LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fiftli Series, Volume XVII. No. 1699. January 6,1877. CON T E N T S. I. RUSSIA AND TURKEY. By James Bryce, . Fortnigiitiy Revie, II. WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. By Sarah Tytler, author of Lady Bell, etc. Part xxiii Good Words,. III. COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. By Hon. 1-lugh F. Elliott IV. THE SECRET CHAMBER V. ABRAHAM COWLEY VI. MR. RUSKINS LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS, MacmiiZans Magazine, Blacks oods Magazine, Corn/sill Ma5 azine, Spectator, CHURCH BELLS, AFTER LIFE, P 0 K P R Y. 2 SEAWEED, 2 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DoLLARS, rerni/led direcily io 5/se P blisleerz, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,free of~osbege. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE m sent gratis to any one getting up a ciub of Five New Subscribers. Relnittances 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 an. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be Inade psyabie to the order of LlTTELL & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, IS cents. From Beginning, Vol. CXXXII. .3 12 35 50 62 2 CHURCH BELLS, ETC. CHURCH BELLS. RINGING! ringin~,! ringing as they rang Long, long ago! With echoing peal and merry clang They come and go! The chitdren have played and sung, and laughed and wel)t, And then grown old, and laid them down and slept; And still, as the hours onward flow, The bells are ringing for joy or woe! Singing! chiming! pealing ! such a song Of joy and mirth! Waking up echoes slumbering long Within the earth, Telling their tale of love, and hope, and happy days, From hill to valley the glad song they raise. And still, as the hours come and go, The hells are ringing for joy or woe! Swinging sadly, solemnly, a mournful tone, Telling of death! Of sorrowful hearts, that must wander alone On this weary earth Of silent forms, and hands that lie at rest, Of voices forever hushed in a passionless breast; While the changing hours come and go, And the bells are ringing for joy or woe! Softly rising and falling, at eventide Ring out the bells, Oer the golden valleys far and wide Their music swells. And the children stop in their play, and stand to hear, And theag~d look up with a quiet smile and a tear, As they think of the hours that come and go, While the bells are ringing for joy or woe Ringing! ringing! ringing, in the still night, A joyful chime! While the land lies sleeping, robed in white, At Christmas time, Telling, with fresh sweet tones, the glad old story, Bringing a faint, soft echo from the land of glory! While the changing hours come and go, And the bells are ringing for joy or woe! Ringing! ringing! ringing, oer the city With its mighty throng! Soothing some hearts, all sad and weary, With their happy song. Rising above the sin and sorrow, want atid care, Above the sounds of strife that fill ths air; And still, as the hours come and go, The bells are ringing for joy or woe Ringing! ringing! ringing! recalling fast Old days gone by; Unlocking the fair, green shadowy past To memorys eye. Telling of high resolve, of longings noble, free, Of golden moments gone by unheedingly! Of the changing hours that come and go, Of their ever ringing for joy or woe! Ringing! ringing! ringing ! still ring on, 0 old church hells! With tender pathos to each living one. Your music tells That beauty, wealth, and joy must fade and die, That man must spend his days as for eternity, Where the changing hours will cease to flow, Where tis never ringing for joy or woe Golden Hour. M. AFTER LIFE. SOME drag their heaven down to earth Some raise it to the skies, Some think they share its holy mirth, Before the body dies. But what the time and what the place, This much at least is known, That we shall see Him face to face, And know as we are known. Some hope to touch the vanished hand,? Complete the broken aim; Some but around the throne to stand, And magnify His name. I only know a silent space Between me and my own, Since they have met Him face to face; And know as they are known. Some fear to meet His dreadful eye, To hear His awful word; Some on his bosom long to lie, And pant to meet their Lord. I know, how vast must be his grace, How pure must I have grown, Ere I can see him face to face, And know as I am known. Sunday Magazine. W. C. M. SEAWEED. ALAS, poor weed! The careless tide Has left thee with his lightest foam; And now a desert drear and ~vide Divides thee from thy wished-for home. His flow may bear thee back once more, But canst thou live thy life of yore? Alas, I, too, am left awhile By her I love, in lightest play! On distant loves I see her smile, I hear her laughter far away. Her heart may turn to me again, But can my heart forget the pain? Spectator. R. T. 0. From The Fortnightly Review. RUSSIA AND TURKEY. BY JAMES BRYCE. NEARLY all public writers and speakers in England, and indeed in Germany and the Austrian monarchy also, seem to take it for granted, that the ruling and perma- nent motive of Russian policy is the desire for territorial aggrandizement. Most of them further assume that this policy, so dangerous to her neighbors, and supposed to be so specially dangerous to English power in the East, can only be resisted by supporting the Turkish empire, as the state most directly threatened and least able to sustain an attack. Having been led, in the course of a journey undertaken this autumn through Russia and the Black Sea countries, to question both these as- sumptions, I desire to examine them, and that with reference rather to the course of Russian history generally, and to the char- acter of the Turkish administrative sys- tem, than to the events of these last few weeks or months. My object is not so much to establish any positive conclusions as to show the unsoundness of the prem- ises on which are based many of the doc- trines most frequently and confidently put forward in our recent discussions on these topics; and this, I venture to hope, may be done without any desire or tendency to serve party interests. Properly under- stood, the question of our action in the East is altogether a part from Enblish party politics, and a mans judgment of it ought to be quite unaffected by his view oi our subjects of difference at home. Let me say at starting that I am in no sense an advocate or even an apologist of Russia. Like most English Liberals, I had been accustomed to regard her, ever since the fatal day of Vilagos when she crushed the independence of Hungary, as the arch- foe of political pro~ress, the incarnation of political evil. Even now, her further ad- vance over the provinces of the Turkish empire would, as it seems to me, be a great misfortune for those provinces, for herself, for the world. But the Russia of 1876 is not the Russia of 1849. Just as we have come to look differently upon Austria since her acceptance of constitu- tionalism after x866, and upon Prince Bis 3 marck since he shook himself loose from the feudai party in Prussia, so we must learn to recognize the changes that have passed in Russia since the accession of Alexander II., changes more rapid than any other European country has under- gone in an equally short space. And in any case we ought surely to unlearn the habit, not more unfair than it is unwise and misleading, of putting, as a matter of course, the worst construction upon every word or act of Russia. I do not there- fore attempt, nor desire, to argue that the policy of the Russian government has been, or is now, a disinterested policy. I do not deny, that there is a party, a strong party, which hankers after further con- quests, and dreams of some day reaching the Bosphorus. But what I hope to show is, firstly, that the recent history of Russia affords far less evidence of a passion for territorial aggrandizement than is con-i- monly believed here; secondly, that such aggrandizement would be distinctly injuri- ous to her; thirdly, that her present action is sufficiently explainable without the hy- pothesis, so generally accepted in En- gland, that her aim is the seizure of Euro- pean Turkey; and fourthly, that the actual condition of both Asiatic and Euro- pean Turkey clearly shows that the worst possible way of checking Russia is to try to maintain the status quo there, to allow the Porte to go on expecting support from us, and to teach the subject Christian pop- ulations that it is to the czar, and to the czar alone, that they have to look for de- liverance from intolerable misgovernment. It is natural that any one who sees on the map the Muscovy of the sixteenth century, as it was under the czar Ivan the Terrible, and compares it with the Russan empire of to-day, should b~ astonished at the vast and rapid territorial growth of this state, a growth paralleled only by that of Roman and English dominion. The alarm, however, which this compar- ison causes ought to disappear when it is understood how these vast territories have been acquired. By far the larger part have not been conquered at all, but simply colonized or occupied. Not only Siberia but the whole north-east of European Rus- sia and a gre at portion of the south-east RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 4 RUSSIA AND TURKEY. have come under Russian rule almost without a musket-shot, because these re- gions were inhabited by savage wandering tribes who had no bold on the soil, and made no objection to the advent of set- tlers. Some of them, such as the Tchou- vasses, Mordvins and Tcheremisses of the Volga, are already half Russianized; others, like the Samoyedes and Kirbhiz, remain pagan or Mohammedan; but all are on perfectly good terms with their governors, and seem, indeed, never to have had anything to complain of. Other large districts, such as the Tatar khanates of Kazan and of the Crimea, have, indeed, been conquered, but conquered almost of necessity, being held by semi-civilized Mohammedan states between whom and the Muscovite frontier population it was found practically impossible for peace to subsist. Georgia was not conquered at all, but handed over to the czar by its last king, who could not defend it against his Mohammedan neighbors. The only ac- quisitions, therefore, on which the charge of deliberate aggression can be based are those of Finland and the Baltic provinces, Poland, the south-western provinces con- quered from Turkey, and the districts re- cently occupied in Turkestan (omitting the trifling conquests in Transcaucasia made from Persia). A few words may suffice for each of these. All these territories, except Turkestan, were conquered when conquest was still the order of the day in Europe, and re- garded as the natural reward, even where it had not been the original object, of a war. Our present sentiment, which con- demns the transference of a population to the rule of a victorious alien state, is ex- tremely modern, and far from universally dominant: witness the case of north Schleswi and the general desire of the French, in and before the summer of 1870, to annex the purely German districts on the left bank of the lower Rhine. In the case of Finland, Russia had this excuse, that while it was held by a foreign power St. Petersburg, lying close to the Swedish * I pass over all this the more briefly because it has been admirably set forth by Mr. D. M. Wallace in an article in tisis review for last August. border, was at the mercy of an invading force. Finland, moreover, has, ever since her submission, been treated with singular consideration. She retains her la~vs, her two languages, her metallic currency. Her free constitution, never abolished, has of late years been recalled to active life; no attempt has been made to Russify her people or institutions; she spends all her own revenues and costs Russia a consid- erable sum besides. The story of Poland offers a sad contrast to this generosity, and it is mainly her cruelties there that have drawn on Russia the aversion of western Europe. Nothing can excuse those cruelties, worse even than those of which we were guilty in Ireland in 1798; or the French in Algeria. Several points, however, may deserve to be noticed. One is, that in the original liartition of Poland Russia did no more than was done by Austria and Prussia. A second is, that there existed an ancient and bitter hatred between Russians and Poles, dating from the days when the latter, then the stronger power, had nearly crushed the national existence of Russia. Further, the demo- cratic party in Russia in 1863, seeing in the division between the peasantry of the Lithuanian provinces, who had no Polish sympathies, and the nobles who had, an opportunity of inflicting a blow upon the nobility generally, hounded on the govern- ment against the insurgents. And the government itself was stimulated to greater harshness by its fear of the revo- lutionary spirit which had made Warsaw an outpost. To stamp out the conspira- cies which were always simmering there, seemed to them necessary for the safety of Russia itself. The acquisitions of Asiatic territory made in i8z8 from Persia and in 1829 from Turkey were less considerable than might have been expected, considering the weakness of the beaten party. We need not set this down to generosity gener- osity was not a feature in the character of Nicholas it was due to the sense that annexations were not really for the con- queror s interest, who had enough on his hands already. The war of 182829 was not a war of aggression, but arose out of the conduct of Turkey towards the RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 5 Greeks, and though the Turks were re- als commanding on the Turkoman steppes, duced hy the second campaign to complete forhidding them to engage in fresh wars helplessness, not an acre of land in or annex fresh territory but that the na- Europe was demanded as the price of ture of things had been too strong for the peace. xvar office, and bad carried the Cossack out- It is mainly the more recent advances posts steadily forward. Something, I of Russia in central Asia that have ex- think, must also he allowed for the desire cited the attention of Europe and the sus- of the frontier generals to find occupation picions of England. Yet nothing can he for their troops, and to distinguish them- more natural than these advances, and selves by conquest, just as C~sar ad- England is the country which ought best vanced against the will of the senate, and to understand this, since the causes are our Indian generals or statesmen in spite almost exactly the same as those which of the East India Company. And it is drew us on from concfuest to conques.t till no douht also true that the extension of we became masters of India; or as those territory has been regarded with a certain which have similarly drawn on the French pleasure by the unthinking majority of the in Algeria, and the Americans over the Russian people, more particularly by the land they had reserved for the Indian army, everywhere the home of chauvinism. tribes. A civilized state with semi-civil- But one may well believe that the govern- ized states or predatory nomad races on ment has not desired, much less designed, its frontiers cannot stop where it will, these advances, for they bring nothing but With the former it makes treaties; the expense and responsibility. Turkestan is treaties are broken; it is obliged to pun- a poor country, quite unable to pay the ish, and can often only punish by annex- expense of managing it; the central Asian ing, or by assuming a protectorate which trade which it opens up is of no great con- comes to almost the same thing as annex- sequence, so thinly peopled are all these ation. With the latter no treaty can be countries; and in case of a European war made, and the civilized power must there- the necessity of wasting troops in this fore protect its borders by stationing remote corner of the empire might be sen- troops along them, and must chastise ously felt. every inroad by pursuing the marauders That Russia, finding herself at the north on their homeward way, perhaps for great foot of the Hindoo Koosh (which she may distances. This is found so expensive and probably reach before long), would in the troublesome that a regular expedition is event of a war with England use her posi- undertaken; the offending tribe is de- tion there to annoy us by stirring up the feated, and to prevent fresh irruptions Afghans or hill tribes of the Punjab fron- forts are erected and garrisons stationed tier, or even by intriguing with the native in its country, which thus becomes re- princes of India itself, is probable enough. duced to submission. This advance in- But it is quite another thing to fancy, as volves a contact with fresh tribes, who so many people in England do, that she molest the peaceable natives or the civil- is going to the Hindoo Koosh for that ized settlers by their inroads; and the express purpose. Had she wished either same process is repeated, the line of out- to menace India or to increase her Asiatic posts always moving forward, and the line dominions by war, there was, there still is, of settled subject country following it. In another course open to her. That course, some such way as this has the frontier of not more costly in the first instance, and Russia advanced from the river Ural to far more profitable in the long run, is to the banks of the upper Oxus and the annex Persia, a country with no army, no Thian-shan Mountains. One of the most fleet, and hardly any government, a country distinguished officers in the Russian ser- of great natural resources, with a splendid vice, a man whose veracity no one could geographical position between the Caspian dream of questioning, assured me that the and the Indian Ocean, inhabited by a pop- archives of the war office at St. Peters- ulation far less warlike and fanatical than burb were full of directions to the gener- the Turkomans, industrious and settled, 6 RUSSIA AND TURKEY. though reduced by misgovernment to a point far below its natural level; a coun- try moreover from which India could be threatened much more effectively than from Khiva or Bokhara. Needless to say that we could not have saved Persia, and that she could not have defended herself: six or eight regiments would be enough to overrun the whole kingdom. That Russia has during the last three centuries extended her borders farther and faster than any other European state is undeniable. But then she is the only European state that could so extend itself. The settler xvho lives on the edge of the wilderness may take in as much land as he pleases, while a proprietor in Kent or Normandy cannot push his fence six inches back without risking a lawsuit. And in her extensions to north, east, and south, where she found either unoccupied lands or races inferior to her own, she has really played the part of an improving and civilizing power. Territorial extension, however, which marks a period, sometimes a long period, in the history of almost all great states, always comes sooner or later to an end, sometimes, as with most of the countries of modern Europe, because there is no longer room for it, sometimes also, as in our own case and that of the United States, or as of Rome in the time of the early emperors, because it is believed to be no longer for the interest of the state itself. Twenty years ago we used to have panic-fits about the extension of the United States. We now know that they do not desire either Canada or Mexico or the Antilles, and have even neolected chances of getting a footino in the two latter. Similarly, xve have ourselves repeatedly refused to found new colonies or annex new territories in the East, though the world does not yet credit us with such moderation. Now Russia seems to have reached this point, when for her own interest further territorial growth ought to stop. How far she sees this herself, I shall inquire pres- ently; meantime let me endeavor to state the grounds for believing that she would only injure herself by attempting to incor- porate the provinces of Turkey, for exam- ple, or to wrest from us any part of India. Russia lx s already more land and vaster natural resources than she needs or can deal with. Not to speak of the mineral riches of Siberia, still only half opened up, or of the fertile countries along the lower Amour, or of Turkestan, or of Transcau- casia with so many sources of wealth only requiring capital for their development, she has in the southern part of European Russia, between the Dnieper and the Ural River, a region of unsurpassed fertility, not a third or fourth part of which is now under cultivation, and which could prob- ably support a population as large again as that of the present European domin- ions. In this vast tract, which one may call the Great West of Russia, coloni- zation does indeed go on, and now the faster since railways have been made through it ; but it goes on with nothing like American or even Canadian speed, and at the present rate another century will not see the country even fairly well settled. People in western Europe often talk of Russia as overflowing with men, of her teeming millions, and so forth. The truth is that she is the most sparsely populated of civilized states, with the pos- sible exception of Sweden, and that her population increases slowly. She is a child in the shoes of a b iant. Ii~stead, therefore, of grasping at fresh territories which she is not able either to occupy with settlers or develop by an expenditure of skill and capital, it is her interest to concentrate all her energies on her inter- nal growth, to fill up her empty spaces, improve her communications, train her people to add the higher forms of skilled industry to those comparatively rude and raw handicrafts which, speaking broadly, alone at present thrive among them. One cannot travel through the country without seein~ that this policy, already to some ex- tent he~ un, will make her more prosperous and more powerful than any course of conquest could possibly do. Further, Russia is at this moment un- fitted to assimilate or administer new ter- ritories, and notably such territories as the Turkish. So large an empire as hers is already requires a great multitude of offi- cials, and the supply of good officials is far below the demand. I do not speak merely of corruption, which every one in Russia asserts to be so widely spread for of its existence a stranger has no means of judgingbut of incompetence for the higher administrative fnnctions. Russia, it cannot be too often repeated, is a new country, where civilization has but recently taken root. Great efforts have been made, and made ~vith much success for the people is not only a quick hut a really gifted one to spread education and rear up a cultivated class. But that class is still small, compared with the whole population, or compared with the same class in France, Germany, or En- RUSSIA AND TURKEY. gland. And even in those who have been to the university, culture is not the same thing as it is in educated men in those above-named western countries, where it rests, so to speak, on a basis of hereditary cultivation going back for centuries. If, then, a sufficiently qualified hureaucracy is now wanting in European Russia, how much greater would the deficiency be in the countries west and south of the Eux- me, where several half-civilized races live intermingled, differing in religion and lan- guage, hating one another, depending en- tirely on their governors for the impulse which is to pacify, elevate, discipline, and, in fine, civilize them? Highly qualified men, morally as well as intellectually, are needed to deal with the problems which such countries present. We believe that we send such men to India; but we are able to do so because the class from which they come is, in an old and overpeopled ct~untry like this, unusually large. In Rus- sia such men are too few, and they are likely to he still fewer, for at present the tendency of educated youth there is quite away from official life, towards the pro- fessions or towards employment under such local authorities as are independent of the central government. In the dominions conquered by Russia, such as Transcaucasia, everything depends upon the bureaucracy, everything is re- ferred to it, everything proceeds from it. What im-pulses to civilization are to he given must he given by it, for there are few individual settlers, and they do not affect the country in the least. Now with excellent intentions and considerable ef- forts, the bureaucracy has so far been able to do but little tn improve or develop the later Russian conquests. Order is not yet secure in them, and they are so far from paying their way that they constitute a serious drain on the imperial revenues. They will not pay till they are civilized; and civilization cannot be introduced by ukase. With all this work on her hands it would be folly for Russia to attempt the larger and more difficult task of assimilat- ing Bulgaria, Rou melia, and Anatolia. There are other reasons in the internal conditions of Russia proper why she should refrain from entangling herself xvi th new difficulties. The emancipation of the serfs has raised as many problems as it seemed to solve, and no one can yet say how it may end. Serious reforms in the Church are talked of and likely to be before long undertaken. The finances of the empire, exhausted by the construction of so many railways, which have not yet be- 7 gun to be remunerative, require the most careful nursing. Moreover (and this is a reason to which the enlightened liberals of Russia attach great weight) the addition of new territories obviously incapable of constitutional government would impede or delay that creation of free representa- tive institutions which is the great and the most difficult question of the future for Russia, and towards which some cautious steps have already been taken. The power of the central government is now felt to be too great, and every extension of the districts which can only be ruled despotically by the central government will necessarily throw more upon it.