in it to muse upon; and if we want to know

man, we must speculate a little beyond him, and learn him by similities

and differences. He has best knowledge of his own home and country who

has wandered into a _terra incognita_, and studied the differences of

soil and climate. And besides that every man is a world to himself, and

may find a _terra incognita_ in his own breast, it is not amiss to look

abroad into other wildernesses, where he will find instincts that are

not so much any creature's but that they have something divine in them,

and so, in their origin at least, akin to his own. He will find

conscience of some sort growing in the soil of every heart. It is not

amiss to discover where it grows most healthily, and by what deadly

nightshade its virtue may be suffocated, and its nicer sense not thrive.

Surprising is the diversity;--were not nature corrupted, there would be

no diversity. Now, truth and right is one; and yet we judge not one

thing, we think not aright. Yet is the original impulse true to its

purpose, but, in its passage through the many channels of the mind, is

strangely perverted. It is eloquently said by a modern writer, a deep

thinker, "Thus does the conscience of man project itself athwart

whatsoever of knowledge, or surmise, or imagination, understanding,

faculty, acquirement, or natural disposition he has in him; and, like

light through coloured glass, paint strange pictures on the rim of the

horizon and elsewhere. Truly this same sense of the infinite nature of

duty, is the central part of all within us; a ray as of eternity and

immortality immured in dusky many-coloured Time, and its deaths and

births. Your coloured glass varies so much from century to century--and

in certain money-making, game-preserving centuries, it gets terribly

opaque. Not a heaven with cherubim surrounds you then, but a kind of

vacant, leaden, cold hell. One day it will again cease to be opaque,

this coloured glass; now, may it not become at once translucent and

uncoloured? Painting no pictures more for us, but only the everlasting

azure itself. That will be a right glorious consummation." If it were

only the painting pictures! but we act the painted scenes. And strange

they are, and of diversity enough. It was the confession of an apostle,

that he "thought with himself that he ought to do many things contrary"

to his master. There are national consciences how unlike each other;

there are consciences of tribes and guilds, which, strange to say,

though they be composed of individuals, bear not the stamp of any one

individual conscience among them. They apologise to themselves for

iniquity by a division and subdivision of the responsibility; and thus,

by each owning to but a little share collectively, they commit a great

enormity. It is the whole and sole responsibility of the individual,

responsibility to that inner arbiter sitting _foro conscientiae_, and the

sight of those frowning attendants of the court, Nemesis and Adraste,

ready with the scourge to follow crime, that keep the man honest. Put

not confidence, Eusebius, in bodies, in guilds, and committees. Trust

not to them property or person; they may be all individually good

Samaritans, but collectively they will rather change places with the

thieves than bind up your wounds. In this matter, "Experto crede

Roberto."

But of this diversity.--The Turk will split his sides with laughter,

against the very nature, too, of his Turkish gravity, should he witness

the remorse of the subdued polygamist. We read of nations who, from a

sense of duty, eat their parents, and would shudder at the crime of

burying them in the earth, or burning them. So is there a cannibalism of

love as well as of hatred. Sinbad's terror at the duty of being buried

alive with his deceased wife, the king's daughter, was no invention

beyond the probability of custom. The Scythians, as Herodotus tells us,

thought it an honourable act and no _murders_ committed, when they

slaughtered the king's councillors and officers of state, and guards and

their horses, on which they stuck them upright by skewers, to be in

death the king's attendants. The suttee is still thought no wrong. There

is habit of thought that justifies habit of deed. Southey, in his

_History of the Brazils_, tells a sad tale of a dying _converted_

Indian. In her dying moments, cannibalism prevailed over Christian

conscience; and was the Pagan conscience silent? She was asked by those

standing about her, if they could do any thing for her. She replied,

that she thought she _could_ pick the bones of a little child's hand,

but that she had no one now who would go and kill her one. I dare to

say, Eusebius, she died in peace. The greater part of the world die in

peace. Their conscience may be the first part of then that departs--it

is dead before the man--most say, I have done no harm. I have known a

man die in the very effort of triumphant chuckling over his unfortunate

neighbours, by his successful fraud and over-reaching; yet, perhaps,

this man's conscience was only dead as to any sense of right and wrong

in this particular line; very possibly he had "compunctious visitings"

about "mint and cumine"--and oh! human inconsistency, some such have

been known to found hospitals--some spark of conscience working its way

into the very rottenness of their hearts, that, like tinder, have let

out all their kindred and latent fire, till that moment invisible, all

but _in posse_ non-existent. But for any thing like a public conscience

so kindling since the repentance of the Ninevites, it is not to be

thought of. The pretence of such a thing is a sign of the last state of

national hypocrisy. It was not that sense which emancipated the Negroes

and forbade the slave trade. Take, for example, the Portuguese, and

their "board of conscience" at Lisbon, which they set up to quiet the

remorse, if any should exist, of those who had bought the miserable

natives of Reoxcave, when they sold themselves and their children for

food. This very convenient scruple was started in "the court, to

sanction the purchase, that if these so purchased slaves were set free,

they might _apostatize_!" Now, who were the judges in such a court? Oh!

the villany of the whole conclave!--yet was each individual, perhaps, of

demure and sanctimonious manners, to whom the moral eye of a people

looked--villains all in the guise of goodness:--

"Vir bonus, omne forum quem spectat et omne tribunal,

Quandocuncque Deos vel porco vel bove placat,

Jane Pater, clare, clare, cum dixit, Apollo,

Labra movet metuens audiri--Pulchra Laverna,

Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri,

Noctem peccatis et fraudibus objice nubem."

We are told that there is such a disease as a cannibal madness, and that

it was common among the North American savages; that those seized with

it have a raving desire for human flesh, and rush like wolves upon all

they meet. Now, in what was this court of conscience better than these

cannibals? Better! a thousand times worse--for wolves are honest. Now I

well know, Eusebius, how I have put a coal under the very fountain of

your blood--and it is boiling at a fine rate. Let me allay it, and

follow the stage directions of "soft music;" only on this occasion we

omit the music, and take the rhyme. So here do I exhibit conscience in

its playful vein. Our friend S., the other day, repeated me off the

following lines; he cannot remember where he had them--he says it was

when a boy that he met with them somewhere. Call it the Conscientious

Toper; yet that is too common--it is the characteristic of all

topers--never was one that could not find an excuse. Drink wonderfully

elicits moral words, to compound for immoral deeds. Call it then--

THE CONTROVERSY.

No plate had John and Joan to hoard--

Plain folks in humble plight--

One only tankard graced their board,

But that was fill'd each night;

Upon whose inner bottom, sketch'd

In pride of chubby grace,

Some rude engraver's hand had etch'd

A baby angel's face.

John took at first a moderate sup--

But Joan was not like John--

For when her lips once touch'd the cup,

She swill'd till all was gone.

John often urged her to drink fair,

But she cared not a jot--

She loved to see that angel there,

And therefore drain'd the pot.

When John found all remonstrance vain,

Another card he play'd,

And where the angel stood so plain

He had a devil portray'd.

Joan saw the horns, Joan saw the tail,

Yet still she stoutly quaff'd,

And when her lips once touch'd the ale,

She clear'd it at a draught.

John stood with wonder petrified,

His hair stood on his pate,

"And why dost guzzle now," he cried,

"At that enormous rate?"

"Oh, John!" she said, "I'm not to blame--

I _can't in conscience_ stop--

For sure 'twould be a burning shame

To leave the devil a drop."

Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of

philanthropy--where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have

made, had you been armed with thunder--thunder, I say, for yours would

have been no silent devastation among the villains. No Warnerian silent

blazeless destruction would suit your indignation--in open day, and with

a shout, would you do it, and in such wise would you suffer, if needs

must, with Ajax's prayer in your mouth--"+En de Phaei kai olesson+."

But for a grand picture of a sweeping indignation, there is nothing so

grand as that fine passage in the Psalms--"Let them be as the dust before

the wind, and the angel of the Lord scattering them." Men and all their

iniquities, once so mighty, so vast, but as grains less than grains of

dust--all the clouds of hypocrisy dispersed in atoms before the fury of

the storm of vengeance. You were, as you read, Eusebius, in honest rage.

I could see you as in a picture, like the figure with the scourge in hand

flying off the very ground, in Raffaelle's noble fresco, the Heliodorus;

and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth, and the

quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the

delinquencies of the quaffing Joan. Blind to their delinquencies! Stay

your mirth a moment, Eusebius--are you not blind to your own? Now I

remember me, you are a thief, Eusebius, however you may have settled

that matter with your conscience. Have you read the proposed "Dog-bill?"

Here's a pretty to do!--Eusebius convicted of dog-stealing--subject to

the penalty of misdemeanour! "I!" you will say. Yes, you. You put it

down, doubtless, in the catalogue of your virtues, as you did when you

boasted to me that you had, by a lucky detection in probably the

criminal's first offence, saved a fellow-creature from a course of

crime. Do you remember your dog Chance? yes, _your_ dog, for so you

called him--and, pray, how came you by him? This was your version. A

regiment was marching by your neighbourhood, at the fag-end of which a

soldier led a very fine spaniel by a piece of cord. You always loved

dogs--did you not, you cunning Eusebius? You can put two and two

together as well as most people. The dog had no collar. Oh, oh! thought

you--the master of so fine a dog would have collar and chain, too, for

him. This fellow must have stolen him--it is my duty (your virtuous

duty, indeed) to rescue this fine creature, and perchance save this

wretched man from such wicked courses. So thus you proceed--you look

indignant, and accost the soldier, "Holloa, you fellow--whose dog's

that?" Soldier--"What's that to you?" Eusebius--"What's the name of your

captain, that I may instantly appeal to him on the subject?" Soldier

alarmed--"I beg your honour's pardon, but the dog followed me. I don't

know to whom he belongs." What made you, then, so particularly enquire

where he came from, and whereabouts he met with him? Your virtue

whispered to you, "Ask these questions, that you may be able to find out

the owner." Another imp whispered, "It might be useful." So you seize

the rope, lecture the man upon the enormity of his intentions, quietly

take the dog to your stable, and walk away with, as you flatter

yourself, the heartfelt satisfaction of having saved a fellow-creature

from the commission of a theft. To do you justice, you did, I verily

believe, for two whole days make decent enquiries, and _endeavour_, if

that be not too strong a word--_endeavour_ to find out the owner. But at

the close of every day question Rover himself; and questioning Rover led

you to look into each other's faces--and so you liked Rover's looks, and

Rover liked your looks--and when you said to Rover, I should like to

know who your master is? Rover looked with all his eyes, as much as to

say, "Well now, if ever I heard the like of that! If my name is Rover,

yours must be Bouncer"--then you patted him for a true and truth-telling

dog; and he wagged his tail, and looked again at you, till you perfectly

mesmerized each other, and understood each other, and he acknowledged

that you, and no other, could be his master--and so you mastered him,

and he mastered your conscience--and then you and your conscience began

to have a parley. I fear you had sent her to a bad boarding-school, and

had just brought her home for the holidays, with a pretty many more

niceties and distinctions than she took with her--and had come back

"more nice than wise." "Have you found the owner?" quoth she. "It is

time he were found," replied you. "Why?" quoth she. "Because," you

rejoin, "the shooting season is fast approaching." "That is true." "The

dog will be spoiled for want of practice." "That will be a pity." "Thank

you, conscience--won't it be a sin?" Conscience is silent, so you take

that for granted. "Hadn't I better take out a license this year?" "Oh!

it wouldn't be right you should go without one." "Certainly not,

(somewhat boldly;) I _will_ get my license directly. Poor

Rover!--well--how very fond that dog is of me--it would be highly

ungrateful not to make a return even to a dog. I ought to be fond of

him. I--am--very fond of him." Then you confess, Eusebius, that you

should be very sorry to part with him. Conscience says, "Do you mean to

say you should be sorry to find out the real owner?" "Really,

conscience," you reply, "there can be no harm in being sorry; but you

are becoming very impertinent, and asking too many questions." Here

conscience nods--is asleep--is in a coma, Eusebius--fairly mesmerized by

you, and follows you at your beck wherever you choose to lead her. And

so you take her to your stable to look at Rover: and you want a

suggestion how you can stop Rover's wandering propensities; and

conscience, being in a state of _clairvoyance_, bids you tie him up. You

ask how--"by the teeth;" so you order him a good plate of meat inside,

your stable-door locked, and you replenish that plate for a week or

more, and have a few conferences with Rover in your parlour--and the dog

is tied. Then you didn't like the name of Rover--but liked Chance.

