CHAPTER XLV.

I went out--and to see Francis Vivian; for, on leaving Mr Trevanion,

I was not without anxiety for my new friend's future provision.

But Vivian was from home, and I strolled from his lodgings, into

the suburbs on the other side of the river, and began to meditate

seriously on the best course now to pursue. In quitting my present

occupations, I resigned prospects far more brilliant, and fortunes

far more rapid than I could ever hope to realise in any other

entrance into life. But I felt the necessity, if I desired to keep

steadfast to that more healthful frame of mind I had obtained,

of some manly and continuous labour--some earnest employment.

My thoughts flew back to the university; and the quiet of its

cloisters--which, until I had been blinded by the glare of the

London world, and grief had somewhat dulled the edge of my quick

desires and hopes, had seemed to me cheerless and unaltering--took

an inviting aspect. They presented what I needed most--a new scene,

a new arena, a partial return into boyhood; repose for passions

prematurely raised; activity for the reasoning powers in fresh

directions. I had not lost my time in London: I had kept up, if not

studies purely classical, at least the habits of application; I had

sharpened my general comprehension, and augmented my resources.

Accordingly, when I returned home, I resolved to speak to my father.

But I found he had forestalled me; and, on entering, my mother drew

me up stairs into her room, with a smile kindled by my smile, and

told me that she and her Austin had been thinking that it was best

that I should leave London as soon as possible; that my father

found he could now dispense with the library of the Museum for some

months; that the time for which they had taken their lodgings would

be up in a few days; that the summer was far advanced, town odious,

the country beautiful--in a word, we were to go home. There I could

prepare myself for Cambridge, till the long vacation was over; and,

my mother added hesitatingly, and with a prefatory caution to

spare my health, that my father, whose income could ill afford the

requisite allowance to me, counted on my soon lightening his burden,

by getting a scholarship. I felt how much provident kindness there

was in all this--even in that hint of a scholarship, which was meant

to rouse my faculties, and spur me, by affectionate incentives, to a

new ambition. I was not less delighted than grateful.

"But poor Roland," said I, "and little Blanche--will they come with

us?"

"I fear not," said my mother, "for Roland is anxious to get back to

his tower; and, in a day or two, he will be well enough to move."

"Do you not think, my dear mother, that, somehow or other, this lost

son of his had something to do with his illness,--that the illness

was as much mental as physical?"

"I have no doubt of it, Sisty. What a sad, bad heart that young man

must have!"

"My uncle seems to have abandoned all hope of finding him in London;

otherwise, ill as he has been, I am sure we could not have kept him

at home. So he goes back to the old tower. Poor man, he must be dull

enough there!--we must contrive to pay him a visit. Does Blanche

ever speak of her brother?"

"No, for it seems they were not brought up much together--at all

events, she does not remember him. How lovely she is! Her mother

must surely have been very handsome."

"She is a pretty child, certainly, though in a strange style of

beauty--such immense eyes!--and affectionate, and loves Roland as

she ought."

And here the conversation dropped.

Our plans being thus decided, it was necessary that I should lose no

time in seeing Vivian, and making some arrangement for the future.

His manner had lost so much of its abruptness, that I thought I

could venture to recommend him personally to Trevanion; and I knew,

after what had passed, that Trevanion would make a point to oblige

me. I resolved to consult my father about it. As yet I had either

never forced, or never made the opportunity to talk to my father

on the subject, he had been so occupied; and, if he had proposed

to see my new friend, what answer could I have made, in the teeth

of Vivian's cynic objections? However, as we were now going away,

that last consideration ceased to be of importance; and, for the

first, the student had not yet entirely settled back to his books. I

therefore watched the time when my father walked down to the Museum,

and, slipping my arm in his, I told him, briefly and rapidly, as

we went along, how I had formed this strange acquaintance, and how

I was now situated. The story did not interest my father quite as

much as I expected, and he did not understand all the complexities

of Vivian's character--how could he?--for he answered briefly, "I

should think that, for a young man, apparently without a sixpence,

and whose education seems so imperfect, any resource in Trevanion

must be most temporary and uncertain. Speak to your uncle Jack--he

can find him some place, I have no doubt--perhaps a readership in

a printer's office, or a reporter's place on some journal, if he

is fit for it. But if you want to steady him, let it be something

regular."

Therewith my father dismissed the matter, and vanished through the

gates of the Museum.--Readership to a printer, reportership on a

journal, for a young gentleman with the high notions and arrogant

vanity of Francis Vivian--his ambition already soaring far beyond

kid gloves and a cabriolet! The idea was hopeless; and, perplexed

and doubtful, I took my way to Vivian's lodgings. I found him at

home, and unemployed, standing by his window, with folded arms, and

in a state of such reverie that he was not aware of my entrance till

I had touched him on the shoulder.

"Ha!" said he then, with one of his short, quick, impatient sighs,

"I thought you had given me up, and forgotten me--but you look pale

and harassed. I could almost think you had grown thinner within the

last few days."

"Oh! never mind me, Vivian: I have come to speak of yourself.

I have left Trevanion; it is settled that I should go to the

university--and we all quit town in a few days."

"In a few days!--all!--who are all?"

"My family--father, mother, uncle cousin, and myself. But, my dear

fellow, now let us think seriously what is best to be done for you?

I can present you to Trevanion."

"Ha!"

"But Trevanion is a hard, though an excellent man; and, moreover, as

he is always changing the subjects that engross him, in a month or

so, he may have nothing to give you. You said you would work--will

you consent not to complain if the work cannot be done in kid

gloves? Young men who have risen high in the world have begun, it

is well known, as reporters to the press. It is a situation of

respectability, and in request, and not easy to obtain, I fancy; but

still--"

Vivian interrupted me hastily--

"Thank you a thousand times! but what you say confirms a resolution

I had taken before you came. I shall make it up with my family, and

return home."

"Oh! I am so really glad. How wise in you!"

Vivian turned away his head abruptly--

"Your pictures of family life and domestic peace, you see," he said,

"seduced me more than you thought. When do you leave town?"

"Why, I believe, early next week."

"So soon!" said Vivian, thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps I may ask you

yet to introduce me to Mr Trevanion; for--who knows?--my family and

I may fall out again. But I will consider. I think I have heard you

say that this Trevanion is a very old friend of your father's, or

uncle's?"

"He, or rather Lady Ellinor, is an old friend of both."

"And therefore would listen to your recommendations of me. But

perhaps I may not need them. So you have left--left of your own

accord--a situation that seemed more enjoyable, I should think, than

rooms in a college;--left--why did you leave?"

And Vivian fixed his bright eyes, full and piercingly, on mine.

"It was only for a time, for a trial, that I was there," said I,

evasively: "out at nurse, as it were, till the Alma Mater opened her

arms--_alma_ indeed she ought to be to my father's son."

Vivian looked unsatisfied with my explanation, but did not question

me farther. He himself was the first to turn the conversation, and

he did this with more affectionate cordiality than was common to

him. He inquired into our general plans, into the probabilities of

our return to town, and drew from me a description of our rural

Tusculum. He was quiet and subdued; and once or twice I thought

there was a moisture in those luminous eyes. We parted with more

of the unreserve and fondness of youthful friendship--at least on

my part, and seemingly on his--than had yet endeared our singular

intimacy; for the cement of cordial attachment had been wanting to

an intercourse in which one party refused all confidence, and the

other mingled distrust and fear with keen interest and compassionate

admiration.

That evening, before lights were brought in, my father, turning to

me, abruptly asked if I had seen my friend, and what he was about to

do?

"He thinks of returning to his family," said I.

Roland, who had seemed dozing, winced uneasily.

"Who returns to his family?" asked the Captain.

"Why, you must know," said my father, "that Sisty has fished up

a friend of whom he can give no account that would satisfy a

policeman, and whose fortunes he thinks himself under the necessity

of protecting. You are very lucky that he has not picked your

pockets, Sisty; but I daresay he has? What's his name?"

"Vivian," said I--"Francis Vivian."

"A good name, and a Cornish," said my father. "Some derive it from

the Romans--Vivianus; others from a Celtic word, which means"--

"Vivian!" interrupted Roland--"Vivian!--I wonder if it be the son of

Colonel Vivian?"

"He is certainly a gentleman's son," said I; "but he never told me

what his family and connexions were."

"Vivian," repeated my uncle--"poor Colonel Vivian. So the young man

is going to his father. I have no doubt it is the same. Ah!"--

"What do you know of Colonel Vivian, or his son?" said I. "Pray,

tell me, I am so interested in this young man."

"I know nothing of either, except by gossip," said my uncle,

moodily. "I did hear that Colonel Vivian, an excellent officer,

and honourable man, had been in--in--(Roland's voice faltered)--in

great grief about his son, whom, a mere boy, he had prevented from

some improper marriage, and who had run away and left him--it was

supposed for America. The story affected me at the time," added my

uncle, trying to speak calmly.

We were all silent, for we felt why Roland was so disturbed, and why

Colonel Vivian's grief should have touched him home. Similarity in

affliction makes us brothers even to the unknown.

"You say he is going home to his family--I am heartily glad of it!"

said the envying old soldier, gallantly.

The lights came in then, and, two minutes after, uncle Roland and I

were nestled close to each other, side by side; and I was reading

over his shoulder, and his finger was silently resting on that

passage that had so struck him--"I have not complained--have I,

sir?--and I won't complain!"

THE WHITE NILE.[15]

[15] _Expedition zur Entdeckung der Quellen des Weissen Nil_,

(1840-1841,) von FERDINAND WERNE. Mit einem Vorwort von CARL RITTER.

Berlin, 1848.

Fifty years since, the book before us would have earned for its

author the sneers of critics and the reputation of a Munchausen:

at the present more tolerant and more enlightened day, it not only

obtains credit, but excites well-merited admiration of the writer's

enterprise, energy, and perseverance. "The rich contents and great

originality of the following work," says Professor Carl Ritter,

in his preface to Mr Werne's narrative, "will escape no one who

bestows a glance, however hasty, upon its pages. It gives vivid and

life-like pictures of tribes and territories previously unvisited,

and is welcome as a most acceptable addition to our literature of

travel, often so monotonous." We quite coincide with the learned

professor, whose laudatory and long-winded sentences we have thus

freely rendered. His friend, Mr Ferdinand Werne, has made good

use of his opportunities, and has produced a very interesting and

praiseworthy book.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind the reader, that the

river Nile is formed of two confluent streams, the Blue and the

White, whose junction is in South Nubia, between 15° and 16° of

North Latitude. The source of the Blue Nile was ascertained by

Bruce, and by subsequent travellers, to be in the mountains of

Abyssinia; but the course of the other branch, which is by far the

longest, had been followed, until very lately, only as far south

as 10° or 11° N. L. Even now the river has not been traced to its

origin, although Mr Werne and his companions penetrated to 4° N.

L. Further they could not go, owing to the rapid subsidence of the

waters. The expedition had been delayed six weeks by the culpable

dilatoriness of one of its members; and this was fatal to the

realisation of its object.

We can conceive few things more exciting than such a voyage as Mr

Werne has accomplished and recorded. Starting from the outposts of

civilisation, he sailed into the very heart of Africa, up a stream

whose upper waters were then for the first time furrowed by vessels

larger than a savage's canoe--a stream of such gigantic proportions,

that its width, at a thousand miles from the sea, gave it the

aspect of a lake rather than of a river. The brute creation were in

proportion with the magnitude of the water-course. The hippopotamus

reared his huge snout above the surface, and wallowed in the gullies

that on either hand run down to the stream; enormous crocodiles

gaped along the shore; elephants played in herds upon the pastures;

the tall giraffe amongst the lofty palms; snakes thick as trees lay

coiled in the slimy swamps; and ant-hills, ten feet high, towered

above the rushes. Along the thickly-peopled banks hordes of savages

showed themselves, gazing in wonder at the strange ships, and making

ambiguous gestures, variously construed by the adventurers as

signs of friendship or hostility. Alternately sailing and towing,

as the wind served or not; constantly in sight of natives, but

rarely communicating with them; often cut off for days from land by

interminable fields of tangled weeds,--the expedition pursued its

course through innumerable perils, guaranteed from most of them by

the liquid rampart on which it floated. Lions looked hungry, and

savages shook their spears, but neither showed a disposition to swim

off and board the flotilla.

The cause of science has countless obligations to the cupidity of

potentates and adventurers. May it not be part of the scheme of

Providence, that gold is placed in the most remote and barbarous

regions, as a magnet to draw thither the children of civilisation?

The expedition shared in by Mr Werne is an argument in favour

of the hypothesis. It originated in appetite for lucre, not in

thirst for knowledge. Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, finding the

lands within his control unable to meet his lavish expenditure and

constant cry for gold, projected working mines supposed to exist

in the districts of Kordovan and Fazogl. At heavy cost he procured

Austrian miners from Trieste, a portion of whom proceeded in 1836

to the land of promise, to open those veins of gold whence it was

reported the old Venetian ducats had been extracted. Already, in

imagination, the viceroy beheld an ingot-laden fleet sailing merrily

down the Nile. He was disappointed in his glowing expectations.

