BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
 
No. CCCCLXVII. SEPTEMBER, 1854. Vol. LXXVI.

Strong and many are the claims made upon us by our mother Earth; the love of locality—the charm and attraction which some one homely landscape possesses to us, surpassing all stranger beauties, is a remarkable feature in the human heart. We who are not ethereal creatures, but of a mixed and diverse nature—we who, when we look our clearest towards the skies, must still have our standing-ground of earth secure—it is strange what relations of personal love we enter into with the scenes of this lower sphere. How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality—a place, a country, a local habitation—how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us;—here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beatified and canonised for ever with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places, rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others, where distress or death came once, and since then dwells for evermore. As little as we can deprive ourselves of the human frame, can we divest our individual history of its graceful garment of place and scene. Such a thing happened, we say; but memory is no bare chronicler of facts and events, and as we say the words, the time starts up before us, with all its silent witnesses;—leaves that were shed years ago, trees cut down and gone, yet they live in our thoughts with the joy or the sorrow of which they were silent attendants. We have caught and appropriated these bits of still life—they are a part of our history, and belong to us for ever.

In some degree every mind must have its own private gallery of pictures, impossible to be revealed to the vision of another,—from the homely imagination which cherishes that one bit of sunshine on its walls, “the house where I was born,” the old childish paradise and ideal, rich with such flowers and verdure as can be found in no other place, to the stately and well-furnished recollection which can roam at will through all the brightest countries in the world; but wherever we go, we weave ourselves into the landscape, and make every milestone a historical monument in the chronicle of our life.

And so it comes that natives of a country never expatriated from their home-soil, grow into a passionate veneration and love for their own land. The hills which are radiant for ever with their dreams of youth—the rivers whose familiar voices have chimed into every sound of their 244lamentation and their joy—the roads that echo to their daily footsteps, and all the silent accessories upon which, as on so many props and pillars, their thoughts for years are hung—the very sight of which recall a hundred fleeting fancies—the very name of which spreads pictures lovelier than reality before closed eyes—the “kindly” country, which seems to respond with a voice borrowed from our own past thoughts to the thoughts of to-day, suggesting ancient comforts, ancient blessings, silently speaking hope from experience, solace present from solace past, lays claims upon us, the most intimate of our confidants, the nearest to our bosom; and Nature lavish in her demands upon our sympathy—perpetually calling upon us to weep with her and to rejoice with her—makes liberal recompense, and softens around us with a visible embrace our mother country, our sympathetic and consolatory home.

And scarcely less are we moved by localities sacred to the heroes of our race—storied ground, peopled with names and persons historic in the national annals, or consecrated to other lives than ours. It is natural for us to seek those spots with eager interest, to believe ourselves brought nearer to the great Spirit whose habitation made them famous, and to linger with visionary satisfaction, looking at things which he must have looked at, realising his life where he led it. Pilgrimages many grow out of this natural sentiment. The cottage of Shakespeare—the palace of Scott—the “warm study of deals,” where the Scottish Reformer belaboured Satan—and the dark-browed rooms where hapless Mary accomplished her fate. From these shrines we come no wiser—not a whit better acquainted with the saint of each—notwithstanding we stand in the same space, we look upon the same walls, we have over us the hallowed roof, and the instinctive superstition is satisfied with this limited result of our faith.

But places sacred to one nation are indifferent to another—one class of men exult over a monument, which to their neighbours is but a block of stone. Yet there is one holy place where all the nations of the earth come together to worship—one country rich with a perpetual attraction. The soil thrills to the consecrating touch of love and grief; the ages of the past dwell in it as in a sanctuary. Making no account of the wandering handful of wild Asiatics who surround him, the traveller there seeks not scenes of to-day, but cities of the dead. The place has a solemn array of lofty inhabitants, undying fathers of the soil; generation after generation, conquerors, defenders, devotees, have come and gone and departed. But we do not search this country for traces of the Saracen or the Crusader; passing beyond them as modern visitors, a more ancient race claims the universal awe. It is not the city of Godfrey of Bouillon, but of David of Bethlehem, which shines on yonder cluster of hills; and these are not the knightly names of romance which sanctify the tombs. The brave Crusaders claim memories in other countries, but they have no memory here where their blood watered the sacred soil. Turk and Christian, creatures of to-day, stand on the same platform as we do,—beyond the earliest of them are the true monuments and memories of this country—

The story begins and ends in this great figure appearing visibly before our eyes, and we bow our head to acknowledge Jerusalem, the universal centre of pilgrimage—Judea, Galilee, the Holy Land.

A land which, if it could be possible to sweep it altogether out of earthly knowledge, would still live in the pages of one wonderful Book, and to the readers of that Book be of all countries the most familiar and well known. Many an untutored peasant, who knows no more of the road to our own capital than the half-mile of dusty highway under his own eyes, knows of the way to Bethany, signalised by many wonders—knows of the road to Gaza which is desert—knows of that road to Damascus where the traveller was solemnly arrested on his way; and is better aware of the wayside grave where her heart-stricken husband buried 245Rachel, “sweet Syrian shepherdess,” and of Absalom’s tomb which he built to preserve his name, than of where the royal ashes lie in our own land. Many a humble scholar, untaught in other history, is learned in the ancient wars of Israel, and apprehends Moab, and Edom, and Assyria with a stronger sense of reality than he can apprehend the Russian hordes embattled against ourselves; and sees Pi-ha-hiroth shut in with its mountains, Egypt behind and the sea before, as no description, however vivid, will ever make him see the marshes of the Danube, though he have a son or a brother militant on that disastrous shore to-day. Strong security has God taken for the universal remembrance of that beloved country, blessed by His own Divine preference: while there is a Bible, there must be a Judea; the landscape in all its glorious tints is associated for ever with the wonderful artist’s name; and neither its wretched population nor its heathen rulers, nor all its melancholy meanness and desolation, existing now, can make Christendom forget that this discrowned city is the city over which fell the tears of the Lord.

We have no Crusaders in these days; all that remains of our ancient chivalry finds holier work at home than that impossible redemption of the Holy Land, which God reserves for His own time, and His own hands; nor do we need to depend on the vagabond saint of antique times, the hero of scallop-shell and pilgrim-staff, for our knowledge of Palestine. Neither travellers nor reports are wanting, and we are by no means afflicted with monotony of tone or sameness of aspect in the revelations of our modern pilgrimages. The weary man of fashion who loiters over Palestine in search of a new sensation—the curt and business-like Divine who goes thither professionally on a mission of verification and proof—the wandering litterateur who has a book to make—the accomplished savant and man of science, follow each other in rapid succession. Dreamy speculation—decisions of bold rapidity, made at a glance—accurate topography, slow and careful—each do their devoir in making known to us this country of universal interest. Nor does even the lighter portraiture of fiction shrink from the Holy Land, though here our novelist is a statesman, as much beyond the range of ordinary novelists, as the locality of that last brilliant romance which it has pleased him “to leave half told,” differs from the English village or Scottish glen of common story-telling. To follow Disraeli and Warburton is no easy task, neither is it quite holiday work to go over the ground after Robinson and De Saulcy. Lieut. C. W. N. Van de Velde, the latest traveller of this storied soil, is neither a born poet, nor an accomplished bookmaker, nor a great divine; but whosoever receives his book into their household, receives a social visitor, distinct and tangible—a real man. It is impossible not to clothe the historian with an imagined person—not to see him sitting down to his extempore writingtable compounding his letters—not to form a good guess of the measures of his paces, of perhaps now and then a little puff of Dutch impatience, curiously wrought into a large amount of phlegm. From his first offset he comes clearly out from among the shadows—we are at no loss to keep the thread of personal identity, and are never dubious, in picture number two, about the hero of picture number one. A most recognisable and characteristic personage, we yet stand in no dread of our pilgrim. He makes nothing of his cockle-hat and staff, or his sandal shoon. Instead of calling to his reverent disciples to follow, he offers his arm to any good neighbour who will make the tour with him. You may help to set up the Aneroid, or level the telescope, if you will, but you cannot doubt for a moment that Lieut. Van de Velde takes the angle of yonder nameless villages as a conscientious duty, and when he makes his survey of a bare hillside or Arab desert, does it with the full-hearted and devout conviction that this is his highest capability of serving God; for you ascertain immediately that this is not an expedition of the pleasure-seeker, or a pilgrimage of the devotee. Surveying Palestine is the work of the traveller—his special end and object—and he sets 246about it simply as his vocation, an enterprise which gives consistence and necessity to all his travel.

One disadvantage of this accurate survey, as indeed of all scientific expeditions, is the bare chronicle of unknown villages, a confusion of barren names, and brief descriptions which take the life out of many pages of this narrative. Lieut. Van de Velde has a very pretty talent for making pictures in words, but to make a map in words is one of the driest and least profitable operations of literature. Toil after him as we may, it is impossible to keep in mind this long course which finds no track, and leaves none—a mere piece of elaborate geography, with only the point, here and there, of a hospitable sheikh, or a hastily-sketched interior, to reward us for the toilsome interval of road. This, however, is not a fault peculiar to M. Van de Velde, but belongs alike to all the more serious explorers of Palestine, to whom every fallen stone has, or ought to have, its separate history.

And notwithstanding this, which, indeed, is a necessary feature of the conscientious and painstaking mind visible in these pages, there is much of the picturesque in the travels of Lieut. Van de Velde. If his sketches are as graphic and clear as his descriptions, it is very much to be regretted that they are not added to this work, for we have nowhere seen more rapid and vivid landscapes with so little pretension on the part of the artist. We speak much of the poetic merit of transferring one’s own mind and individuality into the scenery described, and it is a poetic necessity—nevertheless, once in a way, remembering that the real poet who can do this is not a very common tourist, it is a refreshment to have the landscape without the traveller—the hills and the valleys as they lie, without Mr Brown in the corner taking their likeness. In these volumes our honest traveller offers to your view what he saw, sometimes in an honest fervour of admiration; but you cannot fail to be aware that his eye is on the landscape as he draws it, and not upon the central figure I which overshadows the scene. From first to last, indeed, Lieut. Van de Velde never sees his own shadow between himself and the sunshine, never is oppressed by his own claims to be looked at—in fact, is not troubled whether you look at him at all, but demands of you, most distinctly, to look at his picture, and claims from you an interest in it equal to his own. With strong religious feelings, and a mind deeply leavened with Gospel truths, and the Gospel history of which this soil is redolent, our pilgrim travels onward, not without perturbations, yet full of confidence in the special protection of God, and everywhere, a single-hearted Christian, seeks his own “edification,” and to promote the edification of others. We have said that his is not the pilgrimage of a devotee, yet it is undeniable that though too orthodox to expect any miraculous influence from these holy places, he yet looks for “impressions,” for a more vivid realisation of those great events to which our faith looks back, and a brighter apprehension of the Divine teachings which were first delivered in this favoured land. Here is an instance of one profane interruption of his devout meditations;—he is seated by Jacob’s well:—

“I placed myself in the same position, and could well figure to myself the woman with her pitcher on her head coming down out of the valley. He who knows all things, and whose free sovereign love has chosen His own to eternal life from the foundation of the world—He beheld her, the poor sinner, for whose preservation He had come down from heaven. He saw her as she came along under the olive trees, long before she was aware of His being there. And when she saw Him, she hesitated, perhaps whether she should approach Him, perceiving that he was a Jew. But what should she be afraid of, she the lost, who had lost all, for whom there seemed to be nothing but despair? Therefore she came on, and——

“Thus was I musing with myself, as I sat alone at the side of the well, and had just begun to read the fourth chapter of John, when I was suddenly roused by the blustering voice of a gigantic Arab, who had come up without my observing him, and addressed me thus, with all the characteristic repulsiveness and loathsomeness of the Arabs:

“‘Marhhabah chawadja! baksheesh, baksheesh!’

247“This disturbance was most unwelcome. Think what a contrast: To be lost, as it were, in heavenly thoughts, and then all at once to be aroused by such a thief-like clamour for baksheesh. He was a fellow with a face enough to frighten one, filthy and disgusting—so filthy and disgusting as none but an Arab can be. I replied to his salutation, and begged him to leave me alone.

“But no—he had no idea of doing that.

“‘Baksheesh, baksheesh!’ he roared, and sat himself down at the well-side, opposite me, at the same time taking out his pipe and lighting it with such composure as to convince me that he had not the smallest intention to leave me for some time at least.

“And before five minutes had elapsed, half-a-dozen of his fellows appeared, who forthwith placed themselves all round me in a very social circle, so that I had to abandon all thoughts of proceeding with my meditations on the favourite chapter.

“A chorus of ‘baksheesh!’ with all sorts of variations on the same theme, was now raised about my ears. I asked them through Philip on what pretence they wanted a baksheesh, begging at the same time that they would withdraw. Their answer was to this effect: ‘The land and the well belong to us, and no foreigner has any right to come here without paying us a baksheesh. Would you like to go down into the well? Here is a rope that we have brought with that view. We will let you safely down; you can see the well from within, and on coming up again pay us a baksheesh.’

“‘But what makes you suppose that I want to examine your well? I know quite the appearance of the well from within, and thus have no need to go down into it. Be, then, so good as to take your rope home again, and leave me alone.’

“I had almost added, ‘then I will give you a baksheesh;’ but I thought if these rogues see that a baksheesh is earned by merely allowing a stranger to be left alone at the well, then there is every chance that, as soon as they are gone, another similar party will come down to me, and give me still more molestation than these.

“‘If the Chawadja will not go down into the well, then will we go down instead of him, and tell him how it looks on our return; but anyhow, we must have a baksheesh.’”

A sore trial to the righteous soul of our traveller is at all times this demand for “baksheesh;” and he complains feelingly of the extravagant example of former travellers who have encouraged the Arab, only too willing to be encouraged, in his shameless exactions. No small grievance this for the pilgrim of duty or science who must economise; but, from railway porters to Bedouin chiefs, human nature is the same. We suspect the London cabman, compelled to take his legal fare, would turn out as troublesome as Abu Dahuk, if it were not for the terror of the police magistrate; and where there is no such heaven-appointed institution—no guardian angel in blue coat and leaden buttons—no Mr Commissioner Mayne—it is scarcely to be expected that your master of conveyances in the desert—your grand representative of railway and public roads for the district of the Dead Sea—should content himself with the polite information of what “a real gentleman” would offer, as your cabman must be content to do.

Reaching by Smyrna and Beyrout the land of his destination, and rising with serious enthusiasm to hail the first glimpse of Lebanon, Lieutenant Van de Velde wanders for some time along “the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,” stepping aside now and then to a mission station on the skirts of Lebanon, or to a native village, where, among discordant patches of Roman Catholics, of Greek Catholics, and of Mahommedans, he finds nothing but strife and bitter animosities, with not so much as a shadow of the religion for whose name, a vain badge, they hold each other in the direst hatred. Druse and Maronite and Moslem, Greek and Latin and unbeliever, every village hates its neighbour heartily and with a will; and though the Druse patronises the English Protestant, and the Maronite takes the French Catholic under his protection, Christianity vainly seeks a resting-place with either: but, where all cherish the natural intolerance of another faith than their own, the Greek Church, ignorant and bigoted, carries this evil principle farthest. Brutal violence and legal injury are alike the fate of every unfortunate convertite who ventures to embrace the somewhat different gospel preached by the missionaries of the Evangelical 248churches in these coasts, so long the habitation of the Gentiles. The first instance which strikes the traveller is the state of the persecuted missionary churches at Hâsbeiya, whose history he thus relates:—

“Hâsbeiya has a population of 6000 souls, of whom about three-fourths belong to the Greek Church: of the remainder, 1500 are Druses, about 500 Maronites, about 100 Jews of the class called Sephardim, and as many Mahommedans belonging to the court of the Emir Sad-Ed-Din-Shepebi, with some few Anzairies. Mr Bird, one of the American missionaries, was the first who attempted, twenty-five years ago, to diffuse the gospel here. He established a school, and obtained a native teacher; but his effort met with no success, and the school dwindled away. In 1842 the brethren sent a colporteur from Beirût to Hâsbeiya with tracts; and it was from this man that the people first learned to attach to the name Protestant the meaning it bears among them—a true Christian. The books he left behind him would perhaps have had a good effect, if the Greek priests—like all priests who dispute with the only High Priest, Jesus Christ, his right to supremacy over the souls of men—had not found means, in their hatred of the gospel, to get possession of the books and burn them.

“It was about this time that the Emir imposed certain new taxes, which caused great dissatisfaction. These taxes fell particularly hard upon the poor, who had no protector; and the thought occurred to them, ‘We may possibly find protection from the missionaries; they are merciful men.’ In this hope, forty-five of them went to the brethren at Beirût, to enrol themselves, as Protestants, under their protection.

“The missionaries did not, of course, interfere with regard to the tax, but they ‘expounded to them the way of God more perfectly;’ showing them, at the same time, how much true faith in the Son of God differs from such nominal Protestantism as has its origin in mere secular motives. The brethren then sent them back to Hâsbeiya with bibles and tracts, promising to give them spiritual help, if their future conduct should attest the sincerity of their wishes. Shortly after the missionaries found an opportunity of sending two native teachers to Hâsbeiya, who had, in a few days, a hundred and fifty people in attendance on them, desirous of receiving instruction. This was too much for the priests. The bishop threatened to excommunicate all who should adopt the Protestant heresies; but, seeing that this threat had no effect, he had recourse to that powerful weapon, by which, in the East, justice and right are so constantly assailed.

“The head of the Greeks of Hâsbeiya is the Patriarch of Damascus, a certain Mathodios, who, as also the Emir of Hâsbeiya, is subject to the Pasha of Damascus. The Bishop of Hâsbeiya had no difficulty, through his superior in Damascus, in purchasing from the Pasha an order to the Emir, to the effect that the heretics should be brought back by force to the Greek Church. The Emir obeyed but too willingly. The new converts had to endure the bitterest persecutions. They were pelted with stones, and spit upon in the bazaars; they were beaten and insulted in their houses, as well as in the public places; they were no longer safe anywhere, and were debarred all social intercourse. Many attempts were made even upon their lives; and so severe was the persecution to which they were exposed, that, at one time, all but three, who remained faithful, drew back; but around those three, forty others soon gathered. After consultation, they agreed that it was best to disperse, and quitted Hâsbeiya to take up their residence at Abeyh, or elsewhere in Lebanon. In this attempt, however, they failed; the means of earning their bread were wanting, and, after a few months, they were compelled to return to Hâsbeiya. Then arose, in the silent night, from their closed dwellings, many a heartfelt and united prayer to the Lord of the Church; eagerly and trustfully His promises were sought out from His holy Word; and, like the phœnix rising from the flames, the youthful Christian congregation lifted its head anew. Persecution had no longer any terrors for them. At the request of the Patriarch, the Emir ordered his janissaries to drive them with scourges to the church; but his wrath was unable to compel them to kiss or worship the images. A certain Chalîl-Chouri, himself the son of a priest, but now converted to Christ, was sent by his family to Constantinople; here, by the help of the American consul, he obtained a firman from the Sultan, granting freedom to the Protestants of Hâsbeiya. Some amelioration in their lot was the happy result, but only to a certain degree; for the artful Mathodios managed, during five weary years, to bribe the Pasha of Damascus to assail them with all kinds of secret social persecutions.”

While this is the state of the Greek Church, and these the difficulties which all the labours of a purer faith 249must encounter among our so-called Christian brethren in the East, Lieutenant Van de Velde does not share in the popular idea of the greater liberality of the dominant religion. “Mahommedans,” he says, “have been hitherto, by the very laws of the Koran, inaccessible to the gospel. The Sultan is the faithful assertor of these laws, and punishes with decapitation every Mussulman who abandons the doctrines of the Prophet. It is not three years since a respectable young man was beheaded in the streets of Constantinople for having abjured Islamism. Think, then, what is implied in a Mahommedan’s even giving an attentive ear to the gospel.” If this statement is correct, as we presume it to be, it throws rather a singular romance of disinterestedness upon the present services of the most prominent nations in Christendom to this empire of heathenesse.

Notwithstanding the discouragements, almost amounting to impossibilities, which beset him on every hand, M. Van de Velde’s friend and travelling companion, Dr Kalley, does not fail, with unceasing devotion, to proclaim to the thronging hosts of invalids who surround the Hakim at every resting-place, the unchanged faith which, eighteen hundred years ago, proceeded from this very soil. The scene is thoroughly Oriental, and strangely reminds us of many a sacred scene. Crowds of the sick and helpless throng to the door where the wandering physician sits with his medicine-chest. A high compliment to the beneficent science of healing is in the eagerness of these mendicant patients. They believe in a man who goes from village to village for no other purpose than to alleviate their pains and heal their distresses, but they find it extremely hard to believe in one who comes with no medicine-chest, but only with outlandish instruments of science, and have no faith in topography. It may be that the popular imagination has a far-off traditionary remembrance of that sublime Traveller, under whose touch and at whose voice the very dead arose; but it is certain, that while they do not understand travelling for pleasure, nor travelling for discovery, nor any other kind of expeditionary enterprise, the wandering hakim has but to disclose his errand to secure their perfect faith and most respectful welcome. Poor children of Ishmael, materialism is too strong for spirituality with them. They may gape at the antiquary with the scorn of ignorance, but the physician, to those who have so much need of him, is half divine.

At Hâsbeiya an untoward accident arrests our traveller. During a short excursion, the house which he had taken there is robbed, and all his valuables lost. Appeal to the Emir proves fruitless, and M. Van de Velde almost resigns himself to returning home. This, however, is fortunately prevented by letters of encouragement and promises of help; and with a less ambitious retinue he sets forth again undismayed, keeping his way along the coast of the Mediterranean from the Lebanon towards Carmel, from which place he strikes farther inland through the fallen remains of royal Samaria to Jerusalem.

It is not possible to follow our author through his course—this unknown country, sprinkled with names that are familiar to us as household words—nor can we pause to point out how many pictures he makes by the way, how fine an eye this unostentatious artist has for colour, and how even these pale pen-and-ink sketches brighten and glow with the rich tints of Oriental landscape; neither can we do justice to his interiors, with their smoky haze, and wild Arab figures, and primitive hospitality. These are by the way—but as he comes into a country which is distinctly historical, and not only hazy, like one of these same desert castles, with a mist of antiquity, the results of his careful examination become more apparent. Your charlatan is your most universal cosmopolitan, and with an indefatigable hand has he dotted over this sacred territory. Not disposed, however, to receive with blind faith the spot pointed out by the Carmelites (whose monastic order was instituted by Elijah!) as the true scene of Elijah’s sacrifice, M. Van de Velde and Dr Kalley set about examining for themselves, and the very interesting result of their examination, guided by the traditions of the Arabs and not of the Church, is as follows:—

250“Here, then, are the details of what we observed on ‘the burnt place.’

“Having seated ourselves beneath the shade of a huge oak, we once more opened our Bibles at chap. xviii. of 1st Kings, and examined what was required in the place of sacrifice, in order to its agreement with the account given in the Bible. According to verses 18th and 19th, it must have been ample enough in size to contain a very numerous multitude. El-Mohhraka must at that time have been quite fitted for this, although now covered with a rough dense jungle. Indeed, one can scarcely imagine a spot better adapted for the thousands of Israel to have stood drawn up on than the gentle slopes. The rock shoots up in an almost perpendicular wall of more than two hundred feet in height on the side of the plain of Esdraelon. On this side, therefore, there was no room for the gazing multitude; but, on the other hand, this wall made it visible over the whole plain, and from all the surrounding heights, so that even those left behind, and who had not ascended Carmel, would still have been able to witness, at no great distance, the fire from heaven that descended upon the altar. According to verse 30th, there must have been an altar there before, for Elijah repaired ‘the altar of the Lord that was broken down.’ It is well known that such altars were uniformly built on very conspicuous eminences. Now, there is not a more conspicuous spot on all Carmel than the abrupt rocky height of Mohhraka, shooting up so suddenly on the east. Verses 31st and 32d point to a rocky soil, in which stones were to be found to serve for the construction of the altar, and yet where the stones must have been so loose or so covered with a thick bed of earth, that ‘a trench’ could have been made round the altar, whilst not of so loose a composition of sand and earth as that the water poured into it would have been absorbed. The place we were examining met these requisitions in every respect; it showed a rocky surface, with a sufficiency of large fragments of rock lying around, and, besides, well fitted for the rapid digging of a trench. But now comes the grand difficulty of both believers and unbelievers, who have not seen this place: Whence could Elijah have procured so much water as to have it to pour over the offering and the altar in barrelfuls, so that he filled the trench also with water, at a time when, after three years of drought, all the rivers and brooks were dried up, and the king in person, and the governor of his house, divided the land between them to pass through it, to see if, peradventure, any fountains of water might be found, and grass to save the horses and mules alive?—(Verses 1–6). To get rid of this difficulty, some pious travellers, with imaginations stronger than their judgments, have said, ‘O, as for that water, the thing speaks for itself; it must evidently have been got from the sea.’ But less religious persons, who were sharp enough to perceive that the place where Elijah made the offering could not have been at the seaside, have rightly remarked, that it must have been impossible, from every other point of Carmel lying more inland, on account of the great distance from the sea, to go thither and return on an afternoon, much more to do this three several times, as is expressly stated in the 34th verse. Such persons, therefore, have rejected altogether this absurd explanation, without, however, themselves arriving at any better solution of the difficulty; and this has led unbelievers, in their prejudiced haste, to assert that the Bible narrative is a mere fiction, that being the view which, best suited their purpose. Dr Kalley and I felt our mouths shut in the presence of this difficulty. We saw no spring, yet here we were certain the place must have been; for it is the only point of all Carmel where Elijah could have been so close to the brook Kishon, then dried up, as to take down thither the priests of Baal and slay them, return again to the mountain and pray for rain, all in the short space of the same afternoon after the Lord had shown, by His fire from heaven, that He, and He alone, was God (see verses 40–44). El-Mohhraka is 1635 feet above the sea, and perhaps 1000 feet above the Kishon. This height can be gone up and down in the short time allowed by the Scripture. But the farther one goes towards the middle of the mountain, the higher he ascends above the Kishon, because Carmel rises higher then, and the plain through which the river flows runs lower down. Add to this that the Kishon takes a course more and more diverging from the mountain, and the ravine by which people descend to the river’s bed is exceedingly difficult to pass through, so that three full hours are thought necessary for traversing the distance from Esfiëh to the stream. Nowhere does the Kishon run so close to Mount Carmel as just beneath El-Mohhraka. Pious expositors, who would transfer the scene to the seaward side of the mountain, seem quite to have left out of sight the required condition—that it must be near the brook Kishon.

“Well, then, we went down to the Kishon through a steep ravine, and, behold, right below the steep rocky walls of the height 251on which we stood—250 feet, it might be, beneath the altar plateau—a vaulted and very abundant fountain, built in the form of a tank, with a few steps leading down into it, just as one finds elsewhere in the old walls or springs of the Jewish times. Possibly the neighbourhood of this spring may have been the inducement that led to that altar which Elijah repaired, having been built to the Lord in former times. Possibly, too, the water of this spring may have been consecrated to the Lord, so as not to be generally accessible to the people, even in times of fearful drought. In such springs the water remains always cool, under the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand that there might have been found here that superabundance of water which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar. Yes, the more I consider the matter, the more am I convinced, that from such a fountain alone could Elijah have procured so much water at that time. And as for the distance between this spring and the supposed site of the altar, it was every way possible for men to go thrice thither and back to obtain the necessary supply.

“Further, the place of Elijah’s offering—the same, probably, where he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, in offering thanks to the Lord for the divine power He had hitherto displayed, to beseech Him for the further fulfilment of His promises, that of rain for the parched-up ground—the place of Elijah’s offering, I say, behoves to have been so screened by a rising ground on the west or north-west side as to intercept a view of the sea; for he said to his servant, ‘Go up now, and look toward the sea.’ Moreover, the distance to that height must not have been great; for the passage runs—‘Go again seven times,’ (verses 42–44). Now, such is the position of El-Mohhraka, that these circumstances might all quite well have been united there. On its west and north-west side the view of the sea is quite intercepted by an adjacent height. That height may be ascended, however, in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea obtained from the top.”

There is nothing we hear of more frequently than of the great additional light thrown upon the Bible by modern researches; and with Scripture geography and Scripture botany, with Eastern usages and ancient customs, this modern time professes a much clearer apprehension of the Bible than did the elder age, which was ignorant of all this minutiæ of illustration. But the science is overdone. The illustration smothers the text, and we become suspicious of every new attempt of that over-explanatory teaching which toils to bring the material and framework of the sacred record down to “the meanest capacity,” almost wearying us into incredulity where, if left alone, we could not choose but believe. Holy Writ, by far the truest and most life-like picture of its own time, explains itself with small assistance—but we are glad always to light on such an illustration as this, which brings before us, in all its striking features, the locality of one of the most striking scenes of the old dispensation.

Like every other traveller in this singular country, M. Van de Velde is struck by the evident tokens everywhere of long-restrained and dormant fertility. The land is still a land of milk and honey. Folded into the unseen recesses of Carmel, where there is scarcely an eye to look on it, the soil is lavish of the richest vegetation, matted with plants and flowers; and everywhere the same teeming fruitfulness peers through the uncultivated waste, which notwithstanding is a barren waste bound with the visible restrictions of Providence, forbidden and interdicted to spread forth its riches, and waiting solemnly, with the life pent up in its great bosom, till the call of God shall wake it into the luxuriance of old.

A grand romance is in the position of this desolate but unexhausted land—ruled by strangers, inhabited by an alien race, and desecrated by an idolatrous worship, yet with all its rich faculties hidden in its heart, and its heirs, scattered yet indestructible, waiting for return to it as it waits for them. M. Van de Velde cannot restrain his impatience with Turkish rule in Palestine. Disgusted with the universal corruption, universal mismanagement and oppression, he chafes at the idea of the Christian Powers upholding the effete and tyrannical government of the Porte, under whose sway, he says, everything withers, from commercial enterprise to family comfort, and in whose hands everything becomes a failure. Setting political motives aside, it is 252indisputably a singular position which England and France hold in this contest. A few hundred years ago, Christendom resisted with desperation on these very boundaries the invasion of the Turk, and it is strange to see the leading powers of Christendom crossing the very same line in these days to fight under the banner of the Crescent, and mingle the knightly symbols, whose fame has been dearly won in the battles of the faith, with the ensigns of the unbeliever. Well, letting alone the balance of power and such imperial considerations, show us the Englishman who will stand by and see the poor heathen Hindoo, whose pathetic silence craves alms upon our streets, fall into the hands of some big Saxon bully, without lifting hand or voice for the rescue of the weak, and we will say that such a man, but no other, has a right to stigmatise this crusade of right against might, and condemn the Christian nation for defence of the Infidel. But for our ally, with his magnificent indifference, his passive fatalism, his misgovernment, and all his sins, let us be thankful that we do not need to adopt his faults when we vindicate his right—rather that our vindication of his rights, our association with himself, our help and brotherliness, are better modes of vanquishing the Oriental, who has proved his mettle in these days, than a new crusade, such as M. Van de Velde longs for, to restore to the Hebrews their old inheritance. With God, and not with us, does it remain to decide when the Jew is ready for his new existence—when the time of prophecy shall be accomplished, and that revolution begun which is to call out of all lands and places the wandering nation, the great pilgrim of centuries, and bring Israel home. It is not easy to realise the possibility of such an event, and there is no wonder in all past history equal to what this will be—but the work is manifestly out of man’s hands. At this moment, find him where you will, the qualities for which the Jew is distinguished are not those which win the respect or admiration of his neighbours—he is barren and desolate like his country, and has no beauty in him. Harsh sounds and unmelodious—at the best, a wail of blind inquiry, and long suspense—are all the harp of Judah is capable of now; and till the hand of the Divine musician touch the strings, it is a vain hope that any human finger can wake them to the measure of David or of Solomon, the lofty strains of old.

One thing these modern times, with all their fairy works of science and mighty rush of “progress,” ought to do for both Mahommedan and Jew—to convince them that there is but one faith, which never becomes obsolete—one religion, which, all independent of climate or temperature, is from God, and embraces all mankind—which is abashed by no discovery, and thrown into the shade by no improvement. The creed of Mahomet is antiquated, and in its dotage. To live a Jew in these days is to live among the tombs. Paganism is dead and gone long centuries ago. Only Christianity, in its sublime unfailing youth, is never out of date, but works as handily with the instruments of to-day as with those of a thousand years ago, and, knowing neither culmination nor decadence, is perpetually the same.

But to M. Van de Velde, the charm of attraction which binds the devout mind to the children of Abraham, the chosen people, is very strong. He cannot sufficiently execrate the Turkish occupancy, which gives this historic country to the race of all others most indifferent to its holiest memories, and when he sees the soil itself indicating, by many evidences, its inherent riches, yet lying scorched and barren under the eye of heaven—when he sees a government which discourages every exertion, a people who have no heart to make any, conscious, as he says, of the usurpation of these lands, which are not their own—our fervent pilgrim burns with natural impatience to accelerate the slow course of events, and can scarcely bring himself to tolerate the support given to this “Empire of Turkey,” which he apostrophises, with all its tyranny at home and impotence abroad. Far better service, as he thinks, these same victorious European arms would render, if they expelled the Crescent from Palestine, and established the Hebrew in his 253immemorial fatherland; but it is a hard thing for a man to set about accomplishing prophecy—the work is above his hand. M. Van de Velde mentions, however, almost with enthusiasm, the enterprise of a small American colony which, established at Bethlehem, professed an intention to prepare the soil, to “break up the fallow-ground,” in preparation for the return of the banished Israelites. The idea gratifies his eager mind; but the colonists, after all, turn out but indifferently, and the enterprise is found to fail.

The present questio vexata of these sacred localities occupies some space in the journals of M. Van de Velde. This controversy, originating in the real or alleged discoveries of M. de Saulcy, calls up one of the most remote and mysterious events ever brought under human discussion—the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim. The original idea, touching these guilty objects of the Divine wrath, wrapt in awe and mystery as their fate was, seems to have been, that the Dead Sea, itself the gloomiest and most appalling object in creation, had been called into existence by the same miracle which annihilated the condemned cities, and that its deadly waters swept every trace of them out of sight for ever. But modern travel has taken from the Dead Sea much of its mysterious desolation; it is found that sweet fountains spring, and luxuriant vegetation flourishes, within sight of its waters, and that itself bears no evident trace of its deadly qualities, but appears, as one and another of its visitors say, only a “splendid lake,” an inland sea, mirroring clear skies and picturesque mountains, sublime, but not terrible. Traces of the most frightful convulsions of nature surround it on every side; extinct volcanoes and tremendous chasms, mountains dislocated and shattered in pieces, and tracts of unparalleled desolation; but still it is impossible to regard the lake itself as the fatal object which former ideas held it to be. As the subject clears from the superstitious veneration of less informed times, a new theory is propounded. Near the end of the present Dead Sea, a peninsula strikes into the water, almost cutting off into a separate lake the southmost portion of the sea. This portion, beyond the promontory El-Lisan, is found to be extremely shallow, and in more than one spot fordable, presenting a striking contrast, in this particular, to the main body of the water, which reaches the depth of 1300 feet. This shallow end of the lake, guarded by its broad peninsula, Dr Robinson, the eminent American traveller, takes to be an inundated plain; in other words, the vale of Siddim, the ancient site of the condemned cities. According to the Scripture narrative, the soil of this fertile valley was “full of slime-pits,” a bituminous underground to the surface of tropical luxuriance; and Dr Robinson’s theory holds, that the fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah broke up the superficial soil, ignited the bitumen, and lowered the surface of the plain below the level of the lake, which immediately flooded over the sunken valley, and formed the shallow piece of water at the south end of the Dead Sea. A glance at the map will show how the form of the lake justifies this theory, in which many travellers, and among them Lieutenant Van de Velde, fully concur.

On the other hand, M. de Saulcy affirms positively to finding extensive ruins at a place called Kharbet Sdoum (ruins of Sodom), at the foot of Djebel Sdoum, or Mountain of Sodom; and on the edge of this submerged plain he finds also other ruins bearing the name of Sebaan, which he concludes to be Zeboim, and still others called by the Arabs Zouera, or Zuweirah, which he reckons Zoar. These consist of walls, of now and then a distinct building, and of masses of fallen stones, to such extent as to merit the term “stupendous ruins.” Here the reader, who can only compare testimony, is put completely at fault; for, as confidently as M. de Saulcy affirms his discovery of these ruins, does M. Van de Velde deny the existence of any such. No former traveller has lighted upon them; no after traveller has confirmed the story; but what shall we make of the distinct assertion of M. de Saulcy, with his little band of companions, who declared themselves to have twice visited and examined these extraordinary remains, 254and to be perfectly convinced of their authenticity? Limestone rocks, corrugated and channelled by winter torrents, and worn into the resemblance of layers of building, explains M. Van de Velde—stupendous ruins, veritable remains of the cities of the Pentapolis, says his adversary: both produce battalions of testimony—which is right?

In real locality, we apprehend, the controversy makes little difference, since both sides of the question mutually agree in choosing this southern end of the Asphaltic Lake for the position of the destroyed cities. M. De Saulcy places Zoar on the western side; Dr Robinson and M. Van de Velde, and all preceding travellers, settle its position on the eastern coast, upon the peninsula. The Frenchman finds his tangible memorials of Sodom, and the wonderful event which destroyed it, his large burned stones, and destroyed buildings, recognised by Arab tradition, on the still remaining soil; the American and the Netherlander cover these awful remnants of Almighty vengeance with the bitter waters wherein no life can be. The former proposition may admit of proof palpable to the senses, since “stupendous ruins” are not things to be ignored by an honest examination; but the waters of the lake, if they contain it, will not open to disclose their secret;—so all the advantages of proof are on M. de Saulcy’s side. As it is, however, the question does not seem to us a question for ordinary discussion, but simply one of comparative credibility of testimony—are there ruins, or are there not? Has there been glamour in M. de Saulcy’s eyes, or has obstinate scepticism obscured the vision of M. Van de Velde? The question is not one on which we are prepared to give a judgment. Our impetuous Gallic champion stands alone, defying the civilised Bedouin Criticism, as he defied the Ishmael of the desert; but an army of heavy artillery fights on the side espoused by M. Van de Velde. What shall we say?—in prospect of a magnificent duel pending between the head of the one party and the sole and indivisible representative of the other, only that our present author boldly throws himself into the discussion, flings his glove manfully in the face of the Frenchman, denies his premises, scouts his conclusions, and is thoroughly convinced in his own mind that not a vestige remains above ground of the submerged cities of the plain.

M. Van de Velde, who travels economically, without thinking it necessary to secure the attendance of sheikhs of half a dozen tribes, seems to meet with a very much less degree of annoyance and obstruction than is common to travellers in Palestine. We cannot fail to observe, in the midst of many complaints of the rapacity and perpetual exactions imposed by the tribes of the desert upon wandering pilgrims, that every traveller has at least one faithful Arab, who, if not entirely superior to baksheesh, does yet deport himself with exemplary conscientiousness, and gain the entire confidence and friendship of the party he conducts. A good omen this, for a race so completely beyond the rules of ordinary law. There are some cases, too, where, cast almost upon their charity, sick, exhausted, and undefended, with no greater retinue than two unwarlike servants and one Bedouin guide, M. Van de Velde meets with unexpected kindness and hospitality from these children of Ishmael, and in his experience the Bedouins seem to contrast rather favourably with the resident villagers through whose domains his former course had been. Notwithstanding, though the unobtrusive traveller, who trusts himself without a guard among them, may meet with less annoyance than the richly-equipped expedition, prodigal of piastres, one does not see how controversies, historical or geographical, touching this mysterious territory, can ever be rightly determined so long as the investigators are compelled to hurry from point to point, and are kept in terror of the least divergence from their projected course, lest an enemy pounce upon them in the wilds where no help is. A railway to the shores of the Dead Sea is scarcely to be feared or hoped for these few centuries, but there surely might be an expeditionary band, strong enough to disregard the wild inhabitants of this land, which piques and tantalises with imperfect revelations the curiosity of science. 255An expedition which should dare to take time, which should venture into deliberate and careful examinations, and which was sufficiently strong to overawe the lawless lords of the soil, might do much to settle the jars of opinion, and reveal to the general knowledge this terrible country, scarred and marked for ages by the chastising hand of God.

A minor difficulty in the way of reconciling one traveller’s experience with another’s, is the perpetual variation of proper names. Taken down as these must be from the guide of the moment, it is easy to account for the orthographical vicissitudes through which they pass; but it were surely well even to sacrifice a point and take our predecessor’s spelling instead of our own, rather than throw this mist of perplexity over the whole scene. Many a learned puzzle has come out of this peculiarity in the sacred records themselves, the shifting of names, and subtracting of syllables; and we are like, as it seems, to find the same difficulty continuing with us. But it is not necessary, surely, that every new traveller should set up an orthography of his own: with submission, it appears to us that accuracy of place is of much more importance than originality of name, and that he is to be the most commended who enables you at once, and without perplexity, to recognise the spot where, in his predecessor’s company, you have been before.

In taking leave of these pleasant volumes, we cannot help regretting once more that the sketches to which such frequent reference is made are not added to the text. Lieut. Van de Velde’s friend to whom his book is addressed, seems to have rather an unfair advantage over the public in this respect; and without detracting anything from the value of the pen-and-ink sketches, which are admirable of their kind, it is impossible not to feel a degree of injury, or to resist being provoked and tantalised by such a sentence as this—“If my short description of the vale of Shechem, with its mountains of Blessing and Curse, can in any way elucidate to you the narratives of Scripture, I shall be very glad. I hope my sketch will come in aid of my pen.”

And why, then, does not the sketch come in aid of the pen? The worshipful public who read his book claims to be the dearest of dear friends to an author, and suffers no such successful rivalry of its pretensions. We trust to see M. Van de Velde rectify this mistake in his second edition. A very animated book, full of life and motion, atmosphere and reality, he has added to our store—a good book, which the best of us may read “of Sundays,” but which the gayest of us will not find too dry for every day; and we will be glad to see Lieut. Van de Velde complete, by the addition of his sketches, so worthy a contribution to the little library of science, speculation, and adventure, which treats of the Holy Land.

[The beautiful Corinthian legend of Bellerophon is narrated by Homer in the well-known episode of Glaucus and Diomede, in the sixth book of the Iliad. In that episode the strong-lunged son of Tydeus meets in the fight a face that was new to him, and before engaging in battle desires to know the name of his noble adversary. The courteous request is courteously complied with; and it appears that Glaucus—for such is the champion’s name, though now serving in Priam’s army as a Lycian auxiliary—was by descent a Grecian, the grandson of the famous Bellerophon of Corinth, between whose family and that of Diomede a sacred bond of hospitality had existed. This discovery leads to an interchange of friendly tokens between the intending combatants; the weapons of war are sheathed, and a bright gleam of human kindness is thrown across the dark tempestuous cloud of international conflict.

The story of Bellerophon, as told in this passage of the most ancient Greek poet, is a remarkable instance of how popular legend, proceeding from the germ of some famous and striking fact, is gradually worked up into a form where the actual is altogether subordinated to the miraculous. In Homer there is not a single word said of the winged horse, which is the constant companion of Bellerophon’s exploits, in the current form of the legend afterwards revived, and which appears regularly on the coins of Corinth. The reason, also, of the hero’s fall, from the loftiest prosperity to the saddest humiliation, is only dimly indicated by the poet, when he says that Bellerophon, towards the close of his life, “was hated by all the gods,” and, “avoiding the path of men, ate his own heart” (ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων); but whether it was that Homer, knowing the sin of Bellerophon, with a delicate sense of propriety, refused to set it forth distinctly in the mouth of his grandson, or whether the simplicity of the oldest form of the legend knew nothing more than what Homer tells, certain it is that the ever-active Greek imagination could not content itself with the obscurity of the Homeric indication, and the moral that “pride must have a fall” was distinctly brought out in the later form of the myth. For the rest, the writer has taken the topographical notices in the following verses, not from his own conceit, but from the authority of Pausanias in his Corinthian antiquities.

It needs scarcely be added that the legend of Bellerophon—in ancient times equally the property of Corinth in Europe, and Lycia in Asia—has now become in a peculiar manner the possession of Great Britain by the labours of Sir Charles Fellowes, and the Xanthian Chamber of the British Museum.]

From the earliest records of what has been termed profane history, down to the present day, we have been accustomed to regard Europe as the centre of civilisation and of wealth. From Asia, Greece and Rome in early times, and the commerce of European nations more recently, exacted tribute and rich products. Two centuries ago the precious metals and tropical yield of South America and the West Indies excited the rapacity of adventurers from this and other countries; and towards the close of last century we had to recognise the germs of a great Anglo-Saxon power occupying the Atlantic shores and territory of North America, which we now see competing actively with us for a share in influencing the affairs of the world. Still both Asia and the American continent were regarded as merely the feeders of the commercial and political greatness of Europe. Africa was and remains comparatively an unknown continent, whilst the inhospitable regions of the north are shunned by all, save the hardy mariners engaged in the pursuit of the whale and the seal, the former for its industrial usefulness, and the latter as affording us articles of comfort and luxury. The extreme southern hemisphere had, indeed, been explored by Cook, Vancouver, Fourneaux, and others; and its clusters of islands were laid down in our charts, and some of them claimed as calling-stations for the shipping employed in our commerce with India, whilst others were appropriated for their valuable tropical productions. But beyond this the Southern Pacific and Antarctic Oceans were comparatively unknown and unvalued. Below the latitude of Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian Ocean, their waters were an unbroken solitude, save that occasionally a ship bearing the British flag might be seen steering for our penal settlement of Australia, there to deposit its living freight of criminal outcasts beyond reach of contact with the populations of the civilised world; and more recently with a few adventurous colonisers going out to cultivate its untrodden wilds, and, amidst privations and arduous toil, to wring from its soil the means of living, which they had been jostled out of on that of their own densely peopled fatherland.