Conscience suggested the name as a palliative, as something between true

proprietorship and theft--it gave you a protective right, and took away

the sting of the possession. You fortified yourself in this position, as

cunningly as the French at Tahiti. But how happened it, Eusebius, that

when any friend asked you if you had found the owner, you turned off the

subject always so ingeniously, or denied that you had a Rover, but one

Chance, certainly a fine dog?--and how came it that you never took him

in the direction of the country from whence the regiment had come? And

yet, if the truth could be known, would it not turn out, Eusebius, that

fears did often come across your pleasures, and your affection for

Chance? and had a child but asked you, as you might have been crossing a

stile, in quest, with Chance before you, as you did the soldier, "whose

dog's that?" you would have stammered a little--and almost, in your

affection, have gone down upon your knees to have begged him as a gift;

and it is fearful to think what a sum any knave as cunning as yourself

had been, would have got out of you. Now, my dear Eusebius, I entreat

you, when you shall read or hear read--"Is thy servant a dog, that he

should do this thing," that you think of Chance, and not of _his doing_,

but _yours_. I dare to say, you have never quite looked at the affair in

this light; we all are apt to wash our hands of a troublesome affair,

and think we come with them clean into court.

Take care you don't resemble the monkey with the meal-tub. His master

thrashed him when he caught him at the theft, and showed him his hands

covered with meal, that he might understand the reason of his

punishment. Monkey, after the next theft, took care to wash his hands,

and when his master came to punish him, extended them to show how clean

they were. His master smiled, and immediately brought him a

looking-glass--his face and whiskers were powdered with meal: and there

you have the origin of the adage, "You have washed your hands but not

your face." There will still be a monitor, Eusebius, to hold the

looking-glass to you, and the like of you: and look to your face; and

whenever you find that you have _put a good face_ upon any doubtful

matter, take the trouble then to look at your hands; and if they be

clean, look again and see if your face and hands are clean together. And

that will be the best _tableau-vivant_ you or any one else can study.

Now, however, that conscience seems so thoroughly gone to the dogs,

without any personal allusion to your case, Eusebius, I cannot resist

telling you an anecdote by which you will see how Neighbour Grace of

M----n ingeniously touched the conscience of Attorney B., who was

supposed to have none--upon the matter of a dog-theft, and how Attorney

B. was a match for Neighbour Grace.

"I am come to thee, Friend B.," said Grace, "to ask thee a question.

Suppose my dog should go into thy kitchen, and run off with a neck of

mutton, dost thee think I ought to pay thee for the neck of mutton?"

"Without doubt," said Lawyer B.

"Then I'd thank thee to pay me three and fourpence; for it was thy dog

stole my neck of mutton, and that's the cost of it."

"Perfectly right," said Attorney B., coolly drawing out a bill and

receipt. "So, Neighbour Grace, you must pay me three and fourpence, and

that settles the matter."

"How so?"

"Why, as you asked my opinion, my charge for that is six and

eightpence--deduct value of neck of mutton, three and fourpence, and

just so much remains." And Lawyer B. got the best of it, and made him

pay too. Now this it was to probe another's conscience, without knowing

the nature of the beast you stir up; not considering that when

conscience thus comes down, as it were, with "a power of attorney," it

is powerful indeed--"recalcitrat undique tutus." There are many such big

swelling consciences, that grow up and cover the whole man--like the

gourd of Jonah, up in a night and down in a night--a fine shelter for a

time from the too-searching sun; but there is a _worm_ in it, Eusebius,

and it won't last.

It is a very odd thing that people commonly think they can have their

consciences at command, and can set them as they do their watches, and

it is generally behind time: yet will they go irregularly, and sometimes

all of a run; and when they come to set them again, they will bear no

sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum, to awaken

them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in

such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the

case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for

the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out

that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by

latitudes and longitudes--slow here and fast there. They have, too,

their antipodes--it is night here and sunshine there. And so of ages and

eras: and thus the same things make men laugh and tremble by turns. What

unextinguishable laughter would arise should Dr Howley, Archbishop of

Canterbury, go in procession with his clergy to Windsor, each armed with

scissors, to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like

absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and

courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that

very amusing volume, the _Literary Conglomerate_, in an "Essay on Hair,"

how Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce an

anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair, for which pious

zeal he was much commended; and how "Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired

great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in 1104,

against long curled hair, with which the king and his courtiers were so

much affected, that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets of

which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to

change their minds, but immediately pulled a pair of shears out of his

sleeve, and performed the operation with his own hand." A canon is still

extant, of the date of 1096, importing that such as wore long hair

should be excluded from the church whilst living, or being prayed for

when dead. Now, the very curates rejoice in ringlets and macassar. It

would be curious to trace the heresy to its complete triumph in

full-bottomed wigs, in which, it was ignorantly supposed, wisdom finally

settled, when it was not discovered elsewhere. Thus it is, Eusebius,

that folly, the vile insect, flies about--just drops a few eggs in the

very nest of conscience, and is off, and a corruption of the flesh

followeth. Those, therefore, who take out license to shoot folly as it

flies, should be made to look after the eggs likewise.

Alas, Eusebius, that any thing should take the name of this nice sense

that is not replete with goodness, that is not the true _ductor

substantium_! The prophet of an evil which wounds his very soul will

take offence if it come not to pass and spare not. Was not Jonah grieved

that the whole city was not destroyed as he had said? That nice and

inner sense was more ingenious on the side of bold justice, than

prodigal to mercy; and so had he not "a conscience void of offence;"

and thus this honourable feeling not always acts unfettered, but is

intercepted and hurried on, spite of itself, into courses of action in

which there is too much of passion, and, plunging into error with this

outward violence, is forced upon ingenious defences. The story of Piso

is in point. He thought to act the conscientious judge, when he

condemned the soldier to death who had returned from forage without his

companion, under the impression that he had killed him; but as he is

upon the point of execution, the man supposed to have been murdered

returns, all the soldiery present rejoice, and the executioner brings

them both to the presence of Piso. And what did the conscientious Piso?

His conscience would not so let him put by justice; so, with a

surprising ingenuity of that nice faculty in its delirium, he orders

execution upon all three--the first soldier, because he had been

condemned--the second, who had lost his way, because he was the cause of

his companion's death--and the executioner, because he had disobeyed his

orders. He had but to pretend to be greatly grieved at his vagary, to

have the act lauded as an instance of Roman virtue. I look upon the

famed Brutus, when he thought it a matter of conscience to witness, as

well as order, his sons' execution, to have been a vain unfeeling fool

or a madman. Let us have no prate about conscience proceeding from a

hard heart; these are frightful notions when they become infectious. A

handful of such madmen are enough, if allowed to have their way, to

enact the horrors of a French Revolution. All this you know, Eusebius,

better than I do, and will knit your brows at this too serious vein of

thought. I will come, therefore, a little nearer our common homes. You

shall have a scene from domestic life, as I had it the other day, from a

lady with whom I was conversing upon this subject, who tells me it is a

veritable fact, and took place some seventy years back. "It will want

its true power," said my friend, "because that one solitary trait could

give you no idea of the rich humour of the lady, the subject of this

incident--her simplicity, shrewdness, art, ignorance, quickness,

mischief, made lovely by exceeding beauty, and a most amusing

consciousness of it. Seventy years ago, too, it happened--there are no

such ladies in the better ranks of society now. She lived at Margate. It

came to pass that the topping upholsterer there got a new-shaped chest

of drawers from London--the very first that had appeared in Margate--and

gave madam, she being one of the high top-families, the first sight of

it. With the article she fell in love, and entreated her husband to buy

it; but the sensible gentleman, having his house capitally and fully

furnished, would not. The lady still longed, but had not money enough to

make the purchase--begged to have her _quarter_ advanced. This was not

granted. She pouted a little, and then, like a wise woman, made up her

mind to be disappointed, and resumed her more than wonted cheerfulness;

but, alas! she was a daughter of Eve, as it will be seen. Christmas-day

came--it was the invariable custom of the family to receive the

sacrament. Before church-time she sent for her husband. She had a sin on

her conscience--she must confess before she could go to the altar. Her

husband was surprised. "What is it?" "You must promise not to be very

angry." "But what is it? Have you broken my grandmother's china

tea-pot?" "Oh! worse than that." "Have you thrown a bank-note in the

fire?" "Worse than that." "Have you run in debt to your abominable

smuggling lace-woman?" "Worse than that." "Woman!" quoth he sternly, and

taking down an old broadsword that hung over the chimney-piece, "confess

this instant;" and he gave the weapon a portentous flourish. "Oh! dear

Richard, don't kill me, and I'll tell you all at once. Then I, (sob,) I,

(sob,) have cribbed (sob) out of the house-money every week to buy that

chest of drawers, and you've had bad dinners and suppers this month for

it; and (sobbing) that's all." He could just keep his countenance to

say--"And where have you hid this accursed thing?" "Oh, Richard! I have

never been able to use it; for I have covered it over with a blanket

ever since I had it, for fear of your seeing it. Oh! pray, forgive me!"

You need not be told how she went to church with a "clean breast," as

the saying is. It is an unadorned fact. Her husband used to tell it

every merry Christmas to his old friend-guests." Here you have the

story, Eusebius, as I had it thus dramatically (for I could not mend it)

from the lips of the narrator.

Is it your fault or your virtue, Eusebius, that you positively love

these errors of human nature? You ever say, you have no sympathy with or

for a perfect monster--if such there be--which you deny, and aver that

if you detect not the blot, it is but too well covered; and by that very

covering, for aught you know to the contrary, may be all blot. You would

have catalogued this good lady among your "right estimable and lovely

women!" and if you did not think that chest of drawers must be an

heirloom in the family, you would set about many odd means to get

possession of it. Yet I do verily believe that there are brutes that

would not have forgiven in their wives this error--that would argue

thus, You may sin, madam, against your Maker; but you shall not sin

against me. Is there not a story somewhere, of a wretched vagabond at

the confessional--dreadful were the crimes for which he was promised

absolution; but after all his compunctions, contortions, self-cursings,

breast-beatings, hand-wringings, out came the sin of sins--he had once

spit by accident upon the priest's robe, though he only meant to spit

upon the altar steps. Unpardonable offence! Never-to-be-forgiven wretch!

His life could not atone for it. And what had the friars, blue and grey,

been daily, hourly doing? You have been in Italy, Eusebius.

I have not yet told you the story for the telling which I began this

letter; and why I have kept it back I know not--it is not for the

importance of it; for it is of a poor simple creature. But I must stay

my hand from it again; for here has one passed before my window that can

have no conscience. It is a great booby--six foot man-boy of about

nineteen years. He has just stalked by with his insect-catcher on his

shoulder; the fellow has been with his green net into the innocent

fields, to catch butterflies and other poor insects. Many an hour have I

seen you, Eusebius, with your head half-buried in the long blades of

grass and pleasant field-weeds, partially edged by the slanting and

pervading sunbeams, while the little stream has played its song of

varied gentleness, watching the little insect world, and the golden

beetles climbing up the long stalks, performing wondrous feats for your

and their own amusement--for your delight was to participate in all

their pleasures; and some would, with a familiarity that made you feel

akin to all about you, walk over the page of the book you were reading,

and look up, and pause, and trust their honest legs upon your hand,

confiding that there was one human creature that would not hurt them.