Russegger, the German chief of the expedition, pocketed the pay of

a Bey, ate and drank in conformity with his rank, rambled about the

country, and wrote a book for the amusement and Information of his

countrymen. Then he demanded thirty thousand dollars to begin the

works. An Italian, who had accompanied him, offered to do it for

less; mistrust and disputes arose, and at last their employer would

rely on neither of them, but resolved to go and see for himself.

This was in the autumn of 1838; and it might well be that the old

fox was not sorry to get out of the way of certain diplomatic

personages at Alexandria, and thus to postpone for a while his reply

to troublesome inquiries and demands.

"It was on the 15th October 1838," Mr Werne says, "that I--for some

time past an anchorite in the wilderness by Tura, and just returned

from a hunt in the ruins of Memphis--saw, from the left shore of

the Nile, the Abu Dagn, (Father of the Beard,) as Mohammed Ali was

designated to me by a Fellah standing by, steam past in his yacht,

in the direction of those regions to which I would then so gladly

have proceeded. Already in Alexandria I had gathered, over a glass

of wine, from frigate-captain Achmet, (a Swiss, named Baumgartner,)

the secret plan of the expedition to the White Stream, (Bach'r el

Abiat,) and I had made every effort to obtain leave to join it,

but in vain, because, as a Christian, my discretion was not to be

depended upon."

The Swiss, whom some odd caprice of fate, here unexplained, had

converted into an Egyptian naval captain, and to whom the scientific

duties of the expedition were confided, died in the following

spring, and his place was taken by Captain Selim. Mr Werne and his

brother, who had long ardently desired to accompany one of these

expeditions up the Nile, were greatly discouraged at this change,

which they looked upon as destructive to their hopes. At the town

of Chartum, at the confluence of the White and Blue streams, they

witnessed, in the month of November 1839, the departure of the first

flotilla; and, although sick and weak, from the effects of the

climate, their hearts were wrung with regret at being left behind.

This expedition got no further than 6° 35' N. L.; although, either

from mistakes in their astronomical reckoning or wishing to give

themselves more importance, and not anticipating that others would

soon follow to check their statements, they pretended to have gone

three degrees further south. But Mehemet Ali, not satisfied with the

result of their voyage, immediately ordered a second expedition to

be fitted out. Mr Werne, who is a most adventurous person, had been

for several months in the Taka country, in a district previously

untrodden by Europeans, with an army commanded by Achmet Bascha,

governor-general of Sudan, who was operating against some rebellious

tribes. Here news reached him of the projected expedition; and, to

his great joy, he obtained from Achmet permission to accompany it in

the quality of passenger. His brother, then body-physician to the

Bascha, could not be spared, by reason of the great mortality in the

camp.

At Chartum the waters were high, the wind was favourable, and all

was ready for a start early in October, but for the non-appearance

of two French engineers, who lingered six weeks in Korusko, under

one pretext or other, but in reality, M. Werne affirms, because

one of them, Arnaud by name, who has since written an account of

the expedition, was desirous to prolong the receipt of his pay

as _bimbaschi_, or major, which rank he temporarily held in the

Egyptian service. At last he and his companion, Sabatier, arrived:

on the 23rd November 1840 a start was made; and, on that day Mr

Werne began a journal, regularly kept, and most minute in its

details, which he continued till the 22d April 1841, the date of

his return to Chartum. He commences by stating the composition

of the expedition. "It consists of four dahabies from Kahira,

(vessels with two masts and with cabins, about a hundred feet

long, and twelve to fifteen broad,) each with two cannon; three

dahabies from Chartum, one of which has also two guns; then two

kaias, one-masted vessels, to carry goods, and a sàndal, or skiff,

for intercommunication; the crews are composed of two hundred and

fifty soldiers, (Negroes, Egyptians, and Surians,) and a hundred

and twenty sailors and boatmen from Alexandria, Nubia, and the

land of Sudàn." Soliman Kaschef (a Circassian of considerable

energy and courage, who, like Mr Werne himself, was protected by

Achmet Bascha) commanded the troops. Captain Selim had charge of

the ships, and a sort of general direction of the expedition, of

which, however, Soliman was the virtual chief; the second captain

was Feizulla Effendi of Constantinople; the other officers were

two Kurds, a Russian, an Albanian, and a Persian. Of Europeans,

there were the two Frenchmen, already mentioned, as engineers; a

third, named Thibaut, as collector; and Mr Werne, as an independent

passenger at his own charges. The ships were to follow each other

in two lines, one led by Soliman, the other by Selim; but this

order of sailing was abandoned the very first day; and so, indeed,

was nearly all order of every kind. Each man sailed his bark as he

pleased, without nautical skill or unity of movement; and, as to

one general and energetic supervision of the whole flotilla and

its progress, no one dreamed of such a thing. Mr Werne indulged in

gloomy reflections as to the probable results of an enterprise, at

whose very outset such want of zeal and discipline was displayed.

It does not appear to have struck him that not the least of his

dangers upon the strange voyage he had so eagerly undertaken, was

from his shipmates, many of them bigoted Mahometans and reckless,

ferocious fellows, ready with the knife, and who would have thought

little of burthening their conscience with so small a matter as a

Christian's blood. He is evidently a cool, courageous man, prompt

in action; and his knowledge of the slavish, treacherous character

of the people he had to deal with, doubtless taught him the best

line of conduct to pursue with them. This, as appears from various

passages of his journal, was the rough and ready style--a blow

for the slightest impertinence, and his arms, which he well knew

how to use, always at hand. He did not scruple to interfere when

he saw cruelty or oppression practised, and soon he made himself

respected, if not feared, by all on board; so much so, that

Feizulla, the captain of the vessel in which he sailed, a drunken

old Turk, who passed his time in drinking spirits and mending his

own clothes, appointed him his _locum tenens_ during his occasional

absences on shore. During his five months' voyage, Mr Werne had

a fine opportunity of studying the peculiarities of the different

nations with individuals of which he sailed; and, although his long

residence in Africa and the East had made him regard such matters

with comparative indifference, the occasional glimpses he gives

of Turkish and Egyptian habits are amongst the most interesting

passages in his book. Already, on the third day of the voyage, the

expiration of the Rhamadan, or fasting month, and the setting in

of the little feast of Bairam, gave rise to a singular scene. The

flotilla was passing through the country governed by Achmet Bascha,

in which Soliman was a man of great importance. By his desire, a

herd of oxen and a large flock of sheep were driven down to the

shore, for the use of the expedition. The preference was for the

mutton, the beef in those regions being usually tough and coarse,

and consequently despised by the Turks. "This quality of the meat

is owing to the nature of the fodder, the tender grass and herbs of

our marsh-lands and pastures being here unknown--and to the climate,

which hardens the animal texture, a fact perceived by the surgeon

when operating upon the human body. Our Arabs, who, like the Greeks

and Jews, born butchers and flayers, know no mercy with beasts or

men, fell upon the unfortunate animals, hamstrung them in all haste,

to obviate any chance of resumption of the gift, and the hecatomb

sank upon the ground, pitiful to behold. During the flaying and

quartering, every man tried to secrete a sippet of meat, cutting it

off by stealth, or stealing it from the back of the bearers. These

coveted morsels were stuck upon skewers, broiled at the nearest

watch-fire, and ravenously devoured, to prepare the stomach for

the approaching banquet. Although they know how to cook the liver

excellently well, upon this occasion they preferred eating it raw,

cut up in a wooden dish, and with the gall of the slaughtered beast

poured over it. Thus prepared, and eaten with salt and pepper, it

has much the flavour of a good raw beefsteak." The celebration of

the Bairam was a scene of gluttony and gross revelry. Arrack was

served out instead of the customary ration of coffee; and many a

Mussulman drank more than did him good, or than the Prophet's law

allows. In the night, Captain Feizulla tumbled out of bed; and,

having spoiled his subordinates by over-indulgence, not one of

them stirred to his assistance. Mr Werne picked him up, found him

in an epileptic fit, and learned, with no great pleasure, Feizulla

being his cabin-mate, that the thirsty skipper was subject to such

attacks. He foresaw a comfortless voyage on board the narrow bark,

and with such queer companions; but the daily increasing interest of

the scenery and surrounding objects again distracted his thoughts

from considerations of personal ease. He had greater difficulty

in reconciling himself to the negligence and indolence of his

associates. So long as food was abundant and work scanty, all went

well enough; but when liquor ran low, and the flesh-pots of Egypt

were empty, grumbling began, and the thoughts of the majority were

fixed upon a speedy return. Their chiefs set them a poor example.

Soliman Kaschef lay in bed till an hour after sunrise, and the

signal to sail could not be given till he awoke; and Feizulla, when

his and Mr Werne's stock of brandy was out, passed one half his

time in distilling spirits from stale dates, and the other moiety

in getting intoxicated on the turbid extract thus obtained. Then

the officers had female slaves on board; and there was a licensed

jester, Abu Haschis, who supplied the expedition with buffoonery

and ribaldry; and the most odious practices prevailed amongst the

crews; for further details concerning all which matters we refer the

curious to Mr Werne himself. A more singularly composed expedition

was perhaps never fitted out, nor one less adapted effectually to

perform the services required of it. Cleanliness and sobriety, so

incumbent upon men cooped up in small craft, in a climate teeming

with pestilence and vermin, were little regarded; and subordination

and vigilance, essential to safety amidst the perils of an unknown

navigation, and in the close vicinity of hostile savages, were

utterly neglected,--at first to the great uneasiness of Mr Werne.

But after a while, seeing no chance of amendment, and having no

power to rebuke or correct deficiencies, he repeated the eternal

_Allah Kerim!_ (God is merciful) of his fatalist shipmates, and

slept soundly, when the musquitos permitted, under the good guard of

Providence.

On the 29th November, the expedition passed the limit of

Turco-Egyptian domination. The land it had now reached paid no

tribute. "All slaves," was the reply of Turks and Arabs to Mr

Werne's inquiry who the inhabitants were. "I could not help

laughing, and proving to them, to their great vexation, that these

men were free, and much less slaves than themselves; that before

making slaves of them, they must first make them prisoners, a

process for which they had no particular fancy,--admitting, with

much _naiveté_, that the 'slaves' hereabout were both numerous

and brave. This contemptuously spoken _Kulo Abit_, (All slaves,)

is about equivalent to the 'barbarian' of the ancients--the same

classical word the modern Greeks have learned out of foreign

school-books."

"The trees and branches preventing our vessels from lying alongside

the bank, I had myself carried through the water, to examine the

country and get some shooting. But I could not make up my mind to

use my gun, the only animals to aim at being large, long-tailed,

silver-gray apes. I had shot one on a former occasion, and the brute

had greatly excited my compassion by his resemblance to a human

being, and by his piteous gestures. M. Arnaud, on the contrary, took

particular pleasure in making the repeated observation that, on the

approach of death, the gums of these beasts turn white, like those

of a dying man. They live in families of several hundreds together,

and their territory is very circumscribed, even in the forest, as

I myself subsequently ascertained. Although fearful of water, and

swimming unwillingly, they always fled to the branches overhanging

the river, and not unfrequently fell in. When this occurred, their

first care on emerging was to wipe the water from their faces and

ears. However imminent their danger, only when this operation was

completed did they again climb the trees. Such a monkey republic

is really a droll enough sight; its members alternately fighting

and caressing each other, combing and vermin-hunting, stealing and

boxing each other's ears, and, in the midst of all these important

occupations, running down every moment to drink, but contenting

themselves with a single draught, for fear of becoming a mouthful

for the watchful crocodile. The tame monkeys on board our vessels

turned restless at sight of the joyous vagabond life of their

brethren in the bush. First-lieutenant Hussein Aga, of Kurdistan,

lay alongside us, and was in raptures with his monkey, shouting over

to me: '_Schuf! el naùti taïb!_' (See! the clever sailor!)--meaning

his pet ape, which ran about the rigging like mad, hanging on by

the ropes, and looking over the bulwarks into the water; until at

last he jumped on the back of a sailor who was wading on shore with

dirty linen to wash, and thence made a spring upon land to visit

his relations, compared to whom, however, he was a mere dwarf.

Overboard went the long Kurd, with his gun, to shoot the deserter;

but doubtless the little seaman, in his capacity of Turkish slave,

and on account of his diminutive figure, met a bad reception, for

Hussein was no sooner under the trees than his monkey dropped upon

his head. He came to visit me afterwards, brought his 'naùti taïb'

with him, and told me, what I had often heard before, how apes were

formerly men, whom God had cursed. It really is written in the Koran

that God and the prophet David had turned into monkeys the Jews who

did not keep the Sabbath holy. Therefore a good Moslem will seldom

kill or injure a monkey. Emin Bey of Fazogl was an exception to this

rule. Sitting at table with an Italian, and about to thrust into

his mouth a fragment of roast meat, his monkey snatched it from

between his thumb and fingers. Whereupon the Bey quietly ordered

the robber's hand to be cut off, which was instantly done. The poor

monkey came to his cruel master and showed him, with his peculiarly

doleful whine, the stump of his fore-paw. The Bey gave orders to

kill him, but the Italian begged him as a gift. Soon afterwards

the foolish brute came into my possession, and, on my journey back

to Egypt, contributed almost as much to cheer me, as did the filial

attentions of my freed man Hagar, whom my brother had received as a

present, and had bequeathed to me. My servants would not believe but

that the monkey was a transformed _gabir_, or caravan guide, since

even in the desert he was always in front and upon the right road,

availing himself of every rock and hillock to look about him, until

the birds of prey again drove him under the camels, to complain

to me with his 'Oehm-oehm;' which was also his custom when he had

been beaten in my absence by the servants, whose merissa (a sort of

spirit) he would steal and drink till he could neither go nor stand."