A mighty change, however, has come over us—unlooked for and undreamt of—the issue of which the wisest can scarcely imagine for himself; for it is plainly not the unaided work of man which has brought about that change, but an overruling Providence, carrying out a preordained decree that one of the fairest portions of the globe shall be a solitude no longer. In most of the ordinary revolutions which have taken place in the world, human agency is directly traceable. We have witnessed in Europe the hardy tribes of the north over-running the fertile soils, and subjecting to their rule the degenerate populations, of the south. We have seen similar changes in Asia; and one of these is now progressing in Africa, the northern provinces of which are being subjected to the Gaul. Colonisation and emigration are rapidly peopling the western states of the northern continent of America. But to produce such a change in the condition of those far-distant countries, whose shores are washed by the Pacific Ocean, and which are comparatively inaccessible to the ordinary movements of migratory populations, whilst they held out little to invite conquest, an extraordinary stimulus was required. That stimulus has been lately afforded in abundant and overpowering measure. A popular outburst, excited by the love of territorial aggrandisement, which is inherent in the nature of the people of the United States, and which, indeed, is inseparable from the very character of their institutions, led to the seizure by them of a portion of the territory of Mexico on the shores of the North Pacific Ocean. Under ordinary circumstances the acquisition was almost valueless. By land it was well-nigh 269unapproachable. A wild and mountainous territory, occupied by various Indian tribes, intervened between California and the settled States of the Union. Commercially it was unimportant, and likely to remain so for years, if not for centuries, whilst, as an agricultural territory, it was inferior in fertility to those States. It had certainly the advantage of nearer proximity to India and China; but there was scarcely along any portion of the west coast of either the United States or South America sufficient population to render that advantage of value. But in 1848, only a few months after its acquisition by the model Republic, the world was startled with the news that gold had been discovered upon the Sacramento River, within a short distance from the port and bay of San Francisco; and further advices informed us that the deposits of that mineral extended over a territory five hundred miles in length by forty to fifty miles in width; and that, in fact, it promised to be inexhaustible in amount, as it was unrivalled in fineness. A population immediately began to flock to San Francisco by every possible route from the United States, from the west coast of South America, and from the islands of the Pacific. Even China was attracted by the flattering accounts promulgated of the richness of the mines, and began to pour forth its population towards the scene. The emigrating population of Great Britain swelled the tide; and, within twelve months of the first discovery of gold, we heard of nearly three hundred sail of shipping being assembled in San Francisco bay, deserted by their officers and crews, who had joined their cargoes of passengers, and run off to partake of the rich harvest provided for them. The sufferings and privations endured by some of the early adventurers—the crime, the outrage, and utter lawlessness, which spread over the entire territory—were recorded in vain. No warning was heeded. The passion for gain is one of the strongest in our nature. Men heard of fortunes being earned in a day; of the poorest becoming suddenly rich; of revelry and wild enjoyment ensuing after severe toil and privation; and the tide of adventurers flowed on with increased volume as every day added to the assurance that the attracting cause was a permanent one. It cannot be forgotten by the commercial people of this country how vast was the impulse given to the industry, and the agricultural, manufacturing, and maritime interests of the American Republic, by this state of things. Her people almost ceased to care about supplying Europe with farm products. The wealthy settlers in her golden territory could now afford to consume what had formerly been exported as a disposable surplus. Their monetary circulation was being largely expanded; and to a corresponding extent they were enabled to extend their commercial operations to every country. Their shipping, having earned large freights by the transport of passengers from the Atlantic ports round Cape Horn to California, could afford to make the run across the Pacific in ballast to India and China, whence they competed with us in homeward freights on terms almost ruinous to the British shipowner. And although they became, and have since continued to be, larger consumers than formerly of our products of every kind, it is very questionable whether, in the long run, this increased consumption would have compensated us as a nation for the advantages which America had obtained over us, through the possession of this new territory, with its mineral riches, in carrying on the traffic between our eastern possessions and China and the various markets of Europe.

The route westward, by the North Pacific to the Indian Ocean, was thus for the first time established as a great maritime highway by the enterprising mercantile community of the United States. We had ourselves long previously used the route via Cape Horn and the South Pacific in our trade with Chili, Peru, and other countries on the west coast of South America. It was reserved for us for the first time to open out for the commerce of the world an eastern route from the Atlantic and from Europe across the South Pacific Ocean; in fact, 270to bring into practical use the voyages of Cook, Vancouver, and other circumnavigators of the globe, whose achievements during the past century had hitherto been regarded as interesting only in a geographical point of view. Here, again, it was an all-wise Providence which directed our path. On the 6th May 1851, it was first announced that gold had been discovered in our convict settlement of New South Wales. The news spread like wildfire throughout the colony; and in a very short space of time there were upwards of four thousand “diggers” at Ophir, near Bathurst, where the discovery was first made, whose success fully equalled that of the early adventurers at the Californian mines. Additional gold-fields were found shortly afterwards both in New South Wales and the province of Victoria; and before the end of July the arrivals of gold at Sydney, Geelong, and Melbourne were sufficiently abundant to create a perfect revolution in the labour market, not only in those towns, but in the agricultural districts of the entire colony of Australia. The ordinary pursuits of the population were everywhere abandoned. Men of all classes, capable of wielding a pick or a spade, and many to whom such instruments had been previously unknown, were seen abandoning their farms, their shops, or their counting-houses, to swell the throng which rushed forth from every quarter to “prospect” for gold in the gullies and creeks whose appearance or geological formation promised a yield of the precious metal. At the first announcement of so startling a discovery, a large portion of the public in this country were indisposed to credit it. Would-be-wise people shook their heads, and hinted that a mania had seized upon the Australian colonists, which in its issue must be productive of their utter ruin. We had black pictures painted of the effect of a neglected agriculture; and some wiser people than their fellows—journalists and statisticians—indulged in laboured arguments to show that picking up “nuggets” or dust must in a very short period become an unprofitable avocation, and absorb more labour than would yield a paying return, in comparison with the ordinary pursuits of industry. But each fresh arrival from the colony showed the fallacy of these anticipations and prophecies. Gold continued to be picked up in abundance, sufficient to remunerate every person engaged in its search, although the number of the searchers had been multiplied twenty-fold; and a vast emigration began to flow from this and other countries towards the new El Dorado. In 1851—the year when the discovery was first made—there were despatched from the United Kingdom alone 272 ships, with an aggregate tonnage of 145,164 tons, having on board 21,532 passengers. In 1852, the number of ships despatched was 568, with an aggregate tonnage of 335,717 tons, having on board 87,881 passengers. When using this term, by the by, it ought to be borne in mind that adult passengers are meant, children of tender years being counted as nothing, whilst of young persons under fourteen years of age, two are counted as a passenger. The emigration of 1852 would thus be at least a hundred thousand souls. During the past year the number of ships despatched was 1201, with an aggregate tonnage of 553,088 tons, being an increase on the year of 633 vessels and 217,371 tons over the amount of 1852. We have not before us accurate data for determining the precise number of passengers taken out by them; but it would certainly be equal to that of the corresponding period of the previous year. Great Britain, however, was not the only country which was adding to the population of Australia. The United States of America were sending us practised gold-diggers from California, which shortly began to be regarded as affording a less profitable field for their labour. Germany had begun to pour forth her emigrant classes to the colony; and even China was joining in the movement. In the summary of the Melbourne Argus, written for the mail of the 25th March, we find the following statement: “In the course of the last month several separate ship-loads of Chinese have landed on our shores.... Numbers 271of these people, strangers as they are to our customs and religion, have been sought for and engaged at good wages by employers, with whom they can only communicate by signs. They have shown themselves, on the whole, one of the most inoffensive races of the motley group who seek our golden land; and a colony of them, that have been for some time established at the diggings, are remarkable for the quietness of their demeanour, and the propriety of their behaviour.” The growth of the colony is, however, best shown by comparing the aggregate number of the population now, with what it was at the period when gold was first discovered. In the commencement of 1851, it was ascertained that the province of Victoria, which contains the most productive mines, was 77,360. The same journal from which we have quoted estimates it to be now 250,000; and adds, that it is being increased by the arrival of about 1000 immigrants per week. It is doubtful whether the other provinces—New South Wales and South and West Australia—are progressing at the same rate. The “diggers” are a migratory race. The report of a new “find” attracts them from all directions. In February last, the Tarrengower gold-field was opened out, and discovered to be most productive; and the following is a description of the state of things which followed, from one who had visited the locality: “In leaving Bendigo, the comparatively deserted state of the diggings along Kangaroo Flat, in Adelaide Gully, and the Robinson Crusoe, is very apparent. The vast extent of the yellow mounds, where so much bustle and activity formerly prevailed, is now in many cases unenlivened by the presence even of a solitary digger. The want of water, in the first instance, but chiefly the attractions of Tarrengower, have almost depopulated this portion of the Bendigo. Many stores have been removed, and a large number are closed up for the present; yet there is a vitality about the place which shows that the glory has not altogether departed. Some business is being done, and those who still remain have infinite faith in the recuperative energies of Bendigo. ‘When the winter sets in,’ they say, ‘we shall have the diggers back.’” Similar migrations are continually occurring; and hence it is most difficult to arrive at the actual population of any particular province or district. It is most probable, indeed, that the numbers of souls in the entire colony are considerably understated. This, we think, will be apparent when we come to examine the consuming powers of Australia, as tested by its imports. From a return, moved for in the House of Commons by Mr Archibald Hastie, and ordered to be printed on the 1st of May last, the following were the exports from the United Kingdom to the colony in each of the three years ending the 5th January 1854:—

There is certainly evidence here, either of a most wasteful consumption, or of the existence of a population greater than it is generally supposed to be. But this return does not convey the full extent of that consumption. From what appears to be a carefully compiled statement in the Melbourne Argus of the 25th of March last, the imports into the province of Victoria alone, in 1853, amounted to the enormous sum of £15,842,637, received from the following countries:—

If the same proportionate amount has been taken by the other provinces from colonial and foreign markets, the total imports for the year would reach the vast amount of twenty-three millions sterling!

It is certainly true that, with respect to many articles, these imports have been in excess of the requirements of the colony. Its markets have been drugged with Manchester goods, with hardware, and slops, or “haberdashery,” as our parliamentary returns rather absurdly call hats, 272shoes, boots, ready-made clothing, &c. Serious losses will have to be encountered by those parties who are unable to hold over their consignments, and in part from the want of storage-room. But this state of things is merely temporary, and applies to articles which are not strictly necessaries. The arrival of the overland mail, with dates to the end of May, brings us the assurance that business is improving, as indeed might have been expected in a country whose population increases at the rate of a thousand persons a week, each of whom is, on landing upon its shores, placed at once in possession of an income never previously enjoyed. We have the material fact, too, before us, establishing the capability of the Australian colonist to consume largely the products of foreign industry, that during the past year the province of Victoria exported to the amount of £11,061,543, of which £8,644,529 was gold, and £1,651,543 was wool. The difference between the amount of imports and exports may be accounted for without concluding that the population has been running itself into debt beyond their means of paying it with tolerable promptitude. We may reasonably hope, too, that one of the causes of such excessive importations as those of last year will shortly be removed. We have had thus far no efficient and regular mail communication with the colony. Up to the 20th of July, our latest advices from Melbourne were dated the 25th of March; and it was to American enterprise that we were indebted for intelligence up to May 11, brought by the steamer “Golden Age” to Panama, and thence by the West India Company’s boats to Southampton. Close upon four months had thus elapsed, during which our merchants had been operating in the dark, making shipments to a colony the consuming powers of which had not been fairly tested, and which might, for anything we knew, have supplied its wants from the nearer markets of India and China, or taken a portion of the surplus shipments to California. It is clear that such has been the case. We have shown above, that of the total imports into Victoria in 1853, £5,036,311 were derived from “other British colonies,” and £1,668,606 from the United States of America. Our East Indian markets, no doubt, supplied the former amount, and the bulk of the latter crossed the Pacific from California. On the 27th July we had a regular mail by the overland route, via India and the Mediterranean, bringing advices up to the 29th May, which confirmed those brought by the “Golden Age.” It is clear that a country, which takes from the United Kingdom upwards of fourteen millions sterling per annum, ought to have permanently established for it a postal communication as rapid as possible. It is unreasonable and suicidal to torture a great mercantile nation with a system, or arrangements, which leave us for four months consecutively without advices of the wants of one of our most valuable customers, and exchange of sentiments with nearly half a million of our own fellow-countrymen. Before concluding our remarks, we shall endeavour to point out how such improved postal communication can be best established.

Returning to the immediate question of the increase of population in Australia, and its probable future rate, we may state, unhesitatingly, that it must be vastly beyond what is generally anticipated. In fact, the increase is self-creative—“vires acquirit eundo.” Every newly-arrived immigrant, who purchases land from the colonial government, and every digger who pays for a gold license, becomes, in so doing, an importer of labour. Writing on the 25th of March last, The Melbourne Argus says:—

“The following is a statement of the arrivals and departures of passengers by sea since our last summary:—

273“In the same number of weeks previously, as stated in our last summary, the increase was 6281. The immigration is, therefore, again on the increase. It is now proceeding at the rate of about 1000 per week; but we ought not to omit mentioning, that a very large increase over this may be speedily expected. We lately stated, on the authority of public documents, that our land-fund available for promoting emigration from the United Kingdom amounted in the last quarter to upwards of £250,000, and if that rate is maintained during the present year, at the cost of £6000 per ship, as estimated by the Land and Emigration Commissioners, and an average of little more than 400 persons to each ship, there will be a fund sufficient to convey free to these shores no less than 70,000 souls in one year. This, of course, is altogether independent of the emigration of persons paying their own passages, which, we have noticed, always increases with an increased Government emigration. Within the last few weeks we have been invaded by what seems likely to be the advanced guard of a large army of Chinese. Several ships have arrived crowded with Chinese passengers, and many more are reported to be on their way. The same spirit of enterprise is doubtless gradually extending itself amongst the people of other countries; and the natural effects will be exhibited in the inflow of a vast wave of population, to a colony which affords such a field to the labouring man as is presented in no other country upon earth.”

It may appear singular that there should be so large a number of departures as 4483 to set against 12,469 arrivals. We have already remarked, however, that the gold-diggers are migratory in their habits. Many of them, who have amassed a few thousand pounds, return to their own countries to settle. The state of society in Australia is not such at present as to attach parties to the colony. There is unfortunately there a want of home comforts. The wealth in the colony, suddenly acquired, is in the hands of people unprepared, by education or early pursuits, for spending it in a sensible manner, or investing it profitably. Many are coming thence only for a season, as visitors to their native land, or to return with relatives and friends; and some are going away in quest of gold, reported to exist, in more than Australian abundance, elsewhere. For example, there has been recently a rumour of the Peruvian mines reassuming their original fertility; and we observe, in recent Australian papers, announcements of numerous ships about to sail with passengers for Callao, on the west coast of South America, in the neighbourhood of which port it is said that gold has been recently discovered in large quantities. The real gold, however, will most assuredly be Peruvian guano, with which such ships will load for this country and the United States. Such re-emigration is natural amongst a population like that of Australia, and will continue for a while. But the arrivals in the colony are becoming more and more composed of the class likely to be settlers. The Germans have been lately extensive purchasers of land, and are habitués in the colony. A report of a Hamburg society gives the following as the German population in 1852:—

The German emigration to Australia last year will have greatly swelled these numbers; and the description of emigrants from that country may be estimated from the fact that, of nearly 6000 persons who applied to the Berlin Emigration Society in 1852 for advice and assistance, 4444 possessed property amounting in the whole to 977,635 dollars, or, upon an average, 218 dollars (£32, 14s.) per head.^[12] We have also yet to experience the effect which will be produced by remittances home by emigrants for the purpose of enabling their friends to join them in the colony. The impetus given to the efflux of population from Ireland by such remittances was strikingly shown by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners in their Report of last year. The remittances from the United States, as ascertained through leading mercantile and 274banking firms, were as follows in the years mentioned:—

We observe at present that several of the leading emigration firms in London and Liverpool are making arrangements in Australia for the purpose of enabling settlers to pay the passage of their friends out to the colony.

Independently of the attractions offered by the gold-fields, of remittances from friends in Australia, or of Government aid, there is abundant certainty that emigration to that colony must increase very rapidly. In fact, scarcity of shipping is the only bar to it which is likely to be felt. There is a positive want of labour in Australia, which mocks at the childish efforts of such parliamentary committees as that of which Mr John O’Connell was recently the chairman, to prevent its supply. Notwithstanding its vast agricultural resources, the demand for their development created by a rapidly augmenting population, and the ample, and, in fact, extravagant remuneration afforded in the colony for every description of industry, the entire world, whose attention has been for the last two years attracted by its display of wealth, and which is assured of the genuine and permanent character of its claims to notice, appears unable to supply labour in sufficient abundance. Whether we turn to its imports or its exports, furnished us in the valuable report moved for by Mr Hastie, the great want of labour forces itself upon us. We shall take at random a few of the articles exported from Great Britain to the colony during the past three years:—

The last two items certainly would not occupy a place in the list of our exports to Australia if that fine agricultural country had even a moderate supply of labour. The anomaly is monstrous that butter and cheese, soap and candles, should be wanting in a country whose live stock are so abundant that they have actually to be boiled down for their tallow and hides! Our imports from Australia, however, exhibit most strongly its deficient supply of labour. We select a few items:—

The above articles the colony can supply to almost any extent; yet it will be observed that their export is falling off every year. Its mines of copper, especially, are amongst the richest in the world; yet they are comparatively unworked for the want of hands, whilst the world holds so many human beings who would gladly toil for one-fourth of the remuneration which Australia could so well afford them. To the people of Great Britain it is a very material object that the agricultural and mineral resources of the colony should be more largely developed than at present; for if, almost exclusively by the produce of her gold-fields, her population of little, if at all, over half a million souls can afford to import our productions to the amount of above fourteen millions sterling per annum, what may be expected when it becomes enabled to export freely the raw material, the agricultural products, and the valuable minerals—copper, tin, &c.—which its soil will yield to an extent almost beyond the power of calculation?

We have already stated that the increase of the population of Australia is self-creative; and we can very briefly show how that principle is likely to operate. We have a large amount of tonnage at present employed in the passenger trade from Great Britain to that colony; but we have not as yet sufficient homeward freight to employ one-fourth of that tonnage. Since the discovery of the gold-fields the ordinary agricultural and other pursuits of the colonists have been neglected; and, as we might have expected, the exports of bulky raw materials and produce, which constitute freight, have diminished in quantity. Hence our emigrant ships, except in the case of those of the established lines from Liverpool and London, which now return direct from that colony, have had to go in ballast to the Eastern Seas, or to the guano islands of Peru, to seek cargoes. Where such a course has to be pursued, the passage-money outwards must range high—far above the means of the most valuable emigrants, who are agricultural labourers, practical miners, and artisans. But this state of things cannot continue to exist long. The gold-fields are sufficiently tempting, no doubt; yet there are blanks there as well as prizes. The disappointed must resort to agricultural and other walks of industry. The flocks and herds of the squatters in the bush are increasing at a most rapid rate—far beyond the consumptive demand of the colony—and the supplies for export of hides, tallow, oil, and wool must very largely increase. Of the latter most important raw material the following were the shipments to this country during the past three years:—

In bales the total exports of last year were 153,000, of an average of about 300 lb. weight each. This article alone would afford return cargoes for from thirty to forty thousand tons of shipping. The yield both of wool and tallow must increase enormously in a few years; and when an ample supply of homeward freight is afforded, our emigration houses will 276be enabled to reduce considerably the outward passage-money for emigrants to the colony, and thus add to the numbers of its population.

But we cannot regard the discoveries which have been made in the countries of the Pacific as merely tending to give an impulse to our commerce, and to afford increased employment to our shipping and to industry at home. We must regard them in a much more extended light. The important change which is taking place may fairly be termed the opening out of a new quarter of the globe, rich beyond measure in all the products which are valuable and useful to man, and the establishment, in its centre, of an Anglo-Saxon empire, whose future destiny and greatness it is almost impossible to predict rightly. A glance at the position of Australia will be sufficient to show its great commercial importance. To the north-westward it has the fertile islands of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Ceylon, with the vast continent containing China and Hindostan. The extreme portions of these are at less than half the distance which lies between them and Great Britain. From Melbourne to Madras is little more than 5700 miles, whilst the nearer islands in the Indian Ocean are only distant from 3000 to 3500 miles. From Melbourne to any portion of the west coast of North and South America the distance, by the eastward Pacific route, is 8000 miles, or little over that from Great Britain to Cape Horn. It is thus in closer proximity than the mother country to San Francisco, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, and La Plata. There can no want occur of any of the products of the tropics, at all events, to a country occupying a central position as regards such markets as we have named, rich in all that conduces to the comfort and the luxuries of life; whilst of those products which are raised in the temperate zone, Australia has soils of her own capable of providing her with food in abundance, and raw materials amply sufficient to pay for all that she will require to import, without drawing upon her vast stores of the precious metals. These must rapidly become available to create for her population a capital for the purposes of commerce, a mercantile marine, railways, and other improved communications, well-built towns, substantial public works, and the usual accompaniments enjoyed by settled and prosperous communities. There can be no doubt that the absence of these are amongst the main causes which retard emigration to the colony of families belonging to the middle and superior classes, and the absence there so generally regretted of what may be called a “home circle.” Such a want keeps back the influx of a female population, especially of the class required to make a home comfortable; but it will be supplied in time, and, in fact, is being rapidly supplied now. Not much more than six months ago, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, and the seat of the government of the colony, was in a most deplorable state, and without anything like the accommodation required for its population or its commerce. Stores and warehouses there were almost none; and we heard, by every arrival, of merchandise being sacrificed on this account. But more recent advices report that—

“Melbourne is branching out upon every side. Townships spring up in localities where a short time ago there was not a single dwelling of any description; houses seem, in fact, to swarm like mushrooms from the ground in a single night. A little more than twelve months since, and North Melbourne was merely the site of a few scattered tents; it now contains a population of several thousands, with comfortable homes, shops, hotels, and schools to meet the wants of its inhabitants. The suburbs, that are being formed in the opposite direction, offer a still stronger proof of the growth of a taste that has always been peculiarly English, and one that will do more than anything else to place the prosperity of this colony upon a secure foundation—namely, a desire for home comfort. In former times the pursuit of money was the whole, the engrossing passion of the community; so long as this object was attained, the feverish seeker cast not a thought upon the manner in which he lived; he appeared to have an utter disregard of the comforts of home. If he happened to have a run of luck, and was successful, what benefit did he reap from his success! He would run riot for a time, and spend the hard earnings of a month in the dearly-bought pleasure of a few hours’ debauchery. The 277principal reason for this, next to our abominable land-system, was, that the colony could not offer the swarming mass of new-comers any domestic comforts. Now, however, the case is becoming far different: at Richmond, Prahran, St Kilda, and Brighton, the passer-by can gaze everywhere with pleasure upon pretty cottages enclosed in their own little gardens, cheerful, trim-built English-looking villas, and some dwelling-houses that may fairly lay claim to the high-sounding appellation of mansions. Each of these suburbs, hemming Melbourne in on every side, constitutes a town of some size; and we have no doubt that, in a very short space of time, they will form part of Melbourne itself, much in the same manner that Chelsea and Putney do of London; indeed, St Kilda, Windsor, and Prahran are already connected by a line of houses almost the whole of the way with the town.”

A similar state of progressive improvement exists at Sydney, Geelong, Adelaide, and other towns. The population in them is becoming a more settled one; business goes on in more regular channels, and domestic comforts are more studied. Substantial stores for merchandise are also rising up on every side; and importers are now enabled to hold back their goods for a more profitable market than the previous system of selling them on landing, whatever might be the state of the demand, would admit of.

The colony, too, is assuming more and more the character, which it is destined to possess, of an important mercantile community; and its commercial firms are actively preparing for extensive transactions with the rich countries with which they have communication in every direction. The first step towards forwarding such object has naturally been to connect with each other the various ports along the coast, and the towns on the principal rivers; and accordingly we find established lines of steamers running from Sydney to the leading ports in the other provinces, and to the interior at every point where river navigation is practicable, and a working community and trade exist. The same accommodation is provided from Melbourne, Geelong, and Adelaide, to other ports and towns. Several lines of sailing packets also offer themselves to the public between the principal ports. In fact, a large coasting-trade is carried on, both in passengers and merchandise, the route by sea being preferred to travelling by land over badly-formed, and frequently unsafe, roads. In the first instance, some difficulty existed in procuring vessels, especially for the navigation of the rivers, where a light draught of water was necessary, as such vessels could not be trusted to make the voyage out from Europe or America. They are now, however, being gradually supplied by builders in the colony. A somewhat larger class of vessels is regularly employed in the trade between New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land, and the government settlement in West Australia, with a few for San Francisco, Callao, Manilla, and the near East Indian ports. The enterprise of the mercantile community in the colony is being gradually drawn towards this trade; and shipping of the class suitable for it is in active demand, both for purchase and charter. Attention is also being re-directed to the staple business of the colony—the export of its wool, tallow, hides, &c., which will be more cultivated as the fever for dealing in gold abates. At present, indeed, gold, as an article of merchandise, scarcely yields a profit, so numerous are the buyers of it, competing with each other, belonging to the Jewish persuasion. Employment for capital must be sought for in another direction, and it is to be hoped a legitimate one, otherwise the large sums now lying idle in the colony may be squandered in rash speculations. At the close of the last quarter, the Bank of Australia held deposits, not bearing interest, to the amount of £1,998,730 sterling; the Bank of Australasia held at the same period £2,358,390; the Victoria Branch of the Bank of New South Wales held £760,731; the Bank of Victoria, £988,244; and the London Chartered Bank of Australia £133,200, making an aggregate of deposits, not bearing interest, of £6,239,297 sterling. As might have been expected, these establishments are dividing amongst their shareholders, forty, fifteen, and twenty per cent respectively. The last mentioned has only been established nine 278months, and as yet has made no dividend. A large portion of this money must be employed either in commerce or in improvements, as the colonists begin to see their way more clearly. It can never be allowed to lie thus unproductively; yet from the habits of the diggers, and their want of opportunities for investment, there must always be a large amount at their credit in the banks.

The increased employment given by Australia to the shipping of all nations is not, perhaps, sufficiently estimated by the public, and certainly goes far to account for the prosperity of the British shipowner, and for the high rates of freight prevailing throughout the world. From the 20th of January last to the 23d of March, the number of vessels cleared out from the port of Melbourne, exclusive of coasters and colonial traders, were 198, and the number of entries inwards 163, making 261 ships arriving and departing in the short period of sixty days. The bulk of these were large ships, of from 500 to 1000 tons, with some even of more than that tonnage. The arrivals and departures from Sydney, Geelong, and Adelaide would no doubt be greater in number, although of a less size than those of Melbourne. It is probably not unfair to estimate the entire number of arrivals and departures in the colony at 400 ships; and taking the tonnage at the low average of 400 tons each ship, we have the quantity employed in the two months, 160,000 tons, or 960,000 tons per annum, by this noble colony.

We must not, however, confine ourselves to Australia, although we might be excused for dwelling upon it as our own possession. It is a portion, indeed, and the most important one, as being the centre, and probably the seat, of the great Pacific empire which is to be; but still it is only a portion. We have a young and enterprising competitor for sway in the southern hemisphere, and one who is even now making vast efforts to assert that sway; a competitor who regards lightly the geographical formation of the globe itself, if it offers a barrier to his ambition. The acquisition, by the United States, of the territory of California, with its great mineral resources, has given their people a footing in the Pacific, and opened out for them a trade not only with the fertile countries of South America, but also with Australia itself. They outstrip us in their knowledge of the wants of those countries, and in the ample provision which they have been making for their profitable supply. Nay, they have even been enabled to bring their own gold-fields, notwithstanding geographical impediments, actually nearer to Great Britain than its own gold-yielding colony. On the first discovery of the mineral riches of California, it became an object with the United States people to bring to their Atlantic ports, as expeditiously as possible, return remittances in gold for the large shipments of provisions, merchandise, and necessaries, sent by them round Cape Horn for the increasing population of California engaged in mining operations, and by whom agricultural and other pursuits were almost entirely neglected. In the first instance this was endeavoured to be effected by the employment of a line of steamers to make the passage round Cape Horn to New Orleans, whence mails and specie were conveyed by another line of steamers to New York. But our quick-sighted and energetic brethren soon discovered that this natural route was too long for their purposes. The time occupied by the voyage round the South American continent could be saved, if the means could be found of crossing the Isthmus of Panama, which, from Panama on the Pacific side, to Chagres, or Navy Bay, on the Atlantic, was only fifty miles in width; and notwithstanding the passage over the isthmus was at first a difficult and even an unhealthy one, it was adopted; and the mails and specie, having been transported across from Panama to Chagres, were taken on to New York via Jamaica, by the United States Mail Steam-ship Company. By the adoption of this route, the distance from San Francisco to New York was reduced to 5450 miles, of which 2100 miles was accomplished by steaming on the Atlantic, 3300 miles on the Pacific, and 50 miles by overland conveyance across the isthmus, and the time reduced to about three weeks. In September last, we find from an article in the New York 279Merchant’s Magazine, republished in the Sydney Herald of February 23d, that the following was the provision made by the United States for their traffic with California and the countries of the west coast of South America:—

“Of the American steamers sailing between New York and the West Indies, one of the most important communications between the former port and Havanna is established by the United States Steam-ship Company. By virtue of the law of Congress, contracting for carrying the mails, the steamers of this company are commanded by officers of the United States navy. Of the steamers of this line plying between New York and New Orleans, embracing the alternate voyages of those ships, the aggregate tonnage is 4800. The steam-ship ‘United States,’ in her trips from New York to Aspinwall, touches at Kingston, Jamaica. The Pacific Mail Steam-ship Company, which, in connection with the United States Mail Steam-ship Company, carries the American mails to California and Oregon, was established in 1848. It numbers at present fourteen steamers, built at New York, with an aggregate of 15,536 tons.

“In the transportation of the mails, the United States Mail Steam-ship Company on the Atlantic side connects with the Pacific Company. This line, established in 1848 by Mr Law of New York, comprises nine ships now on the service, with one recently launched, and not yet placed on the line. They register in the aggregate 19,600 tons. The steamers of this line are despatched from New York and New Orleans for Aspinwall twice a month.

“The Nicaragua Accessory Transit Company was established in 1850, by Mr Vanderbilt, of New York, and he receives twenty per cent of the profits of the company. This line, forming a communication between New York and San Juan del Norte on the Atlantic, and between San Juan del Sud and San Francisco on the Pacific, is composed of ten steamers, with an aggregate of 18,000 tons. Of these, two sail from New York twice a month for San Juan del Norte, and five are plying on the Pacific side.

“The New York and San Francisco Steam-ship Company comprises four steamers, with an aggregate of 7400 tons; the ‘United States,’ 1500 tons; and another, the ‘Winfield Scott,’ 2100 tons; and the ‘Cortes,’ 1500 tons, plying between Panama and San Francisco. They are equally divided upon the Pacific and the Atlantic sides. All of these vessels were built in New York.

“The Empire City Line was established in 1848, and is composed of three steamers, of an aggregate of 6800 tons. The ‘Empire City’ and the ‘Crescent City’ were the pioneers of this line, and were two of the first steamers engaged in the California trade.

“From the foregoing estimate of the California steam-ships in connection with the port of New York, it will be seen that the number of steamers engaged in that trade is forty-one, including four ships of Law’s Line, which were formerly engaged in the California trade, but which now run between New York, New Orleans, and Havanna—viz., the ‘Empire City,’ ‘Crescent City,’ ‘Cherokee,’ and ‘Falcon.’ The aggregate tonnage of these forty-one ships is 67,336. But this is not all. There are ten American steamers plying between San Francisco and Stockton; there are ten also plying between San Francisco and Sacramento. The latter are for the most part of a larger size than those on the San Joaquin river, and make the trip of a hundred and twenty miles in from seven to eight hours. In the elegance of their accommodations, and the luxuries of their larders, they might compare favourably with any passenger vessels in the world. There are ten other steamers plying from Sacramento to different places above that city. One year ago, there was but one steamboat in Oregon, the ‘Columbia;’ now there are eleven steamboats of different kinds running in the Columbia and Willamette rivers, not including the Pacific steamers,’Sea Gull’ and ‘Columbia,’ running between Oregon and California. At this rate of progress the United States will soon be mistress of the Pacific. American steam-ship lines will, in a few years, be running from San Francisco to Australia, China, and the East Indies.”

There can be little doubt of the truth of one of the prophecies with which our extract concludes, that American steam-ship lines “will, in a few years, be running from San Francisco to Australia, China, and the East Indies;” but what a great future for Australia does this suggest! There must spring up a vast trade between her population and the entire Pacific seaboard of South America. When her agriculture is more fully developed, it is not at all doubtful that, whilst supplying even California with breadstuffs, &c., she may also supply the west coast of South America with the products of the temperate zone, and with the copper and other minerals abounding 280in her soil. We doubt, however, the truth of the prophecy that the United States is likely to be soon “the mistress of the Pacific;” to prevent, in fact, the trade between Australia, China, the East Indies, &c., and San Francisco, being carried on by Australian enterprise, aided by British capital. Fortunately the same enterprise, aided by the capital of this country, might be so directed as to confer a vast boon upon Great Britain herself. One of the leading sources of her present influence in the Pacific is evidently considered by the writer, from whom we have quoted above, to be the adoption by America of the short route to the Pacific via Panama. That route, however, is equally as available to the commerce of Great Britain and Australia as it is to that of the United States; and the fact leads us to the consideration of one of the greatest wants of Australia, which has very materially retarded its progress, whilst it has also been severely felt by the mercantile community of this country—viz., the want of a regular, frequent, and expeditious mail communication between Great Britain and her southern colonial empire. We have already stated that during the past spring serious commercial losses have been occasioned by the want in question, no Government mail having been received in this country from Australia during a period of four months, up to the 27th July last, whilst we have been exporting actually at random. The colony and this country have been mocked by postal arrangements, proposed, but never efficiently carried out. The “Peninsular and Oriental Company” have been subsidised for the purpose of conveying mails once a month; but their efforts have been a failure. Not once in three times have we had a mail without a mistake occurring at some point of the route. Sometimes the steamers employed from Australia have arrived at Singapore or Point de Galle a day or two after the steamers for England have started. Occasionally a few letters have come, whilst the newspapers, containing the most important news for the public—shipping and market intelligence—have been left behind. A while ago, we heard of the “Chusan” steamer arriving at Sydney a day or two earlier than her previous performances led her to be expected; and it was with difficulty that the colonists were enabled to induce her commander to stay above twelve hours to enable a mail for Great Britain to be made up. Any one who has read the excellent digests of Australian news contained in the Melbourne Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald, sent by every Government mail, may imagine that some time is required for writing them, irrespective of printing. The General Screw Steam Company also attempted the carrying of the mails, and subsequently the Australian Royal Mail Steam Company, both subsidised by Government, made the same attempt. They failed in the performance of their engagements. The latter had contracted to perform the voyage from England to Sydney in 64 days, and homewards in 68 days. The “Chusan” was 79 days on the passage from England to Sydney; the “Formosa” 76 days; the “Cleopatra” 120 days. In fact, the Company’s ships were laughed at by ordinary sailing vessels. Then sailing vessels were tried; and we were told that mails were to be forwarded by this or that “clipper,” the Post-Office guaranteeing its sailing on a particular day. But first-rate ships would not accept the terms offered; and accordingly, we had continual instances of those who had undertaken the work failing in its performance. There has hitherto been no certainty as to the mail communication between this country and the colony. We never could tell, within two or three months, at what date we might expect to receive the reply to a letter to Australia, or when one from Great Britain would arrive out in the colony. The merchant who had shipped, or made advances upon goods, had no certainty as to the time when he must make arrangements to meet the demands upon him out of his own resources. The want of certainty imparted an additional amount of hazard to the trade between the two countries. But this is not all the evil resulting from inadequate postal communication. It has tended very greatly, combined with bad post-office management in the colony, to prevent emigration. People accustomed to 281daily intercourse with their friends are unwilling to embark for a country from which they can rarely assure them of their safe arrival, or inform them as to how the world goes with them, in less than eight or nine months. A brother, a sister, or a friend, with whom we can correspond, is not as one lost to us. We do not regard them as quite beyond our social circle. But an emigrant to Australia has thus far been practically rendered an outcast. We may hear of him, or her, if fortune smiles, or dire adversity occurs; but the ordinary kindliness of brotherhood, or sisterhood, becomes neglected when the means of epistolary intercourse are denied. The rudest amongst us feel this as a bar to adventuring into a new country. The emigrant would be glad to communicate the tidings of his good or evil lot to sympathising friends at home; and there are few who do not know with what delight even the merest scrap of home news is received by those who are separated by far less than half the circumference of the globe from that home. What would not any Australian digger give at the present moment if he could hear his parent’s clock tick in its old familiar place? What would any parent at home not give for a glimpse of the present features of a child now located at the antipodes?

It is humiliating to us as Britons, to contrast the niggardly conduct of our own Post-Office authorities, and of the Colonial Office, with that which we have already shown was adopted by the Government of the United States towards the population of its new territory of California. Unfortunately, we are governed in this country upon “economical” principles. The spirit of the trader is carried into every department of the public service. When we ask for any comprehensive and perfect scheme of improvement, we are mocked by some petty expedient, because every successive administration, and every public official, are ambitious of doing their work more cheaply than their predecessors. This is especially the case with respect to the postal arrangements of the country. When an extension or an improvement of the system is suggested, the first question asked is not, “Is it wanted?” but, “Will it pay?” Our American brethren have always dealt with the business of their post-office in a different spirit. They felt that those who are maintaining the commercial greatness of the country by their toil in California are worthy of being enabled to communicate cheaply with their friends at home. Our own postal authorities, however, appear disposed to treat that colony, which is similarly promoting the commerce of Great Britain, rather as an unreasonably intruding suppliant than an important community asking for what is fairly due to them. Our colonists feel deeply the injustice of their position, that, whilst a portion of the colonial revenue is contributed to the Home Government, to be expended in securing steam facilities for their mails, the object for which they are paying is not accomplished.

We feel perfectly assured that we never shall have an effective postal communication with Australia, until we cease to regard that important colony as a mere calling-station for our East Indian mails. Its increasing commerce with the mother country demands that it should have a mail service distinctly its own, conducted with no other view than to promote the convenience of that commerce, and of the people of the colony. How then is this to be provided most economically, and, at the same time, most effectively? The latter is the main question. We ought scarcely to think about cost in the effort to improve the postal facilities of a possession which, we have seen, took from us last year upwards of fourteen millions sterling of British produce and manufactures. Past experience has, we think, shown sufficiently that the object in view can never be obtained by steaming round the Cape of Good Hope. The shortest passages as yet attained by that route were performed by the “Golden Age” in 61 days, and by the “Argo” in 64 days. The noble steam-ship “Great Britain,” in the last trip made the distance to Melbourne in 65 days. The Australian Steam Navigation Company, which promised so largely, failed most unequivocally. The first of their ships, the “Australian,” took 44 days to reach the Cape; the 282“Sydney” took 54 days; the “Melbourne” took 75 days; and the “Adelaide” took 77 days. Of the two last vessels’ voyages the Melbourne Argus remarked at the time:—

“The preposterous length of the voyage is a minor evil in comparison with the anxiety which haunted this community for weeks in the case of the last two steamers. We were almost on the point of giving up the ‘Adelaide’ for lost, when the lumbering old hulk was reported at last to have rolled into Adelaide.... The mischiefs inflicted upon the mercantile community here, by the detention of the ‘Adelaide,’ and the fears for her safety, have been intolerable. Mails have been postponed—goods have arrived before the advices or bills of lading had come to hand—correspondence has been confused, and business transactions have been utterly deranged. It is most provoking to think that a steamer holding the Government mail contract, and for which the mails have been kept back for several weeks, should leave London on the 11th of December, and arrive in Port Philip on the 11th of May following—a period of five months precisely!”

Undoubtedly the Company must have mismanaged its business, and its vessels been unfit for the service. But it is the opinion of all nautical men, that mails, conveyed in even the most superior steamers by way of the Cape of Good Hope, can never be depended upon either for speed or regularity. The most efficient mode which we have seen proposed for performing the service, is that of the Australian Direct Steam Navigation Company via Panama. It is intended that this Company’s vessels, which are to be powerful paddle-wheel steamers of 3000 tons, shall proceed at stated periods from Milford Haven to Aspinwall (Navy Bay), on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus; from whence passengers and cargo will be conveyed by railway to Panama, on the Pacific side, and there re-embarked for Australia, accomplishing the whole distance, to or from, in about fifty-five days. That the power of fulfilling this promise is within the reach of an energetic Company, has recently been proved by the experiment made by the United States steamer, “Golden Age.” America, by the by, is still our pioneer in steam enterprise.

“The ‘Golden Age’—(we quote from an ably-conducted Liverpool paper, the Journal)—steaming only slowly, and under unfavourable circumstances, made the run from Sydney to Tahiti in 13½ days, and from Tahiti to Panama in 18 days 12 hours. A more powerful vessel would have performed the distances in about 11 and 15 days respectively, and surmounted effectually the only difficulty to be experienced in crossing the Pacific, namely, carrying coals sufficient for the voyage from station to station. The detention, which in this case was nearly 15 days between Sydney and Southampton, might be shortened to about 4 days, by proper arrangements being made for prompt despatch; and the voyage would thus be performed in from 50 to 53 days.”

A portion of the journey across the Isthmus, we may remark, was performed on mules, only thirty-one miles of the railway being as yet completed. The whole line, however, is expected to be opened in the course of the present year.

Many circumstances concur to render the Panama route infinitely preferable to any other. In the first place, the shortest distance has to be traversed. From Milford Haven to Sydney by this route is only 12,440 miles, the whole of which, with the exception of 45 miles, is by sea. By the present Peninsular and Oriental Company’s route, via Swan River and Cape Leeuwin, from Southampton the distance is 12,855 miles, of which 238 have to be performed between Alexandria and Suez by canal, by the Nile, and across the desert. By the same Company’s route via Torres Straits, the distance is 13,095 miles, with the same overland journey to make from Alexandria to Suez. We can only get our mails from Australia by either of these routes in sixty days, by the very costly express from Marseilles. The General Screw Company’s route, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, Madras, and Point de Galle, is enormously circuitous; and the same Company’s new route, without touching at the Cape, is 12,837 miles. There is another serious disadvantage connected with the eastward voyage. From the Cape to Australia the weather is generally boisterous, with variable winds; and in passing the equinoctial line, ships have to encounter 283calms, and can derive no aid from carrying canvass. The loss of that aid is a serious matter to screw steamers, in a voyage where economy in the article of fuel is so desirable. From Great Britain to Navy Bay, on the other hand, is usually a run in which canvass can be advantageously used, whilst the run from Panama to Australia is through pleasant weather for the entire distance, the Pacific fully justifying the propriety of its appellation.

Of course, a company working the Panama route effectively, with superior vessels, and carrying regular mails, must be subsidised by the British Government. Our colonists themselves would gladly lend their aid by grants out of their own public revenue. In fact, the province of New South Wales has recently advertised its willingness to give a bonus of £6000 sterling to any company which will bring the postal distance between England and Melbourne to sixty days each way. The Australian Direct Company, however, anticipate a good profit on their undertaking, irrespective of remuneration in the form of a subsidy for carrying the mails, as will be perceived from the following extract from their prospectus, published last year:—

“It is thought unnecessary to dwell on the great extension of general traffic wherever proper facilities of intercourse by steam have been afforded: it may, however, be briefly stated, that the produce of gold during the year 1852, in the colony of Victoria alone, amounted to over £18,000,000, with every prospect of a continuous increase, exclusive of the produce of New South Wales, which forms a large addition to this vast amount; that, during the months January, February, March, and April last, the specie transmitted across the Isthmus—from Peru and Chili, from the western coast of Mexico, and from California—amounted to 20,410,796 dollars, exceeding £4,000,000 sterling,—and that the passenger traffic, by the same route and for the same period, amounted to 10,568 persons, irrespective of those conveyed by the San Juan de Nicaragua line. It may be, moreover, observed that this extent of traffic, however great, affords no adequate idea of the vast trade which will arise to feed this line, when in full operation,—with all the important advantages of a completed railway, and of a systematic conduct of business.

“Large additions to this vast traffic must necessarily flow from the increasing intercourse between North America and the Australian colonies, facilitated as such intercourse is by the powerful lines of steamers already established between the United States and the Isthmus of Panama in the North Atlantic, and between California and Panama in the North Pacific. The augmented line of steamers, also, employed by the Pacific Steam Navigation Company between Valparaiso and Panama, must considerably swell the stream. These great results stand in perfect independence of a line projected, which will in all probability, at no distant period, connect California and China; and likewise of traffic, the natural result of conveyance of passengers and valuable merchandise diverted from old and circuitous routes.

