LITTELLS LIVING AGE. No. 1465. July 6, 1872. CONTENTS. 1. HORACE WALPOLE . Cornhill Magazine, 2 OFF THE SKELLIGS.~ By Jean Ingelow. Part XI.,. Saint Pauls, 3. THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS CoMMISSIoN. By John Piggott, Jun., F.S.A., . . . Frasers Magazine, 4. Tins STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHARTON. By William Black, author of A Daughter of Heth, etc. Part XI., . . . . Macmillans Magazine, 6. ALFoNSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. By Mary Ward, . Macmillans Magazine, 6. PAGAN ASPECTS or CHRISTIANITY, . . . Saturday Review, 7. ANCIENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. By Charles Reade, Pall Mall Gazette, POETRY. DREAMING AND AWAKING, . . . 2 THE BOOKWORM, MULIE BIN Lou, GER ZUR BAR, U. CROWNSNAKE, 2 MISCELLANY. THE FIREWEED, .3 14 22 36 51 69 63 .2 .2 64 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be puncteally for. warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay posta~e on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club THE LIvING AGE with another periodical. An extra copy of TM LIVING AGE ls sent gratis to any one getting np a club of Five New Subscribers Remittauces should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-otlice money-order, if pussible. If neither of these can be procured, the money sho id be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. 2 DREAMING AND AWAKING, ETC. DREAMING AND AWAKING. IF I had laid thee low in the mould, With the sods on thy fair frank face, And prayed my prayer, and made my moan, And turned to my desolate hearth alone, To stare at thy vacant place: Why, I had mourned the long hours through, With a sorrow that would not die; Yet thinking, my love and I at last, When the fret and the fever of life are past, May meet in our home on high. If I had seen thee turn away, From this passionate love of mine, To woo another, for troth and faith, To give another, for life and death, True hand and name of thine: Why, I had felt, though not for me, To win that noble heart, I may Watch his steadfast course afar, I may joy in the light of my one proud star, As I sit in the shade apart. But to know our trust was baseless, To know our hope was vain. Ah, who that wakens from visioned bliss, To truth, cold, bitter, and hard as this, Would venture to dream again. All The Year Round. MUHE BIN Id, GER ZUR RLJII, U. S. W. TIRED am I, and seek repose, Both my weary eyes I close; Father! watch above my head, Let thine eyes be oer my bed. Have I evil done this day? See it not, dear God, I pray: Thy rich grace, and Jesus blood Wash all stains with saving flood. Near and dear to me, may those Lu thy hand, 0 God repose: Small and great, let all to thee, God of all, commended be. 0 relieve the aching breast, Close the humid eyes to rest; Let the moon from heaven look down, Silent, slumbering men to crown. Notes and Queries. F. C. H. THE BOOKWORM. Munerapulveris. WE flung the close-kept casement wide; The myriad atom-play Streamed, with the mid-days glancing tide, Across him as he lay; Only the unused summer gust Moved the thin hair of Dryasdust. The notes he writ were barely dry; The entering breezes breath Fluttered the fruitless casuistry, Checked at the leaf where Death The final commentator thrust His cold Here endeth Dryasdust. 0 fool and blind! The leaf that grew, The opening bud, the trees, The face of men, he nowise knew, Or careless turned from these To delve, in folios rust and must, The tomb he lived in, dry as dust. He left, for mute Salmasius, The lore a child may teach, For saws of dead Libanius, The sound of uttered speech; No voice had pierced the sheep-skin crust That bound the heart of Dryasdust. And so, with none to close his eyes, And none to mourn him dead, He in his dumb book-Babel lies With grey dust garmented Let be; pass on. It is but just These were thy gods, 0 Dryasdust! Dig we his grave where no birds greet, He loved no song of birds; Lay we his bones where no men meet, He loved no spoken words; For him no storied urn or bust; Write his Hic jacet in the Dust. Saint Pauls. CROWN-SNAKE. THE huntsman to the mountain sped, The dawn-light oer the forest spread. On huntsman on! On, thou beloved hnntsman, on! What plashes in the water there? What are the tinkling sounds I hear? What in the grass do I behold, Like sparkling gems and glittering gold? The crown-snake swims around his bath, Behind him left his crown he hath. Now to the brave shall bliss betide Who wins the crown shall win the bride. 0 huntsman! thy gold treasure yield, Thy every wish shtdl be fulflild. My crown, 0 huntsman ! give me back, Thou shalt not gold nor jewels lack. Give me my crown whatever thou Wilt ask of me Ill give thee now ! The huntsman lookd in silence down, And neath his armour hid the crown. Upon his breast the crown he laid, The bride was his ! the lovely maid SIR J. BOWRING Deutsche Volkelieder, 1577. HORACE WALPOLE. 3 From The Cornhull Magazine. of George Grenville, as they sounded HORACE WALPOLE. in contemporary ears and it will be THE history of England, throughout a safe to say that, on counting them up, a very large segment of the eighteenth cen- good half will turn out to he reflections tury, is simply a synomyn for the works from the illuminating flashes of Walpole. of Horace Walpole. There are, indeed, Excise all that comes from him, and the some other books upon the subject. Some history sinks towards the level of the solid good stories are scattered up and down Archdeacon Coxe; add his keen touches, the Annual Register, the Gentlemans Meg- and, as in the Castle of Otranto, the por- zzine, and Nichols Anecdotes. There is traits of our respectable old ancestors, & speech or two of Burkes not without which have been hanging in gloomy re- merit, and a readable letter may he dis- pose upon the wall, suddenly step from interred every now and then from beneath their frames and, for some brief space, as- the piles of contemporary correspondence. sume a spectral vitality. When the history of the times comes to he It is only according to rule that a writer finally written in the fashion now pre- who has been so useful should have been valent, in which some six portly octavos a good deal abused. No one is so amusing are allotted to a year, and an event and so generally unpopular as a clever re- takes longer to describe than to occur, tailer of gossip. Yet it does seem rather the industrious will find ample mines of hard that Walpole shonid have received waste paper in which they may quarry to such hard measure from Macaulay, through their. hearts content. Though Jiansard whose pages so much of his light has been was not, and newspapers were in their in- transfused. The explanation, perhaps, is fancy, time shelves of the British Museum easy. Macaulay dearly loved the paradox and other repositories groan beneath that a man wrote admirably precisely be- mountains of State papers, law reports, cause he was a fool, and applied it to the pamphlets, and chaotic raw materials, frosn two greatest portrait painters of the times which some precious ore may be smelted Walpole and Boswell. There is some- down. But these amorphous masses are timing which hurts our best feelings in the attractive chiefly to the philosophers who success of a man whonm we heartily despise. are too profound to care for individual It seems to imply, wimich is intolerable, character, or to those praiseworthy stu-, that our penetration has been at fault, or dents who would think the labour of a that merit that is to say, our own con- year well rewarded by the discovery of a spicuous quality is liable to be out- single fact tending to throw a shade of stripped in this world by imposture. It is additional perplexity upon the secret of consoling if we can wrap ourselves in the Junius. Walpoles writings belong to the belief that good work can be extracted good old-fasimioned type of history, which from bad brains, and that shallowness, af- aspires to be nothing more than the quin- fectation, and levity can, by some strange tessence of contemnporary gossip. If the chemistry, be transmuted into a substitute opinion be pardonable in these days, his- for genius. Do we not all, if we have tory of that kind has not only its charm, reached middle age, remember some idiot but its serious value. If not very profound (of course he was an idiot!) at school or or comprehensive, it impresses upon us colle~e who had somehow managed to slip the fact so often forgotten timat our past us in the race of life, and revenge our- grandfathers were human beings. The or- selves by swearing that he is an idiot still, dinary historian reduces them to mere me- and that idiocy is a qualification for good chanical mummies; in Walpoles pages fortune? Swift somewhere says that a they are still flesh and blood. Turn paper-cutter does its work all the better over any of the pr6per decorous history when it is blunt, and converts the fact books, mark every passage where for a into an allegory of human affairs, showing moment, we seem to be transported to the that decorous dullness is an over-match past to the thunders of Chatham, the for genius. Macaulay was incapable, both drivellings of Newcastle. or the prosings in a good and bad sense, of Swifts tren 4 HORACE WALPOLE. chant misanthropy. His dislike to Wal- Even the great clothes philosophers di. pole was founded not so much upon post- not hold that a mere Chinese puzzle o humous jealousy though that passion is mask within mask could enclose sheer v~ not so rare as absurd but on the smgu- cancy; there must be some kernel withir lar contrast between the character and in- which may be discovered by sufficient p~ tellect of the two men. The typical Eng- tience. And in the first place, it may b lishman, with his rough, strong sense, asked, why did poor Walpole wear a mas passin~ at times into the narro~vest insular at all? The answer seems obvious. Th prejudice, detested the Frenchified fine men of that age may be divided by a lin gentleman who minced his mother tongue which, to the philosophic eye, is of far mor and piqued himself on cosmopolitan indif- importance than that which separated Jac ference to patriotic sentiment: tlre am- obites from loyal Whigs or Dessenter bitious historian was irritated by the con- from High Churchmen. It separated th~ tempt which the dilettante dabbler in lit- men who could drink two bottles of por erature affected for their common art; and I after dinner from the men who coub the thorough-going Whig was scandalized not. To men of delicate di0estions th by the man who, whilst claiming that sa- test imposed by the jovial party in ascend cred name, and living face to face with ancy must have been severer than thos Chatham and Burke and the great Revo- due to political or ecclesiastical bigotry lution families in all their glory, ventured They had to choose between social die to intimate his opinion that they, like abilities on the one side, and on the othe other idols, had a fair share of clay and indigestion for themselves and gout fo rubbish in their composition, and who, their descendants. Thackeray, in a trisi after professing a kind of sham republican- pathetic passage, partly draws the veil fro ism, was frightened by the French Revolu- their sufferings. Almost all the wits 01 tion into a paroxism of ultra-Toryism. Queen Annes reign, he observes, wer You wretched fribble! exclaims Ma- fat: Swift was fat; Addison was fat caulay; you shallow scorner of all that Gay and Thompson were preposterousl~ is noble! You are nothing but a heap of fat; all that fuddling and punch drinking silly whims and conceited airs! Strip off that club and coffee-house boozing, short one mask of affectation from your mind, ened the lives and enlarged the waistcoat~ and we are still as far as ever from the of men of that age. Think of the dinne. real man. The very highest faculty that described in Swifts Polite Conversatio~ can be conceded to you is a keen eye for and compare the following bill of fare fo. oddities, whether old curiosity shops or in a party of seven with the meou of a mod Parliament; and to that you owe what- era London dinner. First course: a sir ever just reputation you have acquired. loin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal and Macaulays fervour of rebuke is amusing, tongue; second course, almond pudding though, by a righteous Nemesis, it includes patties, and soup; third course, a venisor a specimnen of blindness as gross as any pasty, a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, r that he attributes to Walpole. The sum- goose, and a ham. All which is washer mary decision that the chief use of France down by wine and beer, until, at length, r is to interpret England to Europe, is a large tankard of October having bee- typical example of that insular arrogance passed round, the gentlemen sit down tc for which 1\lr. Arnold has popularized the drink. Think of this and ima~ine shppe name of Philistinism. in the perspective; imagine a man of ir Yet criticism of this one-sided kind has ritable nerves and without the stomach of its value. At least it suggests a problem. an ostrich, set down to such a meal, and What is the element left out of account? regarded as a milksop if he flinches. The Folly is never the real secret of a literary very report of such conviviality before reputation, or what noble harvests of ge- which Christopher Norths performances in nius we should produce! If we patiently the Noctes Ambrosiance sink into insignifi take off all the masks we must come at cance - is enough to produce nightmares in last to the animating principle beneath. the men of our degenerate times, and may HORACE WALPOLE. 5 elp us to understand the peevishness of ceble invalids such as Pope and Lord liar- ey in the elder generation, or Walpole o that which was rising. Amongst these aragantuau consumers, who combined a one the attributes of gorging Jack and ~uzzling Jemmy, Sir Robert Walpole was elebrated for his powers and seems to ave owed to them no small share of his opularity. Horace writes piteously from lie paternal mansion, to which he had re- Arned in P743, not long after his tour in Italy, to one of his artistic friends: Only magine, he exclaims, that I here 2very day see men who are moun- Lains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Prato- lino! I shudder when I see them brandish ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is pickiug his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his neighbours broken head; an al lerman a very mountain of roast beef is sinking back in a fit, whilst a barber is trying to bleed him; brickbats are fly- ing in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs. Only think of the smart ydung candidates headache next morning in the days when soda-water was not invented I And remember too that the representa their knives in act to carve, and look on tives were not entirely free from sympa- them as savages that devour one another. thy with the coarseness of their constitu- I should not stare at all more than I do ents. Just at the period of Hogarths ifj yonder alderman at the lower end of painting, Walpole, when speaking of the the table were to stick his fork into his feeling excited by a Westminster elec- neighbours jolly cheek, and cut a brave tion, has occasion to use this pleasing slice of brown and fat. Why, Ill swear I new fashionable proverb We spit see no difference between a country gen- in his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off tleman and a sirloin; whenever the first on Friday. It owed its origin to a feat laughs or the second is cut, there run out performed by Lord Cobham at an assem- just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, bly given at his own house. For a bet of the surloin does not ask quite so many a guinea he came behind Lord Hervey, questions. What was the style of con- who was talking to some ladies, and made versation at these tremendous entertain- use of his hat as a ~pittoon. The point meats had better be left to the imagina- of the joke was that Lord Hervey son tion. Sir R. Walpoles theory on that of Popes mere white curd of asses subject is upon record; and we can dimly milk, and related, as the scandal went, guess at the feelings of a delicate young rather too closely to horace Walpole gentleman who had just learned to talk himself was a person of effeminate ap- about Domenichinos and Guidos, and to pearance, and therefore considered un- buy ancient bronzes, when plunged into likely wrongly, as it turned out to re- the coarse society of these mountains of sent the insult. We may charitably hope roast beef. As he grew up manners be- that the assailants, who thus practically came a trifle more refined, and the cus- exemplified the proper mode of treating toms described so faithfully by Fielding milksops, were drunk. The two-bottle- and Smollett belonged to a lower social men who lingered till our day were sur- stratum. Yet we can fancy Walpoles viving relics of the type which then gave occasional visit to his constituents, and the tone to society. Within a few years imagine him forced to preside at one of there was a prime minister who always those election feasts which still survive on consoled himself under defeats and cele- Hogarths canvas. Substitute him for the brated triumphs with his bottle; a chan- luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat cellor who abolished evening sittings on who represents the successful candidate the ground that he was always drunk in in the first picture of the series A the evening; and even an archbishop drunken voter is dropping lighted pipe an Irish archbishop, it is true whose 6 HORACE WALPOLE. jovial habits broke down his constitution. Tother day with a beautiful frown on her Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats and brow, you ev~ryxvhere find the Squire Western. To the rest of the gods said the Venus of A man of squeamish tastes and excessive Stowe: sensibility jostled amongst that thick- and so on. She was really in Elysium, skinned, iron-nerved generation, was in a he declares, and visited the arch erected in position with which any one may sympa- her honour three or four times a day. thize who knows the sufferings of a deli- It is not wonderful, we must confess, cate lad at a public school in the old (and that burly ministers and jovial squires not so very old) brutal days. The victim laughed horse-laughs at this mincing of that tyranny slunk away from the dandy, and tried in their clumsy fashion rough horseplay of his companions to to avenge themselves for the sarcasms muse, like Dobbin, over the Arabian which, as they instinctively felt, lay hid Nights in a corner, or find some amuse- beneath this mask of affectation. The en- ment which his tormentors held to be mity between the lapdo0 and the mastiff only fit for girls. So Horace Walpole re- is an old story. Nor, as wc must confess tired to Strawberry Hill and made toys again, were these tastes redeemed by very of Gothic architecture, or heraldry, or amiable qualities beneath the smooth ex- dilettante antiquarianism. The great dis- ternal surface. There was plenty of fem- covery had not then been made, we must mine spite as well as feniinine delicacy. remember, that excellence in field-sports To the marked fear of ridicule natural to deserved to be placed on a level with the a sensitive man, Walpole joined a very Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of happy knack of quarrelling. Lie could the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting protrude a feline set of claws from his vel- pretty much as we speak of prize-fighting vet glove. He was a touchy companion and bull-baiting. When all manly exer- anc~ an intolerable superior. He set out cises had an inseparable taint of coarseness, by quarrelling with Gray, who, as it delicate people naturally mistook effemmna- seems, could not stand his dandified airs cy for refinement. When you can only join of social impertinence, though it must be in male society on pain of drinking your- added in fairness that the bond which self under the table, the safest plan is to unites fellow travellers is, perhaps, the retire to tea-tables and small talk. For most trying known to humanity. He many years, ~Valpoles greatest pleasure quarrelled with Mason after twelve years seems to have been drinkin~, tea with of intimate correspondence he quarrelled Lady Suffolk, and carefully piecing to- with Montagu after a friendship of some gether bits of scandal about the courts of forty years; lie always thought that his the first two Georges. He tells us, with dependants, such as Bentley, were angels all the triumph of a philosopher describ- for six months, and made their lives a bur- ing a brilliant scientific induction, how he den to them afterwards; he had a long was sometimes able, by adding his bits of and complex series of quarrels with all his gossip to hers, to unravel the secret of near relations. Sir Horace Mann escaped some wretched intrigue which had puzzled any quarrel during forty-five years of cor- two generations of quidnuncs. The social respondence; but Sir Horace never left triumphs on which he most piqued him- Florence and Walpole never reached it. self were of a congenial order. He sits Conway alone remained intimate and im- down to write elaborate letters to Sir maculate to the end, though there is a bit- Horace Mann, at Florence, brimming over ter remark or two in the Memoirs against with irrepressible triumph when he has the perfect Conway. With ladies indeed, persuaded some titled ladies to visit his Walpole succeeded better; and perhaps pet toy, the printing-press, at Strawberry we may accept, with due allowance for the Hill, and there, of course to their un- artists point of view, his own portrait of speakable surprise, his printer draws off himself. He prononuces himself to be a a copy of verses composed in their honour boundless friend, a bitter but placable in the most faded style of old-fashioned enemy. Making the necessary correc- gallantry. lie is intoxicated by his ap- tions, we should translate this into a bit- pomntment to act as poet-laureate on the ter enemy, a warm but irritable friend. occasion of a visit of the Princess Amelia Tread on his toes, and he would let you to Stowe. She is solemnly conducted to feel his claws, though you were his oldest a temple of the Muses and Apollo, and friend; but so long as you avoided his there finds one of his admirable effu- numerous tender points, he showed a gen sions, nine capacity for kindliness and even affec HORACE WALPOLE. 7 tion; and in his later years he mellowed in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,0001. down into an amiable, purring old gentle- a-year bestowed because our father was a man, responding with eager gratitude to prime minister. There are many immadil- the caresses of the charming Miss Berrys. late persons at the present day to whom Such a man, skinles~ and bilious, was ill truth would be truth even when seen qualified to join in the rough game of p01- through such a medium. There are we itics. lie kept out of the arena while the have their own authority for believing it hardest blows were given and taken, and men who would be republicans, though confined his activity to lobbies and back- their niece was married to a royal duke. stairs, where scandal was to be gathered Walpole, we must admit, was not of the and the hidden wires of intrigue to be deli- number. He was an aristocrat to the cately manipulated. He chuckles irrepressi- back-bone. He was a gossip by nature bly when he has confided a secret to a and education, and had lived from infancy friend, who has let it out to a minister, who in the sacred atmosphere of court intrigue; communicates it to a great persona~e, who every friend he possessed in his own rank explodes into inextinguishable wrath, and either had a place, or had lost a place, or blows a whole elaborate plot into a thou- was in want of a place, and generally com- sand fragments. To expect deep and set- bined all three characters; indifference to tled political principle from such a man place was only a cunning mode of angling would be to look for grapes from thorns for a place, and politics was a series of and figs from thistles; but to do Walpole ingeniously contrived manceuvres in which justice~ we must add that it would be the moving power of the machinery was equally absurd to exact settled principle the desire of sharing the spoils. Walpoles from any politician of that age. We are talk about Magna Charta and the execu- beginning to regard our ancestors with a tion of Charles I. could, it is plain, imply strange mixture of contempt and envy, but a skin-deep republicanism. lie could We despise them because they cared noth- not be seriously displeased with a state of ing for the thoughts which for the last things of which his own position was the century have been upheaving society into natural outgro~vth. His republicanism strange convulsions; we envy them be- was about as genuine as his boasted indif- cause they enjoyed the delicious calm ference to money a virtue which is nQt which was the product of that indifference, rare in bachelors who have more than they Wearied by the incessant tossing and boil- can spend. So long as he could buy as ing of the torrent which carries us away, much bricabrac, as many knicknacks, and we look back with fond regret to the little odd books and bronzes and curious por- backwater so far above Niagara, where traits and odd gloves of celebrated char- scarcely a ripple marks the approaching acters, as be pleased; add a new tower rapids. There is a charm in the great and a set of battlements to Strawberry solid old eighteenth century mansions, Hill every few years; keep a comfortable which London is so rapidly engulphing, house in London, and have a sufficiency and even about the old red brick churches of carriages and horses; treat himself to with ~~sleep-compelling~ pews. We take an occasional tour, and keep his press imaginary naps amongst our grandfathers steadily at work; he was not the man to with no railways, no telegraphs, no mobs complain of poverty. He was a republi- in Trafalgar Square, no discussions about can, too, as long as that word implied that ritualism or Dr. Colenso, and no reports he and his father and nncles and cousins of parliamentary debates. It is to our and connections by marriage and their fancies an island valley of Avilion, or, intimate friends were to have everything less ruagniloquently, a pleasant land of precisely their own way; but if a vision Cockaine, where we may sleep away the could have shown him the reformers of a disturbance of battle, and even read coming generation who would inquire into through Clarissa Harlow. We could put civil lists and object to sinecures to say up with an occasional highwayman in Hyde nothing of cutting off the heads of the first Park, and perhaps do not think that our families he would have prayed to be re- comfort would be seriously disturbed by a moved before the evil day. Republican- dozen executions in a morning at Tyburn. ism in his sense was a word exclusive of In such visionary glances through the cen- revolution. Was it, then, a mere mean- tunes we have always the advantage of ingless mask intended only to conceal selecting our own position in life, and per- the real man? Before passing such a haps there are few that for such purposes judgment we should remember that the we should prefer to Walpoles. We namee by which people classify their opin- should lap ourselves against eating cares ions are generally a little more than arbi 8 HORACE WALPOLE. trary badges; and even in these days, call them parties which separate and when practice treads so closely on the combine, and fight and make peace, till the heels of theory, some persons profess to plot of the drama becomes too compli- know extreme radicals who could be con- cated for human ingenuity to unravel. verted very speedily by a bit of riband. Lads just crammed for a civil service ex- Walpole has explained himself with unmis- amination might possibly bear in, mind all takable frankness, and his opinion was at the shifting combinations which resulted least intelligible. He was not a republican from the endless intrigues of Pelhams and after the the fashion of Robespierre, or Grenvilles and Bedfords and Rocking- Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had hams; yet even those omniscient persons some meaning. When a duke in those could hardly give a plausible account of days proposed annual parliaments and uni- the princples which each party conceived versal suffrage, we may assume that he did itself to be maintaining. What, for exam- not realize the probable effect of those in- ple, were the politics of a Rigby or a Bubb stitutions upon dukes; and when Walpole Dodin0ton? The diary in which the last of applauded the regicides, he was not anx- these, eminent persons reveals his inmost ious to send George III. to the block. He soul is perhaps the most curious specimen meant, however, that be considered George of unconscious self-analysis extant. His III. to be a narrow-minded and obstinate utter baseness and venality, his disgust at fool. He meant, too, that the great Revo- the ~ low venal wretches to whom he had lution families ought to distribute the to give bribes; his crcepin~, and crawling plunder and the power without the inter- before those from whom he sought to ex- ference from the Elector of Hanover. tract bribes; his utter incapacity to explain He meant, again, that as a quick and cyni- a great man except on the hypothesis cal observer, he found the names of Brutus of insanity; or to understand that there is and Aigernon Sydney very convenient such a thing as political morality, derive covers for attacking the Duke of Newcas- double piquancy from the profound con- tie and the Earl of Bute. But beyond all viction that he is an ornament to society, this, he meant something more, which and from the pious aspiration which be ut- gives the real spice to his writings. It ters with the utmost simplicity. Bubb was something not quite easy to put into wriggled himself into a peerage, and differed formulas; but characteristic of the vague from innumerable competitors only by su- discomfort of the holders of sinecures in perior frankness. He is the fitting represen- those halycon days arising from the per- tative of an era from which political faith ception that the ground was hollow under has disappeared, as Walpole is its fitting their feet. To understand him we must satirist. All political virtue, it is said, was remember that the period of his activity confined in Walpoles opinion, to Conway marks precisely the lowest ebb of political and the Marquis of Hertford. Was he principle. Old issues had been settled, wrong? or, if he was wrong, was it not ra- and the new ones were only just coming to ther in the exception than the rule? The the surface. He saw the end of the Jacob- dialect in which his sarcasms are expressed ites and the rise of the demagogues. His is affected, but the substance is hard to dis- early letters describe the advance of the pute. The world, he is fond of saying, is Pretender to Derby; they tell us how the a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to British public was on the whole inclined to those who think. He preferred the comedy look on and cry, Pi~ht dog, fight bear; view. I have never yet seen or heard, how the Jacobites who had anything to he says, anything serious that was not lose left their battle to be fought by ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philoso- half-starved cattle-stealers, and contented phers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau,. themselves with drinking to the success of the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the cause; and how the Whig magnates, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, with admirable presence of mind, raised the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the regiments, appointed officers, and got the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, are all to expenses paid by the Crown. His later me but impostors in their various ways. letters describe the amazing series of Fame or interest is their object, and after blunders by which we lost America in all their parade, I think a ploughman who spite of the clearest warnings from almost sows, reads his almanack, and believes every man of sense in the kingdom. The that the stars are so many farthing can- interval between these disgraceful epochs dles created to prevent his falling into a is filled if we except the brief episode ditch as h~ goes home at night, a wiser of Chathain by a series of struggles be- and more rational being, and I am sure an tween different connections one cannot honester, than any of them. Oh! I am HORACE WALPOLE. 9 sick of visions and systems that shove one tudes about sacred Whig principles and the another aside, and come again like figures thrice blessed British Constitution. in a moving picture. Probably Walpoles Walpole, in fact, represents a common belief in the ploughman lasted till he saw creed amongst the comfortable but clear- the next smock-frock; but the bitterness headed men of his time. It was the clothed in the old-fashioned cant is sen- stran0e mixture of scepticism and conser- ons and is justifiable enough. Here is a vatism which is exemplified in such men as picture of En~lish politics in the time of Hume and Gibbon. He was at heart a of Wilkes. No government, no police, Voltairian, and, like his teach& r, confound- London and Middlesex distracted, the col- ed all reli0ious and political beliefs under onies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be so, the name of superstition. Voltaire him- and France arrogant and on the point of self did not anticipate the Revolution .to being hostile I Lord Bute accused of all, which he, more than any man, had con- and dying of a panic; George Grenville tributed. Walpole, with stronger per- wanting to make rage desperate; Lord sonal reasons than Voltaire for disliking a Rockingham and the Cavendishes thinking catastrophe, was as furious as Burke when ~ve have no enemies but Lord Bute, and the volcano burst forth. He was a repub- that five mutes arid an epigram can set lican so far as he disbelieved in the divine everything to rights; the Duke of Graf- right of kings, and hated enthusiasm and ton (then Prime Minister) like an appren- loyalty generally. He wished the form to tice, thinking the world should be post- survive and the spirit to disappear. Things poned to a horse-race; and the Bedfords were rotten, and he wished them to stay not caring what disgraces we undergo rotten. The ideal to which he is constant- while each of them has 3,0001. a year and ly recurring was the pleasant reign of his three thousand bottles of claret and chain- father, when nobody made a fuss, or went pagne! And every word of this is true to war, or kept principles except for sale. at least, so far as epigrams need be true. He foresaw, however, far better than most It is difficult to put into more graphic men the coming crash. If political saga- language the symptoms of an era just ripe city be fairly tested by a prophetic vision for revolution. If frivolous himself, Wal- of the French Revolution, Walpoles name pole can condemn the frivolity of others. should stand high. He visited Paris in Can one repeat common news with indif- 1765, and remarks that laughing is out of ference, he asks, just after the surrender fashion. Good folks, they have no time of Yorktown, while our shame is writing to laugh. There is God and the King to for future history by the pens of all our be pulled down first, and men and women, numerous enemies? When did England one and all, are devoutly employed in the see two whole armies lay down their arms demolition. They think me quite profane and surrender themselves prisoners? . . . for having my belief left. Do you know, These are thoughts I cannot stifle at the he asks presently, who are the philoso- moment that expresses them; and, though pliers? In the first place, it compre- I do not doubt that the same dissipation hends almost everybody, and in the next that has swallowed up all our principles it means men who, avowing war against will reign again in ten days with its Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruc- wonted sovereignty, I had rather be silent tion of regal power. The philosophers, than vent my indignation. Yet I cannot he goes on, are insupportable, superficial, talk, for I canot think, on any other subject. overbearing, and fanatic. They preach It was not six days ago that, in the height of incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is four raging wars (with America, France, atheism you could not behie9e how Spain, and Holland), I saw in the papers an openly. Dont wonder, therefore, if I account of the opera and of the dresses of should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself the company, and hence the town, and does not satisfy them. One of their lady thence, of course, the whole nation, were devotees said of him, Ii est bigot, cest urm informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very deiste / French politics, he professes a little powder in his hair. Walpole few years afterwards, must end in des- sheltered himself behind the corner of a potism, a civil war, or assassination, and pension to sneer at the tragi-comedy of he remarks that the age will not, as he had life; but if his feelings were not profound, always thought, be an age of abortion, but they were quick and genuine, and affecta- rather the age of seeds that are to pro- tion for affectation, his cynical coxcombry duce strange crops hereafter. The next seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry century, he says at a later period, will of the men who shamelessly wrangled for probably exhibit a very new era, which the plunder, whilst they talked solemn plati- close of this has been, and is, preparing. 10 HORACE WALPOLE. If these sentences had been uttered by Burke, they would have been quoted as proofs of remarkable sagacity. As it is we may surely call them stern glances for a frivolous coxcomb. Walpole regarded these symptoms in the true epicurean spirit, and would have joined in the sentiment, apr~s moi le deluge, He was, on the whole, for remedying grievances, and is put rather out of temper by cruelties which cannot be kept out of sight. He talks with disgust of the old habit of stringing up criminals by the dozen; he denounces the slave-trade with genuine fervour; there is apparent sincer- ity in his platitudes against war; and he never took so active a part in politics as in the endeavour to prevent the judicial murder of Byng. His conscience generally discharged itself more easily by a few pun- gent epigrams, and though he wished the reign of reason and humanity to dawn, he would rather that it should not come at all than be ushered in by a tempest. His whole theory is given forcibly and com- pactly in an answer which he once made to the republican Mrs. Macaulay, and was fond of repeating: Madam, if I had been Luther, and could have known that for the chance of saving a million of souls I should be the cause of a million of lives, at least, being sacrificed before my doc- trines could be established, it must have been a most palpable angel, and in a most heavenly livery, before he should have set me at work. We will not ask what angel would have induced him to make the minor sacrifice of six thousand a yearto establish any conceivable doctrine. Whatever may be the merit of these opinions, they con- tain Walpoles whole theory of life. I know, he seems to have said to himself, that loyalty is folly, that rank is contempt- ible, that the old society in which I live is rotten to the core, and that explosive mat- ter is accumulating beneath our feet. Well! I am not made of the stuff for a re- former: I am a bit of a snob, though, like other snobs, I despise both parties to the bargain. I will take the sinecures the gods provide me, amuse myself with toys at Strawberry Hill, d,espise kings and min- isters, without endangering my head by attacking them, and be over-polite to a royal duke when he visits me, on condi- tion of laughing at him behind his back when he is gone. Walpole does not de- serve a statue; he was not a Wilberforce or a Howard, and as little of a Burke or a Chatham. But his faults, as well as his virtues, qualified him to be the keenest of all observers, of a society unconsciously approaching a period of tremendous con- vulsions. To claim for him that, even at his best, he is a profound observer of character, or that he gives any consistent account of his greatest contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and, moreover, full of spite. lie cannot be decently fair to any one who deserted his father, or stood in Conways light. He re- flects at all times the irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be sincere enough; only it is pleas- ant, after puffing ones wares to the pub- lic, to glance at their seamy side in pri- vate. Walpole has a decided taste for that last peint of view. The littleness of the great, the hypocrisy of the virtuous, and the selfishness of statesmen in gene- ral, is his ruling theme, illustrated by an infinit3 variety of brilliant caricatures struck off at the moment with a quick eye and a sure hand. Though he elaborates no grand historical portrait, like Burke or Clarendon, he has a whcile gallery of telling vignettes which are often as signid- cant as far more pretentious works. No- where, for example, can we find more graphic sketches of the great man who stands a head and shoulders above the whole generation of dealers ii1 power and place. Most of Chathams contemporaries repaid his contempt with intense dislike. Some of them pronounced him mad, and others thought him a knave. Walpole, who at times calls him a mountebank and an impostor, does not go further than Burke, who, in a curious comment, speaks of him as the grand artificer of fiaud, who never conversed but with a parcel of low toadeaters ; and asks whether all this theatrical stuffing and these raised heels could be necessary to the charac- ter of a great man. Walpole, of course, has a keen eye to the theatrical stuffing. He takes the least complimentary view of the grand problem, which still puzzles some historians, as to the genuineness of Chathams gout. He smiles complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour. But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognize the genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene when the House of Commons was giggling over HORACE WALPOLE. 11 some delicious story of bribery and cor- who then constituted society, and played ruption the house of Commons was such queer pranks in quiet unconsciousness frivolous in those benighted days; he tells of the revolutionary elements that were how Pitt suddenly stalked down from the seething below. He is the best of corn- gallery and administered his thunderin~, mentators on Hogarth, and gives us Gin- reproof; how Murray, then Attorney- Lane on one side and the Marriage ~ la General, crouched, silent and terrified, mode on the other. As we turn over the and the Chancellor of the Exchequer well-known pages we come at every turn faltered out a humbli, apology for the un- upon characteristic scenes of the great seemly levity. It is Walpole who best de- tragi-comedy that was being played out. scribes the great debate when Pitt, In one page a highwayman puts a bullet haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and through his hat, and on the next we read supreme abilities, burst out in that tre- how three thousand ladies and gentlemen inendous speech tremendous if we may visited the criminal in his cell, on the believe the contemporary reports, of which Sunday before his execution, till he fainted the only tolerably preserved fragment is away twice from the heat; then we hear the celebrated metaphor about the confin- how Lord Lovats buffooneries made the ence of the Rhone and the Saone. Alas! whole brilliant circle laugh as he was be- Chathams eloquence has all gone to rags ing sentenced to death; and how Balme- and tatters; though, to say the truth, it rino pleaded not guilty, in order that has only gone the way of nine-tenths of the ladies might not be deprived of their our contemporary eloquence. We have in- sport; how thc Hsuse of Commons ad- deed what are called accurate reports journed to see a play acted by persons of of spoken pamphlets, dried specimens quality, and the gallery was hung round of rhetoric from which the life has de- with blue ribands; how the Gunnings had parted as completely as it is strained out a guard to protect them in the park; what of the specimens in a botanical collection. strange pranks were played by the biga- If there is no Walpole amon,,st us, we mous Miss Chudleigh; what jokes now, shall know what our greatest living orator alas! very faded and dreary were made has said; but how he said it, and how it by George Selwyn, and how that amiable moved his audience, will be as obscure as favourite of society ~vent to Paris in or- if the reporters gallery was still unknown. der to see the cruel tortures inflicted Walpole when he was not affecting phi- upon Damiens, and was introduced to losophy, or smarting from the failure of the chief performer on the scaffold as an intri~ue, or worried by the gout, or a distinguished amateur in executions. disappointed of a bargain at a sale One of the best of all these vignettes could throw electric flashes of light on the portrays the funeral of George II., and is figure he describes which reveal the true worthy of Thackeray. It opens with the man. He errs from petulancy, but not solemn procession to the torch-lighted from stupidity. lie can appreciate great Abbey, whose long-drawn aisles and qualities by fits, though he cannot be fretted vault excite the imagination of steadily loyal to their possessor. And if the author of the Gas/ic of Otranto. Then he wrote down most of our rulers as the comic element begins to intrude; the knaves and fools, we have only to lower procession jostles and falls into disorder those epithets to selfish and blundering, to at the entrance of Henry Sevenths Chap- get a very fair estimate of their charac- el; the bearers stagger under the heavy ters. To the picturesque historian his coffin and cry for help; the bishop blun- services are invaluable; though no single ders in the prayers, and the anthem, as statement can be accepted without careful fit, says Walpole, for a wedding as a fu- correction. neral, becomes immeasurably tedious. Waloles social, as distinguished from Against this tragi-comic background are his political, anecdotes do in one sense relieved two characteristic figures. The what Leechs drawings have done for this. butcher Duke of Cumberland, the hero But the keen old man of the world puts of Culloden, stands with the obstinate a far bitterer and deeper meaning into his courage of his race gazing into the vault apparently superficial scratches than the where his father is being buried, and into kindly modern artist, whose satire was which he is soon to descend. His face is narrowed, if purified, by the decencies of distorted by a recent stroke of paralysis, modern manners. Walpole reflects in a and he is forced to stand for two hours thousand places that strange combination on a bad leg. To him enters the bur- of brutality and polish which marked the lesque Duke of Newcastle, who begins by little circle of flue ladies and gentlemen bursting into tears and throwing himself HORACE WALPOLE. back in a stall whilst the Archbishop hovers over hi~n with a smelling-bottle. Then curiosity overcomes him, and he runs about the chapel with a spyglass in one hand, to peer into the faces of the com- pany, and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of catch- ing cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself wei~,hed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble. What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the ~reat dispenser of patronage, and by far the most impor- tant personage in the government. Wal- pole had reason for some of his sneers. The literary power implied in these bril- liant sketches is remarkable, and even if Walpoles style is more Gallicized than is evident to me, it must be confessed that with a few French idioms he has caught something of that unrivalled dexterity and neatness of touch in which the French are our undisputed masters. His literary char- acter is of course marked by an affectation analogous to that which debases his poli- tics. Walpole was always declaring with doubtful sincerity (that is one of the matters in which a man is scarcely bound to be quite sincere) that he has no am- bition for literary fame, and that he utterly repudiates the title of learned gentle- man. There is too much truth in his dis- avowals to allow us to write them down as mere mock-modesty; but doubtless his principal motive was a dislike to entering the arena of open criticism. He has much of the feeling which drove Pope into par- oxysms of unworthy fury on every mention of Grub-street. The anxiety of men in that day to disavow the character of pro- fessional authors, must be taken with the fact that professional authors were then an unscrupulous, scurrilous and venal race. Walpole feared collision with them as he feared collision with the mountains of roast beef. Though literature was emerg- ing from the back-lanes and alleys, the two greatest potentates of the day, Johnson and Warburton, had both a decided cross of the bear in their composition. Walpole was nervously anxious to keep out of their jurisdiction, and to sit at the feet of such refined law-givers as Mason and Grey, or the feebler critics of polite society. In such courts there naturally passes a good deal of very flimsy flattery between persons who are alterPately at the bar or on the bench. We do not quite believe that Lady Di Beauclerks drawings were unsurpassable by Salvator Rosa and Guido, or that Lady Ailesburys ~ landscape in worsteds was a work of high art; and we doubt whether Walpole believed it; nor do we fancy that he expected Sir Horace Mann to belihve that when sitting in his room at Strawberry Hill, lie was in the habit of apostrophizing the setting sun in such terms as these: Look at yon sinking beams! His gaudy reign is over; but the silver moon above that elm succeeds to a tranquil horizon, & c. Sweeping aside all this superficial rubbish, as mere conces- sions to the faded taste of the age of hoops and wig~, Walpole has something to say for himself. He has been condemned for the absurdity of his criticisms, and it is undeniable that he sometimes blunders strangely. It would, indeed, be easy to show, were it worth while, that he is by no means so silly in his contemporary verdicts as might be supposed from scattered pas- sages in his letters. But what are we to say to a man who compares Dante to a Methodist parson in Bedlam? The first answer is that, in this instance Walpole was countenanced by greater men. Voltaire, with all his faults the most consummate literary artist of the century, says with obvious disgust that there are people to be found who force themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extrava- gant and barbarous as those of the Divina Commedia. Walpole must be reckoned as belonging both in his faults and his merits to the Voltairian school of literature, and amongst other peculiarities common to the master and his disciple, may be counted an incapacity for reverence and an intense dislike to being bored. For these reasons he hates all epic poets from Dante to Black- more; he detests all didactic poems, includ- ing those of Thomson and Akenside; and he is utterly scandalized by the French enthusiasm for Richardson. In these last judgments, at least, nine-tenths of the exist- ing race of mankind a~ree with him; though few people have the courage to express their agreement in print. We may be thankful that Walpole, which is not always the case, is as incapable of boring as of en- during bores. Re is one of the few En- glishmen who share the quality sometimes ascribed to the French as a nation, and certainly enjoyed by his teacher, Voltaire; namely, that though they may be frivolous, blasphemous, indecent, and faulty in every other way, they can never for a single moment be dull. His letters show that crisp, sparkling quality of style which ac- companies this power, and which is so Un- HORACE WALPO~E. attainable to most of his countrymen. The quality is less conspicuous in the rest of his works, and the light verses and essays in which we might expect him to succeed are disappointingly weak. Xohos letter to his countrymen is now as dull as the work of most imaginary travellers, and the es- says in The World are remarkably inferior to the Spectator, to say nothing of the Ram- bler.* Yet Walpoles place in literature is unmistakable, if of equivocal merit. Byron called him the author of the last tragedy and the first romance in our language. The tragedy, with Byrons leave, is revolt- ing (perhaps the reason why Byron ad- mired it), and the romance passes the bor- ders of the burlesque. And yet the re- mark hits off a singular point in Walpoles history. A thorough child of the eigh- teenth century, we might have expected him to share Voltaires indiscriminating contempt for the middle ages. One would have supposed that in his lips, as in those of all his generation, Gothic would have been synonymous with barbaric, and the admiration of an ancient abbey as redundant as admiration of Dante. So far from which, Walpole is almost the first. modern Englishman who found out that our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a roost charming toy might be made of medimvalism. Straw- berry Hill, with all its gimeracks, its paste- board battlements, and stained-paper carv- ings, with the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, the manufacturers of stained glass, the modern decorators and architects of all vanities perhaps, we may venture to add, the Ritualists and the High Church party should think of him with kindness. It cannot be said that they should give him a place in their calendar, for he was not of the stuff of which saints are made. It was a very thin veneering of mediteval- ism which covered his modern creed; and the mixture is not particularly edifying. Still he unddubtedly found out that charm- ing plaything which, in other hands, has been elaborated and industriously con- structed till it is all but indistinguishable from the genuine article. Some persons hold it to be merely a plaything, when all has been said and done, and maintain that whei~ the root has once be severed, the tree can never be made to grow. How- ever that may be, Walpolos trifling was the first forerunner of much that has ocen ~ It is odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in jest, precisely ocr modern system of p oslage cards, only charging a penny instead of a halfpenny. pied the minds of much greater artists ever since. And thus his initiative in lit- erature has been as fruitful as his initia- tive in art. The Castle of Otraato and the M~jsterious Mother were the progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffes romances, and probably had a strong influence upon the author of Ivanhoe. Frowning castles and gloomy monasteries, knights in armour, and ladies in distress, and monks and nuns and her- inits, all the scenery and characters that have peopled the imagination of the romantic school, may be said to have had their origin on the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head crammed full of Wardour-street curiosities and dreamt that he saw a gigantic hand in armour resting on the banister of his staircase. In three months from that time he had elaborated a story, the object of which, as defined by himself, was to combine the ch~ rms of the old romance and the modern novel, and which, to say the least, strikes us now like an exaggerated caricature of the later school. Scott criticises the Castle of Otranto seriously and even Ma- canlay speaks of it with a certain respect. Absurd as the burlesque seems, our ances- tors found it amusin ~, and, what is stranger, awe inspiring. Excitable read- ers shuddered when a helmet of more than gigantic size fell from the clouds, in the first chapter, and crushed the young baron to atoms on the eve of his xveddmng, as a trap smashes a mouse. This, however, was merely a tbretaste of a series of un- pre~edented phenomena. At one moment the portrait of Manfreds grandfather, without the lea~t premonitory warning, utters a deep sigh, and heaves its breast, after which it descends to the floor with a grave and melancholy air. Presently the menials catch sight of a leg and foot in armour to Inatch the helmet, and appar- ently Weionging to a ghost which has lain down promiscuously in the picture gallery. Most appalling, however, of all is the ad- venture which happened to Count Fred- erick in the oratory. Kneeling before the altar was a tall figure in a long cloak. As he approached it rose, and, turning round, disclosed to him the fieshless jaws and empty eyesockets of a skeleton. The ghost disappeared as ghosts generally do after giving a perfectly unnecessary warn- ing, and the catastrophe is soon reached by the final appearance of the whole suit of armour with the ghost inside it, who bursts the castle to bits like an eggshell, and, towerine towards the sky, exclaims, Theodore is the true heir of Alfonso! This proceeding fortunately made a law- 14 OFF THE SKELLIGS. friend Gray, who shared his Gothic tastes with greatly superior knowledge. But he was indefinitely superior to that knowl- edge. But he was indefinitely superior to the great mass of commonplace writers who attain a kind of bastard infallibility by always accepting the average verdict of the time ; which on the principle of the vox populi, is more often right than that of any dissenter. There is an intermediate class of men who are useful as sensitive barometers to foretell coming changes of opinion. Their intellects are mobile if shallow: and, perhaps, their want of seri- ous interest in contemporary intellects renders them more accessible to the ear! liest symptoms of superficial shiftings of taste. They are anxious to be at the head of the fashions in thought as well as in dress and pure love of novelty serves to some extent in place of genuine original- ity. Amongst such men, Walpole de- serves a high place; and it is not easy to obtain a hi~,h place even amon0st such men. The people who succeed best at trifles are those who are capable of soir e- thing better. In spite of Johnsons aphor- ism, it is the colossus who, when he tries, can cut the best head upon cherry-stones. as well as hew statues out of rock. Wal- pole was no colossus; but his peevish anxiety to affect even more frivolity than was really natural to him, has blinded his critics to the real power of a remarkably acute, versatile, and original intellect. We cannot regard him with much respect, and still less with much affection; but the more we examine his work, the more we shall admire his extreme cleverness. suit unnecessary, and if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the same result might have been at- tained more slowly by litigation. The whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, and sometimes we suspect Wal- pole of laughing in his sleeve; as, for ex- ample, in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus As he spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonsos statue (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). Manfred turned pale, and the princess sank on her knees. Behold! said the friar, mark this miraculous indication that the blood of Alfonso will never mix with that of Man- fred! Nor can we think that the story is rendered much more interesting by Wal- poles simple expedient of introducing into the midst of these portents a set of waiting-maids and peasants, who talk in the familiar style of the smart valets in Congreves or Sheridans comedies. Yet, babyish as this mass of nursery tales may appear to us, it is curious that the theory which Walpole advocated has been exactly carried out. He wished to relieve the prosaic realism of the. school of Fielding and Smollett by making use of the romantic associations, without alto- gether taking leave of the lan0uage of common life. He sought to make real men and women out of medkeval knights and ladies, or, in other words, he made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by Scott. The Mys- terious Mother is in the same taste; and his interest in Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percys Relics, is another proof of his anticipation of the coming change of sen- timent. lie was an arrant trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in literature and politics, and in- clined to take a cynical view of his con- temporaries generally, he turned for amusement to antiquarianism, and was the first to set modern art and literature mas- querading in the antique dresses. That he was quite conscious of the necessity for more serious study, appearsin his letters, SOUTHAMPTON. My first view of it in one of which, for example, he proposes showed a gloomy background of cloud a systematic history of Gothic architec- with lines of angry red running between ture, such as has since been often enough its thunderous folds, and a dark fore,,ronnd executed. It does not, is may be said, re- of old wall Roman wall, I was informed. quire any great intellect or even any ex- It looked as old as the hills, and almost as quisite taste for a fine gentleman to strike substantial. A very shallow reach of wa- out a new line of dilettante amusement. ter that hardly covered the green weed In truth, Walpole has no pretensions what- lay between us and the pier, and derived ever to be regarded as a great original an unquiet beauty from the broken reflec- creator, or even as one of the few infalli- tions of a long row of lamps just being ble critics. The only man of his kind who lighted on shore. had more claim to that lost title was his Tom and Mr. Brandon were about to From Saint Paula. OFF THE SKELLIGS. 