* It may be answered, Supposing all that has just been urged to be true, it does not follow that the Russian government or people see it to be true. They may not believe in this alleged incapacity to find administrators, or they may think that the same course of aggrandizement which has brought them to their present point of greatness will carry them on with full sails over the difficulties of the future /n ne cede malls, sed contra azdeni~ior Ito. Or, even while admitting that the development of their internal resources and the creation of representative institutions is the surest path to prosperity, they may be too much seduced by the brilliant prize that seems to lie xvithin their grasp, too much intox- icated by a sense of their historic pan- slavonic mission, to be able to halt when the voices of race and religion call them on. This is a matter on which no one, no, not a Russian himself, can speak with confidence. The sentiment of a nation, the policy of a government, change from day to day, and change from causes be- yond prediction. Two or three remarks * Of course all that is said here as to the present un- fitness of Russia to annex the provinces of Turkey applies with tenfold force to India, as being far more distant and having far fewer elements of national affinity to start from. That Russia may some day wish to menace us through her proximity to India is possible enough. But that she will attempt, within any time one can presently foresee, to conquer India for herself, svith all that she has on her hands already, and with the possibility of conquering Persia always open to her, is an opinion which would scarcely seem to requtre refutation. As so the interest of England in keeping Russia out of Constantinople, two grounds are corn- monly assigned. Some say that once there she could conquer Asia Minor and Syria, forgetting that she can do so now from Transcaucasia. Others say that she may block our path to India through the Levant. No, doubt, if we lose the command of the sea; but if we lose that we shall probably anyhow lose India too. It would certainly be a misfortune for the world (includ- ing Russia herself) if she seized Constantinople. But the injury to England in particular would have nothing to do with. India: it would consist in the stoppage of nor trade with the Black Sea countries and northern Persia. 8 RUSSIA AND TURKEY. however may be ventured for the sake of clearing away a prevalent misconception. It is commonly fancied, not only in En- gland but in the Austro-Hungarian mon- archy (where jealousy of Russia is even hotter than among ourselves), that what is called panslavism is the pervading passion of the Russian people and the guiding star of Russian foreign policy. No greater mistake. Panslavism is a theory, a doc- trine, a sentiment, what you will, which has been taken up by a certain party in Russia, composed chiefly of such of the nobility as live in Moscow, of officers in the army, of a certain number of journal- ists and students. It has absolutely no hold on the peasantry, who would not even know what it meant, and very little on the merchants. It is repudiated by the ad- vanced or socialistic democrats. It is in fact the doctrine of a party, not of the nation, of a party like that which in En- gland would have us go to war for the Turks, or like that which in France de- sires to restore by arms the temporal pow- er of the pope.* That it exerts consid- erable influence is undeniable, but that influence is rather declining than in- creasing, and at this moment draws what appears to be its strength from a source that is really quite different the religious sentiment of hatred to Islam. The wisest heads in Russia, and particularly those who surround the present emperor and reflect his moderation, see through the vague and flimsy notion, a wild inference drawn by ianorance and vanity from mis- conceived premises, that the largest Sla- vonic State is necessarily or naturally called upon to unite all Slavonic races under one sceptre. And though they may occasionally use this spectre to frighten their neighbors, they have far too sound an appreciation of what is practical in pol- itics to be influenced by it themselves. Similarly with regard to the supposed desire of all Russians to possess Constan- tinople. One may hear some irresponsi- ble talk on the subject from private people: expressions of a belief that sooner or later the czar will plant the cross on St. Sophia, and that all south-eastern Europe will own the Muscovite faith and rule, while En- gland and Austria gnash their teeth in the distance. Just such irresponsible talk one * Two assumptions are constantly made by our Rus- sophobists, ~vhicb are perbaps less absurd as applied to Russia tban tbey would be to a popular government, but still quite baseless: firstly, tbat Russia is one, in- stead of being divided into parties like ourselves; sec- ondly, tbat sbe has one deep-laid uncbanging sebeme of policy, to wbicb she afiberes tbrougb all cbanges of circumstance. may hear from Germans about the neces- sity of annexing Holland, or even of gath- ering England and Scandinavia into the great pan-Teutonic empire. Just such idle hopes one may hear Spaniards ex- press of the incorporation of Portugal. Just such was formerly the vaporing lan- guage of Americans about Canada and Mexico. A boy when he looks at a map fancies that the most powerful countries are those which cover the largest space, and it is wonderful how many of us remain boys in this regard. There are plenty of foolish persons in Russia as elsewhere, who fall into this vulgar confusion of big- ness with greatness. But there, as else- where, sensible men see not only that Russia at Constantinople would be weaker and more exposed than she is now, but that she would run some risk of ceasing to be Russia at all, and would be led away into new paths whose end no one could see, and where the true interest of the ojd Russian people would soon be lost sight of. The active sympathy shown by the Rus- sian nation with the Herzegovinians and Servians durinw the last few months has been taken in some quarters as conclusive evidence of its passion for conquest. No assumption can be more gratuitous. It would have been strange indeed if a people among whom religion is an infinitely more potent force (the only one that moves all classes) than in any other part of Europe, had not sympathized with its co-religionists in their struggle, not against ordinary en- emies, but against the very enemies before whom Russia had lain prostrate for two centuries, and with whom she had lnaln- tamed a long, doubtful, though ultimately successful, warfare for three centuries more. The hatred of the Russian people to Mohammedans is almost as striking a feature in their national history and char- acter as it was in those of the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, among whom its origin had been precisely the same. It is almost as deep a feeling as their devotion to the Orthodox Church it is, in fact, with them a part alike of their religion and their patriotism. No one can understand the attitude of Russia in these questions without allowing for the intensity in her people of this combined sentiment the result of her whole history of sympathy with Christians of the Orthodox rite and faith, and hatred to their Mussulman rulers. In the present instance there was added to these feelings a wrath and horror at the cruelties perpetrated by the Turks, I which were not indeed more deep or gen. RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 9 uine than the indignation those cruelties called forth in England, but were all the fiercer because it was commonly believed in Russia, down to the middle of ~Septem- ber last, that Europe generally, and En- gland in particular, were viewing those cruelties with complete sang froid, and that they had not in the least affected the traditional English friendship for Turkey. These things being so, one has no need either of panslavistic theories or the lust for conquest to explain that passionate outburst of feeling in Russia this summer which the czar and his advisers have found it so hard to resist. It pervaded, it still pervades, all classes, even down to the peasantry who know and care nothing about politics. It would make it far easier for the government, despite its financial embarrassments, to undertake a war against Turkey now than at any time within this century. People have compared it to our sym~thy with the Garibaldians in 1859, or to that of the Germans for the Holsteiners in 1863. But it is, by the nature of the case, infinitely stronger than in either of those instances (in which, nev- ertheless, plenty of volunteers were found ready to start), and may best be likened to the feeling wherewith the English people heard in 1641 of the terrible massacre of the Protestant colonists of Ulster, a feeling which bore no small part in bringing on the great civil war. It is no part of my purpose to discuss the recent policy of Russia. Whether it has been selfish and tortuous, or whether the government has honestly endeavored to restrain the fanaticism of its subjects and co-operate with the other powers for the benefit of the Christians in Turkey, is a matter of present political controversy, and I desire here to keep as much as pos- sible upon historical ground. But how- ever its rulers may use the enthusiasm of the Russian people, the fact of that enthu- siasm and its grounds ought to be known and weighed, for they are most important elements in the problem before us. Without professing to see farther into a millstone than the rest of the world, one may incline to believe that whatever be the dreams or schemes of the party of ad- vance in Russia, and whatever the possi- bility that the cabinet of St. Petersburg may ultimately, more or less, adopt them, its present policy i. directed, not so much to the acquisition of territory as to the ex- tension and strengthening of its influe~ice in Turkey, both upon the Porte itself and upon the subject Christian populations, so as to establish, in fact, a sort of protecto rate over the sultan and his dominions. Such a protectorate might be sought either from selfish or disinterested motives doubtless it is sought from both. But be this as it may, be Russias object the ex- tension of her dominions or only the ex- tension of her influence, the question how she may best be met checked, if you will is not, substantially, very different. On this question a few words may be said in conclusion. The influence of Russia over the Chris- tians of Turkey and her power for agres- sion, so far as it depends on that influence, is held to be derived from two sources. One is, their belief that she, and she alone, sympathizes with their sufferings, and is prepared to hel~i them. This is a real and potent cause. The other is their sense of nearness to her in blood and religion, the feeling of Slays for Slays, of Orthodox Eastern Christians for one another. This cause has some force; but a force both much more limited in area and weaker within that area than is usually ascribed to it. Let us see how both may be met. It is, or ought to be, superfluous to add a particle of fresh evidence to that which is already before Europe of the misgovernment of the Turkish provinces and of the utter incapacity of the govern- ment for reform. Every Frank you meet in Anatolia or Roumelia or Constantinople itself, however much he may prefer (as he usually does) the individual Turk to the individual Greek or Armenian, tells you that things are certainly no better than they were twenty years ago, in the days of the Crimean war, that they are probably worse, than it is useless to expect any reform from the Porte, that all the prom- ises it makes will and must be broken must, because there.are neither men fit to carry out reforms, nor is there any force at headquarters to compel them to do so. It is really hardly necessary, in order to get any idea of what Turkish government is, to do more than sail down the Bospho- rus and count the magnificent palaces, rich with marble without and sumptuous decorations ~vithin, that line its shore, pal- aces erected by Sultan Abdul Aziz out of the money he borrowed in the west while his own revenue was diminishing, the oppression of the provinces increasing, the most necessary public undertakings lying unfinished. But wherever one goes in the Turkish empire one hears the same story of the inhabitants oppressed by exactions, of wanton cruelties perpetrated by the officials and the tax-farmers, of land drop. ping out of cultivation because the people I0 RUSSIA AND TURKEY. cannot pay the taxes, of the decline of trade, of the decrease of ~vealth even among the richer families, of mines un- worked, because the functionaries from whom the concession must be obtained break faith or demand extravagant bribes. In a disorganized and dyin~ empire it usu- ally happens that a provincial governor or satral) makes himself independent and establishes a government stronger if not better than the one he has revolted from. The Porte guards against this danger by changin~, its local governors very fre- quently; and what is the result? A good governor for there are good governors even in Turkeyis taken away just when he has begun to know something of his district, and all the sooner if it is suspected that he is popular there. A bad one and considering the nature of the court influences by which they are appointed, it is not surprising that most of them should be heartily bad makes the most of his short tenure by squeezing every piastre he can out of his wretched subjects, whether by way of taxes or bribes or of plain down- right extortion. And in both sets of cases all continuity and regularity of administra- tion, all possibility of carryin6 out reforms, is destroyed by these frequent changes. From the unspeakable misery which this misrule causes, the Mohammedan popula- tion suffers, not indeed so much as the Christian, because the former have more chance of protection from the courts of law, may carry arms, and are less liabl~ to be robbed or bastinadoed by a brother Muslim, but still quite enough to entitle them to our earnest sympathy. It is surely a mistake in dealing with this ques- tion, to endeavor to set creed against * It is unnecessary to discuss whether this incapacity for reform is due to religion, or to race, or to both but a protest may he made, in passing, against the notion that the Turks deserve to he driven out of Enrope be- canse they are Asiatics, as if the Magyars, for instance, were not Asiatics in almost the same sense as the Turks. For the matter of that, the Mohammedan popnlation of the Turkish empire are not, ethnologically speaking, TorIes at all, any more than we are Normans or the modern Spaniards Visigoths. There are places in Asia Minor where you may see a few true Turks still remaining, lost as in the valleys of the Asturias you may occasionally find villages where blue eyes and light hair show the permanence of a Gothic type. But the Muslims of Turkey are probably one of the most mixed races in the world, the children of those subiects of the Byzantine empire svho emhraced Islam at first, or have heen subsequently converted to it; of tlaves brought into the empire; of lanizaries; of the upper class of Turks by Georgian, Circassian, Mingrelian, Greek, Slavonic mothers. And the contrast is great indeed between the heavy, languid, flabby faces of the Turkish royal family, for instance, with their drooping eyelids and rounded sensual outlines, and the firm, hard, angular, bony features, small, fierce, restless eyes and well-knit frames of the genuine Turks or Tatars of the Aral or Caspian steppes. creed, and enlist European feeling on be- half of the Christians only. It is also a mistake to make the indictment against the Porte appear to rest on isolated acts of cruelty and revenge, however hideous. It rests upon a long course of migovern- ment, persevered in after repeated warn- ings, which has reduced some of the rich- est countries in the world to be~gary, which makes the lives of their inhabitants wretched, which produces the state of society wherein massacres like that of May last had become possible. Notwithstahding these facts, which might be supposed to have by this time become pretty well known in the west, people talk about the integrity of the Turkish empire, the importance of main- tainirsg the status quo, etc., etc. Now, you cannot maintain the status quo. As a great German writer has somewhere said, there is in the moral and political, as in the material world, no such thin as a status quo. All is change and motion, if not from worse to better, then from better to worse. You may keep Turkey un- scathed by foreign invasion. You may aid the sultan to suppress revolts within. But you will not thereby, no, nor by exacting a hundred promises of reform, arrest that sure and steady though silent process of decay which has been goin~ on for the last century or more, and makes the gov- ernment more and more powerless for ev- erything but evil. You cannot prevent the empire from one day falling to pieces, after another era of silent oppression varied by revolts and massacres. You may make that era longer, but it will end at last, and when it ends, the hatred of Muslim and Christian, more bitter now than twenty years ago, will probably have become more bitter still. It is their impatience of this tyranny and their belief that while the other pow- ers England and Austria especially desire simply to maintain the status quo, Russia alone is willing and able to help them, that has accustomed the Christians of Turkey to look to Russia, and has given her the influence she now enjoys. Noth- ing can be more natural, nor do we need either secret societies or Russian emissa- ries (though for aught I know Russian cmissaries may be at work, like moles, on every Bulgarian farm) to account for so simple a phenomenon. These poor peo- ple are surely not to be cut off from all hope: and what conceivable loyalty or duty can they owe to a ruling caste and government which calls them and treats them like dogs? Which of us, und ersuch RUSSIA AND TURKEY. II a government, would not intrigue, a~~d re- bel too whenever he got the chance? The only way to remove this disposition to turn to Russia is to remove its cause, that is, to improve the internal condition of the Turkish empire. As regards the largest part of that empire, where the government of the sultan must he suffered to subsist, because there is nothing to put in its place, the only really effective measure would be to appoint European commis- sioners, not only to watch and stimulate the ministry at Constantinople, hut to re- side at all the principal seats of provincial government and see that the pashas and kadis do their duty. But there are dis- tricts where it is fortunately possible to go somewhat further, outlying tracts where the Christians are in a large majority, and which may therefore be practically with- drawn from Turkish administration, even if left nominally subject to the sultan, as Roumania was and Servia is. Thus Thes- saly and Crete might go to Greece, not because Greece has deserved them what have practical politics to do with deserts ? but because it will be better for all parties: Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina would acquire a species of qualified independence, under the guaran- tee of the great powers, and be no longer ruled and pillaged by Turkish officials and tax-farmers. It is in these last-named provinces that the anti-Turkish and pro. Russian feeling is strongest; for in them the Christian population is largest, and lying nearer to Russia they are naturally more inclined to look to her as a deliverer. If she devours Turkey, they will he the first mouthful; if she attacks Turkey, their sympathy will be a considerable aid to her. Our Russophobists ought there- fore to think it more specially important to do something to relieve the wrongs of these provinces, although those who hold that we have also a duty in the matter will not rest content without trying to assuage the misery of the inhabitants, Muslim as well as Christian, of Roumelia and Asia Minor.