“The Directors derive great encouragement from the knowledge that the objects of this Company are favoured with the high approval of British merchants in general. Many of the most eminent London houses have strongly expressed their approbation; and the following document fully attests the spirit in which the enterprise is regarded by several influential and distinguished Manchester firms:

“‘We, the undersigned, being desirous of encouraging the establishment of a line of first-class steam-packets, offering increased facilities and advantages for the transit of passengers and goods to and from Australia and the different important States in the Pacific Ocean, and being deeply impressed with the advantages of the route by the way of the Isthmus of Panama, since the establishment of the railroad at that place connecting the two oceans,—hereby signify our approval of the projected British and Australian Direct Screw Steam Packet Company, for the purpose of carrying out the line of communication to those parts in the most efficient manner. (Signed)—R. Gladstone & Co., Horrocks, Jackson & Co., Robert Smith & Co., Robert Gardner, Samuel Mendel, Robt. Barbour & Brothers, John Pender & Co., George Fraser, Son, & Co., Henry B. Jackson, R. I. Farbridge & Co., B. Liebert, Prescott, Brothers, & Co., Thos. Cardwell & Co., Oswald Stevenson & Co., J. A. Turner & Co.’”

It is most desirable that whatever line is selected for conveying the mails should be as far as possible remunerative, in order to enable Government to fix the rates of postage as low as 284possible. The present charges are preposterously high. A letter by a sailing ship, which may be from ninety to one hundred days on the passage, costs eightpence, if under half an ounce. By steam and overland mail, it is from a shilling to twentypence, if under a quarter of an ounce in weight, for what to a man, whose caligraphy is not of a diminutive order, or who cannot command “bank” or “foreign post” paper, must be only half a letter. Cheap postage for the newly settled population of Australia, and for their friends in this country, is as essential as regular and expeditious mails are to the mercantile communities in both countries. We must remark, too, that newspapers and trade circulars are as much required to be conveyed expeditiously as mercantile letters. By the last overland mail a fortunate few received despatches via Marseilles in sixty days. The bulk of the mail, consisting of newspapers and letters from emigrants, &c., was not delivered until the arrival of the steamer at Southampton, nearly seventy days from her leaving the colony.

We have certainly little hope of our Government doing much to develop the resources of Australia. The Post-Office authorities may, indeed, be induced to concede to the colony, and to the mercantile community of this country, a direct mail communication via Panama, by the prospect—indeed, almost certainty—that if they fail in the performance of their duty, the United States Government will do it for them. The experiment made by the American steam-ship “Golden Age” is said to have been, commercially, an unprofitable one. But the application of steam power to the performance of long voyages is even as yet in its infancy. The chief difficulty hitherto experienced in making short and regular passages to a distant port has been the large quantity of coals required to be carried, which diminishes the power of carrying cargo in our mail steamers. It is estimated that our Cunard Company’s and the Collins’ boats would have to diminish their speed, and to forfeit some of their character for regularity in the transmission of mails to and from America, were the two countries a thousand miles farther apart. But at the present time an improvement is making in the machinery of one of the boats of the latter Company by her owners in the United States, which, it is stated, is likely to economise very materially her consumption of fuel, the saving by which may either be applied to increasing her speed or her carrying capabilities. The same improvement can be adopted in our Australian steamers. But from the Colonial Office we expect literally nothing. The treatment of Australia by that Office has been, from first to last, most neglectful; and even since the gold discoveries, and the recognition by all thinking men of the vast importance which the colony has assumed as a feeder of the commerce of England, our statesmen have appeared incapable of appreciating its claims to their consideration. A glaring instance of this perverse or ignorant blindness has recently occurred in the filling up of the office of Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia. The first party appointed was Mr Stonor, an Irish member, of no great mark in Parliament or elsewhere. This gentleman duly sailed for the colony, but was shortly after his departure unseated for bribery. Such was the grossness of the charges against him, brought to light by a parliamentary inquiry, that the Colonial Office were compelled to despatch his recall. Another Lieutenant-Governor was to be appointed; and the choice fell upon the Hon. F. Lawley, M.P. for Beverley. Mr Lawley’s claims to hold an appointment, so important at the present crisis in a country which eminently requires the supervising of a practical statesman, experienced in the management of colonial affairs, are not easy to discover. He was a young man—young at least in public life—twenty-eight years of age; had passed rather a distinguished course at the university, and had held for a few months the situation of private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but he was chiefly known to the public as a runner of race-horses, and a rather unsuccessful speculator on the Turf. The noble Lord at the head of the Administration, it appears, had some 285interest in the borough—Beverley—which Mr Lawley represented, and had also a son, who was ambitious of parliamentary honours. Mr Lawley was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia; vacated his seat for Beverley; and Lord Aberdeen’s son was elected to fill his place. We only mention this as a curious coincidence. But Mr Lawley had some sense of honour in his breast, as became a young man of his rank and birth, or he may have had merely a correct appreciation of “the fitness of things.” Subsequently to his ill-success upon the Turf—it is not said whether or not during his tenure of his confidential office under the Chancellor of the Exchequer—he had speculated on the Stock Exchange—and lost. His resolution—taken, no doubt, after a due examination of the state of his affairs—was promptly notified to the Government. He resigned the office to which he had been appointed; and the colony was spared the infliction of a Lieutenant-Governor in whom the propensity for gambling was so strongly developed, and whose favourite sphere of action would probably have been upon the race-course of Adelaide. What may be the effect upon the minds of the population of this treatment of South Australia by the Colonial Office we are not to foretell. It cannot, however, advance that Office in their estimation.

Failing the hope of efficient Government aid to the growth of the Australian colonies—as we think it will fail—those colonies have within their reach the means of aiding themselves in one vitally important matter—the securing of a larger supply of labour. The funds accruing from the sale of lands in the colony have, for some years past, been devoted to the purpose of assisting the emigration of useful classes of labourers—principally agricultural—to the various colonies; the business being managed in this country by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners. Of course, a crotchety management was to be anticipated from such a body, composed of parties utterly unversed in the business. We believe it will be found by the colonists that the management has not only been crotchety, but extravagantly expensive, and even destructive of the lives of the intending emigrants. A few extracts from the Report of the Committee (1853) to the Colonial Secretary will be sufficiently intelligible as to the inefficient working of the present system. In the first place, it will be made clear that a great public office, with already a multiplicity of business to conduct, is incompetent, from its very composition, of carrying on a trade in which they have to compete with experienced private firms. After mentioning the utter failure of an experiment made by them of sending out a large number of Highland emigrants on board H.M.S. the “Hercules,” which was proceeding to Hong-Kong as an hospital-ship, and was offered them by the Admiralty for the purpose, the Commissioners report:—

“Meanwhile applications for assistance were made on behalf of Germans and Swiss, and, by a very respectable committee at Madras, of the half-caste population of India. But the growing eagerness to reach Australia soon rendered it unnecessarily pressing for us either to close with applications of this kind, or to relax our ordinary rules in regard to British emigrants. This eagerness soon became excessive—so much so, that, at one time, our office contained no less than 18,000 applications for passages to Australia. The number of letters received in the month of June, which, in 1850, was 1564, and, in 1851, 2884, amounted in 1852 to 18,910, being at an average rate, excluding Sundays, of 727 a day. And when it is remembered that a large number of these transmitted small sums of money, requiring considerable accuracy of treatment, and that a far greater number respected the time and manner in which poor emigrants were to leave their country for ever—a matter in which any inaccuracy, though trifling in respect to the magnitude of the whole service, was of the greatest importance to the individuals—that a great number of our correspondents were persons who could not be counted upon for expressing their own meaning with clearness, or understanding correctly what was written to them—and, finally, that all this mass of details, by no means capable of a cursory or careless treatment, was to be disposed of by persons partly overtaxed and partly new to those details, it will be seen, we hope, that we laboured under no ordinary difficulty in meeting the unusual pressure.”

Of course, such a business, attempted to be carried on by an inexperienced public board, sitting in a central office in London, although dealing with emigration from various ports in the United Kingdom, was likely to run into arrear and confusion. Individual local firms, however, feel no difficulty in carrying it on, upon a scale fully equal to that of the Board, when measured by the extent of their establishments. Those individual firms would have forwarded promptly all the Government emigrants which the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners might have thought proper to hand over to their care, and managed all the details and correspondence dwelt upon as being so onerous upon them. But the Commissioners must needs charter ships of their own, throwing away all the advantages which private merchants possess, of procuring profitable freight for a portion of each ship sent out. And they had to “pay dear for their whistle.” At page 18 of the Report, they say: “The freights, which in June 1851 had fallen as low as £10, and in one instance to £9, 9s. 5d. per adult, rose in June 1852 to upwards of £17; and since that time they have actually reached the enormous amount of £23 per adult.” Undoubtedly, they might have reached this “enormous amount” at the time named. But private and most respectable and experienced firms, at the dearest time mentioned, taking advantage of their ability of paying merchandise freight, would have sent out emigrants, supplied to them by the Commissioners, at an average price of two-thirds the amount, and furnished them with the ample stores, the ventilation, and the other conducives to health insisted upon by the local Government Commissioners, in the case of voluntary as well as Government emigration. Taking from one hundred to one hundred and fifty passengers, paid for by the Commissioners, in each ship, they might have afforded to charge even lower.

But the Commissioners had a model system of their own to exhibit to the world, and peculiar views as to the fitting up of emigrant ships, more calculated, they maintained, to secure the health and comfort and safety of poor persons going out at the expense of the colony, a knowledge of the nature of which was denied to the experienced Government officers stationed at the various ports, whose duty it is to superintend the accommodation and quality of provisions afforded to persons going out at their own expense. Let us see what was the working of this model system! They state that, in consequence of the high rates for shipping, they were compelled to adopt large ships, and they add, page 18:—

“We lament to say that in those despatched from Liverpool the result was unfortunate. Among the adults, indeed, no bad consequence followed, but amongst the infants and young children, whose numbers had been increased by the then recent relaxation of our rules, a great mortality occurred. On the ‘Bourneuf,’ ‘Marco Polo,’ and ‘Wanata,’ in which the aggregate number of passengers was 2581, the number of deaths was 181, of which no less than 152 were below four years of age. On the ‘Ticonderago,’ 165 persons died on the voyage, or in quarantine after arrival, of whom 65 were below fourteen, and 18 were less than one year old.”

It is a somewhat singular fact, that in not one of these vessels, since their being sailed under private management, has more than the ordinary rate of mortality prevailed. After this disastrous loss of human life, the Commissioners came to the resolution of diminishing the number of children allowed to each passenger, and limited the size of their ships. Private firms allowed the same number, and increased the size of their ships. Yet the latter have had no increase in the rate of mortality, whilst, only a few weeks ago, a ship chartered by the Commissioners lost at sea—having only reached Cork—in putting back to their depot at Birkenhead, and after placing the sick in hospital, upwards of sixty lives! The absurdity, on the part of the Commissioners, in employing exclusively small ships, is thus apparent, even in a sanitary point of view. The large clippers, built expressly for the trade, have at the same time had the advantage over their competitors in quick sailing. In proof of this fact, we quote a table, extracted from a file of the London Times of this year, showing the average number of days occupied in the passage by the vessels of different tonnage, ranging from 200 tons upwards, despatched from Liverpool to Australia in the years 1852 and 1853.

We entertain little doubt that, in a short while, the provincial legislatures and people of the various provinces of Australia will protest loudly against this mismanagement of their contributions for the purpose of encouraging emigration, and assert the right of exercising a greater control than they have at present over their own funds.

But it is, after all, to the honest press, and to the enterprise of private individuals, that these important colonies must look chiefly for a relief from their present temporary difficulties. A large amount of misconception has been spread abroad as to the prospects which they hold out for settlers and their social condition. We have had too much information from the Colonies themselves about the state of trade in Melbourne and the other large towns, and the yield of the various gold mines, and much too little of the progress making in agricultural pursuits. With respect to the latter, too, the sort of information conveyed, and the picture which it presents, have not been of a character likely to attract the most useful classes of settlers—our small farmers and farm-labourers. Sheep-farming and stock-farming in “the bush,” as it is still absurdly termed, is naturally associated in their minds with ideas of solitary and half-savage life, to adventure upon which most men, and especially those who have been accustomed to quiet domestic life, and have no pressing necessity for taking such a step, will hardly be induced to leave their native land. In the large towns society is gradually assuming a settled character, and their population, the old and the newly arrived as well, are directing their attention to the ordinary avocations of industry. Dwellings, as we have shown, are being erected almost with sufficient rapidity to meet the demand for them, and proper sanitary and other arrangements will follow. The most congratulatory movement which has recently, and is now more rapidly than ever taking place, is the conversion of the soil, hitherto in a wild state, or forming portions of sheep-runs, into farms of various sizes, cultivated in the best manner by British and other farmers. Little communities, the germs of future towns and villages, are springing up on every side; and before many seasons are over, the population, however largely augmented, will have no occasion to depend upon extraneous supply for any of the leading necessaries of life. Whether as a merchant, a tradesman, or to engage in other legitimate and useful occupations, the emigrant may now safely leave his home to settle for life in Australia in the entire confidence that his industry will meet its full reward. To bring about the future greatness which we have predicted for the colony, as the centre of a wealthy and powerful Anglo-Saxon empire in the Pacific, whose population are governed by British laws, and are in the enjoyment of British institutions, it is most important that the British element should be as largely as possible infused amongst them. Society in Australia calls especially for the presence of an educated middle class, capable of ameliorating, by its example, the rudeness of character and manners which may be expected from amongst her successful gold-diggers, bush-farmers, and traders. The spread of truthful information respecting the climate, capabilities, &c., of the country, will effect much in supplying that want, and inducing such a class to emigrate thither as to a permanent home. The time may come—be it far distant!—when the colonists may demand to be an independent people. Such an infusion amongst them of right-hearted and loyal British men and women—the fathers and mothers of another generation—may do much to postpone such an event. And when it does arrive—when a people grown great and wealthy under the protecting arm of British sway refuses to be governed from the antipodes—the breaking of the link may be rendered a kindly one; and it may to no slight extent operate upon our future relations with the grown-up child, who has cast us off, and decided to walk by himself, that his heart still clings to the home of his parents, and feels an interest in maintaining the prosperity of the land which gave them birth.

PART I.^[13]

Let us imagine one of our species, at an early period of its history, destitute of any artificial aid to the sense of sight, contemplating the aspect of things around him. He perceives that, somehow or other, he lives upon a Something—apparently a flat surface, of indefinite extent in all directions from the spot where he stands—consisting of land and water, alternately visited with light and darkness, heat and cold; with a regular succession of seasons, somehow or other connected with the growth of vegetables of various kinds, suitable and unsuitable for his purposes, with beautiful flowers and magnificent forests: while the air, water, and earth, teem with insects, birds, fishes, and animals, which seem almost altogether at his command. There are also winds, dews, showers, mists, frost, snow, hail, thunderstorms, volcanoes, and earthquakes. He himself, equally with the vegetables and animals, passes through divers gradations, from birth to decay—from life to death: but during life, alike alternately sleeping and waking, subject to vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, of health and disease.

If he look beyond the locality on which all this takes place, he beholds a blazing body alternately visible and invisible, at regular intervals, and to which he attributes both light and heat; another luminous body visible only at night, which it gently illuminates; and both these objects are occasionally subject to brief but portentous obscurations. During the night there also appear a great number of glittering white specks in the blue distance, which he calls stars; all he knows of them being, that they are beautiful objects in the dark; even contributing a little light, in the absence of the moon. Why all these things came to be as they are, he knows no more than the bird that is blithely singing on the branch above him, but for a certain Book, which tells him that God made him, and everything he sees about him; the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, with all the arrangements securing night and day, light and darkness, seasons, days, and years; forming him, in His Image; giving him the earth for a dwelling, and dominion over everything that lives and breathes in it; and commanding him to be obedient to the will of his Maker. That the first man and woman placed on the earth became, nevertheless, almost immediately disobedient; whereby they incurred the anger of God, and their position on earth became woefully changed for the worse. That God, nevertheless, loved man, formed in His own image, after His likeness, with such tenderness, that He devised means for his restoration, if he chose, to the favour which he had forfeited; and Himself visited the earth, in the form of man; submitted to mockery, suffering, and death, on his behalf; rose again, and returned to Heaven with the body which He had assumed on earth. That though man’s body must die and decay, equally with that of every animal, his shall rise again, and be rejoined by its spirit, to stand before the judgment-seat of God, to be judged in respect of the deeds done in the body, and be eternally miserable or happy, according to the righteous judgment then pronounced. Moreover, this Book tells him, with reference to the locality in which he exists, that all things shall not always remain as they are; but that the earth, and all that is in it, shall be burned up; that it, and the Heaven, shall pass away with 289a great noise; that the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and for those on whom a favourable doom shall have been pronounced in the day of judgment, there shall be a new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Believing all this, and his inner nature telling him that the law of action laid down in the Book is righteous, and conformable to that nature, he endeavours to regulate his conduct by it, and dies, as dies generation after generation, in calm and happy reliance on the Truth of that Book.

Ages pass away, and great discoveries appear to be made, by the exercise of man’s own thought and ingenuity, and quite independently of any revelations contained in his Great Book. Whereas he had thought the earth stationary, he finds it, the sun, and the moon, to be round bodies, each turning round on its own axis, the earth once in twenty-four hours; that the earth also goes round the sun once in every year, the moon accompanying it, and at the same time turning round it once in every month; and that these are the means by which are caused light and darkness, night and day, heat and cold, and the various changes of the seasons. The stars remain twinkling, the mere bright specks they ever appeared.

Let us now, however, suppose our thoughtful observer’s sight assisted by the aid of glass, in two ways—so as to place him on the one hand, nearer to distant objects, and on the other, reveal objects close to him, which he had never suspected. In the latter case, his microscope exhibits an astounding spectacle—almost every atom turned, as it were, into a world, peopled with exquisitely-organised animal forms, adapted perfectly to the elements in which they are seen disporting themselves. In the former case, his telescope makes equally astounding revelations in an opposite direction. The Heavens are swarming with splendid structures unseen to the naked eye: new planets are visible, with rings, belts, and moons, and the stars prove to be resplendent suns; the centres of so many systems peopling infinitude; and these, moreover, obeying laws of motion the same as those which exist in the system of which the earth forms part!

“Well,” says our overwhelmed observer, “it is certainly late in the day to make these sublime and awful discoveries; but here they are, unless my instruments play me false, so that I am the victim of mere optical delusion; the boundless, numberless realms of insect life being only imaginary; and the stars really no suns or worlds at all, but simply the glittering spots which alone mankind has hitherto believed them. But if my telescope tell me truly, the little speck on which I live is in fact but a grain of dark dust in the heavens, circling obscurely round a sun, itself a mere star, perhaps eclipsed in splendour by every other star in existence; each probably containing many more and greater planets circling about it than has our sun! And about these matters The Book is silent.”

Pondering these discoveries, and assuming them to be real, our observer echoes the inquiry of our greatest living astronomer—“Now, for what purpose are we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of space?”^[14] And at length the grander one occurs—Are there human beings, or beings similar to myself, anywhere else than on this earth? On the sun, moon, planets, and their satellites? Nay, on all the other inconceivably numerous suns, planets, and satellites in existence? He pauses, as though in a spasm of awe. But he may next, and very rationally, ask, If it be so, how does all this affect me? Has it any practical bearing on the condition of a denizen of this earth?

If our bewildered inquirer unfortunately had at his elbow Thomas Paine, he would hear this blasphemous whisper: “The system of a plurality of worlds renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind, like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks he believes both has thought but little of 290either.”^[15] By this impious drivel is meant, that if this infinitude of systems be made by one God, who has peopled every orb as our own is peopled, with rational and moral beings, it is absurd to suppose that He has such a special regard for us, as the Scriptures assure us He has—that He was made flesh, and dwelt among us—lived with us, died for us, rose again for us; us, the insignificant occupants of this insignificant speck amidst the resplendent magnificence of the infinite universe. Now, that such a notion is equally irreligious and unphilosophical we trust no intelligent reader of ours requires to be persuaded; but that there are both friends and enemies of the Christian Faith, who fear or believe otherwise, may be assumed; and hence the unspeakable importance of viewing the matter soberly, by such light as we have,—as God has been pleased to vouchsafe to us. If we have little, we cannot help it, but must gratefully and reverently make the best use we can of it; assuring ourselves that there must be wise reasons for our omniscient Creator’s having given us just as much as we have, and no more. He might have endowed us with faculties nearly akin to His own; but He has thought proper to act otherwise.

The attention of scientific persons, and those of a speculative character in religion, physics, and morals, has recently been recalled to the question,—whether there are grounds for believing the heavenly bodies to be inhabited by rational beings,—by the publication, eleven months ago, of a thin octavo volume of 279 pages, bearing no author’s name, and entitled, Of the Plurality of Worlds, an Essay. Internal evidence seemed to point to a distinguished person at Cambridge as the author—a gentleman of great eminence as a mathematician, a logician, a divine, and a moralist—in short, to the Reverend Dr Whewell, the Master of Trinity College. The work was divided into numbered paragraphs, as is usual with that gentleman; peculiarities of spelling—e. g., “offense,” instead of “offence”—and of style and expression, are common to the Essay and the other works of the suspected author. We are not aware that up to the present time he has repudiated the work thus attributed to him. On the contrary, he has just published a Dialogue, by way of supplement to it, in which he and various classes of objectors are speakers; and on one of them telling him that one of his critics “repeatedly tries to connect his speculations with those of the author of Vestiges of Creation,” a wild work of an infidel character, he answers, “If he were to try to connect me with an answer to that work, which went through two editions, under the title of Indications of the Creator, he would be nearer the mark; at least, I adopt the sentiments of this latter book.” Now, this latter book was published, certainly not with Dr Whewell’s name on the title-page, but by the publisher of all his other works, and entitled Indications of the Creator; Theological Extracts from Dr Whewell’s History and Philosophy of Inductive Science. But whereas the Essay in question is written by the present highly-gifted Master of Trinity, with the design of showing that “the belief of the planets and stars being inhabited is ill-founded—a notion taken up on insufficient grounds, and that the most recent astronomical discoveries point the other way”—the author declaring that these “views have long been in his mind, the convictions which they involve growing gradually deeper, through the effect of various trains of speculation;” it will be found, on referring to Dr Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1833, that these views seem not then to have been entertained by him. In book iii. chap. 2, we find him speaking thus: “The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are circling about our own sun six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature, besides our moon, and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture that these globes, some 291of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren; that they are, like ours, occupied with life, organisation, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do; yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the domain of nature is enlarged and elevated.” Speaking again of the stars, and supposing them suns, with planets revolving round them, he adds, “And these may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable, animal, and rational life. We may thus have in the universe, worlds, no one knows how many, no one can guess how varied.” And, finally, in the ensuing chapter, “On man’s place in the Universe,” he says: “We thus find that a few of the shining spots which we see scattered on the face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth; and may, perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be, like the earth, the habitations of organised beings.” Undoubtedly these remarks are penned in a cautious and philosophic spirit; and upwards of twenty years’ subsequent reflection, by the light of various splendid astronomical discoveries during that interval, is now announced to have so far shaken Dr Whewell’s faith in such “conjectures,” as to induce him, “in all sincerity and simplicity,” to submit “to the public the arguments, strong or weak,” which had occurred to him on the subject; “and which, when he proceeded to write the Essay, assumed, by being fully unfolded, greater strength than he had expected.” He is now disposed to regard a belief in the plurality of worlds “to have been really produced by a guess, lightly made at first, quite unsupported by subsequent discoveries, and discountenanced by the most recent observations, though too remote from knowledge to be either proved or disproved.” And further, he thus indicates the grand scope of the entire inquiry: “I do not attempt to disprove the plurality of worlds, by taking for granted the truths of Revealed Religion; but I say that the teaching of Religion may, to a candid inquirer, suggest the wisdom of not taking for granted the Plurality of Worlds. Religion seems, at first sight at least, to represent Man’s history and position as unique. Astronomy, some think, suggests the contrary. I examine the force of this latter suggestion, and it seems to me to amount to little or nothing.” In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Essay, Dr Whewell thus speaks, in two passages (§§ 12, 20), which appear to us to indicate at once the spirit in which he offers his speculations, and his apprehension as to the reception with which they might meet. In the former, he owns that his “views are so different from those hitherto generally entertained, and considered as having a sort of religious dignity belonging to them, that we may fear, at first at least, they will appear to many rash and fanciful, and almost, as we have said, irreverent.” In the latter he speaks thus:—

“It is not to be denied that there may be a regret and disturbance naturally felt at having to give up our belief that the planets and the stars probably contain servants and worshippers of God. It must always be a matter of pain and trouble, to be urged with tenderness, and to be performed in time, to untwine our reverential religious sentiments from erroneous views of the constitution of the Universe with which they have been involved. But the change once made, it is found that religion is uninjured, and reverence undiminished. And therefore we trust that the reader will receive with candour and patience the argument which we have to offer with reference to this view, or, rather, this sentiment.”

In this tone of manly modesty is expressed the whole of this really remarkable work; but all competent readers will also be struck by the dignified consciousness of power associated with that modesty. These two characteristics have invested this book with a certain charm, in our eyes, which we cannot but thus avow, after having given his Essay, and the Dialogue, in which he deals with various objectors to his Essay, due consideration. A calm perusal of that Dialogue may suggest to shrewd opponents the necessity of approaching the writer of it with caution.

Here, then, we have a man of first-rate intellectual power, a practised and skilful dialectician, formidably familiar with almost every department of physical science, in its latest 292and highest development; an eminent moral writer and academical teacher, and an orthodox clergyman in the Church of England, coming forward deliberately to commit himself to opinions which he acknowledges he does not publish “without some fear of giving offense:”—opinions at variance with those not only popularly held, but maintained by perhaps three-fourths of even scientific persons who have bestowed attention on the subject. Who can doubt his right to do so, especially in a calm and temperate spirit, as contradistinguished to one of arrogance and dogmatism? None but a fool would rush angrily forward, to encounter such an author with harsh and heated language, or derogatory and uncharitable insinuations and imputations. A philosophical and duly qualified opponent would act differently. He would say, In this age of free inquiry, no matter how bold and serious the attack on preconceptions and long-established opinion and belief, if it be made in a grave and manly spirit of inquiry and argument, and especially by one whose eminent character, qualifications, and position, entitle his suggestions and speculations to deliberate consideration, that deliberate consideration they must have. “I have presented,” says the writer of the Essay, in the Dialogue, “gravely and calmly, the views and arguments which occurred to my mind, on a question which many persons think an interesting one; and if any one will introduce any other temper into the discussion of this question, with him I will hold no argument; if he write in a vehement and angry strain, I will have nothing to say to him.” The author is here alluding to Sir David Brewster, the author of the second of the three works placed at the head of this article. If, on the other hand, a man of great authority and reputation be unwise enough to run counter to opinions universally received, and that by persons of high scientific and literary reputation, merely as a sort of gladiatorial exercise, disturbing views rightly associated with religion and science, and with levity shaking the confidence of mankind in conclusions arrived at by the profoundest masters of science, he must take the consequences of being deemed presumptuous and trifling, and encounter the stern rebuke of those whom he is not entitled to treat with disrespect.

Now, a careful and unprejudiced perusal of this Essay has satisfied us concerning several things. It is written with uncommon ability. The author has an easy mastery of the English language, and these pages abound in vigorous and beautifully-exact expressions. From beginning to end, also, may be seen indications of a subtle and guarded logic; a felicitous and masterly disposition of his subject; a thorough familiarity with the heights and depths of physics, divinity, and morals; and, above and infinitely beyond all, a reverent regard for the truths of revealed religion, and an earnest desire to advance its interests, by removing what, in his opinion, many deem a serious stumblingblock in the way of the devout Christian. That stumblingblock may be seen indicated in the audacious language which we have quoted from Thomas Paine. If this be the object which Dr Whewell has had in view—and who will doubt it?—his title to respectful consideration is greatly enhanced. He must be given credit for having deliberately counted the cost of what he was about to do—the amount of censure, ridicule, and contempt which he might provoke. It seems that he has felt himself strong enough to make the experiment; and here he sees a distinguished contemporary, Sir David Brewster, quickly ascribing “his theories and speculations to no better feeling than a love of notoriety;”^[16] who again stigmatises an argument of the Essayist as “the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry which we have ever encountered in modern dialectics.”^[17]

That Dr Whewell offers us, in his Essay and Dialogue, his real views and opinions, and that they have been long and deeply considered, we implicitly believe, on his own statement that such is the case. It may nevertheless be, that he is the unconscious 293victim of an invincible love of paradox; and indeed Sir David Brewster unceremoniously characterises the Essayist’s conjectures concerning the fixed stars as “insulting to Astronomy,” and “ascribable only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to opinions universally believed;”^[18] that having once conceived what he regards as a happy idea on a great question, he dwells upon it with such an eager fondness as warps his judgment; that having committed himself to what he has seen to be a false position, he defends it desperately, with consummate logical skill. Or he may believe himself entitled to the credit of having demolished bold and vast theories, and plucked up by the roots an enormous fallacy. It may be so, or it may not; but Dr Whewell’s is certainly a very bold attempt to swim against the splendid stream of modern astronomical speculation. He would say, however, Is it not as bold to people, as to depopulate the starry structures? It is on you that the burthen of proof rests: you cannot see, or hear, inhabitants in other spheres; the Bible tells us nothing about them; and where, therefore, is the EVIDENCE on which you found your assertion, and would coerce me into a concurrence in your conclusions? I long for the production of sufficient evidence of so awful a fact as that God has created all the starry bodies for the purpose of placing upon them beings in any degree like man—moral, intellectual, accountable beings, of equal, higher, or lower degree of intelligence—consisting of that wondrous combination of matter and mind, body and soul, which constitutes man, existing in similar relations to the external world. The mere suggestion startles me, both as a man of science and a Christian believer, on account of certain difficulties which appear to me greater than perhaps even you may have taken into account. But, however this may be, I call upon you for proofs of so vast a fact as you allege to exist, or the best kind and greatest degree of evidence which may justify me in assenting to the existence of such a fact. We are dealing with facts, probabilities, improbabilities; and I repudiate any intrusion of sentiment or fancy. If God has told me that the fact exists, I receive it with reverence; and wonder at finding myself a member of so immense a family, from all communication with which He has been pleased to cut me off in my present stage of existence. But if God has not told me the fact directly—and I feel no religious obligation to hold the fact to exist or not to exist—I will regard the question as one both curious and interesting, and weigh carefully the reasons which you offer me in support of your assertion. But will you, in return, weigh carefully the reasons I offer for asserting a fact which appears to me, however you may think erroneously, of incalculably greater personal moment to me as a member of the human family—namely, that “man’s history and position are unique;—that the earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system—its domestic hearth, and the only WORLD in the universe?” I am quite as much startled at having to receive your notion, as you may be to receive mine. My great engine of proof, says his opponent, is analogy: well, replies the other, there I will meet you; and the first grand point to settle is, whether there is an analogy;^[19] when that shall have been settled in the affirmative, we will, as carefully as possible, weigh the amount of it.

This is the point at issue between Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster; who resolutely undertakes to demonstrate “More Worlds than One” to be “the creed of the philosopher, and the hope of the Christian.” It is to be seen whether this eminent member of the scientific world, also a firm believer in the Christian religion, has undertaken a task to which he is equal. He must present such an amount of proof as will require the plurality of worlds to be accepted as his CREED, by a Philosopher; that is, by a 294Baconian—one accustomed to exact and patient investigation of facts, and inferences deducible from them; who rigorously rejects, as disturbing forces, all appeals to our hopes or wishes, our feelings or fancy.

There are two questions before us; to which we shall add, on our own account, a third. The first is that asked in 1686 by the gifted and sprightly Fontenelle (whom Voltaire pronounced the most universal genius which the age of Louis XIV. produced), and echoed in 1854 by Sir David Brewster: Pourquoi non? Why should there not be a plurality of worlds? The second is that asked by Dr Whewell: Why should there be? “I do not pretend to disprove a plurality of worlds; but I ask in vain for any argument that makes the doctrine probable.”^[20] The third, is our own. And what if there be?—a question of a directly practical tendency. We shall take the second question first, because it will bring Dr Whewell first on the field, as it was he who has so suddenly mooted this singular question. But we would at the outset entreat our readers, at all events our younger ones, to remember that we are dealing with a purely speculative subject, respecting which zealous partisans are apt to draw on their imaginations—to assert or deny the existence of analogy, on insufficient grounds; to overstrain or underrate its force; and lend to bare probabilities, or even pure possibilities, somewhat of the air of facts, where facts there are absolutely none.

I. Why should there be more worlds than one? “Astronomy,” says Dr Whewell, “no more reveals to us extra-terrestrial moral agents, than religion reveals to us extra-terrestrial plans of Divine government;” and to remedy the assumption of moral agents in other worlds, by the assumption of some operation of the Divine plan in other worlds, is unauthorised and fanciful, and a violation of the humility, submission of mind, and spirit of reverence, which religion requires.^[21] He considers Dr Chalmers’s allowance of astronomy’s offering strong analogies in favour of such opinions as “more than rash:” he regards such “analogies” as, “to say the least, greatly exaggerated; and by taking into account what astronomy really teaches us, and what we learn also from other sciences, I shall attempt to reduce such analogies to their true value.” We have seen Dr Whewell, in 1833, expressing an opinion very doubtfully, with a “perhaps, that, as analogy would suggest, a few of the heavenly bodies appearing to be of the same nature as the earth, may be, like it, the seats of organised beings.” He is now disposed to annihilate those analogies, so far as they are deemed sufficient to warrant such an immense conclusion. But that to which he is now disposed to come is equally immense. He says, “That the earth is inhabited, is not a reason for believing that the other planets are so, but for believing that they are not so.”^[22] Her orbit “is the temperate zone of the solar system, where only is the play of hot and cold, moist and dry, possible.... The earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system; its domestic hearth; adjusted between the hot and fiery haze on one side, the cold and watery vapour on the other. This region only is fit to be a domestic hearth, a seat of habitation; in this region is placed the largest solid globe of our system; and on this globe, by a series of creative operations, entirely different from any of those which separated the solid from the vaporous, the cold from the hot, the moist from the dry, have been established, in succession, plants, and animals, and MAN. So that the habitations have been occupied; the domestic hearth has been surrounded by its family; the fitnesses so wonderfully combined have been employed; and the earth alone, of all the parts of the frame which revolve round the sun, has become a WORLD.”^[23] Now, let us here cite two or three passages of Scripture, one of them very remarkable. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath he given to the children of men.”^[24] “Thus saith God the Lord, he that created 295the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:^[25] ... I have made the earth, and created man upon it; I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.... Thus saith the Lord, that created the heavens; God himself, that formed the earth, and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed IT to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”^[26] Here the Psalmist speaks of both the heaven and the earth, saying of the latter that he has given it to the children of men; while the inspired prophet repeatedly speaks of the heavens and the earth, saying that God had given breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein; that he had created man upon it; that he had created the earth not in vain, but formed “it,” to be inhabited. It is not said that he formed the heavens to be inhabited, but the earth. This passage Sir David Brewster has quoted as “a distinct declaration from the inspired prophet, that the earth would have been created IN VAIN, if it had not been formed to be inhabited; and hence we draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot be supposed to have made the worlds of our system, and those in the sidereal universe, in vain, they must have been formed to be inhabited.”^[27] Is not this a huge “conclusion” to draw from these premises? And do not the words tend rather the other way—to show that the earth, with its wondrous adaptations, would have been created in vain, if not to be inhabited; but that the heavens may be created for other purposes, of which man, in the present stage of existence, has not, nor can have, any conception?

We have spoken of Sir David Brewster’s drawing a huge conclusion from a passage of Scripture in support of his views of the question before us; but we have to present a still huger conclusion, drawn by him from another glorious passage: “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” “This,” says Sir David, “is a positive argument for a plurality of worlds! We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to the Hebrew poet the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration.... He doubtless viewed these worlds as teeming with life, physical and intellectual; as globes which may have required millions of years for their preparation, exhibiting new forms of beings, new powers of mind, new conditions in the past, and new glories in the future!” In his Dialogue Dr Whewell thus drily dismisses this extraordinary flight of his opponent: “That the Hebrew poet knew, or thought about, the plurality of worlds, is a fact hitherto unnoticed by the historians of astronomy; to their consideration I leave it.”

Let us now, however, follow Dr Whewell in the development of his idea, bearing in mind his own impressive statement, in his preface, that, “while some of his philosophical conclusions appear to him to fall in very remarkably with certain points of religious doctrine, he is well aware that philosophy alone can do little in providing man with the consolations, hopes, supports, and convictions which religion offers; and he acknowledges it as a ground of deep gratitude to the Author of All Good, that man is not left to philosophy for those blessings, but has a fuller assurance of them by a more direct communication from Him.”

“The two doctrines which we have here to weigh against each other,” says Dr Whewell, “are the plurality of worlds, and the unity of the world;” and he “includes, as a necessary part of the conception of a ‘WORLD,’ a collection of intelligent creatures, where reside intelligence, perception of truth, recognition of moral law, and reverence for a Divine Creator and Governor.”^[28] His Essay branches into three great divisions, in disposing of the conjectural plurality of worlds, 296and suggesting the reality of the unity of the world. First, he considers the constitution of man: secondly, that of the earth which he inhabits, its adaptation, structure, and position: lastly, its neighbours in the heavens—the solar system to which it belongs, the fixed stars, and the nebulæ; and as to these, he declares that “a closer inquiry, with increased means of observation, gives no confirmation to the conjecture which certain aspects of the universe at first sight suggested to man, that there may be other bodies, like the earth, tenanted by other creatures like man,—some characters of whose nature seem to remove or lessen the difficulties we may at first feel in regarding the earth as, in a unique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government.”^[29] This is not the order in which Dr Whewell proceeds, but it is that which we shall observe, in giving our readers such a brief and intelligible account as we can of this singularly bold Essay. He himself commences with a beautiful sketch of the state of “Astronomical Discoveries,” with which Dr Chalmers dealt in his celebrated Discourses; by no means understating the amount of them, with reference principally to the number of the heavenly bodies—“a countless host of worlds, arranged in planetary systems, having years and seasons, days and nights, as we have;” as to which, “it is at least a likely suggestion that they have also inhabitants—intelligent beings, who can reckon those days and years—who subsist on the fruits which the seasons bring forth, and have their daily and yearly occupations, according to their faculties.”^[30] “If this world be merely one of innumerable other worlds, all, like it, the workmanship of God,—all the seats of life—like it, occupied by intelligent creatures, capable of will, law, obedience, disobedience, as man is,—to hold that it alone should have been the scene of God’s care and kindness, and still more, of His special interposition, communication, and personal dealings with its individual inhabitants, in the way which religion teaches, is, the objector is conceived to maintain, in the highest degree extravagant, incredible, and absurd.”^[31] Such is, as we have seen, the assertion of Thomas Paine; and Dr Whewell proposes to discuss this vast speculative question, “not as an objection urged by an opponent, but rather as a difficulty felt by a friend of religion;”—“to examine rather how we can quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how we can triumph over the dogmatical and self-satisfied infidel.”^[32] But let our reader note well, at starting, the above mighty “IF:” which he may regard as the comet’s nucleus, drawing after it an enormous and dismaying train of consequences, sweeping into annihilation man’s hopes equally with his fears.

Dr Whewell gives a lucid and terse account of the scope of Dr Chalmers’s eloquent declamation, his ingenious suggestions, and his astronomical or philosophical arguments, which he deems “of great weight; and, upon the whole, such as we may both assent to, as scientifically true, and accept as rationally persuasive. I think, however, that there are other arguments, also drawn from scientific discoveries, which bear in a very important and striking manner upon the opinions in question, and which Chalmers has not referred to; and I conceive that there are philosophical views of another kind, which, for those who desire and will venture to regard the universe and its Creator in the wider and deeper relations which appear to be open to human speculation, may be a source of satisfaction.”^[33]

But “WHAT IS MAN?” is the pregnant question of the royal Psalmist; and Dr Whewell gives an account of man, at once ennobling and solemnising; in strict accordance, moreover, with revelation, and with those views of his moral and intellectual nature universally entertained by the believers in revealed religion. We know of no man living entitled to speak with more authority on such subjects than Dr Whewell; and we think it impossible for any thoughtful person to read the portions of his Essay relating to this subject, without feelings 297of awe and reverence towards our Maker. Not that any new conditions of human nature are suggested, or any peculiarly original views of it presented; but our knowledge on the subject is, as it were, condensed into a focus, and then brought to bear upon the question, What is man, that his Maker should be mindful of him, and visit him? and thereby render the earth, in a unique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government. Lord Bolingbroke objected to the Mosaic account of the creation, and “that man is made by Moses as the final end, if not of the whole creation, yet at least of our system:” but let us remember, that Moses also tells us that God determined to “make man in Our image, after Our likeness;” that God did, accordingly, create man in His own image—with special significance twice asserting the fact that in the image of God created He him; and he tells us that, after the flood, God assigned this as a reason for visiting the crime of murder with death—Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man. The full import of that awful and mysterious expression, the image and likeness of God, man, in his fallen state, may never know. Adam possibly knew originally; and his descendants believe that it consists in their Intellectual and Moral nature. The former is, in some measure, of the same nature as the Divine mind of the Creator:^[34] the laws which man discovers in the creation must be laws known to God; those which man sees to be true—those of geometry, for instance—God also must see to be true. That there were, from the beginning, in the Creator’s mind creative thoughts, is a doctrine involved in every intelligent view of creation—a doctrine which has recently received splendid illustration by a living “great discoverer in the field of natural knowledge.”^[35] Law implies a lawgiver, even when we do not see the object of the law; even as design implies a designer, when we do not see the object of the design. The laws of nature are the indications of the operation of the Divine mind, and are revealed to us, as such, by the operations of our mind, by which we come to discover them. They are the utterances of the Creator, delivered in language which we can understand; and being thus Language, they are the utterances of an Intelligent Spirit.^[36]

“If man, when he attains to a knowledge of such laws, is really admitted, in some degree, to the view with which the Creator himself beholds his creation; if we can gather, from the conditions of such knowledge, that his intellect partakes of the nature of the Divine intellect; if his mind, in its clearest and largest contemplation, harmonises with the Divine mind,—we have in this a reason which may well seem to us very powerful, why, even if the earth alone be the habitation of intelligent beings, still the great work of creation is not wasted. If God have placed on the earth a creature who can so far sympathise with Him (if we may venture upon the expression), who can raise his intellect into some accordance with the creative intellect; and that not once only, nor by few steps, but through an indefinite gradation of discoveries more and more comprehensive, more and more profound, each an advance, however slight, towards a Divine Insight; then, so far as intellect alone, of which alone we are here speaking, can make man a worthy object of all the vast magnificence of creative power, we can hardly shrink from believing that he is so.”^[37]

Again: The earth is a scene of MORAL TRIAL. Man is subject to a moral law; and this moral law is a law of which God is the legislator—a law which man has the power of discovering, by the use of the faculties which God has given him. Now, the existence of a body of creatures, capable of such a law, of such a trial, and of such an elevation, as man is the subject and has the power of—that is, of rising from one stage of virtue to another, by a gradual and successive purification and elevation of the desires, affections, and habits, in a degree, so far as we know, without limit—is, according to all we can conceive, infinitely more worthy of the Divine Power and Wisdom, in the creation of the universe, than any number of planets occupied by creatures having no such lot, no such law, no such capacities, and no such responsibilities. 298However imperfectly the moral law may be obeyed; however ill the greater part of mankind may respond to the appointment which places them here in a state of moral probation; however few there may be who use the capacities and means of their moral purification and elevation; still that there is such a plan in the creation, and that any respond to its appointments, is really a view of the universe which we can conceive to be suitable to the nature of God, because we can approve it, in virtue of the moral nature which He has given us. One school of moral discipline, one theatre of moral action, one arena of moral contests for the highest prizes, is a sufficient centre for innumerable hosts of stars and planets, globes of fire and earth, water and air, whether or not tenanted by corals and madrepores, fishes and creeping things. So great and majestic are those names of RIGHT and GOOD, DUTY and VIRTUE, that all mere material or animal existence is worthless in the comparison.... Man’s moral progress is a progress towards a likeness with God; and such a progress, even more than a progress towards an intellectual likeness with God, may be conceived as making the soul of man fit to endure for ever with God, and therefore, as making this earth a preparatory stage of human souls, to fit them for eternity—a nursery of plants which are to be fully unfolded in a celestial garden. And if this moral life be really only the commencement of an infinite Divine plan beginning upon earth, and destined to endure for endless ages after our earthly life, we need no array of other worlds in the universe, to give sufficient dignity and majesty to the scheme of the Creator.