1ST JEAT ISSOELOw. CHAPTER XIV. And tis sentiment kills me, says I. OFF THE SKELLIGS. 15 push off when I caine on deck. They were going to London that night, partly about passports, partly, I felt sure, that Mr. Brandon might have a surgical opinion about his arm, and partly to call on an aunt of the childrens, an English lady, who lived in town, and might wish to see them before they were taken to their grandmother. The dear little creatures had travelled a good deal considering their tender age. They had been born in England, their father being a poor clergyman in the north of Yorkshire. Not quite a year before their return as orphans, he had accepted a chaplaincy in the West Indies, but his health Iailing, after a very few months, he had gone up to Charleston with his family to stay with a French lady, a relation of his wifes, and there had died. Mr. Brandon knew nothing about the circumstances of their family; he was not even sure how their name was spelt, but he had an address in London, and had ac- cepted the charge of them from their mother. It was Saturday night. Uncle Rollin and I spent a very quiet Sunday, going on shore to church, and afterwards walking beside the grand old wall. On Monday I did a vast amount of shop- ping, bought a quantity of material for work at sea when the children should be gone, and spent a great deal of time, with Mrs. Brands help, in choosing things for my own wear, for I perceived that it was supposed to be my first duty to be always neatly and gracefully dressed. I tried to be as economical as I could, as my allow- ance was not large; but the very next day after these purchases were made, my uncle, taking a walk with me, stopped before one of the principal mercers shops, and, after looking into the window attentively, beck- oned out a young man, and pointing at va- rious things with his fin,er, said Youll he so good as to put up that for me, and that, and that Wont you come inside, sir? said the young man, who was evidently surprised at his style of shopping. No, he answered, retreating a step or two. I dont think I will, thank you. I gave Mrs. Brand, who was behind us with her husband, a significant look, and she stepped forward. And Ill have that, too, said my uncle, pointing at a very broad blue sash-ribhon that dangled in front of the other things. Yes, but you only mean a sash of it, sir, and a dress-length of the silk, and of the embroidered muslin, and that scarf, said Mrs. Brand. Of course, he answered. Uncle, they are too expensive, I ven- tured to say. And what do you call that? he con- tinued to the master, who had now come out. Thats an opera cloak, sir; a very sweet thing. Well, and Ill have that, if you please. Good morning, sir. This good friend of mine, indicating Mrs. Brand, will tell you where to send the things.~~ He then marched off with me. I know I shall repent this, he observed in a moment or two. Dear uncle, pray, pray let us go back then, and countermand the order. Nonsense, child! I meant that as were going to France, I might have done better to buy these things there. I know very well they are for me. Yes. Why didnt you say Thank you? Because I am so afraid if you let me be such an expense to you, it will make you dislike me. You must have spent twenty pounds. But I only spent what I chose. You should take example by me, and never go inside, and then you can get away when- ever you like. Uncle Rollin and I were very happy to- gether till three oclock on Wednesday, when, coming on board, we found Tom and Mr. Brandon waiting for us on deck, and a lady who was introduced to me as Miss Tott. She remarked that she had come to see her nieces. I saw two huge boxes with her name upon them, and wondered at the amount of luggage she had brought, as we were to sail the next day. I took her to my cabin, where the chil- dren, arrayed in their pink frocks, were playing about. Miss Tott embraced them both, and wept over them copiously. She was a pleasant-looking person, tall, very slender, head a little on one side, drooping eyes, a long nose that projected rather too far into space, a pensive, soothing voice, and a fine complexion. Little Frances stared at her, and escaped from her kisses as quickly as possible Kannette regarded her with curiosity and disfavour. My precious ones, murmured Miss Tott. I trust their spirits are not utterly weighed down by these accumulated mis- 16 OFF THE SKELLIGS. fortunes. It is indeed sad when the heart is wrung in infancy. What is she crying for? whispered Frances to me. Suddenly she clasped her hands, and looked up, exclaiming, They are in coloured dresses ali me! and what a colour pink! Yes, maam put in Mrs. Brand, who seemed struck with admiration of this sen- sibility; we had nothing black for them to wear when they came on board; their own frocks were torn to shreds, I do as- sure you. I hope this has not been an additional pang to their tender hearts, continued Miss Tott. You have explained to them, doubtless, that there has been no inten- tional disrespect. She spoke to me, and not without secret wonder I replied, They have not noticed it. They are too youn~ to feel deeply; but I have heard them speak with affection of their dear mamma and the baby. Miss Tott dried her eyes and held out her hand to Nannette, who drew back. This is little Nannettes aunt, I whis- pered. Go to her. The troublesome little creature instant- ly said aloud, But hasnt she brought us something pretty from London? That was because Mr. Brandon had promised each of them a toy. I pushed the chubby little thing nearer, and she shook back her shining lengths of straight hair, and condescended to take the hand presented to her. And so my little darling has no dear papa and mamma, and no sweet baby sister, now? It isnt a baby sister, lisped the child, softly; its my little baby brother; hes got two teeth. But he is gone now. Nannette has no baby brother now. Yes, I have. Is it possible that they are in igno- rance of these things? cried Miss Tott, or are they devoid of feeling? Neither; but they do not understand you. He did cry, said Nannette, with great simplicity, when he was on the raft, But he is very happy now, put in the other child. Mr. Brandon says he never cries at all; God took him up to heaven. lie likes to be up there, said Nan- nette. Miss Tott looked scandalized at this infantile talk, but her boxes now appear- ing, to my ill-concealed surprise she said to me, Mr. Brandon proposed to take my dear little nieces to their graudmamma, but I could not bear the thought that my little desolate ones should ~,o alone; so Isaid I hoped it would be no inconvenience to Captain Rollin if I accompanied them. I thought he would very much dislike to have a lady passenger, and I said nothing by way of encouragement. I see abundance of room, she present- ly added, looking round. But not at my disposal, I answered. ~ Oh, do not let that disturb you, she said very sweetly, and with a soothing tone that I rather resented; your brother will speak to Captain Rollin when he comes on board no responsibility shall rest on you, the gentlemen will do all, and after the captains noble hospitality, I have no anxious feelings about the result; so, she continued very softly, would it be too much to ask that I might be alone with the dear children for a short time? I was rather glad to comply with her request, and went away with the admiring Mrs. Brand, shutting Miss Tott in with the children. In the chief cabin I found Mr. Brandon and Tom, the former marching about in a very impatient style; he was evidently vexed and fretted. They had been mildly and sweetly obliged by Miss Tott to bring her and her luggage on board, and each being soothed and assured that he should not have any unpleasant responsibility, had been told what a relief it would be to the captain to find the childrens best and nearest pro- tector was ready to go with them. And what ~1id ray uncle say? I asked. He pulled a long face, but he evidently means to submit. I said it was a very odd thing. The whole journey has been odd, ob- served Tom. Yes, said Mr. Brandon, I saw when we called on her that she was fm:ll of pen- sive obstinacy and tender humbug. Why did you bring her with you then? She made us; she would come. She felt that the captain would expect no less of her, and she could not disappoint him. You should have assured her to the contrary. We did, over and over again no use; she did not intend to hear. Graham, I wish we had been lost in that fog, and never found her house. OFF THE SKELLIGS~ 17 A fog! we have had none here. brother. in fact, we thought she seemed We had a very thick fog, said Tom, to consider it a mark of the favour of directly after the thunder-storm a Providence towards herself that her sister- soupy fog; we took a cab and set off in it in-law h~md been taken. to find the grandfather and this aunt. The remainder of that day was not at all Drove a lone way and saw nothing; at last comfortable. Miss Totts tender regrets after a sharp turn, and one or two mo3t over the children ahvays seemed to preposterous jolts, we heard a loud knock i.nply reproof of somebody else, and as and came to a stand. The driver had they took a breat dislike to her I found it given matters up, and the horse, in despair difficult to make them behave tolerably. of finding the right turn, had gone up the When at last they were put to bed, each steps of a house and was knocking at the insisted on taking her woolly dog with her, door with his nose. and as long as they could possibly keep The footman opened it, said Mr. awake, they made them bark at intervals. Brandon, and uttered a manly screech. They had been well taken care of during We asked where we were, and found we the voyage, but not kept in order, and con- were in Eaton Square. The horse, all this sequently they were troublesome. Mrs. while, foolishly stared in at the hall door. Brand and I had not established much con- We m naged to get on into Chester trol, and while one was being dressed, she Square; and if Graham would only have would set off and run round the cabin. stood by me, you would have seen a differ- Then the other would rebel in some infan- ent result. tine fashion, poking her fingers into the Nothing of the sort, said Tom; you pomatum, or spilling my ean de Colo~ne. were quite as helpless as I was, if not more These things it would have been ridicu- so. She made us comae and fetch her too, Ions to treat as serious offences, but by and her great chests, and what with all dint of grave looks, a little scolding, and your tailors parcels and mine, and that a little coaxing, we got on pretty xvell, and great Noahs ark nearly as bi~ as a childs they would soon have been very good chil- coffin (and some great woolly dogs that he dren, but they chanced to be particularly bought too, Dorothea, which barked in the full of spirits the first morning of their parcel whenever we moved them), I never aunts presence, and when she found that suffered so with luggage in my life! nothing she could say had any effect, she Yes, I have been round the world with sat down in a corner and drooped, leaving less, said Mr. Brandon. Mrs. Brand and me to catch and dress the So here she is, proceeded Tom; she little rebels. When these operations were wants to persuade the old grandmother over, I lectured them both very gravely, that she ought to take the entire responsi- and received kisses in token of penitence, bility of the children: her father she says but Miss Tott could not recover her spirits, cannot afford it. Now their grandmother, and from that hour she neverdid anything who was brought up a Fren~h Protestant, for them, and seemed instinctively to has lately become a Romnan Catholic; and shrink from interferin0 in the least. Brandon naturally hoped the children She evidently knew nothing of children would be taken by the father~s family and excepting from books. She expected to brought up in the religion of their parents. find some ready-tamed little mortals, But no, they cannot afford it, they say. calm, and rather depressed; instead of two A great deal of crying and scuffiin~ at chubby things, quite wild, unconscious of my cabimi-door was now heard; we looked orphanhood, and mischievous, penitent, at one another. naughty, and good again every hour of Let them alone, said Tom; she has the d y. no doubt, made the children cry by some To me they were the greatest amuse- dismal talk. Now let her manage them ment possible, and to Mrs. Brand a delight herself; she has a right to be alone with that it did one good to see; but they cer- her own nieces if she likes. tainly did not do themselves justice that You seem to for~et, poor thing, that morning. she has only heard within the last day or Nannette talked at prayers, and had to two of the death of her sister-in-law; real- be carried out crying. Frances got away ly, I think she may be excused for being I from Mrs. Brand while we were at break- sorrowful. fast, and ran triumphantly into the chief She took that matter very composed- cabin, where her rash act was rewarded ly, said Tom; she even informed us by Uncle Rollin, who gave her sausage and that dear Panchon had been a very bad toast, and afterwards carried her on deck, manager, and a v cry bad match for her to the great scandal of her aunt. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1200 18 OFF THE SKELLIGS. I had bought some black alpaca at South- hampton, and after breakfast Mrs. Brand and I set to work to cut, out frocks for the children, that we might take them to their grandmother in mourning clothes; and Mrs. Brand, cheerful and happy, in the prospect of having almost more to do tbat day than she could possibly accomplish, was such a pleasant Companion, that I might have stayed below another hour, if Tom had not come to remind me that I had left Miss Tott to amuse herself as best she could, which did not seem altogether polite. My uncle was in the chief cabin reading tbe morning papers, which had come in just before we sailed. I came on deck with my work, and found Miss Tott with Mr. Brandon and Tom sitting on deck- chairs under the awning. We were about ten miles south of Southampton; the sea was blue, the deep sky empty and bare, the sun hot, the air delightful. A shame to shut out such a firmament, is it not? asked Mr. Brandon. I replied witbout considering. I should think so, if it was not absolutely empty and open. Indeed, and why ? Oh! because there is something so pathetic in those awful deeps of empty blue something to fear in that waiting infinitude, with no islands up aloft, noth- ing that belongs to us; only Gods great desert. You prefer to have some of it shut out; you want a tent over your head even when you are out of doors? Yes, I like to feel enclosed, and in my home; clouds are very sublime no doubt, but not oppressively so. Miss Tott, on hearing this, laid her hand on my arm, with an air not quite of re- proof, but rather of tender pity. And yet, she said, we ought not to shrink from nature in her deeper sublimi- ties; nature in the dark midnight sky, and the green, surging billows nothing else can so well soothe the racked and bur- dened mind, and still the turbid passions of the soul. I had often heard people say this kind of thing, and read it in books, but my narrow experience had not yet brought it before me, and Miss Tott uttered her speech in a way that I rebelled against a little. She seemed so much to feel the sweetness and wisdom of her own words, and to fancy that she was tenderly instill- ing so much truth into a hardened nature, that, instead of making any reply, I felt an unworthy wish to shake off her hand however, I resisted this, and there it still lay, as if to appeal to my better self; my ordinary self being covered with blushes, because Tom and Mr. Brandon were look- ing at me. At last, I said, No doubt the beauty and grandeur of the world is very invigorating, very ele- vating. You speak as of some abstract truth that you have nothing to do with. Miss Grahani speaks of what will not always bear di~cussion, said Mr. Bran- don, coming to the rescue; her first words showed rather an over-sensitiveness to the influence of the sublime than the absence of it. Miss Tott took no notice of him, but continued to gaze at me, and keeping her hand on my arm oppressed inc further by sayin~ with pensive compassion, But is there no solace for the heart in communing with nature in her wilder moods, and coming to be healed by her when your spirit is crushed? The tender, old words, Is there no balm in Gilead? flashed across my mind and a thought of the physician there; but I was much too shy to put my thought into words, and answered instead, I dont exactly know; I never am crushed. Ah! she replied, withdrawing her hand, yo.u wi!l be, some day. Dont, Miss Graham, exclaimed Mr. Brandon. I wouldnt if I were you! I looked up; he and Torn sat opposite, enjoying the dialogue, but neither moved a muscle of his face; and, to my discoin- fitnre, Miss Tott took up her crochet, and murmured some low sentence in which we distinguished the word profane; but she seemed to be more in sorrow than in an,,er, and as she worked, she handled the very needle with a tenderness that might have shown us the depth of her compas- sion for us. Tom and Mr. Brandon glanced at one another with eyes that seemed to say, We have got into a scrape, and pres- ently, to my surprise, Tom said, in a tone of apparent feeling, There is a sort of yearning after the infinite, a kind of a brooding over the irrevocable past, looking as it were over the vessels side, to see the waves of ex- istence pass slowly by, which Ah ! exclaimed Miss Tott, inter- rupting him. I thought those speaking features could not have deceived me. I thought there must be a heart with such a voice as that. I knew, of course, that he was amusing OFF THE SKELLIGS. 19 himself at her expense, but I am not sure whether Mr. Brandon did. I say, old fellow, he exclaimed; that sort of thing seems more like a dismal aggravation of a crushing process than a remedy. Its one that I always use, persisted Tom. Ali! said Miss Tott again. Unless Im crushed quite fiat, con- tinued Tom; and then I find that noth- ing does me so much good as a bottle of soda-water with with a little brandy in it! What do you take, Brandon? I am sick of the very word, said Mr. Brandon, with a short laugh. I shall answer with your sister that I never am crushed, I would rather he excused. Oh! but its nonsense to struggle, said Tom, appealing to Miss Tott with his eyes. You may kick and strug~,le as much as you like, hut you must submit. I wont, he repeated, coolly. At least, not if I can possibly help it; and not for long together, as long as I can speak a word or wag a finger I wons ad- mit that Im crushed. It was never in- tended that I should be. I hate the word. I hate the feeling it describes. Trouble does not come by chance it is sent to make us rise, not to make us sink. All right, said Tom; but we were not talking of any trouble worth mention- ing! I like to hear him fire up, he con- tinued, audaciously looking at us. Miss Tott opened wide her dark eyes. What is that? she exclaimed, very tartly. We were not talking of the troubles of widows and orphans, you know, of pinching poverty and remorse for crime, or the agonies of broken hones and cark- ing c are, said Tom, addressing her with suave gravity. We were talking of po- etical yearnings, and general dissatisfac- tion, of dyspeptic nervousness, and the discomfort of having nothing to do. I am sure I ought to speak feelingly of these ills. No one is a greater martyr to them than I am. It is very evident, said Miss Tott, with exceeding sharpness; that none of you have ever known any trouble worth the name. Even if we have, I ventured to say, surely the good has outweighed the evil. What, in this world of sorrow? she answered. You do not know what you are talking of. I beg your pardon. I did not mean to vex you. I am not vexed: but your remark is contrary to reason, religion, and expe- rience. To experience, perhaps; hut is it con- trary to religion? Of course it is. Did not our Saviour say, In the world ye shall have tribu- lation? Yes; but, perhaps he may have meant that his religion would never exempt them from ordinary ills, nor from that envy of the wicked which makes them sometimes persecute the good. I think he meant that they should he afflicted. But they knew that before, said Mr. Brandon. They knew that earth was not paradise. Then you wish to prove that our Saviours words meant nothing. On the contrary; they were meant (among other things) to inform the first disciples that in their day would come the worst trouble that the world had ever known. And now it is over now the Christian nations are richer, wiser, health- ier, and stronger than other people. What do you mean by other people? All but professed Christians. Miss Tott was silent for a while, till seeming to remember a point that would yield her some triumph, she turned to Mr. Brandon and exclaimed, Pray, did you feel inclined during the shipwreck to think lightly of trouble, and to be as philosophical as you are to-day? I have often been in danger before, he answered, hastily; so has Graham. But what did you think? This was rather an unkind cut, and I thought, considering the circumstances, a little ungrateful. He was not willing to discuss the matter, so he tried to put her off by saying, I thought what a number of bones there were in the human frame. That was an odd reflection, surely. Not at all, if most of them are bruised, and you have nothing to lie on but planks and spars. And after that? she said, still ques- tioning him as if for his good and to elicit some better feeling. Too much to be repeated easily. My Yankee friend and I had a great deal to do; but I believe we both felt very strongly the sweetness of life. And what next? she continued, whereupon he gave way to lihe pressure and replied, I felt the baser part of my nature rising up within me; thoughts so distinct, 20 OFF THE SKELLIGS. that they seemed to come from without, buzzed in my ears like wasps. They rep- resented it as hard that the presence of worn-out women and helpless children should make my chance of life so much fainter; hunger, wet, fatigue and pain, things that had stood aloof from me before drew near, and made me feel their weight and power. They gnawed at my heart and chilled my blood. But I suppose you did not feel crushed? said Miss Tott, in the clearest tones of her high-pitched voice. He seemed to dislike this question ex- ceedingly, and yet to be determined to answer. What did you feel? she asked. I felt that this world was utterly gone by, but that the other world was not so near as it had often been in times of no danger at all. It was not within our grasp; there was something first to be felt and to be seen but though all was lost and as yet nothing gained I believed it would be gained. After that there caine a time of forgetfulness, I did not hear, or feel, or see anything. And all this while you were not over- whelmecl? I did not expect to live after the first twenty-four ho.urs, because the pitching of the raft put us in such imminent dan- ger, but I did not despair. Ah! well, we need uot argue about the meanin of words; some of us are better able to bear distress than others; indeed, some of us feel it far less. This was the very thin~ that I had an- ticipated when talking witb~ him some days before, but he did not seem to remem- ber it. Then the worst thing you felt when you be~ame exhausted, she said, was a kind of forgetfulness. Oh no, it was not! he exclaimed; and such a look of horror leapt out of his eyes as for the moment quite astonished us. lie seemed to be collecting his thoughts. We had been lashed together, he said, and I have some sort of recollection of going down and down an almost end- less flight of steps, and thinking that I must and would get to the bottom before I died. After that came a terrible time, when I seemed to be hemmed in by some- thin~ intensely black, and an awful thou~ht pressed me down, that I was dead and it was not what I had expected! I felt sure I was dead, and I appeared to go spinning on with that thought for years. Curiosity got the better of Miss Tott here. She quite forgot to point the obvi- ous moral. Was that in the yacht? she said. I think it must have been, because of the steps; besides what enabled me at last to struggle out of that blackness and hor- ror was the touch of something soft on my forehead. I gathered sense by it to per- ceive that I was still in the body, and I opened my eyes.~~ He paused, and a smile came over his face. I saw a vision, he said; I knew not what else it could be, and I saw light. Indeed! exclaimed Miss Toti. Here was an experience that just suited her. What was the vision? I saw a small hand a childs hand I thought it was at first, and it appeared to hover before my face. There was some- thing bright in it, through which the light was shining. The child the an0el whatever it might be was leaning over me, but I only saw the hand. It offered me bread, too; but my senses were so dim that I connected something sacramental with this bread and wine, and would not touch it because my hands and my lips were so begrimed. Then I went back into the blackness again and the hand floated away; but a voice, inexpressibly sweet and pathetic, appeared to be reason- ing with me. I heard the sound, but could not understand the words; and, after what seemed to be a mighty stru~le, I got my eyes open, and there was the hand again, and the long folds of a gown floated down at my side. Was it very beautiful? said Miss Tott, in a tone of pleasure and awe; was it in white? It was my sister, of course, exclaimed Tom; for he saw that she was completely mystified. It was Dorothea. Never shall I forget the look of aston- ishment and contempt she darted at me when she heard this; she drew up her head and set her lips as if she scorned me, and would not on any account have be- trayed such interest if she could only have known what this really meant. He certainly had not intended to mis- lead, and answered her last question with- out looking at her Yes, in white, I think. I did not see the face, and the hand appeared to hover before me till I came more to myself. Then I drank the wine and ate somnethino and was in this world again. Miss Tott attracted my attention the more strongly because she was the flr~t OFF TH~~ SKELLIGS. 21 Ierson I had met with who. admiring mis- I consider constancy all stuff, said ery, was very anxious to be thought a suf- Tom, unless it exists on both sides. ferer. She liked to talk about being Good heavens ! murmured Miss Tott. stricken, and also when she and I were For, proceeded this hardened young alone of the great expense it would be to man, legs and arms wont grow again; her to go into deep mourning again. but a jilted man has all the world before No doubt if it is a very fine and inter- him where to choose. esting thing to be stricken, many more Mr. Brandon laughed, but he looked un- people will be stricken than would be the easy, and the subject seemed to please case in the days when people believed that Miss Tott, who said to Tom, with droop- great afflictions were punishments for hem- ing eyelids nd pensive sweetness of cx- ous sins, and those eighteen were pression, We should hardly speak of thought by their neighbours much wicked- this, should we, Mr. Graham, before we er folks than themselves, know anything about it? Miss Tott did notc are to pursue the sub- Meaning, said Tom, that I know ject of the visionary hand. She retuined nothing about it. to her former thought, and said with a You a~e young, she replied, with a sigh, sort of tender, reTretful look at him. Some people feel things less keenly But not without experience; I have than others. been in love times out of number. I dont No doubt, he answered; and some mean to say that I have been refused at of us think it mean and cowardly to be present; that may be because I have not always looking at the dark side; if we re- yet gone the length of making an offer. fnse to look at it therefore, no wonder we When you do, may you escape that cannot see it. sorrow, she answered, in a tone that was On the contrary, others feel that a strange contrast to his banter. yearning for sympathy which makes it Mr. Brandon evidently winced under sweet to commune with some friendly and this talk: such an unmistakable twinge of feeling heart, said Miss Tott, sharply. dislike passed over his face that I ventured Sympathy is a skittish and perverse to change the subject by asking some ques- nymph; demands too much, and she gives tion relative to our rate of sailino-. nothing. When a soldier has lost his arm, lie looked up to answer with the air of if he were to go whinin~ about the world a man who feels himself tobe found out, lamenting over it everybody would despise but he took instant advantage of the oppor- him; but if he holds his tongue, and car- tun ity to get away, rising and saying that ries his empty sleeve carelessly, all the he would go and make some inquiries. girls are in love with him. His departure broke up the conference. We expect a soldier to be brave. Miss Tott said she should like to walk Certainly, and thus we help to make about. Tom offered his arm, and I ran him so. below to my cabin to take my finished There are many things which are far work down and bring up the children. more hard to bear than loss of limbs, said They were just awake after their morning Miss Tott, severely, and as if she claimed sleep; but before we had done dressing for herself a large share of them. them to come on deck, Tom knocked loudly We talk without book havino- no ex- at the door, exclaiming, heres a pretty perience in loss of limbs. I suppose dis- state of thin~s: the sea is rising a little, grace may be worse and remorse. I and Miss Tott begins to look very pale. am bound to say that he spoke with a cer- You had better come to her. tam hesitation, and added, I think it I met her coining down. 0 let me lie only honest to confess that I never bad down 1 she murmured, 0, this terrible anything to bear that I consider at all giddiness! comparable to the misery of carrying I gave her to Mrs. Brand, the usual timber about with me in the shape of thing followed; but I observed that she a leg or arm. However handsomely it bore it quite as well as other people. mi,,ht be made Im sure the joints would creak, he added, thoughtfully. I was not speaking of remorse, said CHAPTER XV. Miss Tott, I meant such things as lo~s of To his own master, he standeth or falleth. friends, disappointment of ones fondest How much people talk about their first wishes, a hopeless attachment, the death impressions of a foreign country. It was of its object, inconstancy. about six oclQck, and dark with thunder- Mr. Brandon was silent. clouds, and pouring with rain, when I was 22 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. told we had entered the French harbour, and were lying opposite to the Douane. My luggage, consisting of one little box, was landed, so was Miss Totts; and we waited on board till it had passed, sitting under umbrellas. Poor Miss Tott was fainting for air and longing to get away from the scene of her misery. Uncle Rol- lin, at the last moment, took alarm and de- clined to land, but said he would wait at Ilavre till we returned from Chartres. It was, therefore, a point of honor to be as quick as we could, and I found that Mr. Branclon and Tom had decided on our going on to Chartres that same evening; a cab was waiting to convey us on to the railway station. XYe had dined; but poor Miss Tott had eaten nothing since break- fast, so I made Brand give us a goodly basket of provisions to carry with us. We were a party of six, includina the children. Miss Tott and I were surprised to find ourselves in a decided mist, we had hardly expected mist out of England. The rain was uncommonly like English rain. The railway carriage had the same defect, this was disappointing; but we had the satisfaction of hearing the railway officials quarreling in real French. Nothing to be seen: rain, mist, thunder-clouds. We soon nnpacked our great basket of provisions. Miss Tott was terribly vexed at havin,, to eat an English pigeon pie and salad on French soil; and after that, slices of cake, also such a thoroughly English dish! and then Stilton cheese; and, lastly, straw- berries; but by ten oclock we had done all this with appetite, and then taken off the childrens hats and laid them on the seat to go to sleep. As the dusk came on the rain ceased, and Miss Tott and I gazed diligently out of the windows; but darkness, we were obliged to own, looked much the same everywhere. We saw hardly anything, even when we reached Paris; for the children woke up and cried most piteously. We were soon shut up in a room with numbers of people half of whom spoke as good English as ourselves, and then the officials, storming at Mr. Braridon and the parcels we wanted to have with us, hustled us into a carriage, where, to our disgust, we had to sit for at least ten minutes before the train start- ed. We slumbered while it was dark, and day had just dawned on a perfectly flat country, when we first saw the graceful spires of Chartres Cathedral. All very tired, some very cross, we drove to an hotel, and straightway went to bed till nine oclock, when I woke and peeped out. Ah, yes, this was foreign indeed I a fine broad place, houses with two or three tiers of windows in the roof, women with- out bonnets, the clatter of wooden shoes, and a vast amount of joyous jabbering. A big diligence at the door, with three white cart-horses harnessed abreast there- to. (It looked like a haystack on wheels, and was covered with a tarpaulin). A market and a fair going on, tables with smoking-hot coffee, and round loaves in the shape of a ring upon them; bakers boys bringing these round their arms, and round their necks, great heaps of apples, pears, late cherries, stacks of plums, stains of fruit all over the stones, great rugged melons that did not seem half ripe, tiny French men and French women sitting on them in their little blue pinafores and wooden shoes, and the sun pouring down over all as it never can in England so early in the morning. Inside, the windows swarmed with flies, and the floor was tiled: cheering sights, so foreign. Miss Tott and I dressed the children in their new clothes, then we rang, were con- ducted to a salon, where we found Tom and Mr. Brandon, and where we ate a re- rnarkable breakfast, consisting of fried potatoes, rice-pudding, eggs, rolls as long as our arms, boiled pi~eons, and wine. From Frasers Maazine THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMIS- SION. By JOHa PIGGoT, Just., F.S.A. DIsCOVERIEs of rare books and histori- cal MSS. like those at Lamport Hall, Nor- thants, in 1867, the seat of Sir Charles Isham, Baronet,* and in the following year at Crowcombe Court, Somerset, the seat of a branch of the ancient family of Carew,j showed the desirableness of a Commission to make enquiry as to the places in which MSS. and papers of gen * Ilere, in a lumber-room, a hitherto unknown edition of Shakespeares Venus and Adonis, dated 1599, was found bound up with a copy of The Pas- sionate Pitqrim of the same date, only one other copy of which was previously known. We refer our readers to Mr. Edmonds account of the discov- ery in the Gentlemans Magazine, II. 1867, p. 698; and I 1868, p. 217. Report qi time Gouncil of time Camden Society, 1868. The Director of this Society examined the 120 volumes of MSS. forming this important collec- tion. They were carefully preserved in a recess con- verted into a closet, and had not been inspected by any competent person within the memory of any One living. THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. 23 eral public interest are deposited. Such a Commission was appointed in 1869; in 1870 the First Report was issued, in 1871 the Second; and in the following paper we propose giving an account of some of the most interesting documents brought to light. The First Report was so successful that three editions, or 1625 copies, have been disposed of showing the interest taken by the general public in the matter. One hundred and eighty persons and heads of institutions expressed their wil- linguess either to co-operate with the Com- missioners, or requested their aid in mak- ing known the contents of their collec- tions; and the result was that a number of papers of great utility in the illustra- tion of history, constitutional law, science, and general literature, have been brought to light. The Commissioners in their First Report state that as far as their en- quiries have extended, very important and valuable materials have been discovered, illustrating some of the least known periods of the history of Great Britain, from the Saxon era down to the end of the seventeenth century. They hope that, with enlarged powers of compiling and publishing calendars of the more itnpor- taut papers that may be brought before them, they will be able to render a most essential service to the historical student, not only in this country, but throughout the civilized world. We now turn to their First Report. A valuable collection, almost unknown, was brought under the notice of the Commissioners. They were found in the House of Lords, but are not referred to in any printed Report of the contents of their lordships muniment rooms. They were brought to light by the late Mr. John Bruce, who was en- gaged. in an historical enquiry. A por- tion of these (29,507) have becim examined and arranged, and the Commissioners hope that the remainder will be treated in the same manner. Many of the papers found illustrate the Journals of the House of Lords, or rather are the original docu- ments to which constant reference is made in those time-honoured registers. No copy of a document was ever received by the Lords in evidence, and even the house of Commons sent the orLinals, retaining copies for themselves. Some important letters from Charles I. to his queen were found among these, and were the identical ones taken in his cabinet at Naseby, por- tions of which (detrimental to him) were published by the Parliament. The Com- missioners print several letters which were not noticed by the Parliament at all. Here was found also the original letter, wholly in the hsndwriting of Charles I., addressed to the House of Lords, May 11, 1641, recommending that the Earl of Strafford should be imprisoned for life rather than be executed, although he, the king, had satisfied tIme justice of tIme king- domo by the passing of the Bill of Attain- der against the earl. The Peers offered to return the letter, but he replied: My Lords, what I have written to you I shall be content it be registered by you in your House. In it you see my mind. I know you will use it to my honour. The origi- nal petition was found of Laud, Archbish- op of Canterbury, in his own handwrit- ing, while a prisoner in the Tower. He had been required to give the presentation of St. Leonards, Foster Lane, to a, Mr. George Smith, and he requests them to allow Mr. Smith to come, that he may ex- amine respecting his fitness. The Com- missioners note the discovery of a docu- ment of great national importance, viz. the original manuscript of the Book of Common Prayer, which was annexed to the Statute 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4. The Parliamentary Commissioners, in 1645, issued an order abolishing the Book of Conimon Prayer and Charles II., upon his restoration, took the earliest opportunity to re-establish the worship sanctioned by the Acts of Uniformity of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. In March 1661, he ap- pointed certain Commissioners to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and make such alterations as they thought fit. This altered copy was ordered to be appended to the Act, and so remained till the be- ginning of this century when a clergy- man, who was permitted to consult it, sev- ered it from the original roll. With it was found a volume, printed in 1636, con- taming about 690 MS. alterations, as well as some new forms of prayer. The Coin- mnissioners hope that the Books of Com- mon Prayer attached to time Act of Uni- formity of King Edward VI. and Eliza- beth may yet be discovered among the buried treasures of the House of Lords. The Duke of Rutlands Collection at Belvoir Castle contains 4,000 deeds of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, mmd fif- teenth centuries, largely used in Kicholss Ihstory of Leicesterslmire. There are also a number of household books of the fif- teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth cen- turies. Ameng the MS. volumes is a fine Psalter of the twelfth century on Vellum, adorned with illuminations. This is a magnificent work of English art. The Hatton collection was contained in 24 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. thirteen chests, full of documents of in- estimable value, in chaotic confusion. These have all been carefully arranged. Among the early deeds may be mentioned one of R., Earl of Warwick, (112353) another by Arnoul, Bishop of Lisieux (114182); Empress Matilda (1167); Ed- mund, son of Henry III. (1186) ; and a number of papal bulls. A careful list of the autograph letters will be found in the Report. One portfolio contains letters of Oliver Cromwell, Charles II., WilL m III., Queen Anne, Pedro II. Kino~ of Portn_al, Catherine Queen of Portugal, & c. Lord Mostyns collection contains a number of News Letters and private let- ters, chiefly from 1673 to 1632, of a highly interesting character; the News Letters are unsigned. The parliamentary news seems to have been obtained through the Clerks of Parliament, and it appears from one of the papers in the present collection that a number of coffee-house keepers were summoned before the House of Com- mons, and the Clerk of the House was for- bidden to furnish copies of the Minutes to be read at the coffee-houses. These News Letters are full of Court and City gossip, accounts of duals, murders, & e. We have notices of Nell Gwynue, of the Popish Plot, of Titus Oates standing in the pil- lory at Tyburn, of the great fire in the Temple (1678) when Mr. Ashmoles col- lection of curiosities was consumed, A private letter gives a long account of the trial of College, the Protestant joiner; mentions King Charless visit to Newmar- ket; the custom of bonfires, an~ burnin~ the Pope on the anniversary in November of Queen Elizabeths coronation ; pro- ceedings in the Court of Chivalry; the birth of the Prince of Wales, son of James ill, and the fee of 500 guineas to the mid- wife, & c. Lord Ilerries, of Everiugham Park, pos- sesses a cartulary of the monastery of S. Nicholas of Drax; a large collection of the original charters of the same house from 1083; fine Bible of the thirteenth century ; a quarto volume on vellum, written in the fourteenth century, con- taining the French poem by William de Wygetone called the Manuel des Pech~is; a magnificent antiphonarium of the fifteenth century on vellum, written for the use of the l\ietropolitan Church of York. The collection contains a number of dev.otional and liturgical MSS. of the fifteenth century, and a large collection of family correspondence of the early part of the eiuhteenth century. Th~ Shrewsbury papers consist of a number of charters, from Edward I. to Edward IV. throwing a good deal of light on the early topographical history of Eng- land, and the papers of Sir Gilbert Talbot, K. G., D?puty-Governor of Calais, under Henry VII. and ilenry VIII. Two of the latter refer directly to Perkyn Warbeck. There are original documents of Elizabeth of York, Catherine of Aragon, and Prince Henry (afterwards henry VIII.), Charles II. and James II., and three letters in the ~vriting of Thomas Wulcy. There is a deed of acluittance bctween King Henry VII. and Richard Gardyner, Alderman of London, on the return of a salte of golde with a cover stonding upon a morene gar- nyshed with perles and precious stones. This piece of plate had been pledged by King Richard to Gardyner for 66/. 13s. 4d. Amon~ the papers at Montacute Ilouse, Somersetshire, are interesting letters & c. of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies. Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh are rare; there is one here addressed by him to Sir Edward Phelipps, Master of the Rolls, beseechin~ him to give some end to the unchristian sute which Sanderson bath against me, & c. Mr. Ilorwood, who examined thi; collection, found that one bundle labelled Lew Popens consisted of original Council letters nnd depositions of witnesses and other valuable documents relauing to the Gunpowder Plot. These must have been at Montacute ever since the year 1612. The library of John Tollemache, Esq., of Helmiugham Hall, Suffolk, contains some rare MSS.; among them the splen- did Anglo-Saxon volume, King Alfreds translation of Oro~ius; Trevisas transla- tion into English of Bartholomew de Glan- villes work Dc proprieVtibes reruoi, a fine illuminated MS. on vellum; the only MS. known of Sir Geonerides, a long romance in English verse ; several volumes con- taming materials for the history of Eng- land in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies ; early MSS. containing the statutes to the end of Elward I. and statutes in French to 9 Henry VI.; and D:vinity is represented by several splendid MSS. of the Bible, and some of the Fathers and other works; six or seven volumes of the Fathers are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and some of them came from the Monastery of St. Osyth, in Essex. Most of the collections were formed by Lionel Tollemaclme, teusp. James I. Mr. hlorwood noted a letter of Charles II., to a lady, while an exile in Paris: It is, he says, perfect in composition and stately grace. THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. 25 The Duke of Manchesters collection at merous. One document bears reference to Kimbolton Castle contains letters of the insurrection headed in London by Wat Charles I., William III., Sophia, Electress Tyler, and at Cambridge by Edward Lye- of Hanover, Geor~,e her son (afterwards ter, the mayor, and JarLes de Grancetre. George I.) the great Marlborough, Prior, Of about the date 1381 there is a suppli- Addison, Charles James Fox, and horace cation addressed to the Kin in French, Walpoles to George Montague, 226 in setting forth that a great part of the number. At Blickling Ilafi, Norfolk, the houses belongin~ to the College in Cam- seat of the Marquis of Lothian, are some bridge had been burnt, and their muni- fine MSS. on vellum; a folio Psalter on inents carried away. In a description of vellum, written in Lombardic characters, books belonging to the College in 1400 with Anglo-Saxon glosses over many of there is this item The ceveuth book is a the words; a volume of Anglo-Saxon Bible, which Master John Kynne, Master homilies of the tenth century; a number of the College, bought at Northamptone, of copies of letters to Mr. Grenville, Lord at the time (1389) when the Parliament Halifax, and the Earl of Sandwich, from was there, for the purpose of reading John, second Earl of Buckiugharn, while therefrom in hall at the time of dinner; ambassador to the Court of St. Peters- and there is a r~d line at the beginning, burg, giving great insight to the Court of above the text, containing these words of Catherine II., its political and social in- the Epistle of Jeronynius to Paulinus, the trigues. At Crome Court, Worcestershire, Presbyter, & c.~ The descriptions of the the official papers of Sir Thomas Coventry, vestments, cops, relics, and jewels of the afterwards Lord Coventry, Lord Keeper of college, are fall of valuable and curious the Great Seal from 1626 to 1639, are pre- items. The horn thus described is still in served. The Earl of Macclesfields papers the possession of the college: Also a contain G~orge Stepucys correspondence, great horn in English called bagel, with 1694 to 1707, relating to the negotiations feet silver gilt, and the head of an emperor in which Stepucy was employed during at the end silver gilt, having also a silver this bnstling period, to the movements of cover, at the top of which are four acorns the allied armies, the Electors of Germa- silver gilt This horn was given to the ny, & c. Earl St. Germans, of Port Eliot, Guild of Corpus Christi by John Goldeorn, Cornwall, has letters of Gibbon the histo- one of its aldermen in the fourteenth cen- nan to the first Lord Eliot, which throw a tury. good deal of li~ht on his parliamentary Kings College. In this collection are career. The Earl of Zetlands collection several volumes of interesting original let- contains documents relating to the rebel- ters, chiefly of the sixteenth an(l seven- lion of 1745. The papers at Tabley House, teenth ceiituries, and a number of college Cheshire, consist of a vast amount of mat- accounts, containing curious items. Anoth- ter collected by Sir Peter Leycester (an er volume contain~ an account of the ex- ancestor of Lord de Tabley), on the histo- penditure on continuing the building of ry of Cheshire and of his own family. Sir the College Chapul in 23 and 21 Henry J. S. Trelawnys collection at Trelawne, VII. This has been overlooked in the Cornwall, contains a great number of an- printed history of the Chapel. cleat deeds and rolls relating to lands in Pernbrolce College. Here are a number Cornwall and elsewhere; also hundreds of of interesting deeds relating to the foqnd- letters to and by Bishop Trelawny (one of ress, Mary de St. Paul, Countess of Pem- the seven imprisoned bishops); and Mr. broke, papal bulls, royal licenses, & c. Almacks is rich in early deeds relating to There is a Book of Emptions of the Norfolk, Suffolk, Cheshire, and Lancashire, household of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, and has sonic important historical letters. from 18 Heiiry VIII. to 19 ilenry VIII., of Mr. II. T. Riley visited Cambridge, and considerable value and much interest. It examined the muniments arid papers in came to the college probably through its several of the colleges there. We note connection with Frainliugharn, Suffolk. some of the mo~t interesting items in his The inventories of plate and ornaments Report. Corpus Christi College: A num- (1488) in the Great Register are curious. ber of parchment Bede and other rolls, Mr. Riley, in his Report, gives extracts containing curious information relating to I from these. Another volume contains the Guild of St. Mary, at Cambridge. The copies of between 709 and 839 charters account books of this nuild are very inter- and deeds, mostly executed by En~lish esting, and begin in 1349. Mr. Riley gives sovereigns (King John more especially), items from these. The ancient deeds in between Edgar and the later Saxon Kings the possession of the college are very na- and the end of the reign of Edward I. 26 THE hISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. St. Johns College is rich in early deeds connected with the monasteries of Lille- churche (Kent), Ospringe (Kent), and Bromehall (Berks), the lands of which were granted as an endowment to the col- lege. Among these is the original grant of King John, in the third year of his reign, of the manor of Lillechurche to the Abbey of S. Mary of St. Sulpice, and the Prioress and Nuns, & c.; also a bull of Alexander III., sanctioning the founda- tion of the priory, and a bull of Pope Mar- tin V. (1520), sanctioning the appropria- tion of the houses of Lillechurche and Bromehall to the foundation of St. Johns College. There is also a Mortuary Roll, perhaps the largest known, in favour of Am- pelissa, a deceased prioress of Lillechurche (temp. Edward I.), 59 or 60 feet long; it is signed by about 363 religious houses in England, setting forth that the deceased shall have the benefit of their respective suifrages from that period. It is of great value as showing the current style of writ- ing in each religious house at the close of the thirteenth century. A brief from William, Bishop of Sabina (1217), solicits the alms of the faithful in favour of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist at Cambridge, which was unable from want of means to take in all the sick poor re- sorting thereto. All givers were to have forty days remission from penance. Sev- eral books contain accounts of expenses, furniture, & c., of Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, and foundress of the college, full of items of the most in- teresting character. One of these sets forth the contents of her wardrobe at Hat- field (temp. Henry VIII.); another is an inventory of all the furniture at hatfield. The inventory of her chapel stuff at Coleweston is very curious. There is a paper volume also, containing a detailed statement of the accounts of the exeen- tor~ of Lady Margaret to 1511, a docu- ment of considerable interest. Queens College, the Re~istry of the University, and St. Peters College, con- tain account books and papers of great interest. In the Registry are origin~ I letters, of high historical value, of the times of Elizabeth and James. Mr. Riley prints an interesting Computus or Bur- sars Roll of St. Peters Colle~e, 13889, which throws great light upon the require- ments and usages of scholastic life at that period. Trinity College possesses, besides fine charters, Bursars Books, containing cu- rious ehtries. Turf was the principal fuel, and Ely turfs were considered the best, as being cut of the largest sizes. In 1337 the first clothing for the scholars seems to have been found by the Prior of St. Neots: Be it remembered that the Master re- ceived from the Prior of St. Neots for the robes and furs of 35 scholars for the 11th year, 411. 7s. 2d. Knives and wine are frequently entered as being given as presents for gaining the good will of the great and their dependants in those days. In 1342 the Bursar expended 18s. 2d. for knives and pencases and inkhorns given to our friends at Court. Mr. Riley says that from the number of sollars, so- lers, or sun-chambers (fitted with bay win- dows probably) Kings Hall was coin- mouly known in Cambridge (at least during the fourteenth century) as Sol- lars hall; and that this is the long- sought college which Chaucer mentions in the Reves Tale, as Soleres Hall, and of which he is supposed to have been a member. The documents and papers at Westrnin- ster Abbey are of great value and interest. Mr. Burtt has for some time been engaged in arranging and examinin0 them, and it is hoped that some may be printed. We note one or two curious items Letter of Maud de Clare, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, to the Prior and Convent of Westminster, hoping they will not take in ill part the long stay whi2h the friar Dan Henry is making with her. To let him leave her with the relic which they had allowed her to have for so long before she was better than at present would be a great discomfort to her. Inventory of the jewels ajmd precious stones belonging to the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and others belonging to the Monastery of Westminster., taken away and borrowed by the king for the purpose of raising money thereon, and promised to be re- turned within a year from Michaelmas (51 [henry III.). A list of precious stones, apparently supplied by Roger, a gold- smith of Westminster, for a goldeu image (temp. Edward I.). Grant by King Richard II. to the Abbot & c. of Westminster, of a certain ring with a precious ruby inserted therein, for the shrine of the Confessor, with the condition that he might use the said ring when in England; but that it was to be placed on the shrine when the king went abroad, and to be used for the coronation of the kings successors. In the collection of the Dean and Chap- ter of York is the Oath Book, or Text of the Gospels in Latin, a quarto volume written on vellum at a date prior to the Norman Conquest, on which the Canons 27 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. of the Cathedral made oath from early University of Edinburgh is the Protest times. This exquisitely written volume, by the nobles of Bohemia and Moravia, Mr. Riley says, is of inestimable value. It addressed to the Council of Constance on has additions to it as to relies in the thir- September 2, 1415, in reference to the teenth century, a list of relics in the burning of John Hu s and Jerome of church of Sherburn, in Saxon, being Prague. This is authenticated by one added. There are also measures of land hundred signatures and as many seals, and in Saxon, and part of a homily of Wulstan was bei~neathed to the University in 16o7 in the same language. by Dr. William Guild, of Kings College, From Dr. Stuarts Reports on the col- Aberdeen. There are a number of im- lections in Scotland we find that valuable portant Scottish State Papers in the Ad- materials for history remain compar- vocates Library, Edinburgh. atively unnoticed. The Duke of Hamil- We now turn to the Second Report, tons collection at Hamilton Palace con- which equals, if not exceeds, the first in tains historical papers of great value. interest and importance, and will first cx- Among them are twelve volumes of origi- amine the collections to note the monastic nal letters and State Papers on affairs be- treasures contained in them. Among the twixt Scotland and England in the time MSS. of the Right Hon. Countess Cowper, of James Y. and his daughter, Queen at Wrest Park, Beds, is a fine folio four- Mary. TL~ey probably belonged to the teenth-centnry Cartulary of Crowland English Privy Council, then established at Abbey, made origi.ially in the reign of York. The documents at Gordon Castle, Edward III.; a register or breviary of the the seat of the Dnke of Richmond, con- charters granted to the Abbey of St. John sists of a valuable series of the charters Baptist, Colehester (thirteenth century), of the numerous lands and baronies of and the. Leger Book of the same abbey which the tamnily became possessed, and a (fifteenth century). A number of char- most imposing collection of bonds of man- ters and ancient documents from the rent friendship, and alliance, by the lead- twelfth to the sixteenth century, connected ing families of the north of Scotland, from with the Monastery of Tywnrdreth, Corn- 1444 to 1670, testifying, as Dr. Stuart oh- wall, are in Lord Arundell of Wardours serves, the enormous followin0 which could collection. Lord Leigh has a very vaIn- be relied on by the head of the Gordons. able Leger Book of the Monastery of There is also a collection of letters of con- Stoneley-in-Ardcn (fourteenth century), siderable political importance addres~ed to compiled by Thomas Pype (or Thomas de the Duke of Richmond by different corre- Weston), the eighteenth abbot. The char- spondents in 1744, 1745, and 1746. The ter chests of the family of iNeville, of Earl of Dalhousie, at Brechin Castle, has a Holt, Leicester, contain twenty ancient fine manuscript of Forduns Chronicle, with grants to the Monastery of Bradeley. A Bowers continuation, which Dr. Stuart pedigree of the Carringtons of the North says it would be very desirable to collate shows that Sir John Carrington (a parti- with the MSS used by ilearne and with san of Richard II.), fearing henry IV., those in the Libraries of the Advocates fled abroad, and assumed the name of and the University of Eiinburgh, and in Smyth. After some time he returned and the British Museum. This fine copy is made himself known to the Abbot of St. distinguished from others by illuminated Osyth, in Essex, and lived with him there. initial letters. It is of the date circa 11S0.~ Of books, Colonel Carews (of Crow- The late Bishop Kyles MSS. at Buckie combe Court) MS. copy of the Evangelia contain seventy-two original letters of according to St. Jerome, a splendid man- Queen Mary of Scotland, addres~ed for uscript of the tenth century, is especially the most part to James Beaton, Archbishop deserving of notice Mr. T. Daffus hardy of Glasgow, and an immense collection of gives a careful analysis of its contents. letters and papers connected with the ec- Lady Cowper has a fine folio volume of clesiastical history of Scotland from 1597. Higdens Po lycronicon, in Latin (given by A MS. History of the Scottish College at John Clyate to Windsor Herald, who be- Paris, in the library of the Roman Catho- qucathed it to J. Wrythes, Garter King- lie Bishop of Edinburgh, contains one of at-Arms), and a fifteenth century folio the earliest and most authentic portraits volume, containing an English metrical of Mary Queen of Scots, executed circa version of the Qttestions of Sydrac. Besides 1565, in Indian ink. In the library of the a fifteenth century Tretyse of the Seven * Mr. W. F. Skene is an essay upon t1~e Poyntes of Trewe Love, Mr. Ormnshy Gore preparing has a letter book of Richard de Bury, varioUS copies of Fordrmn which have come under Bishop of Durham, containing copies of his observaijon. 