* * It is often said that the Porte will not consent to any sweeping changes or limitations of its power. The truth is that the Porte, like other Oriental govern- ments, will consent to anything if it is pressed hard enough, hut to nothing while it thinks it can delay the evil day hy professions and promises, and shove all, while it has stiil got a friend left, ourselves, whose jealousy and suspicion may he played upon. If it saw ~hat England was foremost (as the Crimean war gives her a right to he foremost) in exacting strict terms, its tone would soon change. There is no patriotism any- where in Turkey, least of all in the official class. Among them there is only self-interest, and with self- interest one can always reckon. There is indeed plenty of fanaticism, active among the priests, dormant, hut liable to be roused in a moment, among the lower class. The other source of Russian influence over the Christians of Turkey lies, or is supposed, to lie, in panslavism. Now, whatever panslavism may be in Russia itself, outside of Russia it is a mere phan- tom, a spectre evoked to terrify Magyars and Germans, but which vanishes when you approach it. Over whom is it sup- posed to have power? Not over the Rou- mans, who are no Slays, who are exces- sively afraid of being absorbed by Russia, and have shown not a spark of sympathy all these last months for their Bulgarian and Servian neighbors. Not over the Slavic subjects of Austria, who are nearly all Roman Catholics, and therefore far more repelled from Russia by religion than they can be attracted to her by the fantastic sentiment of race. The Poles, of course, and the Czechs hardly less than their Polish brethren, heartily hate Rus- sia; the other Austrian Slays sometimes use her to frinhten the Magyars, but they know well enough that they are,far better as they are than they would be under Mus- covite rule, and that with the aid of the Germans and their own numerical prepon- derance they can hold their own against the Magyars. It is by no means solely or even chiefly due to the prohibition of the government that hardly a volunteer has gone from amon~ the Slays of Austria to help the Servians. Coming to ~furkey itself, the Greeks and Armenians have of course no Slavonic sympathies ; the Greeks, indeed, have quite different vis- ions of their own visions of a Greek empire upon the Bosphorus. As to the Christian Slays, Servians, Bosnians, Her- zegovinians, Montene~rins, Bulgarians (in- cluding for the sake of the argument the Bulgarians among the Slays), the pansla- vistic propaganda has made no progress amonm the mass of them: its doctrines are known only to some few journalists and politicians. They are, however (ex- cept the Bosnian Catholics), drawn to Russia by ecclesiastical sympathy. They are proud of her as a big elder brother. They are grateful to her for what encour- agement she has given them. They would rather be under her rule than the sultans, but they have otherwise no desire to be absorbed by her. We have just marked how soon ill-feeling spr ng up between the Servians and their too powerful friends. The Bulgarians would be very sorry to But the officials could easily, if they wished, carry out all the clsanges the powers may demand, without ex- citing this fanaticism. Of course they now use it as a weapon, and a terrible weapon it is, against any de- mands of the powers. 12 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. see their lately won ecclesiastical mdc- not its own. This weapon, this passionate pendence sacrificed, as it certainly would sympathy for Christians oppressed by be, to the Russian desire for ecclesiastical Muslims, which makes Russia at the pres- uniformity and centralization. Once de- ent moment really formidable, they would livered from Turkish oppression, the Bul- lose, to the worlds gain. But many of garians and Bosnians would have no more the best and wisest people in Russia (in- desire to come under the Russian con- cluding, one may well hope and believe, scription, the Russian customs system, the the emperor himself) would be heartily glad vexatious Russian police supervision, than to see substantial reforms carried out in the Servians or Roumans have now. Any Turkey and the frontier provinces liber- kind of independence would seem prefer- ated, both for the sake of the subject able why be swallowed up and forgotten Christians, and because they feel that a in that monstrdus state, like snow-flakes large part of their own people would in a river? Panslavism would soon have thereby be led to turn their aspirations no more power over the Slays of the Dan- into a healthier channel and think more of ube than pan-Teutonism has over Swedes developing intellectually and materially the or Dutchmen. Russia they have got, than of adding to Whichever way the question is regarded, her new provinces which could only be a the conclusion appears to be the same, source of weakness. that the best way of stopping Russia is to Whatever be Russias real designs as remove as far as possible the grounds to which I will only repeat that I have not which justify her interference, and substi- sought to prove that they are unselfish, but tute the powers collectively, and England only that we shall certainly err by assum- not least conspicuously among them, for ing them to be dishonest, and by ignoring Russia alone as the protecting influence the mighty popular forces that are at work to which the subject populations have to pressing the czar onward one thing look. One part of this is to exact from seems tolerably clear. The mistake of the Porte all such reforms in the adminis- England has been in leaving to Russia all tration of its provinces generally as it is these years, and more especially since the. possible for the watchful presence of insurrection broke out in Herzegovina, the European commissioners to see carried sole championship (whether real or appar- out. The other is to erect in the north of ent) of good government and the welfare European Turkey a group of semi-inde- of the Christian population in Turkey. pendent principalities whose interest it What the consequences of that mistake will be to maintain and stren_ then their have been during the last six months; separate national, life, and which will, in how it has divided us at home in a way fact, constitute a barrier against the farther that would have been impossible had the advance of Russia in that direction. Of whole truth been known; how it has made course there will be plenty of intrigue and our policy waver in the eyes of foreign corruption in such principalities, as there nations; has kept Austria afraid to rely is in Roumania now (whose I)eople, by the on us; has incensed all Russia, and em- way, are in every respect inferior to the boldened her war party; has encouraged Bulgarians), and very likely Russia will the Porte to refuse what it would other- have a finger in such intrigues. But two xvise have conceded, and made it believe facts will remain: the condition of the in- that in the last resort it can always play habitants will be better than it is under upon our fears for Constantinople these the Porte, and instead of looking to Rus- are questions which it is beyond the scope sia to send her troops in among tl~em,they of the present article to discuss. will have every motive to keep her at arms-length. __________________ This is l)utting the case from the most anti-Russian point of view, and assuming her motives to be merely selfish an as- From Good Words. sumption that seems to me thoroughly WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. wanton and unfair. True it is that some nv SARAH TvTLER, of the balder spirits in the Russian party AUTHOR ~ LADY DELL, ETC. of aggression would regret the loss of a fulcrum by which they worked on the sub- CHAPTER LIV. jects of the Porte, and by which they could also stimulate at times the enthusiasm of A SUDDEN SUMMONS. their more ignorant fellow-countrymen, PLEASANCE was still at Stone Cross, thereby winnin~ for their cause a strength when the morning post brought her, along WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 3 with some few papers, a private letter from Mr. Woodcock. He had accepted her as a client, and had written to her frequently in the settlement of her affairs. Such let- ters were in the course of his duty, and he did not depute them to a clerk, because he had a genuine respect and liking for Archie Douglass wife. Pleasance opened the letter at her breakfast-table, without a suspicion of any- thing extraordinary, but she had not read a line of the scrawled and blotted half- page, a contrast to Mr. XVoodcocks usual strong, clear, handwriting with which he was in the habit of covering a page and a half, or two pages, of paper, without be- ing aware that some startling calamity had thrown even a man like Mr. Woodcock off his balance. DEAR MADAM, he wrote, I am grieved to inform you that bad news has just reached me, indirectly, which you ought to know, and not to read first in the newspapers. A grievous accident has happened to the shooting-party at Shard- leigh. The telegram for a London sur- geon simply stated that Mr. Douglas had received a gun-shot wound, that the h~em- orrhage was great, and the worst appre- hensions were entertained. I have not a moment to lose, as I am starting at once to do what I can for the poor fellow and his mother and sister. I shall write to you by the first post after I arrive at Shardleigh; and if anything remains to be done, you may command my best. ser- vices. Your faithful and obedient servant, GEOFFREY WooDcocK. It was on a September morning, the year having advanced through its prime into its first decay, when Pleasance sat alone in the dining-room at Willow House with that letter on the table-cloth before her, and when her eyes all at once began to swim. She recovered presently, so as even to hear the sweet, cheery song of a robin on one of the willow-trees, that peculiarly autumnal song associated with the garner- ing in of ripe fruit, and the pathetic, peace- ful smile of the autumnal sun over the reaped and stripped fields and orchards, to which Archie Douglas had first called her attention. Archie Joel Wray badly hurt2 dy. ing, perhaps dead already no, the last could not be with the sun shining in the sky, and she sitting there with no intima- tion of it only let God spare Archie Douglas to walk the face of the earth, to breathe the same air with her only let God not cut him off in his fresh youth, and she would ask nothing more. What of the early quarrel between hus- band and wife? What of their obstinately maintained separation ever since, and of the people who would not hesitate to say that the couple who had never been happy together, never borne atid forborne, and shared good and evil as husband and wife ought, but who had fallen apart and kept apart from the moment of their union, could surely, of all the couples in the world, best afford to be parted? These people knew nothing of the love that in its bitterness may be the very root and source of discord, and which can survive all discord and all disunion, though its un- dying existence be but an undying anguish till love and life be put in harmony. It was the very reverse of what they said. Archie Douglas and she who were severed and at enmity, could of all the couples in the world least afford to be sundered by death. Archie, if he were conscious, might think of her; wish for her presence, seek to accomplish their reconciliation in death, as he had sought it in life. Pleasance would no longer fail him, since the shadow of death obscured all worldly distinctions. Would there be any room left save for primitive wants especially in the heart which was naturally single and tender? Would not the one passion of his life, which had exercised such all-powerful sway over him, as in Pleasances eyes to make havoc of his integrity, reassert its sway, even in the middle of the most sol- emn considerations? Would not love prove indeed strong as death, and, outlast- ing all other hunian emotions, cause him to sigh with his passing breath for the sight of his wifefor an assurance that they were one at last, and in spite of all, for an embrace in which he should gather up and bid farewell to mortal good? Pleasance rose up quickly to go on her errand; she had not called together her small household, or announced to the Per- rys a catastrophe in which they, too, had an interest. Pleasance could not tell what she might have clone had she been a happy xvife, only parted for a day from her husband. But even then she had a dim notion that she could ill have borne sympathy; that she could not have called in her servants to weep and lament with her over the worst, or to attempt to revive her soul with vain hopes and feeble consolations; she would rather, if it might have been, have played 4 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. the part of that Shunammite woman who had been the object of her youthful ad- miration, and said, It shall be well; and then she saddled an ass and said to her servants, Drive and go for ward, slack not thy riding for me except I bid thee. As it was, she did no more than tell Mrs. Perry that she had heard news which would cause her to take a journey at once, and that she could not tell when she miaht return. Mrs. Perry, watching her mistress nar- rowly under her deference, made no oppo- sition. For that matter Mrs. Perry was in the receipt of recent letters from her old mis- tress, demolishing the original construc- tion which Perry had put on her instruc- tions, and abounding in injunctions which had Mrs. Archie Douglass supreme will and pleasure, her highest honor and satis- faction, for their constant text. Some- thing has come to her, Perry, but it is no business of ours to make remarks; there is a light in her eye and a set of her mouth, that I never saw matched in my proper Mrs. Douglas. Our present Mrs. Douglas is growing up and taking on, Perry. All she said was, I must go, Mrs. Perry, get me a time-table, yes, it must be the first train north-west. I cannot say anything about coming back; and not another word or sign, as if she had only to speak and have what she wanted done, and it was not for her to give reasons. I shall offer either you or me to go ~vith her as maid or man, al- thou~h she do lead us a dance. I dont think she will, she has grown so fit com- pany for the deans lady, and the rest, dont they know it? This last Mrs. Douglas has picked up that purse of her own which my lady did not bring with her, but she has found more she has found mind, manners, everything. Whatever can Mr. Archie be thinking of to continue to turn his back on his lady, who has grown to be so fine a lady? She was al- ways handsome, as can be seen. But we have nothing to say of our master and mistress; and I only hope, Perry, that they will see we have acted with discre- tion, and done our duty. Perry was compelled to acquiesce even to the alarming suggestion of sending him away as man with vouno Mrs. Douglas on an unknown journey with no termination specified when his melon beds were in their most critical condition. But Pleasance declined the company of either Mrs. Perry or her husbandher growth as a fine lady had not extended to any such necessity in her eyes. I have travelled before by myself, I can manage perfectly, she was a little impatient in re- fusing to be helpless. Mrs. Perry might pack a trunk for her mistress, prepare sandwiches and put them in a sandwich-case, and Perry might go with her to the station, where, however, Pleasance abruptly dismissed him, and took out her ticket, starting alone on her journey of life or death. Stone Cross and Shardleigh were three middle-sized counties apart, but these counties could be traversed in the course of one autumn afternoon, so near had Pleasance been to her husband when he was at his own place, by the speed which annihilates distance. As yet she did not feel it near as she sat with her fingers clasped tightly together, and looked out mechanically on the shifting scene through which she was whirled along. It was a grey, still day; but the country through which Pleasance passed and which rapidly became more and more wooded in its landscape, showed no change in the heavy dusky green foliage of later summer. In spring, thes6 ~oppices, coy- erts, and stretches of young plantation, and old woodland, would present every variety of delicate gre en, daintily brushed and powdered with red and brown. Six weeks later than this September day, they would be gorgeous in their autumn patches of yellow and crimson. Even in midwin- ter, when the varied tracery of the boughs became exposed, with the copper-colored stems of firs, the white bark of birches, and the misty purple tin~e of beech twigs brought out in fine mellow relief against a dark background, there would be no mo- notony such as was presented by the pres- ent sombre uniformity of color and shade. Even xvhen she did not know that she was looking at it, Pleasance had a dreary sense of summer fulfilment, without the glory of autumn. The hedges with their burnished wealth of hips and haws, the very bare fields, were an unconscious relief, after these dark woods, where birds were silent, and last years nests deserted, where hyacinths and primroses had long withered and seeded on their stems. The belied bleak east country, with its openness and width of light, had been less depressing than these unrelieved masses of wood. It chanced that Pleasance had no com- panions for the first part of her journey; towards the close the train got mixed up with and lost in a whole series of trains which had been running with special re WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. gard to a volunteer review held in the neighborhood. It had been a monster review, inspected not only by a field officer and his staff, but by one of the royal princes, and had at- tracted a large company of spectators in addition to the volunteers themselves. Each carriage of the train employed for the purpose of the review, was crowded to overflowing, until at a junction where Pleas- ance s express train stopped, its carriages were pressed into the service. At last, when third and second class carriages were crammed beyond further expansion, a portion of the travellers were transferred to the first-class carriages. A couple of elderly, well-to-do farmers, returning, not from the review, but from the next mar- ket town, were drafted upon Pleasance as her share in the reversion. No intru- sion, I hope, miss; you see we cannot help ourselves, if we are to get home to- night, said one of the invaders. They were both of them bluff and stout men. Both wore dark frock coats which had a Sunday air, and each made a considerable display of shirt front. The speaker addressed Pleasance in civil deprecation, glancing at her general air, but failing to recognize in it any sign of matronhood. At another time Pleasance would have been diverted with the humor of such an excuse to herpointed as it was by the recollection of her own intrusion into a first-class carriage under the wing of Mr. Woodcock, when her ill-fitting pilot jacket, and newly-bought gloves, had not proved a sufficient passport to so elevated a posi- tion. In her present circumstances Pleas- ance uttered only a gravely gracious nega- tive to the idea of intrusion. She sat gaz- ingdre amily out of the window, wondering how the noisy and extremely mundane farce of a fight, like a review, could be acted in close juxtaposition to that last tragic and very real single combat, between life and death, which is the last scene here below of our strange eventful history. The two farmers were not gentlemen farmers,though they appeared to be yeo- men of substance and respectability. They sat in the farthest corner from Pleasance, and were either silent or con- versed for a time in undertones, suffering themselves to be subdued by the presence of the young lady, whom they mentally pronounced in looks and manner, if not in dress, a stunner. Gradually the restraint wore off, and the farmers carried on their conversation au- dibly. Their talk reached Pleasance, and 5 although she was not attending to its sense, by that curious faculty which the mind possesses, the ~vords entered into her ears, so as to make an impression, capable of being retained and recalled, on her brain. The farmers were not speaking of the market and its prices, or of the prospects of their crops and cattle probably these interesting topics had already been dis- posed of they were comparing notes on the more speculative question of their squire, his opinions, his worth, and his weakness. They spoke of him as elderly men do of men much their juniors, and as men in the struggle of business, or who are only moderately affluent, speak of other men the select few, raised far above business fluctuations, born with silver spoons in their mouths, and amply, even excessively provided for durino their threescore years and ten, while still in their cradles. Such men, with their equally lucky daughters, sisters, and wives, if women be included in the estimate, are rarely spoken of with envy by elderly men and women. On the contrary, the duke and duchess and the millionaire are apt to be indicated with a gentle indul bcnce and a mild pity, which broadly hint it is on the cards that all is not gold that glitters. It became clear by the tenants com- ments that their squire had other claims on their tolerance, besides his advantages as a great young squire. His opinions evidently did not coincide with the pro- nounced conservatism of the farmers. He seemed suspected of liberalism and rad- icalism; he was plainly charged with being too much on the side of those rascals of laborers. Yet even in this far more serious and culpable offence than the mere acci- dent of having been born a squires eldest or only son, and thus rendered exempt from these toils and the responsibilities in procuring a living, which go far to render men manly and thoughtful, the farmers spoke of their squire with considerable leniency. It was evident they looked over even submitted to utilize his youthful flush of confidence and enthusiasm, in giving in to the notion that such as he was in position, might be the natural arbitra- tors between county boards, parish ves- tries, and individual employers of labor on the one hand, and the Hod~ es of labor on the other. The whole tone of the criticism implied that there must have been the good offices of possibly more than one generation be- tween the contending parties. Pleasance listened and noted vaguely this talk of the yeomen about their su i6 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. perior, wondering as vaguely all the time, how in the tumult and miserable anxiety of her mind, she could listen to what she was but partially capable of comprehend- ing, to what she knew was of no moment to her. She had ceased to listen, every pulse in her body was beating too impetuously, be- fore she reached the last little country sta- tion, which the train would sweep by, before it approached Westbrook, the country town close to Shardleigh. There were people waiting at the little station, at which there was no stop, and a salutation was waved amidst perceptible excitement from the ~ rou p on the platform to some traveller in the train. Do you see that? it will be to some friend of the gentleman, said one of Pleasances com- panions, who had paused in his talk and was looking out. There is Woodgreen where he was carried, and is lyinghe pointed to a farmhouse which the train was passing. He is not from these parts, you know, said the other, not looking at Pleasance, as she leant forward with heaving breast and convulsive grasp of the side of the carriage to steady herself. The speaker was utterly unconscious of the profound impr~ssion which he ~vas making, as he went on with his speech which carried enlightenment in its careless words: His name is Scotch, and so for that matter is the squires, though I believe he is no re- lation, only a college chum who had come down with the other friends of the family, and was stopping in