Think of those hours, my gentle friend, and consider the object for

which that wretch of a booby is out. How many of your playmates has he

stuck through with pins, upon which they are now writhing! And when the

wretch goes home murder-laden, his parents or guardians will greet him

as a most amiable and sweet youth, who wouldn't for the world misspend

his time as other boys do, but is ever on the search after knowledge;

and so they swagger and boast of his love of entomology. I'd rather my

children should grow up like cucumbers--more to belly than head--than

have these scientific curiosity-noddles upon their poles of bodies, that

haven't room for hearts, and look cold and cruel, like the pins they

stick through the poor moths and butterflies, and all innocent insects.

Good would it be to hear you lecture the parents of these heartless

bodies for their bringing up, and picture, in your eloquent manner, the

torments that devils may be doomed to inflict in the other world on the

cruel in this; and to fix them writhing upon their forks as they pin the

poor insects. What would they do but call you a wicked blasphemer, and

prate about the merciful goodness of their Maker, as if one Maker did

not make all creatures? Yet what do such as they know of mercy but the

name? These are they that kill conscience in the bud.

Men's bosoms are like their dwellings--mansions, magnificent and

gorgeous--full of all noble and generous thoughts, with room to

expand--or dwellings of pretensions, show, and meanness--or hovels of

all dirt and slovenliness; yet is there scarcely one in which conscience

does not walk in and out boldly, or steal in cautiously, though she may

not always have room to move her arms about her, and assert her

presence. Yet even when circumscribed by narrowness, and immured in all

unseemly things, will she patiently watch her time for some appropriate

touch, or some quiet sound of her voice. Her most difficult scene of

action, however, is in the bosom of pretension; for there the trumpet of

self-praise is ever sounding to overwhelm her voice, and she is kept at

arm's-length from the touch of the guilty hearts, by the padding and the

furniture that surround them. But oh! the hypocrites of this life--they

almost make one weary of it; they who walk with their hands as if ever

weighing, by invisible scales, with their scruples of conscience their

every thought, word, and action. Shall I portray the disgusting effigies

of one? "Niger est--hunc tu, Romane, caveto." I will, however, tell you

somewhat of one that has lately come across my path, and I will call him

Peter Pure; for he is one of those that, though assuming a quietness, is

really rabid in politics, and has ever upon his lips "purity of

election," and the like cant words. A few years ago his circumstances not

being very flourishing, he got the ear of our generous friend of the

Grange; through his timely assistance, and a pretty considerable loan, he

overcame his difficulties, and is now pretty well to do. At the last

contest for the borough, our friend T. of the Grange, with others, waited

upon Peter Pure; and Peter, with large professions of gratitude--as how

could he do less for so kind a benefactor?--unhesitatingly promised his

vote. At this time, be it observed, there was not the slightest

appearance of the contest which afterwards came, and with that storm a

pretty good shower of bribery. What quantity of this shower fell to Peter

Pure's share, was never discovered; but it is easy to conjecture that so

nice, so grateful a conscience was not overcome for nothing. Peter never

liked cheap sins. The contest came, the election takes place, and Peter

Pure's plumper weighs down the adversary's scale. Soon after this he had

the impudence to accost his benefactor thus:--"My dear friend and

benefactor, and worthy sir, I wished for this opportunity of explaining

to you, with the utmost sincerity and confidence, what may have appeared

to you like--yes--really like a breaking of my word. It is true I did

promise you my vote: but then, you know, voting being a very serious

matter, I thought it necessary to read my oath which I should be called

upon to take; and I found, my good friend, to my astonishment, that I was

bound by it not to vote from '_favour and affection_.' Yes, those are the

words. Now, it unfortunately--only unfortunately in this instance, mind

me--happens, that there is not a man in the world so much in my

affection and my favour as yourself; to vote, therefore, as you had

wished me to vote, would, after reading the oath, have been downright

perjury; for I certainly should have voted 'through favour and

affection.' That would have been a fearful weight upon my conscience."

Here was a pretty scoundrel, Eusebius. I should be sorry to have you

encounter him in a crowd, and trust his sides to your elbows, lest you

should be taken with one of those sudden fits of juvenility that are not

quite in accordance with the sedateness of your years. You will not be

inclined to agree with an apologist I met the other day, who simply said

that Satan had thrown the temptation in his way. There is no occasion

for such superfluous labour, nor does the arch-fiend throw any of his

labour away. Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves, and

are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for

all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their

way--they will seek them of themselves.

You will certainly lay me under the censure that Montaigne throws upon

Guicciardini. Let me then make amends, and ascribe one action to a

generous, a conscientious motive. There cannot be found a better example

than I have met with in reading some memoirs of the great and good

Colston, the founder of those excellent charities in London, Bristol,

and elsewhere. I find this passage in his life. It happened that one of

his most richly-laden vessels was so long missing, and the violent

storms having given every reason to suppose she had perished, that

Colston gave her up for lost. Upon this occasion, it is said, he did not

lament his unhappiness as many are apt to do, and perpetually count up

the serious amount of his losses; but, with dutiful submission, fell

upon his knees, and with thankfulness for what Providence had been

pleased to leave him, and with the utmost resignation relinquished even

the smallest hope of her recovery. When, therefore, his people came soon

afterwards to tell him that his ship had safely come to port, he did not

show the signs of self-gratulation which his friends expected to see. He

was devoutly thankful for the preservation of the lives of so many

seamen; but as for the vessel and her cargo, they were no longer his--he

had resigned them--he could not in conscience take them back. He looked

upon all as the gift of Providence to the poor; and, as such, he sold

the ship and merchandize--and most valuable they were--and, praying for

a right guidance, distributed the proceeds among the poor. How beautiful

is such charity! Here is no false lustre thrown upon the riches and

goods of this world, that, reflected, blind the eyes that they see not

aright. The conscience of such a man as Colston was an arbiter even

against himself, sat within him in judgment to put aside his worldly

interest, and made a steady light for itself to see by, where naturally

was either a glare or an obscurity, that alike might bewilder less

honest vision.

Some such idea is gloriously thus expressed by Sir Thomas Browne in his

admirable _Religio Medici_.{A} "Conscience only, that can see without

light, sits in the areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts, surveys our

thoughts, and condemns our obliquities. Happy is that state of vision

that can see without light, though all should look as before the

creation, when there was not an eye to see, or light to actuate a

vision--wherein, notwithstanding, obscurity is only imaginable

respectively unto eyes. For unto God there was none. Eternal light was

for ever--created light was for the creation, not himself; and as He saw

before the sun, He may still also see without it."

A case of conscience came to be discussed not long since, in which I

took a part. We had been speaking of the beauty of truth, and that

nothing could justify the slightest deviation from the plain letter of

it. This was doubted; and the case supposed was, that of a ruffian or a

madman pursuing an innocent person with intent to murder. You see the

flight and pursuit; the pursuer is at fault, and questions you as to the

way taken by the fugitive. Are you justified in deceiving the pursuer by

a false direction of the way his intended victim had taken? Are you to

say the person went to the right, when the way taken was the left? The

advocate for the downright truth maintained that you were not to

deceive--though you felt quite sure that by your telling the truth, or

by your silence altogether, immediate murder would ensue. The advocate

declared, that without a moment's hesitation he should act upon his

decision. He would have done no such thing. People are better than their

creeds, and, it should seem, sometimes _better_ than _their_ principles.

In which case would his conscience prick him most, when the heat was

over--as accessory to the murder or as the utterer of untruth? I cannot

but think it a case of instinct, which, acting before conscience, _pro

hac vice_ supersedes it. The matter is altogether and at once, by an

irresistible decree, taken out of the secondary "Court of Conscience"

and put into the primary "Court of Nature."

Truth, truth! well may Bacon speak of it thus--"'What is truth?' said

laughing Pilate, and wouldn't wait for an answer." If there be danger in

the deviation shown in the case stated, what a state are we all in? All,

as we do daily in some way or other, putting our best legs foremost.

Look at the whole advertising, puffing, quacking, world--the flattering,

the soothing, the complimenting. Virtues and vices alike driving us more

or less out of the straight line; and, blindfolded by habit, we know not

that we are walking circuitously. And they are not the worst among us,

perhaps, who walk so deviatingly--seeing, knowing--those that stammer

out nightly ere they rest, in confession, their fears that they have

been acting if not speaking the untrue thing, and praying for strength

in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their

penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in

some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of

temptation. And this, Eusebius, is the best prelude I can devise to the

story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her

offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller, therefore, shall

it be--because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to

soften offences, Eusebius. I see already you are determined to do so. I

will call it her crime. Yes, she lived a life of daily untruth. She

wrote it, she put her name to it--"litera scripta manet." We must not

mince the matter; she spoke it, she acted it hourly, she took payment

for it--it was her food, her raiment. Oh! all you that love to stamp the

foot at poor human nature, here is an object for your contempt, your

sarcasm, your abuse, your punishment; drag her away by the hair of her

head. But stay, take care you do not "strain at a gnat and swallow a

camel;" examine yourselves a little first. She has confessed, perhaps

you have not. Remember, no one knew it; no one guessed it. It is she

herself has lifted up the lantern into the dark recesses of her own

heart; or rather, it is true religion in her hath done it: and dark

though it was there, you ought to see clearly enough that her heart is

not now the den wherein falsehood and hypocrisy lurk; search well--you

see none. She has made a "clean breast of it," and you had better do the

same, and drop the stone you were about to fling so mercilessly at her

dying head. Are you out of patience, Eusebius? and cry--Out with it,

what did she do? You shall hear; 'tis but a simple anecdote after all. I

have learned it from a parish priest. He was sent for to attend the

deathbed of poor old village dame, or schoolmistress. She had a sin to

confess; she could not die in peace till she had confessed it. With

broken speech, she sobbed, and hesitated, and sobbed again.

"I--I--I," she stammered out, and hid her face again. "There, I must, I

must tell it; and may I be forgiven! You know, sir, I have kept school

forty years--yes, forty years--a poor sinful creature--I--I"----

"My good woman," said the parish priest, "take comfort; it will be

pardoned if you are thus penitent. I hope it is not a very great sin."

"Oh yes!" said she, "and pray call me not _good_ woman. I

am--not--good;" sobbing, "alas, alas!--there, I--will out with it! I put

down that I taught grammar--and (sobbing) I, I, _did not know it

myself_."

Eusebius, Eusebius, had you been there, you would have embraced the old

dame. The father of lies was not near her pillow. This little sin, she

had put it foremost, and, like the little figure before many nothings,

she had made a million of it; and one word, nay one thought, before

confession was uttered, had breathed upon and obliterated the whole

amount. Where will you see so great truth? And this, you will agree with

me, was a case of _Tender Conscience_.

FOOTNOTES:

{A} _Religio Medici_, a new edition, with its sequel, _Christian Morals_,

and resemblant passages from Cowper's _Task_. By Mr Peace, Bristol. The

text of this inestimable author is here cleared of its many errors, and

the volume contains a useful verbal index.

THIERRY'S HISTORY OF THE GAULS.{A}

'Tis a pleasant thing to turn from the present, with its turmoil and its

noise, its clank of engines and its pallid artizans, its political

strife and its social disorganization, to the calm and quiet records of

the past--to the contemplation of bygone greatness: of kingdoms which

have passed away,--of cities whose site is marked only by the mouldering

column and the time-worn wall--of men with whose name the world once

rang, but whose very tombs are now unknown. If there is any thing

calculated to enlarge the mind, it is this; for it is only by a careful

study of the past that we come to know how duly to appreciate the

present. Without this we magnify the present; we imagine that the future

will be like unto it; we form our ideas, we base our calculations upon

it alone; we forget the maxim of the Eastern sage, that "this too shall

pass away." It is by the study of history that we overcome this

otherwise inevitable tendency; we learn from it, that other nations have

been as great as we, and that they are now forgotten--that a former

civilization, a fair and costly edifice which seemed to be perfect of

its kind, has crumbled before the assaults of time, and left not a trace

behind. There is a still small voice issuing forth from the ruins of

Babylon, which will teach more to the thinking mind than all the dogmas

and theories of modern speculators.