28 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. letters by and to different Popes to and Some curious details respecting an Eug- by various Kings of England and other lish nunnery in the fifteenth c2ntury are countries of great interest. This voL g:ven from three ancient rolls of the Nun- time has been entrusted to Mr. Horwood nery of St. Rtdegund, in Jesus College, for careful examination. Cambridge. The following is a transla- A letter written by William de Wyke- tion of the original of t~me first of these: ham is kept in the Wardens Lodge. New ~ Cambridge. The Account of Da~ne A~ - College, Oxford. It is the only specimen nes Bana~ter, Treasurer and Raceiver of of the handwriting of the illustrious man t5e houses there of the Blessed Mary and (except his signature) existing, and is sup- St. Radegunda, from the Eve of St. Mi- posed to refer to the radsom of the Duke chael the Archangel, in the twcuty-eighth of Bourbon, who had been taken prisoner year of the reign of King Henry the at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. It begins: Sixth (141~); to the Eve of St. Michael Tres chier S:re Veuilliez savoir que the Archangel thence next ensuiu~ in the yci Dymenge je envoiny pur Canal ; and twenty-ninth year of the same Kug, being is addressed To my very dear John Lord for one year. Roger Thde, of hlyntone, of Cobehame. The following is a trans- was paid 3s. Sd. for weaving 77 ells of lation: Very dear Sir Be pleased to cloth for the livery of the servants. Also, know that this Sunday I sent for Canal, for eight warpes (parcels of four) of fish the vadlet of Simon Bachel, who came to called lyng, bought of John Antylle, at me at Shene, where I spoke to him of the Ely Fair, at 81. the warpe, u~akin~ 5s. 4d.; exchange of which you know; and this with six warpes of codde at 6 1-21. the Monday he sent a vadlet to Paris, and warpe. For I quarter and 2 1-2 bus. of charged him to be there with all the haste oatmeal bought this year for the kitchen he may for the same reason. And the said at 81. the bushel, 7s. For 32 pmillets Symon or Bartholomew Spifanie, his fath- bought at Stantum, 2s, SI. For 4 quar- er, will send to their companions, at what- ters of pease bought of John Presote, lls. ever place the Pope shall be, to have you For a lamb bought of the clerk of St. An- speedly paid the sum of which it was tonys, 61. For two sheep bought of spoken between us; so that there may be Master John Herrvsone, chaplain, 12d., no need for you to ~,o or send to Paris for and no more, the rest being forgiven to the this reason. For assuredly you will find Society. For a horse bought at the Fair the said payment before you in the hands of St. John the Baptist, 98. 61. For an- of the said companions, at whatever place other horse bought of Richard Baker, of the Pope shall be found. Very dear Sir, Bumstede, 4s For a sheep bought may the Holy Spirit keep you in health. I of Richard Sexteyne, 61. . . . For the Written at Shene, in great haste, this making and mending of horse-collars by Monday, upon my setting out. WILLAM one man hired for five days, 221. (or 4 l-2d. DE WYKELIAME. a day). . . . Moneys paid to our lady the A deed in the charter chests of the fami- Prioress and the whole convent, for their ly of Neville of liolt, dated July 5, 16 Rich- clothing this year, in part payment of 66s. ard II., estahlishes a new fact in the life of 81., 438. 81., and no more. Under the the great founder of New Colle~e, viz, that head of Ilospitiumn, or Guests Hall, we he made a considerable settlement of have the large sum of 111. 78. 41., for property in Oxfordshire on some of his bread, ale, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, kindred, pork, hens, chickens, fish, & a., to be Wyclif was born in the same year (1321). eaten in that place, so that the nunnery Viscount Dillon, of Dychley, has a very did not neglect the duties of ho~pitaiitv. valuable volume, written at the end of the A cow, bought for tha Guests Hall. cost fourteenth century, containin0 Wyclifs 6s. 81. Under the head of Data, or Pres- translation of the Gospels of SS. Matthew ents, we find 12d. entered for a crane and Mark, with commentaries in English. (grure) bought and given to the Chancel- This copy has passa~es from Grostbte on! br of the University of the town of Cam- the abuses of the papal system. Lord J bridge, for his frIendship in divers matters Dillon has also a small folio, circa 140J, of of our lady, the same being to the advan- Wyclifs translation of the New Testament ta~e of the Community. Among Miscel- Some of the rolls of Queens College, Ox: laneous Payments we select, For the sal- ford, have been quoted by the late Pro- ary of Robert Palmere, conf~ssor of the fessor Shirley to prove the residence of 1 adies this year, as in divers preceding John Wyclif in various years between 1363 years, 6s. 81. For the salary of Master and 138J; but the question cannot be set- John Herrysone, chaplain, celebrating tled without further particulars. mass for the ladies the whole time of THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. 29 this account, lOOs. . For the pay of in hail, circa 1397: On Saturday a Bedel John Euersdone. hired to plough the whole (of the University) came to dine with the time of account, 26s. 6d. Also, for the Fellows. On the same day came the farm- pay of John Wyllamessone, shepherd, er of Radelyve (Radcliffe, Bucks), the hai- with Sd., the price of one pair of boots luff and miller of Tynchwyke (Tingewick, this year, 20s. Sd. For the pay of Joanna Bucks), the reeves of Awitone now Alton ( Graungyer, one of the handmaids of our Barnes, Wilts), and Sterte (Wilts), to dine lady (the Prioress), including 3s. 4d. given with the Fellows. P. 6. On Thurs- to her as a reward for provisional duties, day came three carpenters to dine with the 13s. 4d. The receipts of the house, ac- Fellows. On Friday came the farmer of cording to this roll, amounted to 891. Os. Hekfield to dine with the Fellows, his ser- 22 1-4d.; but according to the third roll, vant dining with the servant~. P. 25. thirty years later in date, these had fallen On Sunday W. Broun, the stonemason, to 311. iSs. 8 1-2d. came to dine with the Fellows, and nuoth- In a list of the Masters of Gonville and er labourer to dine with the servants. On Cams College, Cambridge, is this passa~e the same day came to dine with the Fel- (trans.) : Be it remembered that A.D. lows a certain vadlet of Master Nicholas 1465 died Edmond Shyreff after the Feast Wykhain, and Thomas Glasier (the gh - of St. Michael; against whom at the time zier), came to supper with the Fellow,. of his election as Warden no slight oppo- On Thursday came a poor priest of Essex sition was formerly made by N. Bothe, af. (Yssexia) to supper with the Fellows. terwards Bishop of Exeter, who factiously On the same day came a charcoal burner attempted to usurp to himself the office of (carbonarins) to dinner. Subsequent en- Warden. But the ambition of this man tries record that a brickmaker, a tiler, a was far from prevailing; although in the skinner, a Hermit, two women of home- meantime he most disgracefully made chirche, and a woman whofitted the nibs away with the best cup and the best piece and the boardeloths, dined with the Fel- of silver plate, together with as much lows on different occasions. At the end of money as he could scrape together. As, a list of jewels belonging to the same col- to what was afterwards restored when he lege is this memorandum, in Latin, Be it had reached a flatter preferment we are in remembered that AD. 1456, on the day of ignorance. Mr. Riley points out that St. Cecilia the Virgin and Martyr (Nov. the Christian name of Booth, Bishop of 22), the Venerable Father, Master Thomas Exeter, Was John, and he attained to that Gascoigne, of the diocese of York, Profes- di~nity in 1475, seven years before Shy- sor of Holy Theology, gave to this college rells election to the Wardenship. of the Blessed Mary of Winton, in Oxford, The charters of Exeter Coile~e, Oxford, to the honour of God and of his ~lorions show that the foundation absorbed Bed- Mother Mary, and of all saints, the relics ford, Castle, Cheker, Culverd, Fragon, underwritten : A portion of the sepul- Godstowe, Hambury, Peter, Seheld, Scot, chre of God; of the place where Christ and St. Stephen Halls. sweat blood; of the place where the Bless- Mr. Rileys description of ~he documents ed Mary breathed forth her spirit; of the of New College, Oxford, makes us hope flesh of St. Paul; a bone of the Blessed that some of them will be carefully exam- Mary Magdalene; a bone of St. Vincent med. lie says that the Liber Senescalli the Martyr; a bone of St. Ambrose the Coquina~ (or Book of the Steward of the Doctor; two small bones of St. Bri~it Kitchen), beginnin~ cirm~a 1386, contains (Bir,ittre) the Widow; a portion of the the names of all the members of the Col- tomb of St. Gregory the Pope. lege who dined in hall each day, who dined Of collections of documents which have with them, and in the margin there are a only been partially examined, and which vast number of notes, many very indis- are likely to contain papers of more than tinct, and others, though distinct, very mi- local or family history, we may mention nutely written; all which, no doubt, would those of Lord Arundell of Wardour (con- well repay a thorough examination, as taming 8,000 or 9,000 separate documents), throwing light not only on the earliest his- Charles Berington, Esq., of Little Malvern tory of the college, but at least to some Court, and the Ormonde munimnents at extent upon the manners and usages of Kilkenny Castle. Of the latter Mr. I. J. the day. From one of the books called Gilbert says: These archives, as yet un- Liber Senescalli A ulce (Book of the Hall arranged and uncatalogned, are rich in Steward), an office taken by the Fellows unique original documents, and constitute in turns, we take some entries, which show an invaluable series for elucidating the the variety in the status of persons dining history of the numerous important aflairs 30 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. in which representatives of the Ormonde and contains letters from Buckiugham, line were enga,ed from the twelfth to the Secretaries Lake, Calvert, Naunton, and fifteenth century Conway, the Earls of Suffolk, Middlesex, Important sixteenth century MSS., men- and Nottingham; and last, not least, letters tioned in the Report, are contained in from James I. and his daughter Elizabeth Lord Caithorpes collection. These are of Bohemia. More than five hundred of known as the Yelverton MSS., formed by these letters are catalogued in the Report. Robert Beale, Clerk of the Council to Mr. Fitzmaurice points out that the most Queen Elizabeth, and many important pa- interesting is Jamess letter to the Coin- pers relatin~ to Mary Queen of Scots are missioners for the trial of Sir Walter Ra- contained in them. Documents relating to leigh. The king tells them he has read the same century are in the collections of their letter, and objects to both the courses Messrs. Bromley Davenport and Cottrell which they propose. A narrative of his Dormer. A MS. found by Mr. W. H. Tur- proceedings not sufficient, and a public ner, of Turi Street, Oxford, now in the calling of him before the Council will make Bodleino, is an exceedingly interesting ii- him too popular, and will be too much honour lustratien of the usa0es of the period. It for him. He recommended that he should is an inventory, circa 1551, of the effects be called before those who have hitherto of John, Viscount Lisle, and Earl of War- examined him, and charged, and after the wick, afterwards Duke of Northumber- sentence for his execution a declaration land, beheaded in 1553. The destination can be issued! of all the articles is given; and it will sur- In the collection of Mr. Ormsby-Gore prise many to learn that the old coats (of Brogyntyn, Salop) there is a vellum were chiefly given to his sons, the old shirts roll thirty feet long, showing the funerall were cut up to make handkerchiefs for his proceedin,, of Q u~een Anne from Denmark lordship; articles lost or stolen when stay- House in the Stro~de to Westminster Ab- ing at different houses are duly recorded; bey the 27 daie of May 1619, giving the and it is quite evident that economy was order of the procession with banners, & c., by no means unstudied in this noblemans beautifully coloured. Among the letters establishment. A number of entries in of this period in this collection is a copy, the MSS. of the Corporation of Abingdon circa 1621, of one from James I. to Secre- relate to payments made to players. We tary Calvert, reproving the Commons transcribe a few of these. 1551. Item. about their assertion of their privileges. Geven in reward to my Lord of Wostars They said it was their inheritance, the (Worcesters) players vis. xd. Item, geven monarch that it was by the grace and per- in reward to therle of Darbes players vs. mission of his ancestors. Here we have 1580. Item, paid to my Lord of Shros- the hi~h regal ideas of the Stuarts which bures playars vis. 1579. Item, geven in occasioned the downfall of their house. reward to the Lord Barcleys plnyars, at Mr. Fitzmaurice states that since the the commandment of Mr. Mayot, mayor, publication of the First Report, the im- and by the hands of Mr. Leonell Bostock mense collection of Mr. Harvey, of Ickwell vs. Item, geven the tomblars that plad Bury, Beds, of printed pamphlets, broad- befor Mr. Mayor and his company in re- sides, & c., relating to the political history ward iiis. ixd. Item, paid to therle of of the seventeenth century, has been cata- Baths playars in reward vs. There are logued. He says, It is probably as coin- many entries of this nature, showing that plete a collection as any can be of the pub- the worshipful mayor and corporation of lications of that time relating to the cur- the borough were not above witnessing rent events of the day, and it is luckily also such dramatic representations. in an admirable state of preservation. We now select and arrange in chrono- Passing on to the reign of Charles I. we logical order the most interesting docu- find in the report of Lord Wrottesleys ments in the Report, relating to the great MSS. an evidence that Charles was not events of the seventeenth century, so as to much better than his father in the sale of form a series of new illustrations of the dignities: London, near Essex Gate, 1632. history and manners of a most eventful Sir William Devereux to Sir Hugh Wrot- period. tesley. Understands that somehody had The Camden Society are to be congratu- possessed him that Sir Thomas Blother, of lated in having just published a selection the Privy Chamber, offered him to be a from the valuable MSS. of the Hon. G. M. baronet for 8001., and that the King would Fortescue, of Dropinore. The collection make many for 2001. or 3001.; that the King seems to have been made by John Packer, was reserved; one offered 8001., and could Secretary to the Duke of Buckinghain, not get it. Thought he had performed the THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. 31 office of a brother in getting it for 5001. will take up some weeks, if not months, If he had not been brother-in-law, and a and then yon may suppose what time they descendant of the founder of the Garter, will take up in the thorough r~formation. he had not gotten it so low. Nine years of the grievances. The great business of after J. Skeffin~ ton writes to Walter Wrot- the week has been the raising of the 100,- tesley, March 6, 1641, offering a baronetcy, 0001. for the maintenance of the Kings ar- the King having given a warrant with my and the relief of the northern counties. liberty to nominate a gentleman whom he The money is borrowed some part from or I think fit; gives him the first offer for the City of London; 50,0001. is offered to 3001.; hut six days after Thomas Pudsey be lent by one Mr. Hamson, one of the writes to tell Walter not to think of the fermors of the Customs; for so many thou- baronetcy. It is thought those which sand pounds that shall be lent they are to have been made shall be cauld in question, be secured hy bond of some gentlemen of and nothing shall be done but by Parlia- the House until the Act be passed, and ment. The King is gone, as we heard, for then the gentlemen are to have in their Yorke, and so for Scotland. Many of the bonds. Yesterday the ~reat charge the Lords have been with him to intreat him House of Commons has against the Lord to come to the toune, but all will not do. Lieutenant of Ireland was delivered to the It is reported that he will not come to the Lords in the Painted Chamber by Mr. toune until the Queen doth return, and Pim. About a year and a half after this that she bath made him take an noth a demand was made for college plate in (oath) bnt he has taken the prince along support of the monarchical cause. Ac- with him, which the Parliament are very cordingly we find in Mr. Rileys report on sorry for it. A month before Pudsey the MSS. of Exeter College, Oxford, sev- writes: Straffords tryal will he to-mor- eral letters and papers relating to this de- row senet. It is thought he will not come mand. The Rector and Fellows sent a pe- off well, for the axe or the rope may sarve tition to the King that they considered his turne. The Bishop of Oxford is dead, themselves bound to keep ther plate. But and our bishop is not well. I think all on being reminded that the common- have quesie stomachs, for they stand upon wealth of learning was in danger, and their good behaviour; for in the House the colleges themselves not likely to out- some are for bishops and some for none, live his Majesty, if he shall be destroyed and if. there be any they are to be allowed in this rebellion, they submitted. The a partickelar stipant, so that their pride following receipt was forwarded them: will be abated. The Prince of Oranges Received of the Rector arid Fellowes of son is to come over very shortly and marry ye Colledge of Exeter, in Oxford, in plate with our Kings eldest daughter; the right- for his Majestys service, by them present- ings are drawn all redy. On February ed as followeth: in white 2081b. 4oz. Sdwt.; 11, 1641, Thomas Crompton says : On for guilt plate 381b. Ooz. 3dwt.; total, Tuesday, as it is reported, 4000 Kentish 2461b. Soz. ldwt. (Signed) Win. Park- men, horse and foot, caine thro London, hurst, Thos. Bushell. The college bad and went to the Parlt. House. They bad already given the King 3001. in the previ- all papers in their hatts, but the super- ous year. The Rector informed Mr. Riley scription as yet to us unknown . It is im- j that of the ancient college plate, a silver agined they came on behalf of Sir E.Der- saltcellar and an ostrich egg, set in silver ing, Knight of the Shire, many being sorry gilt, are the only articles which survived for the censure and imprisonment upon I the requisition. From an Inventory Book him. On December 10, same year, he of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, for says, The King is pleased with the enter- 1610, it seems that Fellows entered their tainment in the City. Rewards and boa- rooms partly furnished by the college. ours for the City. In three cloister chamber, now Mr. Gor- Among the letters of the Dryden family seltons. Imprimis, a fayre standing bed- in the possession of Sir Heary Dryden,~sted, with carved valiance, and a testerne Bart. (of Canons Ashby, county N& rth-1 waynscotted and a truckle-bed under it, ampton), is a letter dated Nov. 26, 1640, with mats and cords to both. The latter from Westminster. Sir John Dryden was for the scholar, as, according to the writes to his uncle, Richard Knio~htley, original statutes, the scholars slept in a that he shall have his prayers, tho he can bed placed below the Fellows. not be so serviceable either to him or the Sir George Osborn, Bart. of Chicksands, country that bath set him (Dryden) in that Beds, has a most interesting collection of place of trust. . . . I suppose that the letters and papers relating to the defence petitions that come from several couaties of Castle Cornet, in Guernsey, during the TilE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY. He is little past fifty. You are very hard ~n him.~~ On the contrary, I am sorry for him. You will always find it good for him to do whatever suits yourself. Alick! said his sister, mournfully, you have never forgotten or forgiven my girlish bits of neglect after your wound. No, Bessie, he said, holding her hand kindly, it is not the neglect or the girlish- ness, but the excuses to me, still more to my uncle, and most of all to yourself. They are what make me afraid for you in what you are going to take upon yourself. She did not answer immediately, and he pursued, Are you driven to this by dislike to liv- ing at Bishopsworthy? If so, do not be afraid to tell me. I will make any arrange- ment, if you would prefer living with Jane. We agreed once that it would be too expen- sive, but now I could let you have another hundred a year. As if I would allow that, Alick! No, indeed! Lord Keith means you to have all my share. Does he? There are more words than one to that question. And pray is he going to provide properly for his poor daughter in the West indies? I hope to induc? him to take her into favor. Eb! and to make him give up to Cohn Keith that Auchinvar estate that he ought to have had when Archie Keith died? You may be sure I shall do my best for the colonel. Indeed, I do think he will con- sent to the marriage now. You have sacrificed yourself on that ac- count? he said, with irony in his tone that he could have repented the next mo- ment, so good-humored was her reply, That is understood, so give me the merit. The merit of, for his sake, becoming a grandmother. You have thought of the daugh~rs? Mrs. Comyn Menteith must be older than yourself. Three years, said Bessie, in his own tone of acceptance of startling facts, and I shall have seven grandchildren in all; so you see you must respect me. Do you know her sentiments? I know what they will be when we have met. Never fear, Alick. If she were not married, it might be serious; being so, I have no fears. Then came a silence, till a halt at the last tt~tion before Bath roused Alick again. Bessie, he said, in the low voice the stoppage permitted, dont think me un- kind. I believe you have waited on purpose to leave me no time for expostulation, and what I have said has sounded the more harsh in consequence. No, Alick, she said, you are a kind brother in all but the constructions you put upon my doings. I think it would be better if there were more difference between our ages. You are a young guardian, over anx- ious, and often morbidly fanciful about me during your illness. I think we shall he hap- pier together when you no longer feel yourself responsible. The tables turned, muttered Alick. I am prepared for misconstructions, added Bessie. I know it will be supposed to be the title; the estate it cannot be, for you know how poor a property it is; but I do not mean to care for the world. Your opinion is a different thing, and I thought you would have seen that I could not be in- sensible to such dignified kindness, and the warmth of a nature that many people think cold. I dont like set speeches, Bessie. Then believe me, Ahick. May I not love the fine old man that has been so kind to me? I hope you do, said Alick, slowly. And you cant believe it? Not with Lady Temple before you; and hers was really an old man. Do not talk of her or Sir Stephen either. No, Bessie, he added, more calmly after a time, I may he doing great injustice to you both, but I must speak what it is my duty to say. Lord Keith is a hard, self-seeking man, who has been harsh and grasping toward his family, and I verily believe came here bent on marriage, only because his brother was no longer under his tyranny. He may not be harsh to you, because he is past his vigor, and if he really loves you, you have a power of governing; but from what I know of you, I cannot believe in your loving him enough to sni~ke such management much better than selfish manceuvring. Therefore I cannot think this marriage for your real welfare, or 32 THE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION.~ 33 a fearful carnage, leaving upwards of 20,000 rest, translated from the French by Mr. dead, wounded and prisoners. The writer of Fraser: the letter afterwards visited the ground and was shown the windmill in which the King got to Fans, 10th March, 1649. see the battle, and the hawthorn bush where Having received his letter by Pooley, and seen Oliver placed himself for the like purpose. by it the assurances of the continuance of the Marquesss affection for the service of the King, In the same volume is a curious account her son, as he had always shown for that of the of the living of the writers grandfather at late King, her husband, whose murder ought to Standon: arouse in all his servants the passion of seeking Walter Lord Aston, grandfather to the present ~ll means to avenge a death so abominable, she lord, married the Lady Mary Weston. His doubted not that he would be well pleased to find opportunities, and that for that effect he father was many years ambassador in Spain. would do all that lay in his power, and conjured The estate of Standon coming to him through him to unite with all those of his nation who his wife, a descendant of the great Sir Ralph j regarded that death with just indignation, and Sadler, he removed thither and there began his magnificent way of living; he had 101 persons to forget all past differences. in his family. The writer resided there for i Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, the Queen. three or four months every summer, from the i of Hearts, waf the eldest daughter of time he was six until about his fourteenth year. I James I., and married, in~ 1613, Frederick, The table was served with three courses, each Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia. of twenty dishes; and these were brought up by Of ten letters we select this : twenty men, who stamped up the great stair I like thunder at every course. My lord had four servants behind his own chair. He was very curious in his wine; but first of all drank at one draught a whole quart either of malt drink or wine and water, as a remedy for stone and gravel. At all the inns he lodged at in travel- ling they kept a quart glass called my lord As- tons glass. Sir Edward Southcote saw one at the Altar Stone at Banbury not many years ago. The servants all dined together in the hall, and what was left was thrown together into a tub, which two men took on their shoulders to the court gate, where every day forty or fifty poor people were served with it. When my lord did not go hawking in the afternoon, he always played at ombre with his two sons for an hour, and at four oclock returned to a covered seat in his vineyard. There he sat alone, and none durst approach him. At five oclock his chariot, with a pair of his six grey Flanders mares (the chariot was made so narrow that none could sit by him) took him a trole about the park for five or six miles. He returned at seven, and by eight would be in bed. He always lay in bed without pillow, bolster, or night-cap. Winter and summer he rose at four, and entertained himself with books till it was time to go a-hunt- ing or h~ wking at wild ducks. He would never allow any but hunted venison at his table. Every day but Sunday one buck was killed at the least, but most commonly a brace. He never made or returned any visit, the court and address of that county being made to him. There are thirteen letters by Charles I. in the muniments of the Duke of Mont- rose at Buchanan Castle; but as these are of no particular interest, we pass on to note those addressed to James Marquis of Montrose, by Queen Henrietta Maria, and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia sister of Charles I. One letter from Henrietta Maria will suffice as a specimen of the LIVI~G AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1201 The Hagh, 9th December, 1649. Had received the Marquiss of the 4th of November this last week, and the next day, by Sir William Fleming, one from the King of the same date from Jersey; who assured her he was not changed in his affections nor his design, which he would show to the world very suddenly. Robert le Diable (her son Prince Rupert) is about Sillie with seven good ships. She doubted not but the Marquis had seen by that time the proclamation against Morton and Kinnoull, and all the adherents of that detestable bloodie murderer and excommunicated traitour, James Gream. The Turks never called the Christians so. In a P.S. the Queen adds Oulde Bramford says lie is nowtoo oulde to be a knave, having been honest ever. We observe from another part of the Report that Sir C. Cottrell was steward of the household to the Queen of Bohemia, and Mr Cottrell-Dormer (of Rousham, near Oxford) possesses runny interesting letters and papers relating to the residence of the royal family abroad. A very interesting collection of letters and papers relating to the Cromwell fam- ily is in the possession of Mrs. Prescott (uee Cromwell Russell) of Oxford Square. This lady is a lineal descendant of the Protector, and possesses two swords used by him, a hat worn when he dissolved the Long Parliament, a beautiful cabinet of Florentine mosaic, presented to him by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and a medi- cine cabinet of black wood with silver cups. Among the letters we note one, dated June 15, 1655 : Order to Mr. Waterhouse to pay Mr. Robert Walker 241. for a draught of his Highuesses pic- ture (Signed, Simon Cannon), and the re- ceipt below, si0ned by H. Walker. 1658, 34 TilE HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION. January 18. Return, signed by the Earl of Themond and others, of the revenues of public institutions in Ireland, and an account of the 16,5001. remitted by or- der of his Highness and Council to be dis- tributed among the poor distressed Prot- estants of Piedmont, & c., perfected by S. Morland durino the time of his abode in Geneva, in qualitie of his Highnesss Com- missioner Extraordinary for the affairs of the Valleys. Among the papers of Clare College, Ca~nbridge,is an order, signed by the Protector, July 1, 1652, stating, These are to char0e and require you, upon sight hereof; not to quarter any offi- cers and sooldiers on any of the cOlled,~es, balls, or other houses belonging to the University of Cambridge, nor to offer any injury or violence to any of the students or members of any of the colledges or howses of the said Universitie, as y6u shall answere the contrary at your perill. A curious letter in Lord Lytteltons MSS., from Philip Cary to Sir Henry Lyttleton alludes to the chance in the ceremony of marria~e made by the Parliament. The notices of papers scattered through the Report relatin~ to the reign of Charles II. afford some curious illustrations of the events of the time. A letter dated Sep- tember 20, 1670, in the Earl of Mount Edg- cumbes collection, states: The Prince of Orange is coming over. He will land at Harwich, and thence go to Newmarket. I am told his comin~ is not so much a com- pliment to his Majesty as to get in a debt of 200,0001., lent by his father to the late Kii~g, an(l interest ever since, which will make the sum double. In the same col- lection a letter (January 27, 1672) says: A fire at the Kings play-house between 7 and 8 on Thursday evening last, which half burned down the house and all the scenes and wardrobe; and all the houses from the Rose Tavern in Russell Street on that side of the way to Drury Lane are burned and blown up, with many in Vine- gar Yard; 20,0001. damage. The fire be~an under the stairs where Orange Moll keeps her fruit. Bell the player was blown up. About this time Ursula Woolryche writes to her daughter, Lady Wrottesley (Wrot- tesley MSS.): They say there is the greatest galantry may be in to\vne; silver and gould lace all over the peticotes and the bodies of their gounes; but sleeves and skirts blake; abundance of curles very small on their heads, and very fine their heads dressed. Though the letters of Charles II. to his daughter the Countess of Lichfield, and from the Duke of York to the same, in Viscount Dillons collec tion, do not contain important historical details, they illustrate the amusements of the period. In one letter, undated, Charles tells his daughter her brother was at Win- chester, and would go in a few days to see Holland, and by the time he returned he would have worn out in some measure the redness of his face, so as not to fright the most part of the ladies. James, Duke of York (afterwards James II.), tells his niece the Duchess plays often at bassett, my daughter dances country dances, which the Duchess cannot do, her leg not being quite well enough for that. From Edin- burgh he writes : The letters of this day brought the news of Tom Thynne having been assassinated, and how ready some people are to lay it on the poor Catholics, and tis well the murderers were soon found out. We have plays twice a week in this house, the Duchess not caring to stir out. When Lent comes we shall have no more plays, so that bassett will be the chief diversion within doors. From Ed- inburgh, July 18, 1681, he says: This town begins to fill with company again, the meeting of Parliament being to be soon, which I am confident will behave themselves better than those of late have done in England. Cargill the great Coven~ anting field preacher is taken; he has been once examined before the Council, and will be again to-morrow, after which he will be tried and I believe condemned. (Cargill was executed July 26, 1681.) In a letter dated March 22, no year, the Duke states: Was fox-hunting yesterday. Very little company till the last day or two. The Duchess and his daughter had been twice to see the cocic/Ighting. Her Majesty had not yet played at basset, which made the drawing-room very dull. Another letter says they generally had cockfighting twice a day at Newmarket. A certificate in Mr. Bromley Daven- ports collection, signed and sealed by P. Venables and H. Lucy, that Philip Ward and his servant had not been in any places infected by the plague (September 7, 1665), shows the care that was taken to prevent the spreading of the dreadful dis- ease. Every one has heard of the power supposed to be possessed by the monarch of curing the Evil by touch. In a letter from Sir Charles Cotterell to Robert Dor- mer (Novemnber 15, 1683) among Mr. Cot- trell Dormers MSS. he says: Charles was touched by the King yesterday, by which and his drink together his lip is now very well, and will, I hope, be no worse. To show the vast number of MSS. some of these collections contain, 35 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAFTON. afrording a promising field for the labours of historical students we may mention that in the Earl of Dartmouths collection at Patshull, Stafford, there are more than 2,100 documents illustrating the period between 1660 and 1688, and there is fortu- nately in the Earls possession a catalogue of every item. Colonel William Legge was a faithful supporter of Charles I., and Mr. Howard points out that there must have been a severe struggle in the mind of his son George (First Lord Dartmouth) before he could transfer the fleet which he commanded to the service of William of Orange; but he spared much bloodshed. There is a letter in this collection from Lord Berkeley at London, to Lord Dart- mouth (December 3, 1688) : Reached London at noon, when the King was at dinner. After he had dined I kissed his hand; he carried me into the Queens bed- chamber, where I read the address; he was well pleased; gave him Lord Dart- mouths letter; he asked about the fleet. Abundance of people railed at Lord Dart- mouth, but the King continually justified him. The whole Dutch fleet are at Ply- mouth, where they were saluted by the citadel at their coining with about 40 guns. Bristol in the Prince of Oranges hands. The Marquess of Worcester, the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Blessington, Capt. Stev- eniugham, and several others, have gone over to the Prince. The Lords of Halifax, Nottingham, and Godolphin are gone to negotiate, but the trumpeter that was sent before for leave they found drunk asleep at Reading, so they are forced to stay there till they have an answer by another. December 11. Letter by Phil. Frowde at London: The Queen and Prince went away down the river on Sun- day night. The King followed about two or three oclock. The mob are now pull- ing down the Mass-houses and burning, & c December 19. Letter by Sir R. Beach. The King taken to Faversham; the Chancellor taken; he was going to Ilambro in a collier; when taken to the Lord Mayor, he knelt to kiss his hand; the Lord Mayor so astonished that he fell into a swound. The original journal by the Marquis of Halifax, in Earl Spencers collection, is of great interest, as showing Kin Williams opinion on persons and parties. On December 30, 1688, in a con- versation with the Marquis, The King said that the Commonwealth party was the strongest in England; said that at best they would have a Duke of Venice. In that perhaps he was not so much mis- taken. Said that he did not come to es tablish a Commonwealth, and he was sure of one thing, he would not stay in England if King James came again. He said also with the strongest asseveration, he would go if they went about to make him regent. The Bishop of Salisbury, a dangerous man, and had no principles, bade me speak with those who came from Dr. Qates; said he would give him something, though it went hard with him. On another day he said he would have some of us talk together, to see to find some expedient in Oatess matter. IN.B. This was not pursued. Dr. Lyons, of Dublin, submitted to the Commissioners a large collection of papers and letters addressed to or connected with William Kin~, Arch bishop of Dublin (6,1650 d. 1729). Selections from these letters occupy about twenty pages of the Report, and these contain interesting in- formation on the History of Ireland. From Macmulans Magazine. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF A DAUGHTER OF HETH, ETC. CHAPTER XVI. OUR URLAN OUT-MAN~EVEED. Come down, come down, my bonnie bird, And eat bread aff my hand; Your cage shall be of wiry goud, Whar now its but the wand. YOU are the most provoking husband I ever met with, says Queen Titania. We are climbing up the steep ascent which leads from the village of Ellesmere to the site of an ancient castle. The morning is full of a breezy sunshine, and the cool north-wester stirs here and there. a grey ripple on the blue waters of the lake below. I hope you have not had much expe- rience in that direction, I observe. Very pretty. That is very nice indeed. We are improving, are we not? she says, turning to Bell. Bell, ~vho has a fine colour in her face from the light breeze and the brisk walk- ing, puts her hand affectionately within her friends arm, and says, in gentle ac- cents It is a shame to tease you so, you poor innocent little thing. But we will have our revenge. We will ask somebody else to protect you, my pet lamb 1 Lamb htn! Not much of the lamb visible, but a good deal of the vinegar 36 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PIIAETON. auce, says one of us, mindful of past fa- her to take flight herself, and disappear yours, like a wild bird amid the shifting lights It was a deadly quarrel. I think it had and gloom of the windy day. The Lieu- arisen out of Titas inability to discover tenant, indeed, seemed continually rcgard- which way the wind was blowing; but the ing her in rather an anxious and embar- origin of our sham-fights had seldom much rassed fashion. Was he afraid she might. to do with their subsequent rise and prog- escape? Or was he merely longing to get ress. an opportunity of plunging into that se- I wish I had married you, Count von rious business he had spoken of the night Rosen, says my Lady, turning proudly before? Bell was all unconscious. She and graciously to her companion on the put her hand within Titas arm, and walked right. away over the green lawn, which was Dont alarm the poor~man, I say: and warm in the sunshine. We heard them indeed the Lieutenant looked quite aghast. talking of a picnic on this lofty and lonely Madame, he replied gravely, when he spot sketching out tents, archery- had recovered himself, it i~ very kind of grounds, and what not, and assigning a you to say so; and if you had made me place to the band. Then there were ru- the offer sooner, I should have accepted it mours of the 1-laymakers, of Sir Roger with great pleasure. But would there de Coverley, of the Guaracha, and I have been any difference? No, I think know not what other nonesense, coming not perhaps it would be the worse. It towards us as the north-wester blew back is merely that you are married; and you to us fragments of their talk, until even make believe to chafe against the bonds. the Lieutenant remarked that an old- Now I think you two would be very a,,ree- fashioned country dance would look very able to each other if you were not mar- pretty up her~i on such a fine piece of ned. green, and with all the blue and breezy Ah, well, said Tita, with an excellent- extent of a great English landscape form- ly constructed sigh; I suppose we must in~ the circular walls of this magnificent look on marriage as a trial, and bear it hall-room. with meekness and patience. We shall A proposal is an uncomfortable thing to have our reward elsewhere. carry about with one. Its weight is un- Be~l laughed, in a demure manner. conscionable, and on the merriest of days That calm assumption of the virtues of it will make a man down-hearted. To ask meekness and patience was a little too a woman to marry is about the most se- much; but what was the use of further rions duty which a man has to perform in fighting on a morning like this? We got life, even as some would say that it is the the key of a small gate. We climbed up most unnecessary: and those who settled a winding path through trees that were the relations of the sexes, before or after rustling in the sunlight. We emerged the Flood, should receive the gratitude of upon a beautiful green lawn a bowling- all womankind for the ingenuity with green, in fact, girt in by a low hed~e, and which they shifted oa to male shoulders overlooked by a fancy little building. But this heavy and grevious burden. the great charm of this elevated site was The Lieutenant walked down with us the panorama around and beyond. Windy from the hill and through the little village clouds of white and grey kept rolling up to the inn as one distraught. He scarcely out of the west, throwing splashes of pur- even spoke and never to Bell. He re- ple gloom on the bright landscape. The garded the getting out of the phaeton with trees waved and rustled in the cool breeze a listless air. Castor and Pollux whose the sunlight kept chasing the shadows affections he had stolen away from us across the far meadows. And then down throu,,h a whole series of sneaking kind- below us lay the waters of Ellesmere lake nesses whinnied to him in vain. When here and there a deep, dark blue, under my Lady, who now assumed the responsi- the warm green of the woods, and here bility of apportioning to us our seats, and there bein~, stirred into a shimmer of asked him to drive, he obeyed mechani- white by the wind that was sweeping i cally. across the sky. Now Bell, as I have said, was uncon And to-day.we shall be in Chester, and f scious of the awful possibilities that hung to-morrow in Wales! cried Bell lookincr over our adventures of that day; and was away up to the north, where the sky wa~ I in as merry a mood as you could desire to pretty well heaped up with the flying masses see. She sat beside the Lieutenant; and of cloud. She looked so bright and joyous scarcely had we gone gently along the nar- then, that one could almost have expected row village street and out into the broad- THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. 37 or country road that leads northward, than she began to tell her companion of the manner in which Tita tyrannizes over our parish. You would not think it, would you? she asked. No, said the Lieutenant, I should not think she was a very ferocious lady. Then you dont know her says a voice from behind; and Tita says Dont begin again, in an injured way, as if we were doing some sort of harm to the fine morning. I can assure you, said Bell, seriously, that she rules the parish with a rod of iron. She knows every farthin~ that every labourer makes in the week, and he catches it if he does not bring home a fair proportion to his wife. Well, Jackson, she says, going into a cottage on her way home from church, I hear your master is going to give you fourteen shillings a week now. Thank ye, maam, he says, for he knows quite well who secured him the additional shilling to his wages. But I want you to give me threepence out of it for the savings bank; and your wife will gather up a sixpence a week un- til she gets enough for another pair of blankets for you, now the winter is com- ing on, you know. Well, the poor man dares not object. He gives up three- fourths of the shilling he had been secretly expecting to spend on beer, and does not say a word. The husbands in our parish have a bad time of it One of them has, at least, says that voice from behind. And you should see how our Tita will confront a huge fellow who is half bemused with beer, and order him to be silent in her presence. How dare you speak to your wife like that before me ! and he is as quiet as a lamb. And sometimes the wives have a turn of it, too not reproof, you know, but a look of surprise if they have not finished the sewing of the chil- drens frocks which Tita and I have cut out for them or if they have gone into the alehouse with their husbands late on the Saturday night or if they have missed being at church next morning. Then you should see the farmers boys playing pitch and toss in the road on the Sunday fore- noons how they scurry away like rabbits when they see her coming up from church they fly behind stacks, or plunge through hedges anything to get out of her way. And I am not assisted, Count von Rosen, in any of these things, says my Lady, by a youn~ lady who was once known to catch a small boy and shake him by the shoulders because he threw a stone at the clergyman as he passed. Then you do assist, Mademoiselle, in- quires the Lieutenant, in this overs~eing of the parish? Oh, I merely keep the books, replied Bell. I am the treasurer of the savings bank, and I call a fortnightly meeting to announce the purchase of various kinds of cotton and woollen stuffs, at wholesale prices, and to hear from the subscribers what they most need. Then we have the materials cut into patterns, we pay so much to the women for sewing, and then we sell the things when they are made, so that the people pay for everything they get, and yet get it far cheaper than they would at a shop, while we are not out of pocket by it. Here a deep groan is heard from the hind seat of the phaeton. That beautiful fiction about the ways and means of our local charities has existed in our household for many a day. The scheme is admirable. There is no pauperization of the peasantry around. The theory is that Queen Tita and Bell merely come in to save the cost of distribution; and that nothing is given away gratis except their charitable labour. It is a pretty theory. The folks ar6und about us find it answer admirably. But somehow or other whether from an error in Bells book-keeping, or whether from a sudden rise in the price of flannel, or some other recondite and esoteric cause all I know is that the system demands an annual subvention from the head of the house. Of course, my Lady can explain all that away. There is some temporary defect in the working out of the scheme; the self- supporting character of it remains easy of demonstration. It may be so. But a good deal of hread in the shape of cheques has been thrown upon the waters in a certain district in England; while the true author of the charity the real dispenser of these good things is not considered in the matter, and is privately regarded as a sort of grudging person, who does not understand the larger claims of humanity. At length we have our first glimpse of Wales. From Ellesmere to Overton the road gradually ascends, until, just before you come to Overton, it skirts the edge of a high plateau, and all at once you are confronted by the sight of a great valley, through which a stream, brown as a Welsh rivulet ought to be, is slowly stealing. That narrow thread that twists through spacious woods and green meadows is the river Dee; far away heyond the valley that it waters, rise the blue masses of Cyrn-y 38 TFIE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. Brain and Cefn-y-Fedn, while to the south or the taking of sketches, or some such of the latter range lies the gap by which idyllic employment, the party would in all you enter the magic Vale of Liangollen. likelihood have got divided. It would have On this breezy morning there were white been a pleasant opportunity for him to ask clouds blowing over the dusky peaks of this gentle English girl to be his wife the mountains, while ever and anon, from with the sweet influences of the holiday- a blue rift overhead, a shimmering line of time disposing her to consent, and with silver would strike down, and cause the the quiet of this wooded valley ready to side of some distant hill to shine in pale catch her smallest admission. Besides, brown, and grey, and gold. who could tell what might hnppen after That is a very strange sight to ~ a reached Chester? That was the said the Lieutenant, as the horses stood in next of the large towns which Arthur had the road; all these great mountains, with, agreed to make points of communication. I think, no houses on them. That is the I think the Lieutenant began at this time wild country into which the first inhabi- to look upon large towns as an abomina- tants of this country fled when the German tion, to curse telegraphs, and to hate the tribes swarmed over here all that we penny post with a deadly hatred. have been taught at school; but only think But in place of any such quiet resting- of the difficulty the Berlin boy living place, we had to put up Castor and Pol- with nothing but miles of flat sand around lux in the brisk little town of Wrexham, him has to imagine a wild region like which was even more than usually busy this, which gave shelter because no one with its market-day. The Wynustay Arms could follow into its forests and rocks. And was full of farmers, seed-agents, implement how are we to go? We cannot dirve into makers, and what not, all roaring and talk- these mountains. ing to the last limit of their lungs bus- Oh, but there are very fine roads in thug about the place and calling for glasses Wales, said Bell; broad, smooth, well- of ale or attacking huge joints of cold roast made roads; and you can drive throu,gh the beef with an appetite which had evidently most beautiful scenery, if you wish. not been educated on nothing. The However, it was arranged we should not streets were filled with the vendors of va- attempt anything of the kind, which would rious wares; the wives and danghters of take us too far out of our route to Scot- the farmers, having come in from the coun- land. It was resolved to let the horses try in the dog-cart or waggonette, were have a rest in Chester the next day, while promenading along the pavement in the we should take a run down by rail to most gorgeous hues known to silken and Llanrwst and Bettws-y-Coed, merely to muslin fabrics; cattle were being driven give our Uhlan a notion of the difficulties through narrow thoroughfares; and the he would have to encounter in subduing sellers of fruit and of fish in the market- this country, when the time came for that place alarming the air with their in- little expedition. vitations. The only quiet corner, indeed, So we bowled through the little village was the churchyard, and the church, of Overton, and down the winding road through which we wandered for a little which plunges into the beautiful valley while; but young folks are not so foolish we had been regarding from the height. as to tell secrets in a building that has an We had not yet struck the Dee; but it echo. seemed as though the ordinary road down Was there no chance for our unfortu- in this plain was a private path through a nate Uhlan? magnificent estate. As far as we could Hurry hurry on to Chester! cried see, a splendid avenue of elms stretched on Bell, as we drove away from Wrexham, in front of us; and while we drove through along the level northern road. the cool shade, on either side lay a spa~ious A gloomy silence had overtaken the extent of park, studded with grand old Lieutenant. He was now sitting behind oaks. At length we came upon the stream, with my Lady, and she was doing her best flowing brown and clear, down through to entertain him (there never was a wo- picturesque and wooded banks; and then man who could make herself more a~reea- we got into open country again, and ran ble to persons not of her own household) pleasantly up to Wrexham. while he sat almost mute, listening re- Perhaps the Lieutenant would have liked speetfully, and half suffering himself to be to bait the horses in some tiny village near interested. to this beautiful stream. We should all Bell, on the other hand, was all delight have gone out for a saunter along the at the prospect of reaching the quaint old banks; and, in the pulling of wild flowers, city, that evening, and was busy with wild THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAXTON. 39 visions of our plunge into Wales on the morrow, while ever and anon she hummed snatches of the Lieutenants Burgundy song. Please may I make a confession? she asked, at length in a low voice. Why, yes. I hoped, however, she was not going to follow the example of the Lieutenant, and confide to me that she meditated making a proposal. Although men dislike this duty, they have a prejudice against seeing it undertaken by women. All our journey has wanted but one thing, said Bell. We have had every- thing that could Le wished bright weather, a comfortable way of travelling, much amusement, plenty of fights in- deed, there was nothing wanting but one thing, and that was the sea. Now did you never try to look for it? Were you never anxious to see only a long thread of grey near the sky, and be quite sure that out there the woods stopped on the edge of a line of sand? I dared not tell Tita for she would have thought me very ungrate- ful, but I may tell you, for you dont seem to care about anybodys opinions but I used to get a little vexed with the con- stant meadows, rivers, farms, hills, woods, and all that over and over again, and the sea not coming any nearer. Of course one had no right to complain, as I sup- pose its put down in the map, and cant be altered; but we seem to have been a long time coming across the country to reach the sea.~~ Why, you wild sea-gull, do you think that was our only object? A long time reaching the sea! Dont imagine your anxiety was concealed. I saw you per- petually scanning the horizon, as if one level line were better than any other level line at such a distance. You began it on Richmond Hill, and would have us believe the waves of the Irish Channel were breaking somewhere about Windsor. No no! pleaded Bell; dont think me ungrateful. I think we we have been most fortunate in coming as we did; and Count Von Rosen must have seen every sort of English landscape first the river-pictures about Richmond, then the wooded hills about Oxfordshire, then the plains of Berkshire, then the mere-coun- try about Ellesmere and now he is go- ing into the mountains of Wales. But all the same we shall reach the sea to-mor meekest possible way; we are not hus- band anfi wife. I wish you were, says the other, coolly. Madame, I observe at this point, that is rather a dangerous jest to play with. It is now the second time you have made use of it this morning. And if I do repeat old jokes, says Tita, with a certain calm audacity, it must be through the force of a continual example. And such jests sometimes fix themselves in the mind until they develop and grow into a serious purpose. Does that mean that you would like to marry Bell? If it can be done legally and properly, I should not be sorry, I know. Can it be done, Count von Rosen? Shall we four go back to London with dif- ferent partners? An exchange of hus- bands Merciful Powers! what was the woman saying? She suddenly stopped, and an awful consternation fell on the whole four of us. That poor little mite of a creature had been taking no thought of her words, in her pursuit of this harmless jest; and somehow it had wandered into her brain that Bell and the Lieutenant were on the same footing as herself and I. A more embarrassing slip of the tongue could not be conceived; and for several dreadful seconds no one had the courage to speak, until Bell wildly and incoherently with her face and forehead glowing like a rose asked whether there was a theatre in Chester. No, cries my Lady, eagerly; dont ask us to go to the theatre to-night, Bell; let us go for a walk rather. She positively did not know what she was saying. It was a wonder she did not propose we should go to the gardens of Cremorne, or up in a balloon. Her heart was filIled with anguish and dismay over the horrible blunder she had made; and she be~an talking about Chester, in a series of disconnected sentences, in which the heartrendin,,, effort to appear calm and unconstrained was painfully obvious. Much as I have had to bear at the hands of that gentle little woman, I felt sorry for her then. I wondered what she and Bell would say to each other when they went off for a private confabulation at night. By the time that we drew near Chester, row. however, this unfortunate incident was What are you two fighting about? pretty well forgotten; and we were suf- says Queen Titania, interposing. ficiently tranquil to regard with interest We are not fighting, says Bell, in the the old city, which was now marked out in 40 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. the twilight, by the yellow twinkling of maturely? Put it off until the evening, the gas-lamps. People had come out for and then take your refusal like a man. their evening stroll round the great wall Dont do Wales an injustice. which encircles the town. Down in the Why, says the Lieutenant, peevishly, level meadows by the side of the Dee, lads you think nothing is important but look- were still playing cricket. The twilight, ing at a fine country and enjoying yourself indeed was singularly clear; and when we out of doors. I do not care what happens had driven into the town, and put up the to a lot of mountains and rivers when this phaeton at an enormous Gothic hotel thing is for me far more important. When which seemed to overawe the small old- I can speak to Mademoiselle, I will do so; fashioned houses in its neighbourhood, we and I do not care if all Wales is put under too set out for a leisurely walk round the water to-morrow ancient ramparts. After your refusal, the deluge. Well, But here again the Lieutenant was dis- it is a good thing to be prepared. But you appointed. How could he talk privately need not talk in an injured tone, which re- to Bell on this public promenade? Lovers minds one oddly of Arthur. there were there, but all in solitary pairs. You should have seen the stare on Von If Tita had only known that she and I Rosens face. were interfering with the happiness of our It is true. All you boys are alike when young folks, she would have thrown her- you fall in love all unreasonable, discon- self headlong into the moat rather than tented, perverse, and generally objectiona- continue this unwilling persecution. As it ble. It was all very well for you to call was, she went peacefully along, watching attention to that unhappy young man s the purple light of the evening fall over conduct when you were in your proper the great landscape around the city. The senses; but now, if you go on a~ you are ruddy glow in the windows became more going, it will be the old story over again. and more pronounced. There were voices Then you think I will persecute Made- of boys still heard down in the racecourse, moiselle, and be insolent to her and her but there was no more cricketing possible. friends? In the still evening, a hush seemed to fall All in good time. Bell refuses you to- over the town; and when we got round to morrow. You are gloomy for a day. You the weir on the river, the vague white ask yourself why she has done so. Then masses of water that we could scarcely you come to us and beg for our interfer- see, sent the sound of them roaring and ence. We tell you it is none of our busi- tumbling, as it were, into a hollow chain- ness. You say we are prejudiced against ber. Then we plun~ed once more into you, and accuse us of forwarding Arthurs the streets. The shops were lit. The suit. Then you begin to look on him as quaint galleries along the first floor of the your successful rival. You grow so fun- houses, which are the special architectural ously jealous glory of Chester, were duskily visible in Here the Uhlan broke into a tremendous the light of the lamps. And then we es- laugh. caped into the yellow glare of the great My good friend, I have discovered a dining-room of the Gothic hotel, and sat great secret, he cried. Do you know ourselves down for a comfortable evening, who is jealous? You. You will oppose Well, I say to the Lieutenant, as we anyone who tries to take Mademoiselle go into the smoking-room, when the wo- away from you. And I I will try and men have retired for the night, have you I will do it. asked Bell yet? From the greatest despondency he had No, he answers, morosely, leaped to a sort of wild and crazy hope of Then you have escaped another day? success. He smiled to himself, walked It was not my intention. I will ask about the room, and talked in the most her whenever I get the chance that I buoyant and friendly manner about the am resolved upon; and if she says No, prospects of the morrow. He blew clouds why, it is my misfortune, that is all. of cigar-smoke about as if he were Nep- I have told you she is certain to say tune getting to the surface of the sea, and No.~~ blowing back the sea-foam from about his Very well. face. And then, all at once, he sat down But I have a proposal to make. we were the only occupants of the So have I, says the Lieutenant, with room and said, in a hesitating way, a gloomy smile. Look here do you think Madame To-morrow you are going down to see could speak a word to her if she does a bit of Wales. Why spoil the day pre- say No ? THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PIIAETON. 