the house. I hear our Mr. Douglas, who, whatever may be his faults, has his heart in the right place, and no mistake, is terribly cut up by the accident. He has never left the others bedside, day or night, any more than if he had been the squires brother. There was an unexpected silence in the carriage, for the second farmers eyes were riveted on Pleasance. Has there been one accident or two? she was forcing herself to ask, in a husky voice, raising her veil. Who is hurt? The farmer, who had remarked her agitation, dismissed his first conjecture that the young lady was the friend of the injured gentleman to whom the signal had been made, and before whom he and his crony had begun indiscreetly to talk over the accident which, until to-days review, had been the great topic of every circle in the neighborhood. She may have no concern with this accident, but, poor soul young as she is, she has had to do with some other in her life, so that the mere mer~tion of the trouble has given her a turn. Only one, miss, and that one too many, he said in civil explanation. It was an accident in Mr. Douglas of Shard- leighs party, as they were shooting over Furze l3row yesterday. One of the bushes caught a gun, as should not have been loaded, carried by a lout of a beater, and the charge went into the shoulder of a stranger gentleman stopping up at the house. He went down like a shot, and was taken up bleeding like a bullock, from an artery, they say, and carried to Wood- green. He was given over by the first doctor that saw him, but as he lived on, and was one of them folks that could afford more help, he had a dozen medical men around him in no time, while a tip- top surgeon from London was called in. Now I hear they agree between them, that since he has not given them the slip in the mean time, there is some chance for him left. I am glad, said Pleasance, in thank- fulness for the respite to the man she had never seen, clasping her hands, the tears breaking forth and streamino~ cheeks. b over her She dried her tears, leant back, and told herself that it had been a great mistake. No doubt Mr. Woodcock had telegraphed, or written, or travelled away in hot haste, to remedy, so far as she was concerned, the blunder that had been committed. But she could not find time to think of herself, her idle journey and wasted pain; she was full of a blessed confusion of re- lief and gratitude, in which the needless sor- row and perturbation to herself, that would have been foremost in a more selfish and colder-hearted womans mind, found as yet no room. Then she became aware that her com- panions, with quite as much natural deli- cacy as engrossing interest in their own talk, had resumed their interrupted con- versation. But only a few more words reached her ear when it flashed upon her that Archie Douglas was their squire, on whose proceedings they had been animad- verting. She listened for what more was to come with~ tremulous eagerness, but it met her in a form which she had not ex- pected, and overwhelmed her wifh discom- fiture and dismay. She had the prover- bial fate of the hearkener, though her hearkening had related, as far as she knew, to talk of another not of herself, and was done in open day. The speakers were proceeding to speak of her before her face, without their knowing it. One of WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. them was saying that the squire might have taken a lesson from his own unfortunate marriage not to favor violently the lower class and every vagabond, as he was in- clined to do. The other was correcting him and telling him that he reckoned there was some mistake, for the squires wife had proved to be a lady with a great for- tune. But no doubt she was a bitter bad one, whatever she had come from or had in her hand, when even the squire who, poor young fellow, was friendly to every- body could not put up with the woman he had made his wife. Pleasance had to endure the bewilder- ing sense of impersonality, the stran~, e feeling of shame, with which one has to sit and hear his character and history spoken of as that of another, without the power to prevent it. It would be. worse than anything which had gone before, both for herself and these two stout tenants of her husbands, innocent of evil, if she were to say aloud, lookinb in their faces, I am the squires wife, and I have been as much sinned against as sinnino CHAPTER LV. ONE LOOK AT SHARDLEIGH. WHEN the train stopped at Westbrook, the sprucest and least shy of the farmers paused after gettin~~ out, and said civilly to Pleasance, Cant I do anything for you, miss call your servant, or look after your luggage? We are quiet enough at Westbrook in general, but the stir of this review seems to have turned things topsy- turvy here also. Thank you, said Pleasance, but I have no luggage and no servant. I shall return by the next train. I find there has been a misunderstanding about my com- ing here, she added hastily, seeing that her volunteer ally looked surprised. Ah! that is unlucky, hut I would not let myself be too easily put out, the elderly man proffered his sensible advice. There is no end of railway mishaps, continued the farmer, remembering with regret old coachin~ days, attributing every error to railway mismanagement, and pro- ceeding to condole with Pleasance on what he concluded was her plight, with fellow-feeling. There is no train goes right through, I mean as far as me and my friend were taken up, till pretty late in the evening, and the daylight has drawn in a bit by now; you would be landed at your destination in the dark, and no friends expecting you again, it is like; better stop the night here. There are LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 834 7 good hotels where even a young lady like you, though she may feel a trifle awkward, will be perfectly safe and pretty comforta- ble. Jam doing to pick up my horse and trap at the hest (the Swan), and will be happy to show you the way, if you wish it. It is a crying shame there aint dam- a6es to passengers for being misinformed, as well as for accidents, though dam ages might be no object to the like of you. Pleasance, feeling weary and bewildered, readily accepted the friendly service, but before she could get out of the station she was again accosted, by a gentlemans groom this time. He came hurriedly up, looked about him, and approached Pleas- ance, touchin~, his hat. Beg pardon, maam, but is your name Douglas? Pleasance gave a great start and a gasp. Had detection found her out the moment that she had come within a mile of Shard- leig~h? But she could not deny her name, let the result be what it might. Yes, she said, trying to speak firmly. Then she is a friend of the poor gen- tlemans after all, reflected the attentive farmer; but what the dickens did she mean by a misunderstanding about her comino? I have been sent over to fetch you; the carriage is at the gate. Gentleman is better, maam, I am most appy to say looking up decidedly; the worst is over, they appreend. I was bidden be sure and tell you the first thing. The squire he would have come himself, hut he has been so taken up to-day with the prince and everythink; he was only seeinb the prince off when I left. I think there is another mistake, said Pleasance with a faint smile, growing sick in the middle of her sense of deliverance at the bare thought of the danger which she had narrowly escaped. She felt sure, too, that her wits were giving way under the shocks and trials of the day, when she could jumble up the mention of a prince, with Archie Douglas and his engagement in attending on his friend. I am not a relative of the sick gentle- mans, but another Douglas. Her assertion was corroborated by a shout from the farther end of the train. Here, Waterton, here is the lady for Woodgreen, and Pleasance, with a little thrill of interest that withdrew her for a moment from her own pressing cares, joined the rest of the travellers, and the railway functionaries standing aside to make way for, and to gaze sympathetically at the pale, red-eyed woman for whoim Pleasance had been mistaken, and whose i8 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. piteous case she had held, not an hour be- fore, to be her own. To be sure, Pleasances farmer friend was saying. Douglas is a common name seems so, at least no end to misunderstandings, this xv ay, miss, to the Swan. He never for a moment, in his recent discovery of the commonness of the name of Douglas, associated the beautiful young lady whom he xvas proud to be of use to and in so doing, to teach his neighbor Hipwell manners with the wife of xvhom even his philanthropic young squire was fain to get i-id, and whom the farmer him- self had been lately denouncing as a rep- robate. Westbrool~, though a good old town of some size and respectability, added to a certain old-fashioned sober beauty, was not a manufacturing town. The commo- tion in its crowded streets was due to its contingent to the reviexv, and to the fact which Pleasance and her conductor learned as they walked along, that the young prince xvho had naturally been the hero of the review, had passed throuo-h the town in the afternoon. Even the elderly man of bucolic inter- ests was moved by the honor which had been done to the place, and indulged in regrets that his women-folks had not known in time to go and stare at the real live prince with the rest. The news did not prevent Pleasances companion from discharging his office as guide, but his desire to talk the great event over in the bar of the Swan, and to carry the tale home, largely eclipsed the sensation which Pleasance had created in his mind. Nevertheless, he was more than willinb to do a good turn to this pleasant-spoken beauty, who was about the age of his youngest daughter; hut since he regarded himself as a leading man in his line in the district, and xvas fond of taking an active part in every pub- lic matter, he xvas rather glad to get his strange young lady off his hands, and to think no more of her. He was ready to rush into the heat of the discussion going on in the bar of the Swan, whether it were possible to get up impromptu fireworks to celebrate loyally the honor done to the town. The Swan, where Pleasance xvas as de- sirous of finding shelter as her conductor could be of disposing of her, and where the farmer handed her over as a strange youn5 lady who had come to grief by los- ing her way on the railway, fully deserved the character it had received. It was a county-town inn of the best sort, and where, even in the midst of the universal commotion, Pleasance was immediately shown to a good private sitting-room, and was waited upon by a neat, clever, soft- spoken maid. The landlady had only got time to catch a glimpse of Pleasance arriving without luggage or attendant under the champion- ship of Mr. Burrows, of Hogs Lane Farm, but she, like the old landlady of the York- shire Grey, was favorably impressed. She leapt to the conclusion that Mr. Burrows was right, the guest was really one of the o-entle-folks who had been victims to the disorder on the line that day, and xvhom it was alike the landladys duty and policy to treat with every attention. If it had not been for the special supper given in the Swan that night to the West- brook volunteers, the landlady xvould have devoted herself to Pleasance; as it was, she told off for her use the nicest of her chambermaids. Pleasance had grown, as Mrs. Perry had declared, since the days of the Yorkshire Grey, and since her acquaintance with the ways and doings of the Broxvn Coxv. The result of the months and months spent at Willow House, under Mrs. Perrys careful auspices, was that Pleasance took all those marks of distinction as a matter of course, and confirmed the chambermaid in her report to her mistress, that the nexv-comer was quite my lady; such another as Sir Johns daughters, when they had rooms for the county ball. Pleasance ventured to ask her attendant about Shardleigh, and found that, after the prince, who would have been the preferable subject of conversation, there xvas nothing that any inhabitant of West- brook would speak of with greater read- iness and gusto th~ n Shardleigh. It was not only the finest place in the neighbor- hood, but the squire was very liberal, as his father had been before him, in allow- ing the use of old rights of way, and in throwing open his grounds, and especially his winter garden on set days to the pub- lic. The family resided part of every year at Shardleigh, Mrs. and Miss Douglas, the squires mother and sister, were there then; and the prince had called that after- noon at Shardleigh, which had been the reason of his passing throuoh Westbrook. Of course the prince could not be in the neighborhood nobody ever was in the neighborhood without visitinb Shard- leigh grounds. The family always employed the town tradesmen and not only Mrs. Dou~ las, WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. but the squire and his sister took a deal of trouble with the workpeople, and were very good to the poor. And a prince had actually been to Shardleigh in token that its attractions were transcendent. How far was it from Westbrook to Shardleigh? Pleasance questioned. A full mile by the road to the principal gate, then another mile through the park to the winter garden and the house, her willing informant told her; but there was a lane which led by the house, as it stood in the corner of the park, and from one point of which where the lane crossed Burnham Brook you could catch quite a near view of the house with the great conservatory and the terrace. The lane was not above a quarter of a mile from the town, but few people cared for it now, since every Tuesday, any one who liked could drive in at the main entrance, and go right up to the house, and walk all over the gardens and the conservatory; even when the family were at home, they took care to he out of the way, or they greeted the visitors pleasantly. Mr. Douglas had even been known to turn aside in order to set right a party of tourists. People said that it was beneath him, and that he should know his own place and think more of himself; but the pleasant-spoken chain-. bermaid thought he was a very fine young gentleman indeed, and was sure he would be as kind as a woman to the poor gentle- man lying badly hurt at Woodgreen. I am sure he will, said Pleasance, with eager acquiescence. She had dined in the golden glow of an approaching fine September sunset in which the grey day had ended; she was detaining the maid who had acted as nim- ble hands and feet to a venerable grey- headed waiter nominally serving, xvhile Pleasance cut an apple into minutest sec- tions, and turned over its ~eeds. I should like a stroll this beautiful evenino~ she said hesitatingly, setting about the first piece of duplicity she had been guilty of in her life, and necessarily bungling it; could 1 find the lane you spoke of? is it easily reached? Quite easily, the maid said with decision; she had only to go as far as St. Nicholass Church the old church with the square towerin sight of the Swan windows, and pass it, when she would find the lane which turned off fifty yards or so beyond the churchyard. It was a very quiet walk Westbrook was generally quiet, for it had no rough mill hands, or swaggering sol- diers, or tramps to speak of. But this night, when there was talk of rockets to 9 be thrown up, or at least a konfire lighted in the Elm Meadow, the maid would go bail that the lady would not meet a living soul in Shardleigh Lane. She would not meet a living soul, Pleas- ance repeated in feverish reassurance, for a longing had seized her to look for this once, when she was so near, on Shard- leigh, which might have been her home. She had no apprehension of meeting Archie Dough s, whose post was by his friend at the farmhouse, a station distant. The only other person whose recognition Pleasance feared was Archies sister Jane. But Pleasance argued that it was very un- likely, when she only knew a single girl in the whole population of Westbrook, num- bering ten thousand, that this solitary girl should be the very person Pleasance would meet in a deserted lane, in the even- ing, of all tim Cs, when a girl in Jane Doug- lass rank must have dressed for dinner, and be obliged to confine herself to the conservatory or the terrace. Besides, though this single girl was her own sister-in-law, Pleasance, whom she had only seen once, and that for a short time in the Willow House drawing-room, would not probably recognize her in her walking-dress with hat and veil. Pleasance ruled that there was no risk of discovery from this enemy; and she herself would be gone early the next morning on her return to Stone Cross. So she went out before the yellow light of the sunset had reached its climax, and found the few streets she traversed not only restored to their usual quiet, but already forsaken for the anticipated rejoi- cings in the Elm Meadow. She had no difficulty in finding St. Nicholass Church the old parish church of the town and in striking upon the lane beyond the churchyard. But in con- sideration that the lane had the high park wall on the one hand, and an equally high hawthorn hedge on the other, and lay deep in the shadow, Pleasance not only feared that the September dusk would find her there, but doubted that she would have nothing save her walk for her pains. As far as she had gone for the first five minutes, she could only ~ee the grass get- ting a darker and darker green beneath her feet, and the sky changing from blue to purple over her head. She could not conceive how, with such barriers on each hand, her prospect could be extended. But just as she had brought herself to say she must give up the foolish quest, she saw that the park wall and the hedge before her gave way on the right hand and 20 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. on the left to the low parapet, ivy-hung, leigh when he was on his way to find of an old bridge. The green-garlanded Archie Douglass wife at the carrier s inn arch, with the brown water stealing in the side street, near the Shoreditch throu b h below, presenting an agreeable Station. Pleasance was perfectly aware feature, varyin~ the park scenery as viewed that she had changed since the time a from the great house beyond, was doubt few months a~o when she had thought less one of the reasons why the lane itself a London cab a fine carriage, and been at had been allowed to remain, home in the Yorkshire Grey. She had When Pleasance stood on the pic~ not forgotten that in the interval she had turesque old cow-bridge over Burnham become an heiress worthy of the name Brook, the park with its clumps of magnifi- even in sight of Shardleigh, and who cent timber stretched before her under the could, if she chose, provide herself with a lingering radiance all the more impres- home almost as fair, refined, and exclusive sive because of the sombreness of the as this home. But the rearin~ and expe- lane of this loveliest September sunset. rience of many years came back upon her, It retained an after-glow made up of the in a rush, at this moment, and were all the precious dust of the sunk sunbeams, more irresistible since during the whole and the slight mist which came between previous day she had been thinking and her dazzled eyes and the glory, bathing dreaming of Archie Douglas as Joel Wray and softening the undulating lines of the in the surroundings in which she had so trees, and the sweep of the grassy open- quickly learned to know and love him, at ings. the wheat-hoeing and on the harvest-field, The pile of the house, appearing so on the beach at Cheam, in the old manor- close to her as to startle her for a mo- house roo n rustic places, with their ment, was very similar in Pleasances un- homely figures, widely removed from this sophisticated eyes, which knew little of scene, so noble in its repose, that it did architecture save what she had drawn not seem unmeet that a prince had been a from her haunt in Stone Cross Cathedral, guest there that day. to any other large, handsome building the While Pleasance stood on the bridge size of which makes it imposing. She and noted that bright liThts were spring- could not see, and could not very well have ing up in the house, she ~vas so near it appreciated, the gateway and portico, which that the sound of a window being opened, were not incongruous excrescences, as they drew her attention to the terrace which are in most instances, but were fine integral she had overlooked. It lay before the portions of the older wino of the house, long French windows, just lit, which constituting Mr. Woodcocks chief pride Pleasance had judged rightly belonged to in the mansion as a man of enlightened a drawing-room, and had flights of steps taste. Of the winter g~ rden, of which leading to a lower terrace, and thence to a every lady made so much, and of which flower-garden, which was almost entirely Pleasance had heard in a former stage of out of Pleasances scope of vision. her existence, when she had little guessed The window opened was one of the its history, she could see merely the towers drawing-room windows reaching to the and cupolas still reflecting the sunlight, floor, and out of it relieved against the hut only giving her a vague hint of the light background, taking Pleasances fairy world within, breath away with. consternation for the in- Yet, with all its deficiencies, the glimpse stant, and causing her to draw back in the of Shardleigh under that wonderful mel- utmost agitation and alarm within the low light, which would have transformed shadow of the park wall came a lady the meanest, most barren prospect of a and a gentleman. The gentleman, as wretched quarter of a great town, or a bleak Pleasance knew in a second through the chalk down, or a black peat moss, into a~ gathering dusk, was Archie Douglas, no place almost fair, almost invested with longer watching by the bed of his friend interest, for the moment, ravished Pleas- in the farmhouse three miles off, and the ances soul with its rich and stately beauty. lady, Pleasance guessed by the flaxen hair She stood leaning against the parapet flowing loose over her shoulders and white of the bridge, and looking her heart out. gown, must be his sister. As she looked there came back upon her For a moment of acute distress Pleas- in a flood the same impression with which ance labored under the delusion that she she had gazed in the early mornin~, in must be seen and recognized, even as she London, on the house in Grosvenor Place saw and recognized the figures before her. that very sense of incongruity with XVhen she recovered and knew herself which Mr. Woodcock had recalled Shard- safe, she gave herself up to one long, ar WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 21 dent gaze at the man she had loved and wedded, whom she had not seen for months, whom she had thought to see that morning stretched lifeless, or sighing out his life before her. But Pleasance had never seen Archie Douglas look as he ap- peared then, not even in the last encoun- ter at a fashionable hour in a fashionable park. As if in an echo of Pleasance~ s convic- tion of the gulf which divided them, he came out on the terrace in the magnificent scarlet and gold uniform of the officer of a yeomanry regiment, which he had put on when he hastily joined the review, in order to escort the prince to Shardleigh. The dress, though fantastic in Pleasances eyes, enhanced as she could not have