During this halt, and whilst rambling along the bank, picking up

river-oysters and tracing the monstrous footsteps of hippopotami,

Mr Werne nearly walked into the jaws of the largest crocodile he

had ever seen. His Turkish servant, Sale, who attended him on such

occasions and carried his rifle, was not at hand, and he was glad

to beat a retreat, discharging one of his barrels, both of which

were laden with shot only, in the monster's face. On being scolded

for his absence, Sale very coolly replied, that it was not safe so

near shore; for that several times it had occurred to him, whilst

gazing up in the trees at the birds and monkeys, to find himself,

on a sudden, face to face with a crocodile, which stared at him

like a ghost, (Scheitan, Satan,) and which he dared not shoot, lest

he should slay his own father. Amongst the numerous Mahommedan

superstitions, there is a common belief in the transformation,

by witches and sorcerers, of men into beasts, especially into

crocodiles and hippopotami.

"Towards evening, cartridges were served out and muskets loaded,

for we were now in a hostile country. The powder-magazine stood

open, and lighted pipes passed to and fro over the hatchway. _Allah

Kerim!_ I do my best to rouse my captain from his indolence, by

drawing constant comparisons with the English sea-service; then I

fall asleep myself whilst the powder is being distributed, and,

waking early in the morning, find the magazine still open, and the

sentry, whose duty it is to give an alarm should the water in the

hold increase overmuch, fast asleep, with his tobacco-pipe in his

hand and his musket in his lap. Feizulla Capitan begged me not to

report the poor devil." This being a fair specimen of the prudence

and discipline observed during the whole voyage, it is really

surprising that Mr Werne ever returned to write its history, and

that his corpse--drowned, blown up, or with a knife between the

ribs--has not long since been resolved into the elements through

the medium of a Nile crocodile. The next day the merciful Feizulla,

whose kindness must have sprung from a fellow-feeling, got mad-drunk

at a merry-making on an island, and had to be brought by force on

board his ship. He seemed disposed to "run amuck;" grasped at sabre

and pistols, and put his people in fear of their lives, until Mr

Werne seized him neck and heels, threw him on his bed, and held

him there whilst he struggled himself weary and fell asleep. The

ship's company were loud in praise and admiration of Mr Werne, who,

however, was not quite easy as to the possible results of his bold

interference. "Only yesterday, I incurred the hatred of the roughest

of our Egyptian sailors, as he sat with another at the hand-mill,

and repeatedly applied to his companion the word _Nasrani_,

(Christian,) using it as a term of insult, until the whole crew

came and looked down into the cabin where I sat, and laughed--the

captain not being on board at the time. At last I lost my patience,

jumped up, and dealt the fellow a severe blow with my fist. In his

fanatical horror at being struck by a Christian, he tried to throw

himself overboard, and vowed revenge, which my servants told me.

Now, whilst Feizulla Capitan lies senseless, I see from my bed this

tall sailor leave the fore-part of the ship and approach our cabin,

his comrades following him with their eyes. From a fanatic, who

might put his own construction upon my recent friendly constraint

of Captain Feizulla, and might convert it into a pretext, I had

everything to apprehend. But he paused at the door, apologised, and

thanked me for not having reported him to his commander. He then

kissed my right hand, whilst in my left I held a pistol concealed

under the blanket."

Dangers, annoyances, and squabbles did not prevent Mr Werne

from writing up his log, and making minute observations of

the surrounding scenery. This was of ever-varying character.

Thickly-wooded banks were succeeded by a sea of grass, its

monotony unvaried by a single bush. Then came a crowd of islands,

composed of water-plants, knit together by creepers and parasites,

and alternately anchored to the shore, or floating slowly down

the stream, whose sluggish current was often imperceptible. The

extraordinary freshness and luxuriance of the vegetable creation

in that region of combined heat and moisture, excited Mr Werne's

enthusiastic admiration. At times he saw himself surrounded by a

vast tapestry of flowers, waving for miles in every direction, and

of countless varieties of tint and form. Upon land were bowers

and hills of blossom, groves of dark mimosa and gold-gleaming

tamarind; upon the water and swamps, interminable carpets of lilac

convolvulus, water-lilies, flowering-reeds, and red, blue, and white

lotus. The ambak tree, with its large yellow flowers and acacia-like

leaf, rose fifteen feet and more above the surface of the water out

of which it grew. This singular plant, a sort of link between the

forest-tree and the reed of the marshes, has its root in the bed of

the Nile, with which it each year rises, surpassing it in swiftness

of growth. Its stem is of a soft spungy nature, more like the pith

of a tree than like wood, but having, nevertheless, a pith of its

own. The lotus was one of the most striking features in these scenes

of floral magnificence; its brilliant white flower, which opens as

the sun rises, and closes when it sets, beaming, like a double lily,

in the shade it prefers. Mr Werne made the interesting observation,

that this beautiful flower, where it had not some kind of shelter,

closed when the sun approached the zenith, as though unable to

endure the too ardent rays of the luminary that called it into life.

Details of this kind, and fragments of eloquent description of the

gorgeous scenery of the Nile banks, occur frequently in the earlier

part of the "Expedition," during which there was little intercourse

with the natives, who were either hostile, uninteresting, or

concealed. Amongst other reasons for not remaining long near shore,

and especially for not anchoring there at night, was the torture the

voyagers experienced from gnats, camel-flies, and small wasps, which

not only forbade sleep, but rendered it almost impossible to eat and

drink. To escape this worse than Egyptian plague, the vessels lay in

the middle of the river, which, for some time after their departure,

was often three or four miles across. When the breeze was fresh,

there was some relief from insect persecution, but a lull made the

attacks insupportable. Doubtless a European complexion encouraged

these. Our German lifts up his voice in agony and malediction.

"The 10th December.--A dead calm all night. Gnats!!! No use creeping

under the bed-clothes, at risk of stifling with heat, compelled as

one is by their penetrating sting to go to bed dressed. Leave only a

little hole to breathe at, and in they pour, attacking lips, nose,

and ears, and forcing themselves into the throat--thus provoking a

cough which is torture, since, at each inspiration, a fresh swarm

finds its way into the gullet. They penetrate to the most sensitive

part of the body, creeping in, like ants, at the smallest aperture.

In the morning my bed contained thousands of the small demons which

I had crushed and smothered by the perpetual rolling about of my

martyred body. As I had forgotten to bring a musquito net from

Chartum, there was nothing for it but submission. Neither had I

thought of providing myself with leather gloves, unbearable in that

hot climate, but which here, upon the Nile, would have been by far

the lesser evil, since I was compelled to have a servant opposite to

me at supper-time, waving a huge fan so close under my nose, that it

was necessary to watch my opportunity to get the food to my mouth.

One could not smoke one's pipe in peace, even though keeping one's

hands wrapped in a woollen burnous, for the vermin stung through

this, and crept up under it from the ground. The black and coloured

men on board were equally ill-treated; and all night long the word

'_Baùda_' resounded through the ship, with an accompaniment of

curses and flapping of cloths. The _baùda_ resemble our long-legged

gnats, but have a longer proboscis, with which they bore through a

triple fold of strong linen. Their head is blue, their back tawny,

and their legs are covered with white specks like small pearls,

Another sort has short, strong legs, a thick brown body, a red

head, and posteriors of varying hues." These parti-coloured and

persevering bloodsuckers caused boils by the severity of their

sting, and so exhausted the sailors by depriving them of sleep,

that the ships could hardly be worked. Bitterly and frequently does

Mr Werne recur to his sufferings from their ruthless attacks. At

last a strange auxiliary came to his relief. On Christmas-day he

writes:--"For the last two nights we have been greatly disturbed by

the gnats, but a small cat, which I have not yet seen by daylight,

seems to find particular pleasure in licking my face, pulling my

beard, and purring continually, thus keeping off the insects.

Generally the cats in Bellet-Sudan are of a very wild and fierce

nature, which seems the result of their indifferent treatment by the

inhabitants. They walk into the poultry-houses and carry off the

strongest fowls, but care little for rats and mice. The Barabras,

especially those of Dongola, often eat them; not so the Arabs,

who spare them persecution--the cat having been one of Mahomet's

favourite animals--but who, at the same time, hold them unclean."

There is assuredly no river in the world whose banks, for so great

a distance, are so thickly peopled as those of the Nile. Day after

day the expedition passed an unbroken succession of populous

villages, until Mr Werne wondered whence the inhabitants drew

their nourishment, and a sapient officer from Kurdistan opined the

Schilluks to be a greater nation than the French. But what people,

and what habitations! The former scarce a degree above the brute,

the latter resembling dog-kennels, or more frequently thatched

bee-hives, with a round hole in the side, through which the inmates

creep. Stark-naked, these savages lay in the high grass, whose

seed forms part of their food, and gibbered and beckoned to the

passing Turks, who, for the most part, disregarded their gestures

of amity and invitation, shrewdly suspecting that their intentions

were treacherous and their lances hidden in the herbage. Wild rice,

fruits, and seeds, are eaten by these tribes, (the Schilluks,

Dinkas, and others,) who have also herds of cattle--oxen, sheep, and

goats, and who do not despise a hippopotamus chop or a crocodile

cutlet. Where the land is unproductive, fish is the chief article

of food. They have no horses or camels, and when they steal one of

these animals from the Turks, they do not kill it, probably not

liking its flesh, but they put out its eyes as a punishment for

having brought the enemy into their country. In one hour Mr Werne

counted seventeen villages, large or small; and Soliman Kaschef

assured him the Schilluks numbered two millions of souls, although

it is hard to say how he obtained the census. The _Bando_ or king,

although dwelling only two or three leagues from the river, did

not show himself. He mistrusted the Turks, and all night the great

war-drum was heard to beat. His savage majesty was quite right to be

on his guard. "I am well persuaded," says Mr Werne, "that if Soliman

Kaschef had once got the dreaded Bando of the Schilluks on board,

he would have sailed away with him. I read that in his face when

he was told the Bando would not appear. And gladly as I would have

seen this negro sovereign, I rejoiced that his caution frustrated

the projected shameful treachery. He had no particular grounds for

welcoming the Musselmans, those sworn foes of his people. Shortly

before our departure, he had sent three ambassadors to Chartum, to

put him on a friendly footing with the Turks, and so to check the

marauding expeditions of his Arab neighbours, of Soliman Kaschef

amongst the rest. The three Schilluks, who could not speak Arabic,

were treated in the Divan with customary contempt as _Abit_,

(slaves) and were handed over like common men to the care of Sheikh

el Bellet of Chartum. The Sheikh, who receives no pay, and performs

the duties of his office out of fear rather than for the sake of the

honour, showed them such excellent hospitality, that they came to

us Franks and begged a few piastres to buy bread and spirits." On

Mr Werne's representations to the Effendi, or chief man at Chartum,

dresses of honour (the customary presents) were prepared for them,

but they departed stealthily by night; and their master, the Bando,

was very indignant on learning the treatment they had received.

A vast green meadow, a sort of elephant pasture, separates the

Schilluks from their neighbours the Jengähs, concerning whom Mr

Werne obtained some particulars from a Tschauss or sergeant,

named Marian of Mount Habila, the son of the Mak or King of the

mountains of Nuba. His father had been vanquished and murdered by

the Turks, and he had been made a slave. This sergeant-prince was

of middle height, with a black tatooed countenance, and with ten

holes in each ear, out of which his captors had taken the gold

rings. He was a sensible, well-behaved man, and had been thirteen

years in the service, but was hopeless of promotion, having none to

recommend him. Besides this man, there were two Dinkas and a Jengäh

on board; but from them it was impossible to extract information

with respect to the manners and usages of their countrymen.