41 I thought it would come to that. stirred only by a ripple. Here and there You are what do you call it? very it darkened into a breezy green, but for unsympathetic. the most part it reflected the cold grey sky Unsympathetic! No; I have a great overhead. The shores were flat. The interest in both of you. But the whole tide was up, and not a rock to be seen. story is so old, one has got familiar with its One or two small boats were visible; but manifestations. no great full-rigged ship, with all her It is a very old and common thing to white sails swelling before the wind, swept be born, but it is a very important thing, onwards to the low horizon. But it was and it only happens to you once. the sea that was enough for this mad And falling in love only happens to girl of ours. She had the window put you once, I suppose? down, and a cold odour of sea-weed flew Oh no, many times. I have very often through the carria~,e. If there was not been in love with this girl or the other girl, much blue outside, there was plenty in the but never until this time serious. I never deep and lambent colour of her eyes, where before asked anyone to marry me; and pure joy and delight fought strangely with surely this is serious that I offer for her the half-saddening influences produced by sake to give up my country, and my this first unexpected meeting with the sea. friends, and my profession everything. Turning abruptly away from the coast- Surely that is serious enough. line with the grey walls of Conway Cas- And so it was. And I knew that if ever tie overlooking the long sweep of the estu- he got Bell to listen favourably to him, he ary we plunged down into the moun- would have little difficulty in convincing tains. The dark masses of firs up among her that he had never cared for anyone be- the rocks were deepening in gloom. There fore, while she would easily assure him that was an unearthly caha on the surface of she had always regarded Arthur only as a the river, as if the reflection of the bool- friend. For there are no lies so massive, ders, and the birch-bushes, and the occa- audacious, and unblushing as those told by sional cottages, lay waiting, for the first two young folks when they recount to each stirring of the rain. Then, far away up other the history of their previous love the cleft of the valley, a grey mist came affairs. floating, over the hills; it melted whole mountains into a soft dull grey, it blotted CHAPTER XVII. out dark green forests and mighty masses of rock, until a pattering against the car- IN THE FAIRY GLEN. riage windows told us that the rain had 0 Queen, thou knowest I pray not for this: begun. Oh set us down together in some place It is always so in Wales, said my La- Where not a voice can break our heaven of dy, with a sigh. bliss, But when we got out at Bettws-y-Coed, Where naught but rocks and I can see her you would not have fancied our spirits face were grievously oppressed. Indeed, I re- Softening beneath the marvel of thy grace, Where not a foot our vanished steps can track marked that we never enjoyed ourselves The golden a~,e, the golden age come back ~ so much, whether in the phaeton or out of it, as when there was abundant rainabout, LITTLE did our Bonny Bell reck of the the desperation of the circumstances driv- plot that had been laid against her pence ing us into being recklessly merry. So xve of mind. She was as joyous as a wild sea- would not take the omnibus that was car- bird when we drew near the sea. All the rying up to the Swallow Falls some half- morning she had hurried us on; and we dozen of those horrid creatures, the tour- were at the station some twenty minutes ists. The deadly dislike we bore to these before the train started. Then she must unoffendin~ people was remarkable. Wh~ t needs sit on the northern side of the car- right had they to be invading this wonder- riage, close in by the window; and all at ful valley? What right had they to leave once, when there flashed before us a lon~ Bayswater and occupy seats at the tcbles and level stretch of grey-green, she uttered d h6ie of hotels? We saw them drive a quick, low cry of gladness, as though the away with a secret pleasure. We hoped last wish of her life had been realized, they would get wet, and swear never to Yet there was not much in this glimpse return to Wales. We called them tour- of the sea that we got as we ran slowly ists, in short, which has become a terni of along the coast-line towards Conway. It opprobrium among Englishmen; but we was a quiet grey day, with here and there would have perished rather than admit for a patch of blue overhead. The sea was a moment that we too were tourists. 42 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PIIAETON. It did not rain very much. There was Rhine with those young ladies, later on in a strong resinous odour in the air, from the year to Kdnigswinter. Would it the spruce, the larch, the pines, and the not be a very nice thing for us all, when breckans, as we got through the wood, we leave the phaeton at your home, to go and ventured down the slippery paths for a few weeks to Kiinigswinter? which brought us in front of the Swallow We cannot all flirt with a pretty gov- Falls. There had been plenty of rain erness, says Tita. and the foaming jets of water were dart- Now that is too bad of you English ing among the rocks very much like the ladies, retorts the Lieutenant. You white glimmer of the marten as he cuts must always think, when a man talks to a about the eaves of a house in the twilight, girl, he wants to be in love with her. No The roar of the river filled the air, it is absurd. She is intelligenta and joined in chorus the rustling of the good talker she knows very many things trees in the wind. We could scarcely hear and she is a stran,er like myself in a ourselves speak. It was not a time for hotel. Why should I not talk to her? confidences. We returned to Bettws. You are quite right, Count von Rosen, But the Lieutenant, driven wild by the says Bell. impossibility of placing all his sorrows be- Of course he was quite right. He was fore Bell, eagerly assented to the proposal always quite right! But wait a bit. that we should go and see the Fairy Glen We set off for the Fairy Glen. The rain a much more retired spot after lunch- had ceased; but the broad and smooth eon. The dexterity he displayed in hurry- roads were yellow with water; large drops ing over that meal was remarkable. It still fell from the trees, and the air was was rather a scramble for a number of humid and warm. The Lieutenant lit a visitors were in the place; and the long cigar about as big as a wooden leg; and table was pretty well filled up. But with Bell insisted on us two falling rather be- a fine audacity our Ublan constituted him- hind, hecause that she liked the scent of a self waiter for our party, and simply har- cigar in the open air. ned the hotel. If my Ladys eyes only We crossed the well-known Waterloo happened to wander towards a particular Bridge built in the same year as that dish, it was before her in a twinkling. The which chronicled the great battle and Lieutenant alarmed many a young lady we heard the Lieutenant relating to Tita there by first begging her pardon and then how several of his relatives had been in reachin,, over her shoulder to carry off the army which came up to help us on some huge plate; although he presently that day. atoned for these misdemeanours by carv- You know we had won before you ing a couple of fowls for the use of the came up, said my Lady, stoutly. whole company. He also made the ac- The Lieutenant laughed as he replied to quaintance of a governess who was in her. charge of two tender little women of I am not sure about that, he said; twelve and fourteen. He sat down by the hut you did what we could not have done governess; discovered that she had been you held the whole French army by at Bettws for some weeks; got from her I yourselves, and crippled it so that our some appalling statistics of the rain that mere appearance on the battle-field was had fallen; then for the maids were enough. rather remiss went and got her a bottle I think it was very mean of both of of ale, which he drew for her, and poured you, said Bell, to win a battle by mere out and graciously. handed to her. Bell force of numbers. If you had given Napo- was covertly lau,,hing all the time: my leon a chance Lady was amazed. Mademoiselle, said von Rosen, the Now, he said, turning in quite a mat- object of a campaign is to win battles ter-of-fact way to us, when do we start anyhow. You throw away the heroic ele- for this Fairy Glen? meats of the old single combatants when it Pray dont let us take you away from is with armies that you fight; and you take such charming companionship, observed all advantages you can get. But who was my Lady with a smile. the br~ver then your small English Oh, she is a very intelligent person, army, or the big French one that lost the says the Lieutenant; really a very intel- whole day without overwhelming their ligent person. But she makes a great enemy, and waited until we camne down to mistake in pref~rring Schillers plays to drive them back? That is a very good Lessings for her pupils. I tried to con- word a very strong word our zurUck- vince her of that. She is going to the geworfen. It is a very good thing to see THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. .43 that word at the end of a sentence that Bettws-y-Coed, is the only reply which is talks of your enemies. vouchsafed to me. At length we got to the neighbourhood They were not far to seek. When we of the Fairy Glen; and found ourselves in had clambered up the steep bank to the among the wet trees, with the roar of the path overhead, Bell and the Lieutenant stream reverberating through the woods. were standing in the road, silent. As soon There were a great many paths in this as they saw us, they came slowly walking pretty ravine. You can go close down to down. Neither spoke a word. Somehow, the water, and find still pools reflecting the Bell managed to attach herself to Tita; silver-lichened rocks; or you can clam- and these two went on ahead. her along the hi,,h banks through the You were right, said the Lieutenant, birch and hazel and elm, and look down in a low voice, very different from his or- on the white waterfalls beneath you that dinary light and careless fashion. wet the ferns and bushes about with their You have asked her, then? spray. Four people need not stay to- Yes. gether. Perhaps it was because of an ex- And she refused? traordinary change in the aspect of the Yes. day that Tita and I lost sight of the young I thought she would. folks. Indeed, we had sat down upon a Now, he said, I suppose I ought to great smooth boulder and were pensively go hack to London? enjoying the sweet scents around, and the Why? plashing of the stream, when this strange It will not be pleasant for her my thing occurred, so that we never remem- being here. It will be very embarrassing bered that our companions had gone. to both of us~ Suddenly into the gloomy grey day there Nonsense. She will look on it as a leaped a wild glow of yellow fire; and far joke. up the narrowing vista of the glen I am afraid our Uhlan looked rather where the rocks grew closer together savage at this moment. the sunlight smote down on the gleaming Dont you see, I observed to him se- green of the underwood, until it shone and riously, that if you go away in this man- sparkled over the smooth pools. The ner you will give the affair a tremendous light caine nearer. There was still a sort importance, and make all sorts of explana- of mist of dampness in the atmosphere tions necessary? Why not school your- hangin,., about the woods, and dulling the self to meeting her on ordinary terms; rich colours of the glen; but as the sun- and take it that your question was a sort light came straggling down the rocky ra- of preliminary sounding, as it were, with- vine, a dash of hlne gleamed out overhead, out prejudice to either? and a rush of wind through the dripping Then you think I should ask her again, green branches seemed to say that the at some future time? he said eagerly. wet was being swept off the mountains I dont think anything of the kind. and towards the sea. The Fairy Glen was Then why should I remain here? now a blaze of transparent green and fine I hope you did not come with us mere- gold, with white diamonds of raindrops ly for the purpose of proposing to Bell. glittering on the ferns and moss and No; th t is true enough but our re- bushes. It grew warm, too, down in the lations are now all altered. I do not hollow; and the sweet odours of the forest know what to do. above woodruff, and campion, and wild Dont do anything: meet her as if mint, and the decayed leaves of the great nothing of the kind had occurred. A St. Johns wort all stole out into the sensible girl like her will think more moist air. highly of you in doing that than in doing Where have they gone? says Tita some wild and mad thing, which will only almost sharply. have the effect of annoying her and your- My dear, I say to her, you were self. Did she give you any reasdn? young yourself once. Its a good time ago I do not know, said Von Rosen, dis but still consolately. I am not sure what I said. Bell never asked for letters this morn- Perhaps I did not explain enough. Per- ing, remarked my Lady, showing the di- haps she thought me hlunt, rude, coarse in rection her thoughts were taking. asking her so suddenly. It was all a sort No matter, Arthur will be meeting us of fire for a minute or two and then directly. He is sure to come over to our the cold water came and that lasts. route in his dogcart. The two women were now far ahead We must find them, and get back to surely they were walking fast that Bell 44 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. might have an opportunity of confiding to her, as being an old friend, and all that all her perplexities to her friend, stupid nonsense; and I know that she has I suppose, said Von Rosen, that I a stran~,e idea that she owes to him ----- suffer for my own folly. I might have The Lieutenant suddenly stopped. known. But for this day or two back, it No, lie said, I will not tell you what has seemed so great a chance to me of she did tell to me this afternoon. But I getting her to promise at least to thin k of think you know it all; and it will be very it and the prospect of having such a bad of you to make a sacrifice of her by wife as that it was all too much. Per- bringing him here haps I have done the worst for myself by If you remain in the phaeton, we the hurry; but was it not excusable in a cant. man to be in a hurry to ask such a girl to Then I will remain. be his wife? And there is no harm in Thank you. As Tita and I have to knowing soon that all that was impos- consider ourselves just a little bit amid sible. all this whirl of love-making and reckless Doubtless it was comforting to him to generosity I must say we prefer your go on talking. I wondered what Bell was society to that of Master Arthur. sayin0 at this moment; and whether a That is a very good compliment! comparison of their respective views would says Von Rosen, with an ungracious sneer throw some light on the subject. As for for who ever heard of a young man of the Lieutenant, he seemed to regard Bells twenty-six being just to a young man of decision as final. If he had been a little twenty-two when both wanted to marry older, he might not; but having just been the same young lady? plunged from the pinnacle of hope into We overtook our companions. Bell an abyss of despair, he was too stunned to and I walked on together to the hotel, and think of clambering up a0ain by degrees. subsequently down to the station. An air But even at this time all his thoughts of gloom seemed to hang over the heavy were directed to the best means of making forests far up amid the grey rocks. The his presence as little of an embarrassment river had a mournful sound as it came to Bell as possible. rushing down between the mighty boul- This evening will pass away very ders. Bell scarcely uttered a word as we well, he said, for everybody will be talk- got into the carriage and slowly steamed in0 at dinner, and we need not to address away from the platform. each other; but to morrow if you think Whither had gone the joy of her face? this better that I remain with you then She was once more approaching the sea. you will drive the phaeton, and you will Under ordinary circumstances you would o,i 0 ye Mademoiselle the front seat for the have seen an anticipatory light in her whole day? Is it agreed? blue eyes, as if she already heard the Certainly. You must not think of long plash of the waves, and smelt the leaving us at present. You see, if you sea-weed. Now she sat in the corner of went away we should have to send for the carriage; and when at last we came in Arthur. view of the most beautiful sight that we A sort of flame blazed up into the face had yet met on our journey, she sat of the Lieutenant; and he said, in a rapid and gazed at it with the eyes of one dis- and vehement way traught. This thing I will say to you if Ma- That was a rare and wild picture we demoiselle will not marry me good. It saw when we got back to the sea. The is the right of every girl to have her heavy rain-clouds had sunk down until choice. But if you allow her to marry they formed a low dense wall of purple all that pitiful fellow, it will be a shame along the line of the western horizon, be- and you will not forgive yourself, either tween the sea and the sky. That heavy Madame or you, in the years afterwards bar of cloud was almost black; but just that I am quite sure of! above it there was a calm fair stretch of But what have we to do with Bell choice of a husband? s lambent green, with here and there a torn shred of crimson cloud and one or two You talked just now of sending for lines of sharp gold, lying parallel with the him to join your party. horizon. But away over in the east again Why, Bell isnt bound to marry every- were some windy masses of cloud that had one who comes for a drive with us. Your caught a blush of red; and these had sent own case is one in point. a pale reflection down on the sea a sort But this is quite different. This of salmon-colour that seemed the comple- wretched fellow thinks he has an old right ment of the still gold-green overhead. 45 TilE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAFTON. The sunset touched faintly the low mountains about the mouth of the Dee. A rose-red glimmer struck the glass of the window at which Bell sat; and then, as the train made a slight curve in the line running by the shore, the warm light en- tered and lit up her face with a rich and beautiful glow. The Lieutenant, hidden in the dusk of the opposite corner, was re- garding her with wistful eyes. Perhaps he thought that now, more than ever, she looked like some celestial being far out of his reach, whom he had dared to hope would forsake her strange altitudes and share his life with him. Tita, saying noth- ing, was also gazing out of the window, and probably pondering on the unhappy climax that seemed to put an end to her friendly hopes. Darkness fell over the sea and the land. The great plain of water seemed to fade away into the gloom of the horizon; but here, close at hand, the pools on the shore occasionally caught the last reflection of the sky, and flashed out a gleam of yellow fire. The wild intensity of the colours was almost painful to the eyes the dark blue-green of the shore-plants and the sea- grass; the gathering purple of the sea; the black rocks on the sand; and then that sudden bewildering flash of gold where a pool had been left among the sea- weed. The mountains in the south had now disappeared; and were doubtless away in that mysterious darkness wreathing themselves in the cold night- mists that were slowly rising from the woods and the valleys of the streams. Such was our one and only glimpse of Wales; and the day that Bell had looked forward to with such eager delight had closed in silence and despair. When we got back to the hotel, a letter from Arthur was lying on the table. CHAPTER XVIII. THE COLLAPSE. Thy crowded ports, Where rising masts an endless prospect yield, With labour burn, and echo to the shouts Of hurried sailor, as he hearty waves His last adieu, and, loosening every sheet, Resigns the spreading vessel to the wind. THE following correspondence has been handed to us for publication dans Fransais mon cher Mamma le pony est tral bien et je sni mon cher Mamma, Voter aim6 fils, TOM. COWLET HousE, TWIOEJ~NHAM, July , 1871. My dear Papa, Tom has written Mamma a letter in French and Doctor Ashburton says I must begin to learn French too but Tom says it is very dificult and it takes a long time to write a letter with the dixonary and he says my dear Papa that we must learn German Too but please may I learn German first and you will give my love to the German gentleman who gave us the poney he is very well my dear papa and very fat and round and hard in the sides Harry French says if he goes on eeting like that he will burst but me and Tom only laughed at him and we rode him down to Stanes and back which is a long way and I only tumbled off twice but once into the ditch for he wanted to eat the Grass and I Pooled at him and slipt over his head but I was not much Wet and I went to bed until Jane dryed all my close and no one new of it but her Pleese my dear papa how is Auntie Bell, and we send our love to her, and to my dear mamma and I am your affexnate son, JAcK. P.S. All the monney you sent as gone away for oats and beans and hay. Pleese my dear Papa to send a good lot more. INN, GAKHAR, Friday Afternoon. You will see I have slightly departed from the route I described in a telegram to Bell. Indeed, I find myself so untrammelled in driv- ing this light dogcart, with a powerful little an- imal that never seems fatigued, that I can go anywhere without fearing there will not be ac- commodation for a pair of horses and a large party. I am sure you must often have been put to straits in securing rooms for so many at a small country inn. Probably you know the horse I have got it is the cob that Major Quinet bought from Heathcote, I saw him by the merest accident when I returned from Wor- cester to London told him what I meant to do he offered me the cob with the greatest good- nature and as I knew I should be safer with it than anything I could hire, I accepted. You will see I have come a good pace. I started on the Tuesday moraing after I saw you at Wor- cester, and here L am at Oakham, rather over ninety miles. To-morrow I hope to be in Not- tingham, about other thirty. Perhaps, if you will allow me, I may strike across country, by Hud- dersfield and Skipton, and pay you a visit at Kendal. I hope Bell is well, and that you are not having much rain. I have had the most delightful weather. Yours sincerely, ARTHUR AsUBuRTON. COWLET HousE, TwIcKENHAM, It is a race, said the Lieutenant, who July, 1871. Mon cher Mamma, Doctor Ashburton shall be at Carlisle first. dire me que je 6cris a vous dans Fransais je Arthur will beat, remarked Bell, look- sais Fransais un petit et ici est un letter a vous ing to my Lady; and although nothing 46 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETO~. could have been more innocent than that ~observation, it seemed rather to take Von Rosen down a bit. He turned to the win- dow and looked out. I think it was very foolish of Major Quinet to lii~nd him that beautiful little bay cob to go on such an expedition as that, said Tita. He will ruin it entirely. Fan- cy going thirty miles a day without giving the poor animal a days rest! Why should he be so anxious to overtake us? If we had particularly wanted him to accompany us, we should have asked him to do so. He does not propose to accompany you, I say. He is only coming to pay you a visit. I know what that means, says my Lady, with a tiny shrug;, something like the arrival of a mother-in-law, with a car- riageful of luggage. My dear, I say to her, why should you speak scornfully of the amiable and excellent lady who is responsible for your bringing up? I was not speaking of my mamma, says Tita, but of the abstract mother-in- law. A man never objects to an abstract mother-in-law. Now, your mamma al- though she is not to be considered as a mother-in-law My mamma never visits me but at my own request, says my Lady, with some- thing of loftiness in her manner; and I am sorry she makes her visits so short, for when she is in the house, I am treated with some show of attention and respect. Well, I say to her, if a mother-in- law can do no better than encourage hy- pocrisy But I bear no malice. I will take some sugar, if you please. And as for Arthur, continues Tita, turning to Bell, what must I say to him? Only that we shall be pleased to see him, I suppose, is the reply. The Lieutenant stares out into the streets of Chester, as thou0h he did not hear. We cannot ask him to go with us it would look too absurd a dogcart trot- ting after us all the way. He might be in front, says Bell, if the cob is so good a little animal as he says.~~ I wonder how Major Quinet could have been so stupid! says Tita, with a sort of suppressed vexation. The reader may remember that a few days ago Major Quinet was a white-souled angel of a man, to whom my Lady had given one of those formal specifications of character which she has always at hand when anyone is attacked. Well, one of the party humbly recalls that circumstance. He asks in what way Major Quinet has changed within the past two days. Tita looks up, with that sort of quick, trium- phant glance which tells beforehand that she has a reply ready, and says ~~Jf Major Quinet has committed a fault, it is one of generosity. That is an error not common among men especially men who have horses, and who would rather see their own wives walk throu~,h the mud to the station than let their horses get wet. Bell, what is good for you, when youre sat upon? Patience, says Bell: and then we go out into the old and grey streets of Ches- ter. It was curious to notice now the de- meanour of our hapless Lieutenant to- wards Bell. He had had a whole night to think over his position; and in the morn- ing he seemed to have for the first time fully realized the hopelessness of his case. He spoke of it before the women came down in a grave, matter-of-fact way, not making any protestation of suffering, but calmly accepting it a~ a matter for regret. One could easily see, however, that a good deal of genuine feeling lay behind these brief words. Then, when Bell came down, he showed her a vast amount of studied respect; but spoke to her of one or two ordinary mat- ters in a careless tone, as if to assure ev- erybody that nothing particular had hap- pened. The girl herself was not equal to any such effort of amiable hypocrisy. She was very timid. She agreed with him in a hurried way whenever he made the most insi nificant statement, and showed her- self obtrusively anxious to take his side when my Lady, for example, doubted the efficacy of carbolic soap. The Lieutenant had no great interest in carbolic soap had never seen it, indeed, until that morn- ing; but Bell was so anxious to be kind to him, that she defended the compound as if she had been the inventor and patentee of it. It is very awkward for me, said the Lieutenant, as we were strolling through the quaint thoroughfare Bell and my Lady leading the way along the piazzas formed on the first floor of the houses; it is very awkward for me to be always meet- ing her, and more especially in a room. And she seems to think that she has done me some wrong. That is not so. That is quite a mistake. It is a misfortune that is all; and the fault is mine that I did not THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PIIAETON. 47 understand sooner. Yet I wish we were again in the phaeton. Then there is great life motion something to do and think about. I cannot bear this doing of noth- ing. Well, if the Lieutenants restlessness was to be appeased by hard work, he was likely to have enough of it that day; for we were shortly to take the horses and phaeton across the estuary of the Mersey, by one of the Birkenhead ferries; and any one who has engaged in that pleasing op- eration knows the excitement of it. Von Rosen chafed against the placid monotony of the Chester streets. The passages nnder the porticoes are found to be rather narrow of a forenoon, when a crowd of women and girls have come out to look at the shops, and when the only alternative to waiting ones turn and getting along is to descend ignominiously into the thoroughfare below. Now, no stranger who comes to Chester would think of walk- ing along an ordinary pavement, so long as he can pace through those quaint old galleries that are built on the roofs of the ground-row of shops and cellars. The Lieu- tenant hung aimlessly aboutjust as you may see a husband lounging and starin~ in Regent-street, while his wife is examin- ing with a deadly interest the milliners and jewellers windows. Bell bought presents for the boys. My Lady purchased photo- graphs. in fact, we conducted ourselves like the honest Briton abroad, who buys a lot of useless articles in every town he comes to, chiefly because he has nothing else to do, and may as well seize that op- portunity of talking to the natives. Then our bonny bays were put into the phaeton, and with a great sense of free- dom shining on fe face of our Uhlan, we started once more for the north. Bell was sitting beside me. That had been part of the arrangement. But why was she so pensive? Why this profession of tenderness and an extreme interest and kindness? I had done her no injury. Bell, I say to her, have you left all your wildness behind you buried down at the foot of Box Hill, or calmly interred under a block of stone up on Mickleham Downs. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set my Lady frowning at you as if you were an incor- rigible Tom-boy? Come, now, touching that ballad of the Bailifls Daughter the guitar has not been out for a longtime A small gloved hand was gently and furtively laid on my arm. There was to be no singing. I think, said Bell, aloud, that this is a very pretty piece of country to lie be- tween two such big towns as Chester and Liverpool. The remark was not very profound, but it was accurate, and it served its purpose of pushing away finally that suggestion about the guitar. We were now driving up the long neck of land lying between the parallel estuaries of the Dee and the Mer- sey. About Backford, and on by Great Sutton and Childer Thornton to Eastham, the drive was pleasant enough the windy day and passing clouds giving motion and variety to the undulating pasture-land and the level fields of the farms. But as we drove carelessly through the green land- scape, all of a sudden we saw before us a great forest of masts grey streaks in the midst of the horizon and behind them a cloud o.f smoke arising from an immense stretch of houses. We discovered, too, the line of the Mersey; and by and by we could see its banks widening, until the boats in the bed of the stream could be vaguely made out in the distance. Shall we remain in Liverpool this eve- ning? asks Bell. As you please.~~ Bell had been more eager than any of us to hurry on our passage to the north, that we should have abundant leisure in the Lake country. But a young lady who finds herself in an embarrassing position may imagine that the best refuge she can have in the evening is the theatre. Pray dont, says Tita. We shall be at Liverpool presently, and it would be a great pity to throw away a day when we shall want all the spare time we can get when we reach Kendal. Kendall It was the town at which Ar- thur was to meet us. But of course my Lady had her way. Since Von Rosen chose to sit mute, the decision rested with her; and so the driver, being of an equable disposition, and valuing the peace of mind of the party far above the respect that ought to have been shown to Liverpool, meekly took his orders and sent the horses on. But it was a long way to Liverpool, de- spite Titas assurances. The appearances of the landscape were deceitful. The smoke on the other side of the river seemed to indicate that the city was close at hand; but we continued to roll along the level road without apparently coming one whit nearer Birkenhead. We crossed Brom- borough Pool. We went by Primrose Hill. We drove past grounds apparently surrounding some mansion, only to find 48 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON, the level road still stretching on before us. Then there were a few cottages. Houses of an unmistakably civic look began to ap- pear. Suburban villas with gardens walled in with brick studded the road-side. Fac- tories glimmered grey in the distance. An odour of coal-smoke was perceptible in the air; and finally, with a doleful satisfaction, we heard the wheels of the phaeton rat- tling over a grimy street, and we knew we were in Birkenhead. There was some excuse for the Lieuten- ant losing his temper even if he had not been in rather a gloomy mood, to begin with. The arrangements for the transfer- ence of carriage-horses across the Mersey are of a nebulous description. When we drove down the narrow passa~,e to Tran- mere Ferry, the only offici~ 1 we could se- cure was a hulking lout of a fellow of de- cidedly hang-dog aspect. Von Rosen asked him civilly enough, if there was any one about who could take the horses out, and superintend the placin~ of them and the ph~ eton in the ferry. There was no such person. Our friend in moleskin hint- ed in a surly fashion, that the Lieutenant might do it for himself. But he would help, he said; and therewith he growled something about being paid for his trouble. I began to fear for the safety of that man. The river is deep just close by. Bell and Tita had to be got out, and tickets taken for the party and for the horses and phaeton. When I returned, the Lieutenant, with rather a firm-set mouth, was himself taking the horses out, while the loafer in moleskin stood at some little distance, scowling and muttering scornful observations at the same time. Ha! have you got the tickets? said our Uhlan. That is very good. We shall do by ourselves. Can you get out the nose- bags, that we shall pacify them on going across? I have told this fellow if he comes near to the horses if he speaks one more word to me he will be in the river the next moment; and that is quite sure as I am alive.~~ But there was no one who could keep the horses quiet like Bell. Wnen they were taken down the little pier, she walked by their heads, and spoke to them, and stroked their noses; and then she swiftly got on board the steamer to receive them. The Lieutenant took hold of Pollux. The animal had been quiet enough even with the steamer blowing and puffing in front of him, but when he found his hoofs strik- ing on the board between the pier and the steamer, he threw up his bead, and strove to back. The Lieutenant held on by both hands. The horse went back an- other step. It was a perilous moment, for there is no railing to the board which forms the gangway to those ferry-steamers, and if the animal had gone to one side or the other, he and Von Rosen would have been in the water together. But with a Hi! hoop! and a little touch of a whip from behind, the horse sprang forward, and was in the boat before he knew. And there was Bell at his head, talking in an endearing fashion to him as the Lieuten- ant pulled the strap of the nose-bag up; and one horse was safe. There was less to do with Castor; that prudent animal, with his eyes staring wildly around, feeling his way gingerly on the sounding board, but not pausing all the same. Then he too had his nose-bag to comfort him; and when the steamer uttered a yell of a whistle through its steam-pipe, the two horses only started and knocked their hoofs about on the deck for they were very well employed, and Bell was standing in front of their heads, talking to them and pacifying them. Then we steamed slowly out into the broad estuary. A strong wind was blowing up channel, and the yellow-brown waves were splashing about, with here and there a bold dash of blue on them from the gusty sky overhead. Far away down the Mer- sey the shipping seemed to be like a cloud along the two shores; and out on the wide surface of the river were large vessels be- ing tugged about, and mighty steamers coming up to the Liverpool piers. When one of these bore down upon us so closely that she seemed to overlook our little boat, the two horses forgot their corn and flung their heads about a bit; but the Lieu- tenant had a firm grip of them, and they were eventually quieted. He had by this time recovered from his fit of wrath. Indeed, he laughed heartily over the matter, and said I am afraid I did give that lounging fellow a great fright. He does not under- stand German, I suppose; but the sound of what I said to him had a great effect upon him I can assure you of that. He re- treated from me hastily. It was some time before he could make out what had happened to him; and then he did not re- turn to the phaeton. The horses bore the landing on the other side very well; and, with but an occasional tremulous start, permitted themselves to be put-to on the quay, amid the roar and confusion of arriving and departing steamers. We were greatly helped in this matter by an amiable police~ THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. 49 man, who will some day, I hope, become Bells excessive tenderness of heart. She Colonel and Superintendent of the Metro- had p0 sessed herself with some wild idea politan Force. that she had cruelly wronged our Lieutea- Werther, amid all this turmoil, was be- ant. She strove to make up for this imag- ginning to forget his sorrows. We had a mary injury by a show of courtesy and busy time of it. I-fe and Bell had been so kindness that was embarrassing to the occupied with the horses in getting them whole of us. The fact is, the girl had over that they had talked almost frankly never been trained in the accomplishments to each other; and now there occurred of city life. She regarded a proposal of some continuation of the excitement in marriage as something of consequence. the difficulties that beset us. For, after There was a defect, too, in her pulsation: we had driven into the crowded streets, her heart that ought to have gone reg- we found that the large hotels iii Liver- ularly through the multiplication table in pool have no mews attached to them; and the course of its beating, and never in our endeavours to secure in one place changed from twice one to twelve times entertainment for both man and beast, twelve made frantic plunges here and some considerable portion of our time there, and slurred over whole columns of was consumed. At length we found sta- figures in order to send an anxious and bling in Hatton Garden; and then we were tender flush up to her forehead and face. thrown on the wide world of Liverpool to A girl who was so little mistress of herself, look after our own sustenance. that on a winters evening, when we Mademoiselle, said the Lieutenant happened to talk of the summer-time and rather avoiding the direct look of her eyes, of half-forgotten walks near Ambleside however if you would prefer to wait, and Coniston tears might suddenly be and go to a theatre to-night seen to well up in her blue eyes, was Oh no, thank you, said Bell, quite scarcely fit to take her place in a modern hurriedly as if she were anxious not to drawing-room. At this present moment have her own wishes consulted; I would her anxiety, and a sort of odd self-accusa- much rather go on as far as we can to- tion, were really spoiling our holiday: but day. we did not bear her much malice. The Lieutenant said nothing how It was on this evening that we were des- could he? He was but six and twenty, or tined to make our first acquaintance with thereabouts, and had not yet discovered a the alarming method of making roads key to the Rosamonds maze of m~ womans which prevails between Liverpool and wishes. Preston. It is hard to say by what pro- So we went to a restaurant fronting a cess of fiendish ingenuity these petrified dull square, and dined. We were the only sweetbreads have been placed so as to oc- guests. Perhaps it was luncheon; per- casion the greatest possible trouble to haps it was dinner we had pretty well horses hoofs, wheels, and human ears;. forgotten the difference by this time, and and it is just as hard to say why such roads were satisfie& if we could get something although they may wear long in the to eat, anywhere, thrice a day. neighbourhood of a city inviting constant But it was only too apparent that the traffic should be continued out into pleasant relations with which we had country districts where a cart is met with started had been seriously altered. There about once in every five miles. These was a distressing politeness prevailing roads do not conduce to talking. One throughout this repast, and Bell had so far thinks of the unfortunate horses, and of forgotten her ancient ways as to become the effect on springs and wheels. Espe- - quite timid and nervously formal in her cially in the quiet of a summer evening, talk. As for my Lady, she forgot to say the frightful rumbling over the wedged-in sharp things. Indeed, she never does stones seems strangely discordant. And. care for a good brisk quarrel, unless there yet when one gets clear of the suburban are people present ready to enjoy the slums and the smoke of Liverpool, a very spectacle. Fighting for the mere sake of respectable appearance of real country life fighting is a blunder; but fighting in the becomes visible. When you get out to presence of a circle of noble dames and Walton Nurseries and on towards Aintree knights becomes a courtly tournament. Station and Maghull, the landscape looks All our old amusements were departing fairly green, and the grass is of a nature we were like four people met in a Lon- to support animal life. There is nothing don drawing-room; and, of course, we very striking in the scenery, it is true.. had not bargained for this sort of thing Even the consciousness that away beyond on setting out. It had all arisen from the fiats on the left the sea is washing overt LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1202 50 TUE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PIIAETON. the great sandbanks and on to the level shore, does not help much; for who can pretend to hear the whispering of the far- off tide amid the monotonous rattling over these abominable Lancashire stones? We kept our teeth well shut, and went on. We crossed the small river of Alt. We whisked through Maghull village. The twilight was gathering fast as we got on to Aughton, and in the dusk lit up by the yellow stars of the street lamps we drove into Ormskirk. The sun had gone down red in the west: we were again as- sured as to the morrow. But what was the good of another bright morning to this melancholy Uhian? Mis- fortune seemed to have marked us for its own. We drove into the yard of what was apparently the biggest inn in the place; and while the women were sent into the inn, the Lieutenant and I hap- pened to remain a little while to look after the horses. Imagine our astonishment, therefore (after the animals had been taken out and our luggage uncarted), to find there was no accommodation for us inside the building. Confounded house! growled the Lieutenant, in German; thou hast be- trayed me I So there was nothing for it but to leave the phaeton where it was, and issue forth in quest of a house in which to hide our heads. It was an odd place when we found it. A group of women regarded us with a frightened stare. In vain we in- vited them to speak. At length another woman little less alarmed than the others, apparen~ly~. made her appearance, and signified that we might, if we chose, go into a small parlour smelling consum- edly of gin and coarse tobacco. After all, we found the place was not so bad as it looked. Another chamber was prepared for us. Our luggage was brought round. Ham and beer were provided for our final meal, with some tea in a shaky tea-pot. There was nothing romantic in this dingy hostelry, or in this dingy little town; but ~were we not about to reach a more favoured country the beautiful and en- chanted laud of which Bell had been dreaming so long? Kennst du es wohi? Dahin, dahin, IVIi.icht ich mit dir, 0 mein Geliebter, zieha ! EAbte by Queen Titania. I confess that I cannot understand these young people. On our way from the Fairy Glen back to Bettws-y-Coed, Bell told me something of what had occurred; but I really could not get from her any proper reason for her havieg acted so. She was much distressed, of course. I forbore to press her lest we should have a scene, and I would not hurt the girls feelings for the world, for she is as dear to me as one of my own children. But she could give no explanation. If she had said that Count von Rosen had been too precipitate, I could have understood it. She said she had known him a very short time; and that she could not judge of a proposition coming so un- expectedly; and that she could not consent to his leaving his country and his profession for her sake. These are only such objections as every girl uses when she really means that she does not wish to marry. I asked her why. She had no objection to urge against Lieutenant von Rosen personally as how could she ? for he is a most gentlemanly young man, with abil- ities and accomplishments considerably above the average. Pe~haps, living down in the coun- try for the greater part of the year, I am not competent to judge; but I think at least he com- pares veryfavourably with the gentlemen whom I am in the habit of seeing. I asked her if she meant to marry Arthur. She would not an- swer. She said something about his being an old friend as if that had anything in the world to do with it. At first I thought that she had merely said No for the pleasure of accepting afterwards; and I knew that in that case the Lieutenant, who is a shrewd young man, and has plenty of courage, would soon make another trial. But I was amazed to find so much of seriousness in her decision; and yet she will not say that she means to marry Arthur. Perhaps she is waiting to have an explanation with him first. In that case, I fear Count von Rosens chances are very small indeed; for I know how Arthur has wantonly traded on Bells great generosity before. Perhaps I may be mistaken; but she would not admit that her decision could bealtered. I must say it is most unfortunate. Just as we were getting on so nicely and enjoy- ing ourselves so much an(l just as we were getting near to the Lake-country that Bell so much delights in everything is spoiled by this unhappy event, for which Bell can give no adequate reason whatever. It is a great pity that one who shall be nameless but who looks pretty fairly after his own comfort did not absolutely forbid Arthur to come vexing us in this way by driving over to our rout~. If Dr. Ashburton had had any proper control over the boy, he would have kept him to his studies in the Temple instead of allowing him to risk the breaking of his neck by driving wildly about the country in a dogcart.] ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. 51 From Macmillans Magazine. of its best life every guarantee for the fu- ALFONSO THE WISE, KING GE CASTILE. ture. The conquest of Seville followed, BY MARY WARD. and Ferdinand the Saint expelled its in- THE thirteenth century was for the habitants, and repeopled its streets with Christian states of Spain a time of rapid orthodox. Fresh annexations were made political growth. The famous battle of year by year, and the choice for the an- the Navas or plains of Tolosa, in 1210, had nexed populations lay between exile and struck a blow at Moorish dominion in the the Churchs penalties for heresy. At the south of the peninsula from which it never accession of Alfonso X., Christian Spain recovered. Valencia, the Cids lost con- might have fairly thought that fifty more quest, was regained on the one hand, and years at the most would see the last infi- Leon was permanently united to Castile del sail dipping into the Mediterranean on the other. Thecampaign of victory distance. We hear no more of the ancient which the energy and vigour of Alfonso glitter and prestige which in the days of VIII., sovereign of Castile alone, had the Cid made a Spanish knight think it no begun, was carried on triumphantly by the disgrace to fight for a time in the ranks political sagacity of Ferdinand the Saint, of the nation enemies. The moral effect owner of Leon also; sagacity, which for of Islam was gone. The original impulse the first time in Christian Spain made a of conquest and fanaticism, which had vi- Christian king the master and not the brated so long in the Spanish Morisma, slave of political opportunity. The battle was dead, and it seemed impossible that a of 1210 opened southern Spain to the thing so lifeless could long be suffered to Christians. Andalusia was conquered in hamper the vigorous growth of Christian 1236, and Ferdinand the Saint entered Spain. But success fertilized the native Cordova. The mosque of Cordova be- seed of Spanish indolence, and weak kings came the cathedral of a Christian bishop; and over-powerful nobles distracted Chris- and ranged in the strange pulpit, covered tian effort; and, as all know, it was not with arabesques, and lately echoing to the till three hundred years after the battle voice of the mufti, a Christian choir sang of Tolosa that Spain drove out the last Te Deum. Cordova had been at once the miserable remnant of a powerless people. seat of Mohammedan Empire in the West, The Alhambra became a palace of the the treasury of Arabic science, and the kings of Castile; but even then the disap- philosophical centre from which alone En- pearance of Islam was only a political and rope drew tbat imperfect knowledge of a religious disappearance. Still in the Aristotle, by which every department of streets of Saragossa, where once the great mediieval thought was for so long shape.d dynasty ?~ the Beni-Ijouds held Christian and tested; and the fall of Cordova was Aragon in check, you come upon groups the fall of Mohammedan Spain. It had which would not be out of keeping in Da- been no ordinary capital. Mohammedan- mascus; and in the language which every ism, in the outset so rude, so fervent, so peasant talks the commonest words physically irresistible, had in Spain striven betray, half-pathetically, an Arabic origin. to place its empire on a fresh basis, and to Within these gradually extending put forth other and wider claims to do- boundaries, the Spanisll mind had been minion than the sword and the Koran. rapidly and healthily developing. Be- Cordova was the home of philosophers, tween the dates of the Poem of the Cid, botanists, astronomers, at a time when and of the accession of Alfonso X., a period France, according to modern theory, had of almost exactly one hundred years, the only just begun to exist. Her savants, literature of the country had passed out men of the young Arab faith and race, of its infancy, had lost its purely objective found themselves, strangely enough, in the character, and contented itself no more position of apostles of antiquity, handing with outsides. The Poem of the Cid was on the civilization of Greece to the schools simple, because nothing else than simpli- of Paris. liTuthanked and unowned, Cor- city was then attainable. Life, complex dova was at one time the sun and centre as it may seem at first sight to have been, of European culture; and though in the was really simple; that is, ruled by a sin- thirteenth century other towns had sur- gle dominant impulse. The pressure was passed it in splendour and military im- intense, but it was in one direction the portance, the old ineffable tradition cluno direction of unwavering hostility to the round it still. When it fell into the hands infidel invaders. Circumstances threw the of the Christians, Islam must hsve seemed country and its literature into the heroic to have lost its raison d~tre, and to have stage. But towards the end of the twelfth resigned with this symbol and memento and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, 52 ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. hope and moderate tranquillity began for Spain. She found time for other works than rough epics and monkish legends of St. Mary the Egyptian, and worthless rhymes on the Adoration of the Magi; bound up with these we find a rhyming history of Apollonius, prince of Tyre sure sign of leisure and security in author and audience. Presently, from the mon- astery of San Milano, Gonzalez Berceo, the first named Spanish poet, began to pour legend after legend, and poem after poem. There is an exquisite little passage in the opening of one of his longest poems, the Miracles of the Virgin,~ which accurately mark the transition time through which the literature is passing. He is describing the Virgin under the allegory of a garden. The introduction of allegory of itself of course marks the second period of a liter- ature; but independently of this, the piece is so detailed, so purposely suggestive, so full of a subdued and finely finished colour and music, that one is tempted to believe, for the moment, either that the Poem of the Cid must be much earlier than 1150, or that some later hand has been at work here. But compare it with other passages from Berceo, and the genuineness of both mat- ter and form appears at once. In the La- ment which the Virgin Maria made on the day of her Sous Passion, the poet puts into the mouth of the Virgin lines whose grave, unembarrassed flow and restrained tenderness produce that effect of simpli- city without crudeness after which the best of modern art is perpetually striving. Between this and the best passage from the scene of the Cortes, -in the Poem of the Cid, the gulf is immense. Berceo is by no means a great poet; you may wade through twenty or thirty pages of Sanchez edition without finding a line worth notic- ing: still somewhere in the old moiks dull and unequally developed nature there lay hidden capacities which the date of his birth denied to the older author, nat- urally the more richly gifted of the two. For a man writes not only according to the soul within him, but according to the pressure of intelligence around him, and his thoughts will be such as his age allows him, his method of expression such as his age will understand. So far the development of the national genius was undisturbed. In the thir- teenth century, however, three foreign in- fluences at least were at work on Spain: that of the Troubadours driven southward by the storm of the Albigensian crusade, a long-lived influence, whose extent and force can hardly be rightly estimated till we reach the fifteenth century, and at- tempt to penetrate into the literary life of the court of John II.; that of Arabic lit- erature, brought to bear by the conquest of Cordova, and chiefly to be traced in the court and writings of Alfonso X.; and that of the Trouv~res, soon to be lost sight of in the overmastering enchantment of Italy and Dante. Our subject obliges us to concern our- selves chiefly with the second of these. The age of the Cantares de Gesta was over: in the fourteenth centui-y the Divina Corn- media was to change the whole mind and course of Spanish literature, and the gap between is filled with the figare of Alfouso X., surrounded by wise men from the East. King Alfonso was a man of great sense, writes the Jesuit historian Man- ana, but more fit for a scholar than a king; for whilst he studied the heavens and the stars, he lost the earth and his kingdom. Manianas account of him throughout is marked with a certain dis- trust and vague dislike, which one may suppose explained, either by the popular traditions of Alfonsos unsoundness in the- ological matters, or by the natural con- tempt of the practical man for failure. And that Alfonsos political career was a failure cannot be denied. He was pro- claimed at Seville, his fathers conquest, under the happiest of auspices. The Gua- dalquivir, so long a Moorish river, flowed along its whole course through Christian territory. Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Valen- cia: in the contemplation of such a line of conquests, how distant must have seemed the day when Alphonso VI. entered Tol- edo in triumph, and how amply avenged the long exile in the Asturias! Alfouso, already skilled in war and distinguished for his learning, ascended his fathers throne with all the prestige which belongs to the son not only of a conqueror, but of a saint. It was a moment of natural en- thusiasm for the throne, justified by the high character, both for military and lit- erary attainment, borne by the new occu- pant of it. Yet in the very first year of his reign we find Alfonso debasing the coin at Seville, and by the act sowing the seeds of that universal mutiny and discon- teut which overwhelmed and humiliated his old age. This proceeding, often re- peated throughout his reign, has been treated by all his historians as the gravest blot upon his career. Was it a piece of thirteenth-century political economy, the result of a sort of theoretical alchemy, or merely an unwise expedient for the relief ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. 