The author of the Essay then ascends to an infinitely greater and grander altitude:—

“If by any act of the Divine government the number of those men should be much increased, who raise themselves towards the moral standard which God has appointed, and thus towards a likeness to God, and a prospect of a future eternal union with him; such an act of Divine government would do far more towards making the universe a scene in which God’s goodness and greatness were largely displayed, than could be done by any amount of peopling of planets with creatures who were incapable of moral agency, or with creatures whose capacity for the development of their moral faculties was small, and would continue to be small, till such an act of Divine government was performed. The interposition of God, in the history of man, to remedy man’s feebleness in moral and spiritual tasks, and to enable those who profit by the interposition to ascend towards a union with God, is an event entirely out of the range of those natural courses of events which belong to our subject: and to such an interposition, therefore, we must refer with great reserve; using great caution that we do not mix up speculations and conjectures of our own with what has been revealed to man concerning such an interposition. But this, it would seem, we may say, that such a Divine interposition for the moral and spiritual elevation of the human race, and for the encouragement and aid of those who seek the purification and elevation of their nature, and an eternal union with God, is far more suitable to the idea of a God of infinite goodness, purity, and greatness, than any supposed multiplication of a population, on our own planet, or on any other, not provided with such means of moral and spiritual progress. And if we were, instead of such a supposition, to imagine to ourselves, in other regions of the universe, a moral population purified and elevated without the aid, or need, of any such Divine interposition, the supposed possibility of such a moral race would make the sin and misery, which deform and sadden the aspect of our earth, appear more dark and dismal still. We should, therefore, it would seem, find no theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a plurality of worlds of moral beings; while, to place the seats of those worlds in the stars and the planets would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.”^[38]

Should it be urged, that if the creation of one world of such creatures as man exalts so highly our views of the dignity and importance of the plan of creation, the belief in many such worlds must elevate still more our sentiments of admiration and reverence of the greatness and goodness of the Creator; and must be a belief, 299on that account, to be accepted and cherished by pious minds, Dr Whewell replies in the following weighty passage:—

“We cannot think ourselves authorised to assert cosmological doctrines, selected arbitrarily by ourselves, on the ground of their exalting our sentiments of admiration and reverence for the Deity, when the weight of all the evidence which we can obtain respecting the constitution of the universe, is against them. It appears to me, that to discover one great scheme of moral and religious government, which is the spiritual centre of the universe, may well suffice for the religious sentiments of men in the present age; as in former ages, such a view of creation was sufficient to overwhelm men with feelings of awe, and gratitude, and love, and to make them confess, in the most emphatic language, that all such feelings were an inadequate response to the view of the scheme of Divine Providence which was revealed to them. The thousands of millions of inhabitants of the earth, to whom the effects of the Divine love extend, will not seem, to the greater part of religious persons, to need the addition of more, in order to fill our minds with vast and affecting contemplations, so far as we are capable of pursuing such contemplations. The possible extension of God’s spiritual kingdom upon the earth will probably appear to them a far more interesting field of devout meditation than the possible addition to it of the inhabitants of distant stars, connected, in some inscrutable manner, with the Divine Plan.”^[39]

“In this state of our knowledge,” Dr Whewell subsequently adds, after recapitulating the whole course of the argument indicated by the lines above placed in italics, “and with such grounds of belief, to dwell upon the plurality of worlds of intellectual and moral creatures as a highly probable doctrine, must, we think, be held to be eminently rash and unphilosophical. On such a subject, where the evidences are so imperfect, and our power of estimating analogies so small, far be it from us to speak positively and dogmatically. And if any one holds the opinion, on whatever evidence, that there are other spheres of the Divine government than this earth, other spheres in which God has subjects and servants, other beings who do his will, and who, it may be, are connected with the moral and religious interests of man, we do not breathe a syllable against such a belief, but, on the contrary, regard it with a ready and respectful sympathy: it is a belief which finds an echo in pious and benevolent hearts, and is of itself an evidence of that religious and spiritual character in man, which is one of the points of our argument.... But it would be very rash, and unadvised—a proceeding unwarranted, we think, by religion, and certainly at variance with all that science teaches—to place those other extra-human spheres of Divine government in the planets and in the stars. With regard to these bodies, if we reason at all, we must reason on physical grounds; we must suppose, as to a great extent we can prove, that the law and properties of terrestrial matter and motion apply to them also. On such grounds it is as improbable that visitants from Jupiter, or from Sirius, can come to the earth, as that men can pass to those stars—as unlikely that inhabitants of those stars know and take an interest in human affairs, as that we can learn what they are doing. A belief in the Divine government of other races of spiritual creatures, besides the human race, and in Divine ministrations committed to such beings, cannot be connected with our physical and astronomical views of the nature of the stars and planets, without making a mixture altogether incongruous and incoherent—a mixture of what is material, and what is spiritual, adverse alike to sound religion and to sound philosophy.”^[40]

Those possessing a competent acquaintance with the doctrines of theology, and ethical and metaphysical discussions, cannot, we think, read this necessarily faint and imperfect outline of what Dr Whewell has thus far advanced on the subject, without appreciating the caution and discretion with which he handles the subject which he here discusses—one of a critical character—in all its aspects and bearings. It is deeply suggestive to reflecting minds, who may be disposed to note with satisfaction how closely his doctrine, as thus far developed, quadrates with those of the Christian system. He has well reminded us, in the Dialogue, of a saying of Kant—that two things impressed him with awe: the starry heaven without him, and the Moral Principle within; and the current of his reflections tends towards that awful passage in the New Testament,—words 300which fell from the lips of the Saviour of mankind: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”^[41] These two questions (to say nothing of the significance of the expression with reference to the subject now under discussion, “the whole world”), and the reason which is proposed to those who would answer the question, as that which should govern the choice between their own soul and the whole world, justify our attaching the highest conceivable value and importance to man, as a rational, a moral, an accountable being.

In the Dialogue, an objector suggests, “But in your inclination to make man the centre of creation, and the object of all the rest of the universe, are you not forgetting the admonitions of those who warn us against this tendency of self-glorification? You will recollect how much of this warning there is in the Essay on Man:—

To imagine ourselves of so much consequence in the eyes of the Creator is natural to us, self-occupied as we are, till philosophy rebukes such conceit.” To which it is justly answered—“It is quite right to attend to such warnings. But warnings may also be useful on the other side: warnings against self-disparagement; against the belief that man is not an important object in the eyes of the Creator. I do not know what philosophy represents man as insignificant in the eyes of the Deity; and still less does religious philosophy favour the belief of man’s insignificance in the eyes of God. What great things, according to the views which religion teaches, has He done for mankind, and for each man!”^[42]

But man’s intellectual and moral nature being of such dignity and value in the estimation of God, other circumstances connected with him tend in the same direction, says Dr Whewell, and point him out as a special and unique existence, in every way worthy of his transcendent position. He is created by a direct and special act of the Deity, and placed and continued, under circumstances of a most remarkable character, upon the locality prepared for him. We need hardly say that Dr Whewell repudiates the irreligious, idle, and unphilosophical notion that man is merely the result of material development out of a long series of animal existences. This figment Dr Whewell easily demolishes, on philosophical grounds, in common with all the great scientific men of the age; and having vindicated for man the dignity of his origin, as the result of a direct act of creation, and differing not only in his kind, but in his order, from all other creations, proceeds to consider his relations to his earthly abode. This brings us to the second stage of his Argument, to which we now proceed; premising that it necessarily involves considerations relating to the constitution of man, physically, intellectually, and morally; and especially as a being of progressive development. This stage is to be found in two chapters of the Essay, the fifth and sixth, respectively entitled, “Geology;” and “the Argument from Geology,”—both written with uncommon ability, and exhibiting proofs of the great importance attached to them by the author. Even those who may altogether dissent from his main conclusions, will appreciate the interesting and instructive, the masterly and suggestive outline which he gives of this noble twin sister of Astronomy, Geology. We are disposed to hazard a conjecture, that the governing idea developed in these chapters, was the origin of the whole speculation to which the Essay is devoted.

It is, we think, to be regretted that those who intend to lay before the public their impressions of foreign travel, should so often have recourse to the form of letters purporting to be addressed to friends or relatives at home. We admit that, for purposes of fiction, the epistolary style is convenient. Testy Mathew Bramble, his tyrannical sister Tabitha, and the lovelorn Winifred Jenkins, may, by their several lucubrations, unite to form the most amusing of family chronicles; but Smollett, when he compiled Humphrey Clinker, took care that the expression of each character should be perfectly natural. So with Lever’s Dodd Family, and the immortal letters of Mrs Ramsbottom. But the case of a party deliberately penning letters, in his or her own name, not for the private gratification of a select circle, or the information of those to whom they are addressed, but directly for the press and the public, is very different. In the first place, every one knows and feels that the letters are not genuine. The most gifted of our race, in addressing a mother, a sister, or a child, do not think it necessary to indulge in fine writing, or in long elaborate descriptions, or in statistical details. They write simply—generally shortly; and a good deal of their matter would, if submitted to the eye of a stranger, appear to be unmeaning gossip, not improbably approaching to twaddle. We doubt not that, in the real letters which Mrs Stowe despatched across the Atlantic, there were many household inquiries, suggestions, and remembrances—domestic precepts and home-thoughts—kind, motherly, or friendly words, such as render letters doubly delightful to the recipients. But these formal epistles which she has now given to the world under the collective title of Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, bear falsity in their very face, and, in all human probability, the printer’s devil was the first person that perused them. They are all pitched in one key. Her despatches to the home nursery are as elaborate efforts of composition, as those which are nominally addressed to her father, or to “Dear Aunt E.”;—and, as a necessary consequence, they are frigid in the extreme. This is an artistic blunder, which cannot fail to detract very much from the interest of what Mrs Stowe had written. It was not perhaps to be expected, nor indeed desired, that she should have printed her genuine letters; but surely there was no occasion for recasting her diary or memoranda in a purely fictitious form.

We have, however, no reason to doubt that these volumes contain a faithful record of Mrs Beecher Stowe’s impressions of such parts of Europe as she has visited; and we so receive them. In her preface she requests “the English reader to bear in mind that the book has not been prepared in reference to an English, but an American public, and to make due allowance for that fact.”—We do not think that any explanation of the kind was required. Mrs Stowe says plainly enough, that “the object of publishing these letters is to give to those who are true-hearted and honest the same agreeable picture of life and manners which met the writer’s own eyes.”—In short, she was delighted with her tour and reception, and generally pleased with the people whom she met; and she wishes to communicate her own agreeable impressions to her countrymen. No one, on this side of the water at least, is likely to object to so kindly and benevolent a design. And we are bound to say, that had she prepared this book with the sole object of gratifying the people of Great Britain by indiscriminate praise of everything which met her eye, she could hardly have been more eulogistic than she is. Nor is this at all surprising, when we remember under what circumstances her journey to this country was made.

302No work published within our memory made so rapid an impression on the public mind as Mrs Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It became famous among us almost as soon as it was imported from America. The theme was of surpassing interest, the characters were powerfully drawn; there was enthusiasm and pathos enough to thrill the heart, to call up tears, and to awaken the general sympathies of the free for the wrongs of the persecuted negro. It brought home to the minds of all of us the horrors of slavery in its worst and most unendurable form. The separation of husband and wife—the sale of children—the exposure in the public market of men and women, whose education was often superior to that of the brutes who bought and sold them: all these things, so revolting to humanity, were described with an energy and power greater, perhaps, than have been exhibited by any recent writer. Add to this that the tone of the novel was eminently religious, and calculated to make it find its way into circles from which other works of fiction were studiously banished; and it is easy to account for its immense and sudden popularity. Thousands of persons who would have thought it a positive sin to indulge in the perusal of a romance by Scott or Lytton, devoured the pages of Mrs Stowe with an avidity the more intense from their habits of previous abstinence. It was a book much patronised by the Quakers, and greatly in favour among the Methodists. It was multiplied by countless editions; it was to be seen in the drawing-room of the noble, and in the humble home of the mechanic; and from men of all classes throughout Great Britain it met with a cordial acceptance.

Unfortunately, however, it entered into the heads of certain wiseacres, that they might produce a great moral sensation, and promote other causes besides that of emancipation, by inducing Mrs Beecher Stowe to visit this country, and by parading her as an object of interest. Far be it from us to attempt to dictate to the gentlemen and ladies who are the principal promoters of the Peace Society, and the most active in the distribution of Olive-leaves, or to those who make total abstinence a leading article of their faith. But we may be allowed, with all deference, to hint our opinion that, in inviting Mrs Stowe to undergo the ordeal of a public ovation, they were not acting altogether fairly by the lady whom they professed to honour. We trust that we have said enough, both now and previously, to testify the sincere admiration in which we regard her talents as exhibited in her famous novel, and our sympathy for the cause in which that genius was displayed. Our tribute of praise, however humble in its kind, has not been niggardly bestowed; but we demur altogether to the propriety of making a public show and spectacle of the authoress of the most popular work, upon even the best or the holiest subject. We should demur to the propriety of such an exhibition, were it even demanded by the general voice—we condemn it when it is notoriously got up for sectarian glorification. Yet such undoubtedly was the case with Mrs Stowe. At Liverpool, at Glasgow, and at Edinburgh, her self-constituted friends determined that she should be received with demonstrations which were, in the eyes of the unexcited, purely ridiculous. There were to be anti-slavery meetings, working-men’s soirées, presentation of addresses and offerings, and an immense deal of the same kind of thing which was utterly unsuited to the occasion; and the result was, that Mrs Stowe, in so far as the north of Britain was concerned, saw little of that society which gives the intellectual stamp to the country, and derived her impressions almost entirely from the conversation of a limited coterie. How could it be otherwise? Mrs Stowe was undoubtedly a very clever woman—she had written an admirable novel upon a most interesting subject—and every one was delighted both with its matter and its success. But was that any reason why town-councils should receive her at railways—why people should be urged to present addresses to her as though she had been a Boadicea, or a Joan d’Arc—or why her presence should be made an excuse for indulging in unmeasured speeches, or in violent objurgations 303against the legislature of America, for continuing a system which we have nationally decreed to be vile in our own dominions, and have taken every means in our power to discountenance elsewhere? Opinion in this country, in so far as it can be expressed—and it has been expressed in thousands of ways—is unanimous for the emancipation of the negro. One and all of us consider the continuance of slavery, as it exists in America, a foul blot upon the nation, which proclaims itself as peculiarly free; and we have said so in anything but undecisive terms. Still, what we have said, is the expression of an opinion only. We may object to slavery in America, as we may object to the same institution in Turkey, or to serfage in Russia, or to anything else beyond our cognisance and jurisdiction; but we are not entitled to usurp the right, which every separate nation possesses, of regulating its own laws according to its peculiar position. We say this, because, of late years, the tendency towards popular demonstrations and sympathising meetings in England, has increased to such a degree as even to embarrass our relations with foreign powers. Well-meaning, but supremely ignorant vestry-men, bustling civic magistrates, and conceited members of town-councils, consider themselves entitled to sit in judgment and give sentence upon all questions of European politics. The moment a political exile of any note arrives in this country, he is fêted, and cheered, and made a hero of by municipal dignitaries, who seize the occasion as a capital opportunity for making ungrammatical professions of their ardent adoration of liberty. Their sympathy in favour of insurgents is perfectly unbounded. They have sympathised with the Hungarians—they have sympathised with the Italians—and, until very lately, they showed great sympathy for those gentlemen who were compelled to leave France for their conspiracies against the existing government. It is not a little amusing to contrast the tone which is now assumed by the liberal press and by the municipalities of England towards Louis Napoleon, with that which was prevalent some eighteen months ago! We should like to see an ovation attempted now in honour of the French republicans. And yet what change has taken place? Ledru Rollin is as good a patriot now as ever; the title of the Emperor to the throne of France is not one whit better than it was before. We are now engaged in war; and the utmost efforts of our statesmen have been used to induce Austria to join with the Western Powers. And yet, in the face of these negotiations, we find that, in the large towns of England, Kossuth is declaring to immense and sympathising audiences that the accession of Austria to our side would be the means of riveting the chains on the oppressed nationality of Hungary! This conduct on the part of the English public, or rather that portion of it which has an inveterate itch for meddling with what it does not and cannot understand, is not only silly, but positively dangerous. If the people of every State were to act in this way, war would not be the exception, but a perpetually existing calamity; and nation would rise against nation, not on account of acts of positive aggression, but because each objected to the mode in which the other administered its own affairs. We have no scruple in expressing our conviction that, since this sympathising mania commenced, Great Britain has lost much of her influence as a first-rate European power. It has the effect of placing, apparently at least, the Government and the people in antagonism—of detracting from the power of the one, and unduly adding to that of the other. And—what we regret most deeply to see—it has raised and fostered the impression that we are collectively a nation of braggarts. It is most natural that it should be so, for we are perpetually vaunting about the force of public opinion in this country, and declaring that nothing can stand against it. On the Continent the voice of the towns is considered as the sure index of public opinion; and if that voice had been taken, not very long ago, we should ere now have been engaged in liberating crusades in behalf of Hungary and Italy. The Government, of course, and the vast bulk of the educated and thinking classes throughout Great Britain, estimate these ridiculous 304exhibitions at their proper value, and treat them with silent contempt;—not so foreigners; who, being assured that in the principal towns of England immense meetings have been held and resolutions passed in favour of insurgency, conclude, naturally enough, that these are demonstrations of that public opinion of which they have heard so much, and that the British Government cannot do otherwise than yield to the pressure from without. Perhaps the most absurd commentary upon this exceedingly reprehensible system of sympathising may be found in the fact, that while our mayors, provosts, aldermen, bailies, and other civic small-deer, are sympathising with the oppressed nationalities of Europe, various of their Transatlantic brethren are doing the same in behalf of Ireland and the Irish, and holding up the people of England to the scorn and detestation of the universe, as the cold-blooded, fiendish, and systematic torturers of the oppressed Celtic nationality!

But we must not diverge too much from our immediate subject. It seems to us that there really was no occasion for holding public meetings to show that the sympathy of this country was decidedly in favour of the cause of emancipation, or to irritate the Americans by a vain-glorious comparison of our own conduct contrasted with theirs. We ought, in common decency, to remember that no very great tract of time has elapsed since slavery was abolished in the British colonies; and as, in matters of this kind, interest is always a ruling motive, we should also bear in mind that the prosperity of those colonies has not been increased by the substitution of free for forced labour. Very few of us, on this side of the Atlantic, are able to give a competent opinion as to what effect immediate and unconditional emancipation might produce upon the slave-holding States of America; and therefore we are hardly entitled to do more than to assert the general principle, which condemns the absolute property of man in man. How entire emancipation, which we trust, before long, every State in America will adopt, can be carried out, must be left to the wisdom and discretion of the local legislatures. No change so great as this can be wrought suddenly. Christianity itself must be inculcated, not coerced, for violence never yet made converts; nor was the blood-red baptism of Valverde, who held the cross in the one hand and the sword in the other, equal in efficacy to the calm expositions of Xavier. Now, it is very plain to us that, in her own way, Mrs Beecher Stowe is a zealot. She has been writing and working at this subject of emancipation, until she has ceased to see any practical difficulty between her vision and its realisation, and wants to persuade all others that no practical difficulty exists. We agree with her so far, that we contemplate not only as desirable, but as necessary for the political existence of the United States of America, a measure for the ultimate and entire emancipation of the negro; but we cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of urging an immediate change, which might have the effect, in many important respects, of deteriorating instead of bettering the condition of the black population. What more, by any possible effort, can the people of Great Britain do than they have done? Every man in America knows that we detest the system of slavery. We have shown that by a long series of legislative measures, and by national grants to purchase the freedom of our slaves in the colonies; and very few names, indeed, are held in greater honour in this country than those of Clarkson and Wilberforce. But most assuredly we have no right to dictate to other nations, or to insist that they shall adopt our views in the regulation of their internal policy. We might just as well attempt to coerce them in matters of religion, and, founding upon our belief in the purity of Protestantism, insist that the Catholic states shall renounce the authority of Rome. Certainly we shall not improve the cause of the American negro by indulging in bitter terms and unlimited objurgation against the States which do not, as yet, see their way to immediate emancipation. All the great reforms of the world have been progressive. To hasten them unduly, and until men are fit to receive them, is the mere work of 305anarchy; and the world-history of the last sixty years, whilst it conveys a terrible warning against the neglect of a despised population, shows us that, in order to be permanent, all social ameliorations must be carefully and cautiously introduced.

But we feel that we owe an apology to Mrs Stowe for this digression. It was no fault of hers that she had to run the gauntlet through so many soirées, or to appear perpetually in the disagreeable character of a lionne. The whole programme was arranged before she set foot in this country; and she had nothing else for it than to go through her allotted part with patience and equanimity. We must admit that she was sorely tried during her sojourn in the north. She seems to have been under the custody of a special dissenting body-guard, with about as little liberty of action as the unfortunate Lady Grange. No wonder that Scotland appeared to her a very different country from the land of her imagination. Not one of those by whom she was surrounded possessed a spark of romantic enthusiasm, or cared about the associations which have shed the light of poetry over the land. “One thing,” says Mrs Stowe, “has surprised, and rather disappointed us. Our enthusiasm for Walter Scott does not apparently meet a response in the popular breast.” Very little indeed does the lady know of the beating of the national heart of Scotland, or the veneration in which the memory of our greatest poet is held by his countrymen. But it is not at soirées, or meetings such as she witnessed or attended, that the national feeling finds a voice; nor have the writings of Sir Walter Scott been ever favourably regarded by the rigid sectarians among whom she moved. His thoughts were not as their thoughts are, nor would it be possible that any sympathy should exist between minds so differently constituted. We cannot expect Mr Sturge to take much delight in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” or a sleek member of the Peace Society to feel his spirit moved by the chaunt of the “Field of Flodden.” What has amused us most in the perusal of this book is, the evident influence which the dislike of her friends to the martial strains of Scott produced at length upon herself. She seems to have entered Scotland in a sort of fever of enthusiasm, as is testified by the perpetual quotations from Sir Walter’s poetry—rather common, by the way, for they are to be found in all the guide-books—in which she indulges. By-and-by she begins to find that her raptures are coldly listened to by the society in which she moves; and ultimately she seems to have adopted the view that in some respects her friends were right. The following is a very pretty morçeau of criticism: “The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the Lady of the Lake and Marmion without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer: and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.” We marvel that Mrs Stowe, who is a clever woman, does not perceive that the people of a country in which the spirit which she pleases to reprehend becomes extinct, must necessarily be in time succeeded by a race of unresisting slaves. The remark, too, comes with a peculiarly bad grace from a lady who is not only proud of the independence of her country, but affects intense enthusiasm for the struggles of the Puritans and Covenanters in Great Britain. However, we suppose she thought it polite to the members of the Peace Society, among whom she was moving, to give this little jog to their principles; and it may be that, after all, her intimacy with the writings of Scott is considerably less than one would conclude from the quantity of quotation. Certainly we were surprised to find it stated by a lady of so much literary pretension and apparent acquaintance with the personal history of Sir Walter, that Abbotsford “is at present the property of Scott’s only surviving daughter;” and we must also confess that some of her quotations unsettle our ancient ideas as to the limits of the Border. For example, she says with reference to a visit paid at the Earl of Carlisle’s—“I was also interested in 306a portrait of an ancestor of the family, the identical “Belted Will” who figures in Scott’s “Lay.””

Possibly Lord Carlisle was not previously aware that his ancestor was a Scotsman, and a retainer of the house of Buccleuch. With equal propriety might Omer Pasha be described as a hetman of the Cossacks, rushing to the rescue of Gortschakoff.

On the whole, we are inclined to think that the American public will not derive much enlightenment on the subject of Scotland and the Scots from the revelations of Mrs Stowe. We can assure them that the general aspect, tone, and sentiments of society here do not at all correspond with what is represented in her pages. It is not the fact that the greater part of our time is occupied by delivering or listening to wish-washy platform speeches, or even to such as have “the promising fault of too much elaboration or ornament,” on the subjects of tee-totalism, olive-leavery, or any of the other mild absurdities of the day. It is not the fact that we have lost all grateful memory for the warlike deeds of our ancestors, or for the poets who have worthily recorded them. And, above all, it is not the fact that Mrs Stowe had a fair opportunity of forming a judgment, on almost any point, of the views entertained by the bulk of the more educated classes of society. We do not say this at all in disparagement of the parties among whom she moved, and by whom she was so hospitably entertained. We have every respect for their worth, position, and acquirements; and we are well aware that among the ministers of various denominations to whom she was introduced, and of whom she speaks affectionately, there are many whose talent, learning, and devotion have made their names known beyond the waters of the Atlantic. It must have been peculiarly gratifying to her to receive the congratulations of the late venerable Dr Wardlaw of Glasgow, of Dr John Brown of Edinburgh, whom she rightly calls “one of the best exegetical scholars in Europe,” and other lights of the United Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches. In Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen she received much civic kindness and attention; but we are at a loss, after reading her book, to discover much trace of her intercourse with general society beyond a very limited coterie. True, she refers to some persons “from ancient families, distinguished in Scottish history both for rank and piety,”—and especially to a “Lady Carstairs,” of whose corporeal existence we can find no trace in any Book of Dignity within our reach. All that, however, is of little moment; and we never should have thought of alluding to such circumstances, were it not that, so very much having been said in America on the subject of Mrs Stowe’s reception in Scotland, her account of what she saw may naturally be received as an accurate picture of the country. We have no doubt whatever of her general accuracy in describing what she saw. We are very proud to think that she was received with much enthusiasm and cordiality; and nothing could be more genuine than the expression of feeling on the part of the working-classes. Her book undoubtedly struck most deeply in the popular mind; producing a sensation which we have never seen equalled, inasmuch as it extended through every grade of society. And we can very well understand the intensity of the feeling which must have thrilled Mrs Stowe, when she found that even in sequestered villages in Scotland her work had been moistened with tears, and that the people, on the announcement of her approach, thronged to welcome the woman who had exercised so mighty a spell over their intellect and their passions. There was, really, no delusion in the matter, in so far as admiration of her talent and respect for her intrepidity were concerned; but we may, at the same time, be allowed to regret that she was made part of a premeditated pageant. The utter want of delicacy which marked the whole arrangements was most extraordinary. We are sure that Mrs Stowe must have been surprised, if not disgusted, at finding herself announced as ready to receive deputations and addresses at certain stated hours, and at the invitation 307of crowds to attend in order to cheer her at railway stations. There is something elevating in spontaneous enthusiasm, even when it is carried beyond the limits of strict propriety; but demonstrations such as those to which we have alluded, are not only unfair to the party paraded, but border closely on the ludicrous. No quackery of the kind was required to insure Mrs Stowe a cordial reception in Scotland; and we fear that in some respects it operated rather to her disadvantage than otherwise.

We confess to have been greatly disappointed in the perusal of her northern tour. We had expected to derive some amusement, if not edification, from the remarks of a lady whose previous publications had manifested considerable power in the depiction of character, not unmixed with occasional glimpses of humour; the more especially as there is much in the northern idiosyncrasy which must appear peculiar in the eyes of a stranger. Nothing of the sort, however, is to be found in the pages of Mrs Stowe. Read her work, omitting the familiar names of places, and one would be utterly at a loss to suppose that she is describing Scotland and its inhabitants either outwardly or inwardly. Saunders, as she depicts him, is a sort of sentimental Treddles, minding every body’s business more than his own, intoning peace speeches on a platform with a strong nasal twang, and refreshing himself, after his labours, with oceans of the weakest and the worst of tea. It is ten thousand pities that Mrs Stowe should not have witnessed either a Lowland kirn or a regular Highland meeting. Possibly the sounds either of fiddle or of bagpipe might have grated harshly on her ear; and the “twasome” reel or that of Houlakin been regarded as forbidden vanities; still she would have been infinitely the better of some more diversified experience, which might at least have caused her to avoid the error of depicting us as a nation of Mucklewraths, Hammeryaws, and Kettledrummles. As for her outward sketches, we must say that we greatly prefer the ordinary guide-books. They have at least the merit of being concise, and do not usually confound localities and historical events, as Mrs Stowe certainly does when she indicates Glammis Castle as the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth.

Moving southwards, Mrs Stowe seems to have been surrendered, in the Midland Counties, almost entirely into the hands of the Quakers. They appear to have acted towards her with considerable indulgence; for her host, albeit one of the most eminent of his sect, consented to join a party to Stratford-on-Avon. Mrs Stowe’s Shakespearian remarks do not appear to us either so novel or profound as to justify any lengthy extract—indeed, they are chiefly confined to speculations as to what Shakespeare might have done or said had he been born under different circumstances and in a different age. Disquisitions of this sort appear to us very nearly as sensible and profitable as the question, once gravely argued in the German schools, whether Adam, if born in the fifteenth century, would instinctively have betaken himself to the occupation of a gardener. Mrs Stowe, upon the whole, inclines to the opinion that Shakespeare would have ranked with the Tories. She says—“That he did have thoughts whose roots ran far beyond the depth of the age in which he lived, is plain enough from numberless indications in his plays; but whether he would have taken any practical interest in the world’s movements, is a fair question. The poetic mind is not always the progressive one; it has, like moss and ivy, a need for something old to cling to and germinate upon. The artistic temperament, too, is soft and sensitive; so there are all these reasons for thinking that perhaps he would have been for keeping out of the way of the heat and dust of modern progress.” Certainly, understanding progress in the sense which Mrs Stowe attaches to it, we cordially agree with her that Shakespeare would have kept out of its way; but it does seem to us a most monstrous assumption that he would have taken no practical interest in the world’s movements. Of all the poets that ever lived, Shakespeare was decidedly the most practical and comprehensive in his views. So far from being addicted to clinging to old things, from mere want of moral stamina, he has created a new world of his own; and no man 308ever possessed so keen a power of analysis of human character, and perception of the springs of action. But possibly we do her wrong. The word “practical” nowadays has divers significations; and if Mrs Stowe simply means to express her belief that Shakespeare, had he existed in our time, would neither have been a habitual spouter upon platforms, a vegetarian, a tee-totaller, a member of the Peace Congress, nor a unit of the Manchester phalanx, we beg leave to record our entire acquiescence in her estimate. Also we think that, as an eminent vice-president of the Fogie Club lately phrased it, she has hit the nail on the point, when she adds—“One thing is quite certain, that he would have said very shrewd things about all the matters that move the world now, as he certainly did about all matters that he was cognisant of in his own day.” We have not the least doubt of it.

The Stratford pilgrimage, however, seems to have given little gratification to any of the party except Mrs Stowe, who considered it in the light of a duty. Her brother, the Rev. C. Beecher, who was of the party, doing a little independent platform business whenever he could with propriety, and whose journal materially swells the bulk of the second volume, seems to be quite the sort of man whom Prynne would have delighted to have honoured. Relic-hunting after professors of the lewd art of play-making, was by no means to his taste; and accordingly we find the following commentary delivered over the tea and crumpets on the questionable amusements of the day:—“As we sat, in the drizzly evening, over our comfortable tea-table, C—— ventured to intimate pretty decidedly that he considered the whole thing a bore; whereat I thought I saw a sly twinkle round the eyes and mouth of our most Christian and patient friend, Joseph Sturge. Mr S. laughingly told him that he thought it the greatest exercise of Christian tolerance, that he should have trailed round in the mud with us all day in our sight-seeing, bearing with our unreasonable raptures. He smiled, and said quietly—‘I must confess that I was a little pleased that our friend Harriet was so zealous to see Shakespeare’s house, when it wasn’t his house, and so earnest to get sprigs from his mulberry, when it wasn’t his mulberry.’ We were quite ready to allow the foolishness of the thing, and join the laugh at our own expense.”

Warwick Castle, where Mrs Stowe grows critical upon art, after a very peculiar fashion—and Kenilworth, at which she indulges in the somewhat singular remark that “it was a beautiful conception, this making of birds”!—need not detain us. The pleasure trip was succeeded by a penance, in the shape of a lecture “against the temptations of too much flattery and applause, and against the worldliness which might beset me in London,” delivered by a celebrated female preacher, belonging to the Society of Quakers, of the name of Sibyl Jones, who had “a concern upon her mind for me.” That Sibyl possessed somewhat of the prophetic spirit, appears plain from the commentary of Mrs Stowe, who was sensibly touched by the hints which she received, and very likely began to feel that she had been somewhat over-elevated by the inflation of the northern Puffendorffs. In all seriousness, we believe that the lesson was both well meant and well timed; but the commentary appended is but one of the many proofs contained in these volumes, that Mrs Stowe is something more than a passive spectator of the Transatlantic movement for establishing what are called the “Rights of Woman”—in more vulgar language, the superiority of the grey mare, and the supremacy of the petticoat over the breeches. Now, as to the supremacy of women, we never had any doubt about it—few men, who have been married for a year, can be sceptical upon that point—and the utmost that men can demand from their wives as to the respective ranking of the garments, is, in the ancient and significant language of the Highlanders, to be allowed “to cast their clothes together.” Moreover, to the wife is invariably committed that highest symbol of authority known as “the power of the keys;” so that she has it in her power at all times to coerce her husband by the simplest and the readiest means. In fact, she has him at a 309dead lock, and possesses the entire command of the press. Young Hampden may talk as much as he pleases, at his Club, about the liberty of the press, and its being as essential as the air he breathes; but, when he returns home, about one in the morning, he is very fain to take his candle, and move up-stairs as quietly as possible, without attempting to enfranchise any incarcerated spirits. We do not hesitate to declare ourselves in favour of the supremacy of the wife in her own household, believing that it is, in almost every case, an unavoidable consummation, and, upon the whole, the very best arrangement that human ingenuity could devise. But the American notion goes far beyond this. The advocates of the “Rights of Woman” admit of no such paltry compromise as the surrender of domestic authority. What you as a man can do, of that your wife is equally capable, and may lawfully exert herself accordingly. Are you a barrister—why should not your wife, who has studied as a juris-consult, and been admitted to the honours of the forensic gown more legitimately than Portia, take a fee from the opposite party, and, by an influence only known to herself, cause you to quail before you have proceeded half-way in the exposition of the cause of your client? Or are you a doctor—Harriet Hunt, M.D., forgive us for this supposition; for your image, albeit we never saw you and never may, often haunts us in our dreams, and from your imaginary hand have we received multitudes of indescribable but seemingly celestial pills—how would you like your wife to be called in as an adviser on the homœopathic principle, after you had staked your existence on the superiority of the drastic method, and see her recover a patient in less than a week, whereas you had calculated upon a month’s legitimate fees under the ordinary curatory process? Or let us suppose that one of the fairest dreams of the strong-minded women of our generation should be realised, and that all political disabilities were removed from the fair sex, so that they might be admitted to sit and vote in Parliament. We scorn to take up the objection which might occur to a common mind of the impossibility of the Speaker maintaining order—we shall suppose a far worse case; and that is the possible disagreement between man and wife in political principle and conduct. How could you possibly endure the spectacle of your spouse accompanying the smiling Mr Gladstone to a division in one lobby, whilst your stern sense of duty compelled you to retire into another? How could you possibly remain at bed and board with a woman who was in the habit of attending those meetings at Chesham Place, which Lord John Russell is so fond of calling whenever he requires a friendly castigation, as Henry II. bared his brawny shoulders to the monks? And how, as a gentleman and a man of honour, could you reconcile it with your conscience to lay your head on the same pillow with a woman who can support the Coalition Ministry, and even go the length of declaring that she has confidence in the Earl of Aberdeen? Or we shall come to preaching, which is perhaps the more germain to the matter. The Rev. Asahel Groanings, of some undefined shadow of dissent, marries Miss Naomi Starcher of corresponding principles, with a fortune of some few hundred pounds, which are speedily sunk, beyond hope of extrication, in the erection of an Ebenezer. Both are licensed to the ministry, Asahel officiating in the morning and his helpmate in the afternoon. But somehow or other, Asahel is not popular with his congregation. His style of oratory reminds one unpleasantly of the exercitations of a seasick passenger in a steamboat, and his visage is ghastly to look upon, being distorted as if he laboured under a permanent attack of colic. Whereas, the voice of Naomi is soft as that of a dove cooing in a thicket of pomegranates, her countenance is fair and comely, and the thoughts of the elders, as they gaze upon her, revert to the apocryphal history of Susannah. The result is, that Asahel utters his ululations to empty benches, whilst Naomi attracts hundreds of the rising youth of dissenting Christendom. How can their union possibly be a happy one; or how can they continue to fructify in the same theatre of usefulness? 310Yet Mrs Beecher Stowe absolutely goes the length of recommending, or at least sanctioning, the view that ladies should be allowed to preach. She says, “The calling of women to distinct religious vocations, it appears to me, was a part of primitive Christianity; has been one of the most efficient elements of power in the Romish church; obtained among the Methodists in England; and has in all these cases been productive of great good. The deaconesses whom the apostle mentions with honour in his epistle, Madame Guyon in the Romish church, Mrs Fletcher, Elizabeth Fry, are instances which show how much may be done for mankind by women who feel themselves impelled to a special religious vocation.” Then she goes on to cite the case of the prophetesses, and tells us that “the example of the Quakers is a sufficient proof, that acting upon this idea does not produce discord and domestic disorder.” We are afraid that Mrs Stowe’s platform experiences have tended somewhat to warp her better judgment upon this point; and we beg to submit that, according to her own showing, the ladies of America have quite as much to do, in the interior of their households, as they can possibly manage to accomplish, without entering into any of the learned professions, or attempting to eclipse their husbands. The following extract is certainly a curious one. We, of course, are not answerable for the correctness or colouring of the picture, these being matters for which Mrs Stowe is amenable to the consciences of her countrywomen.

“There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty; and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions. They do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake nights ruminating the awful question who shall do the washing next week, or who shall take the chamber-maid’s place, who is going to be married, or that of the cook who has signified her intention of parting with her mistress. Their hospitality is never embarrassed by the consideration that their whole kitchen cabinet may desert at the moment that their guests arrive. They are not obliged to choose between washing their own dishes, or having their cutglass, silver, and china, left at the mercy of a foreigner, who has never done anything but field-work. And last, not least, they are not possessed of that ambition to do the impossible in all branches, which, I believe, is the death of a third of the women in America. What is there ever read of in books or described in foreign travel, as attained by people in possession of every means and appliance, which our women will not undertake, single-handed, in spite of every providential indication to the contrary? Who is not cognisant of dinner-parties invited, in which the lady of the house has figured successively as confectioner, cook, dining-room girl, and, lastly, rushed up-stairs to bathe her glowing cheeks, smooth her hair, draw on satin dress and kid gloves, and appear in the drawing-room as if nothing were the matter? Certainly the undaunted bravery of our American females can never enough be admired. Other women can play gracefully the head of the establishment; but who, like them, could be head, hand, and foot, all at once?”

This passage is very suggestive in two ways. In the first place, we humbly venture to think that it contains many excellent reasons why the ladies of America should mitigate their inordinate desire for sharing in what hitherto have been considered the appropriate employments of men. It appears, by Mrs Stowe’s evidence, that they have already so much domestic work to perform, that they are compelled to sacrifice both their health and beauty, which certainly are the two last things that a woman would be inclined to part with. Therefore it seems to us unwise, and even preposterous, that any portion of them should be clamorous in demanding a further increase of duty, unless, like the gude-wife of Auchtermuchty in the old Scots ballad, they are prepared to make an entire interchange of occupation with their husbands, and can persuade the latter to whip cream, concoct soup, wash the dishes, and arrange the table, whilst they are pleading at the bar, prescribing for half the young fellows in the neighbourhood, gesticulating at public meetings, or receiving the incense of deputations. In the second place, these particulars of American society may, in reality, have more to do with the evident dislike to emancipation of the slaves which evidently prevails in many parts of the United States, than 311Mrs Stowe was aware of when she penned the passage. If it is true that the ladies of America—using the term in the same sense as Mrs Stowe does, for she is comparing the personal appearance of women of the richer and more independent class in the two countries—if it is the fact that the American ladies in the free States have to undergo the drudgery which she describes, and that not from choice, but from absolute inability to obtain proper assistance; then we have a distinct and intelligible motive assigned to us why many excellent and humane people in the slave States hesitate to join the movement in behalf of emancipation. We have often suspected that some strong social reasons, unknown to us and to the British public, must exist, to account for the continuance of the slave system; and we think that Mrs Stowe has, albeit unwittingly, disclosed one of them. For what does her sentiment amount to, but an acknowledgment that, in the great enlightened republic of America, it is impossible to procure decent or permanent service—that, as there is no acknowledgment of anything like rank or gradation, the servants consider themselves in all respects as good as their master or mistress, will not obey them unless it suits their humour, and are always ready to decamp? That must be the case, unless we are to suppose that the American ladies, answering to the aristocracy here, have a diseased appetite for performing the offices of scullion, cook, and table-maid. Now, it may be thought a very strong statement on our part, but we venture to say, that were slavery existing at the present time in Great Britain, and were the kind of free service procurable on any terms, no better than that which Mrs Stowe and all other writers have described as existing in America, emancipation would be a decidedly unpopular proposal in these Islands. Is it possible to doubt that? Look at the history of the Factories Bill, opposed, defeated, and evaded in every possible way, by the very same men who proclaim themselves as the warmest friends of the negro. They thought it as nothing that the bodies and souls of the young children within their factories should be distorted and uncared for, whilst at the same time they were ready to expend their gratuitous sympathy on the American slave. But we shall not refer solely to them. Our remark applies to every class; and we put the question to the ladies of this country, from the Duchess of Sutherland downwards, whether, if they had been born slave-owners, they would at once have relinquished their control over those whom they could treat kindly, and whose affections they could secure, to pass to a system which would have sent them down from the drawing-room to slave themselves in the pantry or the kitchen? Is that an argument for slavery? Heaven forbid! We intend nothing of the kind, and should be very sorry to see our meaning so twisted and distorted. But it is an argument of the very strongest description against republicanism and republican institutions, and against those absurd notions of equality which, under philosophical cover, are making such rapid progress in this country. Slavery, we are convinced, has in all times existed rather as a social necessity, than from any abstract wish in man to own property in man. The idea is of itself repugnant. Not much more than a hundred years ago, the Earls of Sutherland were, in effect, considerable serf-owners. The patriarchal rule of the chief was more despotic than is the sway of the proprietor of slaves in America; for if the Mhor-ar-chat, which we apprehend to be the most ancient designation of the family, had desired Dugald or Donald to pitch his recusant brother into the loch, with some hundred-weight of granite attached to his neck by a plaid, “nae doubt the laird’s pleasure suld be obeyed.” Fortunately we are past that phase of existence. The feudal system has decayed and died, which we are not by any means sorry for; but, on the other hand, we have not yet arrived at the point when the descendants of Dugald and Donald consider themselves as ranking in the same degree of the social scale with the great Lady of Dunrobin. Feudal service has given way to a better-ordered, more convenient, and more profitable system. But still, among us, the 312gradations of rank are recognised and acted on; and it is because the feelings and institutions of the country are essentially aristocratic, that our domestic arrangements and social intercourse are so decidedly superior to those of America, or indeed of any other country in the world. We have equal laws, to which noble and yeoman are alike amenable; but we do not insist upon the recognition of what has absurdly and mischievously been termed, the law of universal equality. Admirably has Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in one of his earlier writings, exposed the fallacy of those who confound equal rights with absolute parity in society. “If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood, they could not make it law. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smoothe away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to equality is unfit for freedom.” How is an army led? By subordination only. Remove that principle, and the army resolves itself into a mob. So is it with all society. Let men talk of the absurdities of chivalry as they please, it is the influence of the chivalrous institutions still remaining among us which leavens the whole mass of British society. Pothouse philosophers may sneer at this assertion, and, in their usual elegant style of language, talk of “flunkeyism,” a phrase which, of late, has been very frequently in their mouths. Let us see what they understand by it. Do they mean to object to service altogether? Do they consider the waiter at the Thistlewood Arms, who supplies them with their nocturnal allowances of gin, degraded by the act of fetching? Doubtless they would infinitely prefer to help themselves, and to be the sole supervisors of the score; but as that is a degree of liberty which no law could possibly allow, or landlord tolerate, they are very fain to avail themselves of the spirituous ministry of Trinculo. But do they consider him on a level with themselves? Not at all. They bully him for his blunders in the transmission of half-and-half and kidneys, with a ferocity truly unfraternal; and if he were to propose to take a place at the table of their democratic worships, he would be taught a due reverence to the rules of society and breeding by the application of a pint-pot to his cranium. We have very little doubt that the wretched kind of domestic economy which prevails in the free States of America has had a strong influence in preventing the spread of emancipation principles; and we believe that to the very same cause may be traced the continuance of slavery in ancient Rome as part of their social system. The Roman plebeian was quite as surly a republican as the descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. He would not stoop to act in the capacity of a servant—hardly in that of a help, which we believe to be the recognised American term; and consequently the Cornelias, Livias, and Tullias of Rome, had either to avail themselves of the ministry of slaves who formed part of the household, or to submit to the personal drudgery of cleaning the lampreys and opening the oysters for the suppers of their luxurious lords Titius or Mœvius, or any other of the fellows of the common sort who had a tribune of their own, would not have consented to brush the toga or clean the sandals even of a senator. At the bare mention of such a thing they would have been ready to rush to the Mons Sacer, for it is a curious fact that in all ages the disaffected have manifested a propensity for taking to the hills. Chivalry put an end to this; and by establishing gradation of orders and of rank, laid the foundation for the freedom which now prevails throughout the states of Europe. It was no disgrace for the squire to obey the orders of the knight, or for the yeoman to serve the squire. The lady in her bower had the attendance of damsel and of page; and the great model of a well-regulated household was then framed and introduced. But not one atom of chivalrous feeling was conveyed by the Mayflower to New England. The spirit of the sourest republicanism pervaded that whole cargo of human verjuice; and instead of bearing with them to the west the seeds of civilisation, they carried those of intolerance and slavery. Very wise, in more senses than one, is the old proverb, which, in all matters of reformation, desires us to look primarily to home, 313and to set our houses in order. There are many social reforms, besides emancipation, required in America; and some which we almost venture to think must necessarily precede it. For at present, according to Mrs Stowe’s own showing and testimony, there is a vast gap in society occasioned by the republican abhorrence of anything like menial service, and the jealous and almost defiant spirit with which the semblance of authority is resisted. In a word, we believe that until civilisation in America has proceeded so far as to assimilate its social condition to that of the older states of Europe, very material obstacles will impede the triumph of that cause which Mrs Stowe has so enthusiastically advocated.