When we turn to the study of ancient history, our attention is

immediately riveted on the mighty name of Rome. Even the history of

Greece cannot compare with it in interest. Greece was always great in

the arts, and for long she was eminent in arms: but the arms of her

citizens were too often turned against each other; and the mind gets

fatigued and perplexed in attempting to follow the endless maze of

politics, and the constant succession of unimportant wars. There are,

indeed, many splendid episodes in her history--such as the Persian war,

the retreat of the Ten Thousand, a few actions in the Peloponnesian

contest, and the whole of the Theban campaigns of Epaminondas; but the

intervening periods have but a faint interest to the general reader,

till we come down to the period of the Macedonian monarchy. This,

indeed, is the great act in the drama of Grecian history. Who can peruse

without interest the accounts of the glorious reign of Alexander; of

that man who, issuing from the mountains of Macedonia, riveted the

fetters of despotism on Greece, which had grown unworthy of freedom, and

carried his victorious arms over the fertile plains of Palestine, till

he stood a conqueror amidst the palaces of Persepolis, and finally

halted only on the frontiers of Hindostan, arrested in his progress not

by the arms of his enemies but by the revolt of his soldiers? He flung a

halo of glory around the last days of Greece, like the bright light of a

meteor, whose course he resembled equally in the rapidity and brilliancy

of his career. With him dies the interest of Grecian story: the

intrigues and disputes of his successors, destitute of general interest,

served but to pave the way for the progress of a mightier power.

Of greater interest even than this is the history of Rome. Her conquests

were not merely the glorious and dazzling achievements of one man, which

owed their existence to his talents, and crumbled to pieces at his

death; they were slow and gradual in their progress--the effects of a

deep and firm policy: they were not made in a day, but they endured for

a thousand years. No country presents such interest to the politician

and the soldier. To the one, the rise and progress of her constitution;

her internal struggles; the balance of political power in the state; her

policy, her principles of government; the administration and treatment

of the many nations which composed her vast empire, must ever be the

subject of deep and careful study: while to the other, the campaigns of

Hannibal, the wars of Caesar, and the long line of her military annals,

present a wide field for investigation and instruction--an inexhaustible

topic for philosophic reflection.

But there is one subject connected with the progress of the Roman empire

which has been unduly neglected, and without a perfect understanding of

which we cannot justly appreciate either the civil or military policy of

that state. We mean the history of the nations who came in contact with

her--viz. the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Spaniards. The ancient

historians belonged exclusively to Greece or Rome: they looked upon all

other nations except themselves as barbarous; and they never related

their history except incidentally, and in so far as it was connected

with that of those two countries. Modern historians, following in their

track, and attracted by the splendour of their names, deviated not from

the beaten path; and a thick veil still hung over the semi-barbarous

neighbours and enemies of Rome. The history of no one of those nations

was more interesting, or in many points involved in greater obscurity,

than that of the GAULS.

Nowhere amongst the ancient writers could any connected account of the

origin or progress of this nation be found; scattered notices of them

alone could be discovered interspersed incidentally amongst other

matter, and these notices were frequently inconsistent. This is

particularly the case as regards their early history: in later times,

when they came into more immediate contact with the Romans, a more

connected and minute account of them has been preserved. In the lively

pages of Livy, and in the more accurate narrative of Polybius, a

considerable mass of information on this subject maybe found; while a

clear light has been thrown on many parts of their latter history by the

narrative of Appian, the Lives of Plutarch, and, above all, by the

Commentaries of Caesar. But all this information, scattered over a

multiplicity of authors, could give us no conception of their history as

a people. An author was still wanting to collect all these together, so

as to present us with something like a continuous history. But to do

this was no easy task: the materials were scanty and often

contradictory; they were all written in a spirit hostile to the Gauls; a

deep vein of prejudice and national partiality ran through and tarnished

them all; the motives of that people were misrepresented, their actions

falsified, the historians often understood little of their institutions

and their character. From such materials it required no common man to be

able to deduce a clear and impartial narrative; it required great talent

and deep research--the accuracy of the scholar and the spirit of the

philosopher, the acuteness of the critic joined to the eye of the

painter. Such a man has been found in Amadee Thierry. His _History of

the Gauls_ is a work of rare merit--a work which must ever be in the

hand of every one who would understand the history of antiquity. It is

little to the credit of the literature of this country, that his work

has not yet appeared in an English translation.

He has traced the progress of the Gauls, from their earliest appearance

on the stage of the world till their final subjection to the Roman

power, in a manner worthy of a scholar and a philosopher. His narrative

is clear, animated, and distinct; he possesses in an eminent degree the

power of giving breadth to his pictures; of drawing the attention of his

readers to the important events, whilst the remainder are thrown into

shade. His mode of treating his authorities is perhaps the best that can

be imagined; he neither clogs his pages with long extracts, nor does he

leave them unsupported by a reference to the original authors. At the

end of each paragraph a reference is given to the authorities followed,

to whom the reader may at once turn if he wish to verify the conclusions

arrived at; and where the points are involved in obscurity, the passages

founded on are quoted generally in a note, and never in the text, except

when their importance really justified such an interruption of the

narrative. His style is always animated and graphic, occasionally rising

to elevated flights of eloquence, while his subject is one of a deep and

varied interest; for in following the checkered fortunes of the Gauls,

he is brought in contact with almost every nation of the earth. To

whatever country of the ancient world we turn, we find that the Gaul has

preceded us, either as the savage conqueror or the little less savage

mercenary. Issuing originally from the East, that boundless cradle of

the human race, we soon find him contending with the German for his

morass, with the Spaniard for his gold--traversing the sands of Africa,

and pillaging the plains of Greece--founding a kingdom in the midst of

Asiatic luxury, and bearing his conquering lance beneath the Capitol of

Rome. But a mightier spirit soon rose to rule the storm. In vain the

courage of the Gaul, allied with the power of Carthage, and directed by

the genius of Hannibal, maintained for years a desperate and doubtful

contest in the heart of Italy. The power of Rome kept steadily

advancing: Greece soon fell beneath her conquering arm; and the fleets

of Carthage no longer ruled the wave. The Spaniard, after many a

hard-fought field, at last sank into sullen submission; and the

Galatians, degenerating under the influence of Asiatic manners, proved

unequal to the contest; the Gaul, instead of inundating the land of the

foreigner, could with difficulty maintain his own; and soon the eagle of

the Capitol spread its wings over a Transalpine province. But the free

spirit of the Gaul now made a mighty effort to rend asunder the bonds

which encircled it; and a countless multitude, after ravaging Spain,

poured down into Italy: the Roman empire rocked to its foundation, when

Marius, hastening over from his African conquests, saved his country by

the glorious and bloody victory of Aquae Sextiae. Yet a little while and

the legions of Rome, under the orders of Caesar, traversing with fire and

sword their country, retaliated on the Gaul the calamities he had often

inflicted on others, subdued his proud spirit, and forged for him,

amidst seas of blood, those fetters which were finally riveted by the

policy of Augustus. Such is a brief outline of the heart-stirring story

of this singular and interesting race.

One of the most interesting parts of Thierry's work is the Introduction.

He there gives a brief view of the character of the Gaulish race; its

division into two great branches, the Gaul and the Kimry, and the

periods into which the history of this people naturally divides itself.

A considerable part of it is taken up in proving that this people do in

reality consist of two great branches, the Gaul and the Kimry. This, we

think, he has clearly and satisfactorily shown, by evidence drawn both

from the language and from the historical accounts which have been

preserved to us regarding them. His character of the Gauls as a people

is ably and well given; but here we must let him speak for himself:--

"The salient characteristics of the Gaulish family--those which

distinguish it the most, in my opinion, from the other races of

men--may be thus summed up:--A personal bravery unequaled amongst

the people of antiquity; a spirit frank, impetuous, open to every

impression, eminently intelligent; but joined to that an extreme

frivolity, want of constancy, a marked repugnance to the ideas of

discipline and order so strong in the German race, much

ostentation--in fine, a perpetual disunion, the consequence of

excessive vanity. If we wish to compare, in a few words, the

Gaulish family with that German family to whom we have just

alluded, we may say that the personal sentiment, the individual I,

is too much developed amongst the former, and that amongst the

latter it is not sufficiently so. Thus we find, in every page of

Gaulish story, original characters who strongly excite and

concentrate upon themselves our sympathy, causing us to forget the

masses; whilst, in the history of the Germans, it is generally the

masses who produce the effect. Such is the general character of the

people of the Gaulish blood; but in that character itself, an

observation of facts leads us to recognise two distinct shades

corresponding to two distinct branches of the family, or to use the

expression consecrated by history, to two distinct races. One of

those races--that which I designate by the name of the

Gauls--presents in the most marked manner all the natural

dispositions, all the faults and all the virtues, of the family; to

it belong, in their purest state, the individual types of the Gaul.

The other, the Kimry, less active, less spiritual perhaps,

possesses in return more weight and stability: it is in its bosom

principally that we remark the institutions of classification and

order; it is there that the ideas of theocracy and monarchy longest

maintain their sway."--(I. iv. vi.)

How important and how little attended to is this character of the

different races of men! How perfectly is it preserved under all

situations and under all circumstances! No lapse of time can change, no

distance can efface it. Nowhere do we see this more distinctly than in

America: there how marked is the difference of the Spanish race in the

south and the Anglo-Saxon in the north! And from this we may draw a

deeply important practical lesson; viz. the danger of attempting to

force on one race institutions fitted to another. Under a free

government, the Anglo-Saxon in the north flourished and increased, and

became a mighty people. Under a despotic sway, the Spaniard in the south

was slowly but surely treading that path which would ultimately have led

to national greatness, when a revolution, nourished by English gold, and

rendered victorious by English arms, inflicted what was to him the curse

of free institutions. Under their influence, commerce has fled from the

shores of New Spain; the gold-mines of Peru lie unworked; population has

retrograded; the fertile land has returned to a state of nature; and

anarchy, usurping the place of government, has involved the country in

ruin and desolation. Nor is this the only instance of the effect of free

institutions on the Spanish race. In Old Spain the same experiment has

been tried, and has produced the same result. Under their withering

effect, the empire of Spain and the Indies has passed away; the mother

country, torn by internal dissensions, has fallen from her proud estate,

and can with difficulty drag on a precarious existence amidst all the

tumult and blood of incessant revolutions. How long will it be ere we

learn that free institutions are the Amreeta cup of nations--the

greatest of all blessings or the greatest of all curses, according to

the race on which it is conferred!

The history of the Gauls, in Thierry's opinion, divides itself naturally

into four great periods: his brief _resume_ of the state of the nation,

during each of those periods, is so animated that we cannot refrain from

quoting his own words:--

"The first period contains the adventures of the Gaulish nations in

the nomad state. No race of the West has accomplished a more

agitated and brilliant career. Its wanderings embrace Europe, Asia,

and Africa: its name is inscribed with terror in the annals of

almost every people. It burned Rome: it conquered Macedonia from

the veteran phalanxes of Alexander, forced Thermopylae, and pillaged

Delphi: afterwards it planted its tents on the ruins of ancient

Troy, in the public places of Miletus, on the banks of the

Sangarius, and on those of the Nile: it besieged Carthage,

threatened Memphis, reckoned among its tributaries the most

powerful monarchs of the East: on two occasions it founded in Upper

Italy a mighty dominion, and it raised up in the bosom of Phrygia

that other empire of the Galatians which so long ruled Asia Minor.

"In the second period--that of the sedentary state--we observe the

same race every where developing itself, or permanently settled,

with social, religious, and political institutions, suited to its

particular character--original institutions, and civilization full

of life and movement, of which Transalpine Gaul offers a model the

purest and the most complete. One would say, to follow the animated

scenes of that picture, that the theocracy of India, the feudality

of the Middle Ages, and the Athenian democracy, had resorted to the

same soil, there to combat and rule over one and other in turn.