believed it was in the power of dress to set off the natural elegance of Archie Douglass figure and the comeliness of his prepos- sessing face. Jane Douglas also was not in her drdi- nary evening dress of simple white muslin. An impromptu garden-party had been as- sembled at Shardleigh as soon as the princes intentions were known, and Jane retained its demi-toilette, in which Pleas- ance could distinguish the gossamer fall of lace, and the gleam, against the light with- in, of gold and jewels at the throat, the bosom, and the wrists. A third member of the party who had followed the others to the window and stood there, had a costly Indian shawl drawn round her figure, slight and graceful as a girls, and showed the same flashes and points of light, where the setting of a lQcket, the eyes of a serpent bracelet, the stones of a cross, came out on the black and white of her dress. The family party were alone after the dispersal of their guests, including the chief. The honor and the fatigue were alike over, and the mother, son, and daugh- ter were left by themselves, not too ex- hausted,to indulge in natural satisfaction, and compare notes on the occurrences of the day. Added to this welcome conclu- sion, there was in the Douglases case the increase of a very lively sense of relief from a recent burden of anxiety and sym- patbetic distress. The temporary effect of these combined influences on an im- pressionable young fellow like Archie Douglas, was to render him for the hour in exuberant spirits. Pleasance, standing not so far off, on the bridge, in the lane, could hear the gay voices and laughter, with Archies rising pre-eminent. She could see the two younger figures flitting in their freedom and gladness backwards and forwards, with Archies arm drawn through his sisters in place of hers drawn through his, to hold her by his side, and the two contrasted heads, dark and fair, in closest confidential contact, as their two owners pursued their merry stroll. It did not seem that anything or anybody was wanting to the group. How could there be, especially when the one who had vol- untarily excluded herself, and who stood unsuspected, looking into paradise, was only Pleasance? What could she have in common with the young fellow before her a great one of the earth in his peacock plumage? Was he indeed the same foot- sore reaper to whose primitive wants she had once ministered? If he had been what he had seemed, she might have served him in a thousand ways, and proved his best friend; as it was, she was right that he had no need of her; she would have been at the best a tolerated intruder, a wearisome drag on him and his friends. A sharp pang went through her heart as she told herself this, and added that her own eyes saw and testified to the ultimate wisdom and integrity of her course. But she had been accustomed to think of Archie Douglas as still remembering and regretting her, however foolishly. True, he had been in the animation of pleasant, social intercourse when she had met him riding with his sister and Rica Wynfiham in the Park; but his tone had changed instantaneously at the sight of her; in their interview after he had acknowledged her as his wife, he had shown himself full of restless pain and misery. Mr. Wood- cock had always talked of him as of a man disappointed, dissatisfied with his abundance of good things. Altogether it was a great blow which struck to Pleasances heart to see Archie Douglas the happiest of the happy. She did not pause to inquire whether she had any right to resent it. But her heart spoke out more truly in its inconsistent cry, You are cruel, Archie Douglas you whom I thought. so kind, cruel and heartless, you are like the rich man who took the ewe lamb. You sought me with a false pretence; and now, though our lives are sundered, you can be as happy as if you had never known of my existence: it is as if you chose the time when I had flown to you iii what I held to be your extremity, to show me that you never knew what love meant. You have made me lose my love Joel, as well as my husband Archie Doublas. I have wasted my whole heart upon a dream. The glow in the western sky paled, 22 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. faded, and darkened; Shardleigh park and house paled and darkened with the sky; the first star came out, and the dews began to fall. The mother within tapped on her chil- drefi, who obeyed the summons reluc- tantly. The mute shadow watching all, stole back through the silent lane to the inn. From Macmillans Magazine. COLONEL ]3ARRE AND HIS TIMES. THE Life of Lord Shelburne, by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, of which the con~ cluding volume has just made its appear- ance, has brought the latter end of the eighteenth century so prominently before the public that no apology.is necessary for offering a slight sketch of one of Lord Shelburnes greatest friends Colonel Barr6. In framing the following article much of the material has necessarily been drawn from the same sources with those of Lord Shelburnes Life. The Gren- ville Correspondence, the Bedford Cor- respondence, the Chatham Correspond- ence, Walpoles works, the Life of Lord Rockingham, Ban crofts History of America, the Parliamentary debates, and numerous other books and pamphlets bearing upon the history of the time have been consulted. The passages relatinb to the communications which passed between Pitt and Bute are taken from the unpub- lished MS. of Sir Gilbert Elliot, who was on a confidential footing with both Pitt and Bute. What occurred on these occa- sions curiously evinces how little Butes professions were to be relied on. We may now turn to our narrative. Isaac Barr6 was born in Dublin in 1726. His father, Peter Barr6, and his mother, Miss Raboteau, were both natives of the district of Rochelle, and both had fled before that tempest of persecution which in 1685 completed the annihilation of French Protestantisin. When the Edict of Nantes was revoked, when fertile dis- tricts and populous towns were converted into deserts, when oppressions equally cruel with and much less defensible than those of Titelmano or Torquemada had turned Languedoc into a waste, and had driven its wretched inhabitants to find a friendly shelter in the caves of the Pyre- nees or the thickets of the Ardennes, they, with many of their unfortunate country- men, took refuge in Ireland. The escape of Miss Raboteau was not made without difficulty. Heavy penalties were placed upon emigration. Ships of war guarded the coast. Troops patrolled the frontier, and chains and the galleys were reserved for the fugitive. Miss Ra- boteau, in her home near Rochelle, was offered the alternative of marrying a Catholic gentleman for whom she did not care, or of lifelong devotion to a religion which she detested. There was only one means of escape. Her uncle, who had some time before settled in Dublin as a merchant, was in the habit of payin~ occa- sional trading visits in his own vessel to Rochelle. His niece informed him of her miserable plight, and implored his assist- ance. He concealed her in Rochelle till the time for embarkation drew nigh, and then, placing her in an empty cask, trans- i)Orted her on board his ship. In Dublin, whither he carried her, she married Peter Barr6. Little is known of the early life of the Barr~s. From the nature of their exile it is probable they were poor. It is stated that through the patronage of the Bishop of Clogher, whose child Mrs. Barr6 had nursed, they were established in a small grocers shop; but this account must be accepted with reserve, as it was made many years afterwards, when Barr6s first appearance on the political stage and his celebrated attack on Pitt might incline people to exaggerate his insignificance for the purpose of heightening his audacity. If Barr& s parents were poor, their means were at all events sufficient to afford their son a good education. He was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar, and graduated in 1745. The bar was the~profession select- ed for him by his parents. Garrick, charmed with displays of his acting, rec- ommended the stage, and coupled the proposition with the liberal offer of a thou- sand a year. Barr~ himself chose the army. The war of the Austrian succes- sion was then raging on the Continent. As far as the English contingent was con- cerned, it had been carried on with uniform want of success. Dissensions in the camp had already threatened the existence of the army. Divisions in the cabinet pre- cluded any hope that these dissensions would ever be entirely healed. But Bar- r& s nature xvas both ardent and sanguine, and he probably looked upon a military career as the quickest road to fame. In 1746 he received his commission as an ensign in the 32nd regiment, then stationed in Flanders. The profession which Barr6 thus em~ COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. 23 braced, and of which he was destined for many years to remain an active but undis- tinguished member, was, during the mid- dle of the last century, at its worst period. Political corruption had sapped every branch and every rank of the service. Commissions, promotions, favors, were placed in one gre at mart, and sold to the highest political bidder. The discipline of the army1 was sacrified to the discipline of the House of Commons. For a young man like Barr6, without means and with- out connections to enter the army was simply to doom himself to years of morti- fication and disappointment. The internal condition of the army was no better than its administration. Barrd, like Wolfe, must often have abhorred the society into which he was cast. To the favored few indeed many rex4ards were offered. There were perquisites the very names of which are now almost forgotten. There was nearly complete immunity from service. Many officers spent more time at Ranelagh than they did with their re iments. But to Barrd, and men like Barrd, xvho had no favors to receive, the army presented a very different aspect. They had no society but that of their brother officers; no reward but in the efficiency of their regiments. There was little in the officer of that day to recom- mend him. He was badly educated, very often profligate. He was the butt of sat- irists. Sometimes he was a schoolboy, who staggered under the weight of his cockade, sometimes a shopman, attempting a military bluster. As for the discipline of the men, nothing could be worse. In the March of the Guards to Finchley, Hogarth has presented to us the wildest scene of confusion and licentiousness. To a young and aspiring Vnan like Barrd the first charms of such a profession must soon have yielded to a bitter sense of mortification. Crushed by the wealth of more fortunate comrades, with neither influence to command favor nor means to purchase it, his future prospects must have appeared most disheartening. It is true that many of the statesmen of that and of a later time Henry Pelbam, Con- way, Shelburne, the great Pitt himself were, or had been, soldiers, but these men were all favored by political connection, and of political connection Barrd was entirely destitute. After protracted negotiations the war was concluded in 1748 by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and with it disappeared Barrds chance of snatching fame from any fortunate exploit. For nine years we now lose sight of him. We know that he spent part of that time with his regiment in Scotland and at Gibraltar, but of his man- ner of life we are entirely ignorant. Wal- pole asserts that he employed the intervals of duty in assiduous study, and it is likely enough that this was the case, as no man could have acquired such a mastery of speaking, unless he had studied literature carefully, and cultivated the art of compo- sition. It is not till 1757 that, as a volun- teer in Wolfes regiment, on the expedi- tion against Rochefort, he again comes prominently before the eye. The years which followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle supplied many proofs that it would not endure. British India was attacked by Dupleix. The American col- onies were threatened by M. la Jonqu~ire. Large forces of soldiers and sailors were collected by the French government. En- gland regarded these signs with alarm. In 1754 Pelbam died. Newcastle exclud- ed Pitt from the administration. War with France broke out. Alarm became converted into a panic. The people trust- ed Pitt as much as they distrusted Nexv- castle. They determined to support Pitt. The history of the short but violent stru ~- gle which ensued is well known: how the king wavered, how Nexvcasfle crin~ed, how Pitt, at first inexorable, at length bent, and how Fox, omitting to calculate xvhat had hardly before entered into the calculations of a minister, the power of public opinion, sank into a humble place- man. Pitt was the man who personified this revolution in popular power. The hope, the force, and the enterprise of the nation looked to him for support. Pitt, and only Pitt, could save the country from what, to a people conscious of its own strength and its own resources, must have seemed a living death. While Newcastle was minister the most heroic efforts could be attended but by greater failure; while his placemen filled the offices the most lavish grants would but accumulate their illicit treasure. The voice of virtue, which Pitt alone had raised, and which died without an echo on the level wilderness of official c& rruption, had found an answer in the hearts of the people. I~ June, 1757, he became to all intents and purposes prime minister. Pitt at once proceeded to take vigorous measures against France. First of all he organized an expedition against Rochefort. As has already been said, Barr6 was at- tached to it in the capacity of a volunteer. The expedition terminated ingloriously; 24 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. but it marks the turning-point in Barr6s life. The two men who did more for him than anybody else in the world were at- tached to the same regiment. Wolfe res- cued him from obscurity after he had lin- gered a subaltern for eleven years. Shel- burne in after life brought him into Parlia- ment, and became his patron and friend. Wolfe was the only officer whose con- duet at Rochefort had made him conspic- uous. Pitt, with his wonderful insight into character, selected him in the following year to accompany General Amherst as brigadier in the expedition against Cape Breton. By the influence of Wolfe, Barr6 was also appointed to the same expedition as major of brigade, though Wolfe himself states that at that time he hardly knew Barr6 by sight, or had spoken ten words to him. Early in June the English fleet appeared off Louisburg. Louisburg was perhaps the most important French strong- hold in America. It stood like a sentinel in the Atlantic to guard the maritime road to Canada, and was the first and strongest link of that chain of fortresses which had been destined to bind the rugged shores of the St. Lawrence with the sunny and fruitful regions of the Mississippi. But the glory of France in America was set- ting, the days of her ambition were de- parted, and dreams of conquest and em- pire had passed into realities of bitterness and humiliation. A few forts, a few towns, a few citadels still acknowledged her sovereignty, but these, which had once been the guardians of her prosperity, were now left the fragments of her decay. Lou- isburb was doomed. Nothing could save it; neither the fogs which shrouded it, nor the iron barrier of rugged rocks which en- circled it, nor the wall of felled pine-trees which hedged in the shore, and through whose branches the defenders poured a murderous fire. Nature and art failed to afford it protection, and Louisburg was compelled to capitulate. Fortune had destined that Barr6 should be a participator in the final subjugation of Canada. The capture of Louisburg was the first step towards its accomplishment, the second was the attack upon Quebec. In 1759 the expedition under Wolfe was organized. Barr6s abilities had from the very first commanded the respect of Wolfe. Common dangers and common successes had probably -on his regard. Barr6 was appointed to the expedition. The post of adjutant-general was conferred upon him, with the rank of captain in the army. In June the fleet sailed into the St. Lawrence under French colors. Great was the ex ultation of the Canadians on beholding the friendly ensign. Tb e discovery of the deception overwhelmed them with grief. The whole province was in consternation. The zeal of fervor of patriot ism, the ferocity of the savage, and the valor of a few veteran troops were arrayed under Montcalm to defend an impregnable city. The difficulties of the English ap- peared insurmountable. The charts of the St. Lawrence were imperfect; its shoals intricate; its storms destructive; its rapid current floated down fireships on the fleet. At length, when every effort had been baffled, when the lines of the enemy seemed impenetrable, when XVolfe in his despondency had prepared the gov- ernment for impending failure, triumph rose from the shadows of disaster. After a lapse of more than a hundred years the memory of the exploit is not dimmed. Once more we behold the busy but noise- less embarkation; again we feel the breath- less sil~nce which reigns over the dark river; again we se.e the intrepid ascent of its lofty and rocky bank; and we again hear the thunder of the volley which, while it decided the fate of the battle, rang over the grave of the French empire in America. The battle of Quebec was unfortunate for Barr~. A severe wound in his cheek injured his sight, and the death of Wolfe withdrew the protection of a friend and patron. He wrote to Pitt, but Pitt seldom favored such applications for promotion or office. The answer was unsatisfactory, and Barr6 was once more compelled to lean upon his friends. In September, 176o, Amherst sent him home with de- spatches notifying the capture of Mont- real. With his return to England com- menced a new epoch in his life. On the field of Quebec he had lost his greatest. friend. With Pitts reply his hopes of promotion had vanished. He was now to find in Lord Fitzmaurice a more powerful patron, and in Parliament a wider field for his ambition. Walpole says that it was the custom of Lord Fitzmaurice to collect a knot of young orators at his house, and that Barr~, who formed one of the band, soon over- topped the others. However this may he, Lord Fitzmaurice, on succeeding to his father, Lord Shelburne, in 1761, nominated Barr6 to the vacant family borough of Wycombe. When Barr~ took his seat in the House of Commons, the stron~ ministry of Pitt had at length fallen. Little more than a year before, its unanimity and its concord COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. 25 had appeared complete. The king seemed hale and hearty, and everything portended a prolonged administration. But fortune had decreed that Pitts glory as a minister should be eclipsed at the moment of cul- mination. Machiavelli, in tracing the history of Florence, describes hoxv happiness and ruin swept in waves over the city; how war bred peace, and how repose engen- dered strife. In the same way, the una- nimity of Pitts government contained the seeds of its own destruction. The para- mount ascendency of Pitts will could alone produce harmony; and Pitts will, while it ruled despotically, excited the jealousy and the fear of his colleagues. The first stroke of misfortune was the death of George II., the commencement of Pitts decline the council held by George III. on the day of his fathers decease. The council continued to sit during the whole day, and it was not till seven oclock in the evening that its members, harassed with anxiety, and weary of conjectures for the future, were permitted to adjourn. Late as was the hour, Bute at once de- inanded an interview with Pitt. A few months before he had employed Elliot, then at the Board of Admiralty, to effect an interview with Pitt for the purpose, as he expressed it, of renewing that fraternal union which had once existed between them. To this request Pitt had, in a con- versation with Elliot, returned a positive, and a not very courteous, refusal. Bute desired to be at the head of the treasury, though in the capacity of a cipher; Pitt would not listen to such a proposal. He believed I3utes character to be imperious and grasping; he suspected him of a desire to meddle with the war, and he declared he would permit not the color, not the shadow of a change in its conduct. If he was not to direct, he would retire; he would not be rid with a check-rein. He concluded with the followinb words By distrusting his friends, he will become dependent on his enemies. I will make way for his greatness I will assist it only I cannot make part of it. In the conversation on the evening of the death of George II. Bute reminded Pitt of this former overture. Great changes had occurred, but he was still, he said, ready to stretch out the hand of friend- ship. He assured him that he had laid aside all thoughts of being first lord of the treasury that he meant to be a private man by the side of the king, and that he approved of the system of the war. Pitt thanked Bute for his expressions of friend- ship, but said he must distinguish between a public and a private friendship; the lat- ter was a virtue, the former was often fac- tion and cabal. He must remain com- pletely independent. His politics, like his religion, would admit of no accommoda- tion. If only the country were saved, he would agree with Bute in wishing to retire. The only difference between them, he said, was that his lordship would practice his philosophy in a court, he in a village. So the two rivals parted: Pitt to continue for a little longer his high career of inflex- ible command Bute to plot, to under- mine, and to divide the government. The first blow fell upon Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer. Legge was a good man of business. His speeches were pointed and concise. He is described on one occasion as the only man in the House who seemed to have learned his troy weight no very great compliment to other members. In 1756 he had thrown up his office in the government to join Pitt, and had shared with Pitt the shower of gold boxes which had rewarded their zeal. He had, however, offended the king, when Prince of Wales, by not supporting a political enemy at a Hampshire election consequently in March, 1761, he was dis- missed. His future life, he said to the king, would show his zeal. Nothing but your future life, replied the monarch, can eradicate the bad impression I have received of you.~~ The next to fall was Holdernesse. 