Mrs Stowe, like many others of her ardent countrywomen, has a decided turn for crotchets. She next falls in with Elihu Burritt, and begins an eulogistic commentary on the “movement which many, in our half-Christianised times, regard with as much incredulity as the grim, old, warlike barons did the suspicious imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword now, as then, seems so much more direct a way to terminate controversies, that many Christian men, even, cannot conceive how the world is to get along without it.” We suspect that, by this time, exceeding grave doubts as to the practicability of his views, and the termination of all disputes by arbitration, must have penetrated even the jolter-pate of the pragmatic Elihu, and that he must be mourning over the enormous waste of olive-leaves for so little good purpose. We sincerely hope, for his sake, that he has been allowed a liberal commission or per-centage on the circulation. As Mrs Stowe seems to have been admitted to his secrets, we may as well insert her account of the operations of the Peace Society.

“Burritt’s mode of operation has been by the silent organisation of circles of ladies in all the different towns of the United Kingdom, who raise a certain sum for the diffusion of the principles of peace on earth and good-will to men. Articles, setting forth the evils of war, moral, political, and social, being prepared, these circles pay for their insertion in all the principal newspapers of the Continent. They have secured to themselves in this way a continual utterance in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany; so that from week to week, and month to month, they can insert articles upon these subjects. Many times the editors insert the articles as editorial, which still further favours their design. In addition to this, the ladies of these circles in England correspond with the ladies of similar circles existing in other countries; and in this way there is a mutual kindliness of feeling established through these countries.”

We have already recorded in the Magazine our opinion of the character of these olive-leaves, as well as of the articles avowedly emanating from the pen of the inspired Elihu; and therefore we need not trouble ourselves by again disturbing the rubbish. If there are any sincere but weak people who were inclined to view favourably the movements of the Peace Society, the transactions in Europe during the last twelve months must have convinced them of the utter impossibility of creating any general court of arbitration, by means of which international disputes may be adjusted. At the present moment, Russia stands condemned for her aggression by every state in Europe. Even Prussia does not venture to defend the forcible occupation of the Danubian principalities; and every species of persuasion and representation was employed to induce the Czar to abandon his purpose, or at all events to retrace his steps. So unwilling were the western powers to draw the sword, that they allowed a great deal of valuable time to be expended in negotiation, before they took any decided step; and the general opinion in England is, that the British Government was rather too tardy in its movements. And yet, without a single declared ally, and with the unanimous voice of Europe against him, Nicholas has thrown down the gauntlet, and the fleets of Britain and France are in the Black and the Baltic Seas. After this, it is inconceivable that there should be found any people besotted enough to talk about arbitration. We should not, however, omit to notice the last dying speech and final confession of the Peace Society, as delivered by a leash of Quakers before his Majesty the Emperor 314of all the Russias, and reported on their return with so much unction by the highly-gifted and exulting Pease. There is no tragedy so deep and solemn as to be entirely without a farcical element; and we can remember nothing, in the shape of burlesque, to compete with the apparition of those diffident Quakers at St Petersburg. But the fact is, that the leading members of the Peace Society, amongst whom rank conspicuously the chiefs of the Manchester school, were perfectly well aware that the notion of arbitration was a mere chimera. Their real object was to promote the spread of democratic principles; and, if possible, to weaken the power of every existing government by strewing dissatisfaction among their subjects. This is not our allegation only—it is in perfect consonance with what Mrs Stowe records in repeating her conversations with the leading apostles of peace; and we really think that the following revelation as to ultimate views, is by no means the least valuable or interesting part of her work. She says—

“When we ask these reformers how people are to be freed from the yoke of despotism without war, they answer, ‘By the diffusion of ideas among the masses—by teaching the bayonets to think.’ They say, ‘If we convince every individual soldier of a despot’s army that war is ruinous, immoral, and unchristian, we take the instrument out of the tyrant’s hand. If each individual man would refuse to rob and murder for the Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of Russia, where would be their power to hold Hungary? What gave power to the masses in the French Revolution, but that the army, pervaded by new ideas, refused any longer to keep the people down?’

“These views are daily gaining strength in England. They are supported by the whole body of the Quakers, who maintain them with that degree of inflexible perseverance and never-dying activity which have rendered the benevolent actions of that body so efficient.”

Very good, Mrs Stowe! But are no soldiers to be allowed to think, except those belonging to a despot’s army? And is every individual soldier to be permitted to act exclusively upon his own impressions of the abstract propriety or justice of the service in which he is engaged? Passages such as these—and they are not unfrequent in her work—go far indeed to unsettle our faith in the sense, judgment, and discretion of Mrs Stowe—qualities without which even the highest talent fails in attaining at its aims.

But we must now follow Mrs Stowe to London, where her reception was of a most marked and gratifying kind. Our readers cannot have forgotten the remonstrance or expostulation which was addressed by the ladies of Great Britain, under the generalship of the Duchess of Sutherland, to the ladies of America, on the subject of the emancipation of the slaves. That document was freely commented upon at the time; and, if we recollect aright, some rather pungent strictures were made upon it, even by writers in this country, as if, by taking this step, the fair remonstrants had somewhat transgressed the reserve which is expected from their sex. In that view we cannot join. We have intimated, perhaps broadly enough, our objections to the American notion of the “Rights of Woman;” but we trust to stand acquitted of entertaining any such discourteous view as might preclude the ladies from a fair expression of their opinion. In a question such as this, embracing all the domestic considerations and feelings to which women are more alive than men, it was not only well and commendable, but noble and Christian, that women should take a decided part, and attempt, at least, by an appeal to the common sympathies of the sex, to awaken commiseration for the degraded condition of thousands of their human sisters, and to urge an effort in their behalf. We really think that one such representation, addressed by women to women, is more likely to have a lasting and salutary effect, than five hundred public meetings, such as Mrs Stowe witnessed at Glasgow and elsewhere, where bull-throated ministers and blethering bailies assemble to make trial of their powers of oratory. Notwithstanding the reply of Juliana Tyler, who came forward as the champion on the other side, we believe that the appeal, on the part of the ladies of Great Britain, must have made a deep impression on the minds of many in America. We do not feel ourselves called upon to discuss the arguments 315which Mrs Tyler employed; for in a ladies’ controversy, no male has a right to interfere. Mrs Stowe tells us that the origin of the address was this: “Fearful of the jealousy of political interference, Lord Shaftesbury published an address to the ladies of England, in which he told them that he felt himself moved by an irresistible impulse to entreat them to raise their voice, in the name of their common Christianity and womanhood, to their American sisters.” We shall add, what Mrs Stowe is too modest to say, or perhaps what she does not know, that, but for the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the interest excited thereby, Lord Shaftesbury might have worn his pen to the stump before he could have succeeded in eliciting any such remonstrance.

Most graceful indeed, and becoming, was the attention which was lavished, on the part of the Duchess of Sutherland and her kindred, upon Mrs Stowe; and to us by far the most pleasing portion of the book is that in which she records her impressions of London society. In the very highest circles of the metropolis, and while moving for a time in a sphere which might very well dazzle and perplex one to whom such scenes must have appeared like a fairy dream, she really appears to have kept her equilibrium, and preserved her coolness of judgment much better than when she was greeted by civic demonstrations in the North, or by gatherings of the peaceful but somewhat prosy and dogmatic brotherhood of the Quakers in the Midland Counties. To our great astonishment we have observed that poor Mrs Stowe has been accused by various liberal journals in England, of “flunkeyism,” for conveying to her friends an accurate account of what she saw at Stafford House, and one or two other mansions to which she was invited. Anything more unfair and even monstrous than this style of criticism it is impossible to conceive. Mrs Stowe is writing her impressions of British society for the information of her friends in America. In London it was her good fortune to be received cordially and hospitably by several of the most distinguished and estimable of the nobility and public characters; and because she gives a fair, and by no means too minute relation of what she saw and heard, she is scoffed at, by a certain section of the liberal gentry of the London press, as a kind of parasite. This is really very shabby and disgusting; for we do think that her modest, unaffected, and sometimes naïve observations upon what she saw passing around her, might have saved her from any such reflection. She enjoyed in England particular advantages such as very few Americans could boast of. Had N. P. Willis ever been able to compass an admission to Stafford House, his literary fortune would have been made. We should have heard no more of Count Spiridion Ballardos, or any such small-deer; but the intrepid Penciller would have fixed at once upon the Duke of Argyll as his victim, and have magnified himself in some inconceivable way, by introducing Philip Slingsby as the triumphant rival and competitor of the MacCallum-Mhor. Mrs Stowe does not try by any means to exalt herself—indeed her figure does not appear at all prominently in the picture. She has endeavoured to give as accurate a sketch as she could of London society, and in some respects has succeeded pretty well. Blunders there are of course, but that was unavoidable, and a good deal of what appears to us to be gossip, but which possibly may have a higher value in the eyes of her Transatlantic readers. She very fairly admits in her preface, that her narrative may be tinged couleur de rose; and we are only surprised, considering the temptations in her way, that she has used the Claude Lorraine glass with so much discretion. Society is quite as intoxicating as champagne; and it is impossible to write a book of this kind, without recalling, to a considerable extent, the feeling of the bygone excitement. We have no doubt that the printed narrative would seem peculiarly sober, could we be favoured with a perusal of the actual letters which Mrs Stowe despatched to America from the bewildering whirl of London.

One thing, however, we have remarked with pain; and that is the introduction by Mrs Stowe of an elaborate defence or explanation of what were called the “Sutherland Clearings.” 316Her motive for doing so is quite apparent; but we cannot help thinking that she has placed both herself, and the noble family for whom she appears as an advocate, in a false and disagreeable position, by putting forth statements of the accuracy of which she had no means of judging. The transactions to which she refers are of an old date; and they occurred in a district of which she has absolutely no personal knowledge. She never was in Sutherland, or indeed any other part of the Highlands, and therefore she was not entitled in any way to deal with such a subject. That she was furnished with materials for the purposes of publication seems more than probable: if so, we cannot commend the prudence of those who took so singular a method of refuting what may very possibly be calumny or misrepresentation. With the merits of the case we have nothing to do, nor shall we express any opinion upon them; but it does seem to us a most extraordinary circumstance that Mrs Stowe should have been induced to put forth a long, elaborate, and statistical argument upon a subject of which she is wholly ignorant. A defence of this kind—supposing that any defence was required—is positively hurtful to the parties whose conduct has been called in question; and anything but creditable to their discretion if they consented to its issue.

Interspersed with the actual narrative, are commentaries, or rather criticisms, upon art and literature, which, for the sake of the authoress, we could wish omitted. Her taste, upon all subjects of the kind, is either wholly uncultivated or radically bad—indeed it would be absolutely cruel to quote her observations on the works of the old masters. In literature she prefers Dr Watts, as a poet, to Dryden, and has the calm temerity to proceed to quotation. She says, “For instance, take these lines:—

“Simply as a specimen of harmonious versification, I would place this paraphrase by Dr Watts above everything in the English language, not even excepting Pope’s Messiah”!!! Whereas, to any one possessing a common ear, the lines must rank as absolute doggrel, and the ideas which they convey are commonplace and wretchedly expressed. Elsewhere she says:—“I certainly do not worship the old English poets. With the exception of Milton and Shakespeare, there is more poetry in the works of the writers of the last fifty years than in all the rest together.” We wonder if she ever read a line of Chaucer or of Spenser, not to speak of Pope and Dryden. But she objects even to Milton. Here is a piece of criticism which we defy the world to match: “There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only one who weeps

“God does not care, nor his angels.” Our readers, we hope, will understand why we leave this passage without comment. But it may be worth while to show them the sort of poetry (beyond Watts) which Mrs Stowe does admire, and she favours us with the following as a “beautiful aspiration” from an American poet of the name of Lowell:—

Beautiful aspirations—lovely lines! Why—they are absolute nonsense; and the mere silent reading of them has set our teeth on edge. Try to recite them, and you are inevitably booked for a catarrh! In like manner she refers to some rubbish of Mr Whittier, an American rhymer, as a “beautiful ballad, called ‘Barclay of Ury.’” We have a distinct recollection of having read that ballad some years ago, and of our impression that it was incomparably the worst which we ever encountered; though, if a naked sword were at this moment to be presented to our throat, we could depone nothing further, than that “rising in a fury,” rhymed to “Barclay of Ury;” and also, that “frowning very darkly,” chimed in to the name of “Barclay.” But it was woeful stuff; and it lingers in our memory solely by reason of its absurdity. However, as Mrs Stowe prefers this sort of thing to Spenser, we have nothing for it except to make our bow, regretting that our æsthetical notions are so far apart, that, under no circumstances whatever, can we foresee the possibility of a coalition.

Beyond the Channel we shall not follow her; the more especially as the greater part of the Continental tour is described in the journal of the Rev. Charles Beecher, an individual with whose proceedings, thoughts, and raptures, we have not been able to conjure up the slightest sympathy. In fact, taking Mr Beecher at his own estimate and valuation, and making every allowance for playfulness of manner, we should by no means covet his company in any part of Europe; and we are only surprised that, in one or two places (as for instance Cologne), he did not receive an emphatic check to his outrageous hilarity. But as he seems to have been impressed with the idea that he exhibited himself rather in a humorous and attractive light, we have no intention of dispelling the dream—we are only sorry that Mrs Stowe should have thought it worth while to increase the bulk of her book by admitting her relative’s inflated, ill-written, and singularly silly lucubrations, as part of a work which, considering her literary celebrity, and the interest of the theme, will in all probability have an extensive circulation.

After making every allowance for the difficulty attendant upon the task of portraying with fidelity and spirit the customs of a foreign country, we cannot, with truth, express an opinion that Mrs Stowe has been successful in her effort. Far more interesting and agreeable volumes have been written by women of less natural ability; and we are constrained to dismiss, with a feeling of decided disappointment, a book which we opened with the anticipation of a very different result.

It is the common practice of innovators to set up a loud cry against long-received opinions which favour them not, and the word prejudice is the denunciation of “mad-dog.” But prejudices, like human beings who hold them, are not always “so bad as they seem.” They are often the action of good, natural instincts, and often the results of ratiocinations whose processes are forgotten. Let us have no “Apology” for a long-established prejudice; ten to one but it can stand upon its own legs, and needs no officious supporter, who simply apologises for it.

We have had philosophers who have told us there is really no such thing as beauty, consequently there can be no such thing as taste; that it is a mere idea, an unaccountable prejudice somehow or other engendered in the brain. And though there exists not a head in the universe without a portion of this disorder-breeding brain, the philosopher persists that the product is a worthless nonentity, and altogether out of the nature of things. We maintain, however, in favour of prejudices and tastes—that there are real grounds for both; and, presuming not to be so wise as to deny the evidences of our senses, and conclusions of our minds, think it scarcely worth while to unravel the threads of our convictions. In matters of science we marvel and can believe almost anything; but in our tastes and feelings we naturally, and by an undoubting instinct, shrink from the touch of an innovator, as we would shun the heel of a donkey.

Whenever an innovator of this kind sets up “An Apology” for his intended folly, we invariably feel that he means a very audacious insult upon our best perceptions. The worst of it is, he is not one easily put aside—he will labour to get a commission into your house, ransack it to its sewers, and turn it out of windows. He is the man that must ever be doing. He will think himself entitled to perambulate the world with his pot of polychrome in his hand, and bedaub every man’s door-post; and if multitudes—the whole offended neighbourhood—rush out to upset his pot and brush, he will laugh in their faces, defend his plastering instruments, and throw to them with an air his circular, “An Apology;” and perhaps afterwards knock the doors down for an authorised payment. Such a one shall get no “Apology”-pence out of us.

We are prejudiced—we delight in being prejudiced—will continue prejudiced as long as we live, and will entertain none but prejudiced friends. There are things we will believe, and give no reasons for, ever; and things we never will believe, whatever reasons are to be given in their favour. We think the man who said, “Of course, I believe it, if you say you saw it; but I would not believe it if I saw it myself,” used an irresistible argument of good sound prejudice, mixed with discretion. It is better, safer, and honester, to bristle up like a hedgehog, and let him touch who dares, than to sit and be smoothed and smoothed over with oily handling of sophisticated arguments, till every decent palpable roughness of reason is taken from you.

Reader, do you like white marble? What a question! you will ask,—do you suppose me to have no eyes? Do not all people covet it—import it from Carrara? Do not sculptors, as sculptors have done in all ages, make 318statues from it—monuments, ornaments, and costly floors? Of course, everybody loves white marble. Then, reader, if such is your taste, you are a prejudiced ignoramus; you belong to that age “devoid of the capacity to appreciate and the power to execute works of art”—that age which certain persons profess to illuminate. You are now, under the new dictators of taste, to know that you had no business to admire white marble,^[45]—that you are so steeped in this old prejudice that it will require a long time before you can eradicate this stain of a vile admiration, although your teachers have acquired a true knowledge in an incredible time. You must put yourself under the great colourman of the great Crystal Palace, Mr Owen Jones, who, if he does not put out your eyes in the experiments he will set before you, will at least endeavour to convince you that you are a fool of the first water. But beware how you don his livery of motley. Hear him: “Under this influence (the admiration of white marble), however, we have been born and bred, and it requires time to shake off the trammels which such early education leaves.” You have sillily believed that the Athenians built with marble because of its beauty,—that the Egyptians thought there was beauty in granite. You thought in your historical dream that he who found the city of brick, and left it of marble, had done something whereof he might reasonably boast. You have been egregiously mistaken. If you ever read that the Greeks and Romans, and other people since their times civilised, sent great distances for marble for their palaces and statues, you must put it down in your note-book of new “historic doubts.” You learn a fact you never dreamed of, from Mr Owen Jones. They merely used it (marble) because it lay accidentally at their feet. He puts the richest colouring of his contempt on “the artificial value which white marble has in our eyes.” Learn the real cause of its use: “The Athenians built with marble, because they found it almost beneath their feet, and also from the same cause which led the Egyptians to employ granite, which was afterwards painted—viz. because it was the most enduring, and capable of receiving a higher finish of workmanship.” He maintains that so utterly regardless were these Greeks of any supposed beauty in marble—especially white marble—that they took pains to hide every appearance of its texture; that they not only painted it all over, but covered it with a coating of stucco. Listen to an oracle that, we will answer for it, never came from Delphi, that no Pythia in her madness ever conceived, and that, if uttered in the recesses, would have made Apollo shake his temple to pieces.

“To what extent were white marble temples painted and ornamented? I would maintain that they were entirely so; that neither the colour of the marble, nor even its surface, was preserved; and that preparatory to the ornamenting and colouring of the surface, the whole was covered with a thin coating of stucco, something in the nature of a gilder’s ground, to stop the absorption of the colours by the marble.”

“A thin coat of stucco!” and no exception with respect to statues—to be applied wherever the offensive white marble showed its unblushing nakedness and beauty!! Let us imagine it tested on a new statue—thus stucco over, however thin, Mr Bayley’s Eve, or Mr Power’s Greek Slave—the thought is enough to make the sculptor go mad, and commit a murder on himself or the plasterer—to see all his fine, his delicate chisellings obliterated! all the nice markings, the scarcely perceptible dimplings gone!—for let the coat of stucco be thin as a wafer, it must, according to that thickness, enlarge every rising and diminish the spaces between them: thus, all true proportion must be lost; between two risings the space must be less. “What fine chisel,” says our immortal Shakespeare, “could ever yet cut breath?” How did he imagine, in these few words, the living motion of the “breath of life” in the statue! and who doubts either the attempt or the success 319so to represent perfect humanity, when he looks at the finest antique statues? Let an audacious innovator dare to daub one of them with his coat of stucco, and all the chiselling of the life, breath, and motion is annihilated. It must be so, whatever be the thickness of the coat; though it be but a nail-paring it must diminish risings and hollows, and all nicer touches must disappear. We should heartily desire to see the innovator suffocated in his plaster and paint-pot, that in his suffering he may know it is a serious thing to knock the life-breath out of the body even of a statue.

There is one slight objection to our getting rid of this prejudice in favour of white marble which we suggest to Mr Owen Jones, and all the “Stainers’” Company—the unseemly blots we shall have to make in the fairest pages of poetry, old and new. Albums will of course be ruined, and a general smear, bad as a “coat of stucco,” be passed over the whole books of beauties who have “dreamed they dwelt in marble halls.” The new professors, polychromatists, must bring out, if they are able, new editions of all our classics. How must this passage from Horace provoke their bile:

And when, after being enchanted by the “grata protervitas,” he adds the untranslateable line,

we can almost believe, with that bad taste which Mr Owen Jones will condemn, that he had in the full eye of his admiration the polished, delicately defined charm of the Parian marble.

It was a clown’s taste to daub the purity; and first he daubed his own face, and the faces of his drunken rabble. He would have his gods made as vulgar as himself; and then, doubtless, there was many a wooden, worthless, and obscene idol, the half joke and veneration of the senseless clowns, painted as fine as vermilion could make them.

But to suppose that Praxiteles and Phidias could endure to submit their loveliest works to be stuccoed and solidly painted over with vermilion, seems to us to suppose a perfect impossibility. That they could not have willingly allowed the defilement we have shown by the nature of their work, all the nicety of touch and real proportion of parts lying under the necessity of alteration, and consequently damage thereby. Whatever apparent proof might be adduced that such statues were painted—and we doubt the proof, as we will endeavour to show—we do not hesitate to say that the daubings and plasterings must have been the doing of a subsequent less cultivated people, and possibly at the demand of a vulgarised mobocracy. The clown at our pantomimes is the successor to the clown who smeared his face with wine-lees, and passed his jokes while he gave orders to have his idol painted with vermilion. Yet though it must be impossible that Phidias or Praxiteles would have allowed solid coats of paint or stucco, or both, to have ruined the works of their love and genius, under the presuming title “historical evidence” an anecdote is culled from the amusing gossip Pliny, to show what Praxiteles thought of it. “There is a passage in Pliny which is decisive, as soon as we understand the allusion.” Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv. cap. 11), he says that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, “Those which Nicias has had under his hands.” “So much,” adds Pliny, “did he prize the finishing of Nicias”—(tantum circumlitioni ejus tribuebat). This “finishing of Nicias,” by its location, professes to be a translation from Pliny, which it is not. Had the writer adopted the exact wording of the old English translation, from which he seems to have taken the former portion of the sentence, it would not have suited his purpose, but it would have been more fair: it is thus, “So much did he attribute unto his vernish and polishing”—which 320contradicts the solid painting. Pliny is rather ambiguous with regard to this Nicias—whether he was the celebrated one or no. But it should be noticed that the anecdote, as told in Mr Owen Jones’ “Apology,” is intended to show that the painter’s skill, as a painter, was added—substantially added—to the work of Praxiteles, whereas this Nicias may have been one who was nice in the making and careful in the use of his varnish; and we readily grant that some kind of varnishing or polishing may have been used over the statues, both for lustre and protection. Certainly at one time, though we would not say there is proof as to the time of Phidias, such varnishes, or rather waxings, were in use. But even if it were the celebrated Nicias to whom the anecdote refers, we cannot for a moment believe he would have touched substantially, as a painter, any work of Praxiteles. But as genius is ever attached to genius, he may have supplied to Praxiteles the means of giving that polish which he gave to his own works, and probably aided him in the operation, not “had under his hands,” as translated—“quibus manum admovisset.” Pliny had in his eye the very modus operandi of the encaustic process, the holding heated iron within a certain distance of the object. But what was the operation? Does the text authorise anything like the painting the statue? Certainly not. And however triumphantly it is brought forward, there is a hitch in the argument which must be confessed.

In making this confession, it would have been as well to have referred to Pliny himself for the meaning. Pliny uses the verb illinebat, in grammatical relation to circumlitio, in the sense of varnishing, in that well-known passage in which he speaks of the varnish used by Apelles—“Unum imitari nemo potuit, quod absoluta opera illinebat atramento ita tenui,” &c.

The meaning of this passage hangs on the word circumlitio. Winckelmann follows the mass of commentators in understanding this as referring to some mode of polishing the statues. But Quatremère de Quincey, in his magnificent work Le Jupiter Olympien, satisfactorily shows this to be untenable, not only “because no sculptor could think of preferring such of his statues as had been better polished, but also because Nicias being a painter, not a sculptor, his services must have been those of a painter.” If these are the only “becauses” of Quatremère de Quincey, they are anything but satisfactory; for a sculptor may esteem all his works as equal, and then prefer such as had the advantage of Nicias’s circumlitio. Nor does the because of Nicias being a painter at all define the circumlitio to be a plastering with stucco, or a thick daubing with vermilion; for, be it borne in mind, this vermilion painting is always spoken of as a solid coating. As to Nicias’s services, “What were they?” asks the author of the Historical Evidence in Mr Jones’s Apology. “Nicias was an encaustic painter, and hence it is clear that his circumlitio, his mode of finishing the statues, so highly prized by Praxiteles, must have been the application of encaustic painting to those parts which the sculptor wished to have ornamented. For it is quite idle to suppose a sculptor like Praxiteles would allow another sculptor to finish his works. The rough work may be done by other hands, but the finishing is always left to the artist. The statue completed, there still remained the painter’s art to be employed, and for that Nicias is renowned.”—Indeed! This is exceedingly childish: first the truism that one sculptor would not have another to finish his work—of course, not; and then that the work was not finished until the painter had regularly, according to his best skill and art—which art and skill were required—been employed in the painting it as he would paint a picture, “for which he was renowned;”—that is, variously colour all the parts—till he had variously coloured hair and eyes, and put in varieties of flesh tones, show the blue veins beneath, and all that a painter renowned for these things was in the habit of doing in his pictures. If this be not the meaning of this author, and the object of Mr Owen Jones in making such a parade 321of it, he or the writer writes without any fixed ideas, and all this assumption, all this absurd theory, is after all built upon a word which these people are determined to misunderstand, and yet upon which they cannot help but express the doubt. But why should there be any doubt at all? As far as we can see, the word is a plain word, and explains itself very well, and even expresses its modus operandi. A writer acquainted with such a schoolboy book as Ainsworth’s Dictionary might have relieved his mind as to any doubts or forced construction of circumlitio; he might have found there, that the word comes from Lino, to smear, from Leo, the same—and that Circum in the composition shows the action, the mode of smearing. Nay, he is referred to two passages in Pliny, the very one from which the quotation in the Historical Evidence is taken, and to another in the same author, Pliny—and authors generally explain themselves—where the word is used in reference to the application of medicinal unguents. We can readily grant that the ancient sculptors did employ recipes of the most skilful persons in making unctuous varnishes, which they rubbed into the marble as a preservative, and also to bring out more perfectly the beauty of the marble texture—not altogether to hide it. It may be, without the least concession towards Mr Owen Jones’s painting theory, as readily granted that they gave this unctuous composition a warm tone, with a little vermilion, as many still do to their varnishes. Pliny himself, in his 33d book, chap. vii., gives such a recipe: White Punic wax, melted with oil, and laid on hot; the work afterwards to be well rubbed over with cere-cloths. To return to the “Circumlitio,” we have the word, only with super instead of circum, used in the application of a varnish by the Monk Theophilus, of the tenth century, who, if he did not take the word from Pliny, and therefore in Pliny’s sense, may be taken for quite as good Latin authority. After describing the method of making a varnish of oil and a gum—“gummi quod vocatur fornis”—he adds, “Hoc glutine omnis pictura superlinita, fit et decora ac omnino durabilis.” The two words Superlitio and Circumlitio,^[46]—the first applicable to such a surface as a picture; the last to statues, which present quite another surface. But if it could be proved—and it cannot—that the works of Praxiteles were in Mr Owen Jones’s sense painted over, would that justify the colouring the frieze of the Parthenon, the work of Phidias, who preceded Praxiteles more than a century, during which many abominations in taste may have been introduced? We are quite aware that, at a barbarous period, images of gods, probably mostly those of wood, were painted over with vermilion, as a sacred colour and one of triumph. We extract from the old translation of Pliny this passage:—“There is found also in silver mines a mineral called minium, i. e. vermilion, which is a colour at this day of great price and estimation, like as it was in old time; for the ancient Romans made exceeding great account of it, not only for pictures, but also for divers sacred and holy uses. And verily Verrius allegeth and rehearseth many authors whose credit ought not to be disproved, who affirm that the manner was in times past to paint the very face of Jupiter’s image on high and festival daies with vermilion: as also that the valiant captains who rode in triumphant manner into Rome had in former times their bodies covered all over therewith; after which manner, they say, noble Camillus entered the city in triumph. And even to this day, according to that ancient and religious custom, ordinary it is to colour all the unguents that are used in a festival supper, at a solemne triumph, with vermilion. And no one thing do the Censors give charge and order for to be done, at their entrance into office, before the painting of Jupiter’s image with minium.” Yet Pliny does not say much in favour of the practice; for he adds—“The cause and motive that induced our ancestors to this ceremony I marvel much at, and cannot imagine what it should be.” The Censors did but follow a vulgar taste to please the 322vulgar, for whom no finery can be too fine, no colours too gaudy. However refined the Athenian taste, we know from their comedies they had their vulgar ingredient: there could be no security among them even for the continuance in purity of the genius which gave them the works of Phidias and Praxiteles; nor were even these great artists perhaps allowed the exercise of their own noble minds. The Greeks had no permanent virtues—no continuance of high perceptions: as these deteriorated, their great simplicity would naturally yield to petty ornament. They of Elis, who appointed the descendants of Phidias to the office of preserving from injury his statue of Jupiter Olympius, did little if they neglected to secure their education also in the principles of the taste of Phidias. The conservators would in time be the destroyers; and simply because they must do, and know not what to do. When images—their innumerable idols—were carried in processions, they were of course dressed up, not for veneration, but show. We know that in very early times their gods were carried about in shrines, and, without doubt, tricked up with dress and daubings, pretty much as are, at this day, the Greek Madonnas. Venus and Cupid have descended down to our times in the painted Madonna and Bambino. Whatever people under the sun have ever had paint and finery, temples, gods, and idols have had their share of them. We need no proofs, and it is surprising we have so few with respect to the great works of the ancients, that these corruptions would take place. It is in human nature: barbarism never actually dies; it is an ill weed, hard entirely to eradicate, and is ready to spring up in the most cultivated soils. The vulgar mind will make its own Loretto: imagination and credulity want no angels but themselves to convey anywhere a “santa casa;” nor will there be wanting brocade and jewels, the crown and the peplos, for the admiration of the ignorant. Are a few examples, if found and proved, and of the best times—which is not clear—to establish the theory as good in taste, or in any way part of the intention of the great sculptors? If authorities adduced, and to be adduced, are worth anything, they must go a great deal farther. Take, for instance, a passage from Pausanias, lib. ii. c. 11: Καὶ Ὑγείας δ’ ἐσι κατα ταυτον αγαλμα οὺκ αν οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἴδοις ῤᾳδίως, οὕτω, περιεχουσιν ἀυτὸ κόμαι τε γυναικὼν άὓ κειρονται τῇ θεῶ, καὶ ἐσθῆτός Βαβυλωνίας τελαμῶνες.—“And after the same manner is a statue of Hygeia, which you may not easily see, it is so completely covered with hair of the women who have shorn themselves in honour of the goddess, and also with the fringes of the Babylonish vest.” Here, surely, is quite sufficient authority for Mr Jones to procure ample and variously coloured wigs for the Venus de Medicis, and other statues, and to order a committee of milliners to devise suitable vesture. Images of this kind were mostly made of wood, easy to be carried about; and were often, doubtless, made likest life, for the deception as of the real presence of a deity. The view of art was lost when imposture commenced. Mr Jones admits that the Greek sculptors did not intend exact imitation, but his theory goes so close to it, it would be difficult to say where it stops short. Indeed, he had better at once go the whole way, or we may better say, “the whole hog,” with bristle brushes, for when he has got rid of the “prejudice” in favour of white marble, his spectators will be satisfied with nothing less than wax-work.

We remember hearing, in a remote village, the consolation one poor woman gave another—“Look up to them pretty angels, with their lovely black eyes, and take comfort from ’em.” These were angels’ heads in plaster, round the cornice, which the church-wardens, year after year, with the official taste and importance of the Roman Censors, had caused to be so painted when, as they announced on a tablet, they “beautified” the church. Of late years we have been removing the whitewash from our cathedrals, thicker, by repetition, than Mr Owen Jones’s prescribed coats of stucco. Should his theory prevail, we shall be again ashamed of stone; white-lime 323will be restored until funds shall be found for stucco, inside and out, as preparation for Mr Jones’s bright blue and unmitigated vermilion and gold. It is frightful to imagine Mr Owen Jones and his paint-pot over every inch of Westminster Abbey, inside and out.

Let us take a nearer view of the historical evidence. We are told, “Ancient literature abounds with references and allusions to the practice of painting and dressing statues. Space prevents their being copiously cited here.” We venture to affirm, that the lack of existence is greater than the lack of space, if by ancient literature is meant the best literature—the literature contemporary with the works of the great sculptors. There were poets and historians—can any quotation be given at all admissible as evidence? It is extraordinary that the advocates for the theory, if it were true, can find no passages in the poets. Is there nothing nearer than what Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates? “Let it be remembered that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, and that Plato lived in Athens, acquainted with the great sculptors and their works; then read this passage, wherein Socrates employs by way of simile the practice of painting statues—‘Just as if, when painting statues, a person should blame us for not placing the most beautiful colours on the most beautiful parts of the figure—inasmuch as the eyes, the most beautiful parts, were not painted purple but black,—we should answer him by saying, Clever fellow, do not suppose we are to paint eyes so beautifully that they should not appear to be eye.’—Plato, De Repub., lib. iv. This passage would long ago have settled the question, had not the moderns been preoccupied with the belief that the Greeks did not paint their statues; they therefore read the passage in another sense. Many translators read ‘pictures’ for ‘statues.’ But the Greek word Ανδριας signifies ‘statue,’ and is never used to signify ‘picture.’ It means statue, and a statuary is called the maker of such statues—Ανδριαντοποιος. (Mr Davis, in Bohn’s English edition of Plato, avoids the difficulty by translating it ‘human figures’).”—Mr Lloyd, in his remarks upon this passage, confesses that it does not touch the question concerning the painting the flesh, but refers to the eyes, lips, and ornaments. We object not to admit more than this, and, as we have before observed, that certain images, mostly of wood, were painted entirely, excepting where clothed; and, for argument’s sake, admitting that Socrates alluded to these common images, if we may so speak, the ancestors of our common dolls, should we be justified in building a theory subversive of all good taste upon such an ambiguity? For nothing is here said of marble statues; and there is nothing to show that marble statues are meant. The writer in the “Apology” says, with an air of triumph, that Ανδριας always means statue, and never picture; but these were figures, that he would call statues, of wood and of clay, and of little value—a kind of marketable goods for the vulgar, as we have already shown. But if the writer is determined to make them marble statues, and of the best, he might certainly have made his case the stronger; for when he says, and truly, that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, he forgets that Socrates was himself a sculptor,—and some have supposed him to have been a painter also, but Pliny is of another opinion. The three Graces in the court before the Acropolis of Athens were his work; and it is probably to the demands these Graces made upon his thoughts the philosopher alluded in his dialogue with Theodote the courtesan. She had invited him to her home; he excused himself that he had no leisure from his private and public affairs,—“and besides,” he adds playfully, “I have φἴλαι—female friends—at home who will not suffer me to absent myself from them day or night, learning, as they do from me, charms and powers of enticement.”^[47] So that we may suppose him to have been no mean statuary. Yet, considering that his mother followed the humble occupation of a 324midwife, and that consequently his father was not very rich, it may not be an out-of-the-way conjecture to suppose that the family trade may have had its humbler employments, of which the painting images may have borne a part. Ships had their images as well as temples, and we know that the ship’s head was “Μιλτοπάρἤος.” The custom has descended to our times. But we are not to take the word put by Plato into the mouth of Socrates—ανδριαντας—necessarily in the highest sense, and imagine he speaks of such works as those of Phidias or Praxiteles. Although the Greeks did distinguish the several words by which statues were understood, they were not very nice in the observance of the several uses. Ανδριαντας may have been applied to any representation of the human figure.^[48] Ανδριαντοποιος, says the Apologist, was a statuary—so may have been said to be Ανδριαντοπλάσης the modellist in clay or wax; but neither word is used by Socrates—simply Ανδριαντας, (images). There is not a hint as to how, or with what materials, they were made. The scholiast on the passage in Aristophanes respecting the work of Socrates (the Graces), makes a distinction between ανδριαντας and αγαλματα—noticing that Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, λιθοξόou, with whom he took his share in the polishing art, adding that he polished ανδριαντας λιθινouς ἐλαξεύε, and that he made the “αγαλματα” of the three Graces. Now, let ανδριας be a statue, or human figure, of whatever material, and grant that some such figures had painted eyes, and probably partially coloured drapery, possibly the whole body painted—what then? they might have been low and inferior works. Who would think, from such data, of inferring a habit in the Greek sculptors of painting and plastering all their marble statues—asserting too, so audaciously, that we the moderns have, and not they, a prejudice in favour of white marble? But Mr Lloyd, in his note on this passage, with respect to Socrates (vide “Apology”), admits that it is no evidence of the colouring the flesh. “The passage is decisive, as far as it goes, but it does not touch the question of colouring the flesh. It proves that as late as Plato’s time it was usual to apply colour to the eyes of statues; and assuming, what is not stated, that marble statues are in question, we are brought to the same point as by the Æginetan marbles, of which the eyes, lips, portions of the armour and draperies, were found coloured. I forget whether the hair was found to be coloured, but the absence of traces of colour on the flesh, while they were abundant elsewhere, indicates that, if coloured at all, it must have been by a different and more perishable process—by a tint, or stain, or varnish. The Æginetan statues, being archaic, do not give an absolute rule for those of Phidias. The archaic Athenian bas-relief of a warrior, in excellent preservation, shows vivid colours on drapery and ornaments of armour, and the eyeballs were also coloured: here again there is no trace of colour on the flesh.” But notwithstanding that no statue has been found with any trace of colour in the flesh, and not satisfied with Mr Lloyd’s commentary, Mr Owen Jones seeks proof and confirmation of the sense of the quotation from Plato, in a caution given by Plutarch, thus mistranslated: “It is necessary to be very careful of statues, otherwise the vermilion with which the ancient statues were coloured will quickly disappear.” What kind of care is necessary? Plutarch uses the word γάνωσις, which means more than care—that a polishing or varnishing is necessary (if, as we may presume, they would preserve the old colouring of an archaic statue), because, not perhaps of the quick fading of the vermilion, as translated by Mr 325Lloyd, but the vermilion εξανθεῖ—effloresces; or, as we should say, comes up dry to the surface, leaving the vehicle with which it was put on. However, let the passage have all the meaning Mr Owen Jones can desire, it relates only to certain sacred figures at Rome, not in Greece, and which may have been, for anything that is known to the contrary, figures of sacred geese. How do these quotations show the practice of Phidias? In the first place, Plato, who narrates what Socrates said, was nearly a century after Phidias, and Plutarch nearly six hundred years after Phidias. On every account the authority of Plato would be preferable to that of Plutarch, who kept his school at Rome, and was far more fond of raising questions than of affording accurate information.^[49] Mr Owen Jones, however, in the impetuosity of his imaginary triumph, outruns all his given authorities to authorities not given. He says: “There are abundant notices extant which illustrate it (the painting of statues). One will suffice. The celebrated marble statue of a Bacchante by Scopas is described as holding, in lieu of the Thyrsus, a dead roebuck, which is cut open, and the marble represents living flesh.” We willingly excuse the blunder of the living flesh of a dead roebuck, ascribing it solely to the impetuosity of the genius of Mr Owen Jones, which, plunging into colouring matter, would vermilionise the palest face of Death. If paint could “create a soul under the ribs of death,” he would do it. He must greatly admire the old lady’s dying request to—

We know not where to lay our hand upon the original account of this statue of the Bacchante of Scopas; but if it says no more than the Apologist says for it—that the marble represented “living flesh”—it does not necessarily imply colour. Here is a contradiction: if it be meant that by “living flesh” the colour of living flesh was represented—for that must be the argument—there must have been an attempt towards the exact imitation of nature. “In the first place,” says Mr Owen Jones, arguing against the suggestion of coloured and veined marble having been used, “veins do not so run in marble as to represent flesh. In the second, unless statues were usually coloured, such veins, if they existed, would be regarded as terrible blemishes, and the very things the Greeks are supposed to have avoided—viz., colour as representing reality—would be shown.” Does Mr Owen Jones here admit that this exact imitation by colour was not usual? If so, as the words imply, what becomes of his quotation of the words of Socrates with regard to colouring the eyes? And further, upon what new plea will he justify his colouring the Parthenon frieze—not only the men and their cloaks, but the horses—so that the latter exactly resemble those on the roundabouts on which children ride at fairs? We suppose he meant the men to have a natural colour, and the horses also—a taste so vile, that we are quite sure such a perpetration would have shocked Phidias out of all patience. And if not meant for the exact colour, what can he suppose they were painted for?—as, to avoid this semblance of reality, the Greeks, according to him, should have painted men and horses vermilion or blue, or any colour the farthest from reality, the contrary to the practice of Mr Owen Jones—and that he should have painted them vermilion he immediately shows, by quoting Pausanias, where he describes a statue of Bacchus “as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood.” What has this to do with marble statues? But he seems not to understand the hint given by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “that the statue was apparently ithyphallic, and probably archaic”—a well-known peculiarity in statues of Bacchus. Not having, 326however, such a specimen in marble, he is particularly glad to find one of gypsum, “ornamented with paint:” nothing more probable, and for the same reason that the wooden one was painted vermilion.

“But colour was used, as we know,” says Mr Owen Jones; “and Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 39) describes a statue of Bacchus as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood. He also distinctly says that statues made of gypsum were painted, describing a statue of Bacchus γυψου πεποιημενον, which was—the language is explicit—ornamented with paint, (επικεκοσμημενον γραφῃ.)” These are statues of Bacchus, and, as the Apologist is reminded by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “apparently ithyphallic,” and therefore painted red. The draperies are the assumption of the writer; he should have said ivy and laurel. Mr Owen Jones, to render his examples “abundant,” writes statues in the latter part of the quotation, whereas the word in his authority, Pausanias, is singular. We stay not to inquire if γραφη here means paint, though, speaking of another statue, Pausanias uses the verb and its congenial noun in another sense—“ἐπίγραμμα ἐπἄυτῆ γραφῆναι.” We the more readily grant it was painted vermilion, because it was a Bacchic statue; and grant that it was seen by Pausanias. We daresay it was ancient enough; but for any proof we must not look to Pausanias, who lived at Rome 170th year of the Christian era;—and here it must be borne in mind, that of the innumerable statues spoken of by that writer, of marble and other materials, the supposed painted are a very few exceptions. Not only does he speak of marble, without any mention of colouring, but of its whiteness. In this matter, indeed, the exceptions prove the rule of the contrary. Before we proceed to the examples taken from Virgil—weak enough—let us see if there may not be found something nearer the time of Phidias than any authorities given. Well, then, we have an eyewitness, one who must not only have seen the statues of Phidias, but probably conversed with Phidias himself—Æschylus. If such statues as he speaks of were painted generally, and as a necessary part of their completion, could he have brought into poetic use and sentiment their vacancy of eyes? It is a remarkable passage. He is describing Menelaus in his gallery full of the large statues of Helen. It is in the “Agamemnon:”

There was “no speculation in those eyes.” The eyes were not painted certainly; as the poet saw the statues in his mind’s eye, so had he seen them with his visible organs. The charm of love was not in them, because the outward form of the eye was only represented in the marble. The love-charm was not in those “vacancies of eyes.” Schütz has this note upon the passage: “Quamvis nimirum eleganter fabricatæ sint statuæ, carent tamen oculis, adeoque admirationem quidem excitare possunt amorem non item.”

These lines of the poet Æschylus, repeated before an acute and critical Athenian audience, would have been unintelligible, and marked as an egregious blunder, if the practice of painting statues, or even their eyes alone, had been so universal as it is represented in this “Apology.” Can there be a more decisive authority, than this of the contemporary Æschylus? It is certainly a descent from Æschylus to Virgil; but we follow the apologist.

The writer, by his italics, is, we think, a little out in grammar, connecting “in morem” (because it was customary) with “versicoloribus alis,”—and in his translated sense of the passage, with “pictâ pharetrâ” also. This is certainly making nothing of it, by endeavouring to make the most of it. “In morem” may more properly attach itself to “stabit;” if not, to the wings or painted quiver,—not, in construction, to both; at any rate, Virgil, though Heyne reproves him for his bad taste, had here a prejudice 327in favour of marble, for “Amor” shall be marble—that is the first word, and first consideration. In the next quotation Virgil, as provokingly, sets his heart upon marble—nay, smooth polished marble—and the whole figure is to be entirely of this smooth marble; but he gratifies Mr Jones by “scarlet”—the colour of colours, vermilion—and thus so reconciles the Polychromatist to the marble, as to induce him to quote the really worthless passage:—

It is not of much moment to the main question what statue one clown should offer to Diana, in return for a day’s hunting, or the other to a very different and far less respectable deity, whom he has already made in vulgar marble, pro temp. only, and whom he promises to set up in gold, though simply the “custos pauperis horti.”

The poetical promises exceeded the clown’s means; neither Diana, nor the deity, odious to her, saw the promises fulfilled. The Apologist is merely taking advantage of a poetical license, a plenary indulgence in nonperformance. It is quite ridiculous to attempt to prove what Phidias and Praxiteles must have done, by what Virgil imagined. But as Mr Owen Jones delights in such quasi modern authorities, we venture to remind him of the bad taste of Horace, who loved the Parian marble; and to recommend him to consider in what manner white marble is spoken of by as good authority, Juvenal, who introduces it as most valued in his time—white statues.

It may be as well to quote also what he says in reference to waxing statues:—

Upon which we find in a note—“Consueverant Deorum simulacra cera illinire (the old word of dispute) ibidemque affert illud Prudentii, lib. i., contra Symonachum,—

And in Sat. XII., “Simulacra intentia cerâ.”