Soon that civilization mixes and alters: foreign elements introduce

themselves, imported by commerce, by the relations of vicinity, by

the reaction of the conquered population. Hence various and other

strange combinations: in Italy it is the Roman influence which

makes itself felt in the manners of the Cisalpines: in the south of

Transalpine Gaul it is at first the influence of the Greeks of

Massalia, afterwards that of the Italian colonies: and in Galatia

there springs up the most singular combination of Gaulish, Phrygian

and Greek civilization.

"Next follows the period of national strife and of conquest. By a

chance worthy of notice, it is always under the sword of the Roman

that the power of the Gaulish nations falls: in proportion as the

Roman dominion extends, the Gaulish dominion, up to that time

firmly established, recoils and declines: one would say that the

conquerors and the conquered from the Allia followed one and other

to all points of the earth to decide the old quarrel of the

Capitol. In Italy the Cisalpines are subjugated, but only after two

centuries of the most determined resistance: when the rest of Asia

accepted the yoke, the Galatians defended still, against Rome, the

independence of the East. Gaul yields, but only from exhaustion,

after a century of partial contests, and nine years of a general

war under Caesar: in fine, the names of Caractac and Galgac render

illustrious the last and fruitless efforts of British liberty. It

is every where the unequal combat of a military spirit, ardent and

heroic, but simple and unskilful, against the same spirit

disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so

beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war, written nevertheless by

an enemy. Every effort of heroism, every prodigy of valour, which

the love of liberty and of country ever produced, there displayed

themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions:

discords between the cities, discords in the cities, enterprises of

the nobles against the people, licentiousness of democracy,

hereditary enmities of race. What men were those Bitunyes who in

one day burned twenty of their towns! What men were those Camutes,

fugitives, pursued by the sword, by famine, by winter, and whom

nothing could conquer! What variety of character is there amongst

their chiefs--from the druid Divitiac, the good and honest

enthusiast of the Roman civilization, to the savage Ambio-rix,

crafty, vindictive, implacable, who admired and imitated nothing

save the savageness of the German: from Dumno-rix, that ambitious

but fierce agitator, who wished to make the conqueror of the Gauls

an instrument, but not a master, to that Vercingeto-rix, so pure,

so eloquent, so true, so magnanimous in misfortune, and who wanted

nothing to take a place amongst the greatest men, but to have had

another enemy, above all another historian, than Caesar!

"The fourth period comprises the organization of Gaul into a Roman

province, and the slow and successive assimilation of Transalpine

manners to the manners and institutions of Italy--a labour

commenced by Augustus, continued with success by Claudius,

completed in latter times. That transference from one civilization

to another was not made without violence and without checks:

numerous revolts are suppressed by Augustus--a great insurrection

fails against Tiberius. The distractions and the impending ruin of

Rome during the civil wars of Galba, of Otho, of Vitellius, and of

Vespasian, gave room for a sudden explosion of the spirit of

independence to the north of the Alps. The Gaulish nations again

took up arms, the senates reformed themselves, the proscribed

druids reappeared, the Roman legions cantoned on the Rhine are

defeated or gained over, an empire of the Gauls is constructed in

haste: but soon Gaul perceives that it is already at bottom

entirely Roman, and that a return to the ancient order of things is

no longer either desirable for its happiness, or even possible; it

resigns itself therefore to its irrevocable destiny, and reunites

without a murmur into the community of the Roman empire."--(I.

6-10)

Here indeed is a noble field for history--many such exist not in the

world; it joins the colours of romance to the truth of narrative--it

embraces within its range all countries, from the snow-clad mountains of

the north to the waterless deserts of the south.

When the first light of history dawns upon the Gallic race, we find them

settled in that territory which is bounded by the Rhine, the Alps, the

Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the ocean, and in the British isles.

There they lived, leading a pastoral life, wandering about from place to

place, and ready to descend with their flocks and herds wherever

cupidity might lead, or fancy direct them. They first turned their

footsteps towards Spain; tribe after tribe crossed the Pyrenees, and

either expelled or amalgamated with the aboriginal inhabitants. Their

efforts were principally directed towards the centre and west; in

consequence of which, the native Spaniards, displaced and driven back

upon the Mediterranean coast, soon opened a way for themselves across

the eastern passes of the mountains, and, traversing the shores of

southern Gaul, entered Italy. There they took the name of the Ligures,

and established themselves along the whole line of sea-coast from the

Pyrenees to the mouth of the Arno. The road to Italy being thus laid

bare by the Spaniards, the Gauls soon followed on their footsteps, and,

crossing the Alps, poured down into the fertile plains and vine-clad

hills of the smiling south: but they were encountered and overcome by

the Etruscans. Internal convulsions in the centre of Gaul, however,

hurled new hordes across the Alps. The Kimry, from the Palus Moeotis,

entered the north-eastern portion of Gaul, and expelled from their

territory many of the tribes who were settled there: these, uniting in

large hordes, precipitated themselves upon Italy. The Kimry, too, joined

in the incursion; race followed race, and the whole of northern Italy

was soon peopled by the Gaulish race, who long threatened the nations of

the south with entire subjugation and destruction. The empire of the

Gauls in Italy, known by the name of Cisalpine Gaul, was productive of

the greatest calamities to that unhappy country; every year there issued

forth from it bands of adventurers, who wasted the fields and stormed

the cities of Etruria, of Campania, and of Magna Graecia. But an

expedition on a larger scale was at last undertaken. Pressed by the

increasing population in their rear, a large band determined to abandon

their present homes, and seek new conquests, and acquire new booty. They

first directed their march to Clusium; but soon the torrent rolled with

resistless force upon the walls of Rome. Defeated at the Allia, the

Romans abandoned their city, leaving, however, a garrison in the

Capitol; this garrison, reduced to the last extremities by famine, was

obliged to capitulate, and to purchase the departure of their foes by an

enormous ransom. The Gauls, crowned with success and loaded with

plunder, departed; and the Romans, taking courage at their retreat,

harassed their rear and cut off their supplies.

Such is the truth regarding this famous invasion, which has been the

subject of a falsification probably without a parallel in the annals of

history; by it defeat was transformed into victory, and the day when

Rome suffered her greatest humiliation by the ransom of her capital, was

turned into almost the most famous day of her existence, when her most

successful enemy was humbled to the dust. In the pages of a Greek

historian the truth has been preserved; while the annals of the state

are filled with a very different tale, embellished with all the

eloquence and genius of the national historian. Such a sacrifice of

historical veracity, in order to appease the insatiable cravings of

national vanity, naturally casts a shade of doubt and suspicion on all

the early records of her victories and triumphs. Freed from her enemies,

Rome revived and emerged unconquered from the strife; she had been

forced to bend before misfortune, but she was not broken by adversity: a

new city sprung up on the ruins of the old, and the legions once more

issued from the ramparts to carry her victorious banners to the capitals

of a conquered world. We have not space to trace the various fortunes of

Cisalpine Gaul during the early struggles which it carried on with the

now increasing power of Rome. Suffice it to say, that when the Latins

united in a league against her, the Cisalpines joined them; an

engagement took place at Sentinum, where victory crowned the efforts of

the Romans; but though defeated, the Gauls maintained their high

character for valour during that fatal day. This success was followed up

by a vigorous attack on the powerful Gaulish tribe of the Senones, who

were almost exterminated, and on their territory was established a Roman

colony: this was the first permanent settlement made by that people

amongst the Gaulish tribes of Italy.

We must refer the reader to M. Thierry's work for the account of the

causes which led the Gauls and Kimry to press upon, and finally invade

northern Greece, and the relation of the defeat of their first attack

under the Brenn. We shall dwell somewhat longer on their second

invasion, which forms one of the most interesting episodes of their

history:--

"In the year 280 B.C., the Gauls, under a celebrated chief whose

title was the Brenn, prepared to invade Greece. Their army,

composed of various tribes of Gauls and Kimry, amounted to 152,000

infantry and 61,000 cavalry. When this immense array reached the

frontiers of Macedonia, a division broke out amongst their chiefs,

and 20,000 men, detaching themselves from the main army, advanced

into Thrace. The remainder, under the Brenn, precipitated

themselves on Macedonia, routed the army which endeavoured to

arrest their progress, and forced the remnant of the regular forces

who survived, to take refuge in the fortified cities. During six

months they ravaged with fire and sword the open country, and

destroyed the unfortified towns of Macedonia and Thessaly. At the

approach of winter, the Brenn collected his forces and established

his camp in Thessaly, at a position near Mount Olympus. Thessaly is

separated from Epirus and AEtolia by the chain of Pindus; and on the

south, the almost impenetrable range of Mount Oeta divides it

from the provinces of Hellas. The only pass by which an army can

march into Greece is that of Thermopylae, which is a long narrow

defile, overhung on the right by the rocks of Mount Oeta, and

flanked on the left by impassable morasses, which finally lose

themselves in the waters of the gulf of Mulia. A few narrow and

difficult tracts traverse the ridge of Oeta; but these, though

passable to a small body of infantry, present insurmountable

obstacles to the advance of an army. To the pass of Thermopylae, in

the spring of the year 280 B.C., the Brenn directed his march.

Aware of its vital importance, the Athenians, Boeotians,

Locrians, Phocians, and Megarians, who had formed a league against

the northern invaders, collected a force of about 26,000 men, who,

under the orders of Calippus, advanced to and occupied the strait,

whilst 305 Athenian galleys, anchored in the bay of Mulia, were

ready to operate upon the flank of the enemy. In his approach to

this position, the Brenn had to pass the river Sperchius, to defend

which Calippus had detached a small force: the Brenn, by a

stratagem, directed their attention from the real point of attack,

and crossed the river without loss. He then advanced to Heraclea,

and laid waste the surrounding country. The day after his arrival

at this place, he marched upon Thermopylae. Hardly had the Gauls

begun to involve themselves in the pass, when they were encountered

by the Greeks in its classic defile. With loud cries, and in one

enormous mass, the Gauls rushed impetuously on; in silence, and in

perfect order, the Greeks advanced to the charge. The phalanx of

the south proved impenetrable to the sabre of the north; the pass

was soon covered with their dead bodies; the Gallic standards were

unable to advance. Meanwhile the Athenian galleys, forcing their

way through the marshes, poured in an incessant volley of arrows

and darts on the long and unprotected flank of the invaders. Unable

to withstand this double attack, the Gauls were forced to retreat.

This they did in the utmost confusion; large numbers perished,

trodden to death by their companions--still more were drowned in

the morasses. Seven days after this severe check, a small party

having attempted to cross Mount Oeta, they were attacked when

involved in a narrow and difficult pass, and cut to pieces. To

raise the drooping spirits of his men, and to separate the forces

of his adversaries, the Brenn detached a corps of 40,000 men, under

the command of Comlutis, with orders to force their way into

AEtolia. This diversion proved eminently successful. Comlutis,

finding the passes of Mount Pindus unguarded, traversed that range,

and entered AEtolia, the whole of which he laid waste with fire and

sword without opposition, as the whole military force of that

country had marched to the defence of Thermopylae. On hearing of

this invasion, the AEtolians immediately separated from the allied

army, and hastened to the defence of their country. On their

approach Comlutis retreated; but whilst involved in the mountain

passes, his rear was overtaken by the regulars, and his flanks were

assailed by the enraged peasantry; so severe was his loss, that

hardly one-half of his force rallied at the camp of Heraclea. The

day after the departure of the AEtolians, the Brenn led on the main

body of his troops to attack the pass of Thermopylae; whilst a

strong detachment received orders to force one of the mountain

paths, the knowledge of which had been betrayed to him by the

inhabitants; being guided by one of whom, and their movements being

concealed from view by a thick mist, which enveloped them, this

detachment succeeded in surprising the troops who were entrusted

with its defence, and, moving rapidly on, they fell on the rear of

the main body of the allies, who were engaged at Thermopylae.