They held it treachery to divulge such particulars. Many of the

soldiers and sailors composing the expedition being natives of the

countries through which it sailed, apprehensions of desertion were

entertained, and partially realised. On the 30th December, whilst

passing through the friendly land of the Keks, everybody slept on

shore, and in the night sixteen men on guard deserted. They were

from the distant country of Nuba, (a district of Nubia,) which it

seemed scarcely possible they should ever reach, with their scanty

store of ammunition, and exposed to the assaults of hunger, thirst,

and hostile tribes. Hussein Aga went after them with fifty ferocious

Egyptians, likely to show little mercy to the runaways, with whom,

however, they could not come up. And suddenly the drums beat to call

all hands on board, for there was a report that all the negroes

were planning escape. During this halt Mr Werne made ornithological

observations, ascertaining, amongst other things, the species of

certain white birds, which he had observed sitting impudently upon

the backs of the elephants, picking the vermin from their thick

hides, as crows do in Europe from the backs of pigs. The elephants

evidently disapproved the operation, and lashed with their trunks

at their tormentors, who then flew away, but instantly returned to

recommence what Mr Werne calls their "dry fishing." These birds

proved to be small herons. Shortly before this, a large pelican

had been shot, and its crop was found to contain twenty-four fresh

fish, the size of herrings. Its gluttony had caused its death, the

weight it carried impeding its flight. Prodigious swarms of birds

and water-fowl find their nourishment in the White Stream, and upon

its swampy banks. In some places the trees were white with their

excrements, whose accumulation destroyed vegetable life. There is no

lack of nourishment for the feathered tribes--water and earth are

prolific of vermin. Millions of glow-worms glimmer in the rushes,

the air resounds with the shrill cry of myriads of grasshoppers,

and with the croaking of countless frogs. But for the birds, which

act as scavengers and vermin-destroyers, those shores would be

uninhabitable. The scorching sun fecundates the sluggish waters

and rank fat marsh, causing a never-ceasing birth of reptiles and

insects. Monstrous fish and snakes of all sizes abound. Concerning

the latter, the Arabs have strange superstitions. They consider them

in some sort supernatural beings, having a king, Shach Maran by

name, who is supposed to dwell in Turkish Kurdistan, not far from

Adana, where two villages are exempted from tribute on condition of

supplying the snakes with milk. Abdul-Elliab, a Kurd officer of the

expedition, had himself offered the milk-sacrifice to the snakes;

and he swore that he had seen their king, or at any rate one of his

_Wokils_, or vicegerents, of whom his serpentine majesty has many.

He had no sooner poured his milky offering into one of the marble

basins nature has there hollowed out, than a great snake, with long

hair upon its head, stepped out of a hole in the rocks and drank.

It then retired, without, as in some other instances, speaking to

the sacrificer, a taciturnity contritely attributed by the latter

to his not having yet entirely abjured strong drinks. Two other

Kurds vouched for the truth of this statement, adding, that the

_Maran_ had a human face, for that otherwise he could not speak,

and that he never showed himself except to a sultan or to a very

holy man. To the latter character the said Abdul-Elliab had great

pretensions, and his bigotry, hypocrisy, and constant quotations

from the Koran procured him from his irreverent shipmates, from Mr

Werne amongst the number, the nickname of the _Paradise-Stormer_,

it being manifest that he reckoned on taking by assault the blessed

abode promised by Mahomet to the faithful. Pending his admission to

the society of the houris, he solaced himself with that of a young

female slave, who often experienced cruel treatment at the hands of

her saintly master. Having one day committed the heinous offence of

preparing _merissa_, a strong drink made from corn, for part of the

crew, the Kurd, formerly, according to his own admission, a stanch

toper, beat her with a thong as she knelt half-naked upon the deck.

"As he did not attend to my calls from the cabin," says Mr Werne,

"but continued striking her so furiously as to cut the skin and

draw streams of blood, I jumped out, and pulled him backwards, so

that his legs flew up in the air. He sprang to his feet, retreated

to the bulwark of the ship, drew his sabre, and shouted, with a

menacing countenance, 'Effendi!' instead of calling me Kawagi,

which signifies a merchant, and is the usual title for a Frank. I

had no sooner returned to the cabin than he seized his slave to

throw her overboard, whereupon I caught up my double-barrel and

levelled at him, calling out, '_Ana oedrup!_' (I fire.) Thereupon

he let the girl go, and with a pallid countenance protested she was

his property, and he could do as he liked with her. Subsequently

he complained of me to the commandant, who, knowing his malicious

and hypocritical character, sent him on board the skiff, to the

great delight of the whole flotilla. On our return to Chartum,

he was cringing enough to ask my pardon, and to want to kiss my

hand, (although he was then a captain) because he saw that the

Bascha distinguished me. A few days previously to this squabble,

I had gained the affection and confidence of our black soldiers,

one of whom, a Tokruri or pilgrim from Darfur, had quarrelled with

an Arab, and wounded him with his knife. He jumped overboard to

drown himself, and, being unable to swim, had nearly accomplished

his object, when he drifted to our ship and was lifted on board.

They wanted to make him stand on his head, but I had him laid

horizontally upon his side, and began to rub him with a woollen

cloth, but at first could get no one to help me because he was an

_Abit_, a slave, until I threatened the captain he should be made

to pay the Bascha for the loss of his soldier. After long-continued

rubbing, the Tokruri gave signs of life, and they raised him into

a sitting posture, whilst his head still hung down. One of the

soldiers, who, as a Faki, pretended to be a sort of awaker of the

dead, seized him from behind under the arms, lifted him, and let him

fall thrice violently upon his hinder end, shouting in his ear at

the same time passages from the Koran, to which the Tokruri at last

replied by similar quotations. The superstition of these people is

so gross, that they believe such a pilgrim may be completely and

thoroughly drowned, and yet retain power to float to any part of the

shore he pleases, and, once on dry land, to resume his vitality."

A credulous traveller would have been misled by some of the strange

fables put forward, with great plausibility, by these Arabs and

other semi-savages, who have, moreover, a strong tendency to

exaggerate, and who, perceiving the avidity with which Mr Werne

investigated the animal and vegetable world around him, and his

desire for rare and curious specimens, occasionally got up a lie

for his benefit. Although kept awake many nights by the merciless

midges, his zeal for science would not suffer him to sleep in the

day, because he had no one he could trust to note the windings of

the river. One sultry noon, however, when the Arab rowers were

lazily impelling the craft against unfavourable breezes, and the

stream was straight for a long distance ahead, he indulged in a

siesta, during which visions of a happy German home hovered above

his pillow. On awaking, bathed in perspiration, to the dismal

realities of the pestilential Bach'r el Abiat, of incessant gnats

and barbarian society, his Arab companions had a yarn cut and dried

for him. During my sleep they had seen a swimming-bird as large as

a young camel, with a straight beak like a pelican, but without a

crop; they had not shot it for fear of awaking me, and because they

had no doubt of meeting with some more of these unknown birds. No

others appeared, and Mr Werne noted the camel-bird as an Egyptian

lie, not as a natural curiosity.

A month's sail carried the expedition into the land of the Keks,

a numerous, but not a very prosperous tribe. Their _tokuls_ or

huts were entirely of straw, walls as well as roof. The men were

quite naked, and of a bluish-gray colour, from the slime of the

Nile, with which they smear themselves as a protection against the

gnats. "There was something melancholy in the way in which those

poor creatures raised their hands above their heads, and let them

slowly fall, by manner of greeting. They had ivory rings upon their

arms, and one of them turned towards his hut, as if inviting us

in. Another stood apart, lifted his arms, and danced round in a

circle. A Dinka on board, who is acquainted with their language,

said they wanted us to give them durra, (a sort of corn,) and

that their cows were far away and would not return till evening.

This Dinka positively asserted, as did also Marian, that the Keks

kill no animal, but live entirely on grain and milk. I could not

ascertain, with certainty, whether this respect for brute life

extended itself to game and fish, but it is universally affirmed

that they eat cattle that die a natural death. This is done to some

extent in the land of Sudan, although not by the genuine Arabs:

it is against the Koran to eat a beast even that has been slain

by a bullet, unless its throat has been cut whilst it yet lived,

to let the prohibited blood escape. At Chartum I saw, one morning

early, two dead camels lying on a public square; men cut off great

pieces to roast, and the dogs looked on longingly. I myself, with

Dr Fischer and Pruner, helped to consume, in Kahira, a roasted

fragment of Clot Bey's beautiful giraffe, which had eaten too much

white clover. The meat was very tender, and of tolerably fine grain.

The tongue was quite a delicacy. On the other hand, I never could

stomach the coarse-grained flesh of camels, even of the young ones."

Africa is the land of strong stomachs. The Arabs, when on short

rations, eat locusts; and some of the negro tribes devour the fruit

of the elephant-tree, an abominable species of pumpkin, coveted by

elephants, but rejected even by Arabs, and which Mr Werne found

wholly impracticable, although his general rule was to try all the

productions of the country. His gastronomical experiments are often

connected with curious details of the animals upon which he tried

his teeth. On the 12th January, whilst suffering from an attack of

Nile-fever, which left him scarcely strength enough to post up his

journal, he heard a shot, and was informed that Soliman Kaschef had

killed with a single bullet a large crocodile, as it lay basking on

a sandy promontory of the bank. The Circassian made a present of the

skin to M. Arnaud, an excellent excuse for an hour's pause, that

the Frenchman might get possession of the scaly trophy. Upon such

trifling pretexts was the valuable time of the expedition frittered

away. "Having enough of other meat at that moment, the people

neglected cutting off the tail for food. My servants, however, who

knew that I had already tasted that sort of meat at Chartum, and

that at Taka I had eaten part of a snake, prepared for me by a

dervish, brought me a slice of the crocodile. Even had I been in

health, I could not have touched it, on account of the strong smell

of musk it exhaled; but, ill as I was, they were obliged to throw

it overboard immediately. When first I was in crocodile countries,

it was incomprehensible to me how the boatmen scented from afar

the presence of these creatures; but on my journey from Kahira to

Sennaar, when they offered me in Korusko a young one for sale, I

found my own olfactories had become very sensitive to the peculiar

odour. When we entered the Blue Stream, I could smell the crocodiles

six hundred paces off, before I had seen them. The glands,

containing a secretion resembling musk, are situated in the hinder

part of the animal, as in the civet cats of Bellet Sudan, which are

kept in cages for the collection of the perfume."

As the travellers ascended the river, their intercourse with the

natives became much more frequent, inasmuch as these, more remote

from Egyptian aggression, had less ground for mistrustful and

hostile feelings. Captain Selim had a stock of coloured shirts,

and an immense bale of beads, with which he might have purchased

the cattle, villages, goods and chattels, and even the bodies, of

an entire tribe, had he been so disposed. The value attached by

the savages of the White Stream to the most worthless objects of

European manufacture, enabled Mr Werne to obtain, in exchange for

a few glass beads, a large collection of their arms, ornaments,

household utensils, &c., now to be seen in the Royal Museum at

Berlin. The stolid simplicity of the natives of those regions

exceeds belief. One can hardly make up one's mind to consider them

as men. Even as the _ambak_ seems the link between useful timber

and worthless rushes, so does the Kek appear to partake as much

of brute as of human nature. He has at least as much affinity

with the big gray ape, whose dying agonies excited Mr Werne's

compassion at the commencement of his voyage, as with the civilised

and intellectual man who describes their strange appearance and

manners. A Kek, who had been sleeping in the ashes of a fire, a

common practice with that tribe, was found standing upon the shore

by some of the crew, who brought him on board Selim's vessel.

"Bending his body forward in an awkward ape-like manner, intended

perhaps to express submission, he approached the cabin, and, on

finding himself near it, dropped upon his knees and crept forward

upon them, uttering, in his gibberish, repeated exclamations of

greeting and wonderment. He had numerous holes through the rims

of his ears, which contained, however, no other ornament than one

little bar. They threw strings of beads over his neck, and there

was no end to his joy; he jumped and rolled upon the deck, kissed

the planks, doubled himself up, extended his hands over all our

heads, as if blessing us, and then began to sing. He was an angular,

high-shouldered figure, about thirty years of age. His attitude

and gestures were very constrained, which arose, perhaps, from the

novelty of his situation; his back was bent, big head hung forward,

his long legs, almost calf-less, were as if broken at the knees; in

his whole person, in short, he resembled an orang-outang. He was

perfectly naked, and his sole ornaments consisted of leathern rings

upon the right arm. How low a grade of humanity is this! The poor

natural touches one with his childish joy, in which he is assuredly

happier than any of us. By the help of the Dinka interpreter, he is

instructed to tell his countrymen they have no reason to retreat

before such _honest_ people as those who man the flotilla. Kneeling,

jumping, creeping, kissing the ground, he is then led away by the

hand like a child, and would assuredly take all he has seen for a

dream, but for the beads he bears with him." Many of these tribes

are composed of men of gigantic stature. On the 7th January, Mr

Werne, being on shore, would have measured some of the taller

savages, but they objected. He then gave his servants long reeds

and bade them stand beside the natives, thus ascertaining their

average height to be from six to seven Rhenish feet. The Egyptians

and Europeans looked like pigmies beside them. The women were in

proportion with the men. Mr Werne tells of one lady who looked clear

away over his head, although he describes himself as above the

middle height.

At this date, (7th January) the flotilla reached a large lake, or

inlet of the river, near to which a host of elephants grazed, and

a multitude of light-brown antelopes stood still and stared at the

intruders. The sight of the antelopes, which were of a species

called _ariel_, whose flesh is particularly well-flavoured, was

too much for Soliman Kaschef to resist. There was no wind; he gave

orders to cease towing, and went on shore to shoot his supper. The

antelopes retreated when the ships grated against the bank; and as

the rush-jungle was by no means safe, beasts of prey being wont to

hide there to catch the antelopes as they go to water at sunset,

a few soldiers were sent forward to clear the way. Nevertheless,

"on our return from the chase, during which not a single shot

was fired, we lost two _báltaschi_, (carpenters or sappers,) and

all our signals were insufficient to bring them back. They were

Egyptians, steady fellows, and most unlikely to desert; but their

comrades did not trouble themselves to look for them, shrugged their

shoulders, and supposed they had been devoured by the _assad_ or

the _nimr_--the lion or tiger. The word _nimr_ is here improperly

applied, there being no tigers in Africa, but it is the general term

for panthers and leopards." Here, at four-and-twenty degrees of

latitude south of Alexandria, this extraordinary river was nearly

four hundred paces wide. Mr Werne speculates on the origin of this

astonishing water-course, and doubts the possibility that the

springs of the White Stream supply the innumerable lakes and creeks,

and the immense tracts of marsh contiguous to it; that, too, under

an African sun, which acts as a powerful and constant pump upon the

immense liquid surface. When he started on his voyage, the annual

rains had long terminated. What tremendous springs those must be,

that could keep this vast watery territory full and overflowing!