1-lol- dernesse had originally been brought into office by Newcastle. Newcastle described him as taciturn, dexterous enough, and most punctual in the execution of his or- ders. He was in reality a dull man of fashion, who had married a Dutch bride, who gave splendid f~1es, who, in conjunc- tion with Lord Middlesex, had at one time managed the opera, and who now late in life was still strugglin~ for the garter. Pitt had placed him in the cabinet as a cipher. He had been a cipher for nearly twenty years ,and it might have been sup- posed had become used to his trade. Now, for the first time, he resented being passed over, and offered Bute to procure his own resignation by with his colleagues. When a convenient moment presented itself, Holdernesse was dis- missed, and exchanged his office for a rich sinecure. Bute succeeded to the seals. While these changes affected the outer appearance of the government, the discord within it was fast producing rupture. Bed- ford had early in the year resigned the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland in consequence 26 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. of some diffic\ilties upon which he and Pitt had taken different views. Bedford, though a violent and a headstrong man, was iso a courageous one, and well knew how to prize the same quality in another. He seems to have had a real admiration for Pitts character, but the flame of dis- sension was carefully fanned by Rigby, and the negotiations with France finally raised an insurmountable harrier between the two statesmen. He therefore joined in an alliance with flute. George Grenville ~vas another malcon- tent. He, too, hated the war. He had never cordially liked Pitt. For years he thouo~ht that his own services had been disregarded. As long ago as the time of Pelham, he had stated his grievances to Pitt, and Pitt had ignored them. Pitt, he said, had brouTht division and unhappi- ness into his family, and he seemed even to look upon Pitts marriage to his sister as an injury to himself. flute carefully cultivated the friendship of Grenville. He made him a cabinet mim~mister, and hinted at future favors. Of the remainder of the council, Grenville had never been a friend of Pitt, and Newcastle, timid and fickle, at heart desired peace, and was at all times ready to sacrifice his friends to himself. The rupture with Spain brought matters to a crisis. Pitt joined issue with his col- leagues on the simple question of peace or war. He was beaten, and with Temple at once resigned. flutes authority in the cabinet was now absolute, but it was necessary that arrange- ments should be made for the approaching session. Parliament would meet in less than a month. The government had not a single speaker in the House of Commons upon whom it could rely. There was lit- erally nobody who would venture to with- stand the eloquence and invective of Pitt now driven into opposition, and the recol- lection of Pitt in opposition, his scorn, his satire, and his vehemence, still rankled in the mind of many a victim, flute had ex- pected much of George Grenville. A message was sent to hurry him from Wot- ton. Every flattery was blandished upon him. He was offered the seals of the sec- retary and the leadership of the Flouse of Commons. He must not think of the speakership. He was far too valuable a servant to the king to be allowed to retire from active politics. He was to receive all the support that the authority of the crown could bestow. Hishonor was to be the kings honor, his disgrace to be the kings disgrace. Only one condition was imposed upon him. He was never to men- tion the name of Fox. Grenville for the moment refused the seals, but accepted the leadership of the House of Com~mons. The union was scarcely complete before it began slowly, though surely, to dissolve. In fact Grenvilie was not a man who ever could work satisfactorily with others. He had a very high notion of his own capacity; he was very sensitive; and he was very domineering. He soon showed symptoms of jealousy both of Fox and of flute; and his sensitiveness was wounded in its ten- derest part by Temple, who ordered his hall-porter to close the door in his face, and who rudely turned his back upon him at the Privy Council. Before the meeting of Parliament the adhesion of another powerful supporter was secured. This, extraordinary as it may appear after flutes conversation with Grenville, was no other than Fox. His venal services were now purchased upon the promise of a peerage at an early date to his wife, Lady Caroline. The negotiations with Fox had been conducted by Barr6s patron, the young Lord Shelburne. Shelburne was then perhaps the most sincere friend whom flute possessed. He was seriously con- vinced of the necessity of peace, and was much more consistent than flute in its pursoit. He was only in his twenty- fourth year, but had already given signs of ability, and had expressed a desire for political employment. With the intoler- ance of youth, he could see nothing in anybody elses opinions but his own. Rigby, who, whatever his other merits were, could not boast of a high political morality, contemptuously observed that Shelburne seemed to think that virtue was confined to himself and his friends; and Fox, likewise, admonished him that there was more honesty in the world than he gave it credit for. The sneers of Righy and the lectures of Fox give us the most reasonable assurance of the sincerity of Shelburne. In the impending struggle he was prepared to throw his whole weight into the scale of the government. Such was the condition of parties when Barr~ took his seat in the Flouse of Com- mons. Much was expected during the session. Scarcely ever had matters of greater importance been placed before Parliament. The defence of an old war, the reasons against a new one. were to be debated with all the acrimony which broken party faith and broken family ties could inspire. In the Commons the gov- ernment was supported by a large major- COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. 27 ity, but it was for the most part a timid rounded as he was by the most unprece- and dull herd. Pitts eloquence awed dented difficulties. But Lord North cx- them. His sarcasm scared them. Not perienced no compassion. He was a one dared to enter the lists against him. wretch, a corrupter, a sycophant. Noth- Before the Christmas recess I3arrd had ing hut his head would expiate his iniqul- broken the spell. He had overwhelmed ties. While these tirades were going on, Pitts person with abuse and his measures Lord North probably slumbered peacefully with reproach. He was a profligate mm- as long as he could, but when he was com- ister, the execration of the people of En- pelled to answer he did so with a degree gland. .There he would stand, turning of good sense and self-command that must up his eyes to heaven, that witnessed his ever do honor to his disposition. perjuries, and laying his hand in a solemn The pre-eminence of Barr6 as a speaker manner on the table that sacrilegious was due principally to his extraordinary hand, that had been employed in tearino power of invective, but it would be a great out the bowels of his mother country. injustice to suppose that there was noth- Pitt maintained a haughty but discreet ing but invective in his speeches. On the silence. He, at all events, was not the contrary, some of them abound with wise man to cast the first stone. Perhaps his maxims and good, sound common sense. mind wandered back through the memo- He was generally on what we should call ries of nigh twenty years. He may have the constitutional side, and as the great recollected the same grave assembly con- constitutional questions of that day have vulsed by an angry and acrimonious debate. all been settled in his favor, it is naturally The shadows of faces now passed away difficult for us to help being struck by his may again have surrounded him; and the arguments. But Barr6 does not deserve voice of Sandys imploring him to spare our unqualified ap~probation. He was es- the rank and authority of Carteret may sentially a party man. He spoke for his have once more rung in his ears. This party, and he voted wit/i his party. Wal- speech was applauded by Fox and by pole called him a bravo, and nothing can Righy, but the House was disgusted. It so well illustrate the dependence of his was too savage for the bitterest partisan. position as the fact, that clever and elo- On its conclusion Barr~ was seen to eat a quent as he was, the first trace we find of biscuit. Does it eat biscuit? said his making an original motion was in 1778, Charles Townshend, I thought it ate seventeen years after he entered Parlia- nothing but raw flesh. The court alone ment. He was one of those mercenaries was pleased. of the great political leaders of last cen Horace Walpole was a witness of this tury, who after a tumultuous life of Parlia- curious scene. As he approached the mentary conflict were content to retire into House of Commons the tones of a new oblivion upon a pension, men of vast abili- voice struck upon his ear, as he passed ties 4nd too often of low morality, who the door the figure of a new speaker fell flamed across the political heavens like upon his eye. The House which for the meteors, and whose brilliant track, al- last few years had scarcely ventured on a ready beginning to fade in the lapse of great debate, and which Pitt had tamed time, alone remains to mark their former into such absolute submission, that, as splendor. Walpole himself had once remarked, a Thus Barrd found himself fi~hting the no was as likely to be heard from the battles of the people, and his eloquence House of Commons as from an old wom- was of a sort peculiarly adapted to such an, presented a scene of the most violent warfare. It was of an aggressive charac- confusion. Walpoledescribes Barr6 as a ter. It is doubtful whether as a minis- black, robust, middle-aged man, of a mili- terial speaker he would ever have risen tary figure; a bullet, lodged loosely in his to any eminence. His mind was fired by cheek, had distorted his face, and had im- all the lofty principles which a popular op- parted a savage glare to one eye; but position, whether rightly or wrongly, unprepossessing as was his appearance, seems always to inspire. He was the Walpole admits that his diction was both champion of resistance in every form; of classic and eloquent. The harsh chord mobs against soldiers; of the people which I3arrd first struck never ceased to against the Parliament; of the Parliament vibrate. Through his Parliamentary career against the crown. The corporation of his speeches were marked by remorseless London denied the privileges of the severity. Could anything have instilled a House of Commons; he recommended drop of mercy into his gall, it would have concession. The American colonies rose been the amiability of Lord North, sur- in rebellion against England; he coun 28 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. selled compliance. His speeches abound from Bute to tell him that Fox was de- with appeals to the moral sympathies. signed for the leadership of the House of Virtue is eulogized; tyranny, corruption, Commons. It was in vain that Grenville and fraud meet with proper reprobation. appealed to the king, and reminded h~m of Such themes can never be exhausted, and his former promises, and of his long- are always popular. It is doubtful declared enmity to Fox. The king was whether his eloquence, stripped of such firm. Bad men, he said, must be called spangles as these, would ever have shone upon to govern bad men, and Grenville, so brilliantly before the world. But Barr6 with feelings of anger, was compelled to was not always so fortunate as to charm surrender the lead of the House of Coin- the House with his language, or to terrify mons, and to exchange the office of the it with his invective. He was an Irish- secretary of state for the Admira ty. man, and his French extraction was un- The conclusion of peace withdrew the one able to save him from the penalties of an great bond that had hitherto attached the Irish birth. On one fatal occasion, when ministers. he was speaking on the subject of Amer- Early in 1763 the position of Bute was ica, he declared, in stentorian tones, I most embarrassing. F ox, his ablest sup- think Boston ought to be punished; she porter, hated in the House of Commons, is your eldest son. The House, which and in wretched health, attempted to draw he had oftener driven to tears than to towards his old friends, the Dukes of Dev- mirth, naturally exploded into a roar of onshire and Cumberland; and Bedford, laughter. though still in Paris, was inclined to lean For some time after his first display in to the friendship of Pitt. Butes own the House of Commons, Barr6 does not fears accelerated his fall. He had yen- seem to have been a frequent speaker. A tured to impose an unpopular tax. The second attack on Pitt in the following city of London remonstrated, mobs were year received the most marked disapprov- apprehended, and Bute had already suf- al, and his voice was almost drowned by fered too much violence at the hands of the shuffling, talking, and coughing of his the people not to dread a personal encoun- audience. In all probability this was the ter. He resigned, and having recoin- last act of hostilitpwhich Barr6 displayed mended George Grenville as his successor, towards Pitt, as a rapid change in the rela- withdrew to drink the waters of Harrow- tions of parties was soon to effect a union gate. that remained unaltered till death. In the new government the claims of In May, 1762, the poor old Duke of Barr6 were not overlooked. He became Newcastle was driven from office. He adjutant-general to the British forces, and fell without a word of sympathy. At an soon afterwards governor of Stirling Cas~ age when friends are most needed, he had tle. These appointments produced about to retire from a friendless government to 4,000?. a year. His patron, Shelburne, at a friendless opposition. His levee, once the same time became president of the crowded with clients and timeservers, was Board of Trade. empty and deserted. The days of his No government ever bore such a crop active government with Pelham, the days of disasters as that of Grenvilles. Un- of his intrigues with Fox, the days of his settled points of law, the rights of the brilliant subjection to Pitt, were gone I-louse of Commons, the rights of the col- gone, never to return. At all events, he onies, all those questions which for years was an old servant of the crown; the king to come jeopardized the peace of the king- might at least have said one gracious word doin at home, and abroad carried blood- to him to soften his fall; but the king shed and devastatidn thron b h in anya sent him from the closet with a cold dis- blooming province, now stalked on to the missal. dreary stage of politics. One of the first Bute succeeded Newcastle as first acts of the administration was the prose- lord of the treasury, and George Gren- cution of Wilkes. The elements of dis- ville became secretary of state. The content had for some time been floating in government had no cohesion. Bedford the atmosphere. The unpopularity of was sent to Paris to negotiate a peace, Bute, the parsimony of the king, the scan- but Bedford, the ambassador, and Egre- dals concerning the princess dowager, mont, the secretary, were soon at daggers were 1)0th causes and indications of pop- drawn. Grenville supported Egremont, ular dissatisfaction, but as yet there had but Grenvilles own position was not been no tangible question upon which pub- secure. He was at an assembly at Egre- lic opposition could, with any plausibility, monts house, when a message arrived unite. The prosecution of Wilkes and the COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. 29 legality of general warrants supplied the army were also politically servants of the want. In the reign of James I. Floyd had crown, the offence was unpardonable. been sentenced to be whipped at the carts- He determined on making an example. tail from the Fleet to Westminster Hall, The high rank and court favor of Conway and to a lifelong imprisonment for a few saved him for the moment, but both Barr~ trivial words. Not so many years before a and Shelburne were dismissed from their writer had stood in the pillory for a smaller military commands. offence than that of Wilkes yet that There is no act in the reign of G eor~e severe sentence did not provoke one tenth III. which is so difficult to excuse as the part of the abuse that was now showered dismissal of officers for their votes in Par- upon the government. General warrants liament. It clearly shows either that the were no novelty. Many who raged most king completely misunderstood the En- loudly against them, and against Halifax, glish Constitution, or that he deliberately had seen them a few years before em- intended to destroy it. Even in those ployed by a great minister without a mur- days, when political purity was at its low- mur. The cause of a libeller was now and est ebb, when boroughs were put up for for some years to come the cause of the sale, and when the votes of members were more liberal party of politicians. Shel- bought by scores, there was yet a certain burne was one of those who at once per- veil drawn over the infamy of the corrup- ceived that the government, whatevei ex- tion. The old theory- of the Constitution cuses might at first be made for it, was was maintained. The constituencies were proceeding upon a policy both despotic supposed to represent the people, the and unwise. He found, too, his own sphere members were supposed to represent the of action reduced into smaller limits than constituencies, and the House of Commons he had expected. He had looked to es- was supposed to he a disinterested body tablish a control over the colonies as of gentlemen deliberating for the good of independent as that of Halifax or of Towns- the nation. This was a fiction, no doubt, bend had been. But he was disappointed, but it was a very useful one, and went far Egremont was not prepared to yield the to attach the people to the forms of a Con- authority of the secretary, and Shelburne, stitution in itself excellent. If a French- feeling dissatisfied with his position as a man had told an Englishman in 1763 that minister, and strongly objectin~, to the he was governed by a dozen great lords general policy of the government, began to and a few court favorites, he would have turn his eyes to Pitt. considered his nation insulted and the It is unnecessary to go at length into Frenchman a fool. But in fact, though the intricate detail of the negotiations this was not generally admitted, it was which occurred in the summer between very nearly the case. It was left for George the king, Bedford, Shelburne, and Pitt. III. to say boldly what most Englishmen How Bedford, mindful of the slights he had shrunk from saying. He avowedly had received at Paris, was inclined to coa- considered every member of the House of lesce with Pitt; how he was led to believe Commons who drew a public salary his that Pitt was prepared to act with him; own particular representative. In his own how he persuaded the king, who had over words, those who voted against the court and over again said he would never re- had deserted him, and must be punished. ceive Pitt into his service again, to send The evil precedent of Lord Cobham, who for him; how, when Pitt arrived, he re- was dismissed in 1733 for his vote against fused to share his power with Bedford; the Excise Bill, affords no exculpation. and how, after the death of Egremont, The dismissal of Cobbain ~vas the act of Bedford, in disgust, joined the govern- the minister, and unconstitutional and im- ment, and Shelburne resigned his office politic as such a dismissal was, it was still and xvent into opposition, are facts that the act of a minister who could be ejected need not be more than mentioned here. and impeached at the discretion of the When Parliament opened in November, majority. Even Rigby, who was no stick- 1763, Shelburne,.carrying Barr6 with him, ler for scruples when some advantage was had entered into a close, and, as it proved, to be obtained, expressed a strong hope, a lasting, alliance with Pitt. on the occasion of the Whig proscription Wilkes privilege almost at once occu- by Fox, that military officers would not be pied the attention of Parliament. Shel- included within its operation. Though burne in the House of Lords, and Barr6 Grenville must bear a portion of the blame, and Conway in the House of Commons, chiefly this arbitrary act emanated from the voted against the government. To the king. king, who considered that officers Qf the During the session which followed the 30 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. dismissal of Barr~, his reputation, as a speaker rose rapidly higher and higher. The times were such as to afford great opportunities for a bold and clever man to earn distinction. The question of the legality of general warrants redivided par- ties, and offered opportunities for new alliances. Barrd seized the occasion to evince his new attachment to Pitt, and to excuse his past conduct. As Pitt gradually withdrew from the world, his place, to a certain extent, be- came filled by Barrd. Barr6 had all the bitterness of invective and a great deal of the fire and declamation of the older statesman. 