53 of practical necessity? It is impossible to side of Richard of Cornwall, yet by no determine. That the people never forgot means wishing to offend the author of the it, and that they revenged themselves by Siefe Partidas, offered him a tithe of the leaving the king in great measure to fight ecclesiastical revenues usually appfied to his own quarrel with his undutiful son and the repairing and restoring of churches, rebellious nobles, is very evident. Against provided he would relinquish all claim to the effect of so practical a wrong his repu- the Empire. Alfonso, always needy, felt tation for learning never made head: the keenly the attractions of the offer, but villager, unable to make his little hoard could bring himself neither to reject it, nor of gold go as far as he had calculated, was to accept the condition upon which it hung. not likely, in the face of such an evil, to During the whole of his transactions con- take much interest in the astronomical nected with the unlucky election of 1236, merits of the author. of it. The enthusi- there is not a trace of decision or of dig- asm for Alfonso as a savant belongs to a nity. We find him in 1275, three years later date in Spain. During his lifetime after the election of Rudolph of Haps- it was reserved for foreign countries, un- burg, undertaking a winter journey to troubled by the king, to recognize and re- France, for the purpose of meeting the ward the efforts of the philosopher. To Pope at Belcaire, and pleading his rights. such recognition we owe the famous mci- Lie sets forth his claim to the Empire with dent which connects his name with gen- all the arguments he can muster, in the eral European history. Four years after presence of Pope and Cardinals, but in his accession, in 1256, three out of the vain. The Pope thoroughly understands seven Electors of Germany Tr~ves, that Rudolph is not a man to be trifled Saxony, and Brandenburg meeting in- with, and stands firm; but, says Man- side the walls of Frankfort, elected Alfon- ann, being a meek man, and understand- so X. emperor; while the Archbishops of ing how to appease generous spirits, he Mentz and Cologne, and the Count Pala- embraced and kissed the furious monarch, tine, finding the gates of the city closed and so pacified him. against them, encamped outside, and pro- In the autumn of 1276 Alfonso returned claimed Richard of Cornwall. As to the to Castile, master indeed of a tithe of the casting vote of Ottocar, king of Bohemia, ecclesiastical revenues, but emperor no opinions are divided: whether he regis- longer even in his own eyes. He found tered it on the side of Alfonso or not the the kingdom in confusion; his eldest son fact remains the same, that Alfonso never ~dead; the Moors, aided by reinforcements became emperor; that if the imperial func- from Africa, marching northwards; and tions were discharged at all between 1256 his second son Sancho claiming the suc- and 1272, they were discharged by Rich-, cession against his brothers children. ard of Cornwall, and that . the election of The Moors were easily repulsed, but from Rudolph of Hapsburg, in 1272, removed this year until his death Alfonsos life was the crown of Charlemagne for ever out of a succession of~troubles and humiliations. his reach. Alfonso owed his election to To win back Sancho he took the succession several causes, not all complimentary to from Ferdinands children, and so offended him; but there seems no reason to doubt Philip III. of France, their grandfather, the profession of the Electors, that they and ran the risk of a French invasion. In were principally influenced in their choice 1280 he once more debased the coinage, by the wide-spread reports of his learning, and by this act of short-sighted folly de- If it was so, learning never earned a more stroyed his last hold upon the sympathies worthless guerdon. For twenty years Al- of Spain. Sancho, who considered his fonso hankered after the proffered yet un- father only as an obstacle in his path, took attainable prize. Had he been a popular advantage of every mistake, made friends and secure ruler, we may well believe that with Granada, and secured Castile by he would have put forth all the resources. large promises of a better order of things. of Castile to claim it. But he was dis- When, in 1281, Alfonso summoned a Cortes tracted on the one side by the perpetual at Toledo, Sancho summoned a counter revolts of Granada, a rising kingdom, one at Valladolid, in which his father was which the genius of a Moorish soldier of publicly deposed. Alfonso, forsaken by fortune had built up upon the ruins of the j Church and State alike, made one last des- older Mohammedan states, and on the perate effort to recover his ancient su- other by the discontent of his poorer sub- premacy. To this period of his life be- jects, the mutiny of his nobles, and the longs the famous and touching letter quot- schemes of his second son, Sancho. Nor ed in Ticknors well-known book. It is was this all. The Pope, enlisted on the addressed to Aloazo Perez de Guzman, at 54 ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. the court of Morocco, asking for help in men and money from, the king of that country. In it he speaks of his sad and fallen state. His prelates, instead of making peace, have fomented discord. Since those of his own country fail him, none can take it ill that he applies to those of Benamarin. He therefore entreats Guzman to obtain help and money for him from Aben Jusef, who is allied and at peace with him. If fate allows. Alfonso will amply recompense Guzman for his good offices; if not, urges the philosopher-king, loyalty and charity are their own reward. Therefore, my cousin, Aionzo Perez de Guzman, so treat with your master and my friend that he may lend me on my rich- est crown, and on the jewels in it, as much as shall seem good to him; and if you should be able to obtain his help for me, do not deprive me of it, which I think you will not do; rather I hold that all the good offices which my master may do me, by your hand they will come, andmaythe hand of God be with you. Given in my only loyal city of Seville, the thirtieth year of my reign, and the first of my misfor tunes. THE KING. At last the Pope excommunicated San- cho and his adherents, and popular sympa- thy turned a little towards the aged and forsaken king. But Alfonso, shut up itt his only loyal city, received the submis- sion of various towns and vassals, which the excommunication brought about, with a certain apathy and hopelessness. There is nothing more. dreary than the history of his last days, as the old ~hronicle of his life relates them. A false report gains ground of the death of Sancho, and the news reaches Seville. It came to Don Alvaro, says the chron- icle, and so to the king Don Alfonso. And he saw that it was said in the letter that the Infante Don Sancho, his son, was dead. And he was much troubled, inso- much that he would not show it before those who were there, and withdrew into a room by himself, so that no man dared go in to him. And he began to weep for him very bitterly; and so great was his sorrow, that at last he said concerning him many grievous words, declaring that the best man of his lineage was dead. His attendants, indignant at his grief, break in upon him, reproaching him with the indulgence of such weak lamentation over the death of a rebel and a perjurer. It is Joab and David over again. And Alfonso, broken in mind and body, seeks to pacify them and to hide his own emo- tion. Master Nicholas, he said, addressing their spokesman, I am not weeping for the death of the Infante Don Sancho, but I weep for my miserable old age. Sancho, however, recovers from the fever which had attacked him, and journeys to Avila as healthy and as pugnacious as before. Alfon- so is told of the mistake, and it pleased him. For he had entered upon that bor- der-land where neither pleasure nor pain have any life or keenness, but are shadows like all else. He fell ill in Seville, so that he drew nigh unto death. . . . Aud when the sickness had run its course, he said be- fore them all that he pardoned the Infante Don Sancho, his heir, all that out of malice he had done against him, and to his sub- jects the wrong they had wrought towards him, ordering that letters confirming the same should be written sealed with his golden seal, so that all his subjects should he certain that he had put away his quar- rel with them, and desired that no blame whatever should rest upon them. And when he had said this, he received the body of God with great devotion, and in a little while gave up his soul to God~ So died Alfonso of Castile, having, as it seemed, made a failure of his life. Never upon the face of it was any man more un- suited to his position, or more incapable of doing the work assigned him. We fancy him perhaps under other circumstances a student in some monastery, like Berceo; a professor of law at Salamanca; a great troubadour, free to catch and revel in every passing nuance of emotion. To what a roundness and completeness we imagine mi,ht have grown the natute which fate appears to have so stunted and mutilated. But as we pass beyond his life, through his writings into the later life of Spain, we are gradually persuaded that our first impres- sion was wrong, as was the first impression of his conntrymen. During those twenty years, which appear at first sight one long contemptible hankering after a doubtful gain, Alfonso created Spanish law, endow- ed and enlarged the Universities, regulated the unwieldy growth of municipal privi- lege and custom throughout Spain, and by his banishment of the hitherto omnipotent Latin from all public acts, and his great p rose works in the vulgar tongue, produced I effects, both upon the language and litera- ture, which among other Romance peoples had been the fruits of the united efforts of several generations, and gave such an im- pulse to the mind of Sp~sin as Chaucer gave to England a century later. All this 55 ALFONSO TIlE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. Christian and Arabic sources, and should have considered no part of it complete without illustration from, or reference to, the learning of the East? In the Chron- ica General de Espaila Arabic literature has left still more definite traces. It is a little startling to find in the fourth part of this chronicle the objections of modern critics to the history~ of the Cid, anticipat- ed and justified by a king of Castile born about 120 years after the heros death. But M. Dozy has explained the puzzle. We know now that nearly the whole of the fourth part is nothing more than a translation from an Arabic history of the Cid, which has been lost, and which very naturally places the conquerors of Valen- cia in by no means the most favourable of lights, and we do not need M. Dozys help in restoring for ourselves the Arabic la- ment over Valencia, which Alfonso has handed down to us in token of an unusual sympathy with a hostile literature. The following passage is taken from the third part of the Siete Partidas which re- lates to the duties and privileges of the king Vicars of God are the kings, each one in his kingdom, placed over the people to maintain them in justice and in truth. They have been called the heart and soul of the people. For as the soul lies in the heart of man and by it the body lives and is maintained, so in the king lies justice, which is the life and maintenance of the people of his lordship. And as the heart is one, and from it all the other members receive dig- nity and worthiness so that they may become one with it, so those of the kingdom, though they be many, because the king is one, must be one with him, to seive and aid him in all those things which he has to do. was done in a curious, loitering, unevident way. These works were not the offshoots of an illustrious life; they came into the world stamped with an unfavourable birth- mark, with no glitter, no prestige, shroud- ed like their author in a cloud of mean and harassing circumstances. They had to win their way upwards from the rank and file of human efforts by their own in- trinsic merit. And it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when Spaniards, conscious for the first time of the riches and capabilities of the national life, sou~,ht to trace its developments to their several sources, that Alfonsos la- bours were at last approached, sifted, and understood by men in whom the political temper of the Spain of his day was alto- gether dead. Four years after his accession, on the eve of the Feast of St. John, the code of the Siete Partidas was begun. This great work, which forms to this day the ground- work of all Spanish law, and which, creep- ing in from Florida, has found its way into the law-courts of the United States, was undertaken in obedience to a dying injunc- tion of St. Ferdinand, who had himself begun upon it. It was finished in ten years, but did not receive full authority as law till after Alfonsos death. It is not, however, as a code of laws that we are concerned with the Siete Partidas. Its foundation, general tendency, and com- pleteness as such these are not literary questions, and must be judged of by those qualified to consider them. It is in the wide and general culture which the book reveals, iu the many influences that we dis- cover to have been at work upon it, in the curious historical evidence afforded by its pages, and in the thousand-and-one points which throw light upon the character of its author, that the ordinary reader finds legitimate working-ground. When we think of how few literary Spaniards con- sider the knowledge of Arabic essential to the study of the past history of their country; when we remember the stir cre- ated quite recently in Spain by the publi- cation of a series, of mere extracts from Arabic MSS. MSS. chosen from hund- reds of others which remain to this day uncatalogued and unknown in the depths of the Escurial does it not at least ap- Superfluous and worthless honors the king pear remarkable that at a time when, as a ought not to desire. For that which is beyond Spanish king victorious over but ~ot yet necessity cannot last, and being lost and come rid of the ancient oppressors of his race, short of turns to dishonor. Moreover the wise he might have justifiably neglected and re- men have said that it is no less a virtue for a pelled the genius and skill of a people man to keep that which he has than to gain that whom he still feared, Alfonso should have which he has not; because keeping comes of drawn his principal work equally from judgment, but gain of good fortune. And the Thought is the manner in which men con- sider things past, present, and to come. It is born in the minds of men arid ought to be en- gendered without anger, without great sadness or much desire or with violence, hut with rea- son and concerning things which breed honour and avert ill. And let the king guard the thoughts of his heart in three manners firstly let him not desire nor greatly care to have su- perfluous and worthless honours. It is curious to compare what follows with the facts of the writers life 56 ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. king who keeps his honour in such a manner which the greater were the knowledge of His that every day and by all means it is increased, holy faith, of natural things, and the kingdom lacking nothing, and does not lose that which he of my fathers, the better to snstain this last. has for that which he desires to have,. he is He hath of His own good pleasure given to me held for a man of right judgment, who loves his the high good and possession of the philosophers own and desires to lead thorn to all good. And stone, for I sought it not. This great treasure God will keep him in this world from the dis- became known to me in my poverty, and I made honouring of men, and in the next from the it, and with it increased my wealth. dishonour of the wicked in hell. Then follow a series of verses, de arte We can do no more than mention the ma~,or, in which the author relates how he ~ Septenario, a work which anticipates imported a savant from Egypt who pos- the Tesoro of Brunetto Latini; the sessed the secret, how it had been impart- Book of Hunting; the Treatise on ed to him, and how zeal for the good of Chess (is there any kindred between this his countrymen had led him to open to the and the one printed by Caxton?); the world this great and divine mystery. The Fuero Castellano, which was intended receipt itself is given in cyphers, which to regulate the curious and unequal growth have never yet been explained, and which, of municipal privilege and custom in as Ticknor remarks, were probably never Spain; the Gran Conquista dUltramar, meant to be explained. In the opening of which there is a splendid copy in the verses it is said, that not wishing to give British Museum, whichbelonged to Charles such great po~ver as the knowledge of the II.; and those other smaller works which, secret would impart to an unlettered man, under the title of Opusculos Legales, have the author has imitated the Theban Sphinx, been recently published by ihe Spanish and has put forth truths under the guise Academy. of cyphers. As we have said, the sixteenth-century The whole thing is a delectable corn- editions of all these works have put Al- pound of imorance, superstition, and knav- fonso clearly before the world a man and cry. In n~ither thou0nt nor expression is author. Moreover, they have provided there a trace of dignity or cultivation, and materials for foreign criticism, of which it we know that Alfonso of Castile possessed has not been slow to avail itself. The both. The evidence, external and inter- Germans have gone to work upon Alfonso, nal, has been exatnined in detail by Los and the result of their grUndlich investiga- Rios and other critics. It was noticed by tions has been a little disheartening. Sanchez as early as 1775 that the character True, they say, the man did good work; of the MS. was suspicious; that it had the that he strongly influenced for good both appearance of having been formed by de- the social and political civilization of Spain tached strokes of the pen, as if in laboured cannot be denied; therefore, as the ser- imitation of a thirteenth or early four- vant of human progress he claims our teenth century hand. The MS. has been most serious attention: but as a man he is carefully examined more than once since in our eyes undone by one fatal error, 1775, and, says Los Rios, there is no mod- as a philosopher and follower of truth, he em pakeographer who will not declare it is for ever discredited by the book of the to belong to the latter half of the fifteenth Tesoro. century. The note upon it which fixes the What then is this book of the Tesoro, ownership of it upon the famous Marques upon which Alfonsos reputation for hon- de Villena is written in the same suspicious esty, and therefore for greatness, undoubt- character, and there can be no doubt that edly hangs? Among the MSS. of the it saw the light long after his death, its National Library there may be seen a author attaching to it the names of a king small parchment folio consisting of about sufficiently famous and sufficiently far re- ten leaves, and closed with a curious double moved, and of a well-known patron of let- lock. The character in which it is written ters so universally credited with a knowi- appears to be that of the fourteenth cen- edge of the black art, that after his death tury, and no less than sixty-two para- the greater portion of his priceless library graphs of the book consist of unintelligi- was handed over to the kin0 and burnt by ble cyphers. It opens with a prose pre- the common hangman. face, from which we will quote a few Notice also the expression in the Pro- lines : logue, who have been Emperor. At the Book L of the Tesoro. Written by me, close of the MS. beion~ing to the Biblioteca Don Alfonso, King of Spain, who have been Nacional we find th6 following notice of Emperor, since after many great mercies which (late : May God be praised. This book the Lord God hath bestowed upon me of was written in the year of our Salvation, ALFONSO THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. 57 1272. Now, although it is true that Ru- Aurelius, in despair, applies to a clerk of doiph of Hapsburg was elected emperor in Orleans, a noted magician and astrologist; 1272, we know that it was not till 1276 I and, with the aid of the Tables Tole- that Alfonso relinquished his long-cher- tanes, the magician produces an illusion ished dream, and gave up the style and which frightens Dori~,en out of her senses. title which all his efforts were unable to It cannot be denied that the connection in confirm and substantiate. But such an ex- which his great work is mentioned, is pression would come naturally enough to scarcely as complimentary to Alfonso as the half-educated author of the fifteenth one might wish it to be; still it affords a century; aware of one fact only, the fact curious proof of the wide-spread popuJarity of Rudolphs election, and in his anxiety to which it had attained within a hundred to avoid anachronisms, stumbling into a years of his death. In the fifteenth and fatal one. The date, too, in the year of sixteenth centuries it was translated into our Salvation, has an odd ring about it. Latin, and printed frequently in a inuti- Till the end of the fourteenth century lated form in France, Italy, and Germany. Spain counted from the era of Cmsar; when Our own days have seen a superb edition the year of Our Lord was mentioned at all, of it issued by the Spanish Academy. And it was always placed after the year of the the Tabuim well deserved their medimval Era, and spoken of as that of~ The Incar- fame, and their modern reprint, not only r~ation, the form of our Salvation being as the crude embodiment of patientdabour of much later date. and long research, but as the product of Add to this the penalties decreed against an almost premature enlightenment of magic and alchemy in the Partidas; the as- mind. For the successors of Averrhoes sertion that if a king desires the t~hing and Avicenna, driven out of Seville and which may not be, and attempts to do by Cordova by the father, had returned to art what accordino to nature cannot be their old haunts at the invitation of the done, as does el Aiquimia, he will be con- son. With them, too, had come the famous sidered a man without understanding, and Rabbis, depositaries of learning which had will waste both time and money; and the not been able to hold its own against the denunciation of those who make alchemy energy and splendour of Mohammedan ficiesen aiquimia, deceiving men, and mak- science, and which had gradually sunk ing them believe that which according to into a supplementary place. In Toledo, nature cannot be. the conquest of Alfonso VI. and the most So far indeed from encouraging the pop- Christian of cities, Alfonso had gathered ular superstitions of his time, Alfonso stood together a great council of the ~vise men in a strangely advanced position towards of all nations, composed principally of them, and deserves to be placed side by Arabs and Arabic Jews, but containing side with our own Bacon, as one of the first also representatives of the learning of genuine and modest inquirers after scien- France amid Italy. here for many years tific truth. Compare with the false Tes- he maintained them at the public expense, oro the true Tablas Alfonsinas. They while the necessary data for the compila- are crude, no doubt. They have that curi- tion of the Tablas Alfonsinas were being ous element of mystery and fancifulness collected. A permanent meeting sat in which enters universally into medimeval Toledo, conducted, when Alfonso could science; but they are what Roger Bacon not be present, by a famous Rabbi, while was dreaming of, and their merit was at- detachments of savants established them- tested by their rapid popularity. It is with selves in different parts of the town and its a rare delight that the English student of neighbourhood for the observation of the Alfonso finds in the Frankeleines Tale heavenly bodies, and the drawing up of of our own Chaucer a mention of the kings tables. This was the first time, says the scientific work Spanish Royal Academy of Ihistory, that in barbarous timnes the republic of letters His tables Toletanes forth he brought, was invited to contemplate an academy of Ful wet corrected that ther lacked nought. learned men occupied through many years This is an undoubted reference to the in rectifying the old astronomical caleula- Alfonsine Tables, which, from the place of tions, in disputing about the most difficult their compilation, were frequently called details of this science, in constructing new the Tabulm Toletanam. Dorigen sets her instruments, i~m observing by mneans of lover, Aurelius, the task of clearing the them the course of the stars, their declina- coast of Brittany from rocks, so tions, ascensions, eclipses, longitudes, and latitudes. That they ne letten ship ne bote to gon. Compare with this Roger Bacons de 58 ALFO~S0 THE WISE, KING OF CASTILE. spairing dream of what might be, as we dreds of years, that we get at the heart of have it in the Opus Tertium sent to Alfonso. These little pieces, some of Pope Clement IV. in 1267. Mathemati- them full of a sunny lyrical buoyancy, cians,* instruments, tablet,, all are requi- others fancifully sad and grave, and others site, he says, and he despairs of all three. simple narrative, which only the genius of Good mathematicians are not to he had, the narrator saves from baldness and awk- except at vast expense, such as could only wardness, betray to us the real inner na- be borne by the Pope or some great prince: ture of the great author of the Partidas the same complaint applies to instruments, and of the Grande y General Hstoria. and ~o the compilation and certifying of The language in which they are written is tables. Such tables, perfectly done, would as it were a confidence in itself, and ap- be worth a kings ransom. He himself has peals to one. It is Gallician, and we are often attempted their composition, but in reminded by it of the writers childhood vain. The work is too vast and costly for in Leon, and of the early years among any but the great. Before it could be the Asturias, far away from Seville and undertaken it would at least be necessary Cordova, and the busy. disputant South. that We have no details of this childhood of Alfonso, but from these Gallician cantigas Ten or twelve boys should be instructed in we can well believe that it had memories the ordinary canons and astronomical tables; for him which remained for ever sacred. and when they knew how to work at them, then It was tended and trained, no doubt, by for a year to discover the motions of each planet the beautiful Beatrice of Snabia, his moth- singly, for every day and every hour, accordi to all the variations of their motion. ng er, whose statue stands near that of her son in the cathedral of Toledo. 11cr form What would he have said had he known is full of grace and di~nity; she averts of the council of savants already assembled her modest, tender face while she holds at Toledo, under a great prince, working her hand to receive her wedding-ring from not for one year, but for many at this her husband. There is a fanciful poetry thing very about the conception of the mediteval Yet, as we read the account not only sculptor which takes hold of the imagina- of such public acts as these, but of Alfon- tion. There in the cathedral of Toledo sos private life, of his maintenance ~ the three have stood for centuries fa.. his palace at B~irgos, of which twenty ther, mother, and son the parents for years ago remains were still to be ever exchanging the symbol of their love, traced, of Arabic savants, men who pro- thus made immortal: the son standing a fessed not only Averrhoes but the little apart, unnoticing, extreme youthful- Koran, we wonder no longer at the ness in face and figure, the countenance popular suspicion of his orthodoxy slightly upraised, eyes and lip smooth and Had God Almighty consulted me about untroubled, almost smiling; one hand hold- the solar system, it would have been better ino~ the fastening of the long upper man- done, he is reported to have said, and the tIe, which falls to the feet in large calm authenticity of the speech has been a folds; the other grasping a sceptre, upon ground of contention for centuries. hL~ is the top of which perches a dove. more than probable that he never made ~ One should read the Canrigas.with this but it is very natural that. Spain should statue in ones mind. With wars in Granada have supposed him capable of it; for Al- ~ rebellions, imperial elections, fonsos religion, deep and genuine as it and treaties, they have nothing whatever todo T was, was of an altogether different type . .~ here are signs of warlike enthu- from that of St. Thomas Aquinas. ~t is I smasm, it is true, traces of that natural and not represented by the First Book of the inevitable patriotism which was the birth- Particles, to the compilation of which a Ill right of every medimval Spaniard; still sorts of political causes contributed; it is their general tone presupposes one of not to be judged of by the Prologue of the those happy elevated moods of the mind forged Tesoro : it runs into quite other in which material confusions and distrac- moulds, and is preserved to us in quite tions are lost sight of, and the delight of other shapes. It is in the Cantigas d la the soul in the strength and purity of its Vergen Maria, mentioned in his will, and 9wn emotions expresses itself outwardly sung over his grave at Toledo for hun- in a certain grace and serenity. Take, for instance, this welcome to May, the month * It must be remembered that Bacon included of Mary, which we reproduce in a faint under the general term of mathematics, geomeiry, Lnglish copy, preserving the metre of the arithmetic, astronomy, and music. on inal PAGAN ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 Welcome, 0 May, yet once again we greet and is not without dignity, though want- thee! ing in the delicate individual flavour of So aiway praise we her, the Holy Mother, the Cantigas. Great efforts have been Who prays to God that He shall aid us ever made of late years to recover the re- Against our foes, and to us ever listen. mainder of it. Spain has been searched Welcome, 0 May, loyally art thou welcome! for it, but in vain. If it exists at all, it So aiway praise we her, the Mother of kind- must be looked for now rather in Paris or ness, Vienna, than in the Escurial. Mother who ever on us taketh pity, Alfonso of Castile is not to be de- Mother who guardeth us from woes unnum- scribed in a few pages. He is not like the bered. Cid, a man of one impulse, and that an easily comprehensible one. his character is fall of indications, of half-growths and complexities. You class him perhaps in your mind as a philosopher, and he is one; then why not more indifference to this worlds gains and prospects? But he had the volatile and quickly-moved humanity of a child, and the crown of Charlemagne pleases him like any other bauble. He appears at one time a king jealous of his rights, enumerating with bitter pride those who had knelt at his feet and done him homage; while later we find him directing that he should be buried near his parents on a lower tomb, his head to their feet, be- cause of his unworthiness. And there they rest together, Ferdinand the Saint and Alfonso the Wise, father and son, diffi- cult as it is to relize that the same age pro- duced both: the one a noble and adequate representative of the best and most char- acteristic influences of his day; the other bewildered by dim ideals for the realiza- tion of which the world had not yet pro- vi(led the means, his force wasted per- petually in untimely aspirations. Not wholly anything, whether for good or evil, it is difficult to understand and represent him; but our sympathy with him perhaps transcends that which we are able to ac- cord to the Saint. Welcome, 0 May! welcome, 0 month well- favoured! So let us ever pray and offer praises To her who ceases not for us, for sinners, To pray to God that we from woes be guarded. Welcome, 0 May, 0 joyous May and stain- less So will we ever pray to her who gaineth Grace from her Son for us, and gives each morning Force that by us the Moors from Spain be driven. Welcome, 0 May, of bread and wine the giver Pray then to her, for in her arms, an infant, She bore the Lord.! She points us on our journey, The journey that to her will bear us quickly ! There is little depth or subtilty of thought in this; but how fresh it is, how entirely without effort or affectation There is nothing strained, not an epithet too much, and the allusion to the Moors completes the whole effect of spontaneity. The more serious poems, such as lit- anies, confessions of sin, legends like that exquisite one of the nun who leaves her convent for the sinful world, and coming back years afterwards broken and repent- ant, finds the Virgin in her place, wearing her forsaken dress, and fulfilling her de- serted duties, till she should return to re- sume them, when, without a word of up- braiding, they axe given back to her, and she, heart-broken with love and gratitude, confesses to the amazed and wondering sisters, her flight and her long absence, and dies in an ecstasy, all are charac- terized by the same fresh simplicity. Not that the book is faultless; here and there the evil influence of the Troubadours has crept in, producing lines so curiously meanin~,less, and versification so ingen- iously unnatural, that we smile and acquit Alfonso of what is his only in name. The Qucrellas, a poem, of which only two stanzas remain to us, was written within a year or two of his death. It was meant to be a lament over his misfortunes, From The Saturday Review. PAGAN ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. THE ecclesiastical mind of England has of late got plunged into controversies which carry us back to ages which ecclesi- astical controversialists must not be al- lowed to have wholly to themselves. To an exclusively theological view no period of history seems richer than the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Those ages are the very paradise of theological contro- versy. They are the days of theology in the very strictest sense. The disputes of other ages, say the Iconoclast controversy or the vast mass of controversies which we jumble together under the name of the 60 PAGAN ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. Reformation, had commonly more or less to do with mans practical duties towards his Creator or towards his fellow-creatures. Even within the time of which we speak, there was one dispute, the Pelagian dis- pute, which, as having as much to do with the human as with the divine nature, had more in common with disputes of a prac- tical kind. But this was a Western dis- pute, a controversy between Britain and Africa. The true native land of pure the- ology is the Eastern half of Christendom, the lands where men spoke the one lan- guage which has the power of distinguish- ing with sharp precision the minutest shades of theological difference. There lay the true home of the controversies of those specially controversial ages; there arose the heretics whose eternal doom we are bidden to pronounce thirteen times in the year; and there arose the giants of orthodoxy who smote off the heads which arose one after another from the crushed, but never fully seared, trunk of the hy- dra of heresy. The centuries between Constantine and Justinian are a time so fertile both in heretics and saints that men are sometimes tempted to speak as if none but heretics and saints lived in those days, and as if three centuries and more of the worlds history had only an ecclesiastical existence. Or, if men look at those days at all in their secular aspect, they are tempted simply to despise the weakness of the decaying Empire, to turn away from the spectacle of shifting Emperors and invading barbarians, of the rule of eu- nuchs and favourites, and the ten thousand crimes of the courts of Byzantium and Ravenna. We need not say that this is no adequate view of the true middle ages, of the transitional period of the worlds history when the Roman and the Teutonic elements still existed side by side in all their distinctness, and had not yet been welded together into a whole different from either. But it is worth while to see how religious controversies looked in those days in the eyes of that large class who were neither saints nor heretics. The course of history carries us so suddenly from heathen persecutions under Dio- cletian to ecclesiastical disputes under Constantine, that we are apt to think that all mankind, or at least all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, were actively engaged on behalf either of orthodoxy or of heresy. We are apt to forget how long mere Paganism went on. We are apt to fancy that, as soon as Con- stantine set up the Labarum as his stand- ard, the whole Roman world followed his example, and that men no longer disputed whether Christianity were true, but only what was the true form of Christianity. But things were far from changing in this sudden way. Everything indeed shows that Christianity was the advaucin~ and that paganism was the declinin~ religion. But the advance and the decline were gradual. Down almost to the end of the fourth century it was hard to say which was the established religion of the Empire. Except Julian, every Emperor was a Chris- tian, and it should be remembered that, while Constantine and Theodosius acted as zealous Christians long before their baptism, Julian was not only a baptized man, but had something of an ecclesias- tical tinge about him, having in his youth though, to be sure, he never got beyond his youth publicly read the Scriptures in the congregation. But, on the other hand, baptized and believing Emperors, both orthodox and heretical, continued to be invested, like their heathen predeces- sors, with the office and badges of the High Pontiffs of the old religion. It was Gratian who first felt any scruple as to such conformity with a false creed, and his scruple was of evil omen. It was a well-hazarded prophecy, if it was really uttered as a prophecy, that, if Gratian re- fused to be Pont~f~x Maximus, there would before long be a iVlaximus Pont~fex. But, if Christianity was the religion of the Roman Emperor, it was at least not the religion of the Roman Senate. It is curious, in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the despotic system of Diocletian and Constantine was fully established and when lecrislation went steadily on the rule that Quod principi placuit legis habet vigore in, to see how the Roman Senate won hack again some small portion of its old authority. Even the Senate of Con- stantinople seems to have acted now and then; but the Senate of Constantinople was overawed by the constant presence of the Emperor. In the West, on the other hand, when the Emperor lived at Milan or Ravenna while the Senate went on in its old place at Rome, it often happened that in sudden emergencies the Conscript Fathers had really to act according to their own wisdom. But, down to the reign of Theodosius, the Conscript Fathers were a decidedly heathenish asscmbly. They vigorously protested against the dis- establishing decree of that orthodox Em- peror, by which sacrifices to the old Gods were not forbidden, but were no longer to be offered at the public cost. Later still,~ when Alaric was at their gates, men fell 61 PAGAN ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. back, not indeed on the genuine worship had on the old. Before Christianity final- of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but on ly uprooted paganism. it in a manner some strange rites from Etruria. No Christianized it. The paganism of Julian other story better brings out the strange was not simply a system of State ceremo- mixture of creeds and feelings at the nies and poetical tales. It had become a time. The Pr~nfect of the city coasuhs creed; it was a system of faith and morals. the Bishop, the first bearer of the famous Take the history of Z~simos, written in name of Innocent. His answer, if we may the fifth century, when paganism was fast trust the spiteful heathen Z& simos, was the j vanishing. To him the worship of the most striking example on record of that Gods of Rome was not the subject of play- habitual sacrifice of private conviction ful verse which it was to Horace, nor the which some say is the highest duty, if not matter of state policy which it was to the of a Bishop, yet at least of a statesman. augur of Cicero. His faith is as firm, his They were to do the idolatrous rite, but orthodoxy is as rigid, he is as undoubting to do it privily (6 di r~y r~ ir6Xe& .g corrjpiav in his belief in Divine Providence and Di- ~nwpoaOev r~ obceiag 7rotflai~Irvo~ 66~nt~ adupa vine ven~eanCe as the most fervent disput- ~,cci, a6ro~ wowii ~i7rrp Zacwtv). To under- ant on the Christian side. lie hates Chris- stand this answer, whether really given or tiamty; but it is not with the blind ha- not, we must remember that to the mind tred of earlier times; he clearly has some of Innocent the Gods who were to be knowledge of its doctrines, and he even called on to save Rome were no mere borrows its language in denouncing it. non-existent beings, no mere creations of He laments the departure of Constantine the fancy. They were devils, living and from the ri0ht way a formula which powerful; the point of the answer is, that he must surely have learned from his ene- the Roman patriotism of the Bishop car- mie s; he has his confessors of the truth; ned him so fnr, that he was ready to see he has his signs and wonders, his special Rome saved by the help of devils rather . interpositions for the punishment of irrev- than not see her saved at all. But the erence; he has his general theory De sacrifices would have no virtue unless they Gubernatione Deoruin in the plural, as were done publicly; the Senate went up carefully thought out and as firmly be- into the Capitol and did all things de- lieved in as ever Salvianus had in the sin- cently and in order, but no man, the i gular. Of Christianity and its professors heathen historian teEs us, dared to have he never speaks without some expression any share in their doings. of sectarian dislike. In short, in Z6simos The revival of paganism under Julian the Christian disputant met with a fanati- bears its witness both ways. Except that cal enemy as hitter, and no doubt as con- the fires of persecution were not kindled, scientious, as himself. it has much in common with the reign of From Zosimos let us go back a genera- Philip and Mary in England. It has~tion or two to Ammianus. We conceive much in common with it, both in the ease that classical purists will cry out if we say with which the revival was made and in that Ammianus Marcelhinus, the historian the ease with which it was got rid of. of the campaigns of Julian, has really a If mens minds had not been floating be- right to rank very high, within one or two tween the old system and the new, if of the top, among the extant Latin histo- there had been a large and zealous ma-~ rians of Rome. Between him and Tacitus jority in favour of either, the change the gap is filled up with the dreary epit- either way would have been far more dif- omes of the Angustan history. But Tac- ficult, whether in England or in the Ro- itus, as well as Livy and Sallust, is not a man Empire. And when, after the death writer contemporary with what he writes of Julian, victims are slain, and the usual about. And daring people are nowadays rites of divination are gone through on beginning to say that Tacitus wrote with behalf of the Christian Jovian, we are re- a party object, and is not to be implicitly minded of the fact that Elizabeth was trusted. But Ammianus was a contem- crowned with the old ceremonies, and that porary, and, in a large part of his story, mass went on, being said in English he was a spectator and an actor, an officer churches till the summer of 1559. in Julians army. If we look at his mat- Both in England and in the Roman Em- ten, his thorough trustworthiness, his keen- pine there were, during the time of change, I ness of observation, we might put him in many zealous supporters of the old system the highest class of writers; if we look at and many zealou2 supporters of the new. I his detestably complicated and affected But in the Roman case it should be no- style, we might put him in the lowest. ticed what a deep effect the new system But what we are concerned with is the 62 PAGAN 4S?EOTS OF CHRISTIANITY. way in which he looks at Christianity. In this respect he has pretty well reached the state attributed by Principal Tuiloch to Mr. Burton, that of a pitiless impartiali- ty. He clearly was not a Christian him- self; he always speaks of Christianity from the outside; but he always speaks of the religion itself with respect. lie clearly felt the sublimity of Christian mar- tyrdorn; he speaks with reverence of those who laid down their lives for their faith. He despises the Christianity of Constantius, in whose hands it had become an old wifes fable ( anilis superstito ), but he says that Christianity itself is a religio absoluta et simplex words which are not very easy to understand, but which are clearly meant to be respect- ful. He strongly blames the pride and luxury of the Bishops of Rome, but in the same breath he bears witness to the sim- ple and useful lives of the Bishops of smaller places. Theodosius, whom ZOsi- mos pursues with all the bitterness of con- troversial hatred, he calls princeps per- fectissimus. But his strongest expression of admiration is bestowed on the tolerant policy of Valentinian, who hindered the professors of either faith from molesting the professors of the other. Something must be allowed for the different circum- stances of the time of Ammianus and of the generation of ZOsimos. Aminianus must have written or revised his book under Theodosius; but it may well have been before the public sacrifices were for- bidden, in short before Christianity was, strictly speaking, the established religion of the Empire. Z6simos wrote when things had altogether gone against the old Gods. But it is plain that we see in the two writers two widely different lines of thought with regard to the advancing creed. Ammianus is an indifferent philos- opher; ZOsimos is a fanatical partisan. Claudian seems to represent a third state of mind. There is indeed something won- derful in the sight of a poet singing the praises of a Christian prince in the very generation which saw the final triumph of Christianity, not only without introducing a single Christian expression or idea, but with the most lavish use of the machinery of the old mythology. The position of Claudian was different from that of the poets of the Augustan age; it was differ- ent from that of a modern poet who drags in classical illustrations. If Virgil and Horace did not very fervently believe in the religion which they professed, at all events neither they nor those about them believed in any other; and they at least did the part of good citizens in professing to be- lieve the religion of the commonwealth. If a modern poet talks of Jupiter and Apol- lo, no one suspects him of believing in them; his poetical talk about them is con- sistent with the most devout and orthodox belief in another faith. But when Claud- ian prays Jupiter and the other Gods to prosper the arms of Honorius, it must have sounded to every devout Christian as a direct invocation of the devil and his angels. This way of pntting Christianity utterly out of sight, as if it had never been heard of,. is far more wonderful than either the fierce hatred of Z6simos or the cool indifference of Ammianus. It would be in- teresting to look through the remains of some of the more fragmentary writers of the same age with the same object. Eu- napios, for instance, hates Christianity as fiercely as Z~simos, while in Malchos and OlympiodOros we seem, from such little light as we have, to have calm outsiders of the school of Ammianus. A far more difficult question is that of the religion of Bo~itius in a later, and of Prokopios in a still later, generation. The philosophic Consul and Patrician was for ages looked on as a saint and a martyr, as a theologian who confuted heretics, and who died for his faith at the bidding of an heretical prince. Yet it is well known that the Consolation of Philosopli~1 does not contain a single expression of Christian faith or Christian hope, for sure- ly such a phrase as angelica virtus proves nothing at all. It is a speaking fact that when Alfred translated Bo~itius for the edification of Englishmen, he had to Christianize him in the process. We feel convinced with Dr. Stanley, in the Dictionary of Biograpky, that the theologi- cal writings attributed to Boi~tius cannot possibly be the work of the author of the Consolatio. Bo~tius the Patrician must have been, if not a Pagan, at all events not a Christian. At the same time there can be no greater witness than the writings and the life of Bo~tius how deeply Chris- tianity had leavened both the faith and the practice of many who still stood outside the Church as a religious community. As for Prokopios, the wonderful passage near the beginning of his History of the Gothic War looks as if the contemplation of theological controversies had driven him into pure theism and contemptuous toleration. Christians, he says, were end- lessly disputing about the nature of the Godhead. But he holds it for madness to try to define things which the human mind cannot understand. He, Prokopios, is eon- ANOIE~T MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 63 vinced that God is all-powerful and all- neath the gut strings, and prolonged the good, and he can go no further. As for vibration; the viola di Bardone, a larger anything else, let each man, clerk or lay- and more complicated instrument, whose nian icoi iepeO~ ica~ idt6r,~, the reference to sympathetic wires, twenty-two in number, Thucydides is obvious say what he were placed. so that they could be struck pleases. Prokopios was perhaps a scoffer; with the thumb, while the fingers played certainly he shows no signs of any special the gut strings; the viola da gamba, called devotion. But this passage really only by Sir Andrew Aguecheek the viol de puts in another shape what the pious Sal- gamboys, and all the tribe of citterns and vianus had already said, perhaps without ghitterns, that nsed to hang in every bar- knowing it. The author of De Guberna- bers shop for gentlemen to play, when hone Des would ~ot take upon himself to England was famous as a musical nation, pronounce that Ulfilas and Athaulf would and that was before the monstrous idea of without doubt perish everlastingly. He confining musical education to the less mu- thought that such good people as the sical sex had entered the national head. Goths, heretics as they were, would have Here, too, are all the instruments the some chance in the next world. Perhaps translators of our Bible have bravely trans- his notions really came nearer to those of planted to Assyria and the night of ages Prokopios than he would have liked to ac- the sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, & c.; and knowledge. here are the children and grandchildren of the dulcimer viz, the keyed dulcimer, the virginal, the clavichord, the spinet, harpsi- chord, pianoforte. There are nearly two hundred specimens of the old Cremonese From The Pall Mall Gazette d other Ital ANCIENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, an ian violins, violas, violons, and basses, and amongst them I see a vio- ON the 1st of June the South Kensing- ha that a friend of mine once gave four ton Museum opened a special exhibition of hundred and fifty pounds for, and a bass ancient musical instruments. They have that was bought for eight hundred pounds been obtained on loan from all quarters; in Paris. But as this is the one branch I money, powerful as it is, could not buy the am well versed in, I postpone it for the greater part; and every man and woman, time, my present object being merely to who loves music, or possesses a mind, indicate the various character of the trea- should study them before the unique op- sures, and the profit that may be reaped. portunity runs away, and this multitude of The Marquis of Kildare lends an Irish gems is dispersed for ever, harp with its one row of metal strings, the Talk of the treasures of the deep! Give wooden frame black with age, exposure, me the treasures of the country house; and methinks a little peat-smoke. To such for there curiosities can always find a cor- a harp Carolan, the last great improvising ncr to live: in London, novelties jostle Irish harper, sang his traditionary melo- them into their graves through ra ~ ..~s that lived by ear and now are dead, Pr~xr~n~ of space. In a word, private contributors, J alas! One comfort: as the devil escaped English and foreign, have peopled one of being put in a pie by shunning Cornwall, the halls of this museum with the spoils of so those divine melodies some gay, some time. Here are Egyptian and Indian in- sad have died and gone to Heaven, and struments, Turkish and Chinese, very cu- so escaped the defilement and degradation rious; oriental banjos, & c.; and above all I of being hashed and smashed into quad- a most amazing specimen of roundabout rilles by Jullien and his followers, and resonance a long black wooden tube, played in false time and utter defiance of over which the strings are stretched, and their dominant sentiment. There is an the tube rests on two hollow everlasting older harp, lent by Mr. Dalway, on which pumpkins. But the main feature is a num- is inscribed Ego sum Rex cithararum. ber of mediseval instruments, exquisite in Pride goeth bore destruction; so this form and workmanship, and sometimes en- self-trumpeting harp is in pieces. The crusted with gems, and inlaid with oriental epithet of King of Harps is better mer- lavishness and the skill of a Genoese jew- ited by the noble instrument of Lady Lla- eller. Here in stringed instruments alone nover a triple-stringed Welsh harp, are full a score of obsolete varieties, and made by the famous John Richards about many specimens of each kind, especially 140 years ago. On such a harp, made by of the lute, the archiute, the mandolin, the the same maker (Richards), blind Parry of sweet viola damore, with its sympathetic j Ruabon harped his ravishing tunes a wires that lay and trembled in unison be- thousand years old to the poet Gray, and 64 ANCIENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. so fired him with brave thoughts that he wrote The Bard while the music was fresh in his soul. Woe is me I who can play this harp nowadays? This one looks bursting with music. I would give a few pounds to hear Sweet Richard playedon it. But I ransacked Wales five years ago, and not one public harper did I find could play the triple harp. Yet their greatest airs were all composed for it, and are half lost without it. Then there are Italian spinets, one of which ought to interest the ladies; for it has nineteen hundred and twenty eight precious stones outside it, and very little music inside. There is Handels harpsi- chord. He had more harpsichords than Cromwell skulls. But this time there really is a tidy pedigree made out. There are two much finer double harpsichords with stops and swell, one of them made by Joseph Kirkinan and lent by his descend- ants. I heard this harpsichord played by Mr. Sullivan and the learned Mr. Engel; and it is a great and beautiful instrument full of sweetness and tenderness, yet not deficient in grandeur: and sings to the heart. It ought never to have been allow- ed to die. There was room in the world for the pianoforte and the harpsichord too; each can do things the other cannot. It seems at first sight strange and sad that so many stringed instruments should have been invented in modern Europe, and framed with so much skill and taste, only to die away, when so poor a thing as the guitar survives. They were not killed, as some people fancy, by our four-stringed in- struments, for they ran parallel with these for centuries. Some of them no doubt deserved to die; the mandolins, and little citterns, for not making noise enough in such a world as this, and the lute and viola di Bardone for being always out of tune. I read that a contemporary of Ilandel said, If a lutenist lives to eighty he must have been sixty years tuning; and another, writing to lutenists, gave them this warn- ing, You shall do well ever when you lay it by to put it into a bed that is constantly used. So mankind rose agains tthese invalid instruments and put them to bed once for all. But I hope that true lovers of music, both male and female, will inspect the harpsichord, the viola damore, and the viola da gamba with candid eyes, and give them a trial. Put these two last at their lowest, they must be superior to the guitar, since they have more tone, and arpeggios can be played on them with the hand and suddenly the chords swept with the bow a rare musical effect for any single in- strumnent to produce. The larger viola of the two could also be fitted with the sym- pathetic wire strings; the finger-boards of both could be fretted, and I apprehend the bridge of each could be arched a little. Ladies could play the viola damore grace- fully. Indeed, a Mrs. Ottey played the viola da gamba publicly in 1720, and a Miss Ford in 1761; teste viro doctissimo Carob Engel. Meyerbeer t~ ought well of the viola damore, for he wrote a part for it in Les I~uguenots. The late Prince Consort had music of the sixteenth centu- ry performed omi various ancient instru- ments such as are now on show. On that occation a viola da gamba that figures in this very exhibition was played by Mr. Hatton who, I hope, is alive to play it again and was much admired. The deceased Prince had many ideas before his age, and I think your readers will appreci- ate what he did for music in 1845, when in 1872 they have examined this noble collec- tion with the attention it deserves. CHARLES READL. Tnz FIREWEED. The epilobium, or fireweed, a species of cotton plant, springs up spontane- ously on evergreen lands that have been burnt over. lIundreds of acres of this plant are to be seen in the north woods of New York. It is perennial, grows to the height of four to six feet, the stem being one fourth of an inch in diameter, and, some two feet from the top, put- ting out a dozen to twenty branches, each bear- ing from fifteen to twenty pods, that, in August, open and display a white fibre like that in the boll of the cotton plant. The seeds are very small and numerous, but do not require ginning to separate them from the fibre. The plants grow close together on poor or rich soil, and in any climate from forty degrees north to the Arc- tic Circle. Its southern limit of growth is the northern limit of cotton, and is very similar to cotton. Mr. Miller, of Utica, made candle and lamp wicks of it, and ropes that proved as strong as cotton ropes of the same size. Carded and spun, it made excellent yarn, from which a stocking was knit. Its fibre makes the finest of paper, being almost equal to silk for this pur pose. ?ublic Opinion.