Assaulted both in front and rear, the Greeks would have been

totally destroyed, had it not been for the presence of the Athenian

fleet, who afforded a safe refuge to their shattered ranks. Freed

from the presence of his opponents, the Brenn immediately pushed on

to Elatia at the head of 65,000 men, from whence he directed his

march on Delphi. The town of Delphi was built on the slope of one

of the peaks of Parnassus, in the midst of a natural excavation,

and being almost entirely surrounded with precipices, it was left

unprotected by any artificial fortifications: above the town, on

the north, was situated the magnificent temple of Apollo, filled

with native offerings of the Greeks. The possession of this

treasure was the main object of the Brenn. The Gaulish army, on

their arrival before Delphi, dispersed over, and pillaged the

surrounding country for the remainder of the day; thus losing the

most favourable opportunity of assaulting the town."

The _denouement_ of the tragedy we shall give in Thierry's own words:--

"During the night, Delphi received from all sides, by the mountain

paths, numerous reinforcements from the neighbouring people. There

arrived successively 1200 well-armed AEtolians, 400 heavy-armed men

from Amplussa, and a detachment of Phocians, who, with the citizens

of Delphi, formed a body of 4000 men. At the same time, they

learned that the brave AEtolian army, after having defeated

Comlutis, had retaken the road to Elatia, and, increased by bands

of the Phocians and Boeotians, laboured to prevent the junction

of the Gaulish army of Heraclea with the division which besieged

Delphi.

"During the same night, the camp of the Gauls was the theatre of

the greatest debauchery; and when day dawned, the greater portion

of them were still intoxicated: nevertheless, it was necessary to

make the assault without loss of time, for the Brenn already

perceived how much the delay of a few hours had cost him. He drew

out his troops then in battle array, enumerating to them anew all

the treasures which they had before their eyes, and those which

awaited them in the temple: he then gave the signal for the

escalade. The attack was vigorous, and was sustained by the Greeks

with firmness. From the summit of the narrow and steep slope by

which the assailants had to ascend in order to approach the town,

the besieged poured down a multitude of arrows and stones, not one

of which fell harmless. Several times the Gauls covered the ascent

with their dead; but every time they returned to the charge with

courage, and at last forced the passage. The besieged, obliged to

beat a retreat, withdrew to the nearest streets of the town,

leaving the approach which conducted to the temple free: the

Gaulish race rushed on: soon the whole multitude was occupied in

pillaging the oratories which adjoined the temple, and, in fine,

the temple itself.

"It was then autumn, and during the combat one of those sudden

storms so frequent in the lofty chains of Hellas had gathered;

suddenly it burst, discharging on the mountain torrents of rain and

hail. The priests attached to the temple of Apollo, seized upon an

incident so fitted to strike the superstitious spirit of the

Greeks. With haggard eyes, with disheveled locks, with frenzied

minds, they spread out through the town, and through the ranks of

the army, crying that the god had arrived. 'He is here!' said they;

'we have seen him pass across the vault of the temple, which is

cloven beneath his feet; two armed virgins, Minerva and Diana,

accompany him. We have heard the whistling of their bows, and the

clang of their lances. Hasten, O Greeks! upon the steps of your

gods, if you wish to partake of their victory!' That spectacle,

those exhortations pronounced amidst the rolling of the thunder,

and by the glare of the lightning, filled the Hellenes with a

supernatural enthusiasm; they reformed in battle array, and

precipitated themselves sword in hand upon the enemy. The same

circumstances operated not less strongly, but in a contrary way,

upon the victorious bands; the Gauls believed that they recognised

the power of a divinity, but of an enraged divinity. The

thunderbolts had frequently struck their battalions, and its

reports, repeated by the echoes, produced around them such a

reverberation, that they no longer heard the commands of their

chiefs. Those who penetrated into the interior of the temple, had

felt the pavement tremble under their steps; they had been seized

by a thick and mephitic vapour, which overpowered them, and threw

them into a violent delirium. The historians relate, that amidst

this tumult they beheld three warriors of a sinister aspect, of

more than human stature, covered with old armour, and who

slaughtered the Gauls with their lances, appear. The Delphians

recognised, say they, the shades of three heroes, Hyperochus and

Zorodocus, whose tombs adjoined the temple, and Pyrrhus the son of

Achilles. As to the Gauls, a wild panic hurried them in disorder to

their camp, which they attained only with great difficulty,

overwhelmed by the arrows of the Greeks, and by the fall of

enormous rocks, which rolled over upon them from the summit of

Parnassus. In the ranks of the besiegers, the loss was doubtless

considerable.

"To that disastrous day succeeded, for the Kimry-Gauls, a night not

less terrible; the cold was excessive, and snow fell in abundance;

besides, fragments of rock falling incessantly in their camp, which

was situated too near the mountain, crushed the soldiers not by one

or two at a time, but by bodies of thirty and forty, as often as

they assembled to maintain guard or to seek repose. The sun no

sooner rose, than the Greeks who were within the town made a

vigorous sally, whilst those who were in the country fell upon the

rear of the enemy. At the same time, the Phocians, crossing the

snow by paths known but to themselves, took them in flank, and

assailed them with arrows and stones, without exposing themselves

to the slightest danger. Hemmed in on all sides, discouraged, and,

moreover, extremely incommoded by the cold, which had cut off many

of their number during the night, the Gauls began to yield. They

were sustained for some time by the intrepidity of the chosen band

who combated around the Brenn, and acted as his guard. The

strength, the stature, the courage of that guard, struck the Greeks

with astonishment. In the end, the Brenn having been dangerously

wounded, those brave men dreamed only of making a rampart of their

bodies for him, and of carrying him from the field. The chiefs then

gave the signal of retreat, and to prevent the wounded from falling

into the hands of the enemy, they caused those who were not in a

condition to follow, to be put to death. The army halted when the

night overtook it.

"The first watch of that second night had hardly commenced, when

the soldiers who were on guard imagined that they heard the tumult

of a night march, and the distant tramp of horses. The darkness,

already profound, did not permit them to discover their mistake;

they gave the alarm, and cried out that they were surprised--that

the enemy was upon them. The famine, the dangers, and the

extraordinary occurrences which had befallen them during the last

two days, had much shattered all their imaginations. At that cry,

'The enemy is at hand!' the Gauls, suddenly aroused, seized their

arms, and believing the camp already entered, they threw themselves

upon, and mutually slaughtered, each other. Their consternation was

so great, that they believed that each word which struck their ears

was uttered in Greek; as if they had forgotten their own proper

tongue. Besides, the darkness of the night did not permit them

either to recognise each other, or to distinguish the shape of

their bucklers. Day put an end to that frightful _melee_; but

during the night the Phocian shepherds, who remained in the fields

to watch their flocks, ran to inform the Greeks of the disorder

which was evident in the Gaulish camp. They attributed so

unexpected an event to the intervention of the god Pan, from whom,

according to the religious faith of the Greeks, alarms without any

real cause proceeded; full of ardour and of confidence, they

attacked the rearguard of the enemy. The Gauls had already resumed

their march, but with languor, as men discouraged, worn out by

diseases, famine, and fatigue. On their line of march the

population carried off the cattle and provisions, so that they

could not procure any subsistence without the utmost difficulty,

and at the point of the sword. The historians reckon at 10,000 the

number of those who sank under these misfortunes; the cold and the

nocturnal combat had cut off as many more, and 6000 had perished at

the assault of Delphi: there remained then to the Brenn no more

than 35,000 men when he rejoined the main body of his army, in the

plains watered by the Cephisus, on the day after his departure from

Thermopylae."--(I. 171-178.)

The Brenn, overwhelmed with grief at his misfortune, no sooner saw his

army free from immediate danger than he put himself to death. His

successor, following his dying advice, slaughtered 10,000 of the

wounded, and continued his retreat:--

"As he approached Thermopylae, the Greeks, issuing forth from an

ambuscade, threw themselves on his rearguard, which they cut to

pieces. It was in this miserable state that the Gauls gained the

camp of Heraclea. They remained there for a few days before setting

out on their northward route. All the bridges of the Sperchius had

been broken down, and the left bank of the river was occupied by

the Thessalians, who had collected _en masse_; nevertheless, the

Gaulish army forced a passage. It was in the midst of a population

all armed, and thirsting for vengeance, that they traversed, from

one extremity to the other, Thessaly and Macedonia, exposed to

perils, to sufferings, to privations, daily increasing, combating

without intermission during the day, and at night having no other

shelter than a cold and watery sky. They gained at last the

northern frontier of Macedonia. There the distribution of the body

took place: afterwards the Kimry-Gauls divided into many bands;

some returned to their country, others sought in different

directions new food for their turbulent activity."--(I. 180.)

A band of Tectosages joined to the Tolistoboies, and a horde of Gauls,

united, and traversing Thrace with fire and sword, passed over into Asia

Minor. They found it distracted by the quarrels of Alexander's

successors. Summoned in an evil hour by Nicomedes to aid him and the

Greek states of Asia Minor in their struggle against the Seleucidae, they

soon established him on the throne of Bithynia. But they now turned

their victorious arms against the nations of that unhappy country. Their

armies, increased by reinforcements drawn from Thrace, had divided

themselves into three hordes: the Tectosages, the Tolistoboies, and the

Trocmes. To avoid dispute, they distributed the whole of Asia Minor into

three parts: of these the Trocmes possessed the Hellespont and Troas;

the Tolistoboies, AEolida and Ionia; the Tectosages, the coast of the

Mediterranean from the west of Mount Taurus. They now overran and

subdued all Asia Minor; every country, every town, was obliged to pay

them tribute; or soon the fertile land was reduced to an arid desert,

watered only by the blood of its inhabitants, and the costly city,

stormed by the fierce warriors of the north, became a heap of smoking

ruins. At last the Tectosages came in contact with Antiochus, king of

Syria, and were totally defeated at the battle of the Taurus; the Syrian

king, following up his victory, compelled them to resign their

conquests, and to establish themselves on the banks of the Halys, near

the town of Ancyra, in Upper Phrygia, where they dwelt, too weak again

to enter on the career of conquest. Internal war prevented the Asiatics

for some time from pursuing their successes, and the Trocmes and

Tolistoboies continued still to pillage and oppress all the maritime

provinces. Nay, their power was actually increased by those wars, as

each of the contending parties purchased the mercenary services of large

bands of those brave, though turbulent warriors. But the end of the

Gaulish rule in Asia Minor was at hand. The small state of Pergamus,

under the able rule of Eumenes, emerged from its obscurity, and

inflicted a severe wound upon the Gauls by the defeat of Antiochus, king

of Syria, with whom a great number of them served as mercenaries. His

son Attalus, on his accession to the throne, immediately marched against

and defeated the Tolistoboies. Ionia, which had long groaned under their

oppression, seizing the opportunity, rose up against them; the

Tolistoboies, beaten in several engagements, were driven beyond Mount

Taurus; and the Trocmes, after a vain attempt to maintain themselves in

Troas, were forced to retreat and unite with their defeated countrymen.

Attacked now by the whole population of Asia Minor, the two hordes were

driven by degrees into Upper Phrygia, where the Tectosages had formerly

settled. Here the three hordes united, and here they founded the empire

of Galatia.

"Thus ended in Asia Minor the dominion of this people in their

character of nomad conquerors; another period of existence now

commenced for them. Abandoning their wandering life, they mixed

with the indigenous population, who were themselves a mixture of

Greek colonists and Asiatics. That blending together of three

races, unequal in power and in civilization, produced a mixed

nation, that of the Gallo-Greeks, whose civil, political, and

religious institutions, carry the triple stamp of Gaulish, Greek,

and Phrygian manners. The regular influence which the Gauls are

destined to act in Asia Minor, as an Asiatic power, will prove not

to be inferior to that of which they have been deprived; and we

shall see them defend, almost to the last, the liberty of the East

against the Roman arms."--(I. 203-204.)