Then the sluggishness of the current is another puzzle. Were the

Nile _one_ stream, Mr Werne observes--referring, of course, to the

White Nile--it must flow faster than it does. And he concludes

it to have tributaries, which, owing to the level nature of the

ground, and to the resistance of the main stream, stagnate to a

certain extent, rising and falling with the river, and contributing

powerfully to its nourishment. But the notion of exploring all

these watery intricacies with a flotilla of heavy-sailing barges,

manned by lazy Turks and Arabs, and commanded by men who care more

for getting drunk on arrack and going a-birding, than for the great

results activity and intelligence might obtain, is essentially

absurd. The proper squadron to explore the Bach'r el Abiat, through

the continued windings, and up the numerous inlets depicted in

Mr Mahlmann's map, is one consisting of three small steamers,

drawing very little water, with steady well-disciplined English

crews, accustomed to hot climates, and commanded by experienced and

scientific officers. With the strongest interest should we watch

the departure and anticipate the return of such an expedition as

this. "Much might be done by a steam-boat," says Mr Werne; who then

enumerates the obstacles to its employment. To bring it over the

cataracts of the Nile, (below the junction of the Blue and White

Streams,) it would be necessary to take the paddles entirely out,

that it might be dragged up with ropes, like a sailing vessel.

Or else it might be built at Chartum, but for the want of proper

wood; the sunt-tree timber, although very strong, being exceedingly

brittle and ill-adapted for ship-building. The greatest difficulty

would be the fuel--the establishment and guard of coal stores; and

as to burning charcoal, although the lower portion of the White

Stream has forests enough, they are wanting on its middle and

upper banks; to say nothing of the loss of time in felling and

preparing the wood, of the danger of attacks from natives, &c., &c.

If some of these difficulties are really formidable, others, on

the contrary, might easily be overcome, and none are insuperable.

Mr Werne hardly makes sufficient allowance for the difference

between Soliman Kaschef and a European naval officer, who would

turn to profit the hours and days the gallant Circassian spent in

antelope-shooting, in laughing at Abu Haschis the jester, and in a

sort of travelling seraglio he had arranged in his inner cabin, a

dark nook with closely-shut jalousies, that served as prison to an

unfortunate slave-girl, who lay all day upon a carpet, with scarcely

space to turn herself, guarded by a eunuch. Not a glimpse of the

country did the poor thing obtain during the whole of the voyage;

and, even veiled, she was forbidden to go on deck. Besides these

oriental relaxations, an occasional practical joke beguiled for the

commodore the tedium of the voyage. Feizulla, the tailor-captain,

whose strange passion for thimble and thread made him frequently

neglect his nautical duties, chanced one day to bring to before his

superior gave the signal. "Soliman Kaschef had no sooner observed

this than he fired a couple of shots at Feizulla Capitan, so

that I myself, standing before the cabin door, heard the bullets

whistle. Feizulla, did not stir, although both he and the sailors

in the rigging afterwards affirmed that the balls went within a

hand's-breadth of his head: he merely said, '_Malesch--hue billab_,'

(It is nothing--he jests;) and he shot twice in return, pointing

the gun in the opposite direction, that Soliman might understand

he took the friendly greeting as a Turkish joke, and that he, as a

bad shot, dared not level at him." Soliman, on the other hand, was

far too good a shot for such a sharp jest to be pleasant. The Turks

account themselves the best marksmen and horsemen in the world, and

are never weary of vaunting their prowess. Mr Werne says he saw an

Arnaut of Soliman's shoot a running hare with a single ball, which

entered in the animal's rear, and came out in front. And it was a

common practice, during the voyage, to bring down the fruit from

lofty trees by cutting the twigs with bullets. All these pastimes,

however retarded the progress of the expedition. The wind was

frequently light or unfavourable, and the lazy Africans made little

way with the towing rope. Then a convenient place would often tempt

to a premature halt; and, notwithstanding Soliman's sharp practice

with poor Feizulla, if a leading member of the party felt lazily

disposed, inclined for a hunting-party, or for a visit to a negro

village, he seldom had much difficulty in bringing the flotilla to

an anchor. In a straight line from north to south, the expedition

traversed, between its departure from Chartum and its return

thither, about sixteen hundred miles. It is difficult to calculate

the distance gone over; and probably Mr Werne himself would be

puzzled exactly to estimate it; but adding 20 per cent for windings,

obliquities, and digressions, (a very liberal allowance,) we get a

total of nearly two thousand miles, accomplished in five months,

including stoppages, being at the very moderate rate of about 13

miles a day. And this, we must remember, was on no rapid stream, but

up a river, whose current, rarely faster than one mile in an hour,

was more frequently only half a mile, and sometimes was so feeble

that it could not be ascertained. The result is not surprising,

bearing in mind the quality of ships, crews, and commanders: but

write "British" for "Egyptians," and the tale would be rather

different.

The upshot of this ill-conducted expedition was its arrival in the

kingdom of Bari, whose capital city, Pelenja, is situated in 4° N.

L., and which is inhabited by an exceedingly numerous nation of tall

and powerful build; the men six and a-half to seven French feet in

height--equal to seven and seven and a-half English feet--athletic,

well-proportioned, and, although black, with nothing of the usual

negro character in their features. The men go naked, with the

exception of sandals and ornaments; the woman wear leathern aprons.

They cultivate tobacco and different kinds of grain: from the

iron found in their mountains they manufacture weapons and other

implements, and barter them with other tribes. They breed cattle

and poultry, and are addicted to the chase. About fifteen hundred

of these blacks came down to the shore, armed to the teeth--a sight

that inspired the Turks with some uneasiness, although they had

several of their chiefs on board the flotilla, besides which, the

frank cordiality and good-humoured intelligent countenances of the

men of Bari forbade the idea of hostile aggression. "It had been

a fine opportunity for a painter or sculptor to delineate these

colossal figures, admirably proportioned, no fat, all muscle, and

magnificently limbed. None of them have beards, and it would seem

they use a cosmetic to extirpate them. Captain Selim, whose chin

was smooth-shaven, pleased them far better than the long-bearded

Soliman Kaschef; and when the latter showed them his breast,

covered with a fell of hair, they exhibited a sort of disgust,

as at something more appropriate to a beast than to a man." Like

most of the tribes on the banks of the White Nile, they extract

the four lower incisors, a custom for which Mr Werne is greatly

puzzled to account, and concerning which he hazards many ingenious

conjectures. Amongst the ape-like Keks and Dinkas, he fancied it to

originate in a desire to distinguish themselves from the beasts of

the field--to which they in so many respects assimilate; but he was

shaken in this opinion, on finding the practice to prevail amongst

the intelligent Bari, who need no such mark to establish their

difference from the brute creation. The Dinkas on board confirmed

his first hypothesis, saying that the teeth are taken out that they

may not resemble the jackass--which in many other respects they

certainly do. The Turks take it to be a rite equivalent to Mahomedan

circumcision, or to Christian baptism. The Arabs have a much more

extravagant supposition, which we refrain from stating, the more so

as Mr Werne discredits it. He suggests the possibility of its being

an act of incorporation in a great Ethiopian nation, divided into

many tribes. The operation is performed at the age of puberty; it is

unaccompanied by any particular ceremonies; and women as well as men

undergo it. Its motive still remains a matter of doubt to Mr Werne.

Before Lakono, sultan of the Bari, and his favourite sultana Ischok,

an ordinary-looking lady with two leathern aprons and a shaven head,

came on board Selim's vessel, the Turks made repeated attempts to

obtain information from some of the Sheiks concerning the gold

mines, whose discovery was the main object of the expedition. A

sensible sort of negro, one Lombé, replied to their questions, and

extinguished their hopes. There was not even copper, he said, in the

land of the Bari, although it was brought thither from a remoter

country, and Lakono had several specimens of it in his treasury. On

a gold bar being shown to him, he took it for copper, whence it was

inferred that the two metals were blended in the specimens possessed

by the sultan, and that the mountains of the copper country also

yielded the more precious ore. This country, however, lay many days'

journey distant from the Nile, and, had it even bordered on the

river, there would have been no possibility of reaching it. At a

very short distance above Palenja, the expedition encountered a bar

of rocks thrown across the stream. And although Mr Werne hints the

possibility of having tried the passage, the Turks were sick of the

voyage and were heartily glad to turn back. At the period of the

floods the river rises eighteen feet; and there then could be no

difficulty in surmounting the barrier. Now the waters were falling

fast. The six weeks lost by Arnaud's fault were again bitterly

deplored by the adventurous German--the only one of the party

who really desired to proceed. Twenty days sooner, and the rocks

could neither have hindered an advance nor afforded pretext for a

retreat. To Mr Werne's proposal, that they should wait two months

where they were, when the setting in of the rains would obviate

the difficulty, a deaf ear was turned--an insufficient stock of

provisions was objected; and although the flotilla had been stored

for a ten months' voyage, and had then been little more than two

months absent from Chartum, the wastefulness that had prevailed gave

some validity to the objection. One-and-twenty guns were fired, as

a farewell salute to the beautiful country Mr Werne would so gladly

have explored, and which, he is fully convinced, contains so much of

interest; and the sluggish Egyptian barks retraced their course down

stream.

It is proper here to note a shrewd conjecture of Mr Werne's,

that above the point reached by himself and his companions, the

difficulties of ascending the river would greatly and rapidly

increase. The bed becomes rocky, and the Bach'r el Abiat, assuming

in some measure the character of a mountain stream, augments the

rapidity of its current: so much so, that Mr Werne insists on the

necessity of a strong north wind, believing that towing, however

willingly and vigorously attempted, would be found unavailing. This

is another strong argument in favour of employing steamboats.

Although the narrative of the homeward voyage is by no means

uninteresting, and contains details of the river's course valuable

to the geographer and to the future explorer, it has not the

attraction of the up-stream narrative. The freshness is worn off;

the waters sink, and the writer's spirits seem disposed to follow

their example; there is all the difference between attack and

retreat--between a cheerful and hopeful advance, and a retrograde

movement before the work is half done. But, vexed as an enthusiastic

and intrepid man might naturally feel at seeing his hopes frustrated

by the indolent indifference of his companions, Mr Werne could

hardly deem his five months thrown away. We are quite sure those

who read his book will be of opinion that the time was most

industriously and profitably employed.

A sorrowful welcome awaited our traveller, after his painful and

fatiguing voyage. There dwelt at Chartum a renegade physician, a

Palermitan named Pasquali, whose Turkish name was Soliman Effendi,

and who was notorious as a poisoner, and for the unscrupulous

promptness with which he removed persons in the slightest degree

unpleasing to himself or to his patron Achmet Bascha. In Arabia, it

was currently believed, he had once poisoned thirty-three soldiers,

with the sole view of bringing odium upon the physician and

apothecary, two Frenchmen, who attended them. In Chartum he was well

known to have committed various murders.

"Although this man," says Mr Werne, "was most friendly and sociable

with me, I had everything to fear from him on account of my brother,

by whom the Bascha had declared his intention of replacing him in

the post of medical inspector of Bellet-Sudàn. It was therefore in

the most solemn earnest that I threatened him with death, if upon

my return I found my brother dead, and learned that they had come

at all in contact. '_Dio guarde, che affronto!_' was his reply;

and he quietly drank off his glass of rum, the same affront having

already been offered him in the Bascha's divan; the reference being

naturally to the poisonings laid to his charge in Arabia and here."

At Chartum Mr Werne found his brother alive, but on the eleventh

day after his return he died in his arms. The renegade had had no

occasion to employ his venomous drugs; the work had been done as

surely by the fatal influence of the noxious climate.

ART AND ARTISTS IN SPAIN.

The accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the

Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the

solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some

"sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it

must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous

and deleterious,--from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva,

from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and

thence to Naples, the English "my lord," with his bear-leader,

was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same

course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by,

generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again,

the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their

magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and

called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances,

rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally

blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever

was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever

belonged to "Europe's middle night," _that_ the descendants of

Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had

there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter,

so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its

dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine

gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be

surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land--its

weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant

with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown

to English gardens--remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray

and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation

of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was

that, with rare exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed

book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed

the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the

Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures

of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French

rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers.

Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands,

exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends,

on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian,

or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but

for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its

sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and

captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have

adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like

Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,--emulating the deeds of

Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves

into the actual life, and studying the historic manners of Spain,

like Carnarvon and Ford. Still, though soldier and statesman,

philosopher and littérateur, had put forth their best powers in

writing of the country that so worthily interested them, a void was

ever left for some new comer to fill; and right well, in his three

handsome, elaborate, and most agreeable volumes, has Mr Stirling

filled that void. Not one of the goodly band of Spanish painters now

lacks a "sacred poet" to inscribe his name in the temple of fame.