We have already treated of this custom of waxing the statues, and given the recipe of Pliny, to which we revert for a moment, because the advocates for the colouring theory insist that illitia, linita, illinere, linire, all of one origin, are words applicable to painting. Pliny says,—we quote from Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,—after showing how the wax should be melted and laid on, “It was then rubbed with a clean linen cloth, in the way that naked marble statues were done.” The Latin is—“Sicut et marmora nitescunt.” The writer in the Dictionary speaks as to the various application of the encaustic process, to paint and to polish: “Wax thus purified was mixed with all species of colours, and prepared for painting; but it was applied also to many other uses, as polishing statues, walls, &c.”

Lucian, who died ninety years of age, 180th of the Christian era, although he relinquished the employment of a statuary, and followed that of literature, had certainly an excellent taste in art. His descriptions of statues and pictures prove his fondness and his knowledge. What he says of the famous Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles is very remarkable. After admiring the whiteness of the marble and its polish, he praises the ingenuity of the artificer, in so contriving the statue as to bring least in sight a blemish in the marble, (a very common thing, he adds). It would not have required this ingenuity in the design, if Praxiteles had intended his statue to be painted, for the paint would have covered the stain in the marble wherever placed. We may learn something more from Lucian. In his “Images,” wishing to describe a perfect woman, he will first represent her by the finest statues in the world, selecting the beauties of each. It is in a dialogue with Lycinus and Polystratus. 328“Is there anything wanting?” asks Polystratus, after mention of these perfect statues. Lycinus replies that the colouring is wanting. He therefore brings to his description the most beautiful works of the best painters. Enough is not done yet; there is the mind to be added. He therefore calls in the poets. Here, then, we have statuary, painter, and poet, each by their separate art to portray this perfect woman. He does not describe by painted statues, but by pictures. Had painting statues been universal, as pretended, Lucian must have seen examples, and his reference to pictures would have been unnecessary. If it be argued that the paint had worn off, that argument will tell against the Polychromatists, for it at least will show that, in an age when statues were esteemed, the barbarity of colouring was not renewed.

In his “Description of a House,” he says, “Over against the door, upon the wall, there is the Temple of Minerva in relief, where you may see the goddess in white marble, without her accoutrements of war.” The painter, it may be fairly conjectured, painted inside on the wall of the house, the common aspect, and the white marble statue.

In his “Baths of Hippias,” he mentions “two noble pieces of antiquity in marble of Health and Æsculapius.” Nor does he omit noticing paint, and that vermilion—but where is it? “Then you come to a hot passage of Numidian stone, that brings you to the last apartment, glittering with a bright vermilion, bordering on purple.”

According to Mr Owen Jones’s theory, all these exquisite works in white marble are to be considered as unfinished; if they have not been handed over to the painter, they should be now. Why did Phidias and Praxiteles so elaborate to the mark of truth their performances? The reader will be astonished to learn the reason from Mr Owen Jones. It was from the necessity of the subsequent finish by paints!

“People are apt to argue that Phidias never could have taken such pains to study the light and shade of this bas-relief, if the fineness of his workmanship had had to be stopped up when bedaubed with paint.” It is astonishing that not a glimmering of common sense was here let in upon the work of Phidias, while the whole light of his understanding showed the effect of his own handiwork on the plaster; for he, in that case, says, “But when the plaster has further to be painted with four coats of oil-paint to stop the suction, it may readily be imagined how much the more delicate modulations of the surface will suffer.” Does he suppose that the eyes of Phidias, and of people in that age, were blind to the suffering of these nice modulations from the stucco, or over-coats of paint? But why did Phidias so finish his works?—hear the polychromatic oracle “Now, people who argue thus have never understood what colour does when applied to form. The very fact that colour has to be applied, demands the highest finish in the form beneath. By more visibly bringing out the form, it makes all defects more prominent. Let any one compare the muscles of the figures in white with the muscles of those coloured, and he will not hesitate an instant to admit this truth. The labours of Phidias, had they never received colour, would have been thrown away; it was because he designed them to receive colour, that such an elaboration of the surface was required.” This is the most considerable inconsiderate nonsense imaginable. Common sense says, that one even colour, or absence of colour, gives equal shadows, according to the sculptor’s design; but if you colour portions of the same work differently, the unity of shadows will be destroyed, for shadows will assimilate themselves to the various colourings, be they light or dark. This necessity of colouring would impose such a task upon the sculptor, so complicate his work and design, and so bring his whole mind into subservience to, or certainly co-operation and consultation with, the painter, that no man of genius could submit to it; for it is the characteristic of genius to have its exercise in its own independent art. The assertion of this effect of colour, by Mr Jones, is untrue in fact, and if he could make it true, would so complicate, and at the same time degrade, 329the statuary’s art, that in the disgust of its operation it would be both out of the power, and out of the inclination, of men to pursue it. Will the people of England take Mr Owen Jones’s reproof? To them the labours of Phidias have hitherto been thrown away, for they have only as yet seen his works in white marble—in fact, unfinished. In this state Mr Jones thinks they have been very silly to admire them at all—and how they came to admire them who can comprehend? they have no colourable pretext for their admiration. Not only have the labours of Phidias been “thrown away,”—but, what is more galling to this age of economists, some forty thousand pounds of our good people’s money have been thrown away too. What is left to be done? Simply what we have often done before—throw some “good money after the bad,” and constitute Mr Owen Jones Grand Polychromatist-plenipotentiary, with competence of salary and paint-pots, and establish him for life, and his school for ever, in the British Museum. It is well for him and for them the innocent marbles have no motion, or the very stones would cry out against him, and uplift their quiescent arms to smash more than his paint-pots.

And here let us be allowed to remark of Mr Owen Jones’s colouring, having been thoroughly disgusted at the Crystal Palace, that he is as yet but in the very elements of the grammar of colour. He has gone but a very little way in its alphabet. He has practised little more than the A B C—that is, the bright blue, the bright red, the bright yellow. But the alphabet is much beyond this. What of their combinations? These are so innumerable that, as if in despair of their acquirement, he puts his whole trust in the blue, red, and yellow, so that the very object of colour, variety, is missed, and the eye is wearied and irritated in this Crystal Palace with what may be called, in defiance of the contradiction of the word, a polychromatic monotony. His theory of colour stops short at the beginning—it is without its learning. The sentiments of colours are in their mixtures, their relative combinations, and appropriate applications, and we venture to suggest to other Polychromatists, besides Mr Owen Jones, that the grammar of colouring, if learned properly, will lead to a mystery which the blue, red, and yellow, of themselves the A, B, C of the art, are quite insufficient to teach. The study is by none more required than our painters in glass; nor are some of our picture-makers, as our Academy exhibitions show, without the need of a little learning. We scarcely ever see a modern window that does not exhibit a total ignorance of colour. The first thing that strikes the eye is a quantity of blue, for it is the most active colour, and it is given in large portions, not dissipated as it should be—then reds, and as vivid as may be—and yellows. Attempt at proper effect, such as the genius loci requires, there is none. With the unsparing use of these three unmitigated colours only, we do not see why decorators should be called Polychromatists at all; they should style themselves Trichromatists. But of Mr Owen Jones’s polychromatic theory and practice, do not let him so slander the tasks of the ancients as to pretend that he has it from them, if by the ancients he means those artists of good time. They delighted in white marble, “nuda et candida signa,”—the naked and the white. The pretence that he had it from them, is as the

The grandsire never took it; the naked Pict never had it. And yet the directors of this Crystal Palace have taken Mr Owen Jones’s word for it. They have inconsiderately, and with the worst taste, delivered up the Palace into Mr Jones’s hands. We dread his being put into any other palace, for he evidently longs to be stuccoing and daubing the real marbles. “The experiment cannot be fairly tried, till tried on marble”—and he looks to a wide area, ample verge, and room enough, “and in conditions of space, atmosphere, &c., similar to those under which the originals were placed.” We however owe it to Mr Owen Jones’s candour in admitting a note by Mr Penrose, 330which vindicates the character of this odious marble. Thus speaks Mr Penrose: “An extensive and careful examination of the Pentelic Quarries, by the orders of King Otho, has shown that large blocks, such as were used at Athens, are very rare indeed. The distance, also, from the city is considerable: whereas there are quarries on Mount Hymettus at little more than one-third the distance (and most convenient for carriage), which furnish immense masses of dove-coloured marble, much prized, it would seem, by the Romans (Hor., ii. 18), and inferior in no respect but that of colour to the Pentelic. It could, therefore, only have been the intrinsic beauty of the latter material that led to its employment by so practical a people as the Athenians.” It will occur to the reader to ask if there is not here something like a proof that they did not intend this Pentelic marble to be painted; for it is manifest, under the stucco-and-painting theory, the dove-coloured of Hymettus would have answered all purposes. But Mr Owen Jones triumphs over his own candour. He sees nothing in the admission of this note of Mr Penrose; he takes it up, he exhibits it, merely for the purpose of throwing it down and trampling upon it. He gives it a scornful reply.—Reply in large letters. It is a curious one, for, like the boomerang, it flies back upon himself, and gives his own arguments a palpable hit. The reader may remember how he had asserted that “the Athenians built with marble because they found it almost beneath their feet.” In his oblivious reply, he discovers that the Athenians used it because it was a great way off from their feet; nay, that the worst part of the matter was, that it was no farther off from their feet. He uprises in reverential dignity, to reprove “our present ideas of economy.” “I do not think that, with our present ideas of economy, we are able to appreciate the motives of the Athenians in choosing their marble from the Pentelic quarries, in preference to those of Mount Hymettus. We must remember that the Greeks built for their gods; and the Pentelic marble, by presenting greater difficulties in its acquisition, may have been a more precious offering.” Mr Jones thus offers two contradictory motives on behalf of the Athenians—one must be given up. It would be strange in so few pages that a writer should so contradict himself, if we did not bear in mind with what ingenuity a theory will invest its own pertinacity. Surely no man on earth will believe that the Athenians, either by any extraordinary devotion^[50] they showed towards their gods in the time of Pericles, or by an unheard of folly (for they were a practical people), chose the one quarry in preference to the other, for no other reason than its greater cost and difficulty.

We are referred to the evidence of Mr Bracebridge, produced before the committee of the Institute, which Mr Jones says settles the point “as far as regards monumental sculpture.” The evidence is, that in the winter 1835–6, an excavation, to the depth of twenty-five feet, was made at the south-east angle of the Parthenon. “Here were found many pieces of marble, and among these fragments parts of triglyphs, of fluted columns, and of statues, particularly a female head, which was painted (the hair is nearly the costume of the present day).” It is quite an assumption that the spot of this excavation was the place where “the workmen of the Parthenon had thrown their refuse marble.” There is no proof whatever that these fragments were even of the age of the Parthenon; even if they may be supposed so to be, we presume that, as works of art, they are worthless, for they are called refuse, and most likely had nothing to do with the work of the Parthenon. We believe at the same time was found the very beautiful fragment in relief, the Winged Victory, of which but very few casts were taken. One of these we have just now seen, and doubt not its being of the age of Phidias. This is white marble, and we have never heard that it has any indication of having been painted. If Mr Owen 331Jones could prove to us that the whole Parthenon, with all its statues, showed certain indications of paint, we still have not advanced to any ground of fair conclusion; for, in the want of contemporary evidence—(we cannot call anything yet adduced evidence)—we are left to conjecture that the daubing and plastering were the work of a subsequent age, or ages, when ornament encroached upon and deteriorated every art in Greece, whether dramatic, painting, or sculpture. “Pliny and Vitruvius both repeatedly deplore the corrupt taste of their own times. Vitruvius (vii. 5), observes, that the decorations of the ancients were tastelessly laid aside, and that strong and gaudy colouring and prodigal expense were substituted for the beautiful effects produced by the skill of the ancient artists.”—(Smith’s Antiquities.)

We pay little attention to what has been said by the writers quoted regarding Acrolithic or Chryselephantine statues, whether of the best or lowest character. Whatever they were, they have perished, and there is nothing left for modern barbarism to restore. We have looked chiefly to undoubtedly good genuine marble—white marble statues, and reliefs of the best times, of such as are to be seen and admired, unadorned, in our British Museum. “It is the custom of all barbarous nations to colour their idols,” says the writer of the historical evidence. We perfectly assent to this, and believe we shall ourselves be a very barbarous nation whenever the statues in that Museum shall be plastered with stucco, or painted over with four coats of vermilion or any other colour. Barbarous nations have painted, and do so still, not only their idols but themselves. Our Picts, with their woad colouring, may have emulated the peculiar beauty of blue-faced baboons. We dispute not the point that Greece, as well as every other country, at some period of its history was addicted to the common barbarous taste of colouring to the utmost of their means. The question is not whether they did it, but when they left it off. It is said in the “Apology,” that if they had ever left off the practice, it would have been so remarkable an event that it would have been noted in history. We know not where any one will be able to put his hand upon any passage in history, showing the exact or probable period at which our neighbours the Picts left off the fashion, which we learn prevailed. We think Mr Owen Jones himself would be very much astonished if, even though in pursuit and pursuance of his own argument, he should turn the corner of Pall Mall, and come face to face with half-a-dozen naked Picts in the ancient blue and vermilion costume. Quite satisfied that the fashion has been superseded, we care not about the when. Nor do we care to know, in our practical age, what finery they put upon their idols; and although a commission under Polychromatic direction may bring back, from no very distant travel, accounts of multitudes of idols still draped and painted, we are sure this English nation will not resume the practice. We have something else to do, which the “Wisdom of Solomon” tells us they had not, who fabricated such monstrosities. “The carpenter carved it diligently, when he had nothing else to do, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the image of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every spot therein.”

Much is made of the notices of Pausanias, who, in the 177th year of the Christian era, travelled over Greece. Mr (afterwards Sir Uvedale) Price, in 1780 published “an accurate bill of fare of so sumptuous an entertainment,” in relation to the temples, statues, and paintings remaining in Greece in the time of Pausanias. We have thought it worth while to look over this bill of fare, and to extract all that is said about painted statues. Page 45: “In the great square, where there are several temples, there are the statues of the Ephesian Diana, and of Bacchus 332in wood—all the parts of which are gilt with gold, except the faces, which are coloured with vermilion.” Immediately follows—“There is a Temple of Fortune with her statue, which is an upright figure of Parian marble”—Nothing about painting this! Page 177–78: “In Ægina there is a Temple of Jupiter, in which there is his statue of Pentelican marble, in a sitting posture, and one of Minerva in wood, which is gilt with gold, and adorned with various colours; but the head, hands, and feet are of ivory.” “At Philoe there are the temples of Bacchus and Diana: the statue of the goddess is in brass, and she is taking an arrow out of her quiver; but that of Bacchus is of wood, and is painted of a ruddy colour.” It is only the wooden are painted! Page 199: “In Phigalia there is a Temple of Diana Sospita, with her statue in marble; and in Gymnasium there is a statue of Mercury, and likewise a Temple of Bacchus Acratophorus with his statue—the upper part of which is painted with vermilion, but the lower part is covered by the ivy and laurel that grows over it.” This is the statue mentioned in the historical evidence, where it says “the body being of gilded wood.” There is no doubt it was so—but in fairness we must say, that, having examined the original passage in Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 89), we find no mention of the material of which it was made. Here it will be observed that in no instance does Pausanias speak of a marble statue painted.

We have been reading an account of the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii—without doubt, both these places contained Greek sculpture of a good period. There have been a vast number of marble statues and fragments of statues found. The marble of which they are made is mentioned. They are mostly white marble, and there is no notice of any having been painted. If one should be, or should have been found coloured, it would be an exception, the not unlikely experiment of individual bad taste. We should bear in mind, also, that the discovered works must have been found with regard to substance and colour in the state in which they were overwhelmed in the sudden destruction of the towns. Yet do we read of a single painted marble statue? The paintings are, however, minutely described, and their coloured wall decorations. We have yet to learn that there has been any paint discovered upon those exquisitely beautiful statues belonging to the Lycian Temple Tomb, in the British Museum, discovered and brought to this country by Sir Charles Fellowes. Could we be brought to believe that marble statues were stuccoed or painted—and we utterly repudiate any such attempts as Mr Jones’s to make it credible—we should bless the memories, had they left us any notices of their names, of those worthies of a better taste who had the good sense to obliterate, to the utmost of their power, the bedaubers’ doings. With them we venerate white marble; and while we think of the Polychromatists, we entertain greater respect for the taste and sense of the so-called simpletons of the fable who endeavoured to wash the blackamoor white, than for the fatuous who would make the white black, or even vermilion.

It is surprising that in the history of the arts the Homeric period is made of so little account. We are inclined to believe that the arts had reached a high state, at least of workmanship; that they were subsequently lost, and revived. If Homer and Hesiod, the eldest of heathen authors, introduced into their poems elaborate descriptions of the shields of Hercules and Achilles, and in some degree spoke of the actual workmanship, can we believe that either of them treated of things totally unknown at the times they wrote? If so, they were inventors—or at least one of them—of the arts they describe. It is all very well to ascribe all that we read of as mere poetry; but poetry, however it invents, or partakes of invention, builds invention on fact. It would not invent an art, and offer it to the world as a thing already known. The shields exhibit extraordinary workmanship, which is thought worthy to be attributed to the skill of a deity. That of Hercules in Hesiod implies the use of hidden springs, for Perseus is described as hovering over and not touching the shield, and the Gorgons 333pursuing him as making a noise with the shield’s motion. The gold and silver dogs keeping watch at the gates of Alcinous could scarcely be the unauthorised invention of the poet. Much might be said upon the Nineveh discoveries; references might be made to the time of Moses—and instances more than that of the brazen serpent; the subsequent building of the Temple might supply most curious detail—all these proving the existence of sculptural arts, more or less refined, long antecedent to what we would fain call the revival of art in Greece. But we cannot be allowed space for a discussion not immediately bearing upon the subject of this paper.

It may be fairly conceded, that we are not to look to the earliest periods of art for its greatest simplicity. In all countries monstrosities and ornament were more eagerly sought, soon after the first attempts at representation, than accuracy and beauty. The time of the

if not the poets’ fiction, was of short duration.

In this paper we treat not of the barbarities of art. Barbarous ages may be of all or of any times. Art having once reached perfection, and having mastered, over the falsities of bad taste, its own independence and emancipation from every other art, we deprecate the return of a barbarism which shall unite it with a gaudy presumption of another and a lower art, subjugating the genius of mind to the meaningless handling of the decorator.

Indeed, we should be content very much to narrow the question—to care little whether the ancient statues and relievi were painted or not. We are quite sure, from the very nature of things, the materials and the objects in the use of them, that they never ought to have been painted; and if there ever was such a practice, and it were a common one as pretended, the world has shown its good sense in obliterating the marks of the degradation of art so widely, as that any satisfactory discovery of such a practice is not to be met with. Ages have passed in a contrary belief, and much more than the meagre evidence adduced must be required, in any degree to damage the long-established opinion that statues should not be painted, and that white marble has undeniable, and, for the purpose of the statuary, perfect beauty. The audacious attempt in the Crystal Palace, and the assumptions of the “Apology,” might lead to the worst taste, to retard and not to advance art. And while we see simultaneously set up a foolish and dangerous principle to govern our national collections in painting, and probably sculpture, assumed with too much apparent authority, we fear the introduction of monstrosity in preference to beauty, and the consequence in oblivion of what is good in art, and the encouragement of a practice of all that is bad.

If the reader, unsatisfied with the damage inflicted in these pages upon the facts assumed by Mr Owen Jones in his “Apology,” and his conclusions upon them, would desire to see further arguments adduced from the necessities which originated the various styles of basso, alto, and mezzo relievo,—showing that they all presupposed one even colourless, or at least unvariegated plane, as the surface upon which they were to be executed, and how and why these three—the basso, alto, and mezzo—have each their own proper principles, in which they differ from each other—how they were invented for the very purpose of doing that which, if painting the marble had been contemplated, would have been unnecessary—how, in fact, they are in their own nature independent of colour, regulated by principles of light and shade, with which colour would detrimentally interfere—we would recommend to his attentive reading the short yet complete treatise on the subject, by Sir Charles Eastlake, being No. 7, in his admirable volume, The Literature of the Fine Arts. He proves by the characters of the three styles, and by the wants they were invented to supply, and the diversity of design which they require, that “the Greeks, as a general principle, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not to represent air as if it was a picture.” As Mr Jones’s experiments are made on relievi, a little study of their nature and distinctions is at this moment very desirable.

If Mr Jones colours the horses brown and grey, the faces of the riders flesh colour, and marks their eyes, and reddens their lips, and draperies their bodies after patterns out of a tailor’s book—it is quite absurd to say that the Greeks never intended exact imitation. In what he has done every one will recognise the attempt to portray exact nature in colour. Upon this principle, and establishing a contempt of white marble, there is but one more step to take, to set up offensive wax-work above the art of the statuary in marble. Sculpture is an appeal to the imagination, not to the senses. That which attempts to deceive disgusts by the early discovery of the fraud. Indeed, it is a maxim in sculpture that a certain unnaturalness in subordinate accompanying objects is to be adopted, to show that a comparison with real nature is not intended. “If imitation is to be preferred,” says Aristotle, “which is least adapted to the vulgar and most calculated to please the politest spectators, that which imitates everything is clearly most adapted to the vulgar, as not being intelligible without the addition of much movement and action, as bad players on the flute turn round, if they would imitate the motion of a discus.” Paint to the statuary is what all this motion is to the flute-player. Whoever mutilates what is great and good in art, and would persist in so doing, after reproof, ought to pay the penalty of his folly. We would not be too severe in the punishment of offenders in taste, but should rejoice to see one of a congenial kind put in practice, one very mild for such an offence as this of statue painting—the tarring and feathering the perpetrators, plasterers and bedaubers, principals and coadjutors. Upon Mr Owen Jones’s principle, the “ex uno omnes,” and his making a confirmed summer of one swallow, though we entirely deny the existence of this one rara avis, a white marble statue painted, he and his company ought not to object to the punishing process, for more culprits have been known to have been tarred and feathered than are even the pretended specimens of painted marbles on record. We would, out of consideration for the peculiar taste of the decorators, mitigate the punishment, by allowing the received proportion of Mr Jones’s blue and vermilion to be mixed with the tar.

Besides, as fine feathers make fine birds, and choice may be made of the brightest colours, it would be a fine sight, and one that would very much take the fancy of the public, to see the Polychromatists stand materially and bodily plastered, stuccoed, coloured, tarred and feathered, in the Crystal Palace, in their own glory or shame, as they may be pleased to take it, as living specimens of colouring interferences, to the infinite amusement of all beholders, and a caution to modern decorators. They would be pleased in one respect, for, beyond a question, the white statues would be quite neglected, the “prejudice” in favour of white marble would quite give way, and even the city wonders, Gog and Magog, would be no longer visited.

The reader will think it time to draw to a conclusion; it will be most satisfactory if he deems the case too clear to have required so much discussion, and that

But before we lay down the pen, we would not have it supposed that we are not sensible both of the merits and advantages of the Crystal Palace. It ought to be, and doubtless will be, the means of improving the people, and affording them rational amusement. There has been a little too much bombast about it, as a great college for the education of the mind of the people—too much eulogistic verbiage, which sickens the true source of rational admiration. It will improve, because it will amuse; for good amusement is education both for head and heart. The best praise it can receive is, that it is a place of 334permanent amusement, than which nothing could be devised more beautiful and appropriate for those who mainly want such relief from the toils and cares which eat into life. We could wish the Archbishop of Canterbury had not consented to let the Church of England be dragged in triumph behind the car of a commercial speculation. It was in bad taste at its opening—and Mr Owen Jones’s colouring is another specimen of bad taste—but “non paucis maculis.” We sincerely hope it will succeed in all respects, though we ventured not to join the Archbishop in his prayer. In fact, it is too great in itself for unnecessary display at the ushering in, which was worse than ridiculous—it made that which should be most serious in that place an offence and a falsity. The reader may be amused by an inauguration of quite another kind—one of poetry by anticipation. We summon, then, our oldest poet, to celebrate as afar off, for coming time, our newest Crystal Palace and its wonders, in

CHAUCER’S DREAM
OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

PART IV.

CHAPTER VI.—CHARLEMONT.

The people swayed and hummed in the road, with strange burnished chequers cast over their very visages as they pressed against the gorgeous gates, thrown open towards each other, so as to form a double impromptu palisade across the highway, and locked as well as steadied by inward props; through the bars of each side-wicket could be seen a scarlet-clothed Swiss sentinel, his musket shouldered, as he paced to and fro, grimly though carelessly contemplating all. But scarce was there time to take in the scene ere a louder trumpet-note sounded from among the trees, and two mounted trumpeters in orange liveries were seen to rise at speed on the brow of the avenue; till, amidst sudden silence, the whole array of a brilliant cortège rose up beyond them from a slope, glittering, indeed, yet pale and almost tarnished amidst the rich evening light, as it emerged through the cool forest chase. It was indeed the royal stag-hunt returning to Marly from the woods. Swiftly they came onward—the troop of chivalrous-looking gardes-du-corps, in sky-blue and gold, scarlet velvet breeches and white-plumed black hats, with ringing scabbards and glossy foam-necked horses,—the carriages and riders, the sledge with the slain stag, and the chasseurs and stag-hounds. But the procession appeared to go across in visionary swiftness between the reversed gates: there was but one glimpse of that single face, with its unfixed and solitary glance, its inscrutable air of calm, ere it had gone past, to a doubtful murmur of Vive le Roi, that was succeeded by a hubbub of sounds, with all the disagreeable pressure of a miscellaneous crowd, sometimes standing on the wheels, or leaning against the carriage-hood. Young Willoughby had torn off his hat with a ‘hurrah!’ which stultified all his previous British protestations.

337A face was turned up from the confusion beneath, which, owing to the now neater attire of the possessor, Charles had not before observed: the village teacher had assumed coat and hat, bearing an umbrella of somewhat faded texture beneath his arm, and some workmen evidently assisted him to gain a more convenient position.

“Yes, I say, Father Pierre,” gloomily observed one of the workmen, addressing the teacher, as if in reference to some previous remark, “there are plots!”

“Ah, it is no doubt undeniable,” agreed that person, with reluctance, while he still turned an eye to the carriage, as if to apologise for being thrust up against it: “there are possibly plots. In that case it is only necessary to disconcert them, Monsieur Jacques.”

“But it is exactly to do so, Monsieur Morin,” said a quieter mechanic, “that, after earlier than usual dismissing the school, you were on the point to set off for Paris.”

“Yes, half an hour ago, on foot, to the Club Breton, at the Palais Royal,” continued a peasant beyond.

“Père Pierre had a plot also, you know,” added some one else.

“Pardon me, Monsieur Robert—a plan,” replied the teacher with his peculiar blandness, though his eye continued wandering sideways to the carriage: “to plot, my friend—it does not belong to the virtuous.”

“But from a philosopher,” rejoined the villager, “Monsieur Père Morin is about to become a man of action—he has a plan.”

“Delayed by this beast of a barricade, which deranges everything,” said his rougher neighbour, angrily.

“Monsieur Morin will, then, however, relate to us this plot which he counteracts,” added the keen-eyed mechanic, with emphasis—“and the plan also. We shall perhaps be able to assist him! It seems to me that M. Morin should have avoided being thrust on this side the barrier.”

“Good!” responded Jacques, “we shall assist him! It is no doubt fortunate after all.” The last riders had passed through, and the porters were coming with their keys to unlock the gates. The neighbouring chateau clock struck six with a cracked tone; and the great gates were slowly yielding, to allow time for the Swiss sentries to cross through. They came together to their usual place with a clash; the crowd poured each way between again, among the various country vehicles and market-carts, the passengers and riders, from or to the city, or the town of Versailles—for a few minutes in such sudden disorder as almost to hurl the bystanders from the carriage when it drove forward; save the young man, the teacher, who had held by it for security, and in the attempt to balance himself was urged so close as to seize the hood of the barouche, already in motion. An unaccountable repugnance shot from the young lady’s look and attitude as she started back, extricating her shawl from the accidental clutch—till her heart reproached her next moment at his thorough expression of apology mixed with alarm, for Jackson drove furiously down-hill. She was in vain calling him to stop, when she saw her brother spring up quick as thought, look round, and hurl their unintentional fellow-passenger backward on the road.

“Drive on, Jackson,” shouted Charles, triumphantly. “Serves him right—the very fellow’s face that I detested!”

Panniered market-asses, hastening pedestrians and boys, alone mingled with their speed across the bridge, past the chemin des affronteux, into Charlemont; the sudden howl of indignation from the groups behind them had died away.

“What on earth is the matter with you, Jackson?” called out the lad, starting up again, as they reached about the middle of the village street; “why don’t you drive on? Never mind watering your horses!”

“They’ve got a couple of farm-waggons and some hampers right across the way, sir,” replied Jackson, turning 338about from his box, with an undertone as much from misgiving as respect.

A shadowy mass blocked up the passage before them, looking vague in the dusk. It was opposite the door of a shabby auberge or village inn, with the sign of the Fleur-de-lis. Charles stood up to call out in French, and a gendarme in coarse blue uniform advanced to the side of the carriage, civilly enough, as if to answer his inquiries.

“You have injured a respectable person, it is said, monsieur,” was the reply of the functionary, in a lowered voice—“a man of influence in the place here.”

“Wilfully, too, it seems!” added a villager, sharply, and turning to the crowd, which in a few seconds gathered about the speakers.

“Yes, yes—our schoolmaster—a philosopher—an estimable man—M. Morin!” was the general response, rising to a climax: “see him there, assisted by every one to reach the spot!”

The figure of Morin by that time became obvious, in fact, near the door of the tavern, supported by workmen and peasants, while the blood trickled down his cheek, and he limped on one foot, seeming more confused than hurt. The concern of the ladies was extreme; young Willoughby alone remained obstinately cool as the excitement increased; he assumed the chief part with great self-possession, and distinctly imputed the fault to the aggrieved individual, expressing quite as plainly, though in rather indifferent French, his doubts as to the seriousness of the injury.

The landlord of the auberge, a beetle-browed man in a striped cowl and white apron, with an air between a cook and a butcher, had hovered behind, looking on with apparent attempts at moderation among the bystanders. “Yet monsieur will scarcely refuse to apologise to M. Morin?” inquired he, thrusting his sinister visage nearer.

“If you only hand me your purse, mother,” was Charles’s answer, to Lady Willoughby’s anxiety, “you’ll soon see what’s wanted!”

“Monsieur!” exclaimed he, drawing back from the boy’s offer with an offended look, “you insult me!”

In the indignant noise which ensued, apologies would have been unavailing; but at the appearance of another gendarme pushing up, Charles Willoughby seated himself, turned his shoulder on the rabble, and contented himself with explaining matters to the official beside him, into whose palm he had easily enough slipped the rejected coin. It produced no apparent increase of deference in the man’s stiff civility; but he exchanged a few prompt words with his comrade, who took out a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, put the end of the first into his mouth, and rested the latter on the carriage-wheel, looking up imperturbably for further particulars. An authoritative word or two from the other, as he raised his voice, and glanced from the throng to the obstacles in the street, on the other side of which market-drivers from Paris were grumbling, served to restore a degree of order. “Yes, Martin, it will be sufficient,” he loudly observed to his companion, “to take notice of the passports. Attention, then, Martin!”

“Monsieur will exhibit the passports,” said the sergeant in the same tone, as he turned again to the carriage. Charles Willoughby looked blank, though he mechanically felt for them in his pocket, and inquired at Jackson, at Mrs Mason, at all the party, looking below the cushions and beneath the seats. It was to no purpose; he had to admit that they were not forthcoming; a gentleman of the party, who would no doubt directly appear, had happened to have them in his pocket. The gendarmes stood up, and looked to each other significantly; the one put up his paper and pencil, with a shrug of his shoulders; the other addressed himself with a rigid air of regret to the carriage.

“It will be necessary to descend, mesdames et monsieur,” he said firmly, “until the affair can be adjusted. No, monsieur,” he rejoined in a lower voice to Charles, who was hinting at a further douceur, “impossible—a bribe!—and in the circumstances. But the thing is doubtless a mere 339bagatelle, which M. le Maire will very soon arrange at his chateau.”

“Yes! yes! Live justice!” screamed the gathered village, male and female, boys, girls, and children, down to the very crowing of the infant in arms, the excitement of poodles on the thresholds, the rousing up of fowls going early to roost above the doorways inside the dingy cottages.

“But, M. le Gendarme,” interposed the injured Morin himself, calmly, “I entertain no resentment against monsieur.”

“Only a complaint, M. Morin,” said the sergeant, with dignity. “It must be attended to. Besides that, the passports, which concern the State, are wanting. It is far more important.” The mob shrieked applause; even showing symptoms of disapprobation against their outraged teacher, who was silenced.

“Well, then, gendarme,” said young Willoughby, still contemptuous except to the lawful authorities beside him, “what do you mean by our getting down? Can you not take us at once to your mayor? This is not his chateau, I suppose?”

“Impossible, monsieur,” was the unruffled answer, “as M. le Comte has this afternoon gone to his hotel in Paris, and the commissary of the commune resides at some distance. It is by favour, I assure you, monsieur, that you are not conducted there, or to the guard-house of the district—which, of course, was impossible in the case of mesdames your companions.” The affable sergeant of police bowed towards the ladies. “At the auberge here, however, of the Fleur-de-lis, they will enjoy very superior accommodation with M. Grostète, who is the landlord. He is even an artist; the ménage, too, of madame the hostess is admirable.”

With regard to the prolongation of the dilemma, the village mob found an evident luxury in it, appearing to balance oddly enough between the wildest rage and looks of murmured interest; as if, the more struck they were with the youth’s blunt, spirited manner, the mother’s obvious distress, and the young lady’s pale, startled air, through her veil and out of her simple straw-hat, with her governess’s ill-maintained fastidiousness, the more unwilling the whole audience grew to lose hold of these, but would fain have been wrought up to extract something more tragic by way of sequel. The young man who had been the occasion of all, first relieved the party from their difficulty: Morin had fixed his light-blue eyes on the ground, and raised them thoughtfully as he moved forward to the chief gendarme.

“But fortunately, M. le Sergent,” said he, in a thin, distinct voice, “it seems to me that I am capable of readjusting this affair here.”

“And how?” inquired the police-officer, over his shoulder, as he drew himself up with an air of additional authority.

“M. le Maire has this evening gone to Paris?” continued the teacher, with composure.

“Yes, I witnessed his departure, since I had the honour to receive M. le Comte’s instructions,” answered the functionary, in more immovable certainty than before.

“I was aware of it,” said Morin, mildly, “because this morning, through the intendant of his estate, M. le Comte condescended to inform me of it.”

“Ah, you were informed of it, M. Morin!” said the gendarme, with a slight air of surprise, putting his thumb to his chin, and looking somewhat cautious. “Well?”

“And M. le Comte will not only be in Paris to-night,” said the schoolmaster, “but to-morrow also, since he has affairs of more importance to transact. Therefore it would be necessary to convey Monsieur the young Englishman to the commissary at Marly.”

“Peste! I did not know that though!” ejaculated the gendarme, letting fall his hand. “But you are right. It is only to the commissary at Marly, then, that we can resort.” And grim indifference returned to the faces of the gendarmes, as they shrugged their shoulders.

“But it was exactly to see M. le Comte that I was about to proceed, when disabled,” continued Pierre Morin, modestly, while he indicated his misfortune by a slight movement of the leg. The gendarmes stared at each other half incredulously.

340“Eh? Père Pierre?” interrupted two or three voices; and the rough workman shouldered in, turning a dully suspicious glance from his begrimed visage to Morin’s, and adding, “It was to the Cloobbe Breton—the Palais Royal, I thought?”

“To disconcert a plot?” exclaimed several others.

“By a plan?” was the vivacious chorus of many together.

The young schoolmaster bowed. “Certainly, M. Jacques,” he said, with an unruffled smile, to the workmen, “since, thanks to the designs of some relatives, it is to the club that M. le Comte would have gone to-night as an auditor. He is still young—his ideas, though philosophical, are timid—it happens that he would have heard our boldest and least elegant orators, who watch with such a noble jealousy the division which is prolonged in the States-General by the privileged orders. I have studied the character of M. le Comte—he would have been deterred—his eloquence as our deputy to the Third Estate would not only have disgraced us at Charlemont here, but have given force to the opinions of others who would ruin all. There was, in short, a diabolical snare spread for him.”

An indignant murmur ran through the crowd, as they glanced to each other in alarm. The gendarmes rather appeared puzzled.

“Ah dâme!” broke out the superior of the two; “but how is it that you are acquainted with all this, M. le Maitre-d’école?”

“It is simple, M. le Sergent,” replied Morin, calmly. “The message I received to-day, through M. le Comte’s intendant, informed me, that as a correspondent of the Club, as an advocate for the right-to-absorb of the Third Estate, I was about to be dismissed from my school—unless, indeed, on the assurance, before M. le Comte’s departure, of confining my views to the elementary instruction for which I was placed there.” It was with difficulty he could proceed, for the violent uproar of surprise and resentment. “I was silent,” he at length continued: “at your usual wish I read aloud the journal of yesterday. I received the fresh message left for me, that till nine, M. le Comte would be at his hotel in Paris, for the convenience of his intendant’s communications from the chateau here, before visiting, for the first time, this club. It was the proof of a determination still postponed by M. le Comte. I remained unmoved, while mingling with the concourse to the gates yonder—without taking advantage of the last messenger to Paris—but resolved the more, as I perceived the nature, the causes of this proceeding. Had I publicly explained my intention, M. le Comte might have been unjustly accused by you—my motives in personally reaching Paris might have been misinterpreted. I was even aware that to intelligence—to integrity—to virtue—the whole world is about to become a school!”

At the modest attitude, the unconscious air, touched only by a slight twinge of suffering from his foot, with which their teacher announced his private sacrifice to principles, the whole audience were struck mute; their admiration seemed to struggle silently with dismay. “For me, on the contrary,” he pursued, recovering himself by the help of his faded pocket-handkerchief, “had I gained Paris by eight, resorting straight to the Palais Royal before the admission of strangers to the club, I should have obtained the right of the tribune,—permitted after nine to speak, I would have publicly expressed the sentiments most congenial to me, which resemble his own,—without seeming to address myself to him, without his expecting it, I astonish him by my boldness, my disregard of private considerations. I expose, next, the motives of those who entangle him,—I paint the future which dawns on us so slowly,—I should at once have convinced him, my friends—and have retained my school, my position—the relation to my fellow-villagers, which I value—the power to consult their wishes, their necessities!”

“It is the plan! Excellent! Yes, the plan of Père Morin!” ejaculated a dozen hearers in delight.

Monsieur Morin’s countenance had worked with animation, his gestures had grown quicker in accompaniment; and the hushed crowd burst into a scream of approbation, broken only into separate yells as the nearest bystanders 341looked from his face to his disabled foot, from his foot to the deepened blue of the sky, and thence to the offending carriage.

“Yes, it is too late, my friends,” admitted he, composing himself. “As it is, however, by myself accompanying Monsieur the young Englishman, before nine, to the hotel of M. le Maire, I should equally gain the object, without having presumed to request an interview, which would have been denied me. I relieve Monsieur and his friends from a contretemps, while observing the law. I detain M. le Comte, at a critical moment, from a danger to his views—in the act of myself confirming them! It is not yet eight—we have still an hour, useless on foot, when lame—that is, if perhaps Monsieur would not object to one’s occupying a seat beside his coachman?”

“It is reasonable!” exclaimed fifty voices. “M. Morin is right—yes! yes! Sa-cr-r-ré! do they object?”

The young Frenchman looked quietly and calmly, though with an air of dignity, to Charles Willoughby, who for a moment scarcely comprehended his meaning, or the drift of the whole discussion. Brightening up next instant, however, his eye gave a quick response. “Ah, of course!” he said, springing to assist the teacher up; “certainly, Monsieur Morin—with all my heart; here, let me give you a hand!” The perplexed gendarmes looked to each other inactively, the innkeeper and his wife alone gloomed on their door-steps; while, as the injured schoolmaster was helped by the very offender himself to mount the dickey beside Jackson, the villagers grew absolutely ecstatic in their applause; the foremost agitators in the crowd were the first to begin dragging the obstacles aside. “Monsieur Jacksong, my friend,” called out young Willoughby, in his most scrupulous French, somewhat to the surprise, doubtless, of that grim worthy, while a sudden gleam of enjoyment twinkled once more in the youth’s eye, “you will favour me by using the utmost exertions to arrive in time for Monsieur Morin!” He deliberately opened the carriage-door again, took down the steps, and leisurely stepped in, two or three officious pairs of hands contending which should set all to rights behind him. He took off his cap as he stood, and bowed with profound gravity to the crowd. “That’s to say, Jackson,” added he in English, “all right—drive on like mad!”

And as Jackson whipped his tedious beasts like a man devoid of all mercy, the creaking barouche rattled off; accompanied by half the crowd, by noisy curs, frightened poultry, and confused shadows from the trees and houses, till they jolted across the other bridge, and rolled out clear into the broad light of evening. All at once, after some silent meditation, Charles tapped the shoulder near him, and the Frenchman turned his face with a slight start.

“I say, Mossure Moreng,” observed Charles, with more than his customary force of pronunciation, “I am sorry you got hurt, though.”

“The apology of Monsieur is accepted,” was the cold answer, as the young man quietly turned away again towards the smoke of Paris before them.

“Oh, it is not an apology,” said Charles, leaning over, “but I own we are much obliged to you. Such a set of rascally canaille, to be sure! ’Twas ingenious enough, that story of yours—so far as I understood it! But where are we to take you to keep it up? Into town? Or perhaps you would prefer being dropped at the first comfortable inn!”

“I do not comprehend you, Monsieur,” replied the teacher of Charlemont, in evident surprise; “it is to the hotel of M. le Count de Charlemont that we shall go—in Paris.”

“And where is that?” asked the youth, drumming with his small cane on his toe.

“In the Faubourg St Germain, Monsieur—near the Quai Voltaire,” said Morin.

“Why, I should say it was two or three miles out of our way, then,” rejoined Charles, discontentedly. “Well—what after that? Do we finish there—eh?”

“I am unaware of the result, naturally, Monsieur,” answered the schoolmaster. “In the case of Monsieur, it will probably be an inconsiderable fine, which the clerk of M. le Maire will no doubt regulate according to law. But for the coincidence, 342it would have been impossible to extricate Monsieur from that affair there—it was important that I should reach Paris: there is no favour to one or the other—only a compromise.”

“By George!” uttered the boy, staring, “you do not mean to say that long rigmarole account of yours was true?”

The Frenchman betrayed equal amazement. “Is it, then, possible, Monsieur,” said he, “that you doubt it—that you imagine these things not to exist precisely—not to bear themselves as I have stated!” Charles surveyed him coolly. “Think you, Monsieur,” continued the other, with some vehemence, “that one could at all events deceive one’s neighbours, who are aware of every circumstance—who will to-morrow demand of me the result! The police—who confide in my position, my character! No, Monsieur—it is truth that has happened to involve, as to extricate you—truth, by which France is at this moment so animated—by which we here are at the instant surrounded, controlled!”

Young Willoughby whistled slightly as he eyed him. “Oh?” was the careless rejoinder. “But for my part, I feel no inclination to trouble your worthy mayor. The whole thing is a humbug. What if I merely refuse to go, Mister Morran—indeed, if I have you set down beside the first fiacre, with your fare paid to the driver?”

“You do not comprehend this France here, Monsieur,” said the village teacher, blandly, as he let a voluntary gaze of his colourless eye rest on Charles. “She burns to support the law—to assist it. At a moment they are summoned to its aid—they are roused to complete it the more perfectly—they exaggerate. Besides, even in your house, by to-morrow, you would be traced. The offence would have become enhanced. It is owing to the sublime passion for the philosophical—the consistent, Monsieur!”

The boy eyed Morin with a useless frown; he had turned away. Looking about, and thinking, with a singular sense of antipathy, for which he could scarce find sufficient grounds, Charles sat mute; he began to feel as if, much though he despised this Morin, he would never be got rid of till some serious issue came of it in the end. But they reached the barrier, not yet closed—passed through, recognised and unquestioned; for to enter Paris seemed always easier than to get out of it; and rattled along the chaussée through close streets of a dingy faubourg. Much as it was out of their way, yet, to be finally rid of Monsieur Morin and his case, no course seemed secure but to drive straight to the authority he indicated. At the Rue de St Roche, accordingly, in the aristocratic suburb they at length drew up before a high old house in the row of stately mansions, where lacqueys lounged about the balustraded door-steps and huge portes-cochère, and the upper casements began to glow with light. “It is the Hotel St Mirel,” said the village teacher, as he began with difficulty to get down. He waited quietly for the young gentleman to follow him, and they went up the steps together.

The carriage had not stood waiting many minutes before Charles Willoughby reappeared alone. His face was bright with satisfaction.

“What an absurd affair, after all,” said he, contemptuously: “it cost about ten minutes and as many shillings. An old clerk at a table in an antechamber took down the statements on each side. Of course I allowed the facts; and it seems there’s an exact understood price tacked to every sort of assault in France, from a push to a kick, according to the quality of the parties; and if the fellow had pushed me, it would have cost him about double. There were two or three gentlemen talking in an inner room, who all came out together in riding-boots and coats—though which was which, one could hardly see against the large windows this time of night. I only fancy it was the Count that bowed to me, rather a young man, I should say—and looked at Morin rather sharply, giving a slight sort of nod; then he said something to the clerk, who told me I was fined half a louis-d’or, besides the five francs for his own fee, which 343he pocketed very graciously, getting up and putting off his spectacles. I only waited another minute to see if I could catch out that Morin somewhere, as soon as the Count called him aside in a hurry to the inner room; but I must say everything seemed to agree well enough with the fellow’s harangue at the village—his schoolmastership was evidently in danger—till all at once the Count came out again to tell the other gentlemen he could not go somewhere with them that evening. I believe the one was some celebrated actor at the theatre—which was he the footman couldn’t tell—and the other a dook, as John of course expressed it!”