We have not space to follow M. Thierry in his very interesting account

of the exploits of the Gaulish mercenaries in Greece--in particular of

those who served in the army of Pyrrhus; or who, acting in the pay of

Carthage, contributed so much to the victories of that powerful and

wealthy people, and who took that lead in the famous insurrection of the

mercenaries, which so nearly brought about their ruin. We must pass over

too, unnoticed, the desperate struggle between the Romans and Gauls in

Cisalpine Gaul, which ended in the defeat of the Boian confederacy at

the battle of the Telama, and their submission, and the subjugation of

the Insubrians by Marcellus. The whole of Cisalpine Gaul thus seemed to

be finally subdued, when a new enemy suddenly appeared in the field, and

again led the Gaulish standards into the heart of southern Italy.

Hardly had the Cisalpines laid down their arms, when there arrived

amongst them emissaries sent by Hannibal to excite them to a renewal of

the war, and to engage them in an alliance with Carthage, by promising

to guarantee to them the liberty of their country, and by exciting their

cupidity with the prospect of the spoils of Rome and southern Italy.

They were well received, and secret armaments soon began to take place,

especially amongst the Boian confederacy. But what immediately caused

the outbreak was an attempt of the Romans to found two colonies, one at

Cremona, and the other at Placentia. Enraged at this, the Boians took up

arms, and attacking the colonists of Placentia, dispersed them, whilst

the Insubrians expelled those who had advanced to Cremona. The Boians

and Insubrians now uniting their forces, laid siege to Mutina, but in

vain. This check, however, was more than counterbalanced by the defeat

of a Roman army under the orders of Manlius. While affairs were in this

state, the columns of Hannibal, descending from the Alps, arrived on the

Insubrian territory. The result of the late successes of the Gauls in

their disposition towards Hannibal, is well explained by Thierry:--

"Two factions then divided all Cisalpine Gaul. The one composed of

the Venetes, the Cremonas, and the Ligures of the Alps, gained over

to the Roman cause, opposed with vigour every movement in favour of

Hannibal. The other, which included the Ligures of the Apennines,

the Insubrians, and the people of the Boian confederation, had

embraced the Carthaginian side, but without much ardour. The

affairs of Gaul had undergone a great change. At the time when the

propositions of Hannibal were received with enthusiasm, Gaul was

humiliated and conquered; Roman troops occupied her

territory--Roman colonies assembled in her towns. But since the

dispersion of the colonies of Cremona and Placentia--since the

defeat of L. Manlius in the forest of Mutina, the Boians and

Insubrians, satisfied at having recovered their independence with

their own forces, cared little to compromise themselves for the

advantage of strangers, whose appearance and numbers inspired them

with but slight confidence."--(I. 284-285.)

Hannibal felt all the importance of deciding the wavering sentiments of

this people; on them his future success or defeat depended; to do this

nothing but victory was requisite. He accordingly advanced rapidly

against the Romans, and first engaged them in a cavalry action at the

Ticinus. Victory declared for the Carthaginians. The horse of Numidia

routed the cavalry of Rome. This success, unimportant as it was,

revealed Hannibal to the eyes of the Gauls; influenced by it, the

Insubrian chiefs hastened to supply him with provisions and troops.

Hardly had the Carthaginians arrived in sight of the Roman camp at

Placentia, when a large body of the Gaulish contingent revolted from

Scipio, and contrived, though much reduced in numbers, to cut their way

through in spite of all opposition, and join Hannibal. The famous battle

of the Trebia--the first of those great victories which have rendered

immortal the genius of the Carthaginian chief--soon followed; it at once

decided the course of Cisalpine Gaul. Its immediate and ultimate effects

on the power and operations of Hannibal are well developed by our

author:--

"The fortune of Hannibal was then consolidated; more than 60,000

Boians, Insubrians, and Ligures flocked in a few days to his

standards, and raised his forces to 100,000 men. With such a

disproportion between the nucleus of the Carthaginian army and its

auxiliaries, Hannibal was in reality but a Gaulish chief; and if,

in the moments of danger, he had no cause to repent his new

situation, more than once, nevertheless, he cursed with bitterness

its inconveniences. Nothing could equal the courage and devotion of

the Gaulish soldier in the dangers of the battle-field; but under

the tent he had neither the habit nor the taste of military

subordination. The lofty conceptions of Hannibal surpassed his

comprehension; he could not understand war, unless such as he

himself carried it on--as a bold and rapid plundering excursion, of

which the present moment reaped the whole advantage. He would have

wished to march instantly on Rome, or at least to pass the winter

in some of the allied or subject provinces--in Etruria or in

Umbria--there to live at discretion in pillage and license. Did

Hannibal represent that it was necessary to spare the provinces in

order to gain them over to the common cause, the Cisalpines broke

forth into murmurs; the combinations of prudence and genius

appeared in their eyes but a vile pretext to deprive them of the

advantages which they had legitimately won."--(I. 292-293.)

We cannot follow the steps of the great conqueror in his memorable

campaigns--in his fatal march over the fens of Etruria, or through the

glorious field of Thrasymene. But the share which the Gauls had in the

mighty victory of Cannae, and the change of the seat of war, with the

results which followed from it, are of such importance, and the remarks

made upon them by M. Thierry are so just, that we shall give the whole

of his account of this event at full length:--

"From the field of Thrasymene Hannibal passed into southern Italy,

and gave battle a third time to the Romans, near the village of

Cannae, on the banks of the Aufidus, now called the Offanto. He had

then under his banners 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry; and of

these 50,000 combatants, at least 30,000 were Gauls. In his order

of battle, he placed their cavalry on the right wing, and in the

centre their infantry, whom he united to the Spanish infantry, and

whom he commanded in person: the Gaulish foot, as was their custom

on all occasions when they were determined to conquer or die, threw

off their tunic and sagum, and fought naked from their waist

upwards, armed with their long and pointless sabres. They commenced

the action; and their cavalry and that of the Numidians terminated

it. We know how dreadful the carnage was in that celebrated

battle--the most glorious of the victories of Hannibal--the most

disastrous of the defeat of Rome. When the Carthaginian general,

moved with pity, called to his soldiers 'to halt, and to spare the

vanquished,' without doubt the Gauls, bloodthirsty in the

destruction of their mortal enemies, carried to that butchery more

than the ordinary irritation of wars, the satisfaction of a

vengeance ardently wished for, and long deferred. There 70,000

Romans perished; the loss on the side of the conquerors was 5500,

of which 4000 were Gauls. Out of 60,000 Gauls, whom Hannibal had

enumerated around him after the combat of the Trebia, 25,000 only

remained; battle, sickness, above all, the fatal passage over the

marshes of Etruria, had cut off all the rest; for up to this period

they had supported almost exclusively the weight of the war. The

victory of Cannae brought to the Carthaginians other auxiliaries; a

crowd of men from Campania, Lucania, Brutium, and Apulia, filled

his camp; but it was not that warlike race which he formerly

recruited on the banks of the Po. Cannae was the term of his

success; and assuredly the fault ought not to be imputed to his

genius, more admirable even in adverse than in good fortune--his

army only had changed. For two thousand years history has accused

him with bitterness for his inaction after the battle of Aufidus,

and for his delay at Capua; perhaps it might reproach him more

justly for having removed from the north of Italy, and for having

allowed his communications with the soldiers who had conquered

under him at Thrasymene and Cannae, to be cut off. Rome perceived

the fault of Hannibal, and hastened to profit by it. Two armies in

_echelon_, the one to the north, and the other to the south,

intercepted the communication between the Cisalpines and Magna

Graecia. That of the north, by its incursions and by its threatening

attitude, occupied the Gauls at their own hearths, whilst the

second made head against the Carthaginians."--(I. 297-300.)

It has been said by the most renowned conqueror of modern times, that,

give him but the Gallic infantry and the Mameluke cavalry, and he would

subdue the world. And it cannot fail to strike the attentive reader with

astonishment, to learn that the severest blow ever given to the power of

Rome was inflicted by the Gaulish foot and the Numidian horse. It is

curious, as exemplifying the unchanging characters of race, to observe

that the greatest general of antiquity triumphed at the head of an army,

composed of those very nations whom Napoleon, after the lapse of two

thousand years, declared best fitted to pursue the blood-stained paths

of military greatness.

The efforts of the Gauls did not cease with the battle of Cannae; they

defeated an army under Posthumius, which invaded their territory. When

Hasdrubal led his ill-fated expedition to strew their bodies on the

Italian plains, he was accompanied by large bands of those brave

adventurers; and when Carthage, making a last effort to succour her

general, disembarked 14,000 men under the command of Mago, Hannibal's

brother, at Genoa, numerous bodies of Gauls flocked to his standards.

And this general, though unable to effect his junction with Hannibal,

yet maintained his ground for ten years, till at last, defeated in the

territory of the Insubrians, he retired to Genoa. There he received

orders to return to the defence of Africa:--

"His brother also, recalled by the Carthaginian senate, was obliged

to embark at the other extremity of Italy. The Gaulish and Ligurian

soldiers, who had faithfully served Hannibal during seventeen

years, abandoned him not in his days of misfortune; re-united to

their compatriots who had followed Mago, they formed still a third

part of the Carthaginian army at Zama, in the celebrated day which

terminated that long war to the advantage of the Romans, and

displayed to the world the genius of Hannibal humbled before the

fortune of Scipio. The ferocity with which the Gauls fought has

been recorded by the historian: 'They showed themselves,' says

Titus Livy, 'inflamed with that inborn hate against the Roman

people, peculiar to their race.'"--(I. 310-311.)

The war in Cisalpine Gaul did not cease with the departure of Hannibal.

Under the orders of Carthaginian officer, the Gauls again took the

field--Placentia fell beneath their arms; but they received a severe

defeat from L. Furius, in the year 200 B.C., when the Carthaginian

general Amilcar perished. From this period till the year 191 B.C., the

Gaulish nations were involved in a constant succession of wars, in

which, though occasionally victorious, they were upon the whole

unsuccessful. Exposed to the incessant incursions of the Romans, their

strength gradually wasted away; each year left them in a state more

exhausted and unfit to renew the war than the preceding. Nation after

nation laid down their arms in despair, till at last the Boian

confederacy stood alone in its resistance of a foreign yoke; but their

ravaged lands and reduced numbers were unequal to the struggle, and

when, in the year 190 B.C., the Roman armies advanced into the heart of

their exhausted territory, the few remaining inhabitants determined to

abandon the land of their birth, and to seek, amidst ruder nations, and

beneath a more ungenial sky, for that liberty in defence of which their

fathers had so often bled. Accordingly, the wreck of a hundred and

twelve Boian tribes, rising _en masse_, united, and wending their weary

steps over the snow-clad summits of the Alps, and through the pathless

forests of Germany, they found at last, on the banks of the distant

Danube, a resting-place far removed from the hated name of Rome.

All resistance from Cisalpine Gaul now ceased. Occasionally, indeed, a

few tribes from the Transalpine would cross the Alps and descend into

Italy, but they could not withstand the shock of the legions. The

conquered territory was declared a Roman province, which it ever

afterwards remained.

We have not space to follow M. Thierry in his account of the progress

and fall of that strange Gaulish kingdom of Galatia. From the year 241

to the year 190 B.C., it maintained its independence unshaken, amidst

the degenerate sons of Greece and the effeminate Asiatics. But the Roman

power, beneath which the Gaulish race was ever doomed to bend, overtook

them even amidst the mountains of Asia Minor. The Galatians had

furnished some troops to Antiochus the Great, and then, for the first

time, they came in contact with the eagle of the Capitol. The first

encounter is thus alluded to by our author:--

"The Romans had annihilated, at Magnesia, the Asiatic and Greek

forces: yet the conquest of the country appeared to them still

incomplete. They had encountered, beneath the banners of Antiochus,

some bands of a force less easily conquered than the Syrians or the

Phrygians: by the armour, by the lofty stature, by the yellow or

reddish locks, by the war-cry, by the rattling clash of arms, by

the dauntless valour above all, the legions had easily recognised

that old enemy of Rome whom they had been brought up to fear.