With indefatigable research, most discriminating taste, and happiest

success, has Mr Stirling pursued and completed his pleasant labour

of love, and presented to the world "Annals of the Artists of Spain"

worthy--can we say more?--of recording the triumphs of El Mudo and

El Greco, Murillo and Velasquez.[16]

[16] _Annals of the Artists of Spain._ By WILLIAM STIRLING, M. A. 3

vols. London: Ollivier.

At least a century and a half before Holbein was limning the burly

frame and gorgeous dress of bluff King Hal, and creating at once

a school and an appreciation of art in England, were the early

painters of Spain enriching their magnificent cathedrals, and

religious houses, with pictures displaying as correct a knowledge

of art, and as rich a tone of colour, as the works of that great

master. There is something singular and mysterious in the contrast

afforded by the early history of painting in the two countries.

While in poetry, in painting on glass, in science, in manufactures,

in architecture, England appears to have kept pace with other

countries, in painting and in sculpture she appears always to

have lagged far behind. Gower, Chaucer, Friar Bacon, William of

Wyckham, Waynfleete, the unknown builders of ten thousand churches

and convents, the manufacturers of the glass that still charms our

eyes, and baffles the rivalry of our Willements and Wailes, at York

and elsewhere--the illuminators of the missals and religious books,

whose delicate fancy and lustrous tints are even now teaching our

highborn ladies that long-forgotten art--yielded the palm to none of

their brethren in Europe; but where and who were our contemporaneous

painters and sculptors? In the luxurious and graceful court of

Edward IV., who represented that art which Dello and Juan de Castro,

under royal and ecclesiastical patronage, had carried to such

perfection in Spain? That no English painters of any note flourished

at that time, is evident from the silence of all historical

documents; nor does it appear that foreign artists were induced, by

the hope of gain or fame, to instruct our countrymen in the art to

which the discoveries of the Van Eycks had imparted such a lustre.

It is true that the desolating Wars of the Roses left scant time and

means to the sovereigns and nobility of England for fostering the

arts of peace; but still great progress was being made in nearly

all those arts, save those of which we speak; and, if we remember

rightly, Mr Pugin assigns the triumph of English architecture to

this troublous epoch. Nor, although Juan I., Pedro the Cruel, and

Juan II., were admirers and patrons of painting, was it to royal or

noble favour that Spanish art owed its chiefest obligations. The

church--which, after the great iconoclastic struggle of the eighth

century, had steadily acted on the Horatian maxim,

"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,

Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus"--

in Spain embraced the young and diffident art with an ardour

and a munificence which, in its palmiest and most prosperous days,

that art never forgot, and was never wearied of requiting. Was it so

in England? and do we owe our lack of ancient English pictures to

the reforming zeal of our iconoclastic reformers? Did the religious

pictures of our Rincons, our Nuñez, and our Borgoñas, share the

fate of the libraries that were ruthlessly destroyed by the

ignorant myrmidons of royal rapacity? If so, it is almost certain

that the records which bewail and denounce the fate of books and

manuscripts, would not pass over the destruction of pictures; while

it is still more certain that the monarch and his courtiers would

have appropriated to themselves the pictured saints, no less than

the holy vessels, of monastery and convent. It cannot, therefore,

be said that the English Reformation deprived our national school

of painting of its most munificent patrons, and most ennobling and

purest subjects, in the destruction of the monasteries, and the

spoliation of churches. That the Church of England, had she remained

unreformed, might, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have

emulated her Spanish or Italian sister in her patronage of, and

beneficial influence upon, the arts of painting and sculpture, it

is needless either to deny or assert; we fear there is no room for

contending that, since the Reformation, she has in any way fostered,

guided, or exalted either of those religious arts.

In Spain, on the contrary, as Mr Stirling well points out, it was

under the august shadow of the church that painting first raised her

head, gained her first triumphs, executed her most glorious works,

and is even now prolonging her miserable existence.

The venerable cathedral of Toledo was, in effect, the cradle of

Spanish painting. Founded in 1226 by St Ferdinand, it remained,

to quote Mr Stirling's words, "for four hundred years a nucleus

and gathering-place for genius, where artists swarmed and

laboured like bees, and where splendid prelates--the popes of

the Peninsula--lavished their princely revenues to make fair and

glorious the temple of God intrusted to their care." Here Dolfin

introduced, in 1418, painting on glass; here the brothers Rodrigues

displayed their forceful skill as sculptors, in figures which

still surmount the great portal of that magnificent cathedral;

and here Rincon, the first Spanish painter who quitted the stiff

mediæval style, loved best to execute his graceful works. Nor

when, with the house of Austria, the genius of Spanish art quitted

the Bourbon-governed land, did the custodians of this august

temple forget to stimulate and reward the detestable conceits, and

burlesque sublimities, of such artists as the depraved taste of the

eighteenth century delighted to honour. Thus, in 1721, Narciso Tome

erected at the back of the choir an immense marble altar-piece,

called the Trasparente, by order of Archbishop Diego de Astorgo,

for which he received two hundred thousand ducats; and thus, fifty

years later, Bayeu and Maella were employed to paint in fresco

the cloisters that had once gloried in the venerable paintings of

Juan de Borgoña. At Toledo, then, under the auspices of the great

Castilian queen, Isabella, may be said to have risen the Castilian

school of art. The other great schools of Spanish painting were

those of Andalusia, of Valencia, and that of Arragon and Catalonia;

but, for the mass of English readers, the main interest lies in the

two first, the schools that produced or acquired El Mudo and El

Greco, Velasquez and Murillo. The works of the two last-mentioned

artists are now so well known, and so highly appreciated in England,

that we are tempted to postpone for the present any notice of that

most delightful part of Sir Stirling's book which treats of them,

and invite our readers to trace the course of art in that stern old

city to which we have already referred, Toledo.

Before the grave had closed upon the cold remains of Rincon, Juan de

Borgoña had proved himself worthy of wielding the Castilian pencil,

and, under the patronage of the great Toledan archbishop, Ximenes de

Cisneros, produced works which still adorn the winter chapter-room

of that cathedral. These are interesting not only as specimens of

art, but as manifestations of the religious ἠθος of Spain at the

commencement of the sixteenth century: let Mr Stirling describe one

of the most remarkable of these early paintings:--"The lower end of

the finely-proportioned, but badly-lighted room, is occupied by the

'Last Judgment,' a large and remarkable composition. Immediately

beneath the figure of our Lord, a hideous fiend, in the shape of a

boar, roots a fair and reluctant woman out of her grave with his

snout, as if she were a trufle, twining his tusks in her long amber

locks. To the left are drawn up in a line a party of the wicked,

each figure being the incarnation of a sin, of which the name is

written on a label above in Gothic, letters, as 'Soberbia,' and the

like. On their shoulders sit little malicious imps, in the likeness

of monkeys, and round their lower limbs, flames climb and curl.

The forms of the good and faithful, on the right, display far less

vigour of fancy." So the good characters in modern works of fiction

are more feebly drawn, and excite less interest, than the Rob Roys

and Dirk Hattericks, the Conrads and the Manfreds. Nor was Toledo at

this time wanting in the sister art of sculpture: while the Rincons,

and Berruguete, and Borgoña, were enriching the cathedral with their

pictures and their frescoes, Vigarny was elaborating the famous high

altar of marble, and the stalls on the epistle side. In concluding

his notice of Vigarny, "the first great Castilian sculptor," Mr

Stirling gives a sketch of the style of sculpture popular in Spain.

Like nearly all the "Cosas d'Espana," it is peculiar, and owes

its peculiarity to the same cause that has impressed so marked a

character on Spanish painting and Spanish pharmacopeia--religion.

Let not the English lover of the fine arts, invited to view the

masterpieces of Spanish sculpture, imagine that his eyes are to be

feasted on the nude, though hardly indecent forms of Venuses and

Apollos, Ganymedes and Andromedas.

Beautiful, and breathing, and full of imagination, indeed, those

Spanish statues are--"idols," as our author generally terms

them; but the idolatry they represent or evoke is heavenly, not

earthly--spiritual, not sensuous. Chiselled out of a block of cedar

or lime-wood, with the most reverential care, the image of the

Queen of Heaven enjoyed the most exquisite and delicate services of

the rival sister arts, and, "copied from the loveliest models, was

presented to her adorers sweetly smiling, and gloriously apparelled

in clothing of wrought gold." But we doubt whether any Englishman

who has not seen can understand the marvellous beauty of these

painted wooden images. Thus Berruguete, who combined both arts in

perfection, executed in 1539 the archbishop's throne at Toledo,

"over which hovers an airy and graceful figure, carved in dark

walnut, representing our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, and

remarkable for its fine and floating drapery."

Continuing our list of Toledan artists, "whose whole lives and

labours lay within the shadow of that great Toledan church, whose

genius was spent in its service, and whose names were hardly known

beyond its walls," (vol. i. p. 150,) we come to T. Comontes, who,

among other works for that munificent Alma Mater, executed from

the designs of Vigarny the retablo (reredos) for the chapel "de

los Reyes Nuevos," in 1533. It was at Toledo that El Mudo, the

Spanish Titian, died, and at Toledo that Blas del Prado was born.

When in 1593 the Emperor of Morocco asked that the best painter

of Spain might be sent to his court, Philip II. appointed Blas

del Prado to fulfil the Mussulman's artistic desires: previous to

this, the chapter of Toledo had named him their second painter, and

he had painted a large altar-piece, and other pictures, for their

cathedral. But perhaps the Toledan annals of art contain no loftier

name than that of El Greco. Domemis Theotocopuli, who, born, it is

surmised, at Venice in 1548, is found in 1577 painting at Toledo,

for the cathedral, his famous picture of The Parting of our Lord's

Garment, on which he bestowed the labour of a decade, and of which

we give Mr Stirling's picturesque description.

"The august figure of the Saviour, arrayed in a red robe, occupies

the centre of the canvass; the head, with its long dark locks, is

superb; and the noble and beautiful countenance seems to mourn for

the madness of them who 'knew not what they did;' his right arm

is folded on his bosom, seemingly unconscious of the rope which

encircles his wrist, and is violently dragged downwards by two

executioners in front. Around and behind him appears a throng of

priests and warriors, amongst whom the Greek himself figures as the

centurion, in black armour. In drawing and composition, this picture

is truly admirable, and the colouring is, on the whole, rich and

effective--although it is here and there laid on in that spotted

streaky manner, which afterwards became the great and prominent

defect of El Greco's style."

Summoned from the cathedral to the court, El Greco painted, by

royal command, a large altar-piece, for the church at the Escurial,

on the martyrdom of St Maurice; "little less extravagant and

atrocious," says our lively author, "than the massacre it recorded."

Neither king nor court painters could praise this performance, and

the effect of his failure at the Escurial appears to have been

his return to Toledo. Here, in 1584, he painted, by order of the

Archbishop Quiroga, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz," a picture

then and now esteemed as his master-piece, and still to be seen

in the church of Santo Tomé. Warm is the encomium, and eloquently

expressed, which Mr Stirling bestows upon this gem of Toledan art.

"The artist, or lover of art, who has once beheld it, will never,

as he rambles among the winding streets of the ancient city, pass

the pretty brick belfry of that church--full of horse-shoe niches

and Moorish reticulations,--without turning aside to gaze upon

its superb picture once more. It hangs to your left, on the wall

opposite to the high altar. Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz, head of

a house famous in romance, rebuilt the fabric of the church, and

was in all respects so religious and gracious a grandee, that,

when he was buried in 1323, within these very walls, St Stephen and

St Augustine came down from heaven, and laid his body in the tomb

with their own holy hands--an incident which forms the subject of

the picture. St Stephen, a dark-haired youth of noble countenance,

and St Augustine, a hoary old man wearing a mitre, both of them

arrayed in rich pontifical vestments of golden tissue, support the

dead Count in their arms, and gently lower him into the grave,

shrouded like a baron of Roslin 'in his iron panoply.' Nothing can

be finer than the execution and the contrast of these three heads;

never was the image of the peaceful death of 'the just man' more

happily conveyed, than in the placid face and powerless form of

the warrior: nor did Giorgione or Titian ever excel the splendid

colouring of his black armour, rich with gold damascening. To the

right of the picture, behind St Stephen, kneels a fair boy in a

dark dress, perhaps the son of the Count; beyond rises the stately

form of a gray friar; to the left, near St Augustine, stand two

priests in gorgeous vestments, holding, the one a book, and the

other a taper. Behind this principal group appear the noble company

of mourners, hidalgos and old Christians all, with olive faces and

beards of formal cut, looking on with true Castilian gravity and

phlegm, as if the transaction were an every-day occurrence. As they

were mostly portraits, perhaps some of the originals did actually

stand, a few years later, with the like awe in their hearts and

calm on their cheeks, in the royal presence-chamber, when the news

came to court that the proud Armada of Spain had been vanquished by

the galleys of Howard, and cast away on the rocks of the Hebrides."