“Why, that footman was English, then!” said Rose, gravely.

“Of course. As lazy a selfish dog, with his plump looks and his languid impertinence, as you’d see in all May Fair—old Jackson there’s a Roman by comparison—but somehow it refreshed one. I couldn’t help giving him my last half-crown, he fawned so about my hat and cane, as if to do something—and as for the coin, he examined it like a portrait. After that Morin, you know, anything’s pleasant that one’s accustomed to! We’re well quit of him. Happily, by the by, they forgot about the passports, and don’t even know my name. Being lame—if it’s not a sham—why, I fancy the fellow could scarce do otherwise than stay at the Count’s, down stairs with John!”

Charles’s mother gently reproved him for the violence he had used, and his sister said he was very hardhearted. But the carriage turned the corner near the Rue Debilly; and as they drew up at their own gate, Mr Thorpe, bareheaded, followed by Sir Godfrey, came eagerly out. They had been getting very anxious indeed. The tutor had missed the Baronet, whom business had detained a little later than his expectation, so that he had left the city by a different barrier, then had turned, fancying the carriage already past; while Mr Thorpe had ridden nearly all the way home alone, then back, till he met Sir Godfrey.

CHAP. VII.—THE DILIGENCE OF SIR GODFREY.

The Baronet had no sooner written his necessary correspondence that forenoon, and conveyed it, almost as necessarily, with his own hands to the post-office at the British Embassy, than he had turned bridle again toward the Quais, to ride in the direction of the Cité, where it seemed that, after all, the intended legatee of his brother had only exchanged one obscure place of abode for another—48 Rue Chrétienne, au cinquième, in fact, for au septième, num^o. 80, Rue de la Vierge. He found himself ere long plunged into the centre of that strange heart of a no less strange quarter. He had no sooner found the number he was in search of, than a couple of little sharp-eyed, old-faced gamins, engaged in some game of chance in a doorway, were ready to hold his horse, with a jealousy of each other which was a guarantee for their joint fidelity.

It was an insecure-looking old pile, which might yet have seemed a sort of city in itself; compressed back, as it appeared, and almost held up between others less elevated, though of greater prominence and somewhat more respectable appearance, to the vast height of at least seven storeys: the general outer door stood fixedly open, and the cord which held it so, conducting by staple and pulley along the low entrance-passage, as through the arch of a cellar, turned in on one side to a dark little den, half lighted by a cooking-lamp and partly from a back-yard covered with rank grass and all sorts of rubbish, with an old wooden pump in the midst, to which the passage itself led through. Here an old woman, the portress, sat in a crazy leathern arm-chair that had been gilded once; she was busy trying to boil something by the lamp, and talking in a cross voice to herself, her cat, or some one else not visible to Sir Godfrey; her old features were sour enough, probably from the rheumatism 344which controlled her motions; but at his appearance and inquiries she became sufficiently alert and communicative, curtseying at every sentence, and trying to nod her head obsequiously, with the utmost eagerness to do anything in the matter of Suzanne Deroux, whom she knew so well, and who was so deserving—who, indeed, was never from home, except to go to mass on saints’ days at Notre Dame. There was the low fawning cunning and curiosity of old age, joined to the practised manner of some quondam servant, in the portress’s desire that he should be saved the flight of stairs, down which, where it wound up from opposite her lodge, came but the dull glimmer of daylight in some high window: her little girl, however, whom she had screamed for over and over again, between fits of coughing and fresh suggestions to the visitor, at last appeared with her pitcher from the pump, to be angrily despatched up-stairs as a guide to Madame Peltier. That was the appellation expected by the daughter and the son-in-law—the portress informed him—for they were proud, and respected their mother to an extreme—though, properly, it seemed Madame had no right to that title, not having been married—and, doubtless, the marriage even of her daughter must at best have been à la Jacques, since nowadays it was so with all workmen—who had nothing, of course, to inherit or to leave. As for this worthy Suzanne, though she seemed to affect to be religious, her frugality, so unavoidable—her simplicity, which was almost hopeless, did not entitle her—nothing but her misfortunes could entitle her—to such respect.

The portress’s little niece had already preceded him to the floor in view, ere Sir Godfrey reached it, almost breathless, counting the storeys. The whole structure, from base to summit, appeared not merely to teem with apartments, but, as it ascended, to rise and open skyward into visible life: one pleasant buzz of French vivacity, indeed, had seemed to circulate above till the girl appeared; and her voice could now be heard in eager dialogue behind an adjoining door with the young woman who a minute before had been speaking over the balusters. He knocked, half open although it stood, and was at once answered by the latter. Suzanne Deroux was the name of her mother, she said—who was within. There was something hard and cold, almost sullen, about the young woman’s face, though it was well-formed: her cheek seemed worn, her eyes dry and lustreless; nor did she make any inviting or inquiring remark, merely making way for and following the stranger as he slowly entered.

It was a bare garret, with the red-tiled floor of such ordinary Parisian abodes, a low yellow-washed ceiling, much narrower than the floor, as on one side the wall slanted with the roof; yet everything was neat, clean, and decently arranged. But the glance took it in at once, without leaving so much as a shadow; neither hearth nor semblance of a closet broke its completeness, to the recess of the upright dormer-window, which seemed a redeeming feature in so bald an apartment, where it rose large and shining out of the slope, beyond the older woman’s seat. That was an arm-chair, indeed, high-backed and easy: her feet were on a patch of carpet; a pot of mignonette was in flower on the window-sill; a small coarsely-coloured print of some portrait was stuck with a pin to the opposite wall of the recess; as if the household bloomed a little only in that direction, toward the sunlight, which came flooding with the air through the wide-open window-place. Seated on the floor, beside a deal box in a corner, under the slant of the wall, was a stout young workman with a boot-last, engaged on the second of an elegant pair of riding-boots; while a half-naked infant had been laid on the floor, among the parings of the vegetables which seemed meant for some 345afternoon meal—and was taken up by the portress’s little niece, to be hushed and shaken, with an air of matronly attention.

At sight of the English baronet’s conspicuous figure, stooping to enter, and scarce venturing to stand erect within, the bootmaker had looked up with an absolute scowl of astonishment; showing a strongly-marked haggard visage, rendered the more singularly unprepossessing, despite something of the vivid southern tint and classic decisiveness, by a head close-cropped, in all its native soot-blackness, and a chin left roughly tufted below, although the lean tanned cheek had not yet lost altogether its air of youth. Sir Godfrey’s first feeling had been one of pity, mingled with sudden pleasure in the commission he had to perform; their perfect want of manners, their very poverty, the absence of any other apartment to withdraw into, joined to the motionless silence of the elderly woman in her arm-chair, who neither seemed to hear nor see him, all increased it to a kind of embarrassment. In the highest drawing-rooms in Europe, nay, in any peasant’s cottage of his own country, Sir Godfrey would have felt immeasurably more at ease than he then stood, hat in hand, in the attic of these Parisian work-people. He had hardly begun to address the person before him, too, as Madame, ere the child’s fretfulness in the arms of its little nurse became a vociferous squall, to which the elder woman turned her head slowly, with an air of distress, her features working, her body moving and rocking in her chair, as she made a humming, hushing sound to the infant. Its mother snatched it next moment from the girl’s arms, with an angry exclamation. “Why do you remain here under such pretences?” said she, sharply; and the look of early cunning had betrayed itself on the girl’s face by her attempt to seem absorbed in the child, with the hanging of the head that succeeded. “Favour me, little Pochon, by leaving us alone,” continued the young woman, following her as she slunk out: “Widow Pochon is too good, inform her!” And she slammed to the fragile door, then returned near the visitor, with her infant quietly held to the breast: she was not much more than twenty, and had well-shaped features, that, with a happier expression, might have been attractive; but in this slatternly attire and attitude, her careless presence was doubly disagreeable to Sir Godfrey.

He stepped nearer the sitting woman, who, like a recent invalid, seemed still not so much to attend as to be enjoying the open air, the scent from the flower-pot, and the streak of warm sunshine that gleamed on the window-frame and glowed across her clean dress, on the old bright kerchief that was pinned across her breast, and the high white coif of some country fashion which she wore close to her face; yet in her face there was a healthy tint, a little shrivelled, as on a well-kept apple: so that it appeared to be more from ignorance, or the awkwardness of surprise, perhaps as much from his own foreign accent, or some patois to which she might have been accustomed, that, when Sir Godfrey went on distinctly to explain his errand, the woman Deroux looked sometimes vacantly at him, sometimes away out altogether to the open sky, again irresolutely towards her daughter and son-in-law, spreading her hands in the feeble way of still more aged persons, and smoothing her knees with them by turns, more and more restlessly as his voice grew distincter in its emphasis. To the statement of her former patron’s recent death, of the omission or oversight which had interrupted her allowance from him, and of the nature and amount of the present bequest, increased as it would justly be by the addition of some recompense for the intervening years—Suzanne Deroux returned vague murmurs, which might be taken for assent, till her large mild face was at length fixed towards Sir Godfrey’s, with a light of greater comprehension than before in her dim eyes; and he noticed, for the first time, that one side of her cheek and forehead was marked by the white smooth seam of an old scar—how large it was impossible to see, for her cap; but frightful it must have been once—taking, as it did, the eyebrow away, and seeming to have blanched the eye itself, where its shining mark still crept out and curled round, amidst the furrows and wrinkles of otherwise healthy old age. She 346said something in reply, but confusedly, and with evident agitation, while her shaking face seemed fascinated to his—and with such a mixture of patois, as it seemed, whether of idiom, pronunciation, or language—that Sir Godfrey could merely infer it to denote recollection of his brother, with sorrow for his death, and gratitude at the remembrance he had shown. The young man had at length put by his work, risen up, and approached to listen, as he leant his elbows on the broken deal-table.

“She is weak in mind, the poor woman—my mother,” said the daughter, abruptly, though still engaged in administering nourishment to her infant; “it is useless to transact anything with her, Monsieur.”

“No, it is merely her memory that is bad, Jeannette,” interposed the son-in-law, who seemed scarcely his wife’s age; and there was something deferential in his look towards the elder woman, with a comparative kindliness of tone, as he turned to address herself, putting his hand on her arm-chair and his head near hers, and using the respectful vous—“and she does not hear strangers very well—do you, belle-mère?”

The elder woman smiled faintly in return, her head still slightly trembling, though the familiar voice seemed to call up a degree of intelligence and composure on her face, somewhat like a child’s when it is commended: “no—no—not very well, my son!” she said; then drawing herself up and spreading her gown with her hands, sat full of silent importance.

“She has always been weak in mind,” coldly repeated her daughter, paying no attention to them, “since the accident by which she was so injured. I am acquainted with the circumstances, Monsieur, although at that time but a child, and fortunately not present with my mother in the house where it occurred.”

“You allude to the fire, above nineteen years ago, in the house where the family of her employer, my late brother, had their apartments?” Sir Godfrey asked, turning to her. She made a simple assent. “Then your mother, Suzanne Deroux, was a servant living within the establishment?” he continued.

“Yes, she was the nurse—the wetnurse (nourrice-à-lait)” was the unembarrassed answer—“for the infant which perished along with its mother and the other persons. She had remained a considerable time, since it was sickly. My mother had been a peasant, you see, Monsieur.”

She proceeded further of her own accord, with an evident view to the point of business.

“My mother was certainly entitled to this pension, notwithstanding her indifference to it—her refusal, I believe,” said the young woman, looking for a moment at the elder, who had listlessly turned again to the sunlight. “Her wound, which was shocking, confined her for weeks to the hospital—her lover, my father, who up to that time had still admired her, and who was in the family of a nobleman, returned, indifferent to her fate, with his master to the provinces, where his friendship for her had arisen. As for her own infant, my brother, whom at the risk of her own life she had remained to save—its arm was indelibly scorched, almost destroyed by the flames which pursued her. She ultimately relinquished it with apparent unconcern, to the man who had rescued them by a ladder at the window—an Englishman, a servant who had arrived with Monsieur Vilby, and whose eccentricity made him desire to adopt it. She has neither heard of, nor seen her son, my brother, since. She has never seemed even to wish it, Monsieur. Certainly my mother is weak in mind.”

In most of this account the thread was easily traceable; the baronet recalled to mind some vague connection of his brother’s late huntsman, Griffiths, or “Welsh Will,” as he was called, with the fatal incidents—he had heard his son Francis talk years before of a boy about Stoke, whom the huntsman’s vixen wife persecuted and kept out of doors. He had been sent to some business, so far as Sir Godfrey remembered, through Mr Hesketh. The baronet stated as much to the people before him.

“Thou’rt wrong, though, Jeannette,” said the son-in-law again, with the same side-tone, irrespective of their visitor’s presence, rather through a dull incapability to acknowledge it than from intention; “she grieves for him. When thou’dst say, 347remember, during the sharp winter, thou wert glad thy brother’s mouth was not here, did she not groan—and when the fine time came again, while thou wert so apt to taunt us about her son being grown English, she swung herself and wept! You feel it, you wish your son back here, Marraine (godmother), do you not?”

The elder woman turned from the light to him with a start and a stare; perhaps it was the bright sunshine that made her face seem faded beside it, especially where the scar-mark ran; she looked, to the stranger’s eye, almost ghastly, as she replied, in a less cracked and tremulous voice than before—“Holy Virgin, yes! You will send—you will take care of—ah!” And as she stopped, perplexed and troubled, the moisture sprang from her dull-blue eyes into tears; she passed one hand about the disfigured place; she seemed nearer clearness of speech on the subject than hitherto, as if that had been a master-spring to her scattered memories.

“My good woman,” said the baronet soothingly, as he stepped nearer, into the recess where her easy-chair stood—“My good Madame Deroux—if you wish your son to return to you, it shall be managed, of course! You will see him, I hope, grown up and prosperous, as well as able to assist you! It would, no doubt, have been a burden before!—She or you could scarcely recognise him now, however,” he added aside to the daughter, in an undertone.

“It is easy enough, Monsieur,” was the careless answer, without any responsive depression of voice, “since the arm would not lose such a mark, more than my mother’s visage—added to the loss of the little finger. I was too young to remember it, you see—but the washerwoman who kept us both, and who used privately to bring the child at intervals to my mother, leaving it for the night—she had again seen it after its recovery, and lodged along with us afterwards till her death.”

Suzanne Deroux had felt hastily for something beneath the bosom of her dress, and at length drew it forth; a thin gold cross with black beads, which she kissed with fervour, then began eagerly to whisper and mutter some scraps of prayer, that might have been Latin or patois, or both; at each bead that fell from her fingers her face seemed growing calmer.

“She is quite well in other respects, Monsieur,” continued the daughter, turning impatiently from her; “she still eats like a peasant, she sleeps soundly, she prefers bright colours for her dress to go to mass and confession. As for that, she is so superstitious, that when we were about to starve, she would not permit her little cross there to be pledged, nor the dress in which she must frequent Notre Dame—it was not she who suffered, you see, but we—who endeavoured to conceal it from her that we endured so much!”

A look of mild reproach was cast by Suzanne towards her daughter, while her lips still moved.

“Well, well, Jeannette, going to these affairs pleases her,” said the young boot-closer, with the cub-like leaning to his mother-in-law which appeared through his uncouth exterior.

“It is the priests who frighten her,” went on his partner, her back towards him, in perfect indifference to his remarks; “her confessor, who makes her tremble at the supposition of crimes”—

“Of which she is innocent!” observed the son-in-law behind, in the same disregarded way—“sacré nom! Jeannette is wrong about my mother-in-law,” he added, looking awkwardly for a moment at Sir Godfrey. “If you would not call her Madame Deroux—it confuses her ideas—it is Madame Peltier she likes strangers to call her—do you not, Marraine?”

An air of childish pleasure spread over the old woman’s features, and she nodded graciously, and smiled.

“See how she loves the child, too, Jeannette!” said he, as the infant stretched its shapeless arms and legs from the maternal bosom, where it had at length ceased to feed, towards the grandmother’s bright kerchief and white coif, that basked in outer sunshine. She put out her hands to receive it, and, with an aspect of complete satisfaction, began dandling the child towards the window, chirping to it like a bird, or buzzing like a bee; while the slatternly Jeannette applied a careless touch to the disorder of her dress.

348“Peltier is the name of Jeannette’s father, it seems,” resumed the bootmaker more confidentially than before, coming nearer the visitor; “though for that—I and Jeannette do not mind such ceremony—do we, Jeannette? We are fond of each other, you see.” The disdainful glance which he received from his female companion was sufficiently sharp-tempered to make the fondness on her side doubtful.

“Do you not see that you infest Monsieur with your absurd remarks!” said she, angrily, when the pin had been taken from her mouth, on which her attire greatly depended; “and he must naturally wish to escape from a habitation so unworthy of him—favour me by being silent, or going out.” The bootmaker retreated towards his original place again, while his abler partner, with an intelligence and quickness of apprehension, as well as a collectedness, which might have done credit to a higher station, proceeded to take up the thread of their visitor’s business with them.

There was one precaution which she requested him to afford them—a signed paper in his handwriting, to account for their possession of the money, and state the ground of its being given, in case of any accident meanwhile from the police. And while the bootmaker was absent in search of ink-bottle and pen from some neighbour, Sir Godfrey turned, for the first time, from beside the elder woman’s chair in its recess, toward the attic casement which appeared as fascinating to her as to her charge.

“My mother is still a peasant, Monsieur,” remarked the younger woman, apologetically; “she is never weary of admiring Paris!—Paris, with which she has so little to do—of which she knows nothing—which has kept us so long miserable!”

A strange thrill of very novel feeling ran through Sir Godfrey as he pressed nearer, and looked. He almost shrank back with an emotion of awe, the sight was so unexpected, in such extreme contrast to that mean abode, from beside the unmeaning vacancy of the elder woman’s pleasure, the infant’s crowing sounds and motions, the repugnance he felt for the others, and his own engrossing thoughts: otherwise, on Willoughby’s single-minded, straightforward, unimpassioned character, with a very dormant fancy and but tardy movement of association, it might have struck with slight impress. Immense and startling from that height, indeed, was the prospect; nor the less so, that here and there some huge pile of neighbouring chimneys, some tower-top, or a wreath of lazy smoke, broke it up close at hand with a vividness of light and shade, or a distinctness of detail, that was thrust on the eye. Here a sunny perspective of roof, garretwindow, and chimney, ruddy at the top against blue air, with basking cats, and blooming pots, and garments hung to dry, that fluttered cheerfully, where the population of the upper world of Paris, the boulevards of its canaille and its unknown, showed their faces in the sun,—there a vast surging sea of slates, tossed hither and thither into tower, steeple, and shadowy dome, pierced by dusky gulfs and glooms—while midway ran out a dull thread of the Seine into a bridge, and broke forth beyond in dazzling splendour, where the reflection of the houses blended with the substance, so that all there seemed shattered and dripping in silver and gem-like radiance—with visionary structures lifted farther off among unsubstantial bowers, up to the sun’s viewless glory where he stood high in a blaze of light, as if clothed with a great mantle of indistinctness, and contemplated the vast city. Far beneath him floated the Hospital’s golden dome: the softened roar and clamour of Paris rose clear to the open attic casement, with sharper noises from close below it; one saw straight through an uninterrupted space, down upon streets and openings, quays, square, and garden-terrace, in a distinct bird’s-eye view, alive with the motion of minute citizens; scarce could it have been thought that the regal whiteness of the rich Louvre was so near, and the tilted pavilion-roofs of the great, gaunt, high-chimneyed Tuileries. The various stages and storeys of inhabitants descended beyond sight, as to abysses that were bottomless. The air felt clearer than elsewhere, and the sky seemed nearer in its blue purity. It was all such a spectacle as might have absorbed the 349faculties of a prophet; indeed the thought could not but have struck a mind used to interpret its own consciousness, of how slightly human distinctions might weigh, and in what trivial account they would result, could magnificence so beyond the furniture of palaces be familiar, or often accessible. With the English baronet, it was rather the sudden perception of what vast concerns were going on the while, under necessity to be sustained, round about the particular affairs of his own business or experience: added to which came emphatically enough that strange sense, sometimes resembling the superstitious, of time gigantically pressing on to destiny—when with a hurtling, heaving sound before it, and a crash that made all the chimneys vibrate, the hard walls clang, the roofs rattle, and the windows tingle and ring, the clock of Notre Dame, hard by, sent out its first stroke of the hour. The elder woman let the child sink in her lap, gravely crossing herself at every stroke; here and there, outside, a face could be seen turned to it involuntarily. The bootmaker, setting down the writing-materials he had procured after a somewhat long absence, appeared to hear with a savage grin and gleam of satisfaction, whether still caused by the money or by later news; he nodded his head to each long, artillery-like stroke, rolling and reverberating away among the piles of the Cité and St Louis, and made a whistling noise of pleasure as he looked, till it was done.

“And now, my good woman,” said Sir Godfrey, when he had written the required paper, with an order for the money, “let me bid you farewell.” He took Suzanne’s shrivelled hand, and she made a motion to rise up, with decorous gravity. There was a confused murmur of gratitude, as if appealing to her daughter for fuller explanation; but he saw her eyes moisten again, silently, when he said he would cause the means to be taken for at least enabling her son to communicate with and assist her. Suzanne Deroux shook her head, she seemed almost to groan; while the same wavering feebleness of mind again turned her to the window and the child. It appeared doubtful whether she really had a distinct notion who Sir Godfrey was, or what relation he bore to her former master.

“Are you aware,” he added apart, to the daughter, ere turning to the staircase, “whether your mother ever expressed any idea as to the cause of the fire in the house—if it was accidental or otherwise?” The answer was in the negative.

“Or on what floor—her master’s apartments, or some other?” No. Her mother was talkative enough, sometimes, and she believed she knew little of it, and remembered yet less.

“There was no other circumstance, then, of any importance, in the matter, which they were acquainted with?” None, she reluctantly said, after a minute’s reflection; and it was evident that, if it had been otherwise, she would have been eager enough to make the most of it: even the touch of English gold might have no power to make such a woman as Jeannette Deroux feel any sort of genial emotion, but it had at all events given the light of unsatisfied cupidity to her hard grey Normandy eye. Sir Godfrey descended alone, to find the urchins beginning rather to dread the impatience of their charge.

The recent interview, making known little of any additional importance, at least convinced Sir Godfrey of the judiciousness of a step he had hitherto disliked, so long as it seemed possible that unexpected facts might appear from it—an examination for himself, namely, of the original record by the police, whose reputation for exactitude and acuteness was so proverbial. It now, indeed, assumed the air of a somewhat superfluous measure, when through all he had heard from these people, with no motive or means for deception, there did not show the slightest trace of anything unlike other disasters of the kind—of anything equivocal, anything suspicious. It was chiefly, therefore, with the wish for complete reassurance, and final dismissal of the unwelcome subject, that he turned again, on his way homeward, to the chief bureau of police which he had previously passed. He found prompt attendance there, on producing his passport, and the required volume, from 350under the head of “Conflagrations Domestiques,” soon lay open on a high desk before him at the point he was in search of, while the inspector turned the leaves slowly, reading aloud the passages he indicated, and which the peculiar style of French calligraphy did not tend to render lucid.

The record of nineteen years ago had been made under a different monarch, according to the laboriously prolix system of M. de Sartines, especially when any foreign subject was concerned; and it extended over many of the large pages, betraying by its faint-brown ink how considerable an interval had elapsed. It set out with the alarm being brought past midnight to the residence of the commissary in the Quartier faubourg St Germain, that a house on the Quai d’Orcay was in flames, and the endeavours made to arrest them, as well as to succour the inhabitants, who had been driven to the garret windows, and were attempting to pass to the contiguous roofs; it stated the narrow escape of a maidservant from a front window of the first floor, where the whole of the apartments were full of smoke, by the aid of a gendarme with a ladder too short to allow him to enter—and of a woman in her night-dress, whose shrieks had first given the alarm, but who had disappeared; till she returned to a corner window with a child in her arms, actually pursued by a bursting flame, but rescued by a man on the top of a wall which abutted there on a manufactory canal flowing at a right angle into the Seine—also of the English gentleman, the tenant of the first floor, who had at first made his way from the street into the basement, out of a fiacre which had brought him from the theatre, but who reappeared half drenched, and panting for breath, amidst the play of the fire-engines. The state of the February night was described as being very dark before the occurrence, with a high wind blowing up the river, where, from the tide, and a period of unusual rain, the water of the Seine made the canal overflow, rising almost to a level with its bridges, yet affording the greater facilities for the jets from the fire-engines, which succeeded ultimately in saving the adjoining structures, and the sheds of the tobacco-manufactory adjacent, with the lower part of the house itself. The situation of the house was also minutely given, to the very contiguity of the two poplar trees growing outside the wall, up from the canal, but by which the pompeurs had found it impossible to climb in their heavy accoutrements—the height of the wall on that side, and the manner in which the end of the house rose like a continuation of it towards the quay, rendering it apparently impossible, even when one had gained the top of the wall, to reach at all near the solitary first-floor window, in the middle, and higher up. Then followed a detail of the various occupants of the three floors and garrets—on the basement, the proprietor, a widower, elderly and of avaricious habits, whose warehouse of furniture filled three apartments, his sleeping chamber being a closet attached—his clerk, an old man who lived in a fourth apartment with his wife, both acting as porters: above, the family of Monsieur Vilby, the Englishman, consisting at that time of himself, his wife, and infant son, a young female attendant, a child’s nurse, and the man-servant or butler of M. Vilby: on the third storey and in the attics, a banker’s head-clerk, with his wife, her maid, and three young children—a journalist, a painter, and an actor, living together—a single young man, of no profession, (though calling himself a poet), supposed subject to harmless fits of lunacy, inhabiting an attic where he was known frequently to lock himself in. Of these there had perished—the old proprietor himself, M. Canrobert, in whose apartment the fire was supposed to have originated, since he warmed himself only in bed, while supping alone, by candle-light—and the portress, whose husband, luckily for him, had chanced to be absent on business of his master’s,—the remains of both being still distinguishable if only from the place of their discovery: the English lady, Madame Vilby—her infant, at first supposed to have been the one saved by the nurse, but found afterwards to have perished in her embrace, although the charred and mingled debris of the whole upper storeys fallen from above rendered it difficult to distinguish one mass of human substance from another: the man-servant 351of the English gentleman, at one time imagined identical with the person so active on the wall;—also others, above, who were enumerated. Then succeeded the depositions of the various individuals in evidence.

“‘Victorine Tronchet, fille-de-chambre to the late Madame Vilby, declared, that before ten o’clock her mistress signified an intention to sit up for monsieur, who had gone to a theatre at some distance, and that she might retire. Retired to bed, accordingly, in a closet adjoining the nurse’s room—saw the nurse, as she thought, carry out the child as usual to her mistress—imagined, while half asleep, or dreamt, that her mistress herself afterwards passed through the room, stooped over the bed with the child in her arms, and disappeared. But knew nothing further until awoke by the suffocating vapours. Could read—but did not sit up in bed with a candle, perusing romances. There was a lamp always burning on the floor of the nurse’s room. Was not aware, that night, of the nurse having her own child in the house. Believed her mistress to be ignorant of it. Could not tell why her mistress did not herself suckle the child—knew nothing of such affairs. Did not know that Madame’s voice had been brilliant—had heard her mistress sing to a musical instrument, when M. Vilby was at home. M. Vilby had returned home that day, unexpectedly, from England. He went to the theatre, accompanied only by M. Adolphe, his servant—perhaps because Madame had a headache. They used frequently to go to the theatre. Had heard that a new actress of celebrity would perform. The man-servant, M. Adolphe, returned early with some message to Madame, and retired up the outside stairs to his attic at the top of the house.’”

“‘The examination of the stranger who had been so active was made through an interpreter. Stated his name to be Guillaume Greefeeze. Was not a native of England, but of Wales. Knew nothing of the fire, except that having followed M. Vilby’s hackney-coach from the theatre, he smelt smoke, and saw immediately the fire lick out (se lécher) through the front-windows, when the doors below were burst open—heard shrieks at the further end—leapt down by the canal, to climb the wall,—saw suddenly, by the light of the fire, a woman in white at the window a little above—thought she had fallen down inside, till she came back, holding out a child and calling to him. Succeeded in getting to the window by help of the barred outside shutter on that side, which swung with him, however—found it impossible to get either of them down to the wall, which did not come near enough towards being under the window—without firmly fastening the outer edge of the shutter to a staple already there. Refused to leave the woman as she seemed to wish—signed to her to hold the child fast—tore down one end of the window-curtain, which held firm—made her slip herself down after him in the fold of the curtain, while he held the end firm with one hand, catching the shutter by the other. On the top of the wall, which was luckily broad enough to hold them, the woman seemed to faint away, so as nearly to drag them off, when they would have fallen into the canal—shouted for assistance then—before that, all the firemen and the crowd were in front, making a noise—with the pumping, the sound of the fire and wind, and the falling of the roof, it was useless. They were seen by chance, when the woman and child were carried to the hospital. Afterwards assisted at the pumps till the end.’

“The evidence of this witness was extracted with difficulty, by fragments, in spite of a somewhat sullen and cynical air, almost cunning. He frequently used the eccentric phrase ‘for reasons of his own.’ It was thought proper, from these and other suspicious circumstances, to detain him in the meanwhile.

“The statement of the nurse, Suzanne Deroux, was taken formally by her bed-side, in a ward of the Hotel Dieu, where the fever from her injuries continued, while it was doubtful whether her sight would again become perfect. As for her child, whose arm had suffered, hopes had only begun to be entertained of its recovery. ‘Was a native of Normandy, unmarried. Had two children—a girl of four, and the young child which she 352had left with a neighbour, to obtain support by nursing that of Madame Vilby. Had obtained the assistance of the portress in having her own child brought to her privately, at intervals, that she might still contribute to its health. Had thought it pining, as her neighbour was a Parisian—was very healthy herself, being originally a peasant—but was not allowed to go out, except with the child of Madame Vilby in the daytime, accompanied by her or a servant. On the night of the fire, had had both the children with her—and as usual, conveyed that of Madame Vilby to her bed-chamber, to be seen by her while awake. Did not see Madame Vilby after that, but fell asleep holding her own child in her arms to lull an uneasiness it showed—while that of Madame Vilby, which was younger, slept soundly at the other side of the large bed. The suffocating smoke, and the shrieks of Victorine, the fille-de-chambre, made her rise bewildered, seizing the child which she felt clasping her and again uttering complaints. She rushed to the nearest window, which would not open—that of the opposite room, however, yielded, admitting a gust of wind by which the smoke appeared to explode beyond into flame, and showing a man attracted by her cries to the adjoining wall. Confessed that her recollection of the other infant had not till then returned—that her instinct urged her to return only for her own, which she had let fall when attempting to open the first window—that she ran to search the bed, however, in vain—concluded that Victorine or some one else had snatched the child immediately from the side of the bed. Caught up her own infant from the floor where she had dropped it, and after both had been for a moment on fire from the partition of the room, was rescued by the window. Did not yet know whether any one had perished. Was certain the fire had not begun in the nursery, from the lamp on the floor—having distinctly recollected awaking in complete darkness—the lamp must have been overturned, extinguished, or taken away. Acknowledged, of her own accord, that in secretly obtaining her own infant she had committed a crime. Always slept soundly at night, having been a peasant. Did not know anything more, and had no expectation of her child living, it was so sickly from the manner of nourishment.’

“In reference to some of the remains discovered, surgical testimonies were opposed. Amongst several unclaimed bodies deposited at La Morgue, during the progress of this examination, was that, evidently, of an Englishman, whose blue coat and top-boots betrayed his origin. Although swollen and disfigured, while found naturally at a distance down the Seine, yet no other Englishman than the man-servant of M. Vilby had disappeared. The inference became certainty from the subsequent declarations of many pompeurs, gendarmes, and bystanders, that after the rescue of the nurse with her child, a figure had been seen to leap from the pursuit of the flames out of this window into the canal.

“The declaration of M. Vilby, after several days, was taken. ‘Believed the fire to be accidental. Had left Madame slightly indisposed, to see an after-piece at the theatre, which he particularly wished to see with her. Had been somewhat annoyed at her inability to accompany him. Had met friends, and instead of remaining, had sent home a message by his servant, to say he might return late. Had left them, however, earlier than he at first intended—and’——the emotion of the witness was at that point more expressive than words. The commissary-in-chief intimated that no further evidence on the part of M. Vilby would be necessary, unless on inferior points. ‘He was aware of the employment of Suzanne Deroux. Did not know of her introduction of her own infant on any occasion into the house. During his absence on business, his wife had gone out of Paris for some days to visit a married friend, leaving their child, with his full approval. He had approved her not nursing the child herself—nay, had suggested it. He had considered Suzanne a faithful servant, if not very intelligent. Certainly, had she been so, she might have saved his child, without risking her own. He was now about to visit the married friend of his wife in the neighbourhood of Paris.’

353“Additional statement of M. Vilby, ‘Knew the young man Greefeeze. Had seen him several times in England—was unaware of any reason why Greefeeze should follow him from the theatre, or from the hotel of his friends. There was no enmity between himself and this man—on the contrary, he had always found Greefeeze apparently desirous to serve him—had at one time intended to employ him, and once recommended him as gamekeeper to his brother in England. With regard to the body found, had gone to see it at La Morgue, and could trace no resemblance to his servant, John Adolphe. Adolphe never had worn top-boots, that he was aware of. Adolphe was not an Englishman; but, he believed, a Swiss. Having been a trooper in the regiment of his own brother, a British officer, and been for a time his brother’s servant, particularly recommended by him when leaving the regiment for private service, this young man had had his perfect confidence. Was convinced that Adolphe must have lost his life in endeavouring to save what was most precious to his master. Had had him some time before his own marriage, and knew him well. Had himself leapt out of the open window at the end of the house, hardly knowing the canal was below—after the utmost hazard of his life. Had found the whole interior a mass of smoke, bursting into flame from near the staircase—the wind from the open casement alone saved him from suffocation. Had heard no one—felt no one—all whirling, crackling, burning—a hell out of which he still wished he could have thrown himself into annihilation. It was, therefore, probably himself the other witnesses had taken for his servant—or for the dead body at the Morgue. Had been carried into the river, no doubt—but swam to the quay—there was light enough, God knew—came up the stairs without even being noticed—was only sorry that men were so mad as to cling to life, when it was misery. Thought it proper to comply with the forms of law in a country, but considered them often a mockery.’”

Here ended the main portion of the police record. A subsequent note in red ink, however, directed farther on to a later entry in the volume, with the date of nearly six months after. “The Englishman Greefeeze reappeared at the bureau, with passports to be viséd for England. ‘Stated that he was in the service of M. Vilby, who had suddenly become, by the death of an elder brother, the possessor of a title and estates. Desired, in the indifferent manner of the English, to know the state of the woman Suzanne Deroux. Inquired for her residence, on the ground that his master would confer a pension on her for her injuries.’ An inspector was sent with him to the woman’s house, where she had at length returned from the hospital with her child. The emotion of her gratitude on perceiving Greefeeze was the more conspicuous from his impassibility. Yet on the following day, accompanied by the woman and her child, now recovered, Greefeeze presented himself at the bureau, to declare his adoption of the latter, under his own name. He was required to procure a notarial and ecclesiastical testification, as well as to engage against the future return of the child for subsistence from the police—also the approval of his master, Sir Vilby.—Sir Vilby indeed appeared at the bureau, when about to leave Paris in haste. His voice and features were scarcely recognisable from the effects of suffering. He disavowed consent to the act of Greefeeze, who followed him, and whom he contemptuously called a fool. Sir Vilby, however, intimated the right of Greefeeze to pursue his eccentric idea, if persevered in. The stubborn Greefeeze alluded to a wife whom he had left in his own country of Wales, and who was unhappy from the absence of children. His sentiments had apparently been touched in the act of rescuing this infant, which he was about to intrust, on the journey, to the female fellow-travellers who might accompany them. The act of adoption is consequently recorded as follows—— * * * Sir Vilby requested to correct his statement on the previous occasion, six months before, with regard to the body at La Morgue, since, on reflection, he was decidedly of opinion that it was that of the Swiss, John Adolphe, his servant. This had already, indeed, been 354perceived by the commissary—but the retractation appeared more eccentric than the denial. The pension, too, which Sir Vilby now conferred on the nurse, ought to have been given before, as the very material injuries were received at all events in his employment.”

It was with no ordinary feelings that Sir Godfrey Willoughby perused or listened to this formal memorial of an event that had been so long obscure to him: it seemed, however, to leave little now indefinite or concealed; numerous though the details were, which it presented for the first time, they implied nothing really evil, or extraordinary, save as most human calamities might; and the result was rather satisfactory than otherwise. But the afternoon was now far advanced, and he rode homeward, to dine alone, to finish an uncompleted packet to his Exeter lawyer, with information and inquiries about the so-called young Griffiths, as well as in regard to his adoptive father—then to set off, a little later than he had expected, to meet his returning party on the Versailles road.

The circumstances of their late dilemma were soon related—rather tending to Charles’s disadvantage in the eyes of his father, who, amidst all his general mildness, was inclined to look upon the youth’s disposition with occasional severity; seeming, as it did to him, at that half-formed stage, when lads are least agreeable in the paternal view, to indicate some traits, both erratic and froward, though at times brilliant, of his second uncle, John. He scarce listened to the boy’s explanation, and checked his self-justifying arguments somewhat abruptly; to the silent chafing of his son’s spirit, and the mother’s still more silent concern. But at their late coffee-table, all being apparently forgotten with Sir Godfrey’s expressed resolution never to trust the carriage in future apart from his own guidance, they sat pleasantly talking by candle-light. “So soon as Frank arrives, my dear Kate,” said Sir Godfrey, from his arm-chair to the sofa where his wife leant near, recovering from her fatigues, “we shall leave forthwith for the country. I have scarcely any further business in Paris. And you have seen here, I daresay, all that is to see?” She assented perfectly. Mr Thorpe had launched out almost in a dissertation to the governess and Miss Willoughby, the fruit of his late rural notices, on agriculture and ecclesiastical arrangements; led on by Mrs Mason’s attentive air, and the apparently intelligent interest of Rose. It was with a mild confusion that he heard the young lady’s abrupt doubt as to the sufficiency of sugar in his cup, followed straight by the addition of another lump from the silver tongs in her hand; and while Mr Thorpe stirred, and tasted, she had quietly escaped from the room, perhaps to re-read her dearest friend’s epistle. So Sir Godfrey, who not merely treated the tutor with the utmost deference as a graduate and a deacon of the Church of England, but entertained great respect for him as a learned and good man—at once joined himself to the topic—differing slightly from the view that English plans, even English Protestantism, would improve Frenchmen.

“I, of course, have happened to come a good deal in contact with them abroad, my dear sir,” added he, “particularly in North America, during the late war, and I assure you they have many generous, noble, and honourable qualities, peculiarly their own, which would perhaps be lost in any forced imitation of us. When I was taken prisoner by our own rebels there, I really believe, Thorpe, that but for the clear and gentlemanly conviction of some French naval officers, who came up at the time, I should have been summarily hanged on the spot as a spy. I had sought to escape in the uniform of a dead Frenchman, from a band of savages, and colonials more brutal by far—though, among my captors, there were some who ought to have known better. Nothing saved me, in fact, but the ready quickness of these officers, whom I had never in my life seen before. They immediately claimed me as a prisoner who had broken parole from their frigate, by swimming to the river bank—a charge which I, of course, indignantly disowned. I was, however, taken on board in their boat, when the assertion was persisted in by the captain, a French nobleman, 355on the suggestion of his officers, so that the ship set sail with me beyond colonial reach. In the fleet of Count de Grasse I was indebted for the utmost kindness to the captain of the frigate; and when, not long after, at the defeat by Lord Rodney, he himself, with his ship, was captured, I was enabled, in some degree, to repay the obligation. We contracted the warmest friendship. Indeed, I regret not having heard from the Count for many years, and his estates, I believe, are not near Paris.”

“Observe, however,” persisted Mr Thorpe, stubbornly, “the extreme want of principle which, in the bulk of the population, must be a thousand times more egregious. A Protestant, Sir Godfrey, would rather have”—

“My dear Thorpe,” eagerly interrupted the baronet, “the Count deplored the necessity, or rather the action, so deeply, as never, I do believe, to have succeeded in reasoning the painful recollection away. It clung to him like a superstition, in fact—for you must notice, he had sacrificed, as it were, his hereditary honour to save me—a thing perhaps more fanciful, less dependent on personal character, and more on externals and reputation, than with us. Yet so delicate was his feeling, and his wish to conceal it from me—that it was only by further acquaintance with his character I could observe it—or understand the restless tread on that poop at midnight—the frequent abstraction and sudden fitfulness of his conduct towards the officers who had first suggested his conduct—mixed with a singular regard towards myself—notwithstanding, nay, as if because of all. Nothing, as he afterwards confessed to me, almost with tears, could have induced it, except his recognition in me of an officer and a gentleman, an unfortunate stranger, whose country had been gratuitously opposed and defeated by French aid—when those of his own race were about to murder him ignominiously. His sword, however, he said, should have been trusted to alone, at all hazards; or, as he afterwards recollected, the frigate’s guns might have been turned toward the neighbouring town; indeed, next morning he had even sent to acknowledge the deception, with a refusal to give me up, and an offer of personal satisfaction to the American in command. Still, not only to have destroyed for ever the prestige of French honour, with all its securities, but to have falsely pledged the escutcheon of his own family, never before soiled, was a thought which enraged him against himself, against others, almost beyond control. It was useless to reason with my friend; it was perfectly hopeless to attempt consoling him; in truth, during the quiet of our voyage, a kind of insanity seemed to possess him, the only lucid intervals in which were our conversations on subjects as remote as possible from that. I think he secretly abhorred the manners of the colonials, like the American alliance, and saw a degree of retribution in the terrible defeat by Lord Rodney. I myself have reason to recollect America with mingled feelings of horror and satisfaction”—he glanced for a moment towards his wife, whose placid features betrayed no consciousness of the allusion to her first conjugal letters—“so that, my dear Thorpe, you may easily believe I could not help sympathising with him!”

“But surely, Sir Godfrey,” continued the graduate, with very logical insensibility, “you must be of opinion that this country, inclined, as it now seems, to copy England, will be”—

“Like the Count de Charlemont and his friends, I should think, with their English riding-coats and bulldogs!” involuntarily broke in Charles Willoughby, with a laugh: he had been listening very intently; but the laugh ceased at his father’s sudden look.

“Do not interrupt Mr Thorpe, boy!” said the latter, rather sternly; then relaxing next minute at the abashed and flushed look, which made him feel as if his tone had been too harsh—“what do you mean—what Count—what did you say?”

“The mayor I had to visit this evening, you know, sir,” replied Charles, “the Comte de Charlemont, I mean—Charlemont is the village we got mobbed in.”

“De Charlemont?” repeated his father slowly, looking at him, “de Charlemont? You mistake, my boy—or is this some silly presumption of yours? That name I thought I had not allowed to slip from me. I never have permitted myself to mention it. Pronounce the name again.”

Charles did so distinctly and firmly. “That is curious,” said his father, rising from his seat. “Were you listening to what I told Mr Thorpe just now, Charles?”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy, frankly.

“And I think I uttered no such name?” added the baronet.

“No,” said his son with gravity, “there was no name mentioned, except the Count de Grasse and Lord Rodney—I particularly noticed.”

“Ah—well,” was the only additional remark, as his father turned to the old stove-filled hearth-place, and leaning his arms above, stood plunged in thought; Mr Thorpe calmly reasoning on, till it was past time for prayers to be read, and for retirement. “I shall call on the Comte de Charlemont,” said Sir Godfrey, the last thing, to Lady Willoughby.