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. No. 1466. July 13, 1872. 1. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY, 2. THE MAID OF SKER. Part Xxii, 3. A BILLET AT CARRIGAHINCH, 4. GAMBLING SUPERSTITIONS, 5. A LOOKINGGLASS FOR CHRISTIANS, 6. A TRUE LOVER, 7. FRANCE, 8. PETER THE GREAT, 9. THORBECKE, WALTER SCOTT AND BURNS, RESPiTE, . MISCELLANY, CONTENTS. - - - Contemporary Review, - . . Blackwoods Magazine, - - - - Dark Blue, - - - . Cornhill Magazine, . - - . . Dublin University Magazine, St. James Magazine, - - - . . . Saturday Review, - - . - . Saturday Review, - - - - . . Spectator, - . - POETRY. 66 I PARSONSS SONG FOR SEPTEMBER, - - 66 ULFWAS PLAYING, . - . 67 84 98 105 114 117 121 123 125 66 66 83, 97, 127, 128 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OP SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS. remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club THE LIVING AGE with another periodical. -An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE iS sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are - obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. 66 WALTER SCOTT AND BURNS, ETC. WALTER SCOTT AND BURNS. I Do not think the following verses have ever been published; they were given to me many years ago by a son of Sir Walter Scotts valued friend, Mr. Robert Shortrede, of Jedburgh, with the following account of the circumstances un- der which they were written Mr. Shortrede went one day into his sitting- room, where Sir Walter was waiting for him, and found Sir Walter with a volume of Burns in his hand, reading the letter which contained the famous lines of Bruces address to his men before Bannockburn. As he closed the volume, Sir Walter said: I always thought that the opening of those beautiful lines, as you read them by themselves, was too abrupt, and that if Burns had not sent them in a letter to a friend, he would have introduced them with some sort of description of the scene, or of the circum- stances iinder which they were spoken. Mr. Shortrede at first questioned the sound- ness of this criticism, but after some discussion, asked what kind of introduction his friend would have? Sir Walter rejoined, Why, something of this kind, and taking a pencil, wrote on the fly-leaf of the volume of Burns the following lines : By Bannockburn proud Edward lay; The Scots they were na far away, Just waiting for the break o day, To show them which were best. The sun rose oer the purple heath, And lighted up the field of death; When Bruce wi soul-inspiring breath His soldiers thus addrest : Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled, & c H. BARTLE G. FRERE. ~ Macmillans Magazine. RESPITE. AN ODE. 0 qni me gelidis in vallibus Hnmi. Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra. 0 FOR some mighty shade, Far from the citys cry, With music of the twinkling sister leaves, Where light with shade a generous beauty weaves Between me and the sky: To hear some murmuring and friendly stream, Turning to loved ones voices, in a dream That gentle sleep hath made: To wake, as petals open to the sun, At morns renewal when the night is gone, And find things lovely near; While on the charm~,d ear The cuckoos note is falling, or the cry Of happy curlews wheeling in the sky, As seabirds meet the foam Above their tossing home: How sweet, in musing mood, to feel entwine A trusting hand confidingly in mine; After its reverie Aiding, to watch the glee Of one known face whereon do mostly shine Smiles that surpass the sunshine on the sea: Nay more, and better still, to feel the glow Of this vast globe; (as giants pulses flow, Steady and full and deep, Though soundly laid to sleep;) Sure, though remote; straight from the life of God: Beyond all words to feel Gods purposes all weal, His love, like sunlight pure, surrounding all. Dublin University Mag. H. P. PARSONSS SONG FOR SEPTEMBER. SEPTEMBER strews the woodland oer With many a brilliant color; The world is brighter than before, Why should our hearts be duller? Sorrow and the scarlet leaf, Sad thoughts and sunny weather, Ah me! this glory and this grief Agree not well together. This is the parting season this The time when friends are flying, And lovers now with many a kiss Their long farewells are sighing. Why is earth so gaily dressed? This pomp that autumn beareth A funeral seems, where every guest A bridal garment weareth. ULFWAS PLAYING. SHE struck her golden harp the sound Through the woods and hills was ringing, And the wild beasts springing all around Listend, and stoppd their springing. She struck the golden harp again; So sweet were the sounds it utterd But when the grey falcon heard the strain, On the branch his wings he flutterd. Her third stroke on the golden harp Was sweeter still, and stronger, And in the lake the swimming carp, Entranced, could swim no longer. The field broke into fragrant flower When the gold harp playd the Rune Th enchanting notes the knight oerpower: He spurs his steed is gone Tr Sir John Bowring. Norse Ballad. TUE BELIEF I~ IMMORTALITY. 67 From The Contemporary Review, warrant the belief* Materialism, resolv- ing thought into a movement of matter, can only regard death as the destruction of the individual, and prefer everlasting annihilation to everlasting life.j- Positivism, PART ~ allowing spirit no place in its system, denies immortality to man, but confers it on humanity4 Pantheism can grant no immortality to the individual, but prom- ises to him either, as a mode of the divine thought or essence, eternity, or an im- mortality which is realized by becoming in the midst of the finite one with the in- finite and being in every moment eternal,II or a return from relative to absolute be- ing through the knowledge that identifies subject and object. Theism in all its forms, can as little dispense with the im- mortality of man as with the personality of God. Both are as necessary to pure Deism as to orthodox Christianity were, indeed, the articles in the creed of the older English iDeism, by which it stood, with which it fell, when, in its exhausted old age, it had to confront at home the scepticism, of Hume, abroad the full-grown sensualism of France and the highborn Transcendentalism of Germany.** i. INTRODUcTORy. THE immortality of the soul, though a primary, can hardly be considered a primi- tive religious belief It involves concep- tions at once too abstract and positive to be intelligible to primitive man, and what he cannot conceive he cannot believe. The belief in a life after death has, in- deed, been coeval, or nearly so, with reli- gion, but this differs from the belief in im- mortality as a Natural or Physical Poly- theism differs from a Spiritual or Mono- theistic faith. The belief grows up to sat- isfy a slowly evolved but deeply seated need of man, and marks a development in his religion almost equal to a revolution, or the creation of a new faith. The hu- man mind then passes out of the mythical or creative into the metaphysical or deduc- tive stage, and religion ceases to be a sim- ple worship expressive of a peoples in- stincts and inipulses, and becomes a faith, shaping its institutions and manners, laws and literature, thoughts and hopes. A religion never assumes or exercises its full authority, never awakens or satisfies the highest hopes of man, until it can com- mand obedience here, and reward it with everlasting happiness hereafter. And this neither implies nor rests on any religious Utilitarianism, in Leigh Hunts phrase, other-worldliness, but on the simple fact that the immortal nature of man demands a religion which can evoke and satisfy his aspirations after immortality. It is not the ffesign of this essay to dis- cuss the question of Immortality either with or against our Modern Philosophies. Such a discussion would be in a great measure superfluous. Determine the fun- damental conception or principle of any philosophy, and its relation to the belief in question is ascertained. But the dis- cussion of a secondary or inferential posi- tion is useless, while the primary is un- touched. Scepticism can simply, with Hume, deny that there are any grounds to * Philosophical Works, voL iv. pp. 547, if. (Ed. 1854). t Buchner, Kraft and Stoff, p. 212. Of course there was an older and less consistent materia1i~m represented by Dr. Priestley, which tried to main- tain itself alongside a belief in a feture state of re- wards and punishments. But it is now effete; its positions were too untenable to please these thor- ough-going days. ~ Mills Comte and Positivism, pp. 185, 162. Spinoza, Ethices, Part V., Prop. xxiii. See also Van der Linde, Spinoza, Seine Lehre u. deren erste Nachwirkung in Holland, pp. 50 and 75. I Schielermacher, Reden uber Religion, Werke i. p. 264, (ed. 1843). Schelling, Philosophie u. Reli- gion, pp. 71, if. Caro, lIdee de Dien, pp. 370, if. Hegel express~ ed himself very rarely and cautiously concerning the immortality of the soul, though he said very de- cisively, when charged by Schubart with denyiiig it, that in his philosophy the spirit was raised above all the categories which comprehended decay, de- struction, and death (Erdmann, Gesch. der Philos., ii. p. 650). The negative principles which lay in the Hegelian philosophy wore held long in the back- ground, but appeared distinctly enough in Richters Lehre von den Letzen Dingen (1883), and his Nene Unsterblichkeitslehre (1833). Fenerbachs immor- tality of historical remembrance and Schopenhan- ers Nihilism were, so far as our belief is concerned. coarser and more positive in their negations. ** Erdmann remarks (Gesch. der Philos., Ii. p. 650), with special reference to Fichte, in the first pe THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY: AF ES5AY IF THE COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF RE LIGIOUS THOUGHT. 68 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. Philosophy did not create the belief in immortality, and acknowledges or denies its validity, just as it is or is not involved in its own fundamental principles. Specu- lative thought has said all that it can say against the belief, and it still lives; has said, too, all that it can say for it, and it has not died. The old arguments, meta- physical, ethical; teleological, have been exhausted, advanced, answered, confirmed repelled in almost every possible form, and now thought must turn from the high road of abstract speculation, and study human belief as expressed in human reli- gion. Religion, or rather its philosophic theology, may now become a science as purely inductive as any of the physical sciences. The now possible analysis of the faiths of the world, if accompanied by a searching analysis of the faculties of the mind, will hand over to thought our pri- mary and necessary religious ideas, which, as ultimate religious truths, constitute in their synthesis the foundation of the uni- versal and ideal religion of man. On this ground, not as a dogma of relig- ion, or a doctrine of philosophy, but as a specifically human property* involved in the very nature of man, evolved in the evolution of that nature, the belief in im- mortality needs to be discussed. How does it arise and why? What is its ear- liest form? What the law or principle of its evolution? What are the final forms it assumes? Why one rather than an- other? The materials for this discussion are, in one respect, ample enough. Schol- ars have supplied us with exhaustive and accurate expositions of the several cul- tured religions, ancient and modern, and nod of his philosophic thought, that the immortal. ity of man was for the eighteenth century the dog. ma par excellence. It was so hecause philosophy was then pre.eminently Theistic. From the rise of English Deism in Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to Rousseau in France, and Kant and Lessing in Ger- many, theistic thinkers as a rule held the immortal. ity of man to he as necessary to a religion as the he. ing of God. Kant reverses the argument of War- burton, and usaintains the Legation of Moses to he un-divine, because without the doctrine of immor- tality (Relig. innerh. d. Grenzen d. bios. Vernnnft, Werke, vi., 801, Hartenstein~s Ed.) For Lessings views, see Die Erzieh. d, Menschengesch 22, if. See also Wolfenbnt. Frag. Viertes. * Dr. Theodor Waltz, Anthropologle der Natur. Volker, i. 825. soxvith the means of comparing their ear- lier and simpler, with their later and more complex, elements, and this comparison may help us to discover the principle of their growth, or th e reason of their specific development. Then the several faiths can be compared with each other, and what is accidental and what essential in each, may thus be determined. Ethnographers, too, like the late iDr. Theodor Waitz, Mr.1 Tylor, and Sir John Lubbock,* have col- lected an immense mass of information as to the beliefs of savage and primitive peo- ples. But each of these authors is so ab- sorbed in the search after superficial re- L semblances as often to miss fundamental differences, and the very comprehensive- ness which they aim at, forces them to overlook the course of genetic development in the cultured religions4 Now, it may perhaps throw some light upon the growth of religious thought in general, the forma- tion of the cultured religions in particular, and the progress of a people in civilization, if we can trace, though but in outline, the origin and evolution of the belief in im- mortality among two kindred but very dif- ferent peoples, the Hindus and the Greeks. On this point their religions, while start- ing from a common goal, reach the point of sharpest contrast, and so can be most instructively studied. ii. THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE BELIEF. Perhaps it may be necessary to glance here at the origin of the Belief. Death as annihilation is a notion as little intelligi- ble to a primitive or undeveloped mind as immortality. A child cannot understand death as loss o.f being, cannot imagine the dead as otherwise than still alive. It thinks of them as exitting somewhere, as doing something; and neither the lifeless * The views of these ethnographers on our present subject will be found, Anthropologie der Natur- Voiker, i. 825, ii. 191 if.; 411 if., and very frequently; Primitive Culture, chapp. xii. xiii.; Origin of Civil- ization, 138 if. Mr. Tylor admits that the early Aryans did not believe in trausmigration (Prim. Cult., ii. 8), and his theory of the origin of the helief (pp. 14, 15) certain- ly cannot apply to the hindus. The men of the Vedic age had been long out of that savage stage of thought to which alone Mr. Tylors theory Is applic- able. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 69 body, nor the grave, nor the burial can the fathers, and fancy, aided by memory, break their simple faith. Wordsworths peoples the realm of the dead with the Little Maid is a type of the child-mind shades of renowned ancestors, whose so- the world over, and its belief translated ciety and fellowship become before long into the language of man becomes a sub- objects of intense desire to the living. lime Ode to Immortality. To the in- Then, alongside the admiration rendered stincts of a living man, who has not yet to the fathers, ethical ideas are evolved, learned to reason either from the facts of and the conditions on which a man is experience or the data of consciousness, granted or denied admittance to the circle death cannot suggest annihilation, because of ancestral heroes, contain the germinal annihilation is a thought too abstract and notion of a state of reward and retribu- repugnant to these instincts to be either tion. Then, thought, gradually accus~ intelligible or credible. In such a man tomed to conceive the dead as living, to faith ~s stronger than sight; he can con- see in nature life emerge uninjured from ceive and understand life, but not its utter death, works out an abstract doctrine, a negation. If he thinks of the dead, he theory of form and life, body and soul, thinks of them as living the very attempt which, while committing the one to death to represent them in thought is an attempt and dissolution, assigns the other to mdc- to represent living, not dead men. pendent and continued life. And these But, while the instincts of primitive theories become in turn supports of the mind refuse to conceive the dead as non- very belief which evoked them. The hope existent, a double incapacity prescribes of a future life turns back for encourage- the limits and form of the only concep- ment to the very metaphysic itself had tion possible to it, the incapacity to con- created. And as the metaphysic is often ceive other than embodied being, and the fanciful and absurd, the evidence is as incapacity to comprehend unlimited dura- often weaker than the belief. The one is tion. In other words, the undeveloped the creation of crude and premature spec- mind cannot conceive the abstract notion ulation, the other the utterance of a great of spirit and the abstract notion of im- human instinct. mortality, or endless duration of being. XVhile the process of evolution is con- Hence the earliest notions of the future ditioned by the general development of represent it as a shadowy copy of the the national mind, the specific form under present; and its duration is measured by which immortality is conceived is, on the memory, is not made measureless by hope other hand, conditioned by the idea of s.e., the conception attaches itself to the God. The idea formed of the divine na- recollection of the dead rather than to the ture determines that formed of the hu- expectations of the living. But notwith- man. The two ideas develope side by standing these limitations, the belief is a side, constitute, indeed, the two poles or real belief in immortality, so far as it is sides of the same thought. While the possible to a child-mind. The seed is here, idea of God remains so inchoate as to ad- as it ought to be; the natural and neces- mit the limitations and multiplicities of sary growth of mind will transform the Polytheism, it does not and can not involve seed into both flower and fruit, as a necessity either of reason or faith, But, while the belief in the future life any specific form of the belief in immor- springs out of what we must call, for want tality. of a better term, an instinct, its evolution, j But as the religion generates a the- alike as to the time occupied and the ology, as thought comes to conceive God order of thought observed, depends on thei as the One related to the Many, as the development of the mental faculties as in single source of the manifold creation, their turn at once conditioning and con- man is led at the same time and by the ditioned by the history and situation of 1 same principles to conceive and formulate the people. In general, since the belief his faith in his own immortal existence. attaches itself to the past rather than to This does not happen all at once, but is the future, it gathers round the persons of the result of slow and not always con- 70 THE BELIEF IN IMMO1~TALITY. scious movements of mind. Inside of The subject is too extensive to be dealt every Polytheism still in the physical with in a single paper, and so leaving to stage, principles, the deposits of single another article the history of Greek intellects or general tendencies, gather, thought, we shall here confine ourselves to receive, either consciously, or uncon- Indian. sciously, forms inimical to it, and either abolish the ancient religion or erect by its 111. THE HINDU BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. side a distinct and supplementary worship, The limits of the discussion exclude any say under the form of mysteries, or, while attempt, even were such possible, to dis- sparing it as a mode of worship, substitute cover by the analysis of Indo-European for the mythical creations, which were its words or legends, whether there are any original constituents, a body of reflective traces of the belief before the Aryan fain- or speculative doctrines. If the prelusive ily divided into its several Asiat~ic and thought had been tending to grasp a European branches. single universal and indestructible prin- Our present enquiry has to do only with ciple of the life manifested in nature and the Hindus and Greeks, and so must start, man, a Pantheistic theory as to God, a as regards both, with their earliest extant theory of trausmigration as to man, will literature. emerge. But if its tendency had been to 1 THE seek a Supreme Will and Authority, then HYMNS OF THE RIG-VEDA. the result will be a personal God, and the In the earlier books of this Veda the in- personal continuance of man. The first dications of the belief are few, and, in will thus have a metaphysical, but the some respects, indeflnite.* This, indeed, second a moral, basis. Brahmanism may was to be expected. The religion there stand as an example of the one, Zoroas- revealed exists still in great part under trism of the other. the forms of the old nature-worship, Religious and philosophic thought on though it moves in a circle of spiritual such questions as God and Immortality ideas, not indeed distinctly conceived, but thus so run into each other in their re- floating like shadows unrealized in the in- spective beginnings as to be then indis- dividual and general consciousness. The tinguishable. Philosophy springs out of gods are conceived more or less under religion is the attempt of a devout re- physical forms, and so thought is occupied flective man to understand and explain with the visible manifestaiions of the gods himself and the universe. hence the roots and their present relations to man rather of ancient, therefore of modern, thought than with modes of being and relations on our subject must be sought in the invisible and future. ancient religions. Thus intimations of a belief in a life Immortality is not a doctrine of the after death could not be numerous, but schools, but a faith of Humanity, not the sparseness of the intimations does not based on the metaphysic or proved by the argue the uncertainty of the belief. Agni t logic of a given system, hut the utterance Soma4 the Maruts, Mitra and Varuna,II of an instinct common to the race which are implored to grant immortality. By has made itself heard wherever man has liberality and sacrifice ** a man attains advanced from a religion of nature to a immortality, goes to the gods, meets religion of faith. And there is no article in the highest heaven the recompense of of belief he so reluctantly surrenders even the sacrifices he has offered. The Vedic to the demand of system. One of the notion of immortality was not, indeed, like most daring critical and speculative spirits ours, a positive abstract conception, but of the day has, with caustic irony, rallied an indefinite concrete representation. his transcendental countrymen on their Still it was as comprehensive and affirma- tenderness for the ego a tenderness tive as was possible to these early Hindus, which spared self, while Deity was sacri- the very immortality attributed to their ficcd.* And he finds the denial of per- gods.ff Hence, to them it seemed a spe- sonal immortality the last step of the in- exorable logic which completed the cycle * Muirs Original Sanscrit Texts, v. 284, if.; Wil of Transcendental Philosophy. sons Hymns of the Itig-Veda, i. xxv.; Max Mul- lers Ancient Sans. Lit. 19, note 2. The discussion must now turn to the t H-V., v. 4, 10; i. 31, 7. historical question, the development of the I H -V it. 113, 7. if.; Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 303; belief in immortality in India and Greece. 11.-V., v. 55. 4. It H-V., V. 63, 2. 11.-V., i. 125, 5; x. 107,2. * D. F. Strauss, Die Chmistliche Glaubenslelire, ii. ~ x. 14, 8. pp. 697. if. tt in certain cases, as possibly 11.-V. v. 4 10, the THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. des of deification. The man who had been made immortal had become a minor deity. Thus, the Ribhus had become gods, gone to the assemblage of the gods.* Hence, too, the belief is expressed less in the hopes of the living than in their thou0hts touching the dead. Our sage ancestors have obtained riches among the the gods, ~ as companions of the gods 4: they are implored to be propitious to protect, not to injure. The faith in the continued life of the fathers is thus so strong as to rise almost to apotheosis. Death had not annihilated the Fathers, need not annihilate the Sons, and so they pray to be added to the people of eterni- ty, the blessed. ** The belief in a life after death seems thus to have grown up round the thought of the fathers, or simply the dead. Prim- itive man conscious of life in every limb, could know nothing of death could only conceive the dead as still alive. And as the only notion of life outside and above nature was associated with the gods, a life akin to the Divine was attributed to the departed ancestors. Thus the belief stands enshrined in the heart of the Vedic religion, interwoven, on the one hand, with the idea of God, on the other, with the memory of the Fathers. And that it had grown with the history of the people, a primitive legend seems to show. In the later books of the Rig-Veda the future life stands impersonated, as it were, in Yama. Now Yama is the Iranian Yima. His father is in the Vedas Vivasvat, in the Zend Avesta Yivanghat. The names in each case are identical, and indicate that some le,,end connected with them must have existed prior to the separation of the Indian and Iranian Aryans44: Immortality meant was to be realized on earth in off- spring (Muir, Sans. Texts, v. 285, note 415). But a comparison of the abo~e texts with iv. 54,2; vi. 7, 4; ix. 106, 8; x. 53, 10, & c., ivill bear out the statement of the text. In truth, Vedic thought had not yet learned to affirm an absolute immortality. * R.-V.. i, 161, 15; iv. 35, 3, and 8. Muir, Sans. Texts, v. 226 and 284. RAT., i. 91, 1; i. 179, 6. ~ R.-V., vii. 76, 4. It-V., vi. 75, 10; vii. 35, 12. I R.V., vi. 52, 4. iii. 55, 2. ~ vii. 57, 6. Muir, Sans, Texts, v. 28, 5. tt It is not possible to enter here in any satisfac- tory way into any of the many questions, critical, philosophical, mythological, historical, connected with this legend. As to its existence in the aryan period, and its bearing on the relationship of the Iranian and Indian branches, see Dr. Muir, Sanscrit Texts, ii. 296, 469, f; Spiegel, Eranische Alter. thumsk. 439 f.; Lassen, md. Alterthurnsk. i. 619, if. (2nd ed.) For an exhaustive critical and philosoph- ical discussion of the legend under its Iranian and Indian forms, see Prof. Roths Article, Die Sage von Dschemschid, Zeitach. d. Dents. Morgaul. Ge- 71 But the legend survives in the two branches nuder two different forms. The Iranian Yima is the founder and king of a golden age, during whose reign neither sick- ness nor age nor death, neither cold nor heat, neither hatred nor strife, existed. The Indian Yama is the king of the dead, the assembler of men who departed to the mighty streams iind spied out the road for mnny.* But the legends, though different, are not contradictory. The tradition of the first man who lived might well include, or glide into, the tradition of the first man who died. In the ordinary course of na- ture, the one would be the other and so the legend, in its original form, might comprehend both the Iranian and Indian versions. And the division is explicable enough. The Iranic, as a reformed faith, seeking for itself a moral basis, clung to the picture of a golden past, where the an- tagonisms it hated were unknown. The Indian, less moral, more imaginative, caught in the toils of a nature-worship, sighed for relief and sought it in the king- dom of light into which the son of Vivas- vat had been the first to return. And so, while the legend in the one case passed through a series of developments in which Yima and his golden age gradually deteri- orated, it became in the other the centre round which the Hindu doctrine of the future life developed. The processes were similar, but the result different, because the mythical faculty had its objects placed in different spheres. Yasna, then, is the highest expression of the later Vedic faith in a future life. He dwells in celestial light, in the innermost sanctuary of heaven.-f lie and the Fathers are in the hi,,hest heaven. He grants to the departed an abode distinguished by days, and waters, and lights. 4: He set, iv. 417, 433. Also, Dunckers Geschichte der Arier, 453, if. For a discussion as ivell as an anno- tated translation of the passages in the Rig-Veda referring to Yama, see Dr. Muirs Sanscrit Texts, v. 287, if.; 300, if. Professor Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 481, if., resolves the Ya. ma legend as given in the Rig-Veda into one of the myths of the Dawn, Yama, the day, Yami, his sis- ter, the night. Without attempting to discuss the question with the above distinguished scholar, I may simply say that his mythological theory seems to me to be too narrow and exclusive. It is so occupied with nature as to leave little or no room for the ex- ercise of thought and imagination upon the condi- tion and destiny of mao. The tragic elements of human life, birth and death, must have touched primitive mind quite as profoundly as the rising and the setting sun; and the Yama legend appears to be pre.eminently one of those in which the thoughts of men concerning man found expression. * R.-V., x. 14,1; Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 291, if. t R.V., ix. 113, 7 and 8; Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 302. I It.-V.,x.11~ Sand 9. 72 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. grants a long life among the gods. * He is associated with the god Varuna, worshipped as a god, and feasts accord- ing to his desire on the oblations.t lie shares his gratification with the eager Vasishthas, our ancient ancestors who presented the Soma libation. 4 Yama and the Fathers thus enjoy immortal tiles- sedness in heaven. Such was the intense faith of the later Vedic poets. But as the faith was evolved so was the question How can we be raised to the society of Yama and the Fathers? Their ancestors, the men of the heroic age which lies al- ways in the past, deserved to be made im- mortal, but how was immortality possible to their less worthy sons? And here a decisive and determinating peculiarity of the early Hindu faith emerged. Future happiness had a sacerdotal, as distin- guished from a religious, or moral, or na- tional basis rested, not so much on vir- tue or heroism, as on the worship of sacer- dotal deities and the practice of sacerdotal rites. The old natural deities, though now and then implored to grant immortal- ity, are as a rule, limited to action in the sphere of the present and the seen; but the sacerdotal deities, i.e., gods formed from the deification of the instruments of worship, were the great distributors of future happiness. Thus, Agni is made by the gods the centre of immortality, guards and exalts mortals to it; warms with his heat the unborn part and conveys it to the world of the righteous. Soina confers immortality on gods and men. ** He is implored to place his worshipper in that everlasting and imperishable world where there is eternal light and glory. tt Those who have drunk the Soma have become immortal, have entered into light. i~ Then sacerdotal rites like sac- rifice, or virtues like liberality to the priests, purchase immortality. So com- prehensive and absolute is the supremacy of the sacerdotal element in the later Vedic religion that the other gods are now and then represented as dependent for immortality and enjoyment upon the sacerdotal deities or rites.IIII *RAT x 14 ,R.-Y., x. 1A ~. x.1 8. 4: R.-Y., x. 15,8. R.V., iii. 17, 4. R.V., 1. 31, 7; vii. 7, 7. R.,~., x. 16, 4. See also passages from Atharva- Veda, in Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 299, if. ** 11.V., i. 91. 1, 6, 18; ix. 108,8; ix. 109,3. See also the chapter on Lndras love of the Soma-juice, In Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 88, if. It 11.V., ix. 113, 7, f. 4:4: 11.V., viii. 48, 3. R.V.,x.154,35; x. 107, 2. HI Several illustrative passazes will be fOund in Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, v. 14, if. The influence of this sacerdotalism on the development of the Hindu faith in general, and the belief in the future life of the soul in particular, must here be dis- tinctly recognized. The question is not as to its ori,,in, but as to its influence. Its source is psychological, and it forms an es- sential element in all religions is repre- sented in our Christian faith by the sacri- fi~e and priesthood of Christ; but for rea- sons which cannot be stated here, it grew very early to portentous proportions and exercised a baneful influence among the Hindus. The Vedic religion may be de- scribed as a naturalism with a nascent sa- cerdotalism super-induced. In the earlier Vedic era the natural was the predomi- nant element, but in the later the sacer- dotal. When a religion is passing through such a phase of development, there runs beneath or within it a stream of ~vhat may be termed unconscious metaphysics gen- eral tendencies understood at the time in whole by few, perhaps by none, under- stood in part by many, but felt by all. The new element has to assert and justify itself against the old by creating for the religion it seeks to transform a new basis, radically different from the old naturalism; and so the result is a two-fold develop- ment the growth of religious rites on the one hand, and of abstract conceptions on the other. But while the former are manifested in the general constitution ~mnd practice of religion, the latter can appear only in particular and partial utterances. Here and there an individual gathers into himself the dim and diffused consciousness of the people, expresses it in hymn or aphorism, and the expression, a mirror to the collective mind, seems the result of Divine inspiration. Hence, while the speculative and niystical hymns in the tenth book of the Thg-Veda form, in al- most every zespect, contrasts to the spon- taneous and objective compositions of the earlier books, they are yet only concen- trated utterances of thoughts which have been throughout the whole Vedic era slowly accumulating and assuming consist- ency and shape. They are like early spring flowers, at once manifestations of forces at work in the earth and prophecies of what is to come. This double growth of sacerdotalisma and abstract thought stands very clearly revealed in the tenth book of the Rig- Veda. The priesthood is professional, a priest necessary to worship. The sacri- ficial rites are numerous and minute. The value attached to prayers, hymns, sacri- fices, excessive. The new sacerdotalism is superseding the old naturalism, and ab- stract thought is seen struggling to find a new basis and new forms for the changing religion. Creation is conceived as a sacri- fice, either the self-immolation of a god, or the immolation of one god, by others.* Sacrifice is the cause of human prosperity and the processes of nature.t The Brab- man is the son of god, sprung from divine seed4 The Vedic poets are the organs and offspring of deity. The hymns are divine, god-generated, or given, and enter into the Rishis by sacrificell The specu- lative tendencies thus incline to assume sacerdotal forms. Now and then, ihdeed, an exceptional thinker, either above or outside priestly influence, asks and tries to answer the profoundest questions in simple but sublime words. Speculation, partly the victim of the old naturalism as embalmed in language, partly the seer and exponent of the eternal truths there con- tained, finds in life ever emerging from death the principle that abides amid the decay and renewal of nature and man. This, indeed, is but guessed at not ex- plicitly develeped; but the guess extends to the procession of gods and men from a common source of life. The seeds of Hindu speculation lie like the germs of Brahmanism in the later Vedic Hymns. The belief in a life after death ex- pressed in the later Vedic Hymns must now be looked at in the light of sacerdotal and speculative tendencies. Sacerdotal- ism held command over the future; it could reward and punish. The realms of light, the world of the righteous, the society of the fathers, a festive life with Yama, a life in the presence of the gods, immortality in a world where all the ob- jects of gratification are attained, were in its gift. And it also knew an abyss, ** a ~ bottomless and nethermost dark- ness j-~ for the wicked. Speculation has to seek a reason or ground for this sacer- dotal power, and sees it, in a far-off sort of way, in the unity of human nature with the divine, broken by the earthly life, but * R.V., x. 51, 6; x. 130, a But particularly the celebrated Purssshcc Sukta, x. 90. See this hymn translated, explained, and illustrated at great length and on all sides in Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, vol. 1. 8, if.; vol. v. 367, if t RV., x. 62, 1-3, and very frequently. t R.V., vii. 83, 1113; x. 62, 4-6. R.V., x. 20, 10; x. 61, 7. i x. 71,8; x. 125,3; x. 88, 8; x. 61,7. See the extraordinary hymn, HV., x. 129, translated under the title, The Thinkers Ques- tion, in Professor Max Mullers Anc. Sans. Lit., p. 564. Also by Dr. Muir, iv. 4, and v. 856, if.; and hy Mr. Colebrooke, Essays, p. 17 (Williams and Nor- gates edition). ** R.V., vii. 104, 3, 17; ix. 73, 8. 14 ItV., x. 152, 4; x. 103, 12. 73 restored by sacrifice. Thought had di- vined that unity in the source of life im- plied the creation and derivative immor- tality of the gods. It had deified the fa- thers, deified the rishis, and so had learned to conceive the permanent element in man as akin to the divine. On this ground pre- and post-existence become alike natural, complementary conceptions. And so Agni is implored in a funeral hymn to kindle with his heat the unborn part of the dead; to give up again to the Fathers him who comes offered with oblations. * To the soul of the departed it is said, Throwing off all imperfection again go to thy home.t Man has had a past, will have a future, has come from God and may to God return. And there is another side to the thought indicative of its ulti- mate anthropological form, as distinguished from the other, or theological. The dead is told to become united to a body and clothed in a shining form. 4: The varied constituents of the body are told to go to the elements to which they are akin. The like seeks the like. Without body or form individual life is inconceivable. And over all sacrifice presides, bringing the gods to receive the unborn part, carry- ing it to the homes of Yama and the Fa- thers. In these Vedic Hymns, then, the belief in a life after death changes with the change in the religion. In the older Nat- uralism, it was a simple belief in the con- tinued life of the fathers; in the later embryo-sacerdotalism, it is becoming re- lated, on its material side, to the idea of God, on its formal, to the observance of religious rites. The older faith had as its objects persons, but the later is slowly re- fining its objects into abstractions. A Pantheism as to God, a theory of tranami- gration as to man,lI had not yet been * ,R.-V., x. 16, 4-5. t R.-V., x. 14,8. t H-V., x. 14,8. HV., x. 16,3. in The only verse from the Rig.Veda ever quoted proof of transmigration being believed when the hymns were composed is, i. 164, 32. Professor Wil- son renders: He who has made (this state of things) does not comprehend it; he who has beheld it, has it verily hidden (from him); he, whilst yet enveloped in his mothers womb, is subject to many births, and has entered upon evil. (Hymns of the HV., vol. ii. 137, 138.) But as the late Professor Goldstucker observed (Art. Trausmigration, Cham- bers Encyclop.), The word of the text~ bctliupra. jals, rendered by Wilson, according to the commen. tators, is subject to many births, may, according to the same commentators, also mean, has many olIsprings, or has many children; and as the lat- ter is the more literal and usual sense of the word, whereas the former is artificial, no conclusion what- ever regarding the doctrine of transmigration can safely he founded on it. Besides, such a doctrine is entirely alien to Vedic modes of thought. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 74 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. evolved, but the seeds of both had been sown, and had even, under the forcing in- fluences of the nascent sacerdotalism be- gun to germinate. The seeds were still under the foot, still in the earth, while the Vedic Rishis lived, but in the centuries which followed those seeds grew into forests, in which their sons were inextrica- bly entangled and hopelessly bewildered. 2. THE BRAHMANAS.* These mark the next point at which the inquiry into the Hindu belief in the souls life after death can be resumed, and its growth measured. Sacerdotalism is now full-blown. ~ The Aryans have pene- trated further into India. The consequent changes and conquests have contributed to the growth of Brabmanical pretensions. The priest has extended and deepened his command over time and eternity. The number of the sacrifices has been increased, their efficacy heightened, their minutest details made essential. The supersession of the old Vedic naturalism is complete. The names of the old gods remain, but their natures are changed. The speculative principles which form the basis of this full-blown sacerdotalism have also developed. Thou0ht has changed the formal into the material element. To it sacrifice bad first pleased, then commanded, then be- come greater than the gods, and, finally, the source of gods, man, and the universe. Prayer or devotion rises by similar pro- cesses to Brahma (Neuter), the supreme the self-existent. The gods became immortal by sacrifice. ~ Brahma generated out of himself the uni- verse, was, as to his essence, in the Brahrnan, pervaded and so made the once mortal gods immortal. Sacerdotal thought, pursuing its career of abstraction, has thus deified its own conceptions. Brahmanical sacrifice is the source and basis and very substance of the universe. Brahmanical thought is eternal, its vehicle divine. The old worship still stands, only an more developed forms, but sacerdotal thought, at once idealizing and abstract- ive, has explained into, or inserted be- neath it, a circle of ideas evolved from, but destructive of, the old. In harmony with these general tenden- cies, the belief in a life after death has alike on its material and formal sides de- veloped. There is the clear conception of another life conditioned, as to its nature and issues, by the present. The rewards received in it are determined by the sac- rifices offered here. The greater the lat- ter in number and value, the higher the former. These rewards are, indeed, on one side, continued individual life, propor- tioned in its felicity and duration to the quantity and quality of the sacrifices per- formed; but they point, on another side, to a union with Brahma, or a transmuta- tion into other gods, which is hardly com- patible with continued individuality. Thus it is said that he who sacrifices in a cer- tain way conquers for himself an union with these two gods (Adityn and Agni), and an abode in the same sphere. * Again, those who offer particular sacrifices be- come Agni, Varuna, or Indra, attain to union and the same spheres with these gods respectively. t Again, he who sac- rifices with a burnt offering arrives by Agni as the door to Brabma, and, having so arrived, he attains to a union with Brahma, and abides in the same sphere with him. 4 And he who reached this union was not, while he who did not reach it was, subject to repeated births and changes. Thus, a passage of the Sata- patha Brabmana represents the gods as made immortal by certain sacrifices, and then proceeds Death saith to the gods, in the very same way, all men (also) shall become immortal, then what portion will remain for me? The gods replied, Ilenceforward no other being shall be- come immortal with his body, when thou shalt have seized that part. Now, every- one who is to become immortal through knowledge, or by work, shall become im- mortal after parting with his body. This, which they said by knowledge or by work, means that knowledge which is Agni, that work which is Agni. Those who so know this, or who perform this rite, are born again after death, and, by being so born, they attain immortality. Whilst those who do not so know, or who do not perform this rite, are, indeed, borz again after death, but become again and again his food. As to the date of the Brabmanas, the place they occupy in Sanscrit literature, their design, re- lation to the Vedas, & c, see Max Mullers Auc. Sans. Lit. pp. 342, if.; Muirs Sans. Texts, ii. pp. 178, t Professor Roth, quoted In Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, ii. 183. * Satap. Brah., xl. 6, 2, 2, 3. ~ Satapatha Brahmaua, x. 4, 3, 18; xi. 1, 2, 12. 5 lb., ii. 6, 4, 8. Satap. Brahmana, xi. 2, 3, 1; xiii. 7, 1, 1. I lb., xi. 4., 4, 1. II Satap. Brah., xi. 2, 3, 1, if. See a variety of x. 4. 3,9 Translated In Dr. Muirs Sans. Texts, passage~ in Muirs Sans. Texts, iv. 24, if.; v. 237, if. iv. 49, f.; v. 316, f. All the passages quoted in this THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. The first italicized clause plainly prom- ises final emancipation from death; the second as plainly implies successive pa- pearances in a bodily form, subject to mor- tality. And the same thought is, in another passage, thus expressed He who does so (studies the Veda) is freed from dying a second time, and attains to a union with Brahma.* The Brahmanas, then, did not regard the state after death as necessarily final. It was so to the good who attained the abode of the gods, or union with Brahma, but was not so to the bad. Hence the balances in which a mans deeds are weighed may be either in this world or the next. If a man places him- self in the balances here he escapes them hereafter, but, if not, then he must be weighed there, and follow the result; ~ i.e., the pious in this life escape all changes in the next, others shall be subjected to change, determined by the relative pro- portions of the good and evil deeds placed in the balances. Again, the theory alike of reward and retribution is that like seeks like, or, rather, that the reward is of the same nature as the merit, the punishment as the sin. Hence they say that a man is born into the world which he has made.~ So many sacrifices as a man has performed when he departs from this world, with so many is he born in the other world after his death. Certain sacrifices free from the mortal body and raise to heaven, certain others conquer~ for the offerer much lessil Certain sacrifices se- cure a more, others a less, spiritual body. Some become the soul of the sacrificer, and ensure his birth with his whole body in the next world, but others are of more limited efficacy.** On the other hand, the punishments of the wicked are akin in nature, and proportioned i~i degree, to their sins here. Thus a legend which Pro- fessor Weber extracts from the Satapa- tha Brahmanatt gives, while illustrating the differences between the old and the new belief, quite a Dantesque picture of their sufferings. Bhrigu, the son of Var- una, is sent by his father to the four point7s of the compass to be instructed by what he sees there. He goes and finds in each quar- ter men being either hacked in pieces or eaten by other men, who keep saying, This to thee, this to me. Bhrigu asks why they do so, and is told, These did so to us in the other world, we do so to theni again here. This is the legend in its original and ethical form; the explanation shows it transmuted into the later or sac- erdotal. The men are made to represent respectively the wood, milk, grass, and water used in the Agnihotra sacrifice. He who sacrifices conquers the powers of nature these typify. He who does not be- comes, in the next world, their victim; is divided and eaten there by plants and animals as he divided and ate them here. The change significantly illustrates the tendencies of Brahmanical thought. There is a certain community of nature between man and the world; the one can suffer at the hands of the other. Sacrifice has power to unite man to God, or to de- liver him to punitive material forces. lie can be assimilated to the Highest or sub- ordinated to the lowest. The Brahmanas thus show our belief in a much more developed state than the Vedas. Their future state is not necessa- rily final; it may and it may not be so. Its highest reward, union with Brahms, gives finality, but not its lower. A man may become again and again the food of death. Then its punishments arc received at the hands of Nature unconquered by sacrifice. And the ideas that form the roots of these representations are monistic. Speculation more or less consciously recog- nizes the essence of all beings as one; mild disposition and thouglitfal spirit of the Indi- ans, an eternity of reward or puni4iment would not appear probeble. To them it must have seemed section will he found in the sixth chapter of 18th possible to expiate by atonement and purification Section of latter volume, the punishment due to the sins committed in this * Satap. ~t. 9 short life. And, according to their opinion, the re- Brah. ~ ~ ward for virtues exercised in the same brief period t lb., xi. 2, 7, 33. could not endure for ever. (Loc. cii., p. 22.) But ~ lb., Vt. 2, 2, 27. the roots of the doctrine are to he sought in the Saiap. Brah., x. 6,3,1. metaphysical, not in the moral, ideas of the Indians. jib., xi. 2, 6, 13. The notion of everlasting reward, though not per- lb., x. 1, 5, 4. * lb. iv. 6, 11; xi. 1, 5, 6; xii. 8, 3,31. lisps in S European or Christian sense, had been ti Line Legeiide des Satapatha-Bralimana, uber reached in the Brabmanas, and was the result of the Strafende Vergeltung nach dem Tode, indieche sacerdotalism crudely conceiving its wn eflicacy. Streifen, i. pp. 2030. See an epitome with ample Everlasting punishment was not conceived under a and instruictive illustrations in Dr. Muirs Sans. final form, but there was what might stand as its Texts, v. 314, 5. Professor Weber attempts, in his equivalent. Sacerdotalism could not allow those remarks on the above legend. to explain the origin who had despised its authority to pass for ever out of the belief in trausmigration. He says: The of its power. Tranimigration did for the Eastern Brahmanas do not speak distinctly concerning the priesthood what purgatory did for the Western, hut duration of tbeir rewards and punishments, and the dominant sacerdotalism in each case only devel- here manifestly is the starting-point of the dogma oped and translated into a form suitable to its own of transmigration to be sought. To men of the use the matter of the general belief. 75 76 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALiTY. sacerdotalism quite consciously determines under what mode man shall exist. Its being is so bound up with the faith in a future life that it cannot allow that faith to perish. 3. THE UPANIsHADS.* The sacerdotal, as the formal and sensi- ble, can never be to thoughtful minds the ultimate and highest element of religion. Worship in any form is a mediator, a mode in which man tries by articulate or inar- ticulate expression to speak to God. In- tense and subtle spirits always seek to dis- pense with this mediator, to get face to face with God, discover what he is, and what their ultimate relations to Him. Worship, whether sacerdotal or devo- tional, reposes upon and expresses certain doctrinal or speculative principles, and the more clearly these are comprehended, the more does the worship seem, so far as the instructed or initiated are concerned, a circuitous and unnecessary medium of in- tercourse and what it may involve. Hence, within every sacerdotal religion, yet above it, its contradiction, yet its offspring, a mystical or theosophic tendency is sure to rise. On the other hand, a doctrinal reli- gion, i.e., one which consists of formulated principles, or propositions addressed to the intellect, is as a rule antagonistic to mysti- cism. Thus, Greek theosophic thought is found, as in the Orphici, Pythagoreans, and Neo-Platonists, allied with elaborate and symbolical worships. Thus, too, Ro- man Catholicism has been rich, Protestant- ism comparatively poor, in eminent mystics. Tauler and Eckhart, Saint Theresa and Saint Catherine, Fenelon and Madame Guion, are natural products of the former, hardly to he matched in the latter. Thus, too, Lutheranism as compared with Cal- vinism, has been prolific in mystics, and can boast of Jacob Behmen and Emanuel Swedenborg, two of the most eminent. The reason seems to be, that a doctrinal religion has, but a sacerdotal has not, the semblance of ultimate truth, and so an in- tense intellect, while it may rest satisfied with the first, cannot with the second, but craves to pierce the temporal forms to the eternal God behind. This theosophic phase of thought, inevita- ble in India from its peculiar religious de- velopment, receives distinct expression in the Upanishads. It had existed as a ten- dency even in the Rig-Veda. The tenth * For the literary questions connected with the IJpanishads, see Professor Max Mullers Anc. Sans. Lit., pp. 316, f1; Colebrookes Essays, Essay on the Sacred writings of the Hindus, particularly, p. 55. book contains, not only the products of abstract thought, but praises of (tapas) austerity, rigorous abstraction. Right and truth are represented as springing from kindled austerity.* The sages of a thous- and songs hecome by austere fervour invin- cible, went by it to heaven.t And in the speculative hymns its influence is indicated. That one which breathed breathless, while as yet death was not, nor immortality, was developed by the power of fervour (tapas)4 This was the first step in the path of pure theosophic speculation. By austerity a limit was put to sacerdotalism it might avail for the many, not for the elect few. In austere fervour there was generated the thought which strove to find a footing on the Ultimate Reality, to stand face to face with the first and final cause. And so the rishi became ambitious to practise austere fervour, the Brabman to leave sacerdotal- isin for asceticism, to become a i2~6pto~, ab- sorbed in the study of the Veda or the con- templation of Brahma. Hence arose the theosophic speculation which stands ex- pressed in the Upanishads. These embody attempts of generic simi- larity, but with specific differences, to con- struct the universe on the basis of abstract thought. Ascetic speculation must al- ways, indeed, have either an accepted pre- mise or a foregone conclusion, though it may so transform the formulas under which these are expressed as to change their meaning~ Thus Brahma remains in the Upanishads as the supreme, the self-exist- ent, but has lost his sacerdotal extraction and relations, and been transmuted into the Soul of the World.jj The metaphysical conception of life or soul has replaced the priestly conception of deified prayer or de- votion. How then is this universal soul to be conceived? If as absolute, it be- comes a congeries of contradictions, defined yet undefined, endowed with, yet devoid of, form, without limit yet limited. This simply meant as it always must mean, that you cannot think an object without think- ing a quality, and predication is limitation. * 11.-V., x. 190, 1. t R..V., 125, 2. In x. 167, 1. it is said of Indra, By performing austerity thou didst conquer heav- en. ~ lt-V.,x. 129, 2,3. Lassen, md. Alterthumsk. i. 693 (2nd ed.); 530 (1st ed.) i Tne Atman, which was the offspring and finite individualization of the paramatman, belongs to the theosophic rather than sacerdotal thought of India. As to the relation between the two words, see Max Mullers Anc. Sans. Lit., pp. 19, g.; Lassen. md. Alterthumsk. i. pp. 916, f. Taittariya Upanishad, ii. 6; Roers Tr~nslation, Bibliotheca Indica, xv, p. 13; Katha Up., iii. 15; lb., p. 108. And similarly often. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 77 Determinatio est negatio. If conceived as relative, then the only relation possible was one of evolution. Br~hma, the uni- versal soul, could become the Universe it could not exist over against Brabma. As the spider casts out and draws in (his web), as on the earth the annual herbs are produced, as from living man the hairs of the head and body spring forth, so is pro- duced the universe from the indestructible (Brahma).* How, again, shall the relation of the many to the one, the individual soul to the universal, be conceived? As there was in reality only one Being. Brahma,t individual existence was but seeming, the result of ignorance. Those who knew Brahma be- came Brahma4 those who did not know him were, in the degree of their ignorance, miserable, of their (comDarative) knowl- edge, exalted and blest. For this old intra-sacerdotal speculation had, like every similar phase of thought similarly devel- oped~ to evolve the distinction between esoterics and exoterics. There are two sci- ences, the higher and the lower, and for those incapable of either, there are works.II Those who perform works, i.e., the custom- ary sacrifices, gain only a perishable and transient reward, and must undergo again decay and death, go round and round, oppressed by misery, like blind people led by blind. The lower knowledge com- prehends the several Vedas, accentuation, ritual, grammar, & c.; but this, while secur- ing a higher reward than works, still leaves the individual soul the victim of birth and 4eath. Knowledge of Brahma as the uni- versal soul, of the judividual soul as Brah- ma, can alone give rest. Thus knowing, he (V~imuad~va), after the destruction of this body, being elevated (from this world), and having obtained all desires in the place of heaven, became immortal.** Whoever knows this supreme Brabma becomes even Brahma, so overcomes grief, he overcomes sin, he becomes immortal.tt In the Upanishads the belief in immor- tality thus receives marked development. Theosophic, as distinguished from sacer- dotal speculation, now beings it into clear and recognized relation with the idea of God. The former attempts to understand the Universe from its notion of the ulti- mate or highest Being; the latter from its own claims and modes of worship. The one, since it educes all beings from the ab- solute Unity, asserts the eternity of the soul; but the other, since mainly anxious to found and extend its own claims, asserts an immortality whose good or evil states it can command. Theosophic speculation, again, does not, like philosophic, construct its idea of God out of its idea of man, but conversely, its idea of man out of its idea of God. 1-lence, since it starts with the absolute, it loses the notion of person- ality both as regards God and man, and the only relations it can conceive are meta- physical, not moral, necessary and evoin- tional, not voluntary and creational. It is not concerned with the question of im- mortality as such that is settled by its fundamental assumption. Nothing that has issued from the universal soul can perish. The only questions that can con- cern it touch the processes of evolution and involution, emanation from God and return into Him. The first process can admit indefinite gradations of being be- tween God and man, as the gnostic systems witness; the second can admit as many stages and transmutations of being, as Brahmanism can best exemplify. The Upanishads have thus developed the no- tion of immortality into that of eternity, and made individuality an evil and a pri- vation, since the detention of the indi- vidual from return into the universal soul. And so, at this point, theosophic specula- tion and sacerdotalism join hands; both seeking union with Brahma, renounce the belief in a personal immortality. The following dialogue well illustrates the doctrine and spirit of the Upanishads. Yajnavalkya about to withdraw into the forest to meditate upon Brabma and at- tain immortality, wishes to take farewell of his wife Maitreyi. She asks him What my Lord knoweth (of immortality) may he tell that to me?~ Yajuavalkyn replied, Thou who art truly dear to me, thou speakest dear * Xlundaka Up., 1. 1, 7; Roer, ut suprct, 1~ words. Sit down, I will explain it to thee, Katha Up., vi. 1; Roer, 116. t Chhaudogya Up. v., a dialogue from which is and listen well to what I say. And he quoted by Colebrooke, Essays, pp. 5053 (Williams said, A husband ms loved, not because & Norgates ed.); Vajasaneya Up., 57; Roer, p. 72, I ~ Mtmndaka Up., iii, 2, 4, 6, and 8; 110cr, pp. 163- you love the husband, but because you 4. love in him the Divine Spirit (atma, the Vajasaneya Up., 9-14, with notes; Roer, p. 73. absolute self). A wife is loved, not be- i Mundaka Up, i, 1, 4 5; 110cr, p. 151. See also Rena and liatha Ups., with Roers introductions cause we love the wife, but because we and notes. love in her the Divi4e Spirit; children are Mundaka Up., i, 2, 7-8; Roer, 154. loved, not because we love the children, *~ Aitareya Up., ii, 4. 6; Roer, ~ but because we love the Divine Spirit in ~t Mundaka Up., iii, 2, 9; Roer, 164. 78 TUE BELIEF IN IMMORTALiTY. them. The spirit it is which we love when we seem to love wealth, Brahmans, Kshattriyas, this world, the gods, all be- ings, this universe. The Divine Spirit, 0 beloved wife, is to be seen, to be heard, to be perceived, and to be meditated upon. If we see, hear, perceive, and know him, o Maitreyi, then this whole universe is known to us. * It is with us when we enter into the Divine Spirit, as if a lump of salt was thrown into the sea: it becomes dissolved into the water from which it was pro- duced, and is not to be taken out again. But wherever you take the water and taste it, it is salt. Thus is this great end- less and boundless Being but one mass of knowledge. As the water becomes salt and the salt becomes water again, thus has the Divine Spirit appeared from out the elements and disappears again into them. When we have passed away there is no longer any name. This I tell thee, my wife, said, Yajnavalkya. Maitreyi said, My Lord, here thou hast bewildered me, saying that there is no longer any name when we have passed away. And Yajnavalkya replied, My wife, what I say is not bewilderin,,, it is suffi- cient for the highest knowled,,e. For if there be as it were two beings then the one sees the other, the one hears, perceives, and knows the other. But if the one Di- vine Self be the whole of all this, whom, or through whom should he see, hear, per- ceive, or know? How should he know himself, by whom he knows everything (himself)? How, my wife, should he know himself the knower? Thus thou hast been taught, Maitreyi; this is immor- tality. Having said this, Yajnavalkya left his wife for ever, and went into the solitude of the forests.t * This early Hindu mysticism is far nobler than the later mysticism of the Bbagavad-Gita, where the existence of all things in God is prostituted to the basest uses, to teach indifference to the character and results of all actions. The earlier mysticism, as exhibited in the dialogue quoted in the text, may be compared with the German mysticism of the four- teenth century, to which it bears in some respects a remarkable resemblance. The doctrine of love in the one paragraph may be compared with Eckbarts (Wackernagels Altdeutsches Lesebuch, p. 891). The doctrine of the other paragraph with Ruysbroeks, that all who are raised above the creaturely condi- tion into a contemplative life are one with the di- vine glory, yea, are that glory, become one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see. (Ruysbroeks Vier Schriften, p. 141.) t The above dialogue, extracted from the Briha. daranyaka, is abridged from a translation in Profes- sor Max Mullers Auc. Sans. Lit., pp. 22-25. See elso Colebrookes Essays, p. 39 (W. & N.s ed.) 4. THE LAWS OF MANU.* Theosophic speculation elaborated the notion of God as the world-soul, from which, by necessary evolution, individual souls emanated, into which by knowledge, possible only after many changes of form, they returned. Sacerdotalismn accepted and assimilated the notion, and made it the basis of its authority and claims. Of men, the Brabman stood nearest to Brahma, and was the lord of the whole creation.t The other classes had their position and dignity determined by their several de- grees of distance from the universal soul, and so the caste system was founded in the divine order of the universe4 Veritable divinity was made to hedge the Brahman. He was an incarnation of Dharma. He was born above the world, the chief of all creatures. The wealth of the universe was, in fact, though not in form, his. But the peculiar province of sacerdotal- ism is the future. Its sovereignty is pos- sible only in an age of intense faith in a hereafter, whose graduated rewards and punishments are in the hands of the priest- hood. The Divina Commedia is the crea- tion of the same century and system as Innocent III. and Boniface VIII. The faith embodied in the detested Pope in- spired the detesting poet. The same schoolmen, who proved in detail the claims of the Papacy, painted in detail the hor- rors of hell. So while the Brahmans made the theosophic theory of emanation the basis of their claims, the sanctions which enforced them were drawn from the mi- grations of the soul before it could attain union with Brahma. Souls were seen ev- erywhere and in everything. The generic difference between minerals and vegeta- bles, animals and men, men and gods was abolished. The present stood connected alike with past and future, determined by the one, determining the other. The the- ories of individual existence and transmi- gration were, in a manner, combined. There were heavens for the reward of merit, hells for the punishment of demnerit, each with a graduated scale, glorious enough in the one case, horrible enou,,h in the other. When the rewards of the one, * The Laws of Manu, as marking the last develop. ment of the earlier Brahmanical sacerdotalism, are here placed between the earlier speculations of the Upanishads and the later speculations of the philo- sophical systems. For questions connected with their date, & c., see Lassen, md. Altertbumsk. i. pp. 882, f.; Dunckers Geschichte der Arier, pp. 134, f. (text and note). t Laws of Mann, i. 93. ~ Mann. i. 31; also same relation, though on dif- ferent grounds. m~tated, xii. 40-50. Mann, i. 98101. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 79 or the punishmerits* of the other, had ex- hausted the merit or demerit iontracted in a former state of being, a new birth had to be undergone, determined by the pre- vious life.t The sinner descended, the righteous ascended, in the scale of exist- ence. The virtuous Sudra becomes a Vaisyn, the Vaisyn a Kshattriya, the Kshat- triya a Brahman, and the Brahman, when a perfectly holy and sinless man, returns by knowledge into Brahma4 If a man steals a cow, he shall be re-born as a crocodile or lizard; if grain, as a rat; if fruit, as an ape. He who attempts to murder a Brah- man, or sheds his blood, or kills him, is punished a hundred or thousand years in the several hells, and then born again and again in animal forms degraded in propor- tion to hi~ crime.II And to these muta- tions and migrations hardly any limit was recognized. The soul might glide through ten thousand millions of births or more. Absorption was the prize of the elect few; transmigration the doom of the many. Only the selected Brahmins attained the first; almost the whole world revolved in the dreary circle of the second. iNow this point of the Brahmanical faith was exactly the point most intelligible, most credible, and most terrible to the people.** It had grown up in the bosom of the ancient worship, and unfolded itself with the unfolding national mind. Theo- sophie speculations as to the world-soul were too recondite to be generally under- stood; but sacerdotalism, developing as society developed had its claims and their sanctions unconsciousty conceded. Trans- migration had its roots in the Brahmanical conception of God; but the people had grown into it without knowing whence it had sprung, or that it differed in any way from the faith of their fathers. To ~the thinker, the theological is the distinctive side of a religion; but to the multitude, the eschatological. Hebraism was strong in the former, but weak in the latter, ele- ment, and hence so often broke down be- fore fiercer faiths. Christianity has exer- cised a greater command over peoples, though not over individual minds, by its esehatology than by its theology. The speculative intellect seeks to stand face to face with the ultimate cause; the general intellect regards religion as re~ulnting the present by its power to determine the fu * Mann, iv. 8790; xii. 75, 76. t Mann, xii. 55. ~ Mann, ix. 335. Manu, xii. 62, 64, 67. II Mann, xii. 55. Mann, vi. 63. ** Duneker, Geseb. der Arier. p. 102. ture. Hence in India, while a new specu- lative faith as to God grew up and assumed shape among the Brabmans, its eschatology alone took root among the people. They still worshipped the old Vedic gods.* The deities of sacerdotal and theosophic spec- ulation were to them unknown. The fu- neral ceremonies and sacrifices wore still the old forms. But instead of the old heaven of Yama and the fathers, absorp- tion into Brahma had come; instead of the old nethermost darkness, glidings through ten thousand millions of births, with between each almost as many hells. The new eschatology was the product of a new theology; but while the first be- came the peoples the second remained the priests. 