Before deciding any thing as to the lot of the vanquished, the

Roman generals then determined to carry the war into Galatia."--(I.

360-361.)

Accordingly, in the spring of 189 B.C., Cn. Manlius, with 22,000

legionaries and an auxiliary army furnished by the King of Pergamus,

invaded Galatia: at his approach the Tolistoboies and Tectosages

intrenched themselves upon Mount Olympus, and the Trocmes upon Mount

Megalon, and there awaited the attack. The consul first advanced to

Mount Olympus. He led his troops to attack the Gaulish position in three

columns; the principal column, under his own orders, was to advance on

the Gauls in front, the other two were to try and turn their position on

either flank. The column which he led first engaged.

"His _velites_ advanced in front of the standards, with the Cretan

archers of Attalus, the slingers, and the corps of Trulles and of

the Thracians. The infantry of the legions followed with slow

steps, as the steepness of the declivity rendered necessary,

sheltered beneath their bucklers, so as to avoid stones and arrows.

At a considerable distance the combat began with discharges of

arrows, and at first with equal success. The Gauls had the

advantage in position, the Romans in the number and variety of

their arms. The action continued, the equality no longer remained.

The narrow and flat bucklers of the Gauls protected them

insufficiently: soon having expended their darts and javelins, they

found themselves altogether disarmed: for at that distance their

sabres were useless. As they had made no selection of flints and

stones beforehand, they seized the first which chance threw in

their way, which were for the most part too large to be easily

wielded, or for inexperienced arms to throw with effect. The

Romans, meanwhile, poured down upon them a murderous hail of

arrows, javelins, and leaden balls, which wounded them, without

their having any possibility of avoiding the approach. * * * * A

great number had bit the dust, others adopted the course of rushing

right on the enemy, and they, at least, did not perish unavenged.

It was the corps of the Roman _velites_ who did them most harm.

These _velites_ carried on their left arm a buckler three feet in

size, in their right hand javelins, which they threw from afar, at

their girdle a Spanish sword; when it was necessary to engage in

close contact, they transferred their javelins to the left hand,

and drew their sword. Few Gauls now remained on foot: seeing then

the legions advance to the charge, they fled precipitately to their

camp, which the alarm of the multitude of women, children and old

men who were shut up within it, already filled with tumult and

confusion."--(I. 373-376.)

The other two columns had, from the difficult nature of the ground, been

unable to make any progress. Manlius now led on his legionaries to

assault the intrenchment, which they carried at the sword's point. A few

days after this victory, Manlius advanced with his triumphant army to

attack the Trocmes, who were intrenched on Mount Megalon. This battle

resembled much, both in its progress and in its termination, the one

which preceded it. The Trocmes were driven with slaughter from the

field, and their camp taken. Dispirited by this double defeat, the

Galatians, who had rallied their scattered forces behind the Halys, sued

for peace. The Romans, desiring rather to conciliate than to irritate

this warlike people, merely exacted that they should surrender the land

which they had taken from the allies of Rome, and that they should give

up their wandering and predatory habits, so injurious to all their

neighbours. Under the influence of the forced peace in which the

subjection of Asia to the Romans kept the Galatians, their manners

rapidly changed. Asiatic luxury took the place of northern barbarity;

the worship of the national gods was abandoned, and the idols of the

stranger were substituted in their room; the coarse garments of ancient

days, gave place to vestments of purple and gold: yet a little while,

and the loss of national manners was followed by the loss of political

privileges; the magistracies, formerly elective, now became hereditary;

the families who usurped this privilege formed, in course of time, a

bright and all-powerful aristocracy. Ambition limited the number of

these magistracies; from twelve they were reduced to four; at last they

were centred in a single hand: so that when Galatia was united as a

province to the Roman empire, it was governed by a hereditary king. Yet,

amidst this usurpation of the sovereign power, the national council of

the Three Hundred still continued to exist, and assist in the government

of the state.

During twenty years peace subsisted between the Galatians and their

Asiatic neighbours. At the end of that period, however, a war broke out,

and pillaging bands once more began to traverse the plains of Asia

Minor; when Rome interposed, and by her mediation peace was restored.

Mithridates, uniting beneath his sway all the powers of the East, drove

back for a while the Roman eagles, and seemed about to restore their

ancient glory to the Asiatics. The Galatians joined with him; but their

fidelity became suspected, and he seized upon sixty of their nobles as

hostages. Enraged at this treatment, they formed a plot to assassinate

him; it was frustrated, and the conspirators were almost all

treacherously put to death at a banquet. His troops then advancing, took

possession of Galatia, which was governed by one of his officers with

insolence and oppression for twelve years. At last a revolt broke out;

his armies were driven from the country; Galatia was once more free. The

defeat of Mithridates by the Roman arms ensured their independence for a

short time; but the rest of Asia was now subject to the Romans.

Surrounded, enveloped on all sides by their power, Galatia yielded at

last, and was reduced to the form of a Roman province in the time of

Augustus.

Here M. Thierry ends the first part of his History of the Gauls; and

thus far we have followed him step by step, because we considered this

both the least known and the most interesting portion of Gaulish

history. The two periods which follow are more familiar to historical

readers: because, during them, Rome was the great enemy of the Gauls;

and if she has often palliated her defeats, she has at least never

failed to chronicle her victories. Henceforth, therefore, we shall no

longer attempt to follow the thread of his narrative. The victories of

Marius, the campaigns of Caesar, stand in no need of our attention being

directed to them, as to the wars of the Brenn in Greece, or the

conquests of the horde in Asia Minor. Here we take leave of the Gaul as

the conquering nomad; we have seen him wandering through the land of the

stranger with fire and sword; but the hour of vengeance has now come,

and we shall see him bleed in vain on his native soil for that liberty

of which he had so often deprived others.

M. Thierry opens his history of the second period with an exceedingly

interesting account of the state of Gaul during the second and third

centuries before our era. Gaul was then inhabited by three distinct

families or races. By the Iberian family--divided into the Aquitains and

the Ligures. By the Gaulish family--divided into the Gauls, the Kimry,

and the Belgians. And by the Ionian-Greek family, or the inhabitants of

the powerful and flourishing maritime and commercial state of Massalia.

The Iberian and Ionian-Greeks, families occupying comparatively but a

small portion of Gaul, need not detain us. With the Gauls we have more

to do. Our author gives the following account of the way in which their

territory was divided amongst the three different bands of this

family:--

"A line which, setting out from the mouth of the Tann, follows the

course of that river, then that of the Rhone, the Iser, the Alps,

the Rhine, the Vosges, the AEdnian hills, the Loire, the Vienne, and

comes at last to rejoin the Garonne, by turning the plateau of

Arvernia: that line would nearly circumscribe the possessions of

the Gallic race. The territory situated to the east of that limit

belonged to the race of the Kimry; it was in time divided into two

portions by the line of the Seine and the Marne, the one northern

and the other southern. To the south, between the Seine and the

Garonne, lived the Kimry of the first invasion, intermingled with

Gallic blood, or the Gallo-Kimry. To the north, between the Seine

and the Rhine, the Kimry of the second invasion, or Belgians. The

Gauls numbered twenty-two nations; the Gallo-Kimry, seventeen; and

the Belgians, twenty-three. These sixty-two nations were subdivided

into many hundred tribes."--(I. 28.)

He then enters into a long and most interesting description of the

domestic manners, and political and religious institutions, of the

Gauls.

After having traced the Gaul for so long in the field, we love to follow

him into his cabin--to observe his appearance, his pursuits, his

habits--to mark the manly figure, the fair complexion, the flowing

yellow locks, the glittering helmet surmounted with the antlers of the

stag, the buckler covered with all the colours of the rainbow, the

polished cuirass flashing back the rays of the morning sun, the heavy

sabre hanging from the gold-bespangled belt, the precious necklace, the

rich armlets, the bright and variegated hues of the martial sagum or

mantle, of the noble Gaulish warrior. We follow him as he turns away

from his clay-built mansion, and, regardless of the silent tears and

entreating looks of his submissive, perhaps ill-used wife, hurries into

the noise and excitement of the battle-field. Observe the wild frenzy

that there seems to seize him, as he rushes with dauntless courage on

the bristling phalanx of his enemies; as, amidst the clouds of dust

which float overhead, and the horrid cries which resound on all sides,

he tears and widens with savage ferocity the fearful gash he has just

received; as, a moment after, overcoming in personal conflict yon

stalwart chief, he decapitates, with one blow of his heavy sabre, the

yet palpitating corpse, and waves the gory head with demoniac triumph in

the air; and as he returns home, yet reeking with blood and intoxicated

with victory, and suspends above his threshold the ghastly trophy. Look

again--the scene is changed--the glittering arms are flung aside. With

his mantle floating in the breeze, his light spear quivering in his

hand, he plunges into the pathless forest; with fearless step he pursues

his way through the leafy shade, and traverses the treacherous surface

of the morass. Beneath yon giant oak he has encountered the fiercest

inhabitant of those solitudes--the wild bull; but it has fallen beneath

his javelin, which yet protrudes from it bushy neck, and, as it lies

struggling on the greensward, making the wood ring again with its

bellowings, his dagger is raised to give it the final stroke.--Observe

him once more in the council of his nation. The warriors stand in an

attentive circle leaning on their arms; he has risen to address them;

his action is animated, his words are vehement; the polished accents,

the finished periods of the Greek, flow not from his lips, but there is

eagerness in his eye, there is earnestness in his speech, his language

is figurative in the extreme, a thousand picturesque and striking images

illustrate his meaning; his metaphors, drawn from the battle and the

chase, thrill to the bosom of all his listeners; and the clash and clang

of their arms, amidst which he sits down, proclaims alike their assent

to his proposition and their admiration of his eloquence. It is amidst

scenes like these that we love to follow the Gaul, to picture to

ourselves an old race and an old civilization, which combined in so

strange a way the greatness and the savageness, the heroism in danger

and weakness under temptation, of primeval and half-civilized man.

To comprehend clearly the internal and external history of the Gauls, we

must understand the political condition of their country. This is

unfolded in a clear and masterly manner by our author, in the following

passage:--

"In Gaul, two privileged orders ruled the rest of the people--the

elective order of the priests, who recruited themselves

indiscriminately from all ranks, and the hereditary order of the

nobles or knights. This latter was composed of the ancient royal

families of the tribes, and of those men who had been recently

ennobled, either by war or by the influence of riches. The

multitudes were divided into two classes--the people of the

country, and the people of the town. The first formed the tribes or

the clans of the noble families. The client belonged to his patron,

whose domains he cultivated, whose standard he followed in war,

under whom he was a member of a little patriarchal aristocracy; his

duty was to defend him to the death from, and against all: to

abandon his patron in circumstances of danger, passed for the

consummation of disgrace, and even for a crime. The people of the

towns, from their situation, removed from the influence of the old

hierarchy of the tribes, enjoyed greater liberty, and fortunately

found themselves in a situation to maintain and to defend it.

Beneath the mass of the people came the slaves, who do not appear

to have been very numerous. The two privileged orders caused the

yoke of their despotism to weigh, turn by turn, upon Gaul. Turn by

turn they exercised absolute authority, and lost it by a series of

political revolutions. The history of the government of the Gauls

offers, then, three very distinct periods: that of the reign of the

priests, or of the theocracy--that of the reign of the chiefs of

the tribes, or of the military aristocracy--lastly, that of the

popular constitutions, founded on the principle of election, and on

the will of the majority. The epoch which we are about to treat of,

accomplished that last and great revolution; and popular

constitutions, although still ill assured, at last ruled over all

Gaul at the commencement of the first age."--(II. 71-73.)

M. Thierry recognises in the Gauls the traces of two distinct religions.

He says--