1-le possessed the power of making himself feared, and he was feared. The brilliant but volatile Townshend felt the force of his strong will, and immedi- ately paid him that respect which nothing but resolution and firmness could wring from his talents. The rank of Sandwich could not protect him. As he sat in the gallery of the House of Commons he heard himself compared to Nero, and re- tired to fresh intrigues with new-born feelings of astonishment and North first learnt to dread the voice which in later years became the scourge of his own gov- ernment. Before the ministry xvent out Barr6 had established his reputation as a great opposition speaker. But before the resignation of Grenville many events of great importance occurred. Some of these, though they profoundly agitated the public mind at the time, are now almost forgotten. Others, in their birth regarded but with slender interest were destined forever to change the his- tory of England. The Regency Bill and the quarrels between the king and Gren- ville lived but a day. We look back and see in them nothing but indications of what men once thought, and bow they once acted. The questions themselves are dead, and have no more connection with our living Constitution than the sap- less branch has with the gree ntree. Out of the dispute with America arose a new and operative principle in the English Consti- tution, and with American independence the name of Barr6 is inseparably con- nected. The peace of 1763 had made a great change in the condition of England in America. England had more than ful- filled the xvildest schemes of French am- bition. The burning sea of Mexico, the frozen shore of the Hudsons Bay, the steaming swamps and gloomy-headed palmetto forests of Florida, the sombre pine-woods of Canada, the prairies of the Mississippi, and the rocks of the St. Law- rence all were hers, and all acknowl- edged George III. as their king. So great an empire had never since the days of Rome been united under a single sceptre. How was this great territory, half subject, half ally to be governed? History afforded no example to guide the groping mind of the statesman. Athens had been president of a national league; she quickly assumed the authority of an imperial despot. The grant of free allies was soon regarded as the rent of tribu- taries, and the wealth of Delos crowned the Akropolis with temples of marble, whose broken columns still gaze upon the blue gulf and misty mountains of Attica. Rome afforded no examples. Her colo- nies were usually planted with a military object, and were like sons in a Roman family, unalterably subject. Spain had colonized. She had beaten and trampled down a subject race that her grandees might ride in coaches lacquered with gold, drawn by horses shod with silver. Gold was her object, and in exchange for gold she offered the ghostly advantages of the Inquisition. France, also, had colonies, but she too regarded them merely as a source of wealth, and in the reign of Lewis XV., when the country was prostrate under a bad government, they remained nearly the only source of wealth which existed. The connection of the English colonies with the mother country was very pecul- iar, and embraced many of those incon- sistencies between law and practice which are the result of great individual independ- ence, and a general disposition to decen- tralization. The doctrine that the colonies in matters of commerce should be com- pletely subordinate to the mother country was in 1765 as generally accepted in En- gland as in France. It was not then per- ceived that advantages to the mother country could be obtained by any other system than one of strict colonial prohi- bition. The colonies were not to compete with English industries. They were to buy nothing except in the English market. They were to sell nothinb except in the English market. This xvas the theory of the commercial system which bound to- gether En gland and America. The law was in accordance with the theory. Cus- toms were imposed at the ports. Vice- admiralty courts sat to try offences, and there was a nominal revenue collected as the fruits of the system. As the laws which in the reign of George II. m adeit felony to consult with an evil spirit, or to COLONEL ]3ARRE AND HIS TIMES. feed a hobgoblin, or which in still later times inflicted the heaviest penalties upon Roman Catholics, would have led any one who judged of the condition of the people from the condition of the law to suppose that England was a nation sunk in super- stition, or hlinded hy religious bigotry, so the same reader might suppose that Amer- ica was trampled in the dust under the grinding tyranny of the trade laws. But the law was not the practice. High duties were imposed in the continental ports of America, hut a large part of them were never paid. By law no tea might he sold in America excel)t what had heen export- ecl from England. In fact the export of English tea to America declined, while the consumption of tea in America rapidly increased. Officers of customs were ap- pointed to enforce the law; hut everyhody knew that what made the place of an officer of customs so lucrative to him was his connivance at its breach. In 1765, to collect a revenue in America of 2)0001., cost England a sum of 8,oool. The time had clearly come for some ~ in the laws of trade, hut this change was un- fortunately connected with another and fatal circumstance. It was determined to tax America for the purpose of raising an army. The defence of the colonies had always been a difficult question both in England and in America. Many years hefore the Stamp Act, England had declared that she xvould not hear the sole hurthen of colonial defence. The jealousies of the colonies prevented a general combination, and might have proved their ruin, had not England cast out her hroad shield as a shelter. The peace of Paris left England with an increased army and an increased deht. A portion of the army was for the defence of America, and this portion it was proposed that America should main- tain. There were two methods of raising a revenue, either by decreasing the nom- inal amount of the custom duties, and by enforcing the collection of the residue, or by direct taxation. So long as the Amer- icans acquiesced in the principle of the trade laws, they could have no reasonable ohjection to the first method , and as to the second, rash and impolitic as it xvas, it was certainly in accordance with the highest decisions of English law, and not inconsistent with the high notion held in those days of the power of a parent coun- try over its colony. Such was the state of affairs when, in the spring of 1765, the government intro- duced the Stamp Act. It hardly met with 3 any opposition. Shelburne was absent from the House of Lords, Pitt from the House of Commons. Barr6 was the sin- gle champion of any considerable mark that did battle for the colonies. In a speech, perhaps the best of his many fine speeches on America, he commenced a course of opposition which he consistently pursued to the termination of the war. Probably of his future speeches reported in Cobbett, a full quarter are on the sub- ject of the colonies. The Grenville administration only sur- vived the passage of the Stamp Act by a few months. The king could tolerate the ministers no longer. They had unpardon- ably affronted him in the Regency Bill. Bedford was impertinent to him, Grenville lectured him till he cried. He sent for Pitt, but Pitt would not come without Temple. He sent for Lyttelton, but Lvt- telton on his way to Hayes found Tem- ples carriage at Grenvilles door, and despaired. Cumberland the mediator re- tired in disgust to Windsor. All at once the feeble administration of Rockiugham rose tottering from the fragments of party. The Bedfords and the Grenvilles went into opposition. Temple was hostile, Pitt lukewarm. The government iivtde overtures both to Shelburne and Barr6. To Barr6 was offered rank in the army, or anything he liked added to the vice-treas- urership, but the alliance between Pitt, Shelburne, and Barr6 was now firm, and the offers were refused. When Parliament opened American difficulties were at a crisis. An English Parliament and an English nation had never listened to such accumulated insults as now assailed them. Not a year ago England had passed a measure which she believed she had a right to pass, and which she was convinced she had the power to enforce. I laugh, sir, I 1 auTh said Pitt in one of his speeches on the repeal of the Stamp Act, when it is said that this coun- try cannot coerce America. The country was confident in her strength, rich in her resources, proud of her history. Her recent conquests over the greatest powers of Europe had placed her on the pinnacle of glory; her colonial possessions extend- ed over the world; her fleets and her ar- mies were to be found under every sun; one pitiful insult from France or Spain, and the sting of pride would have awoke her immense forces into instant retaliation. Yet what had England now to learn? That in two or three colonies, without a union, without an army, without a fleet, her governors had been chased for their 32 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. lives through the streets, that their houses had heen sacked, that their papers had been scattered, that the vice-admiralty courts had been burnt, that the authority of Parliament had been openly set at de- fiance. Any other country in the world but England would have answered with fire and sword, but England sat down quietly to discuss the constitutional right of the Americans to tax themselves. It was fortunate for the peace of the next few years that the Rockinghams were in office, or the difficulties with America might have been aggravated. Bedford and Grenville would not repeal the Stamp Act. Pitt evolved a scheme which few people in England could under- stand. Rockingharn proposed a policy both comprehensible and effective. He repealed the Stamp Act as he repealed the Cider Tax. They did not work. But he asserted as strongly the right of Parlia- ment to tax America as to tax Devonshire. Barrd, co-operating with Pitt and Shel- burne, acted neither entirely with the gov- ernment nor with the opposition. Pitt desired to assert only the legislative su- premacy of England as distinct from the power of taxation. When therefore a resolution was proposed in the House of Commons that the king in Parliament had power to bind the people of America in all cases whatsoever, Barr6 moved that in all cases whatsoever should be omit- ted. As has already been said the idea of a legislative supremacy only was not then thoroughly understood, and there is noth- ing in the course of after history to lead us to suppose that such a proposition, if carried, would have been attended with success. The Stamp Act was repealed; and as for the moment it was the most transparent point of dissension, the intelligence was received in America with the loudest ac- clamations. Gaols were thrown open, church bells were rung, and at ni~ht illu- minated ~b ures of the king, Pitt, and Barr6 were displayed in Boston. The news of the repeal of the Stamp Act had scarcely reached America before Barrd was actually in the government. Lord Rockingham had found himself ut- terly unable to contend with the adverse fortune which beset him. Pitt refused to join him. The opposition was bitter and formidable. The kings friends sowed dissension in his camp. Nothing re- mained for him but to quit a post which force and treachery made untenable. He retired, and was succeeded by Pitt, now created Lord Chatham. In the new ar rangement Barrd became vice-treasurer for Ireland, and a privy councillor, with his rank in the army restored to him. His patron, Shelburne, at the same time be. came secretary of state. The prospects of Barr6 now seemed brilliant. He was in office under a great minister for whom the country had long been sighing. That minister was revolv- ing in his mind vast schemes of foreign alliance, and of colonial reform, and Barr6 was certainly in point of ability, though not in rank, the ablest representative of the government in the House of Commons. It is natural to suppose that be expected to reap some of the glory of their accom- plishment. But never was a bri 5ht dawn more quickly obscured. In a few months Chatham had disappeared. He still at- tempted from his retirement to direct the reform of the East India Company, but he did it in such a way as to cause the great- est embarrassment to his friends. In the debates on India, Barr6 took a prominent part. He had long taken an interest in the business of India. A few years before, when Sullivan and Clive were striving for supremacy at the India House, it was generally believed that had Sullivan been successful, Barr~ would have gone to India instead of Clive. A bill was now brought in to regulate the affairs of the company. Burke and the Rocl~ing- hams loudly protested against the infringe- ment of the charter, while Barr6 became the champion of Parliamentary control. The bill, if it fell short of what was origi- nally intended, at all events decided the principle of Parliamentary interference. On another point the opposition were more successful. They forced the gov- ernment to reduce the land tax. Some equivalent for this loss was necessary. The opposition knew this well. They also knew that Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, had declared the practica- bility of raising a revenue in America. Dowdeswell and the Rockingbams, there- fore, who had always resisted American taxation, might have predicted with great precision that the success of their motion would result in fresh American duties. It did so. A revenue act was passed, and all the ill-will, all the terror, all the sedition, which it was hoped had subsided forever, awoke in America with fresh violence. It seems strange that Shelburne and Barrd, when we consider their disappro. bation of the measure, and recollect that it was subsequently one of the chief feat- ures of their opposition, should not have at once tendered their resibnations. That COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. 33 they did not do so proves either that they were prepared to hold office while the government pursued a policy which they supposed was of vital danger to the coun- try, or that the real consequences of American taxation had not as yet been thoroughly appreciated even by its oppo- nents. The domestic measures of the govern- ment were equally unfortunate. Its own weakness, and the dislike of the kin6 to the Rockinghams and Grenvilles, had gradually led to a fusion with the party of Bedford. No combination could have been more unlucky. The times required men of large views and of firm, honest principle. The Bedfords were inveterate enemies of all those sentiments of liberty which were just beginning to germinate among the people. Their leaders were dissolute and interested men, who still clung to the old system of oligarchical connection, now that quarrels and changes had well-nigh obliterated the system itself. In the commencement of 1768 Wilkes re- turned to England, and was elected a mem- ber of the House of Commons. Immedi- ately the passions on both sides burst into a flame. Affairs went rapidly from bad to worse. From acts of folly and violence, the popular party rushed into libels, and very nearly into rebellion. From threats and rigor the government proceeded to frame illegal resolutions in the House of Commons, and to fill the streets of Lon- don with troops. The dignity of Parlia- ment which generations of corruption, of buying, of selling, and of bullyin6 had never offended, was now declared insulted. The strife was between the new 6e and the old age, and everything which was worst in both came conspicuously to the front. The opinions of Shelburne and Barr6 and the government were now too diver- gent to permit them to remain members of it any longer. From its very commence- ment it can hardly be said that Shelburne cordially concurred with a single one of its measures. His advice was seldom taken; he abstained from attending the council. Affronts were heaped upon him; his department was divided; his office was offered to another; his patronage was in- truded upon, and he at length only escaped dismissal by a hasty resignation. In the autumn of 1768 Shelburne and Barr~ threw in their lot with the Rockinghams and Grenvilles, and about the same time the resignation of Chatham left Graf ton in name, as he had long been in reality, prime minister. LIViNG AGE. VOL. XVII. 835 For the first few years of his opposition Barr6 found all the materials at hand to make that opposition terrible. The fac- tions of the Grenvilles, of the Rocking- hams, and of the Chathams were it is true constantly at variance, but they united in their ranks the most brilliant speakers of the time Burke, Barr6, and Dunning stood almost unrivalled in the House of Commons. During this period the position of the government was difficult to the last degree. The law imposed upon it the duty of main- taining order. The police force at its dis- posal was composed of a few broken-down old men, who became policemen simply because they were too aged or decrepit for other trades. Time and prescription had handed down to the House of Com- mons a vast mass of privileges which, to a certain extent, the government was bound to protect, or at all events not to see lightly abused. The privileges of the I-louse of Commons were attacked by furi- ous mobs incited by one of the most un- principled men in England. London be- came one seething mass of sedition. The days of the Florentine republic, when the companies of arts, the wool-combers, the dyers, and the doublet-makers, trampled on the authority of the seigniory, seemed to have revived in the metropolis of En-, gland. Not a day passed without its riot. The people rose in their trades. There were mobs of sailors, of weavers, of coal- heavers, of Thames watermen, of tailors, of hatters. The doors of Parliament were beset by an unruly multitude, who loudly called for redress, and beat the members whom they considered hostile. The posi- tion was critical. Mansfield prophesied there would be a rebellion in ten days. The government called in the troops and the riots were quelled. Barrd joined Burke in violent denunciations of the gov- ernment. They charged the ministers with an unconstitutional attempt to super- sede the civil power. The lesson was not forgotten. Eleven years later, when the streets of London were once more thronged with rioters, when houses were being sacked and the bank threatened, the arm. of the executive was found to be palsied. In 1770 Lord North became prime min- ister, but no change occurred in the policy of the government. Lord Norths posi- tion was one of no common danger. His safety lay in the discord between the par- ties of Chatham and of Rockingham. The country seemed united against him. Numberless petitions prayed for a disso- lution. A foreign war was inaminent. 34 COLONEL BARRE AND HIS TIMES. The Spaniards laid claim to the sover- eignty of one of the Falkiand Islands. Barr6 and those acting with him declared that the negligence and facility of the government amounted to little less than treason, and the country was nearly in- volved in an expensive war for an island which was little better than a barfen moor, which had a detestable climate, no inhabitants, no trees, no commercial ad- vantages, and no animals but the snipe and the flocks of wild geese which haunted its bogs. Next came the quarrrels between the House of Commons and the printers. The House of Commons enforced its orders against reporting debates. The newspapers had given the grossest provo- cation. Their reports were often shame- ful misrepresentations and distortions. Members who were eager f.or the suppres- sion of newspaper reports were neverthe- less prepared that the proceedings of the House should be made public; but they required that an official reporter should take accurate notes of their speeches. The printers were sent for: some refused to come. A speakers warrant for their ap- prehension was served within the hounds of the city of London. The messenger was taken into custody by the city police, and the House of Commons, instead of wreaking its vengeance upon a few mis- erable printers, found itself confronted by a grave constitutional dilemma. The question was whether the privilege of the House of Commons could legally invade the liberties of London as declared in its charter. The House proceeded with that irritating mixture of vigor and vacillation which it so often shows when it thinks it necessary to vindicate its dignity. It sent the lord mayor to the Tower, hut Wilkes, whom it was thoroughly afraid of, it con- sidered too contemptible to touch. Barr6 took the most active part in at- tempting to avert the blow from the lord mayor. Our Parliamentary usages supply ma~ny arts by which a feeble minority can oppose a tyrannous majority. He tried them all. The House had never divided so often in one night. TI speaker com- plained that he was tired to death, and did not know how the question would ever be settled. At last, when every expedient had failed, Barrd got up and attacked the government. As the speech affords a fair specimen of Barr6s declamatory style, and is also an illustration of the violence occasionally introduced nto the debates of that day, we may perhaps be par- doned for quoting the following passages: XVhat, he said, addressing ministers, can he your intention in such an attack upon all honor and virtue? Do you mean to bring all men upon a level with your- selves, and to extirpate all honesty and independence? Perhaps you imagine that a vote will settle the whole controversy? Alas! you are not aware that the manner in which your vote is procured remains a secret to no man. Listen; for, if you are not totally callous, if your consciences are not seared, I will speak daggers to your souls, and awake you to all the hells of a guilty recollection. Guilt, as the poet justly observes, is the source of sorrow; trust me, therefore, your triumph shall not be a pleasing one. I will follow you with whips and with stings through every maze of your unexampled turpitude, and plant eternal thorns beneath the rose of ministe- rial reprobation. . . . But it is in vain that you hope by fear and terror to extinguish every spark of the ancient fire of this isle. The more sacrifices, the more martyrs you make, the more numerous will the sons of liberty become. They will multipy like the hydras head, and hurl down vengeance on your devoted heads. Let others act as they will, while I have a tongue or an arm they shall be free; and that I may not be a wit- ness of this monstrous proceeding, I will leave the House: nor do I doubt but every independent, every honest man, will follow me. These wahs are unholy, they are baleful, they are deadly, while a pros- titute majority holds the bolt of Parlia- mentary omnipotence and hurls its ven- geance upon the virtuous. As Barr6 re- tired from the House, there were loud cries, fo the bar! hut the ministers wisely declined to increase their embar- rassments by calling him to account. Barr6 continued steadfast in opposition, but the court was not to be braved with impunity. It had once before driven him from his military commands it now pro- ceeded to force his resignation b yoffen- sively supersedin~ him. In 1773 Barrd felt himself compelled to retire from the army. Both Rigby and North expressed regret for the manner in which he had been treated, and there can he little doubt that the course was suggested by the king. In 1773 opposition was dead. Its members, according to Walpole, were wrig- gling themselves into cOurt. Not a cloud even the size of a mans hand appeared in the sky. Soon it became known that an act which had been passerl in England as a boon had been regarded in America as a new bond of tyranny, and that hun- THE SECRET CHAMBER. 35 dreds of chests of tea had been thrown into the sea. The outrage was a great one. Even Barr6 assented to a bill for closing the port of Boston. The general expectation was that Boston would submit. But the time for submis- sion was passed, and America was about to be severed from England forever. Each post brought worse news. Fore- bodings of evil were wafted on the breat~ of the coming storm, and blood wa~ spilled before the nation knew that there was likely to be xvar. Chatharn, it was supposed, might still save the country. The Rockinghams were prepared to act with him. North labored to remove the prejudices of the king; but before a new government could be foritied, Lord Chat- ham had been sent for by a still higher king, and his hody was sleeping in West- minster Abbey. It was a. strange satire on Barr6s life that he, who had first attained Parliamentary distinction by at- tacking William Pitt, should have been the most zealous mourner for the Earl of Chatham. Shelburne and Barr~, with all those who had acted with Chatham, now ranged themselves with the Rockinghams. All the bitterness and invective of which Barr~ was master were arrayed against the government. There was much fair ground for criticism. The justice of the war was, indeed a matter of opinion; but the method in which it was conducted, the vast grants of Parliament which remained unaccounted for, and the scandalous cor- ruption of contractors were subjects of the justest censure. Barr6 moved for an in- quiry into the public accounts. Lord North was in no position to oppose a motion so plausible. He made the motion his own; and a commission was appointed which naturally languished under ministe- rial protection. In 1782 the days of Lord Norths ad- ministration were numbered. The war alone had preserved the government, but England was now sick of war. In Amer- ica she had been beaten. In Europe she was confronted not only by active ene- mies, but by an armed neutrality, which threatened her right of search. At home she was oppressed by taxation, and was looking to economical reform. In Ireland she beheld all the symptoms of rebellion, which seventeen years before she had too fatally neglected in her colonies. A few close divisions took place in the House of Commons, and the king was painfully con- strained to send for Rockingham. Barr~s political life now rapidly drew. to a close. When Rockingham became prime minister, Barr6 was appointed treas- urer of the navy. In a few months more he was a pensioner. A pension of 3,2001. a year was conferred upon him a sum ten times as large as the government bill then before the House of Commons pro- posed to allow to any one person. The pension was attacked, and Barr6 for the first time found there was something to be said in favor of pensions. In 1783 a heavy misfortune fell upon him for which no wealth could compen- sate; he became blind. For several ses- sions he disappeared from Parliament. When he returned all was changed; his place in politics was gone; a new gsnera- tion of statesmen had sprung up. Pitt, a mere boy, was prime minister. When he did speak, his mind, with the tenacity of advancing years, wandered back into the experiences of the past. He turned for examples to the days of Ligonier and of Wolfe those days when he had suffered so much, and when fortune had seemed so distant. In 1790 he retired from Parliament. The political convulsions which wrecked so many true friendships did not spare him, and his connection with Shelburne became a thing of the past. But before he died he was destined to behold changes more wonderful than the dissolu- tion of the most sacred friendship. He lived to hear of events of which his own days could afford no parallel. The eco- nomic reforms of France, upon which Burke had once lingered so fondly, had been unable to save her from ruin. Rev- olution broke out, and the cries of its vic- tims appealed to the sympathy of every heart, and to the terror of every imagina- tion. He lived to hear that the bulk of the great Whig party to which he had once belonge cI had passed over to the gov- ernment. He lived to hear of Englands war with France, to hear of her defeats, and of her distresses; but long before the day of victory had come a victory greater than that of Pitt or of Wolfe Barr6 was no more. He died in 1802, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. HUGH F. ELLIOT. From Blackwoods Magazine. THE SECRET CHAMBER. CHAPTER I. CASTLE GowRIE is one of the most famous and interesting in all Scotland. 