We make no apology for thus freely quoting from Mr Stirling's

pages his description of this picture; the extract brings vividly

before our readers at once the merits of the old Toledan painter,

and his accomplished biographer and critic. After embellishing his

adopted city, not only with pictures such as this, but with works of

sculpture and architecture, and vindicating his graceful profession

from the unsparing exactions of the tax-gatherers--a class who

appear to have waged an unrelenting though intermittent war against

the fine arts in Spain--he died there at a green old age in 1625,

and was buried in the church of St Bartolemé. Even the painters

most employed at the munificent and art-loving court of the second

and third Philips, found time to paint for the venerable cathedral.

Thus, in 1615, Vincencio Carducho, the Florentine, painted, with

Eugenio Caxes, a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Sagrario;

and thus Eugenio Caxes, leaving the works at the Pardo and Madrid,

painted for the cathedral of Toledo the Adoration of the Magi, and

other independent pictures.

Meanwhile the school of El Greco was producing worthy fruit; from

it, in the infancy of the seventeenth century, came forth Luis

Tristan, an artist even now almost unknown in London and Edinburgh,

but whose style Velasquez did not disdain to imitate, and whose

praises he was never tired of sounding. "Born, bred, and sped"

in Toledo, or its neighbourhood, as Morales was emphatically the

painter of Badajoz, so may Tristan be termed the painter of Toledo.

No foreign graces, no classical models, adorned or vitiated his

stern Spanish style; yet, in his portrait of Archbishop Sandoval,

he is said by Mr Stirling to have united the elaborate execution

of Sanchez Coello with much of the spirit of Titian. And of him is

the pleasant story recorded, that having, while yet a stripling,

painted for the Jeronymite convent at Toledo a Last Supper, for

which he asked two hundred ducats, and being denied payment by the

frugal friars, he appealed with them to the arbitration of his old

master, El Greco, who, having viewed the picture, called the young

painter a rogue and a novice, for asking only two for a painting

worth five hundred ducats. In the same Toledan church that contains

the ashes of his great master, lies the Murcian Pedro Orrente,

called by our author "the Bassano, or the Roos--the great sheep and

cattle master of Spain:" he too was employed by the art-encouraging

chapter, and the cathedral possessed several of his finest pictures.

But with Tristan and Orrente the glories of Toledan art paled and

waned; and, trusting that our readers have not been uninterested

in following our brief sketch of the remarkable men who for four

hundred years rendered this quaint old Gothic city famous for its

artistic splendours, we retrace our steps, halting and perplexed

among so many pleasant ways, blooming flowers, and brilliant bowers,

to the magnificent, albeit gloomy Escurial, where Philip II lavished

the wealth of his mighty empire in calling forth the most vigorous

energies of Spanish and of foreign art.

For more than thirty years did the astonished shepherds of the

Guadaramas watch the mysterious pile growing under scaffolding alive

with armies of workmen; and often, while the cares of the Old World

and the New--to say nothing of that other World, which was seldom

out of Philip's thoughts, and to which his cruel fanaticism hurried

so many wretches before their time--might be supposed to demand

his attention at Madrid, were they privileged to see their mighty

monarch perched on a lofty ledge of rock, for hours, intently gazing

upon the rising walls and towers which were to redeem his vow to St

Laurence at the battle of Saint Quentin, and to hand down, through

all Spanish time, the name and fame of the royal and religious

founder. On the 23d of April 1563, the first stone of this Cyclopean

palace was laid, under the direction of Bautiste di Toledo, at

whose death, in 1567, the work was continued by Juan de Herrera,

and finally perfected by Leoni (as to the interior decorations) in

1597. Built in the quaint unshapely form of St Laurence's gridiron,

the Escurial is doubtless open to much severe criticism; but the

marvellous grandeur, the stern beauty, and the characteristic

effect of the gigantic pile, must for ever enchant the eyes of all

beholders, who are not doomed by perverse fate to look through the

green spectacles of gentle dulness. But it is not our purpose to

describe the Escurial; we only wish to bring before our readers the

names and merits of a few of the Spanish artists, who found among

its gloomy corridors or sumptuous halls niches in the temple of

fame, and in its saturnine founder the most gracious and munificent

of patrons. Suffice it, then, to say of the palace-convent, in Mr

Stirling's graceful words, that "Italy was ransacked for pictures

and statues, models and designs; the mountains of Sicily and

Sardinia for jaspers and agates; and every sierra of Spain furnished

its contribution of marble. Madrid, Florence, and Milan supplied

the sculptures of the altars; Guadalajara and Cuenca, gratings

and balconies; Saragossa the gates of brass; Toledo and the Low

Countries, lamps, candelabra, and bells; the New World, the finer

woods; and the Indies, both East and West, the gold and gems of the

custodia, and the five hundred reliquaries. The tapestries were

wrought in Flemish looms; and, for the sacerdotal vestments, there

was scarce a nunnery in the empire, from the rich and noble orders

of Brabant and Lombardy to the poor sisterhoods of the Apulian

highlands, but sent an offering of needlework to the honoured

fathers of the Escurial."

We could wish to exclude from our paper all notice of the foreign

artists, whose genius assisted in decorating the new wonder of the

world; but how omit from any Escurialian or Philippian catalogue

the names of Titian and Cellini, Cambiaso and Tibaldi? For seven

long years did the great Venetian labour at his famous Last Supper,

painted for, and placed in the refectory; and countless portraits

by his fame-dealing pencil graced the halls and galleries of the

Palatian convents. In addition to these, the Pardo boasted eleven of

his portraits; among them, one of the hero Duke Emmanuel Philibert

of Savoy, who has received a second grant of renown--let us hope

a more lasting one[17]--from the poetic chisel of Marochetti, and

stands now in the great square of Turin, the very impersonation of

chivalry, horse and hero alike--κυδεί γαιῶν.

[17] All these portraits were destroyed by fire in the reign of

Philip III.

The magnificent Florentine contributed "the matchless marble

crucifix behind the prior's seat in the choir," of which Mr Stirling

says--"Never was marble shaped into a sublimer image of the great

sacrifice for man's atonement." Luca Cambiaso, the Genoese, painted

the Martyrdom of St Laurence for the high altar of the church--a

picture that must have been regarded, from its subject and position,

as the first of all the Escurial's religious pictures,--besides the

vault of the choir, and two great frescoes for the grand staircase.

Pellegrino Tibaldi, a native of the Milanese, came at Philip's

request to the Escurial in 1586. He, too, painted a Martyrdom of

Saint Laurence for the high altar, but apparently with no better

success than his immediate predecessor, Zuccaro, whose work his

was to replace. But the ceiling of the library was Tibaldi's field

of fame; on it he painted a fresco 194 feet long by 30 wide,

which still speaks to his skill in composition and brilliancy in

colouring. Philip rewarded him with a Milanese marquisate and one

hundred thousand crowns.

Morales, the first great devotional painter of Castile, on whom his

admiring countrymen bestowed the soubriquet of "divine"--with more

propriety, it must be confessed, than their descendants have shown

in conferring it upon Arguelles--contributed but one picture to

the court, and none to the Escurial; but in Alonzo Sanchez Coello,

born at Benifayrô, in Valencia, we find a famous native artist

decorating the superb walls of the new palace. While at Madrid he

was lodged in the Treasury, a building which communicated with the

palace by a door, of which the King kept a key; and often would the

royal Mæcenas slip thus, unobserved by the artist, into his studio.

Emperors and popes, kings and queens, princes and princesses, were

alike his friends and subjects; but we are now only concerned

to relate that, in 1582, he painted "five altar-pieces for the

Escurial, each containing a pair of saints." Far more of interest,

however, attaches itself to the name and memory of Juan Fernandez

Navarete, "whose genius was no less remarkable than his infirmities,

and whose name--El Mudo, the dumb painter--is as familiar to Europe

as his works are unknown," (vol. i. p. 250.) Born at Logroño in

1526, he went in his youth to Italy. Here he attracted the notice

of Don Luis Manrique, grand-almoner to Philip, who procured him

an invitation to Madrid. He was immediately set to work for the

Escurial; and in 1571 four pictures, the Assumption of the Virgin,

the Martyrdom of St James the Great, St Philip, and a Repenting St

Jerome, were hung in the sacristy of the convent, and brought him

five hundred ducats. In 1576 he painted, for the reception-hall of

the convent, a large picture representing Abraham receiving the

three Angels. "This picture," says Father Andres Ximenes, quoted

by Mr Stirling, (vol. i. p. 255) "so appropriate to the place it

fills, though the first of the master's works that usually meets

the eye, might, for its excellence, be viewed the last, and is well

worth coming many a league to see." An agreement, bearing date the

same year, between the painter and the prior, by which the former

covenanted to paint thirty-two large pictures for the side altars,

is preserved by Cean Bermudez; but El Mudo unfortunately died when

only eight of the series had been painted. On the 28th of March 1579

this excellent and remarkable painter died in the 53d year of his

age. A few years later, Juan Gomez painted from a design of Tibaldi

a large picture of St Ursula, which replaced one of Cambiaso's least

satisfactory Escurialian performances.

While acres of wall and ceiling were being thus painted in fresco,

or covered by large and fine pictures, the Escurial gave a ready

home to the most minute of the fine arts: illuminators of missals,

and painters of miniatures, embroiderers of vestments, and designers

of altar-cloths, found their labours appreciated, and their

genius called forth, no less than their more aspiring compeers.

Fray Andrez de Leon, and Fray Martin de Palencia, enriched the

Escurial with exquisite specimens of their skill in the arts of

miniature-painting and illuminating; and under the direction of Fray

Lorenzo di Monserrate, and Diego Rutiner, the conventual school of

embroidery produced frontals and dalmatics, copes, chasubles, and

altar-cloths, of rarest beauty and happiest designs. The goldsmiths

and silversmiths, too, lacked not encouragement in this greatest

of temples. Curious was the skill, and cunning the hand, which

fashioned the tower of gold and jasper to contain the Escurial's

holiest relique,--a muscle, singed and charred, of St Laurence--and

no doubt that skill was nobly rewarded.

In 1598, clasping to his breast the veil of Our Lady of Monserrat,

in a little alcove hard by the church of the Escurial, died its

grim, magnificent founder. He had witnessed the completion of his

gigantic designs: palace and convent, there it stood--a monument

alike of his piety and his pride, and a proof of the grandeur and

resources of the mighty empire over which he ruled. But he appears

to have thought with the poet--

"Weighed in the balance, hero-dust

Is vile as mortal clay;"

for he built no stately mausoleum, merely a common vault, to

receive the imperial dead. This omission, in 1617, Philip III.

undertook to supply; and Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, an Italian,

was selected as the architect. For thirty-four years did he and his

successors labour at this royal necropolis, which when finished

"became, under the name of the Pantheon, the most splendid chamber

of the Escurial."--(Vol. i. p. 412.)

Mr Stirling's second volume opens with a graphic account of the

decay of Spanish power under Philip IV., and an equally graphic

description of this, the chief architectural triumph of his long

inglorious reign. The Pantheon was "an octagonal chamber 113 feet

in circumference, and 38 feet in height, from the pavement to the

centre of the domed vault. Each of its eight sides, excepting the

two which are occupied by its entrance, and the altar, contain

four niches and four marble urns; the walls, Corinthian pilasters,

cornices and dome, are formed of the finest marbles of Toledo and

Biscay, Tortosa and Genoa; and the bases, capitals, scrolls, and

other ornaments, are of gilt bronze. Placed beneath the presbytery

of the church, and approached by the long descent of a stately

marble staircase, this hall of royal tombs, gleaming with gold and

polished jasper, seems a creation of Eastern romance.... Hither

Philip IV. would come, when melancholy--the fatal taint of his blood

was strong upon him--to hear mass, and meditate on death, sitting in

the niche which was shortly to receive his bones." Yet this was the

monarch whose quick eye detected the early genius of Velasquez, and

who bore the palm as a patron from all the princes of his house, and

all the sovereigns of Europe. Well did the great painter repay the

discriminating friendship of the king, and so long as Spanish art

endures, will the features of Philip IV. be known in every European

country; and his fair hair, melancholy mien, impassive countenance

and cold eyes, reveal to all time the hereditary characteristics of

the phlegmatic house of Austria.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599.

Here he entered the school of Herrera the Elder, a dashing painter,

and a violent man, who was for ever losing alike his temper and

his scholars. Velasquez soon left his turbulent rule for the

gentler instruction of Francisco Pacheco. In his studio the young

artist worked diligently, while he took lessons at the same time

of a yet more finished artist--nature; the nature of bright,

sunny, graceful Andalusia. Thus, while Velasquez cannot be called

a self-taught painter, he retained to the last that freedom from

mannerism, and that gay fidelity to nature, which so often--not in

his case--compensate for a departure from the highest rules and

requirements of art.