5. TIi~ PHItO5O~HICAL SYSTEMS. The laws of Manu exhibit the develop- ment of the belief on the sacerdotal side; but the philosophical systems, its further evolution on the speculative. The Hindu philosophies were, as to form and end, re- ligious, professed to be based on the Ye- das, recognized these as their formal source and authority. Philosophy has, as a rule, lived outside the positive religions. No one associates the philosophy with the re- ligion of Greece, save by way of contrast; and the Greek systems found their charac- teristic element, not in their relation to the national worship, but to the idea of virtue or the general conception of the universe. Modern philosophy from Bacon on the one side, and Descartes on the other, has stood and speculated and inquired outside reveal- ed religion, and been its best friend because its greatest critic. But the Hindu philoso- phies stood in formal connection with reve- lation, although as to principle they might be Theistic, Auto-Theistic, Pantheistic, or Atheistic. They differed as to sub- stance, but agreed as to formal source, and so find their proper parallels, not in the Platonic and Aristotelian, Baconian and Cartesian, but in the Athanasian and An- an, Augustinian and Pelagian, Scotist and Thomist systems and methods. The Hin- du spirit was speculative, not critical, de- ductive, not inductive, and so sought truth along a single line by the process of ab- straction. Sacerdotalism gave to specula- tive thought its objects and end, and hence it did not so much raise the question, What is man? as, Given soul as an essence successively appearing under different forms, how did it arise, and how can it * Lassen, md. Alterthnmsk. i. pp. 911, f.; Dmck- er, Gesch. der Arier, pp. 113, C. 80 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. cease to be? In the West, except in the its reward is exhausted, birth into another earlier phases of Greek thought, and cer- form is necessary, and so new virtues can tam later exceptional instances simply de- only prolong the miserable cycle of births monstrative of the rule, there was a gen- and deaths. Vice needs to be punished; eric idea of personality which, while ad- when its demerit is exhausted, birth must mitting many specific differences, excluded, again happen, and more vice leads to more without discussion, any theory of transmi- births ad infinitum. The aim of the soul gration. In India, on the other hand, the therefore should be to get quit of works, notion of soul as one, but as trausmigrat- I whether good or bad; the confinement ing through many forms, had become so of fetters is the same, whether the chain is fundamental, that the very conception of of gold or iron.* And it can do so only separate disembodied existence after death by knowledge. It prevents actions from was 6 priori excluded. The belief so per- ripening into merit or demerit. Past sin vaded thought and life, that the notion of is annulled, future offence precluded. the opposite was never entertained even as As water wets not the leaf of the lotus, a possibility. so sin touches not him who knows God; The Hindu philosophies, like the Euro- as the floss on the carding comb cast into pean, have thus generic similarities with the fire it consumed, so are his sins burnt ouly specific differences, and their generic away.~ Merit and demerit being obliter- features are the exact opposite of ours. ated, final beatitude can be attained. The They stand related on the speculative side Vedantin is identified with Brahma; the to the earlier theosophic thought, on the Sankhya student ceases to be a self-con- practical to the sacerdotal. The one rela- scious personality. The first quitting his tion is seen in their notions as to the origin corporeal frame, ascends to the pure light and cessation of personal existence, the which is Brahma, and comes forth identi- other in their conception of its miserable- fled with him, conform and undivided; ness and hatefulness. as pure water dropping into the limpid The Hindu philosophies thus intensify, lake is such as that is,4 or as a river at instead of counteracting, the sacerdotal its confluence with the sea, merges therein teaching and tendencies as to our belief altogether. The second has reached the The Vedanta might assert that the world point where he can say, neither I am, nor was an illusion, and Brahma the only real- is aught mine, nor I exist; yet soul re- ity; the Sankhya might affirm a dualism, mains awhile invested with body, as the under a Theistic or Atheistic form; the potters wheel continues whirling after the Nyaya, whether dialectic or atomistic as to pot has been fashioned, by force of the form, might declare the existence of a su- impulse previously given to it. When preme soul and propound the true method separation of the informed soul from its of discovering the nature of things; but corporeal frame at length takes place, and each system held that souls are eternal,* nature in respect of it ceases, then is abso- that they transmigrate through countless lute and final deliverance accomplished.jj bodies,t that the bondage to birth and Such then was the terrible conclusion death is due to ignorance and maintained to which Hindu sacerdotalism and specu- by works, whether good or bad4 Life is lation had alike come. Individual exist- thus a calamity, personal existence expos- ence was a curse; the only immortality ure to successive cycles of conscious mise- known the ~ceaseless succession of births ries under multitudinous forms. The and deaths. Self-annihilation, conceived grand problem of all the systems is thus, either as absorption or the cessation of how to attain final beatitude. The beat- self-conscious being, was the only salva- itude known to each is the loss of con- tion believed in or desired. Sacerdotal- scious personality. The means of attain- ism had made religion a calamity. Its ment in each, knowledge or right appre- modes of worship could neither gladden hension. Good works and bad, virtue and the present nor gild with hope the future. yice, are, because of their consequences, The priesthood might stand proudly pre- undesirable, hinder, by creating merit or eminent, but its pre-eminence was danger- demerit, the final emancipation of the ous, because founded on dogmas which soul. Virtue needs to be rewarded; when created despair. There is a limit to the burdens the human spirit can bear, and * See on this point, Aphorisms from the several Systems, in A Rational Refutation of the Hindu * Anonymous Commentator, in Colebrookes Es- Philos. Systems, by R. N. S. Gore, p. 35, Dr. F. E. says, p. 232. Halls translation. t Colebrooke, p. 232. t Colebrookes Essays, pp. 184, 229, 240, 155. t lb., 236. ~ Rational Refutation. pp. 10, if. ~ Lb., 234. lb., p. 19. U lb., p. 164. THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITy. that limit had been reached. A religion which intensified the actual miseries of tl~e present, and the possible miseries of the future, had abdicated its functions, land deserved only what it was sure, be- fore long, to suffer, abolition or revolution. 6. BUDDHIsM. Buddhism, at once the offspring and the enemy of Brabmanism, can hardly be un- derstood apart from the India in which it arose. It was essentially an anti-sacer- dotal revolution, specifically Indian alike in what it affirmed and what it denied. The Brahmanical gods, sacrifices, ceremo- nies, and inspired hooks it rejected. The caste system, the very foundation of Hin- du society, it recognized, but practically abolished in the religious sphere, a pre- liminary to its general abolition.* But without perhaps consciously borrowing from, or building on any previous system, it appropriated and developed certain ten- dencies and doctrines familiar to Indian speculation and translated them into a faith and a religion for the people4 Buddhism was an ethical, Brahmanism a sacerdotal religion, and so were specifi- cally different, tut both had a. metaphysi- cal as distinguished from a personal basis, and so were generically alike. The gen- eric similarity necessitated resemblances in their respective conceptions of the uni- verse, the specific difference affected their views of life and the conditions which de- termined its happiness or misery. Bud- dhism like Brahmanism had its graduated system of future reward and punishment, its descending circles of hells, its ascending circles of heavens ~ but unlike Brahman- ism its principle of award in the one case was virtue, in the other vice. Hence the grand arbiter of destiny is Karmi, mor- al action, the aggregate result of all pre- vious acts. Buddhism, indeed, is nothing else than the religion of moral action met- aphysically conceived. Buddhas great problem was the prob- lem common to every Indian thinker, How to be delivered from misery, from that greatest of evils, the everla~ting suc- cession of births and deaths. He accepted the Indian theory of man never seems to have imagined any other as possible. The sight of the misery around, the thought of the misery behind and before, pained him. He inquired what is the * Lassen, md. Alterthumsk. ii. pp. 440, if. t lb., i. pp. 996, f. 7 Burnouf, Introduction a lHist. du Bnddhisme Indien, pp. 320, 866, 1.; R. 8. Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, chap. ii. H. S. Hardys Manual, pp. 894, if. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1204 81 cause of age, of death, of all pain? Birth. What is the cause of birth? Existence. What is the cause of existence ? Attach- ment to the existent. What is the cause of attachment? Desire. Of desire? Per- ception. Ot~ perception? The senses. What is the cause of the senses? Name and form, or individual existence. Of in- dividual existenoc? Consciousness. Of consciousness? Ignorance. To annihil- ate birth, existence must be annihilated; to annihilate existence, the attachment to it. Attachment, again, can only be de- troyed by destroying desire, desire by destroying perceptio,n, perception by de- stroying the senses, the senses by destroy- ing the consciousness, and the conscious- ness by destroying the ignorance, which is its cause. If the ground of personal exist- istence is annihilated, it cannot continue, birth and death cease.* What Buddha conceived this final de- liverance to be cannot be discussed here and now. Enough to say, a religion with- out a God could hardly promise a restful but conscious immortality. Nirvana can- not be absorption, for Buddhism knew no world-soul, no Brahma, into which the perfect man could enter, nor can it be any conscious state of being, for the loss of con- sciousness was the goal of Buddhas ambi- tion. The oldest definitions describe Nir- vana as the cessation of thought, since its causes are removed, as a condition in which nothing remains of that which constitutes existence.t When the soul enters Nirvana it is extinguished like a lamp blown out, and nothing remains but the void4 The only asylum and the only reality is nothing, because from it there is no return, and once at rest in Nirvana, the soul has no longer anything to fear, nor anything to expect. * Duneker, Gesch. der Arier, p p. 237, f. t Burnouf, Introduction a iHist. du Bud. md., pp. 73, 88, 589, f. 7 lb., 252. Al. Barthelemy S. Ililaire, Le Bouddha et sa. Religion, pp. vii. viii. See the interesting discus. sions as to the meaning of Nirvana, by Professor Max Muller, Chips i. 223, C; 248, if.; 279, if. On the same sidestand thelate Lug. Rurnouf. Introduction. at supra and 153-155,211, 521, & c.; Lotus de Ia bonn4 Lol, pp. 335. 339, 784, & c.; Lassen, md. Alter- tbumsk. i. 996; ii. 462; iii. 385, 395; C. F. Roppen, Die Religion des Buddha, i. pp. 306, f. M. Barthel- emy S. Hiiaire often, but particularly the Avertisse- ment. On the other side, holding that Nirvana de- notes a state of repose, non-agitation, caini wi.thout wind stand Dr. Wilson sf Bombay, Art. The Buddhist Revolution in Ind., Brit. and For. Lv. Rev., Juiy, 1871, p. 422; Colebrookes Essays, 258~ and J. B. F. Obry, in Dn Nirvana Bonddhiqne, a formal reply to M. B. S. Hilaire. Perhaps the truth lies in very equal proportions on both sides. In Buddhism, as a system, Nirvana can mean nothing but annihilation, or extinction, escape from our own personal existence without passing into any 82 THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. Buddhism is a proof of what a false theory of immortality may become life after death, a thing so terrible that to es- cape it man will court annihilation. The Hindu Spirit had got bewildered in the mazes of transmigration, and unable to find a way to a right conception of God, and a consequent right conception of irn- mortality, it rose into an absolute denial of both, produced and propagated a relig- ion founded on the abolition of what West- ern thinkers used to regard as the funda- mental truths of every faith the being of God and the immortality of man. 7. THE REFORMED RRAHMANISM A religion so ancient, so highly organ- ized, so strong in the traditions and associ- ations of many centuries as Brahmanism, could not be easily vanquished. An old faith which has the courage and skill to re- form itself, will also have vitality and strength enough to engage and defeat its young opponent. The counter-Reforma- tion in Europe is a feeble type of the Brahmanical reaction in India. Roman Catholicism drove back but could not ex- pel from the Continent her vigorous but unorganized enemy: but revived Brah- manisin swept from India the once-victori- ous Buddhism. The old system expanded to receive new and popular elements. The people loved the old gods, never knew or worshipped the abstract deity of the priesthood. Of the old Vedic Gods, Vishnu and Rudra had become the chosen of the people.* They, joined with the Sacerdotal Brahma, formed a new god- head, the famous Brahmanical Trimurtli. Then if, according to the old mystical notion, the human could be absorbed in the divine, why not the divine manifested in the human? If man could become God why not God man? Hence the Avatar notion arose, and by a well-known mythi- cal process the heroes of the old national epics, Rama and Krishna, were deified, and as at once incarnations of the popular deity and heroes of the popular songs powerfully commended the old religion to other being or form of personal being. In Bud- dhism as areligion, Nirvanamay mean to the simple. hearted multitude profound calm, undisturbed ~by successiVe births and deaths. Professor Max Muller, who has very greatly modilied his earlier riew~, nowmaiulains that while the metaphysic of Buddhisrais~both Atheistic and Nihilidic, Buddha ihirsiseif was an Atheist, but not a Nihilist. See his ~Lecture,. Ueber den Buddhistischen Nihilismus. Lassen, lad. Allerthurnsk. i. 918, if.; ii. 1087. But particularly Dr. Muirs Sanscrit Texts, vol. iv., ~oinparison of the Vedic with the later representa- ions of. h~priu.c~pal Indian deities. the Hindu heart.* Thus on both the di- vine and human sides, the old faith was so modified as to suit, even better than the new, the mind and condition of India. Our belief so shared in the general modification as to be in some respects im- proved, in others deteriorated. It receives fullest expression in the Bhagavad-Gita. The general conception is a crude Panthe- ism, with, on the one side a final absorp- tion, conditioned on knowledge, into deity, on the other a hideous moral indifferent.. ism, which abolishes good and evil and in- culcates action without any regard to con- sequences. Krishna says, Immortality and death, being and not being, am, I, 0 Arjuna.j He is everything, its source, its goal, father and mother of this world, whence all things and beings come, whither all return.t The soul is im- mutable, impenetrable, incombustible, can neither be pierced by darts, nor burned by fire, nor drowned by water, nor dried by wind. It can wear out and lay aside old and assume new bodies, as the body can change its garments. Souls are thus conceived as immortal, or, rath- er, eternal, without beginning or end, but as transmigrating through many bodies. Man can be born into nobler and happier forms of personal being, and between birth and death taste divine joys in the heaven of Indra.** Till final emancipation is obtained birth and death succeed each other, but when knowledge of the divine being is acquired, birth ceases, the soul attains deity. if Tranquille animatum utique ilIum devotum summa voluptas subit, sedato affectuumn impetu in numinis essentiam conversum, innoenum .j4 Here, then, our inquiry into the Hindu belief in immortality may end. Its his- torical conclusion was the antithesis and contradiction of its historical beginning. Our purpose was to trace the several steps in this saddest, most extensive and in- jurious revolution of religious thought, and the lessons suggested the reader can best discover for himself. An exaggerated sacerdotalism turned the Hindu spirit from travelling along the only line on which it could haVe reached a right conception of God, and, without that, no right con- * Duacker, Gesch. der Arier, p. 322; Muir, at supra (Dh. ii. Sect. V. t ix. 19. ~ ix. 710; 1618. ii. 2325. Iii. 22. vi, 41, 42. ** ix. 20. tI ii.51; lv. 9 10. ~ vi. 27; A. W. Von Schlegels Translation. TilE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 83 ception of man, as mortal or immortal, 1 can live only when rooted in faith in a per- was possible. Our thoughts weave them- sonal God. selves more subtly than we ima~,ine into Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: consistency and form, and the unsyste- Thou madest man, he knows not why; matized faith of a people will often be He thinks he was not made to die; found more logical than any reasoned sys- And Thou hast made him: Thou art just. tem. The belief in a personal immortality A M. FAIRBAIRN. IT is a curious fact that eruptions of Mount I occasion showed a tendency to interfere with us Vesuvius are generally followed or follow or which it is to be hoped it ~vill not display on take place simultaneously with political disturb- future occasions ; for, not content with keeping ance at homo. In 1855 the resignation of the its own immediate neighbourhood in a state of Aberdeen Ministry and the accession of Lord ferment by ejecting stones of an enormous size, it Palmerston to power were followed almost im- actually threw some ashes over the Orkney Is- mediately by a serious eruption of Vesuvius. lands. This must not happen again. Volcanoes In 1859 th~ resignation of Lord Derby and an will do well to remember that, owing to the collu- eruption took place within a few days of each sion which exists between the dust contractors other. In 1861 the Trent affair occurred with and our vestrymen, we cannot get the cinders America, Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidel being re- removed from our own houses; they should, leased on December 28 of that year, and Torre therefore, learn to locally self-govern themselves del Greco being destroyed by an eruption in the and not add to our troubles by throwing their same month. Another eruption began on No- refuse in our direction. Pall Mall. vember 12, 1867, and on the 18th of the follow- ing month the Fenians attempted to blow up Clerkenwell Prison; the eruption continued to increase in intensity until Lord Derby resigned COPPER IN THE ANIMAL ORGANISM. Mr. office in February, 1868, and Mr. Disraelis Church showed, some years ago, that certain Ministry was formed, when it gradually subsid- colouring matters in the plumage of some kinds ed. If we turn to Etna, we find the same phe- of birds contain copper as a constituent. Ac- nomenon. In 1830, the year in which the cording to the Mechanics Magazine, M. Du- Grey administration was formed, Etna had a claux has recently found appreciable quantities serious eruption. In 1832 the Reform Act was of copper in cocoa. The highest proportion of passed in June, and in November the town of copper found in cocoa was 250 parts in one mil- Bronte was destroyed by an eruption. In Sep- lion; and the lowest, 5 parts of copper in one tember, 1852 when the Duke of Wellington million. The husks are richer in this metal died, there was a violent eruption of Etna. In than the kernel; there being about ten times as 1865 an eruption began in February and lasted much copper in the former as in the latter. until July; three months later, Lord Palmer- Statements that minute quantities of copper ston died and Lord Russell became Premier in have been found in different organic structures his place. There is, as might perhaps be ex- are by no means rare or new: thus Devergie pected, less sympathy between Mount Hecla (.M& lecine Legale, 1840, tome iii. p. 533) states and our own domestic occurrences than 15 that copper had been found by (among others) evinced by Etna and Vesuvius; but, neverthe- Sarzeau, in cinchona, madder, wheat, flour, less, during the period of the railway mania bran, tea, coffee, barley, oats, rye, & c.; and by and the Corn Law agitation of 1845, Hecla Boutigny dEvreux in wine, cider, wheat. De- was in a very disturbed state; indeed, it had a vergie himself, from a number of experiments, most disagreeable eruption, which began in arrived at the conclusion that n~inute quantities September, 1845, and lasted until April 1846. of copper are normally present in the organs of Three new craters were formed, from which the animal body, being derived from the food. pillars of fire rose to the height of 14,000 feet. More recently, Blasius found one part of copper The lava formed several hills, pieces of pumice- (and lead), in 1430, in the ashes of the human stone and scorke of 2 cwt. were thrown to a heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys. Others con- distance of a league and a half, and the ice and sider that the presence of copper is merely acci- snow which had covered the mountain for cen- dental. We (British Medical Journal) are tunes melted into prodigious floods. All this almost inclined to believe, however, that traces boiling and bubbling continued until the follow- of copper enter into the animal organism, play- ing year, when the Corn Laws were repealed ing some subordinate part in it. and Hecla became quiet again. Hecla on this Puplic Opinion. 84 TilE MAID OF SKER. From Blackwoods Magazine. fine black eyes, and abiding colour, and THE MAID OF SKER. the modesty inherited from her grand- CHAPTER LIX. father, and some reflection perhaps of his fame, made her a favourite everywhere. IN A ROCKY BOXVER. And any grandfather might well have I NEVER hear of human impatience been proud to see how she carried her without sagely reflecting upon the rapid dress off. flight of time, when age draws on, and The younger maid sate right above her, business thickens, and all the glory of quite as if Nature bad ordered it so and this world must soon be left behind us. drew her skirt of homespun camlet over From the date of my great catch of fish her dainty feet, because the place was wet and landing of Bardie at Pool Tavan, to and chilly. And anybody looking must the day of my guiding the British fleet have said that she was born to grace. betwixt the shoals of Syracuse, more than The clear outlines of oval face and deli- sixteen years had passed, and scarce left cate strength of forehead were moulded time to count them. as by Nature only can such dainty work Therefore it was but a natural thing be done. Gentle pride and quiet moods that the two little maidens with whom I of lonely meditation had deepened and began should now be grown up, and creat- subdued the radiance of the large grey ing a stir in the minds of young men of eyes, and changed the dancing mirth of the neighbourhood. Early in this present childhood into soft intelligence. And it month of July, that north-west breeze, must~have been a fine affair, with the sun- which was baffling our fleet off the coast shine glancing on the breezy sea, to take of Anatolia, was playing among the rocks a look at the lights and shadows of so of Sker with the curls and skirts and rib- clear a countenance. bons of these two fair young damsels. Bunny, like a frigate riding, doused Or rather with the ribbons of one, for her head and all her outworks forward Bunny alone wore streamers, wherein her of the bends; and then hung fluttering heart delighted; while the maid of Sker and doubtful, just as if she had missed was dressed as plainly as if she had been stays. her servant. Not that her inborn love of It is not your engagement, my dear brightness ever had abandoned her, but Bunny, began Delushy, as if she were that her vanities were put down very ten years the senior officer; you must sternly by Master Berkrolles whenever not suppose for a moment that I object to she came back from Candleston; and but your engagement. It is time, of course, for her lessons in music there ~vhich for you to think, among so many suitors, were beyond Rogers compass he would of some one to put up with, especially have raised his voice against her visits to after what you told me about having the good Colonel. For the old mans toothache. And Watkin is thoroughly heart was entirely fixed upon the graceful good and kind, and able so read quite maiden, and his chief anxiety was to keep respectably. But what I blame you for is her out of the way of harm. He knew this, that you have not been straightfor- that the Colonel loved nothing better (as ward, Bunny. Why have you kept me in behoved his lineage) than true and free the dark about this one of your many hospitality; and he feared that the simple sweethearting~, as you always call and nameless girl might set her affections them? on some grand guest, who would scorn her And for sure, miss, then I never did derelict origin. Now she led Bunny into no such thing; unless it was that I thought a cave, or rather a snug little cove of you was wanting him. rock, which she always called her cradle, I! You surely cannot have thought and where she had spent many lonely is! I want Watkin Thomas! hours, in singing pure Welsh melodies of Well, miss, you need not fly out like the sweetest sadness, feeling a love of the that. All the girls in Newton was after desert places from her own desertion. him. And if it wasnt you as wanted him, Then down she sate in her chair of stone, it might be him as wanted you, which with limpets and barnacles studding it; comes to the same thing always. while Bunny in the established manner I dont quite think that it does, dear bounced down on a pebble and gazed at Bunny, though you may have made it do so. her. Now look up and kiss me, dear: you My sons daughter was a solid girl, know that I love you very much, though very well built as our family is, and ink- I have a way of saying things. And then ing most handsomely fore and aft. Her I am longing to beg pardon when I have TUE MAID OF SKER. 85 vexed any one. It comes of my noble birth, I suppose, which the girls of New- ton laugh about. How I wish that I were but the child of the poorest good man in the parish! But now I am tired of think- ing of it. What good ever comes of it? And what can one poor atom matter? You are not a poor atom; you are the best, and the cleverest, and most learned- est, and most beautifullest lady as ever was seen in the whole of the land. After or rather in the middle of which words, our Bunny, with her usual vigour and true national ardour, leaped into the arms of iDelushy, so that they had a good cry together. You will wait, of course, for your Granny to come, before you settle anything. Will I, indeed? cried that wicked Bunny, and lucky for her that I was not there: I shall do nothing of the sort. If he chooses to be always away at sea, conquering the French for ever, and never coming hbme when he can help it, he must make up his mind to he surprised when he happens to come home again. For sure then, that is right enough. Well, it does seem almost reasonable, answered the young lady: and I think sometimes that we have no right to expect so much as that of things. It is not what they often do; and so they lose the habit of it. I do not quite understand, said Bunny. And I dont half understand, said Bardie : but oh my dear, what shall I do? He is coming this way, I am sure. And I would not have you know anything of it and of course you must feel that it is all nonsense. And I did not mean any harm about courting; only you onght to be out of the way, and yet at the same time in it. Our Bunny was such a slow-witted girl, and at the same time so particular (in- heriting slowness from her good mother, and conscience from third generation), that really she could make no hand at meeting such a crisis. For now she be- gan to perceive gold-lace, which alone dis- comfits the woman-race, and sets their minds going upon what they love. And so she did very little else but stare. I did think you would have helped me, Bunny, Delushy cried, xvith aggrievement. I wanted to hear your own affairs, of course; but I would not have brought you here Young ladies, well met! cried as solid a voice as the chops of the Channel had ever tautened: I knew that you were here, and so I came down to look after you. Sure then, sir, and I do think that it is very kind of you. We was just awanting looking after. Oh what a fish I do see in that pool! Please only you now both to keep back. I shall be back again, now just, sir. With these words away flew Bnnny, as if her life were set on it. What a fine creature, to be sure! said Commander Bluett, thoughtfully; she reminds me so much of her grand- father. There is something so strongly alike between them, in their reckless out- spoken honour, as well as in the turn of the nose they have.,~ Let us follow, and admire her a little more, cried Delushy : she deserves it, as you say; and perhaps well, perhaps she likes it. Young Rodney looked at her a little while, and then at the ground a little while; because he was a stupid fellow as concerns young women. He thought this one such a perfect wonder, as may well be said of all of them. Then those two fenced about a little, out of shot of each others eyes. There was no doubt between them as to the meaning of each other. But they both seemed to think it wise to have a little bit of vexing before doing any more. And thus they looked at one another as if there was nothing between them. And all the time, how they were longing! I must have yes or no: for Rodney could not outlast the young lady: yes or no; you know what I mean. I am almost always at sea; and to-morrow I start to join Nelson. With him there is no play- work. I hope to satisfy him, though I know what he is to satisfy. But I hope to do it. Of course you will, liJelushy answered. You seem to give great satisfaction; al- most everywhere, I am sure. Do I give it, you proud creature, where I long to give it most? How can I pretend to say, without being told in what latitude even as I think your expression is this amiable desire lies? As if you did not know, Delushy! As if I did know, Captain Bluett! And another thing I am not to be called Delushy, much, in that way. Very well, then; much in another way. Delushy, Delushy, delicious Delushy, what makes you so unkind to me? To-morrow I go away, and perhaps we shall never meet again, Delushy; and then how you would reproach yourself. Dont you think you would now? 86 THE MAiD OF SKER. When never and then come together yes. I suppose all sailors talk so, If I cannot even talk to please you, there is nothing more to say. I think that thebards have turned your head with their harpings, and their fiddle-strings, and bal- lads (in very bad Welsh, no doubt) about the charming maid of Sker; and so on. When you are old enough to know better, and the young conceit wears out of you, you may be sorry, Miss Andalusia, for your wonderful cleverness. He made her a bow with his handsome hat, and her warm young heart was chilled by it. Surely he ought to have shaken hands. She tried to keep her own mean- ing at home, and bid him farewell with a curtsy, while he tried not to look back again; but fortune or nature was too much for them, and their eyes met wistfully. These things are out of my line so much, that I cannot pretend to say now for a mo- ment what these very young people did; and everybody else having done the same, with more or less unwisdom, according to constitution, may admire the power of charity which restrains me from describing them. My favourite writer of Scripture is St. Paul, who was afraid of nobody, and who spent his time in making sails when the thorn in the flesh permitted him. And this great writer describes the quick man- ners of maidens far better than I can. Wherefore I keep myself up aloft until they have had a good spell of it. I have no opinion, now. What can you expect of me? Rodney, I must stop and think for nearly a quarter of a century before I have an opinion. Then stay, just so; and let me admire you, till I have to swim with you. Rodney, you are reckless. Here comes the tide; and you know I have got my very best Candleston side-lace boots on! ~The~n come out -of this rocky bower, which suits your fate so, darling; and let us talk m6st sensibly. By all means; if you think we can. There, you need not touch me, Rodney ; I can get out very well indeed. I know these rocks better than you do perhaps. Now sit on this rock where old David first hooked me, as I have heard that old chat- terbox tell fifty times, as if lie had done some great great thing. He did indeed a grand grand thing. No wonder that he is proud of it. And he has so much to be proud of that you may take it for your highest compliment. Perhaps there is no other man in the Service or I might say in all the civilized world But it hurts me to tell what this excellent officer said or even thought of me. He was such a first-rate judge by this time that I must leave his opinion blank. Over the sea they began to look, in a discontented quietude; as the manner of young mortals is before they begin to know better, and with great ideas moving them. Bunny, with the very kindest discyetion. had run away entirely, and might now be seen at the far end of the sands, and spring- ing up the rocks, on her way to Newton. So those two sate side by side, with their hearts full of one another, and their minds rnad~ up to face the world together, what- ever might come of it. For as yet they could see nothing clearly through the warm haze of loving, being wrapped up in an at- mosphere which generally leads to a hurri- cane. But to them, for a few short min- utes, earth and sea and sky were all one universal heaven. It will not do, cried the maid of Sker, suddenly awaking with a short deep sigh, and drawing back her delicate hand from the broad palm of young Rodney: it will never, never do. We must both be mad to think of it. Who could fail to be mad, he an- swered, if you set the example? Now, dont be so dreadfully stupid, Rodney. What I say is most serious. Of course you know the world better than I do, as you told me yesterday, after sailing a dozen times round it. But I am thinking of other things. Not of what the world will say, but of what I myself must feel. And the first of these things is that I can- not be cruelly ungrateful. It wonld be the deepest ingratitude to the Colonel if I went on with it. Went on with it! What a way to speak! As if you could be off with it when you pleased! And my good uncle loves you like his own daughter; and so does my mother. Now what can you mean? As if you did not know indeed! Now, Rodney, do talk sensibly. I ought to know, if any one does, what your uncle and your mother are. And I know that they would rather see your death in the Gazette than your marriage with an unknown, nameless nobody like me, sir. Well, of course, we must take the chance of that, said Captain Bluett, care- lessly. The Colonel is the best soul in the world, and my dear mother a most excellent creature, whenever she listens to reason. But as to my asking their permis- sion it is the last thing I should dream of. I am old enough to know my owa mind, and to get my own living, I should hope, as well as that of my family. And THE MAID OF SKER. 87 if I am only in time with Nelson, of course I think, said the maid, with her lips we shall do wonders. to his ear, in the true old coaxing fashioii, For a minute or two the poor young that I may very well promise that. But maid had not a word to say to him She I will promise another thing too. And longed to throw her arms around him, that is, not to have even you, until your when he spoke so proudly, and to indulge I dear mother and good uncle come to me her own pride in him, as against all the and ask me. And that can never never world beside. But having been brought be. up in so much trouble, she had learned to check herself. So that she did nothing CHAPTER LX. more than wait for him to go on again. And this he did with sparkling eyes and the confidence of a young British tar. There is another thing, my beauty, which they are bound to consider, as well as all the prize-money I shall earn. And that is that they have nobody except themselves to thank for it. They must have known what was sure to happen, if they chose to have you there whenever I was home from sea. And my mother is so clever too to my mind it is plain enough that they meant me to do what I have done. And pray what is that? As if you did not know! Come now, you must pay the penalty of asking for a compliment. Talk about breeding and good birth, and that stuff! Why, look at your hands and then look at mine. Put your fingers between mine both hands, both hands thats the way. Now just feel my great clumsy things, and then see how lovely yours are as clear as wax- tapers, and just touched with rose, and every nail with a fairy gift, and pointed like an almond. A nameless nobody indeed! What nameless nobody ever had such nails? By way of contrast examine mine.~~ Oh but you bite yours shockingly, Rodney. I am sure that you do, though I never saw you. You must be cured of that dreadful trick. That shall be your first job, Delushy, when you are Mrs. Rodney. Now for an- other great sign of birth. Do you see any peak to my upper lip? No, I cant say I do. But how foolish you are! I ought to be crying, and you make me laugh! Then just let me show you the peak to yours. Honour bright and no mean advantages that is to say if I can help it. Oh, heres that blessed Moxy coming! May the Frenchmen rob her henroost! Nowjust one promise, darling, darling ; just one little promise. To-morrow I go to most desperate battles, and lucky to come home with one arm and one leg. Therefore, promise a solemn promise to have no one in the world but me. NELSON AND THE NILE. THE first day of August in the year of our Lord 1798 is a day to be long remem- bered by every Briton with a piece of con- stitution in him. For on that day our glorious navy, under the immortal Nelson, administered to the Frenchmen, under Admiral Brewer, as pure and perfect a lathering as is to be found in all history. This I never should venture to put upon my own authority (especially after the prominent part assigned therein by Prov- idence to a humble individual who came from Newton-Nottage), for with history I have no patience at all, because it always contradicts the very things I have seen and known: but I am bound to believe a man of such high principles and deep reading as Master Roger Berkrolles. And he tells me that I have helped to produce the greatest of all great victories. Be that one way or the other, I can tell you every word concerning how we man- aged it; and you need not for one mo- ment think me capable of prejudice. Quite the contrary, I assure you. There could not have been in the British fleet any man more determined to do justice to all Crap- ~05 than a thoroughly ancient navigator, now Master of the Goliath. We knew exactly what to do, every Captain, every Master, every quarter- master; even the powder-monkies had their proper work laid out for them. The spirit of Nelson ran through us all; and our hearts caught fire from his heart. From the moment of our first glimpse at the Frenchmen spread out in that tempt- ing manner, beautifully moored and riding in a long line head and stern, every old seaman among us began to count on his fingers prize-money. They thought that we would not fight that night, for the sun was low when we found them; and with their perpetual conceit, they were hard at work taking water in. I shall never for- - get how beautiful these ships looked, and how peaceful. A French ship always sits in the water with an elegant quickness, like a Frenchwoman at the looking-glass. And though we brought the evening 88 THE MAID OF SKER. breeze in very briskly with us, there was cause they all are wrong. Some attribute hardly swell enough in the bay to make this grand manoeuvre to our great Ad them play their hawsers. Many fine miral Nelson, others to Captain flood of things have I seen, and therefore know the Zealous, and others to our Captain pretty well how to look at them, which a Foley This latter is nearest the mark; man never can d? upon the first or even but from whom did Captain Foley obtaiu the second occasion. But it was worth the hint? Modesty forbids me to say any mans while to live to the age of three- what Welshman it was who devised this score years and eight, with a sound mind noble and most decisive stratagem, while in a sound body, and eyes almost as good patriotic duty compels me to say that it as ever, if there were nothing for it more I was a Welshman, and more than that a than to see what I saw at this moment. Glamorganshire man, born in a favoured Six-and-twenty ships of the line, thirteen- part of the quiet village of N N. bearing the tricolor, and riding cleared for Enough, unless I add that internal evi- action, the other thirteen with the red dence will convince any unprejudiced per- cross flying, the cross of St. George on the son that none hut an ancient fisherman, ground of white, and tossing the blue and thorough-going long-shoreman, could water from their stems under pressure of by any possibility have smelled out his canvass. Onward rushed our British way so cleverly. ships, as if every one of them was alive, Our great Admiral saw, with his usual and driven out of all patience by the insicrht into Frenchmen, that if they re- wicked escapes of the enemy. Twelve mained at anchor we were sure to man hundred leagues of chase had they cost us, their For Crappos fight well incr capstans. e,ratitude towards God every night, and enough with a rush, but unsteadily when love of the devil at morning, with dread at a standstill, and worst of all when taken of our country for ever prevailing, and by surprise and outmanceuvred. And the mistrust of our own good selves. And manner in which the British fleet advanced now at last we had got them tight; and was enourh to strike them cold by its mean we did to keep them. Captain Fo- majesty ai~d its awfulness. For in perfect ley came up to me as I stood on the rat- silence we were gliding~over the dark-blue lines to hear the report of the men in the sea, with the stately height of the white starboard fore-chains; and his fine open sails shining, and the sky behind us full of face clouded. Master, he said, how solemn yellow sunset. Even we, so sure much more of this? Damn your sound- of conquest, and so nerved with stern de- ings. Cant you see that the Zealous is light, could not gaze on the things around drawing ahead of us? Hood has nobody us, and the work before us, without for a in the chaitis. If you cant take the ship moment wondering whether the Lord in into action, I will. Stand by there to set heaven looked down at us. top-gallant sails. At any rate we obeyed to the letter the These had been taken in, scarce five orders both of our Admiral and of a man minutes agone, as prudence demanded, for scarcely less remarkable. Let not the none of us had any chart of the bay; and sun go down On your wrath, are the very even I knew little about it, except that words of St. Paul, I believe; and we nev- there was a great shoal of rock betwixt er fired a shot until there was no sun left Aboukir Island and the van ship of the to look at it. I stood by the man at the enemy. And but for my warning, we wheel myself, and laid my own hand to it: might have followed the two French brigs for it was a matter of very fine steerage, appointed to decoy us in that direction, to run in ahead of the French line, ware Now having filled top-gallant sails, we soundings, and then bear up on their lar- rapidly headed our rival the Zealous, in board bow, to deliver a thorough good spite of all that she could do; and we had raking broadside. I remember looking the honour of receiving the first shot of over my left shoulder after we bore up our the enemy. For now we were rushing in, elm a-weather, while crossing the bows stem on, having formed line of battle, of the Cari-ier (as the foremost enemys towards the van of the anchored French- ship was called), and there was the last men, limb of the sun like the hoof of a horse Now as to what followed, and the brii- disappearing. And my own head nearly liant idea which occurred to somebody to went with it, as the wind of a round-shot turn the enemys line and take them on knocked me over. Bear up, bear up, the larboard or inner side (on which they lads, cried Captain Foley, our time were quite unprepared for attack) no two has come at last, my boys. Well done authorities are quite agreed, simply be- Liewellyn! A finer ~ample of conning THE MAID OF SKER. 89 and steerage was never seen. Let go the best bower. Pass the word. Ready at quarbers all of you. Nqw she bears clear fore and aft. Damn their eyes, let them have it. Out rang the whole of our larboard bat- tery, almost like a sin,le gun; a finer thing was never seen; and hefore the ring passed into a roar, the yell of Frenchmen caine through the smoke. Masts and spars flew right and left with the bones of men among them, and the sea began to hiss and heave, and the ships to reel and trem- ble, and the roar of a mad volcano rose, and nothing kept either shape or tenor, except the faces of brave men. Every ship in our fleet was prepared to anchor by the stern, so as to spring our broadsides aright; but the anchor of the Goliath did not bite so soon as it should have done, so that we ran past the Carrier, and brought up on the larboard quarter of the second French 74, with a fri,,ate and a brig of war to employ a few of our starboard guns. By this time the rapid darkness fell, and we fought by the light of our own guns. And now the skill of our Admiral and his great ideas were manifest, for every French ship had two English upon it, and some of them even three at a time. In a word, we began with the head of their line, and crushed it, and so on joint by joint, ere even the centre and much more the tail could fetch their way up to take part in it. Our antagonist was the first that struck, being the second of the Frenchmans line, and by name the Conquer-ant. But she found in Captain Foley and David Llewellyn an ant a little to clever to conquer. We were a good deal knocked about, with most of our main rigging shot away, and all our masts heavily wounded. Neverthe- less we drew ahead to double upon the third French ship, of the wonderful name of Sparticipate. From this ship I received a shot, which, but for the mercy of the Lord, must have made a perfect end of me. That my end may be perfect has long been my wish, and the tenor of my life leads up to it. Nevertheless, who am I to deny that I was not ready for the final finish at that very moment? And now, at this time of writ- ing, I find myself ready to wait a bit longer. What I mean was a chain-shot sailing along, rather slowly as they always do; and yet so fast that I could not either duck or jump at sight of it, although there was light enough now for anything, with NEVERTHELESS our Britons were forced the French Admiral on fire. Happening to renew the battle afterwards; because to be well satisfied with my state of mind those Frenchmen had not the manners to CHAPTER LXI. A SAVAGE DEED. at that moment (not from congratulaticn, so much as from my inside conscience), I now was beginning to fill a pipe, and to dwell upon further manceuvres. For one of the foremost points of all, after thor- oughly drubbing the enemy, is to keep a fine self-control and be ready to go on with it. No sooner had I filled this pipe, and taken a piece of wadding to light it, which was burning handy (in spite of all my orders), than away went a piece of me; and down went I, as dead as a Dutch herring. At least, so everybody thought., who had time to think about it; and the Masters dead ran along the deck, so far as time was to tell of it. I must have lain numb for an hour, I doubt, with the roar of the guns, and the shakin~, of bulk-heads, like a shiver, jarring me and a pool of blood curdling into me, and another poor fellow cast into the scuppers and clutch- ing at me in his groaning, when the heavens took fire in one red blaze, and a thundering roar, that might rouse the dead, drowned all the rolling battle-din. I saw the white looks of our crew all aghast, and their bodies scared out of deaths manufacture, by this triumph of mortality; and the elbows of big fellows holding the linstock fell quivering back to their shaken ribs. For the whole sky was blotched with the corpses of men, like the stones of a crater cast upwards; and the sheet of the fire behind them showed their knees, and their bellies, and streaming hair. Then with a hiss, like electric hail, from a miles height all came down again, corpses first (being softer things), and timbers next, and then the great spars that had streaked the sky like rockets. The violence of this matter so attracted my attention, that I was enabled to rally my wits, and lean on one elbow and look at it. And I do assure you that anybody who happened to be out of sight of it, lost a finer chance than ever he can have an- other prospect of. For a hundred-and- twenty-gun ship had blown up, with an Admiral and Rear-Admiral, not to mention a Commodore, and at least 700 comple- ment. And when the concussion was over, there fell the silence of death upon all men. Not a gun was fired, nor an order given, except to man the boats in hopes of saving some poor fellows. 90 THE MAID OF SKER. surrender, as they should have done. And together with the Theseus and a frigate they even compelled us to batter their called the Leader. This frigate was com~ ships so seriously and sadly, that when we manded by the Honourable Rodney Bluett, took posesssion some were scarcely worth now a post-captain, and who had done the trouble. To make us blow up their poor wonders in the height of last nights corn- Admiral was a distressing thing to begin bat. He had brought up in the most with; but when that was done, to go on brazen-faced mann& r, without any sense with the battle was as bad as the dog in of his metal, close below the starboard thc manger. What good could it do them bow of the great three-decker Orient and to rob a poor British sailor of half his the quarter of the Franklin, and thence prize-money? And such conduct becomes he fired away at both, while all their shot at least twice as ungenerous when they flew over him. And this was afterwards actually have wounded him! said to have been the cleverest thing done My wound was sore, and so was I, on by all of us, except the flue helm and the following day, I can tell you; for not calm handling of H. M. ship Goliath. being now such a very young man, I found The two ships, in chase of which we it a precious hard thing to renew the pow- were despatched, ran ashore and surren- er of blood that was gone from me. And dered, as I was told afterwards (for of after the terrible scene that awoke me course I was down in my berth at the time, from the first trance of carnage, I was with the surgeon looking after me); and thrown by the mercy of Providence into thus out of thirteen French sail of the line, pure insensibility. This I am bound to we took or destroyed eleven. And as we declare; because the public might other- bore up after taking possession, the Leader wise think itself wronged, and perhaps ran up under our counter and hailed us, even vote me down as of no value, for Have you a Justice of the Peace on failing to give them the end of this battle board? Our Captain replied that he so brilliantly as the beginning. I defy was himself a member of the quorum, but my old rival, the Newton tailor (although could not attend to such business now ae a much younger man perhaps than myself, making of wills and so on. Hereupon and with my help a pretty good seaman), to Captain J3luett came forward, and with a take up the tucks of this battle as well as polite wave of his hat called out that Cap- I have done though not well done. tam Foley would lay him under a special Even if a tailor can come up and fight obligation, as well as clear the honour of (which he did, for the honour of Cambria), a gallant naval officer, by coming on board none of his customers can expect any more of the Leader, to receive the deposition of than French-chalk flourishes when a piece a dying man. In ten minutes time our of description is down in his books. How- good skipper stood in the cockpit of the ever, let him cut his cloth. He is still at Leader, while Captain Bluett wrote down sea, or else under it; and if he ever does the confession of a desperately-wounded come home, and sit down to his shop- seaman, who was clearing his conscience board as his wife says he is sure to do of perilous wrong before he should face his very first order shall be for a church- his Creator. The poor fellow sate on a going coat, with a doubled-up sleeve to it. pallet propped up by the bulkhead and a For the Frehchmen took my left arm pillow; that is to say if a man can sit who away in a thoroughly lubberly manner. has no legs left him. A round-shot had If they had done it with a good cross-cut, caught him in the tuck of both thighs, like my old wound of forty years standing, and the surgeon could now do no more I would have set it down to the credit of for him. Indeed he was only enabled to their nation. But when I came to dwell speak, or to gasp out his last syllables, by over the subject (as for weeks my duty gulps of raw brandy which he was taking, was), more and more clear to me it be- with great draughts of water between came, that instead of an honour they had them. On the other side of his dying now incurred a lasting national disgrace. bed stood Cannibals Dick and Joe, howl- The fellows who charged that gun had been ing, and nodding their heads from time to afraid of the recoil of it. Half a charge of time, whenever he lifted his glazing eyes powder makes the vilest fracture to deal to them for confirmation. For it was my with however, there I was by the heels, honest and highly-respected friend, the and now for nobler people. Only while poor Jack Wildman, who now lay in this my wound is green, you must not be too sad condition, upon the very brink of an- hard on me. other world. And I cannot do better The Goliath was ordered to chase down than give his own words, as put into the bay, on the morning after the battle, shape by two clear-witted men, Captains THE MAID OF SKER. 91 Foley and Rodney Bluett. Only for the love was playing, and people were dauc- readers sake I omit a great deal of groan- ing. I had never heard such a thing be- ing. fore; and my father had all he could do to This is the solemn and dying delivery of keep me in the black trees out of sight of me, known as Jack Wildman, A. B. sea- them. And among the thick of the going man of H. M. frigate Leader, now off the about we saw our master Chouane in his coast of Egypt, and dying through a hurt hunting-dress. in battle with the Frenchmen. I cannot This must have been what great tell my name, or age, or where I was born, people call a masked ball, I am sure of or anything about myself; and it does not it; since I saw one, when, in the Bellona, matter, as I have nothing to leave behind there were many women somewhere. But me. Dick and Joe are to have my clothes, at the end of the great light place, looking and my pay if there is any; and the wom- out over the water, there was a quiet an that used to be my wife is to have my shady place for tired people to rest a bit. medals for good behaviour in the three When the whole of the music was crashing battles I have partaken of. My money like a battle, and people going round like would be no good to her, because they great flies in a web, my father led me never use it; but the women are fond of down by the river-side, and sent me up ornaments, some dark narrow steps, and pointed to I was one of a race of naked people, two little babies. The whole of the bus- living in holes of the earth at a place we mess was all about these, and the festival did not know the name of. I now know was to make much of them. The nurse that it was Nympton in Devonshire, which for a moment had set them upright, while is in England, they tell me. No one had she just spoke to a young sailor-man; and any right to come near us, except the crawling, as all of us can, I brought down great man who had given us land, and de- these two babies to my father; and one fended us from all enemies. was heavy, and the other light. His name was Parson Chouane, I be- My father had scarcely got hold of lieve, but I do not known how to spell it. them, and the nurse had not yet missed He never told us of a thing like God; but them, when on the dark shore by the river- I heard of it every day in the navy when- side, perhaps five fathoms under the gaiety, ever my betters were angry. Also I Parson Chouane came up to my father, learned to read wonderful writings; but I and whispered, and gave orders. I know can speak the truth all the same. not what they said, for I had no sense of Ever since I began to be put into tongues then, nor desired it; for we knew clothes, and tau0ht to kill other people, I what we wanted by signs, and sounds, and have longed to tell of an evil thing which saved a world of trouble so. Only I happened once among us. How long ago thought that our master was angry at I cannot tell, for we never count time as having the girl-child brought away. He you do, but it must have been many years wanted only the boy perhaps, who was back, for I had no hair on my body ex- sleepy and knew nothing. But the girl- cept my head. We had a man then who child shook her hand at him, and said, E took lead among us, so far as there was bad man, Bardie knows a. any lead; and I think that he thought I every one of us was amazed himself my father, because he gave me the so very small Oh, sir, I can tell you most victuals. At any rate we had no no more, I think. other man to come near him in any cnn- Indeed then, but you must, my friend, ningess. Our master Chouane came down cried Captain Foley, with spirit enough to sometimes, and took a pride in watching set a dead man talking; finish this story, him, and liked him so much that he you thief of the world, before you cheat laughed at him, which he never did to the the hangman. Two lovely childer stolen rest of us. away from a first-rate family to give a ball This man, my father as I may call of that kind and devil a bit you repent him, took me all over the great brown of it 1 moors one night in some very hot weather. Poor dying Jack looked up at him, and In the morning we came to a great heap then at the place where his legs should of houses, and hid in a copse till the even- have been, and he seemed ashamed for the ing. At dusk we set out again, and came want of them. Then he played with the to a great and rich house by the side of a sheet for a twitch or two, as if proud of river. The lower portholes seemed full of his arms still remainino~ and checked lights, and on the fiat place in front of back the agony tempting him now to bite them a band of music such as now II it with his great white teeth. 