Dear Ebony,—My last letter was dated immediately after the first circulation in Madrid of a document, which had a most important effect on the fate of the military insurrection, that soon grew into a popular revolution. You will remember that after the action of Vicálvaro, on the 30th June, the insurgent generals drew their forces southwards, still lingering, however, within a few leagues of Madrid, as if in hopes that the capital would make a demonstration in their favour. But Madrid remained tranquil—almost indifferent; and every post brought accounts of similar apathy in large provincial towns, on whose rising in arms O’Donnell and his friends had doubtless reckoned. A few small bodies of troops and some armed civilians repaired to the insurgent banner; there were trifling disturbances in the Huerta of Valencia; a daring partisan, one Buceta, surprised the slenderly garrisoned but strongly situated town of Cuenca. But these incidents were unimportant; without co-operation on a far larger scale, it was evident the insurrection was a failure, and that O’Donnell and his little army, isolated in the midst of a population which seemed to have lost all spirit (even that of revolt), must soon either make for the frontier, or risk an action with the greatly superior forces concentrating to oppose them. But O’Donnell had a card in reserve, which he was perhaps unwilling to play, but yet was resolved to risk before abandoning the game as lost. In a proclamation, dated from Manzanares, a town nearly half-way on the road from Madrid to Granada, and whither a division under General Blaser was proceeding, although slowly, to operate against him, he issued a declaration in favour of the National Guard, of provincial juntas, and of the assemblage of the Cortes, in which the nation, through its representatives, should fix the basis of its future government. The effect of this profession of faith was soon seen. So long as the generals had limited themselves to invectives against Sartorius 357and his colleagues, and against the system of corruption and immorality they had fostered into a monstrous development, the nation had remained inactive, because it saw no assurance of gain in a mere change of men, and because no prospect was held out to it of a complete change of system. But when O’Donnell spoke out, and threw himself frankly into the arms of the popular cause, he had not long to wait for backers. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th July, Valencia, Valladolid, Barcelona, Zamora, and, most important of all, Saragossa, declared against the government, and the fall of the ministry was inevitable. On the morning of the 17th, Madrid received the double intelligence of some of these pronunciamientos, and that the Sartorius cabinet was out. It was understood that General Cordova, a statesman without talent, and a general without resolution, was to head the new ministry, to which end he had long been intriguing, currying favour with the King-consort, and with a less legitimate influence at court. There was to be a bullfight on the afternoon of Monday the 17th July—the first fight that had been permitted since O’Donnell’s insurrection; and it became known in the morning that Cordova and his friends intended getting up a small emeute or demonstration, when, between seven and eight o’clock, the streets should be thronged with the ten or twelve thousand spectators issuing forth from the bull-ring. The intention of this was doubtless twofold—to let off a little of the popular steam, and to give an air of popularity to the incoming ministry. But Cordova and his advisers had not sufficiently felt the pulse of the people, or duly estimated the possible results of so imprudent a manifestation. It was like exploding fireworks in a powder-magazine; and the moment selected made the trick still more hazardous. On the sultry evening of a burning July day, when several thousand men of the middle and lower classes should just have quitted the spectacle which excites them to the utmost, and habituates them to bloodshed, to raise, in the streets of Madrid, even the simulacre of a riotous banner, and that at a time when the people were galled by a long period of oppression and misrule, and when an insurrectionary army was in the field, was surely an act of as self-destructive madness as ever a doomed and blinded man was afflicted with. Early in the day, one or two leaders of the liberal party in Madrid had spoken to me of the proposed demonstration, and had intimated their intention of being on the watch to improve it, should circumstances turn favourably for their views. Evening came, and the bullfight took place; after it, as usual, the streets were crowded, especially the Puerta del Sol and adjacent thoroughfares. It was about eight o’clock when the first symptoms of disturbance were apparent. Numerous groups were formed in the streets, and parties of men marched through them at a rapid pace, shouting vivas for liberty, and down with the ministry. The resignation of the ministry, I must observe, had not yet been officially published, but it was well known to have been accepted, and that, as far as the cabinet went, Spain was in an interregnum. This was the moment chosen by General Cordova for the farce which was to prove a tragedy. I was reminded, as I watched the proceedings of the night, of the Italian robber story, in which a party of practical jokers, and very mauvais plaisants, having gone out with corked faces and leadless pistols to frighten some friends abroad on a pic-nic, suddenly find amongst them the chocolate visages, fierce whiskers, and blunderbusses charged to the muzzle of the genuine brigand and his band, and heartily deplore the sorry plight in which their folly has put them. So it was in Madrid on the 17th July.

The armed police, up to that evening so numerous that nowhere could you walk ten yards without encountering them, were withdrawn from the streets; the soldiers were all in their quarters—the very sentries had disappeared: the main guard, which mounts at a large solid building on the Puerta del Sol, used by the ministry 358of the interior, but best known as the Principal (chief guard-house), had closed the strong gates of the edifice, and gazed listlessly through the windows at the movements of the mob. Every precaution was taken to avoid collisions between the authorities and the harmless rioters who were to carry out Cordova’s plan. But its execution had scarcely begun when the mockery was turned into earnest—so much so, that I am still at a loss to explain, except by the confusion consequent on a change, and the real absence for some hours of all government in Madrid, the want of any opposition to the insurgents. At first, however, the disturbance was a mere riot, although it soon grew into a political revolt. The bands of men that roamed the streets, with shouts, sticks, and a few with arms, presently began to seek modes of actively employing themselves. Long before the hour (between ten and eleven o’clock) at which, as I afterwards ascertained, the Progresista chiefs in Madrid had decided on an outbreak, the people were busily at work. Before nine o’clock they repaired to two public offices where they knew there were arms—the house of the political governor and the town-hall—and, without opposition from the municipal guards they found there, got possession of between seven hundred and eight hundred muskets. These were regularly served out to the people by the leaders of the movement; and soon, on the Puerta del Sol, an immense crowd, in great part armed, besieged the doors of the Principal. The soldiers within had their orders not to oppose the people, but they did not think proper to admit them into their guard-house. Hard by was an enclosure of planks, placed round some of the demolitions going on in the Puerta del Sol (a flagrant job of Señor Sartorius), and there were also beams from the falling houses. Planks and beams were seized by the mob, piled against the doors of the Principal, and set on fire. The dry wood, parched by the summer sun of Madrid, burned like straw. There was danger of the whole building being consumed. The military evacuated it, and the mob took possession. It would have saved a great deal of fighting, and not a few lives, if they had kept it when they once held it; but, as I have already shown, there was a want of organisation at this early period of the night, and no definite intention, on the part of the masses, of accomplishing a revolution. Even up to eleven or twelve o’clock that night, many persons not inexperienced in such movements thought that the disturbance was a mere popular effervescence—the expression of the joy and relief felt by the people at being rid of their tyrants—and by no means anticipated the serious events that were to grow out of it. The Principal was abandoned by the people, and again occupied by troops. Meanwhile, at other points, the mob was actively mischievous, or, I should perhaps rather say, it actively employed itself in revenging its wrongs on the authors of much of its misery. Below a window, in one of the most frequented and central thoroughfares of Madrid, which I occupied at intervals during the great part of that evening, the passage of strong bodies of the people continued. A great many weapons were now to be seen amongst them—muskets, fowling-pieces, blunderbusses, antiquated firearms of all kinds. At the same time the great majority were unarmed; but their blood was up, their will was strong, and their hands were ready for anything. That night was so full of events that few thought of looking at watches, and I cannot therefore give you the hour at which incidents occurred, or set them down in the exact order of their occurrence, especially as I often changed my place between the hours of eight and two, making excursions into different parts of the town, but frequently returning to the window before mentioned, which, as headquarters and central post of observation, was an excellent position. One of the first acts of violence committed was an attack on the house of Don Luis Sartorius, Conde de San Luis, a man whose name will ever be pre-eminently infamous in the annals of political crime. On their way to his house the people got a ladder, set it against the front of the Principe theatre, which had been endowed when he was in office, and broke to pieces a stone 359over the entrance on which his name was carved. On reaching his residence they turned his furniture, pictures, and valuable library into the street, and made a bonfire of them. I know of literary amateurs who, on hearing of this, hurried to the spot, hoping to rescue some of the rare and curious books he was known to possess: but their efforts were in vain; the people would allow nothing to be taken away, everything was for the flames. At first the second floor of the house was respected, but presently it was known that it had lately become the residence of Esteban Collantes, the minister of public works, who had sent in, it is said, only a few days before, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of furniture. After Sartorius, Collantes, Domenech minister of finance, and Quinto the civil governor, were the three men in Madrid most detested by the people. Collantes was the gamin, the mischievous scapegrace, of the San Luis cabinet, devoid alike of dignity, morality, and common decency. The discovery that he abode above his chief colleague was a godsend to the enraged mob, and his chattels quickly shared the fate of those of Sartorius. Similar destruction proceeded at the houses of the renegade liberal Domenech, of the Marquis de Molins, minister of marine of Count Vista-hermosa, who had commanded under General Blaser at the action of Vicálvaro, and who was then following up with a division O’Donnell’s retiring forces; and at those of the well-known capitalist, Salamanca, and of Count Quinto, the alcalde-corregidor, and governor of Madrid. At these two last houses, especially, great destruction of property took place. Rich furniture, pictures of high value, plate, costly ornaments, jewels (especially at Salamanca’s), to the amount of many thousands of pounds, valuable papers, government securities, and even, it is said, bank notes and coin, were destroyed by fire. There is reason to believe, however, that some of the more portable of these things, particularly the jewels, were stolen—not, as I believe, by the people, who, throughout the whole revolution, set an example of honesty and disinterestedness—but by the professional thieves, who are always on the look-out upon such occasions, and by servants in some of the houses attacked, who, knowing where their masters kept their most precious effects, had great facilities for purloining them. A friend of Salamanca’s went to his house to rescue some valuable papers, and also, if possible, some jewels of great price, which were in an iron chest under a bed. Amongst these jewels was a diamond of remarkable beauty, whose history is rather curious. It had been given, set in a ring, by Count Montemolin, to an attached and faithful follower of his and his father’s fortunes. This gentleman afterwards desired to dispose of the stone, retaining the ring as a memorial, and addressed himself, with this object, to a well-known London jeweller. The jeweller advised him to retain the gem, for that, being of a most unusual size, he should have difficulty, if he bought it, in selling it again—should, perhaps, have to cut it down, &c. &c., and ending by naming a sum, which he acknowledged to be less than its value, as the most he could afford to give for it. The offer was accepted. Señor Salamanca afterwards paid £3000 for it. This ring, with other valuable jewellery and a number of unset stones—worth altogether many thousand pounds—were in the iron chest. Salamanca’s friend reached the house, secured the papers, and went to the chest. It was open and empty.

Meanwhile the people continued in motion in almost every part of the town. It was by no means the rabble that were abroad and stirring; many persons of the better classes were active in promoting the tumult. In the streets the leaders could be heard consulting together, and planning whither they should proceed. One party went to the Saladero prison to release the political captives detained there; another strong band, including general officers and persons of note and rank, repaired to the town-hall, appointed a committee, and drew up a representation to the Queen, which was delivered to her by a deputation. She promised to give it favourable consideration. Before this time there had been movements of troops in the town, but no hostilities. Towards two in the morning, however, a decided change took place in the 360aspect of affairs, and firing commenced at two points. After the deputation had returned from the palace, and reported the result of its mission (amongst other things, the Queen had expressed her earnest desire that there should be no effusion of blood), the committee, which was soon to be a junta, exhorted the crowd assembled in the square of the town-hall to return home and await the result of what had been done. They were disposed to do this, when in the Calle Mayor several companies of infantry opened fire upon them. This roused their indignation and anger, and thenceforward a struggle was inevitable. About the same time as those volleys were fired there was an affray around the princely mansion, or as it is usually called the palace, of Queen Christina. There, too, the people had assembled (throughout the night, “Death to Christina!” had been one of the most frequently repeated cries), had stoned and smashed the windows, forced their way into the house, thrown out furniture and valuables, and lit an immense bonfire with them—finally setting fire to the house itself. The scene presented by the triangular plaza in front of the dowager-queen’s residence was striking enough. The wild figures and furious activity of the insurgents—amongst whom were not a few women inciting the men to mischief—contrasted with the passive attitude of a small body of infantry, which tranquilly looked on at the proceedings of the mob. At last, when a considerable portion of the furniture of the right wing was blazing in the plaza, making it as light as day, and illuminating the half-curious, half-frightened physiognomies that peered from the windows of the neighbouring houses, the handful of troops were reinforced by two companies, which at once fired on the people. Two or three volleys cleared the plaza; a tolerable number of persons were killed and wounded. There was firing at about the same time in other parts of the town—in the Calle Mayor, as already mentioned—and skirmishing between the troops and people, the latter of whom had begun to assume the offensive; and from that moment it was pretty evident that a sharp conflict was at hand. But it was not yet fairly engaged in, owing to the absence of orders for the military, and of leaders and organisation for the mob. A new and most unsatisfactory ministry, with General Cordova and the Duke of Rivas at its head, had been appointed, but could not be said to have as yet assumed command. And there was also mistrust as to the extent to which the troops might be depended upon to act against the people. On the other hand, the movement had commenced so suddenly, and so many incidents had filled the few hours that had since elapsed, that nothing like method had as yet been introduced into the proceedings of the insurgents. On the 18th there was a good deal of desultory fighting, and in several places severe conflicts took place; but few barricades were thrown up, and the skirmishing was chiefly from street corners, and from the doors of houses. It was easy to see that the inhabitants of Madrid sympathised with the revolution, and wished well to the insurgents. In many places, when these were hard pressed, and compelled to run, doors were seen suddenly to open to receive them, and again were quickly closed. The insurgents were as yet but imperfectly armed. You might see groups of half a dozen standing at the corner of a cross street, with perhaps two muskets or fowling-pieces amongst them, the others having sticks and swords—the latter often strange old-fashioned weapons, that looked as if they had belonged to the middle ages, and picked out of a curiosity-shop. These gentry would protrude their heads into the main thoroughfare, and watch the favourable moment for a shot at some military post or passing picket. If the shot drew pursuit upon them, they were off into the doors of neighbouring houses, like rabbits into their burrows, or else away through a labyrinth of lanes to harass some other point. A glance at a map of Madrid, if you chance to have one at hand, will show you how well adapted this most irregularly built capital is to the operations of a body of insurgents perfectly acquainted with its intricacies. The uneven surface—the town being built on a collection of small hills—the narrow crooked streets, jumbled together without any 361sort of order or system—the numerous small squares or open places, in passing over which troops are liable to find themselves under a cross fire from half a dozen different corners—the whole configuration of Madrid, in short, greatly favours its inhabitants when they choose to rise in arms against the garrison. Amongst the most remarkable events of the 18th was the desperate fight maintained by the people against a body of gendarmes, who, all old soldiers, defended themselves with signal valour, but were finally overcome, some of them killed, and the rest disarmed. These gendarmes, or civil guards, as they are here called, were in some sort the Swiss guards of the Madrid July revolution—equally firm in duty and discipline, and almost equally odious to the people, whom they punished pretty severely, and who did not always give them quarter, when vast superiority of numbers at last gave them the advantage which they certainly would not have had in more equal conditions of force. One of the most dashing things done by the insurgents on the 18th was clearing the Plaza del Progreso (one of the larger squares in the heart of the town) with the bayonet, after firing had for some time gone on. The soldiers were fairly driven out by the civilians, and the square and adjoining streets were quickly converted into a fortress, into which there was little probability of the military again penetrating. On the afternoon of the same day a number of lives were uselessly sacrificed, owing to the recklessness and vindictive spirit of a retired officer, a friend of Cordova’s. This person, although no longer in the army, obtained command of a couple of guns, some infantry, and a few dragoons, and, proceeding to the Calle Atocha, one of the principal streets of Madrid, opened a heavy fire of artillery and musketry, firing round shot into the houses, and grape down the street. He did a great deal of damage—some of it to private houses in which no insurgents were or had ever been—killed a few persons, most of them persons who had nothing in the world to do with the insurrection, but who were sitting, inoffensive and terrified, in their houses—lost thirty or forty of his own men, and finally cleared a few hundred yards of street. But this was small gain to the cause he defended, for the insurgents he drove away merely changed their place, and when he departed they returned to contemplate the ravages he had committed in the dwellings of peaceable citizens, and to go forth upon the morrow more embittered than ever to the fight.

It was the 19th, however, that was by far the most important and interesting day of the revolution. The aspect of the night that preceded it was very singular. The day had been hot and bright, as usual in Madrid at this season, and from early in the morning until half-past eight at night the firing had been incessant and frequently very sharp in one or other part of the town. When night fell, the noise and glare were suddenly succeeded by profound silence and darkness. There was no moon; except in a very few streets not a lamp was lit, and the inhabitants received hints to show no lights in their windows. The streets, which during the latter part of the afternoon had been little frequented, owing to the numerous shots that were flying (the soldiers, in some places, firing on every civilian they got sight of), were now almost deserted. There was something very strange and alarming in the complete stillness and gloom prevailing in this densely peopled capital, which in ordinary times is all bustle and blaze until midnight or later. Looking from a first-floor window, nothing was to be seen, except now and then a dark figure gliding stealthily along or darting across the street; but, on venturing out, you soon saw that the people were neither idle nor off their guard. They were in groups behind their barricades—which began to be numerous, although few of them were as yet of a formidable aspect. Meanwhile the revolutionary junta was sitting at the house of Sevillano the banker, a wealthy man, of liberal politics, who had been an object of suspicion and persecution to the Sartorius government. A depot of arms was ordered to be formed there, a well-organised system of defence was 362decided upon, the barricades were ordered to be strengthened and new ones to be made. Within two or three hours after daybreak on the 19th, there were hundreds of barricades in Madrid, many of them of great height and strength. The town presented a most singular spectacle. The whole of its central portion, with the exception of the Principal, which was garrisoned and stoutly defended by a few companies of grenadiers, was soon in the hands of the insurgents. These displayed astonishing activity and readiness of resource. Everything was converted into means of offence or defence. Those of the inhabitants who took no part in the fray, yet did all they could to assist those who did. The enthusiasm was general. In the street in which I that morning found myself, there were several barricades. Most of these were commenced after five o’clock. As soon as the neighbours saw two or three men at work, raising the pavement with picks and crowbars, they hastened to supply them with materials, running out of their houses with empty boxes, dilapidated furniture, and old matting. When mattresses were asked they were freely given, and many hundreds of them were used in the barricades. A patriotic carpenter, nearly opposite to where I was stationed, who usually occupies his time in making coffins for the dead and trunks for the living, brought out of his yard some heavy boards, of great length, which extended completely across the street, and formed an excellent skeleton for a barricade. Before eight in the morning, the firing had begun on all points, and the bullets were singing through the streets in every direction. Besides defending their positions and attacking those of the military and civil guards—who had taken possession of houses here and there in the districts occupied by the people, and held them with great tenacity—the insurgents busied themselves in various other ways, completing and strengthening the barricades, collecting arms, making cartridges, preparing the houses for defence in case the soldiers forced their foremost defences. Quantities of paving-stones were taken up to the roofs and higher floors of the houses, to throw down upon the enemy. Women and children assisted in this labour. It was curious to observe the women. Notwithstanding danger from bullets, they were all at their doors and windows. Some of them—these were the younger ones—seemed to think it great fun; some of the older ones looked ghastly and terrified enough; whilst others, chiefly of quite the lower orders, were fierce partisans—as much so as their husbands and brothers, who in perfect silence, but with deadly resolution, were loading and firing from barricade, window, and house-top. I heard one sturdy dame, crimson with exertion and excitement, who bore in her brawny arms a basket of supplies to a barricade then under fire, express her determination, should the troops get into the street, to shower upon their devoted heads the whole of her kettles and crockery. When a thrifty housewife comes to such extremes as this, it is evident her blood is up. But the forced loan imposed by Sartorius had come home to the pockets of the lower classes of tax-payers, and had greatly exasperated the women.

I profess to send you mere sketches of the revolution—not its history, which the newspapers have already in great measure supplied—and therefore I do not consider myself bound to trace all its events, but limit myself chiefly to what I saw. An artist who should have perambulated Madrid during the 19th and 20th July would have found abundant and striking subjects for his pencil. Feverish activity was the characteristic of the first day, armed and vigilant repose of the second. Repose from fighting, but not from toil, for, although there was a cessation of hostilities—the Principal having surrendered (not, however, until the afternoon of the 20th, when its garrison was literally starved out), the whole town, with the exception of a few barracks and buildings at its extremities, being in the possession of the insurgents, and the Queen having sent for Espartero, which was all that Madrid asked—the insurgents were still mistrustful, and in no way relaxed their watchfulness. The medley of arms amongst them—particularly on the 19th, for on the 20th they were better supplied with muskets—was 363curious to observe. Many had scabbardless swords, which they used as walking-sticks, thereby greatly improving the point; others had pistols, some of tremendous length and most antiquated construction. There were not a few trabucos to be seen. These are tremendous blunderbusses, wide at the mouth, which scatter a handful of postas (large slugs), or carry a ball full four times the size of a musket-ball. Here is a man with a curved scimitar, which must have been handed down to him from some Moorish ancestor, bound to his waist by a bit of old sash; yonder, on a door-step, out of the exact range of fire, but the bullets striking from time to time the balcony above her head, sits a woman playing with a dagger, which she looks quite capable of using. I write only what I myself observed. On the morning of the 20th I walked round many of the barricades when their defenders were breakfasting. One group had got a guitar for a table. It rested on the knees of a circle, and supported their bread and sausage. There was great sobriety; during the whole of the revolution I saw no case of drunkenness.

I leave you to imagine the alarm and confusion at the palace during all this time. The poor, feeble, helpless Queen was distracted by many counsellors. Her evil genius, the Duchess of Rianzares, was at her elbow, urging her to resist to the utmost; for Maria Christina well knew that, if her daughter yielded to the revolution, she herself would have to quit Spain or do penance. She neglected to do the first until it was too late, and must now submit to the second. Then, however, aided by such bad advisers as Roncali, Cordova, Gandara, she excited the Queen to resist and fight, or, if necessary, to fly from Madrid and plant the royal standard elsewhere. There were about 3000 soldiers in and near the palace, in the Retiro gardens, and in two or three barracks—every day the palace cooks provided dinner for 3500 mouths;—these troops, which included a powerful artillery, were to form the nucleus of a force speedily to be assembled, and which was to crush the revolution. A civil war might in this way have been brought about, but the universal spirit of opposition to the Queen, and of indifference—if not dislike—to the dynasty, that the Spaniards have since shown, sufficiently proves that it would not have been of long duration; and its end would inevitably have been the ejection of Isabella II. from her dominions. It was written, however, that the misguided Sovereign should have another chance of retaining the crown to which she has done so little honour. If there were some persons at court who desired to see her leave Madrid for a fortified place—or for any place where she would not be exposed to the pressure of that revolution which they dreaded—there were others who dissuaded her from departure, and even resolutely opposed and forbade it. The ladies of honour, the officers of the halberdiers—that corps which in 1841, under the command of General (then Colonel) Dulce, so stoutly and successfully resisted an attack upon the palace—protested that the Queen should not leave; and one of the former went so far as to seek an interview with a well-known liberal and promoter of the revolution, and to inform him of what was planning. The Marquis of Turgot, the French ambassador, being consulted, advised the Queen by all means to remain where she was. Even the Queen’s husband, poor, feeble, ill-treated Don Francisco de Assis, showed spirit in the cause of prudence, and vehemently protested against her removal from Madrid. Then came—from Saragossa, the eastern stronghold of Spanish liberalism—not Espartero, as was expected, but a messenger, bearing the conditions on which the man of the day, whom all demanded and desired, would come to Madrid. The exact contents of these conditions have not transpired, but, from what has since passed, we may presume that they were tantamount to giving Espartero almost unlimited power, and that, by accepting them, the Queen bound herself to be guided in every respect by him and the cabinet he should form. Few hours were passed in deliberating whether or no they should be accepted, but those were hours of storm and strife within the palace. The wicked, finding their 364projects ruined and their power gone, fell out amongst themselves. There are strange stories of what then occurred, especially between the Queen, her husband, and her mother; of high words and bitter recrimination, and even of blows struck and swords drawn. The exact truth is difficult to ascertain, for scandal, very rife in Madrid, has distorted it into various forms; but I believe there is no doubt that Christina, furious at seeing her daughter about to accept conditions most unpalatable to herself, suffered her Italian blood to move her to unbecoming violence. On the other hand the King, reflecting how much of the unpopularity and difficulty that now overwhelmed his wife was due to the boundless cupidity and unscrupulous manœuvres of the Duchess of Rianzares and her husband, is said to have vented his indignation on the latter, and even to have drawn a sword upon him.

The ten days that elapsed between the summons sent to Espartero and his arrival at Madrid, were days of much anxiety, and even of serious apprehension. The junta governed, but its authority was not strong, and there was danger of excesses by the democratic and turbulent population of the low quarters of Madrid. The greatest danger was of an attack on Queen Christina’s house. For two or three days this was seriously talked of. The people were bent upon burning it. To do this would have been to entail the destruction of a street that runs at the back of the dowager’s palace, and one side of which forms part of the same block; probably, also, the destruction of the British Embassy, which is separated from it but by an interval of a few feet. Fortunately, things occurred to distract the attention of the people, and no attempt was made to carry out the imprudent design. The only acts of violence that had to be deplored were the shooting of three or four obnoxious persons belonging to the secret police. One of these was the infamous Francisco Chico, the chief of that institution, who certainly richly deserved the fate he met, for he had committed many and heinous crimes. A strict watch was kept for the ex-ministers, and had they been caught, in those first moments of excitement and fury, when the people were still hot from the fight, they assuredly would have been killed.

To keep the people employed, the temporary authorities rather encouraged the building and strengthening of barricades. The Spanish nation has been so often cheated out of the results of its insurrections, and has so repeatedly beheld a half-effected revolution converted into a reaction, that it was determined this time to guard against such delusions and disappointments. Such, at least, was the case in Madrid. Under a broiling sun, they toiled as if life and death depended on their exertions. Most of the barricades, at first constructed of very heterogeneous materials, and without much regard to symmetry, were taken down, and rebuilt of paving-stones and earth. The operation was a great nuisance. The town was continually in a cloud of dust; passage through the streets, obstructed by these temporary fortifications, was extremely slow; at night one risked breaking his legs by tumbling into holes, or his shins by stumbling over huge blocks of stone and other building materials. The result of all this labour and inconvenience was, that, by the 25th of July, Madrid contained upwards of two hundred and eighty barricades of the first magnitude, each one of which was the centre of (on an average) eight or ten smaller redoubts and defences. Besides stones, of which the principal parapets were chiefly composed, the materials used were bricks, tiles, bags of sand, beams, mortar, diligences, private carriages, carts, and furniture. On the first days of the revolution, it was curious to observe how, in the haste and enthusiasm of the moment, good and even handsome furniture was taken out into the street by its owners to be knocked to pieces in the barricades. Flags and streamers adorned them all, and at nearly every one, raised upon altars covered with coloured cloths, were portraits of Espartero—horrible caricatures, many of them, but nevertheless the objects almost of adoration on the part of the people. After nightfall there were lights placed round these portraits, which in some 365instances were accompanied by others of O’Donnell, Dulce, and latterly (but only in a few cases) of the Queen, and music of every kind, from excellent bands down to a single cracked guitar, played behind the barricades, in front of which the people assembled in crowds. The revolution, serious enough at first, had now become a sort of festival. The people were too unsettled to return to their customary occupations; business of all kinds was suspended; the streets were continually crowded with men of the lower orders, armed, idle, but very well-conducted; whilst the better classes, to whom, now that the preliminary object of the revolution (the placing of Espartero at the head of affairs) was gained, the whole thing was an intolerable nuisance, longed for the arrival of the man whose presence alone would content the multitude, and restore Madrid to its normal condition.

At last he came, and certainly his reception was a triumph. The road was lined with people for miles without the town. The military and civil authorities went out to meet him as far as the Venta of the Holy Ghost, half a league from Madrid. The garrison was formed up on the right hand outside the Alcala gate, and the National Guard on the left. His approach was announced by a general peal of all the church bells of Madrid. There were triumphal arches, and every balcony in the town was draped with coloured hangings. But the glorious part of the ovation was the unmistakable and irrepressible joy of the people, and their demonstrations of affection. The whole population of Madrid was either outside the town or in the streets. Women of all classes abounded in the crowd, and were vehement in the welcome they gave to the popular hero. His carriage could hardly proceed for the people that thronged around it, eager to touch his hand or even the skirt of his garment. This continued the whole of the way to the palace, which is at the opposite extremity of the town to that at which he entered, and all the way back to Espartero’s temporary residence near the Puerta del Sol. The Duke de la Victoria is far too warm-hearted a man not to be deeply moved by such a reception, and I saw him more than once wipe the tears from his eyes.

The good effects of Espartero’s presence in Madrid were soon apparent. Confidence returned, and in a short time we got rid of the barricades. There was more difficulty in disarming that portion of the population unfit to be trusted with arms, but this too was effected by advertising for their purchase. Thereupon musket and carbine, rifle and blunderbuss, came quickly into store. The ministry which Espartero formed did not at first give general satisfaction to the liberal party, for the political views of some of its members were at least doubtful; but soon its prompt and judicious measures won it good opinions. Its first and greatest difficulty was the Queen-mother. On this point the people would not give way, or listen to reason. A few words from Espartero had sufficed to make them remove their beloved barricades, but with respect to Maria Christina they were inexorable. Armed men beset the gates of the town and the avenues to the palace, and swore she should not depart till she had rendered an account of her stewardship, and refunded at least a part of her plunder. Night after night, and till past daybreak, Espartero and the ministers, and the veteran patriot San Miguel—who, after rendering immense services to the cause of order during the revolution, had been appointed captain-general of the province—remained at the palace, anxious to effect the departure of the Dowager Queen. But when she could have gone she would not; and when she would, it was no longer possible. At first her escape might have been managed, had she consented to go off quietly in a post-chaise, without state or many attendants. But this did not suit her. She had two enormous diligences at her daughter’s palace, to convey herself and her family, her suite and her baggage. And on the night that she might have gone, she made various difficulties, like a person who was being forced to go, instead of one whose safety depended on speedy flight. She seems to have been completely infatuated, and she dallied and lingered until it was too 366late. It became impossible to remove her from Madrid without a serious collision with the people. The systematic, persevering, and determined manner in which they kept watch was attributed to higher instigations than that of their ordinary chiefs. It was said, with what degree of truth it is impossible to ascertain, that they were prompted and directed by persons in authority, who thought it unfair that the cause of so much evil to Spain should be allowed to escape with her spoil to live luxuriously in a foreign land. O’Donnell was mentioned as one of those who would gladly see justice done on the unscrupulous and heartless Duchess of Rianzares. The character of that general renders this not unlikely; but there is no proof of it, and it is a mere report. What is certain is, that Espartero, whose fault it is to be too easy and forgiving, rather than severe and vindictive, was very desirous to get the Queen-mother away,—possibly not only out of pity and consideration for her daughter, but because he felt that her detention in Spain would be an additional embarrassment to his government. He did not conceal his opinion of her; he would not even have seen her, had she not, one night, after he had repeatedly refused her an interview, abruptly entered a room where he and the other ministers were assembled with the Queen. But he would have facilitated her departure. Amidst her delays, pretensions, and indecision, the moment passed, and even his power and influence were insufficient to secure her exit from Spain without a combat and a sacrifice of life; or, at the least, without deeply offending the people, and imperilling the tranquillity of Madrid—if not of the whole country. When things came to this, persons at the palace proposed various plans for escape in disguise. Such escape was not easy, for the people rigidly scrutinised all who left the palace, and armed parties outside the town examined every vehicle that passed. It is said that some one proposed to Christina to disguise herself as a black woman (there are a great many negresses in Madrid), and answered for her escape if she would do so, but that she refused, on account of two remarkable dimples in her cheeks, which she made sure would betray her. The poor lady begins to have more wrinkles than dimples; but she was doubtless right not to risk detection in such ignoble disguise. Her features are of course extremely well known here, and had the people caught her making off in masquerade, she certainly would not have escaped rough usage, and perhaps her life would have been sacrificed. What could her daughter then have done? Hardly have retained her throne, already slipping from under her—and her crown, whose brightness is so grievously dimmed by the humiliation her errors have brought upon her. It seems incredible that a sovereign should be found sufficiently wanting in pride to put pen to such a manifesto—I should rather say to such an apology—as was signed by Isabella II. on the 26th July last. Doubtless nothing less would do; but surely most princes—or they are meaner than the world believes them—would have preferred abdication to so humbling themselves. In that notable proclamation, she completely cried peccavi, promised better behaviour, and protested her entire adherence to Espartero’s political principles. Since he has been here, her conduct towards him has been such as to make it appear miraculous how she ever managed to do without him. She constantly requires his presence, and, notwithstanding the immense deal of business he has to attend to, he is obliged to go daily to the palace. Doubtless she has not yet quite recovered from the alarm of the revolution, and looks upon Espartero as her best safeguard. I will not attribute any covert or perfidious motive to a sovereign who has suffered severely for her errors, and has pledged herself to amendment. But it would be very desirable to separate her from her mother, whose intriguing spirit will never be at rest so long as there is life in her body, and a possibility of her working evil. She continues at the palace, instead of being sent away from Madrid, and guarded in some castle or royal residence. Of course, there are difficulties in the way of removing her, and it seems cruel to separate her from her daughter, from whom, perhaps, before 367long, she may be separated for ever. But the paramount consideration is the welfare of Spain; and, moreover, in reality, the links that bind the two ladies to each other are of a less tender nature than may be supposed, or would seem natural. Christina, it is well known, has never loved this daughter, whom she shamefully neglected, and, it may almost be said, wilfully corrupted, with a view to place upon her throne the Duchess of Montpensier. She has that influence over Isabella which long habit, and the ascendancy of a strong mind over a weak one, naturally give to her. And probably the Queen hangs more than ever upon her mother, now that her lover has been sent away, and her palace cleared of that crew of supple courtiers, ready for any base subserviency or corrupt complaisance, who have so long infested it. “It is absolutely necessary,” the venerable San Miguel is reported one day to have said to the Queen, “that the Señor de Arana should go on a mission to Ciudad Rodrigo. There he will be very near to Portugal, and may easily pass into that country.” This caused instant anxiety and alarm. “You answer to me for his life,” was the reply. “It runs not the slightest risk,” said the old general, and so the thing was arranged. The favourite departed, and is perhaps already as completely forgotten by the person most interested in retaining him here as he appears to be by everybody else. He is not likely to be recalled, so long as Espartero is in power, and it is to be hoped he will not be replaced. The clearance of the court was left for the Duke de la Victoria, who assumed the office of governor of the palace, and speedily dismissed the titled and embroidered, but impure, crowd that haunted its halls and avenues.

Availing myself of the roving and desultory license conceded to the letter-writer, I step back a few weeks to note some small but not uninteresting circumstances, which I find I have omitted to mention. When O’Donnell’s outbreak occurred, not only were the civil guards removed from their duty on the roads and concentrated in the capital, and at other points, to act in bodies as troops against the insurgents and against the people, but the numerous police of Madrid became too much engrossed by their political avocations to heed the ordinary objects of their solicitude. The proper regulation of the streets was neglected, and a prodigious swarm of beggars, emerging from their habitual lurking-places, spread itself over the town. The streets were infested by the most revolting deformities. The least disagreeable section of the mendicant mob was that consisting of the blind men, who, always numerous in Madrid, were now apparently in redoubled strength. There is an independent spirit amongst these ciegos, and they seldom beg, but poke their way about with a big stick, or are led by a friend, and sell newspapers, flying sheets, and extraordinary supplements. Since the revolution there has been much work for them, and from seven in the morning until late at night one hears their discordant cries, consisting generally of the names of new newspapers, (many have been started within the last month), the Esparterista, the Independencia, the Sentinela del Pueblo, or of the announcement of the “latest news from the palace,” “the departure of the tia Cristina,” or “the life of the robber Sartorius,”—all for two cuartos, or one halfpenny. It were unjust to these benighted dispensers of intelligence to class them amongst the beggars, although they certainly are a nuisance, owing to their straightforward manner of perambulation, which compels everybody to keep out of their way who does not desire to have their heavy feet stamped upon his, or their protruded stick thrust against his shins. But the blind are quite agreeable and ornamental compared with the maimed, the diseased, the shrivelled, the distorted, who lie under walls and upon the staircases of public buildings, station themselves at street corners, ride about on donkeys, and everywhere disgust you with their nauseous presence, and pester you with their piteous whine. The Spaniards are charitable—that is to say, they are great alms-givers—and this of course encourages street-begging. There are places of refuge and humane establishments in Madrid whither all destitute persons have a 368right to repair—whither, indeed, it is the duty of the police to compel them to betake themselves. But for some time past it can hardly be said that there has been any police in this capital; and I assure you that a walk through it is anything but a gratification, either to the eyes or the olfactories. It is full of strange, complicated, and most unfragrant odours, to which the puzzled and tortured nose involuntarily and in vain attempts to ascribe an origin. And it is plentifully besprinkled with objects that should never be seen out of an hospital. Here, seated or squatted on the pavement of one of the most crowded thoroughfares, is a wretch with an arm shrivelled to the bone; here another whose leg grows up behind his back, his foot appearing over his shoulder. Here is an unfortunate creature who almost reminds us of the days when lepers sat by the road-side and implored alms. A little farther on a man, in an old soldier’s coat, displays the hideous stump of his amputated leg; and in this narrow passage we run up against a boy leading a donkey, on which is stretched, upon his belly, a shapeless mass of humanity, his limbs naked, and every one of them in some way or other distorted and deformed. And here—haunting the narrow court that leads to the post-office, and whose asphalt pavement, most injudicious in this climate, grows sticky and stinking beneath the beams of the August sun—is a tall young fellow without any arms at all, who, in the names of many saints, entreats pity upon a pobre joven, unable to work, and expects you to put your coppers into his waistcoat pocket. As if political revolutions and vagabond music had some mysterious connection, the number of street bands, Italian harp-players, organ-grinders, and guitar-strummers, that have deafened us during the last six weeks, is something extraordinary. It was noticed by persons here that on one particular day, early in July, all these itinerant professors disappeared, and it was inferred that an outbreak was close at hand. But either the musicians had been falsely alarmed, or a general feast or fast held by them was the cause of the suspension of their hostilities against the tympanum of Madrid, for no insurrection occurred at that time, although we had not very long to wait for it.

The Spanish revolution of 1854 has, I need hardly say, not been accomplished without some expense. Revolutions are costly amusements: from the State they take money, and from the people days of labour. Although this one has, up to the present time, especially as regards Madrid, and in all Spain except Catalonia, been particularly orderly for a movement of the kind, and remarkably free from excess and riot, there still is a bill to pay. The provincial juntas, during their few days of local but almost absolute power, issued various decrees that would have played havoc with the finances had they not been promptly repealed by the regular government established under Espartero, to which, however, even up to the present moment, some of these juntas refuse to give up. In many provinces important taxes were taken off, without any measures being adopted to replace the heavy deficit their abolition would occasion in the public revenue. And some of these taxes were of daily collection, as, for instance, duties on goods entering towns. Then there were barricades to be paid, damages to be repaired, streets to be repaired, and many other charges. And the outgoing ministers, when they saw their political end approaching, took scandalous liberties with the public money. Of the portion of the forced loan that had been collected, but a few thousand reals were to be discovered, although at least half a million sterling had been got in, and paid at Madrid into the coffers of the State. In short, as regards finance, the new government has entered office under most unfavourable circumstances. But the purses of Progresista capitalists, rigidly closed to the Sartorius ministry, are freely opened to that of Espartero. And no time has been lost in effecting savings in various departments. Numbers of useless clerks and government officials have been dismissed; and although, according to the very bad rule here observed, all these men are entitled to more or less retiring pension, to be more or less punctually paid, still the economy is considerable. 369But the great saving will result from the character of the men who have come into office, and who are all respected for their integrity. O’Donnell, it is true, made his fortune in no very reputable way—by the slave-trade, when he was governor of Cuba—but that has been such a common and received practice that it would be erroneous to infer, from his having followed it, that he would necessarily take bribes in Madrid, or defraud the country he assists to govern. A Spanish general, sent out to command at the Havanna, sees nothing improper—as there is certainly nothing extraordinary—in receiving his ounce or two of gold for every slave landed. Don José Concha, now on the eve of embarking for Cuba to resume the post he formerly held there, is almost the only instance, for many years, of resistance to the temptation held out to West Indian captain-generals by the importers of the raw article from Africa. In Spain, however, O’Donnell passes for an honourable man, who keeps his word when it is pledged, and is incapable of the baseness and peculation of which Spanish ministers have been too often guilty.

Although formed and headed by the most popular man in Spain, and composed of men by no means unwelcome to the nation, the present ministry, brief though its existence yet has been, has not escaped censure for some of its acts. Of course, all the persons whom the revolution has upset, all the employés who are put on half-pay, all the friends of the polacos, the partisans of Sartorius, Bravo Murillo, Roncali, and other notorious ex-ministers, who now find themselves sunk in the slough of despond, are furious against the new order of things, and spare no pains to damage the government by propagating false reports and malicious inventions. On the other hand, the ultra-liberals, the republicans and clubbists, look upon the present men as a mere compromise, and declare that the revolution has been nipped in the bud, and has not gone half far enough. They have faith in Espartero, and discretion enough not violently to agitate, at least for the present, against his government; but here there are clearly the elements of two oppositions, one factious and reactionary, the other, by its impatience for progress, nearly or quite as dangerous. The most recent and the principal ground of complaint the latter party has found, is the intimation in a ministerial document published two days ago in the Madrid Gazette, and which preludes to a decree regulating the mode of convocation of the Constituent Cortes—that the government intends to admit no discussion as to the permanence of Isabella and her dynasty on the Spanish throne. There is at present a very strong feeling in Spain against the Queen personally, and against the race to which she belongs; and those who desire to see her compelled to abdicate, or dethroned by the vote of a National Convention—the proper name for the single popular chamber that is to assemble on the 8th of next November—do not perhaps sufficiently reflect on the difficulties to which such a measure would give rise. They are ready to remove, but are they prepared to replace, the erring daughter of the treacherous Ferdinand? My belief is, that were Isabella to-morrow to sign her act of abdication, it would be joyfully received by a large portion of the nation, but that discord would ensue as to who or what should replace her. During the latter days of the Sartorius ministry there were seven or eight candidates in the field for the premiership—as soon as it should be vacant. There have lately been nearly as many named for the throne, should the present sovereign quit it. First there is her daughter, with a long regency—probably that of Espartero. But this would only lead to fresh complications. The Princess of the Asturias is a puny, unhealthy child; besides which there are reasons, known to all, and which I need not particularise, that make it extremely doubtful whether the Spanish nation would accept her as their sovereign even in name. This admitted, there are still many to choose out of, but there are difficulties and objections in every case. There are Montemolin, Montpensier, Don Pedro of Portugal: a federative republic has been talked of, and some have ventured to hint even at Don Enrique, the Queen’s 370cousin and brother-in-law. The two last, however, are out of the question. The priest party would give all its support to Montemolin, and, were an attempt made to change the dynasty, he might possibly find sufficient adherents to commence a civil war, whose duration and consequences to Spain it would be impossible to foresee. Montpensier would find few partisans. Brought into Spain by intrigue, and against the wish of the people, he has wanted either the tact or the opportunity to gain their esteem and affection. Living in retirement at Seville, he has been little heard of, and the general opinion of his abilities is decidedly poor. I say nothing of the Spanish dislike to a French sovereign, or of the opposition that the present ruler of France would probably make to his elevation to the throne of Spain. Amongst the better classes here there is decidedly a leaning to the young King of Portugal. The favourable accounts received of his talents and character, the increase of importance that would be given to Spain by the union of the two countries into the kingdom of Iberia, the commercial advantages to be derived from the command of the whole course of the two great rivers that traverse Portugal and the greater part of Spain,—these are some of the circumstances that induce many here to cast wishful looks in the direction of the young heir of Braganza. Pedro V., they say, would suit them well. And even some of the objections urged against the scheme, such as the vast difference in customhouse tariffs and religious tolerance in the two countries, are set down by them amongst the advantages and inducements to their union. The converts in Spain to such a reduction of the imports on foreign manufactures as should destroy smuggling, benefit the treasury, and produce an increase of the demand for Spanish produce, daily augment in numbers. As to religious tolerance, the Spaniards begin to see that it is inseparable from true liberty, and to be ashamed of the system of bigotry that disgraces their country. The appointment of Don José Alonso, a most determined opponent of ultramontane influence, to the ministry of Grace and Justice, is significant of the feeling prevailing here, and of a probable move in the right direction. The liberals all declare the existing concordat to be doomed, and if the Pope opposes the great alterations that will be made in the present system, and which will doubtless include the expulsion of the Jesuits, and a great reduction in the hierarchical establishment in Spain, it is by no means impossible that the whole fabric of papal interference will be swept away, and that Spain will have the Spanish church as France has the Gallican.

There still are certainly considerable difficulties in the way of the union of the two crowns and countries. In the first place, is it sure that the King of Portugal would accept the arduous task of governing Spain? Would it be wise of him to exchange his present humble but safe and respectable position amongst the sovereigns of Europe for one certainly much more exalted, but also infinitely more arduous, and even dangerous? Admitting, however, that he made up his mind to this, how would the Portuguese like the plan? Waiving the question of national antipathies, to which exaggerated weight has been given, how would Portuguese pride endure that Portugal should be absorbed in Spain, even whilst giving her a king? And what would they say to the loss of the valuable smuggling trade of which Portugal is now the depôt, and which is carried on through her ports and territory? If there be not a customs union, there can be no real union between the countries. It is not likely, however, that Portugal will long benefit in the way it now does by the absurd Spanish tariff, of which a reform is inevitably approaching. 371That tariff is doomed by the increasing good sense of the nation and by the example of others, and its existence can be a question only of time. There are other difficulties, such as the fusion of the two debts and the election of one capital (is Madrid or Lisbon to be sacrificed?) but it is thought that all these things might be reconciled and arranged in a satisfactory manner. It is hoped France would not object, and England’s co-operation and aid are reckoned upon—as they are admitted to be indispensable. The Iberian monarchy, with Pedro V. on the throne and an English princess for his wife—such is the dream of many here. That at least a part of it may be realised, is certainly not improbable. And I have reason to know that such a plan has occurred, some years since, to persons in high places, not in this country, whose influence, if steadily and perseveringly applied, would go far towards carrying it out. No time could be more favourable for that than the present, when England and France are bound in close alliance and cordial amity, and when Spain is thoroughly disgusted with the dynasty that has so long misruled her.

There is much more to be said on this subject of a change of dynasty, but for the present I must conclude, for here is the middle of the month; and moreover writing long letters with the thermometer at fever-heat is almost too much exertion. And so, for at least another moon, I quit the complicated question of Spanish politics, and bid you a hearty farewell.