While he was thus studying and painting the flowers and the fruits,

the damsels and the beggars, of sunny Seville, there arrived in that

beautiful city a collection of Italian and Spanish pictures. These

exercised no small influence on the taste and style of the young

artist; but, true to his country, and with the happy inspiration

of genius, it was to Luis Tristan of Toledo, rather than to any

foreign master, that he directed his chief attention; and hence the

future chief of the Castilian school was enabled to combine with its

merits the excellencies of both the other great divisions of Spanish

art. At the end of five years spent in this manner, he married

Pacheco's daughter, who witnessed all his forty years' labours and

successes, and closed his dying eyes. At the age of twenty-three,

Velasquez, anxious to enlarge his acquaintance with the masterpieces

of other schools, went to Madrid; but after spending a few months

there, and at the Escurial, he returned to Seville--soon, however,

to be recalled at the bidding of the great minister and Mæcenas,

Olivarez. Now, in 1623, set in the tide of favour and of fame, which

henceforward was not to flag or ebb till the great painter lay

stretched, out of its reach, on the cold bank of death. During this

summer he painted the noble portrait of the king on horseback, which

was exhibited by royal order in front of the church of San Felipe,

and which caused the all-powerful Count-duke to exclaim, that until

now his majesty had never been painted. Charmed and delighted with

the picture and the painter, Philip declared no other artist should

in future paint his royal face; and Mr Stirling maliciously adds

that "this resolution he kept far more religiously than his marriage

vows, for he appears to have departed from it during the life-time

of his chosen artist, in favour only of Rubens and Crayer." (Vol.

ii. p. 592.) On the 31st of October 1623, Velasquez was formally

appointed painter in ordinary to the king, and in 1626 was provided

with apartments in the Treasury. To this period Mr Stirling assigns

his best likeness of the equestrian monarch, of which he says--"Far

more pleasing than any other representation of the man, it is also

one of the finest portraits in the world. The king is in the glow

of youth and health, and in the full enjoyment of his fine horse,

and the breeze blowing freshly from the distant hills; he wears dark

armour, over which flutters a crimson scarf; a hat with black plumes

covers his head, and his right hand grasps a truncheon."--(P. 595.)

In 1628, Velasquez had the pleasure of showing Rubens, who had come

to Madrid as envoy from the Low Countries, the galleries of that

city, and the wonders of the Escurial; and, following the advice

of that mighty master, he visited Italy the next year. On that

painter-producing soil, his steps were first turned to the city of

Titian; but the sun of art was going down over the quays and palaces

of once glorious Venice, and, hurrying through Ferrara and Bologna,

the eager pilgrim soon reached Rome. In this metropolis of religion,

learning, and art, the young Spaniard spent many a pleasant and

profitable month: nor, while feasting his eyes and storing his

memory with "its thousand forms of beauty and delight," did he allow

his pencil a perfect holiday. The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph's Coat

were painted in the Eternal City. After a few weeks at Naples, he

returned to Madrid in the spring of 1631. Portrait-painting for his

royal patron, who would visit his studio every day, and sit there

long hours, seems to have been now his main occupation; and now

was he able to requite the friendly aid he had received from the

Count-duke of Olivarez, whose image remains reflected on the stream

of time, not after the hideous caricature of Le Sage, but as limned

by the truthful--albeit grace-conferring--pencil of Velasquez.

In 1639, leaving king and courtiers, lords and ladies, and soaring

above the earth on which he had made his step so sure, Velasquez

aspired to the grandest theme of poet, moralist, or painter, and

nobly did his genius justify the flight. His Crucifixion is one

of the sublimest representations conceived by the intellect, and

portrayed by the hand of man, of that stupendous event. "Unrelieved

by the usual dim landscape, or lowering clouds, the cross in this

picture has no footing upon earth, but is placed on a plain dark

ground, like an ivory carving on its velvet pall. Never was that

great agony more powerfully depicted. The head of our Lord drops

on his right shoulder, over which falls a mass of dark hair, while

drops of blood trickle from his thorn-pierced brows. The anatomy of

the naked body and limbs is executed with as much precision as in

Cellini's marble, which may have served Velasquez as a model; and

the linen cloth wrapped about the loins, and even the fir-wood of

the cross, display his accurate attention to the smallest details of

a great subject."--(Vol. ii. p. 619.) This masterpiece now hangs in

the Royal Gallery of Spain at Madrid.

The all-powerful Olivarez underwent, in 1643, the fate of most

favourites, and experienced the doom denounced by the great English

satirist on "power too great to keep, or to resign." He had declared

his intention of making one Julianillo, an illegitimate child of no

one exactly knew who, his heir; had married him to the daughter of

the Constable of Castile, decked him with titles and honours, and

proposed to make him governor of the heir-apparent. The pencil of

Velasquez was employed to hand down to posterity the features of

this low-born cause of his great patron's downfall, and the portrait

of the ex-ballad singer in the streets of Madrid now graces the

collection of Bridgewater House. The disgrace of Olivarez served to

test the fine character of Velasquez, who not only sorrowed over his

patron's misfortunes, but had the courage to visit the disgraced

statesman in his retirement.

The triumphal entrance of Philip IV. into Lerida, the surrender of

Breda, and portraits of the royal family, exercised the invention

and pencil of Velasquez till the year 1648, when he was sent by

the king on a roving mission into Italy--not to teach the puzzled

sovereigns the mysterious privileges of self-government, but to

collect such works of art as his fine taste might think worthy of

transportation to Madrid. Landing at Genoa, he found himself in

presence of a troop of Vandyck's gallant nobles: hence he went to

Milan, Padua, and Venice. At the latter city he purchased for his

royal master two or three pictures of Tintoret's, and the Venus and

Adonis of Paul Veronese. But Rome, as in his previous visit, was the

chief object of his pilgrimage. Innocent X. welcomed him gladly,

and commanded him to paint, not only his own coarse features, but

the more delicate ones of Donna Olympia, his "sister-in-law and

mistress." So, at least, says our author; for the sake of religion

and human nature, we hope he is mistaken. For more than a year did

Velasquez sojourn in Rome, purchasing works of art, and enjoying

the society of Bernini and Nicolas Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and

Algardi. "It would be pleasing, were it possible, to draw aside

the dark curtain of centuries, and follow him into the palaces and

studios--to see him standing by while Claude painted, or Algardi

modelled, (enjoying the hospitalities of Bentivoglio, perhaps in

that fair hall glorious with Guido's recent fresco of Aurora)--or

mingling in the group that accompanied Poussin in his evening walks

on the terrace of Trinità de Monte."--(Vol. ii. p. 643.) Meanwhile

the king was impatiently waiting his return, and at last insisted

upon its being no further delayed; so in 1651 the soil of Spain was

once more trod by her greatest painter. Five years later, Velasquez

produced his extraordinary picture, Las Meniñas--the Maids of

Honour, extraordinary alike in the composition, and in the skill

displayed by the painter in overcoming its many difficulties. Dwarfs

and maids of honour, hounds and children, lords and ladies, pictures

and furniture, are all introduced into this remarkable picture, with

such success as to make many judges pronounce it to be Velasquez's

masterpiece, and Luca Giordano to christen it "the theology of

painting."

The Escurial, from whose galleries and cloisters we have been thus

lured by the greater glory of Velasquez, in 1656 demanded his

presence to arrange a large collection of pictures, forty-one of

which came from the dispersed and abused collection of the only

real lover of the fine arts who has sat on England's throne--that

martyr-monarch whom the pencil of Vandyck, and the pens of Lovelace,

Montrose, and Clarendon, have immortalised, though their swords

and counsels failed to preserve his life and crown. In 1659 the

cross of Santiago was formally conferred on this "king of painters,

and painter of kings;" and on St Prosper's day, in the Church of

the Carbonera, he was installed knight of that illustrious order,

the noblest grandees of Spain assisting at the solemn ceremonial.

The famous meeting on the Isle of Pheasants, so full of historic

interest, between the crowns and courts of Spain and France,

to celebrate the nuptials of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, was

destined to acquire an additional though melancholy fame, as the

last appearance of the great painter in public, and the possible

proximate cause of his death. To him, as aposentador-mayor, were

confided all the decorations and arrangements of this costly and

fatiguing pageant: he was also to find lodging on the road for

the king and the court; and some idea of the magnitude of his

official cares may be derived from the fact, that three thousand

five hundred mules, eighty-two horses, seventy coaches, and seventy

baggage-waggons, formed the train that followed the monarch out of

Madrid. On the 28th of June the court returned to Madrid, and on the

6th of August its inimitable painter expired.

The merits of Velasquez are now generally appreciated in England;

and the popular voice would, we think, ratify the enthusiastic yet

sober dictum of Wilkie, "In painting an intelligent portrait he

is nearly unrivalled." Yet we have seen how he could rise to the

highest subject of mortal imagination in the Crucifixion; and the

one solitary naked Venus, which Spanish art in four hundred years

produced, is his. Mr Stirling, though he mentions this picture

in the body of his book, assigns it no place in his valuable and

laboriously compiled catalogue, probably because he was unable to

trace its later adventures. Brought to England in 1814, and sold

for £500 to Mr Morritt, it still remains the gem of the library

at Rokeby. Long may the Spanish queen of love preside over the

beautiful bowers of that now classic retreat! We sum up our notice

of Velasquez in Mr Stirling's words:--"No artist ever followed

nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural

as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarised

the refined.... We know the persons of Philip IV. and Olivarez

as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo with

Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their

characters. In the portraits of the monarch and the minister,

'The bounding steeds they pompously bestride,

Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride,'

and enable us to judge of the Cordovese horse of that day, as

accurately as if we had lived with the horse-breeding Carthusians of

the Betis. And this painter of kings and horses has been compared,

as a painter of landscapes, to Claude; as a painter of low life,

to Teniers: his fruit-pieces equal those of Sanchez Cotan or Van

Kessel; his poultry might contest the prize with the fowls of

Hondekooter on their own dunghill; and his dogs might do battle with

the dogs of Sneyders."--(Vol. ii. p. 686.)

While Velasquez, at the height of his glory, was painting his

magnificent Crucifixion, a young lad was displaying hasty sketches

and immature daubs to the venders of old clothes, pots, and

vegetables, the gipsies and mendicant friars that frequented the

Feria, or weekly fair held in the market-place of All Saints, in

the beautiful and religious city of Seville. This was Bartolemè

Estevan Murillo, who, having studied for some time under Juan

del Castillo, on that master's removal to Cadiz in 1640, betook

himself to this popular resource of all needy Sevillian painters.

Struck, however, by the great improvement which travel had wrought

in the style of Pedro de Moya, who revisited Seville in 1642, the

young painter scraped up money sufficient to carry him to Madrid,

and, as he hoped, to Rome. But the kindness of Velasquez provided

him a lodging in his own house, and opened the galleries of the

Alcazar and the Escurial to his view. Here he pursued his studies

unremittingly, and, as he thought, with a success that excused the

trouble and expense of an Italian pilgrimage. Returning, therefore,

in 1645 to Seville, he commenced that career which led him, among

the painters of Spain, to European renown, second only to that of

Velasquez. The Franciscans of his native city have the credit of

first employing his young genius, and the eleven large pictures

with which he adorned their convent-walls at once established his

reputation and success. These were painted in what is technically

called his first or cold style; this was changed before 1650 into

his second, or warm style, which in its turn yielded to his last,

or vapoury style. So warm, indeed, had his colouring become, that

a Spanish critic, in the nervous phraseology of Spain, declared

his flesh-tints were now painted with blood and milk. In this style

did he paint for the chapter The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, in

which the ladies of Seville admired and envied the roundness of a

ministering maiden's naked arm; and a large picture of St Anthony

of Padua, which still adorns the walls of the cathedral baptistery.

Of this famous gem some curious stories are told: Don Fernando

Farfan, for instance, relates that birds had been seen attempting

to perch upon some lilies in a vase by the side of the kneeling

saint; and Monsieur Viardot (_Musées d'Espagne_, p. 146) informs us

that a reverend canon, who showed him the picture, recounted how

that, in 1813, the Duke of Wellington offered to purchase it for as

many gold onzas as would cover its surface; while, in 1843, Captain

Widdrington was assured that a lord had expressed his readiness

to give £40,000 for the bird-deluding picture. The belief in the

gullibility of travellers is truly remarkable and wide-spread; thus,

at Genoa, in 1839, our excellent cicerone gratified us with the

information, that, sixteen years before, the English Duke Balfour

had in vain offered £1600 for Canova's beautiful basso-relievo of

the Virgin Clasping the Corpse of our Saviour, which graces the

ugly church of the poor-house in that superb city. In 1658, Murillo

laboured to establish a public academy of art; and, in spite of the

jealousies and contentions of rival artists, on the 1st of January

1660, he witnessed its inauguration. The rules were few and simple;

but the declaration to be signed by each member on admission would

rather astonish the directors of the Royal Academy in London. We

would recommend it to the consideration of those Protestant divines

who are so anxious to devise a new test of heresy in the Church

of England: thus it ran--"Praised be the most holy sacrament, and

the pure conception of Our Lady." Nothing, perhaps, can show more

strongly the immense influence religion exercised on art in Spain

than the second clause of this declaration. It was the favourite

dogma of Seville: for hundreds of years sermons were preached, books

were written, pictures painted, legends recorded in honour of Our

Lady's spotless conception; and round many a picture by Cano, or

Vargas, or Joanes, is yet to be read the magic words that had power

to electrify a populace,--"Sin Pecado Concebida." The institution

thus commenced flourished for many years, and answered the generous

expectations of its illustrious founder.