92 THE MAID OF SKER. Ask the rest of us, Captain, he said; Joe, you know it; Dick, you know it, now that I am telling you. The boy was bronght up with us, and you call him Harry Savage. I knew the great house when I saw it again. And I longed to tell the good old man there; but for the sake of our people. Chonane would have de- stroyed them all. I was tempted after they had pelted me so, and the old man was so good to me; but something always stopped me, and I wanted poor Harry to go to Heaven Oh, a drink of water! Captain Foley was partly inclined to take a great deal of poor Jacks confession for no more than the raving of a light- headed man; but Rodney Bluett conjured him to take down every word of it. And when this young officer spoke of his former chief and well-known friend, now Com- modore Sir Drake Bampfylde (being knighted for service in India), and how all his life he had lain under a cloud by rea- son of this very matter, not another word did our Captain need from him, but took up his pen again. I ought to have told, said the dying man, slowly; only I could not bring my- self. But now you will know, you will all know now. My father is dead; but Dick and Joe can swear that the boy is the baby. He had beautiful clothes on, they shone in the boat; but the girl-child had on no more than a smock, that they might see her dancing. Our master did not stay with us a minute, but pushed us all into a boat on the tide, cut the rope, and was back with the dancers. My father had learned just enough of a boat to keep her straight in the tideway, and I had to lie down over the babies, to keep their white clothes from notice. We went so fast that I was quite scared, having never been afloat before, so there must have been a strong ebb under us. And the boat, which was white, must have been a very light one, for she heeled with every mo- tion. At last we came to a great broad water, which perhaps was the rivers month, with the sea beyond it. My father got frightened perhaps; and I know that I had been frightened long ago. By a turn of the eddy, we scrambled ashore, and carried the boy-baby with us; but the boat broke away with a lurch as we jumped, for we had not the sense to bring out the rope. In half a minute she was off to sea, and the girl-baby lay fast asleep in her stern. And now after such a long voyage in the dark, we were scared so that we both ran for our lives, and were safe before daybreak at Nympton. My father before we got home stripped off the little boys clothes, and buried them in a black moorhole full of slime, with a great white stone in the midst of it. And the child himself was turned over naked to herd with the other children (for none of our women look after them), and nobody knew or cared to know who he was, or whence he came, except my poor father, and our master and I myself, many years afterwards. But now I know well, and I cannot have quiet to die, without telling somebody. The boy-baby I was compelled to steal was Sir Philip Bampfyldes grand- son, and the baby-girl his grand-daughter. I never heard what became of her. She must have been drowned, or starved, most likely. But as for the boy, he kept up his life; and the man who took us most in hand, of the name of Father David, gave the names to all of us, and the little one, Harry Savage, now serving on board of the Van~uard. I know nothing of the, buried images found by Father David. My father had nothin~, to do with that. It may have been another of Chouanes plans. I know no more of anything. There, let me die, I have told all I know. I can write my nickname, I never had any other Jack Wildman. At the end of this followed the proper things, and the forms the law is made of, with first of all the sign-manual of our noble Captain Foley, who must have been an Irishman, to lead us into the battle of the Nile, while in the commission of the Peace. And after him Captain Bluett signed, and two or three warrant-officers gifted with a writing elbow; and then a pair of bare-bone crosses, meaning Canni- bals Dick and Joe, who could not speak, and much less write, in the depth of their emotions. CHAPTER LXII. A RASH YOUNG CAPTAIN. Now if I had been sewn up well in a hammock, and cast overboard (as the sur- geon advised), who, I should like to know, would have been left capable of going to the bottom of these strange proceedings? Hezekiah was alive, of course, and prepared to swear to anything, especially after a round shot must have killed him, but for his greasiness. And clever enough no doubt he was, and suspicious, and busy- minded, and expecting to have all Wales under his thumb, because he was some- where about on the skirts of the great battle I led them into. But granting him skill, and that narrow knowledge of the THE MAID OF SKER. 93 world which I call cunning; granting grace, even under such doctrine as mine him also a restless desire to get to the bot- was. Captain Bluett spoke much of this, torn of everything, and a sniffing sense although his religious convictions were not like a turnspit-dogs, of the shank-end bone by any means so intense as mine, while my he is roasting, none the more for all that sinews were under treatment; but even could we grant him the downright power, with only one arm and a quarter, I seemed now loudly called for, to put two and two to be better fitted to handle events than together. this young Captain was. His ability was Happily for all parties, poor Hezekiah of no common order, as he had proved by was not required to make any further fool running his frigate under the very chains of himself. The stump of my arm was in of the thundering big Frenchman, so that a fine condition, when ordered home with they could not be down on him. And yet the prizes; and as soon as I felt the Bay of he could not see half the bearings of Jack Biscay, over I knocked the doctor. He Wildinans evidence. We had a long talk, fitted me with a hook after this, in consist- with some hot rum-and-water, for the ence with an old fisherman; and now I evenings already were chilly; and my have such a whole boxful of tools to screw natural candour carried me almost into too on, that they beat any hand I ever had in much of it. And the Honourable Rodney the world if my neighbours would only gazed with a flush of colour at me, when I not horrow them. gave him my opinions, like a raking broad- Tush I am railing at myself again! side. Always running down, and holding up my- You may be right, he said; you were self to ridicule, out of pure contrariety, always so wonderful at a long shot, LIe- just because every one else overvalues wellyn. But really it does seem impossi- me. There are better men in the world ble. than myself; there are wiser; there are Captain, I answered; how many braver; I will not be argued down about things seem so, yet come to pass continu- it there are some (I am sure) as honest, ally! in their way; and a few almost as truthful. I cannot gainsay you, Llewellyn, after However, I never did yet come across any all my experience of the world. I would other man half so modest. This I am forced give my life to find it true. But how are to allude to now, in departure from my we to establish it? usual practice, because this quality and Leave me alone for that, Captain Blu- nothing else had prevented me from dwell- ett; if it can be done it shall be done. ing upon, and far more from following up, The idea is entirely my own, remember. some shrewd thoughts which had occurred It had never occurred to you, had it? to me, loosely, I own; and in a random Certainly not, he replied, with his manner, still they had occurred to me usual downright honesty; my reason for once or twice, and had been dismissed. coming to you with that poor fellows dy- Why so? Simply because I trusted other ing testimony was chiefly to cheer you up men s judgment, and public impression, in- with the proofs of our old Captains inno- stead of my own superior instinct, and cence, and to show you the turn of lubk for knowledge of weather and tideways. young Harry, who has long been so shame- How bitterly it repented me now of this fully treated. And now I have another ill-founded diffidence, when, as we lay in thing to tell you about him; that is if you the Chops of the Channel about the end of have not heard it. October, with a nasty head-wind baffling No, I have heard nothing at all. I did us, Captain Rodney Bluett came on board not even know what had becomne of him, of us from the Leader! He asked if the until you read Jacks confession. With doctor could report the Master as strong Nelson, on board the Vanguard! enough to support an interview; where- That was my doing, said the Hon- upon our worthy bone-joiner laughed, and ourable Rodney: I recommended him to showed him in to me where I sate at the volunteer, and he was accepted immnedi- latter end of a fine aitch-bone of beef. ately, with the character I gave him. And then Captain Rodney produced his But it is his own doing, and proud I am papers, and told me the whole of his story. of it that he is now junior lieutenant ot I was deeply nmoved by Jack Wildmnans Lord Nelsons own ship the Vanguard. death, though edified much by the manner Just before Nelson received his wound, of it, and some of his last observations. and while powder was being handed up, For a naked heathen to turn so soon into a there came a shell hissing among them, trousered Christian, and still more a good and hung with a sputtering fuse in the fore-top-man, was an evidence of unusual coil of a cable, and the men fell down to 94 THE MAID OF SKER. escape it. But young Harry with wonder- and (what matters far more) in true family ful quickness leaped (as he did, to save love, that fine and pure old gentleman, the me in San Domingo,) and sent the fuse much-troubled Sir Philip Bampfylde, over the side with a dash. Then Nelson this, I say, was the very first duty of a came up, for the firing was hot, and of fellow nursed by a general and a baronet course he must be in the thick of it, and through the small-pox; while it was also he saw in a moment what Harry had a feat well worthy of a master of a line- done, and he took down his name for pro- of-battle ship, which was not last in the motion, being just what himself would have battle of the Nile. And scarcely second loved to do. It will have to be confirmed, even to this was the duty and joy of re- of course; but of that there can be no storing to their proper rank in life two question, after all that we have done; and horrihly injured and innocent creatures when it turns out who he is. one of whom was our own Bardie. There- I am heartily glad of it, Captain, I fore, upon the whole, it seemed best to go cried; The boy was worthy of any rank. to work very warily. Worth goes a little way; birth a long So it came to pass that I followed my way. But all these things have to be usual practice of wholly forgetting my- lawfully proven. self; and receiving from the Honourable Oh, you old village-lawyer; as we used Rodney Bluett that most important docu- to call you, at Old Newton. And you de- ment, I sewed it up, in the watered-silk served it, you rogue, you did. You may bag with my caul and other muniments, have lost your left hand; but your right, and set out for Narnton Court, where I has not lost its cunning. He spoke in found hoth Polly, and the cook, and the the purest play and jest; and with mutual other comforts. But nothing would do for esteem we parted. Only I stipulated for our Captain Rodney all young men are a good talk with him about our measures, so inconsiderate except to be off at a when I should have determined them; or racing speed for Candleston Court, and at the latest on reaching port. his sweetheart Delushy, and the excellent The boldest counsel is often the best, Colonels old port wine. And as he was and naturally recommends itself to a man so brisk, I will take him first, with your of warlike character. My first opinion,~ good leave, if ever words of mine can keep especially during the indignant period, up with him. But of course you will was that nothin,, could be wiser, or more understand that I tell what came to my spirited, or more striking than to march knowledge afterwards. straight up to Parson Chowne and con- With all the speed of men and horses, front him with all this evidence, taken young Rodney Bluett made off for home, down by a magistrate, and dare him to and when he got there his luck was such deny it; and then hale him off to prison, as to find Delushy in the house. It hap- and (if the law permitted) hang him. pened to be her visiting-time, according to That this was too good for him, every one the old arrangement, and this crafty sailor who has read my words must acknowledge; found it out from the fine old woman at the best thing moreover, that could befall the lodge. So what did he do but dis- him; for his body was good, though his charge his carriage, and leave all his kit soul was bad; and he might have some with her, and go on, with the spright foot hopes to redeem the latter at the expense of a mariner, to the ancient house which of the former. And if he had not, through he knew so well. Then this tall and bold life, looked forward to hanging as his young Captain entered by the butlers latter end and salvation, it is quite impos- door the trick of which was well known to sible to account for the licence he allowed, him, and in a room out of the lobby he himself. stood, without his own mother knowing it. However, on second thoughts I per- It was the fall of autumnal night, when ceived that the really weighty concern be- everything is so rich and mellow, when the fore us, and what we were bound to think waning daylight ebbs, like a great spring- first of, was to restore such a fine old tide exhausted, into the quickening flow family to its health and happiness. To of star-light. And the plates were being reinstate, before he died, that noble and cleared away after a snug dinner-party. most kind-hearted man, full of religious The good Colonel sat at the head of feeling also, and of confidence that the, his table, after the ladies withdrawal, Lord having made a good man, would look with that modest and graceful kindliness, after him which is the very spirit of which is the sure mark of true blood. King David, when his self-respect returns Around him were a few choice old friends, in a word, to replace in the worlds esteem, such as only good men have; friends, who THE MAID OF SKER. 95 would scout the evidence of their own eyes against him. According to our fine old fashion, these were drinking healths all round, not with undue love of rare port, so much as with truth and sincerity. Rodney made a sign to Crumpy (who had been shaking him by both hands, un- til the tears prevented him), just to please to keep all quiet touching his arrival; and to let him have a slice or two of the haunch of venison put to grill, if there was any left of it, and give it him all on a plate: together with a twelve-pound loaf of farmhouse bread, such as is not to be had outside of Great Britain. This was done in about five minutes (for even Mrs. Cook respected Crumpy); and be- ing served up, with a quart of ale, iu Crumpys own head privacy, it had such a good effect that the Captain was ready to face anybody. Old Crumpy was a most crafty old fel- low which was one reason why I liked him, as a contrast to. my frankness and he managed it all, and kept such a look- out, that no one suspected him of any more than an honoured old chum in his stronghold. Captain Bluett also knew ex- actly what his bearings were, and from a loftier point of view than would ever oc- cur to Crumpy. A man who had carried a 50-gun ship right under the lower port- holes of a 120-gun enemy, and without any orders to that effect, and only from want of some easier business, he (I think) may be trusted to get on in almost every- thing. This was the very thing I do believe occurring to the mind of somebody sit- ting, as nearly as might be now, upon a very beautiful sofa. The loveliest work that you can imagine lay between her fingers; and she was doing her very best to carry it on consistently. But on her lap lay a London paper, full of the hi~hest authority; and there any young eyes might discover a regular pit-pat of tears. My dear, my dear, said Lady Bluett, being not so very much better herself, al- though improved by spectacles; it is a dreadful, dreadful thing to think of those poor Frenchmen killed, so many at a time, and all in their sins. I do hope they had time to think ever so little, of their latter end. It makes me feel quite ill to think of such a dreadful carnage, and to know that my own son was fore- most in it. Do you think, my dear, that your delicate throat would be any worse in the morning, if you were to read it once more to me? The people in the papers are so clever; and there was something I did not quite catch about poor Rodneys recklessness. How like his dear father, to be sure! I see him in every word of it. Auntie, the first time I read it was best. The second and third time, I cried worse and worse; and the fourth time, yo~m know what you said of me. And I know that 1 deserved it, Auntie, for having such foolish weak eyes like that. You know what I told you about Captain Rod- ney, and begged you to let me come here no more. And you know what you said that it was a childs fancy; and if it were not, it should take its course. The Colonel was wiser. Oh, Auntie, Auntie! why dont you always harken him? For a very good reason, my dear child he always proves wrong ~n the end; and I dont. I have the very hi~,hest and purest respect for my dear brothers judgment. Every one knows what his mind is, and every one values his judgment. And no stranger, of course, can enter into him, his views, and his largeness and intellect; as I do, when I agree with him. There, you have made me quite warm, my dear; I am so compelled to vindicate him.~~ I am so sorry I did not mean you know what I am, Auntie. My dear, I know what you are, and therefore it is that I love you so. Now go and wash your pretty eyes, and read that again to me, and to the Colonel. Many mothers would be proud perhaps. I feel no pride whatever, because my son could not help doing it. There was something else this excellent ladys son could not help doing. He caught the beautiful maid of Sker in her pure white dress in a nook of the passage, and with tears of pride for him rolling from her dark grey eyes, and he could not help but all lovers, I trow, know how much to expect of him. Thank you, Rodney, Delushy cried; to a certain extent, I am grateful. But, if you please, no more of it. And you need not suppose that I was crying about, about, about anything. Of course not, you darling. How long have I lived, not to know that girls cry about nothing? nine times out of ten at least. Pearly tears, now prove your sub- stance. Rodney, will you let me alone? I am not a French decker of 500 guns, for you to do just what you like with. And I dont believe any one knows you are here. Yes, yes, yes! Ever so many darlings, if you like and with my whole heart 1 do love you, as darling Moxy says. But one thing, this moment, I insist upon 96 THE MAID OF SKER. no, not in your ear,~nor yet through your thing to the son of my own sister. But, hair, you conceited curly creature; hut at sir, it is not like a gentleman. the distance of a yard I pronounce that The old friends nodded to one another, you shall come to your mother. in approval of this sentiment; and turned Oh, what a shame! And with that to withdraw from a family scene. unfilial view of the suhject, he rendered Wait, if you please, cried Rodney himself after all those mortal perils imao Bluett. Colonel Lougher, I should de- the arms of his mother. With her usual serve your reproach, if I had done any- quickness Delushy fled, hut came hack to thing of the kind. My intention is not to the drawing-room very sedately, and with defy you, sir; but to please you and grat- a rose-coloured change of dress, in about ify you, my dear uncle, as your lifelong half an hour afterwards. kindness to me and to this young lady de- How do you do, Captain Rodney serves. And I have chosen to do it be- Bluet~? fore old friends, that your pleasure may Madam, I hope that I see you well. he increased by their congratulations. Lady Bluett was amazed at the cool- Instead of being ashamed, sir, of the on- ness of them, and in her heart disap- gin of your future niece or you my dear pointed; although she was trying to argue mother of your daughter, you may well it down, and to say to herself How wise be proud of it. She belongs to one of the of them! She knew how the Colonel oldest families in the west of England. loved this young maid, yet never could She is the grandchild of Sir Philip Ramp- bear to think of his nephew taking to fylde of Narntoa Court, near Barnataple. wife a mnere waif of the sea. The lady And I thiak I have heard my mother speak had faith in herself that she might in the of him as an old friend of my father. end overcome this prejudice. But of To be sure, to be sure! exclaimed course if the young ones had ceased to Lady Bluett, ere the Colonel could recover care for it, she could only say that young himself: The Bluetts are an old west- people were not of the stuff that young country family; but the Bampfyldes even people used to be. older. Come to me, my pretty darling. While she revolved these things in her There, dont cry so; or if you must, come tender, warm, and motherly bosom, the in here, and I will help you. Rodney, my gentlemen came from the dining-room, to dear, you have delighted us, and you have pay their compliments to the ladies, done it most cleverly. But excuse my and to have their tea and all that, ac- saying that an officer in the army would cording to the recent style of it. They have known a little better what ladies are, bowed very decently, as they came in, not than to have thrown them into this cx- being topers by any means: and the lady of citement, even in the presence of valued the house arose and curtsied to them most friends. Come here, my precious. The gracefully. Then Rodney, who had found gentlemen will excuse us for a little occasion ere this to salute Colonel Lougher while. and his visitors, led forward the maid, Let me kise Colonel Lougher first, and presented her to them, with a very whispered Delushy; all frightened, crying, excellent naval bow. and quivering as she was, she could not My dear uncle, and friends of the fain- forget her gratitude. So she bowed her ily, he began, while she trembled a lit- white forehead, and drooped her dark tle, and looked at hima with astonishment; lashes under the old mans benevolent allow me the favour of presenting to gaze. you a lady who will do me the honour of Sit down, my dear friends, said Cob- becoming my wife, very shortly I hope. nel Lougher, as soon as the ladies had The Colonel drew hack with a frown left the room. My good nephews tactics on his face. Lady Bluettt on the other have been rather rough, and of the Abon- hand ran up. kir order. However, h~ may be quite What is the meaning of this? she right if this matter requires at once to be cried. And not a word of it to your spread abroad. At any rate, my dear own mother! Oh, Andalusia, how shock- boy, I owe you an apology. Rodney, I ing of you! beg your pardon for the very harsh words I think, sir, said the Colonel, looking I used to you. straight at the youth that you might With these words he stood up, and have chosen a better moment to defy your bowed to his nephew; who did the same uncle, than in the presence of his oldest to him in silence, and then they shook friends. It is not like a gentleman, sir. hands warmly. After which the young It cuts me to the heart to say such a Captain told his story, to which they alt TIlE MAID OF SKER. 97 li~lened in eile~ce five being justices of I There is another thing to be done at the shire, and one the lord lieutenant once, cried Rodney Bluett, warmly to all accustomed to examine evidence. pull Chownes nose. And despite lils It seems very likely, said Colonel cloth, I will do it roundly. Lougher, as they waited for his opinion. My young friend, said the Lord Lieu- That David Llewellyn is a most shrewd tenant; prove it first. And then, I fellow. But he ought to have said more think, there are some people who would about the boat. There is one thing, how-~ pardon you. ever, to be done at once to collect con- firmative evidcnce IT is creditable to the Prussians that in Pins. sia itself is published the severest criticism of the Prussian army, which abroad, and especially in England, finds too many indiscriminate ad- mirers. In reference to the new version of the military penal code now in preparation, a Prussi n Captain has published a book called Education and Discipline in the Prussian Army, of which some account is given in a 1. te number of the JVktional Zeitung. One of the chief aspirations of the author is that the good understanding which has existed in Prussia between the army and the Civil population since 1866 (but which notori- ously ha(l no existence before that date) may be perpetuated; and this condition of things is only, he thinks, to be secured by developing the patriotism of the citizens and raising the moral tone of the soldiers. ile protests against the popular saying that the Prussian schoolmaster beat the Austrian schoolmaster at Sadowa, which he considers not a true observation, but merely an effective phrase in the French style. The Prussian soldier has no time, he says, for study during the short period that he remains with the colours; and in spite of compulsory education, he often joins his regiment with only the slightest smattering of rudimentary knowl- edge. Examining his soldiers year by year as they joined his company, this officer found that out of forty, about five or six could read and Write well, and were in a position to continue their education. From sixteen to nineteen could read and write moderately well; while ten or twelve were only beginners, and one or more generally Poles who can scarcely be expected to profit much by German schools had learnt nothing whatever. Out of fifty recruits only one could say a single word about the war of liberation in 1818; and at most five were ac- qusiLted with the principal points in the nation- al history of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies. It is surmised that these five had not pursued their studies so far as to reach the his- tory in detail of the 1813 campaign. The pub- lished statistics on the subjeet of education in the Prussian army are, it seems, very mislead- ing, inasmuch as every soldier who possesses the least knowledge of reading and writing figures on the list of those able to read and write. Pall Mall. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1205 LE11~ER FROM JERRMY TAYLOR. [The following characteristic letter from Jeremy Taylor, never before publisbed, was kindly sent to me by a friend, for use in the Pxoraas MAGAZIHE. En. P. M.] MADAM I received the letter you were pleased to mention in your last & sent an an- swer to yr second question which you prudently did ask upon the reverse of the other. The summe of it was this: that if you find your doubt quiet and resolved; the scruple that arises at any time must be laid aside by the direct em- pire of the will without any further discourse of reason: For a scruple is an unreasonable fear and it commonly proceeds from a good but from a fearful heart: It is a tendernesse of conscience, but such an one as is more like a sore than the delicacy of a good constitution. It is not always. a temptation to sin; sometimes it is; but it is~ alwayes a needlesse trouble, & apt to tire a re ligious person & to make the service of God be-. come a load. Madam if you dare trust your reason, you may proceed to action; if you dare not, what will you be guided by? And you must never inquire, if when you are answered you cannot be at rest: but that is the infelicity of a scrupulous conscience; it will take any an-- swer but trust none: there is a stone in the foot; if you hold your foot you cannot go for- ward; if you set it down, you cannot abide it. lint Madam all the Divines in the world agree in this, that though a man may not doe any thing against a doubting conscience; yet against a scrupulous he may. Madam Vour most humble and affectionate Servant (Signed) JEU: TAYLc~R. Aug. 20.57. THE Italian papers announce aE open compe- tition ~r a statue in white marble representing Joseph Mazzini in proportions somewhat larger than life. This statue is intended to replace the bust which was deposited at the Capitol on the 17th March, 1872. The competition will close on the 18th June this year. Designs are to be sent to 81, Via della Croce, Roma. 98 A BILLET AT CARRIGAHINCH. From Dark Blue, table, helped himself te a fresh cigar from A BILLETS AT CAIIUIGAHINCH. my case, and took a light from the hand of Wx had been expecting a move for some his next neighbour. time, and at last the order caine. We Did I ever tell you anythin~~ about were to start at dawn next day for Dublin, Carrigahinch? he inquired, during the en route for Scotland. It was unanimously preliminary puffs. resolved that we should make a night of Never, said I; we have only ~ prom~. it not go to bed at all in fact, so that we ise that you would do so. might the more fully enjoy the company Leisurely he took the cigar now from his of Captain Jack. We determined to de- mouth, turned it to see if it was well tam him till the very last moment. aglow, replaced it between his lips giv- Notwithstanding the perpetual drain ing it a few rapid twirls with his finget upon his resources since our arrival, he and thumb as he did so took one long was brimful as ever of anecdote and fun; whiff, and then began. but there was on this occasion a mutual We were quartered there, I remember, feeling of regret at parting, which each of for three or four months after we left the us endeavored vainly to conceal, and which xvest. It was a little town in the north saddened us somewhat. the black north, as Tim called it. He I proposed a round of toasts in due wasnt comfortable there, neither was I form, and at last, when I considered him to tell you nothing but the plain honest equal to a sustained effort, I toasted him. truth. We had to put up with an old Gentlemen, said I, a full bumper! building called the fever hospital, which Fill! I give you the guest of this and of was attached to the workhouse there many pleasant evenings: The health of were no better quarters to be had. Captain Jack, of ours. May we meet The place was a hot-bed of Orangeism, again, and that soon. When the time ar- and we were sent there just before the rives for each of us to retire from the ser- July Anniversaries, as they are called. vice, may our actions shed an equal lustre There are two of these in that month upon the regiment, and our successors on the first and on the twelfth. The au~ keep our memories as green as we shall thorities anticipated riots, and sent uS keep his. there as a precautionary measure. There was a pause after due honours had The population consisted of about a been paid. The captain rose to his feet third who shouted To hell with I{in uneasily. Wililiam! and two-thirds who shouted Confound it ! dont you know, he To hell with the Pope! said; pon my life and credit I feel quite It was quite an uncommon thing to see unequal to the occasion I do indeed. I a soldier in Carrigahinch. There was a dont deserve it. I am sure I shall miss tradition that a troop of horse once gal- you all most confoundedly a deuced deal loped through the main street in at one more, I dare say, than you will readily be- end and out at the other in the trou- lieve. I cant make a speech, you know, bled times; but the oldest inhabitant had and whats more, I dont mean to try. not seen an entire company actually quar- You young fellows are so much better up tered there. Now a great and striking to that sort of thing than we old stagers. change had come over this little communi- I pledge you my word, old as I am, I never ty. They had begun to hate one another made a speech in my life, and Im not go- for the love of God. It was found neces- ing to make an ass of myself at the end sary some time before our arrival to ap- of my days. You must excuse me. point a permanent resident magistrate for We did excuse him, but we did so on the the district, and he was kept busy every implied understanding that he was to give court day in trying to settle cases arising us some more of his military experience in out of party riots. From having been a Ireland before the night was out. sane, sober, steady-going people, they be- Meanwhile, said I, heres to the came suddenly rabid, and wild, and the memory of the faithful, the matchless worst features of party intolerance and Tim! party strife began to manifest themselves. - AhI sighed the captain, thoughlfully All this arose from a very simple and and solemnly filling his glass, heres to apparently harmless transaction. The him with a heart and a half! I neer newly-appointed parish priest had a mis- shall look upon his like again! sion, and invited two Dominican fathers Sadly, but withal steadily, he raised the to preach at Carrigahinch. On these oc- wine to his lips, gazed for an instant into casions the proceedings are rather sens& . the empty glass as he replaced it on the tionaL There is confession, absolution, A BILLET AT CAREI~AIIINCH. 99 exhortation, solemn vows of amendment and repentance are made, and a powerful and earnest preacher as one of these fathers undoubtedly was has for the time an enormous power over an excitable Irish congregation. The immediate result of these gatherings is always beneficial; you find less drunkenness, less debauchery of every kind. But the change is in its na- ture, spasmodic, and its effect is in the main transitory. Human nature is only human nature, to the end of the chapter. Precise- ly the same sort of thing, under a different name, had been going on among the Prot- estants sensational prayer meetings or revivals, introduced by the Rev. Mr. Mc- Gosh. The whole population was drunk from excessive spiritual dram-drinking. The few sober and discreet among them kept wisely in the background, while the froth and scum boiled over. Matters were brought to a crisis by the erection of a large wooden cross in the chapel yard, commemorating the visit of the Dominican fathers. The religious con- victions of a party of Orangemen return- ing from church were so outraged by the spectacle of an old woman kneeling at the foot of this cross, offering up her prayers, and perhaps renewing her vows, that, in their zeal, they pelted her with clods and stones. Next day they were somewhat as- tonished to find themselves severely pun- ished by the new magistrate, who was im- mediately branded as a Papist in disguise. He was no more that than I am; but a blunt, honest, fearless, sensible, even-hand- ed gentleman (as I soon found out), hon- estly accepting the broad truths of religion which admit the possibility that there are priests and parsons who will enter heaven, as surely as that there are priests and par- sons who will not. Thats what plays the deuce with a fine country, sir, said the Captain, rather confusedly. But we all understood him. You mean religious discord? I inter- rupted. I mean religious balderdash! he re- plied, striking the table with his fist a habit of his when he wished to add em- phasis to his remarks; I mean confound- ed religious bosh between man and man. Thats the real Irish difficulty, I re- marked. Of coui~se it is, said he; its at the bottom of all our misfortunes. I vote we dont enter into it, said I. It is as abstruse a question, to all appear- ance, now, as it was a hundred years ago. Well shirk it. We can~t settle it in one night. In one night! he retorted. Look here! By the living Jingo, Id settle it in less than five minutes, and prove it in one generation of If it was left to you. Just so if it was left to me; denom- inational education, and all the rest of it into the bargain. Id just add a common clause to all the Christian creeds professed in Ireland, declaring that any man might be saved who followed, honestly, any on~ of them just as well as another. Id insist on every child being taught that, at all events; and every father, priest, or parson who objected to it should have three months hard labour! We let the argument go by default, and assented without opposition or prejudice, for obvious reasons. It was a subject, evi- dently, upon which his mind was made up; and when an Irishmans mind is made up, it is just as well not to disturb itif you wish to consult your own ease. I speak as a native, to the manor born. Well, gentlemen, he continued, the magistrate had a temporary triumph. The Orangemen were punished, but they had their revenge; for, the following night the cross was cut up into square hits, which were piled in a heap and left there, by some person or persons unknown, as the phrase is, and who were never discov- ered from that time to this. It must have required some skill, said I, to keep a fellow like Tim out of scrapes in such a place as Carrigahinch. Scrapes! Confound it; thats a mild word, responded the Captain. If he had been a soldier, the consequences might often have been serious; but, fortunately, he was only a retainer in quite a civil ca- pacity my servant, in fact. When he got into difficulties, he was always brought before the town authorities, instead of a Court Martial. It was generally a case of fine; and as I had to pay, he did not mind enjoying himself. The very next night after our arrival he was locked up. A policeman came with the news to me while I was at breakfast, and I started off immediately to hear the case, which had been on some time when I got in. It was the result of a public-house row. An assault was clearly proved, in which Tim got the best of it, for he always contrived to keep himself sober. Now said the magistrate, addressing him, you may consider it most fortunate that your position is not more serious. You have had a narrow escape. This is your first offence, as far as I am aware, and 100 A BILLI~T AT CARRIGAIIINCH. Yes, your worship, by raisin its my retreat towards the door, barrin th~ first visit, said Tim, apologetically, I on- cost, your worship, I THINK so STII~L. ly kern yesterday. And he vanished as the last word was ut- Do you know anybody in the town? tered. Divil a wun I was regularly introduced Tini, said I, as we walked back to- to yet hut your honour. gether, I dont mind ten shillings now and Is there no one who will speak to your a~ain; but I must warn you, once for all, character, or go hail for you? that if you dont keep yourself quiet in Tim hesitated: it was a critical mo- Carrigahinch, it will he absolutely out of meat. I advanced from the rear of the my power to retain you in my service. It court to the bench. I was in uniform, and is as much as my commission is worth to the crowd made~ way for me, out of can- run the risks I am running every day~ osity as much as anything else. Confound you! We are in a most ticklish Arrahi Captain, darlin, shouted position here, and will have to be on our Tim, More power! Sure, didnt I make guard. lip the mare before I stirred out? Ticklish, is it Captain; worse than I spoke a few words in his behalg which that by long chalks! It hates the divil had the desired effect. saving your presence and tisnt for want Youll be more cautious for the future, of religion naither. I hope, said the magistrate; let this be a Whats that got to do with it? I warning to you. I am determined to al- inquired. low no party expressions here mind Sure theres the chapel and a church, that. You muse hide your proclivities and a power of praitching-houses besides. or , The place is alive wid em, so it is. I count- My what, your worship? Thats a ed nine of em Im cartain sure.~ very scare word. The more the merrier, I suppose, said If you wish to express your sentiments I, not paying much attention at the moment. about King William, you had better not Bedad, may be so! But, sure, Cap- do it in such a way as to render yourself tam, I never heard tell of more than two liable to be brought before me ag~ in. I religions in Ballybog, where I was reared. fine you five shillings. Call the next case. Father WTelsh and the minister had it all The next case was called; but, before between themselves. Tim could get out he was surr?unded by There are a great many more than the idlers in court, who got him into a red- that, said I; how do you make it out? hpt rage by bantering him. ~ Make it out, is it? Aisy enough. Youll let King Billy alone for awhile, Catholics and Protestants thats all they P11 take my davy, said one. had in Kerry. Tim retorted, in an unmistakeable Every one who doesnt go to Mass, Kerry brogue, and at the top of his voice Tim, is a Protestant, I exclaimed. Why would I? To hell with him, the Faix, may be so, he exclaimed, but owld reprobate! Get out of my road, or theres only wan right church at all events P11 the other is like the owld woman that Bring that man up again, shouted the had so many childer she didnt know what magistrate, rising to his feet. I fine you to do and all of em fighting like a pack now, sir, an additional five shillings. of red divils, There was a shout of laughter. Im not going to argue the point with Long life to your honour~ responded you, said I, and Id advise you not to ar- Tim. gue it with anybody else while youre here~ Silence! Sai4 the magistrate1 oi~ Ill Take my advice and keep yourself quiet. have the court cleared. I cant allow such Sergeant Skinner is quite at home in Carri- unseemly exhibitions. Look you here, sir, gahinch; and I see that, in spite of my I have a great mind to fine you separately wishes, he has taken to preaching again. for each of the five assaults. What would Sure enough, said Tim, I saw him you say to that? out last night, arm in arm with owld Mc- Well, that would be too expinsive Gosh him that used to be ranting in intirely, your worship, replied Tim, going Cokehampton, long ago. down this time very meekly; but theres I remember. It strikes me very for- no charge for sintiments, I suppose, your cibly Tim that youll get youi~ neck broke worship? before a week is out. That depends on how you express Bruck, is it! bad luck to the stick in them. the parish thats able to brake it. Dont Well, thin, said he, making good his be in dread, divil a dint theyll put in it. A BILLET AT CARRIGAIIINCII. 101 I hoped not, quite as fervently on my The raai fighting mm wont be in, Im own account as on his; but I had misgiv- towid, till after dark; but theres a power ings a s I parted with him. I left him read- of spectators there already. I overheard a ing a huge placard on the pier, which an- party saying that Mr. Mc~osh wanted to nounced in large capitals the fact that the swear some i nformations that he was in Rev. Mephibosheth MeGosh would next dread of his life. The magistrate said it day deliver an open air discourse on the was all humbug, and MeGosh is coming to errors of Popery, takin0 for his subject see you. Prayers for the dead. The devil he is! said I. I went in to my quarters. The local Its best to be on the look out, any newspaper, just out, fresh and damp, lay way, sir. Maybe its not alone hell be; on my table; it had been sent without so- he might have a gathering after him. licitation on my part, I therefore naturally Hell not have time to come to-mor- concluded that it contained something un- row, said Denis; his hands will he full. pleasant, and intended expressly for my Shure he has time to-night, sir, re- eye. I was right. The leading article plied Tim. consisted of a bitter attack upon the Gov- My mind is made up, said I. Look eminent for sending us to Carrigahinch at here, Ill just confine all the men to the all. It went on to say that nearly all the barracks. men were Papists, and that of the three To the workhouse,you main,sir. officers in command, one was hopelessly Well, to the workhouse. Ill not let ill (this was poor Denis), another was a a man out to-morrow for love or money, Papist, and a third, this was me, nothing unless we are sent for by the authorities. in particular only luke-warm, or some- Tell Sergeant Skinner or, stay; Ill thing like that. It wound up by calling on write it, and you may deliver it at once, all the good and true men of Carrigahinch Tim. to assert their rights to assemble in their I wrote, ordering the ergeant to send might, and a lot more to the like effect; out at once a strong picket of the guard, and it called upon me to see that McGosh and to bring in forthwith all stragglers; was protected from mob violence in the afterwards to close time gates, and keep the exercise of an undoubted right. Evidently soldiers in till further directions from me, Sergeant Skinner was at the bottom of the I folded this order, and gave it to Tim for whole business; he owed me a grudge for delivery. endeavouring to stop his preaching in the And see here; tell him to place an regiment. I wished him and McGosh at extra sentry on duty at the -back entrance the deuce, and made up my mm or the lending out of the long blank wall at the worst. I had serious thoughts of keeping rear. Theres no thoronghfare there, but Tim a prisoner altogether, till the storm it is just as well to be on the safe side. had blown over, if I could see my way to Theres an old watchmans box in the it, but I couldnt. yard of the workhouse; have it brought We held a council of war after dinner, to the back gate, and post a man in it. over our punch. There was no time to he Can I trust you? lost, that was clear; and that was about Trust me is it! Shure it is not me all the conclusion we could come to after that youre trusting at all, but the ser- our deliberations, cant, said Tim. You might trust me Suppose we send for Tim suggested~ if the divil was at the hall door, captain. Wilkins, and give him a caution. i Well, just deliver the letter, and Ill I gave him that this morning, I re- leave the rest to you. See that no one is plied. admitted to-night. Give him a tumbler of punch then, Faix, we cant keep out MeGosh. He said Denis. You may as well have him has a free pass from the Boord of Guar- up at all events and hear what he says. dians to visit the sick paupers any timne at You may be sure he has been out. all, bad luck to him! The news he brou,,ht us was not reas- Dont let anyone in with him, at all suring. The town was filling rapidly. Peo- events. See thmat he comes by himself. ple were pouring in from all sides I All right, sir. Good night, gentle- threw up the window. The distant hum men. was clearly audible from where we sat We kept it up rather late, not caring a noise as of many voices and of many~t o retire till the noise outside hind somne feet. what abated. I hadnt been in bed half Bedad, sir, theres every prospect of an hour when I heard Tims voice. He a good days divarshun, and no mistake. was evidently in altercation with some 1& 2 A BILLET AT GARRIGAIIINCII. one, but as he was also indulging in occa- effort to pass but Tim had him by the sional snatches of song, I concluded that tails of his coat. The threads of the gar~- nothing serious had occurred. I did not ment began to give way, and the owner discover the whole truth till he told me yielded to the pressure from behind. Per- himself all about it afterwards. haps, on second thoughts, MeGosh con- It appeared that McGosh did turn up eluded that, all things considered, it would about miduight. Tim slept in the loft over be as well if he didnt provoke collision the stable at the end of the long passa~e, with the huge fellow before him. Discre- ~nd quite clo~e to my quarters. He was tion is acknowledged, at all times, to he sitting at the window, in the dark, s. ok- the better part of valour; moreover, was ing his last pipe previous to turning in, it not more consistent with his duty as a when he cau ht sight of the reverend gen- Christian minister to avoid strife as much tleman, just as he was rounding the work-as possih le. On the impulse of the mo- house square under his window. Tim ment he turned to go; hut changed his whistled; there was an answerin~ whistle mind as suddenly a~aiu. from the gate at the end of the passage, Perhaps you wouldnt object to take which he seemed to understand. He put up my name to the captain? I shall not hi~ hand on the window-sill, and easily detain him long. Say that I wish to see vaulted to the ground. The night was him on important business. My name is ratker dark, but clear: there was no mis- MeGosh the Rev. Mephibosheth Me- take about his man hed have sworn to Gosh. Im not in a hurry; Ill wait. MeGosh among a thousand on a darker Faith, then, if you do, itll be agin my pight than this. will, anyhow! Do you think Id disturb Halt! shouted Tim, or, be jabers, the gintleman at this time of ni~,ht? Ill be afther putting a bullet through I suppose I need not ask your leave, you! XVho goes there? said MeGosh, just point out the way and A friend, responded McGosh, obey- Ill go myself. ing the command. Naither wan nor the other, replied Stand and give the countersign! said Tim, growing truculent; give me none Tim. of your chat. Right about, face! quick I dont know-it, replied MeGosh. march! Make yourself scarce, and be And how dare you show your ugly smart about it! nose here, without it? Thats sudden MeGosh hesitated. There was no time death, at wanst, so it is.~ for ceremony. Tim seized him by the cot- Im a cler~,yman, explained MeGosh, lar, turned him about, and pushed him r have a free pass; I visit the paupers vigorously and by main force towards the- when I like. Do you know Captain How- gate leadin0 from the lane. Resistance~ l~ey? was in vain, so McGosh gave in. I do, said Tim. Good-night. Thank you, he said, I I want to see him. can find my way. This is the way I came; Shure, hes no pauper, said Tim. you neednt mind coming any further? No matter; my business is urgent. He didnt quite like the escort. Do you know which is his room? Ill wait till I see your reverence a bit- Well, I do. of the road, at all events, was the re- Id be obliged if youd point it out. sponse. You owld psalm-singing hum- Thats a horse of another colour, bug! very little would make me said Tim, purposely blocking the way, I must beg you to maybe he mightnt though. And he- be- Ilowld! said Tim, shaking him to gan tuning: within an inch of his life. Not another Says she, word out of you between this and the- You fool! gate, or Ill put my fist down your ugly Youre fresh from school, throat! Arrab! Get away cuosza Shaun,* MeGosh did as he was bid, hoping that OYnmadbaun ! I when he got to the gate he would be re- Be so good as to let me pass, then. leased without further molestation. He ~ Divil a foot! said Tim. calculated his chances, and concluded that Youre a most impertinent, presum- if the worst went to the worst, he might ing fellow! I have business with him I get a kick behind which might possibly must see him! and he made- a vigorous be due, but not dangerous. They reached the sentry-box at last. * Shaun Irish for Jack. Tim, is that yourself all ric~ht? t Omamnadhaun Irish for a. simple fellow, voice- inside. . said a A 3ILLET AT CARRIGAIIINCIT. fledad, it is just myself sure enough, and in the best of company. Wouldnt you have the common daceney to step out- ~ide and salute his reverence? Is it the praitcher you mane? I thought hed slip up unkuowost to you. What a chicken I am! replied Tim, contemptuously. The divil is in it if we dont put him through his pacings. Come out and howld him. The heart of MeGosh began to sink within him. He was completely in the power of two huge Irishmen. There was nobody about at that time of ni~,ht who would be likely to take his part; he was at~ the wrong side of the gate for that. lie couldnt run, for Tims knuckles were in his collar. He was afraid to shout, re- membering the injunctions of his captor. It wasnt so dark but that he could dis- cern the faint outline of what appeared to be a musket in the sentrys hand. Howld him! reiterated Tim; come out of that and ketch him by the neck, -while I see is the coast clear. Bad luck to you, is it afeard you are? I wouldnt lay hand on him at all, said the other. Divil a bit of me would touch him for a tin-pound-note the owld heretic! This was at least consolatory if it was not very compliment~ ry to McGosh. Clap hini into the box, then, and stand outside of him. Having satisfied himself, Tim re- turned immediately. Its all right; let his reverence out. MeGosh hesitated to avail himself of the indulgence. Put him out if he wont come then: hell keep us here all night. Give me the word and Ill -walk straight in, said the sentry. You wouldnt murder a man in cold blood! gasped MeGosh, finding words at last; an innocent man! I never kilt a man yet, said Tim, and it isnt the likes of you Id begin on. Quick, march! The musket was levelled just on a line with the pit of the reverend gentlemans stomach, and the order ias instantly obeyed. He was just in time to slip out edgeways. The weapon went through the back of the sentry-box with a crash, the sound of which sent terror into his heart. Down on your knees at ~Vanst, said Tim, pouncing on his victim again. Make haste! Itll soon be over. MeGosh submitted in abject fear. Take your hat now. 108 MeGosh obeyed. Sign yourself, said Tim I I dont understand 1 gasped McGosh. Sign ! bless yourself ~ ma~ke the sign of the cross. Be smart! I dont know how! pleaded McGosh. IMore shame for you! Ill soon lam you. Put your fust finger on your fore- head; draw it straight down till you get to the last button on the ~vaistcoat. Now put it on your left shoulder, and draw it over, across your chest. Thats it I Now you have it complate! You wont forget that, in case I ask it again? No, replied McGosh. What are you going to praitch about to-morrow, your reverence, Id like to be sure? Prayers for the dead! Draw your breath now you seem to be short of it. I want you to repate a few words for me, and Ill let you go. Are you ready? Quite! said MeGosh, with a sigh of relief. Well, now, spake after me : lIIay the Lord have mercy on the soul qf Bridget Flannagan, al(i)as Convoy ! ~ Thats my owld mother that was. I couldnt, said McGosli, growing courageous; I couldnt dont ask me~ I could never bring myself to utter such blasphemous words! Out with them, said Tim, ~ or by this and by that I wont lave a whole bone in your skin or a sound tooth in your head! I can only do so, then, on compul- sion. Youll just do it on your knees, said Tim. Under fear of my life under pro- test! Divil may care, only spake up. Say em out, thats all: The Lord have mercy on the sowi of Bridget Flannagan, AI(i)as Conroy. MeGosh obeyed. Tim did not like his Latin. AI(i)as Conroy, and none of your humbugging. Thats what they call in court a mental reservation youre making like when a man kisses his thumb instid of the book. Say it right at wonst~ The Lord have mercy on the soul of Bridget Flannagan Elias Conroy, repeated McGosh, as near as he could. Bless yourself wanst more, till I see how you do it. MeGosh obeyed. Thatll do, now, your reverence. Thats more than ever you said for your 104 A BILLET AT CARRIGAHINCH. own tJ~er, Ill be bound. You may go I slippore. Was it th~ sentry you pQsted home now, and the top of the morning to at the back gate? Tim opened the gate po1itely~ and Tim, said, IL severely, I am resolved touched his forelock. McGosh, seizing his that this shall be the last row or scrape hat, made good his retreat; and when he youll get me into. Ill give you, now, a got outside, fairly took to his hcels and months wages. You may take yourself ran. Tim made his way to bed immedi- back to Kerry as soon as you like. ately, after singing himself to sleep, I pre- As soon as I lilce, is it, captain? sume, for I caught the sound of his voice Ill not consult your wishes in the repeating the words matter; youll go as soon as I like thats Some say the divils dead, and buried in Ku- at once! Larney, Maybe youll let me stay till the sodger says rose again and listed in the is ident~/led, your honour? army. That will not take long, I presume, said I, its an easy matter. The first thing McGosh did next morn- An aisy matter, is it? responded ing was to go the ma istrate and swear in- Tim, brightening up all of a sudden; formations against two soldiers, unknown, Divil a greater poser MeGosh ever had in who had violently assaulted him inside the his life than that same identification gates the night before. What do you mean? said IL. Here was a nice business, thought I I mane that Ill howld on in your ser- to myself, when I read a letter brought vice, Captain, awhile yet. me by a policeman, and heard his version I cant and wont allow any humbug- of the affair. ging in this matter, said I; once for all, Its a very serious charge, said I; let me tell you that he must be punished, ~o back and s~ y that I shall use every and you, too, I take it. effort to bring the men to justice I cant Divil a matter about me, responde~l say more. Ill see the magistrate at once Tim; but the sod,er is all right, take my and hear what Mr. MeGosh has to say. word. I never told yoj.i a lie. The men shall be paraded for identifica- All right! IL exclaimed, growing tion, and strict inquiry made. wrath. What do you mean? Do you Tim of course, would know all about mean to say that he is gone that he has the business, to a dead certainty; if, in- deserted? deed, he was not actually one of the actors Faix, he didnt, sir; for he never was in it. I made a firm and determined reso- there at all. lution to dismiss him forthwith. Things I looked at him in bewildered aston- were becoming too serious, and I felt that ishment. I was really placing myself in jeopardy by Sure, your honor, said he, growing an overweening affection for the fellow, confidential, and speaking with bated What I shoul do without him I did not breath, SunE WASNT IT WAN 01? THE sjlow myself to inquire, knowin0, from POPES IAUP ES, OUT OF THE WOEK- previous experience, what the result would HOUSE, I HAD IN THE SINTRY EOX I be if I temporized. 1 would not even give I burst into an immoderate fit of laugh- myself time to cool. I was, so to speak, in ter as the truth dawned upon me. I saw & white heat, and resolved to strike while I my way out of the difficulty, and entered was hot. fully into the joke. Of course, identifica- He came before me, looking very tion was out of the question. The uniform sheepish the very picture of meekness of a Carrigahinch pauper, when he had his and humility, as lie always did, when he saw hi0 overcoat and round skull-cap on, would that I was inclined to be angry. pass off very well to the non-military eye c~~~That do you think of yourself now? particularly when seen under such cir- I exclaimed, after I had explained all I cumstances, and in the dark. knew; this is a pretty kettle-o-fish. Of Tim had chosen a good Catholic (as course, it was all your doing. It was you he said), one onwhom he could rely as not who got inc into it. being very friendly to McGosh (there were Well; it was I got you into it, surely, plenty such in the workhouse); and, arm- your honour; but it wasnt all my doing, ing him with the handle of a stable-fork, for all that. Whose, then? posted him at the gate~ At my examination I stated that I had Well, another mans sir, and not posted a sentry at this gate at all. Confound you I It wasnt~ a won~ans My written orders to Sergeant Skinner GAMBLiNG SUPERSTITIONS. 105 were prQduced. H~ would have got me into trouble if he could; but he was, hap- pily, powerless. The men were all in early and each room was in charge of a non- eommissioned officer, who could answer for those in his charge, as the roll had been called as usual. Nothin~ could be made of the case, and it was dropped. Even Tim escaped. lie wisely kept out of sight; and McGosh not knowing who he was, or anything ~bout him, could not give any clue as to his identity, any more than to that of the supposed soldier, though we had to go through the ceremony of parading all the men. As the Captain concluded his story the grey light of dawn was breakin~. There was a stir in the barrack yard. The men were already fallin~, in, and preparing for the march. We filled a parting bumper. There was an unanimous call for a song. The Captain demurred. You established the custom yourself, I pleaded, the first night we met. A custom more honored in the breach than the observance, said he, with char- acteristic modesty, as far, at least, as my voice is concerned. iNot so, said I, but this is no time for compliment; Captain, you will not fail us now. I urge it with all the solemnity of a last request. What shall it be then? ssid he. One of Tims, I su~,gested; you gave usa while ago a few lines of onea~ foretaste of what we might expect. Give us the whole of it. Without more ado he began When I axed your owld father, my Kitty, lie wouldnt take on him to pay. Hes a bit of a screw; But hell make me a present of you Any day. Have pity On me, Machree Says she: You fool Youre just from school, Arrah! get away cLOsER shawn, Ommadhaun! Your mother is willing, my Kitty, She wouldnt take on her to say. Shes a bit of a screw; But shell give me a present of you Any day. Have pity On me Machree Says she: You fool Youre just from school, Arrah! get away ctosmam shawn, Ommadhaun! Im bothered intirely for aise; Tis draining I am in the day. Im getting no sleep in the night, But lying awake with the fright. My Kitty Take pity On me if you plaise. Ill just make bowld, To tighten my howld, Machree! Says she: You fool! Your fresh from school. Arrah! get away CLO5ER shawn, Ommadhaun! Your lips are so rosy, my Kitty, I think they are pouting at me, Mores the pity; Its no wonder Id wish to make free. Give me wan, and thats all. Sure I couldnt at all! I wouldnt kiss mortal, says she; But may be youd take it, Machree! Since you are making bowld, And you keep a good howid; You neednt go back to the school, Like a fool, If you get away CLOSER shawn, Ommadhaun! Tis past and gone, My song is done. We were two fools, and now were wan My Kitty Macbree, And me! J. FRANKLIN FULLER. From The Cornhull Magazine. GAMBLING SUPERSTITIONS. IT might be supposed that those who are most familiar with the actual results which present themselves in long series of chance- games would form the most correct views respecting the conditions on which such results depend, would he, in fact, freest from all snperstitious ideas respectin,, chance or luck. The gambler who sees every system his own infallible system included foiled by the run of events, who witnesses the discomfiture of one gamester after another that for a time had seemed irresistibly lucky, and who can number by the hundred those who have been ruined 1o& GAMBLING SUPERSTITIONS. by the love of play, might be expected to distinguish between the chances prepe,r tp recognize the futility of all attempts to an- the game, and those depending on the luck ticipate the re& ults of chance combinations. of the player. Proceeding to consider the It is, however, but too well known that the chances proper to the game itself, our reverse is the case. The more familiar a friendly cheat summons them all up in two man becomes with the multitude of such rules. First: Though chance can bring combinations, the more confidently he be- into the game all possible combinations, lieves in the possibility of foretelling, there are, nevertheless, certain limits at not, indeed, any special event, but the gen- which it seems to stop: such, for instance, eral run of several approaching events, as a certain number turning up ten times There has never been a successful gambler in succession at roulette; this is possible, who has not believed that his success (tem- but it has never happened. Secondly: porary though such success ever is, where In a game of chance, the oftener the same games of pure chance are concerned) has combination has occurred in succession, been the result of skilful conduct on his the nearer we are to the certainty that it own part; and there has never been a ruined will not recur at the next cast or