36 THE SECRET CHAMBER. It is a beautiful old house, to start with, perfect in old feudal grandeur, with its clustered turrets and walls that could withstand an army, its labyrinths, its hidden stairs, its long mysterious passages passages that seem in many cases to lead to nothing, but of which no one can be too sure what they lead to. The front, with its fine gateway and flankin~ towers, is approached now hy velvet lawns, and a peaceful, beautiful old avenue, with double rows of trees, like a cathedral; and the woods out of which these grey towers rise, look as soft and rich in foliage, if not so lofty in growth, as the groves of the south. But this softness of aspect is all new to the place, that is, new within the century or two which count for but little in the history of a dwelling-place, some part of which, at least, has been standing since the days when the Saxon Athelings brought such share of the arts as belonged to them to solidify and regulate the original Celtic art which reared incised stones upon rude burial-places, and twined mystic knots on its crosses, before historic days. Even of this primitive decoration there are relics at Gowrie, where the twistings and twinings of Runic cords appear still on some bits of ancient wall, solid as rocks, and almost as everlasting. From these to the graceful French turrets, which re- call many a grey chateau, xvhat a long in- terval of years But these are filled with stirring chronicles enough, besides the dim, not always decipherable records, which different developments of architect- ure have left on the old house. The Earls of Gowrie had been in the heat of every commotion that took place on or about the Highland line for more generations than any but a Celtic pen could record. Rebel- lions, revenges, insurrections, conspiracies, nothing in which blood was shed and lands lost, took place in Scotland, in which they had not had a share; and the annals of the house are very full, and not without many a stain. They had been a bold and vigorous race with much evil in them, and some good; never insignificant, what- ever else they might be. It could not be said, however, that they are remarkable nowadays. Since the first Stuart rising, known in Scotland as the Fifteen, they have not done much that has been worth recording; but yet their family history has always been of an unusual kind. The Randolphs could not be called eccentric in themselves: on the contrary, when you knew them, they were at bottom a respectable race, full of all the country- gentleman virtues; and yet their public career, such as it was, had been marked by the strangest leaps and jerks of vicissi- tude. You would have said an impulsive, fanciful family now makin~ a grasp at some vis~onary advantage, now rushing into some wild speculation, now making a sudden sally into public life, but soon fal~ng back into mediocrity, not able ap- parently, even when the impulse was purely selfish and mercenary, to keep it up. But this would not have been at all a true conception of the family character their actualvirtues were not of the imagin- ative order, and their freaks were a mvs- tery to their friends. Nevertheless these freaks were what the general world was most aware of in the Randolph race. The late earl had been a representative peer of Scotland (they had no English title), and had made quite a wonderful start, and for a year or two had seemed about to attain a very eminent place in Scotch affairs; but his ambition was found to have made use of some very equivocal modes of gaining influence, and he dropped accordingly at once and forever from the political firma- ment. This was quite a common circum- stance in the family. An apparently bril- liant beginning, a discovery of evil means adopted for ambitious ends, a sudden sub- sidence, and the curious conclusion at the end of everything that this schemer, this unscrupulous speculator or politician, was a dull, good man after all unambitious, contented, full of domestic kindness and benevolence. This family peculiarity made the history of the Randolphs a very strange one, broken by the oddest inter- ruptions, and with no consistency in it. There was another circumstance, however, which attracted still more the wonder and observation of the public. For one who can appreciate such a recondite matter as family character, there are hundreds who are interested in a family secret, and this the house of Randolph possessed in per- fection. It was a mystery which piqued the imagination and excited the interest of the entire country. The story went, that somewhere hid amid the massive walls and tortuous passages there was a secret chamber in Gowrie Castle. Everybody knew of its existence; but save the earl, his heir, and one other person, not of the family, but filling a confidential post in their service, no mortal knew where this mysterious hiding-place was. There had been countless guesses made at it, and expedients of all kinds invented to find it out. Every visitor who ever entered the old gateway, nay, even passing travellers who saw the turrets from the roaQ THE SECRET CHAMBER. searched keenly for so ne trace of this mysterious chamber. 13 at all guesses and researches were equally in vain. I was about to say that no ghost-story I ever heard of has been so steadily and long believed. But this would be a mis- take, for nobody knew even with any certainty that there was a ghost connected with it. A secret chamber was nothing wonderful in so old a house. No doubt they exist in many such old houses, and are always curious and interesting strange relics, more moving than any his- tory, of the time when a man was not safe in his own house, and when it might be necessary to secure a refuge beyond the reach of spies or traitors at a moments notice. Such a refu~e was a necessity of life to a great medi ~val noble. The pecul- iarity about this secret chamber, however, was, that some secret connected with the very existence of the family was always understood to be involved in it. It was not only the secret hiding-place for an emergency, a kind of historical l)OSSession presupposing the importance of his race, of which a man might be honestly proud; but there was something hidden in it of which assuredly the race could not be proud. It is wonderful how easily a fam- ily learns to pique itself upon any distioc- tive possession. A ghost is a sign of im- portance not to be despised; a haunted room is worth as much as a small farm to the complacency of the family that owns it. And no doubt the younger branches of the Gowrie family the li ht-minded portion of the race L felt this, and were proud of their unfathomable secret, and felt a thrill of agreeable awe and piquant suggestion go through them, when they remembered the mysterious something which they did not know in their familiar home. That thrill ran through the entire circle of visitors, and children, and servants when the earl peremptorily forbade a pro- jected improvement, or stopped a reckless exploration. They looked at each other with a pleasurable shiver. Did you hear? they said. He will not let Lady Gowrie have that closet she wants so much in that bit of wall. He sent the workmen about their business before they could touch it, though the wall is twenty feet thick if it is an inch ; ah said the visit- ors, looking at each other; and this lively suggestion sent tinglings of excitement to their very finger-points; but even to his wife, mourning the coin! nodious closet she had intended, the earl made no explana- tions. For anything she knew, it might be there, next to her room, this mysterious 37 lurking-place; and it may be supposed that this suggestion conveyed to Lady Gowries veins a thrill more keen and strange, perhaps too vivid to be pleasant. But she was not in the favored or unfortu- nate number of those to whom the truth could he revealed. I need not say what the different theo. ries on the subject were. Some thought there had been a treacherous massacre there, and that the secret chamber was blocked by the skeletons of murdered guests, a treachery no doubt covering the family with shame in its day, but so condoned by long softening of years as to have all the shame taken out of it. The Randolphs could not have felt their char- acter affected by any such interesting his- torical record. They were notso morbidly sensitive. Some said, on the other hand, that Earl Robert, the wicked earl, was shut up there in everlasting penance, playing cards with the devil for his soul. But it would have been too great a feather in the family cap to have thus got the devil, or even one of his angels, bottled up, as it were, and safely in hand, to make it possi- ble that any lasting stigma could be con- nected with such a fact as this. What a thin~ it would be to know where to lay ones hand upon the prince of darkness, and prove him once for all, cloven foot and everything else, to the confusion of gain- sayers! So this was not to be received as a sat- isfactory solution, nor could any other be suggested which was more to the purpose. The popular mind gave it up, and yet never gave it up; and still everybody who visits Gowrie, be it as a guest, be it as a tourist, be it only as a gazer from a passing car- riage, or fin in the flying railway train which just glimpses its turrets in the dis- tance, daily and yearly spends a certain amount of curiosity, wonderment, and con- jecture about the secret chamber the most piquant and undiscoverable wonder which has endured unguessed and unde- ciphered to modern times. This was how the matter stood when young John Randolph, Lord Lindores, caine of age. He was a young man of great character and energy, not like the usual Randolph strain for, as we have said, the type of character common in this romantically-situated family, notwith stand- ing the erratic incidents common to them, was that of dulness and honesty, especially in their early days. But young Lindores was not so. He was honest and honora- ble, but not dull. He had gone thrdugh almost a remarkable course at school and 38 THE SECRET CHAMBER. at the university not perhaps in quite the ordinary way of scholarship, but enough to attract mens eyes to him. He had made more than one great speech at the Union. He was full of ambition, and force, and life, intending all sorts of great things, and meaning to make his position a stepping-stone to all that was excellent in public life. Not for him the country- gentleman existence which was congenial to his father. The idea of succeeding to the family honors and becoming a Scotch peer, either represented or representative, filled him with horror; and filial piety in his case was made warm by all the energy of personal hopes when he prayed that his father might live, if not forever, yet lonber than any Lord Gowrie had lived for the last century or two. j:le was as sure of his election for th~ county the next time there was a chance, as anybody can be certain of anything; and in the mean time he meant to travel, to go to America, to go no one could tell where, seeking for instruction and experience, as is the man- ner of high-spirited young men with Par- liamentary tendencies in the present day. In former times he would have gone to the wars in the Hie Germanie, or on a crusade to the Holy Land; but the days of the crusaders and of the soldiers of fortune being over, Lindores followed the fashion of his time. He had made all his arrangements for his tour, which his father did not oppose. On the contrary, Lord Gowrie encouraged all those plans, though with an air of melancholy indulgence which his son could not understand. It will do you good, he said, with a sigh. Yes, yes, my boy; the best thing for you. This, no doubt, was true enough; but there was an implied feeling that the young man would require something to do him good that he would Want the sooth- ing of change and the gratification of his wishes, as one might speak of a convales- cent or the victim of some calamity. This tone puzzled Lindores, who, though he thought it a fine thing to travel and acquire information, was as scornful of the idea of being done good to as is natural to any fine young fellow fresh from Oxford and the triumphs of the Union. But he re- flected that the old school had its own way of treating things, and was satisfied. All was settled accordingly for this journey, before he came home to go through the ceremonial performances of the coming of age, the dinner of the tenantry, the speech- es, the congratulations, his fathers ban- quet, his mothers ball. It was in summer, and the country was as gay as all the en- tertainments that were to be given in his honor. His friend who was going to ac- company him on his tour, as he had accom- panied him through a considerable portion of his life Almeric Ffarrington ,ayoung man of the same aspirations came up to Scotland with him for these festivities. And as they rushed through the night on the Great Northern Railway, in the inter- vals of two naps, they had a scrap of conversation as to these birthday glories. It will be a bore, but it will not last long, said Lindores. They were both of the opinion that anything that did not pro- duce information or promote culture was a bore. But is there not a revelation to he made to you, among all the other things you have to go through? said Ffarring- ton. Have not you to be introduced to the secret chamber, and all that sort of thing? I should like to be of the party there, Lindores. Ah, said the heir, I had forgotten that part of it, which, however, was not the case. Indeed I dont know if I am to he told. Even family dogmas are shaken nowadays. Oh, I should insist on that, said Ffarrington, lightly. It is not many who have the chance of payin~ such a visit better than Home and all the inedi- ums. I should insist upon that. I have no reason to suppose that it has any connection with Home or the medi- tims, said Lindores, slightly nettled. He was himself an es~rit fort; but a mystery in ones own family is not like vulgar mys- teries. He liked it to be respected. Oh, no offence, said his companon. I have always thought that a railway train would be a great chance for the spirits. If one was to show suddenly in that vacant seat beside you, what a triumphant proof of their existence that would be! but they dont take advantage of their opportunities. Lindores could not tell what it was that made him think at that moment of a por- trait he had seen in a back room at the castle of old Earl Robert, the wicked earl. It was a bad portrait a daub a copy made by an amateur of the genu- ine portrait, which, out of horror of Earl Robert and his wicked ways, had been re- moved by some intermediate lord from its place in the gallery. Lindores had never seen the original nothing but this daub of a copy. Yet somehow this face oc- curred to him by some strange link of association seemed to come into his eyes as his friend spoke. A slight shiver ran over him, It was strange. He made no reply to Ffarrington, but set himself to think how it could be that the latent presence in his mind of some anticipation of this approaching disclosure, touched into life by his friends suggestion. should have called out of his memory a momen- tary realization of the acknowledged ma- gician of the family. This sentence is full of long words; but unfortunately long words are required in such a case. And the process was very simple when you traced it out. It was the clearest case of unconscious cerebration. He shut his eyes by way of securing privacy while he thought it out; and being tired, and not at all alarmed by his unconscious cerebra- tion, before he opened them again fell fast asleep. And his birthday, which was the day following his arrival at Glenlyon, was a very busy day. He had not time to think of anything but the immediate occupa- tions of the moment. Public and pri- vate greetings, congratulations, offerings, poured upon him. The Gowrmes were popular in this generation, which was far from being usual in the family. Lady Gowrie was kind and generous, with that kindness which comes from the heart, and which is the only kindness likely to im- press the keen-sighted popular judgment; and Lord Gowrie had but little of the equivocal reputation of his predecessors. They could be splendid now and then on great occasions, though in general they were homely enough; all which the public likes. It was a bore, Lindores said; but yet the young man did not dislike the honors, and the adulation, and all the hearty speeches and good wishes. It is sweet to a young man to feel himself the centre of all hopes. It seemed very rea- sonable to him very natural that he should be so, and that the farmers should feel a pride of anticipation in thinking of his future speeches in Parliament. He promised to them with the sincerest good faith that he would not disappoint their expectations that he would feel their interest in him an additional spur. What so natural as that interest and these ex- pectations ? He ~as almost solemnized by his own position so young, looked up to by so many people so many hopes depending on him; and yet it was quite natural. His father, however, was still more solemnized than Lindores and this was strange, to say the least. His face grew graver and graver as the day went on, till it almost seemed as if he were dis- satisfied with his sons popularity, or had 39 some painful thought wei~hing on his mind. He was restless and e~ ger for the termination of the dinner, and to get rid of his guests; and as soon as they were gone, showed an equal anxiety that his son should retire too. Gc~ to bed at once, as a favor to me, Lord Gowrie said. You will have a great deal of fatigue to-mor- row. You need not be afraid for me, sir, said Lindores, half affronted; but he obeyed, being tired. He had not once thought of the secret to be disclosed to l~in~, through all that long day. But when he woke suddcnly with a start in the mid- dle of the night, to find the candles all lighted in his room, and his father stand- ing by his bedside, Lindores instantly thought of it, and in a moment felt that the leading event the chief incident of all that had happened was going to take place now. CHAPTER II. LORD GOWRIE was very grave, and very pale. He was ~ with his hand on his sons shoulder to wake him; his dress was unchanged from the moment they had parted. And the sight of this formal cos- tume was very bewildering to the young man as he started up in his bed. But next moment he seemed to know exactly how it was, and, more than that, to have known it all his life. Explanation seemed unnecessary. At any other moment, in any other place, a man would be startled to be suddenly woke up in the middles of the night. But Lindores had no such feeling; he did not even ask a question, but sprang up, and fixed his eyes, taking in all the strange circumstances, on his fathers face. Get up, my boy, said Lord Gowrie, and dress as quickly as you can; it is full time. I have lighted your candles, and your things are all ready. You have had a good long sleep. Even now he did not ask, What is it? as under any other circumstances he would have done. He got up without a word, with an impulse of nervous speed and ra- pidity of movement such as only excite- ment can give, and dressed himself, his father helping him silently. It was a curious scene: the room gleaming with lights, the silence, the hurried toilet, the stillness of deep night all around. The house, though so full, and with the echoes of festivity but just over, was quiet as if there was not a creature within it more quiet, indeed, for the stillness of vacancy is not half so impressive as the stillness of hushed and slumbering life. THE SECRET CHAMBER. 40 THE SECRET CHAMBER. Lord Gowrie went to the table when this first step was over, and poured out a glass of wine from a bottle which stood there, a rich, golden-colored, perfumy wine, which sent its scent through the room. You will want all your strength, he said; take this before you go. It is the famous Imperial Tokay; there is only a little left, and you xviii want all your strength. Lindores took the wine; he had never drunk any like it before, and the peculiar fragrance remained in his mind, as per- fumes so often do, with a whole world of association in them. His fathers eyes dwelt upon him with a melancholy sym- pathy. You are going to encounter the greatest trial of your life, he said; and taking the young mans hand into his, felt his pulse. It is quick, but it is quite firm, and you have had a good lon~ sleep. Then he did what it needs a great deal of pressure to induce an Englishman to do, he kissed his son on the cheek. God bless you! he said, faltering. Come, now, everything is ready, Lindores. He took up in his hand a small lamp, which he had apparently brought xvith him, and led the way. By this time Lindores began to feel himself again, and to wake to the consciousness of all his own supe- riorities and enlightenments. The simple sense that he was one of the members of a family with a mystery, and that the mo- ment of his personal encounter with this special power of darkness had come, had been the first thrilling, overxvhelming thought. But now as he folloxved his father, Lindores began to remember that he himself was not altogether like other men; that there was that in him which would make it natural that he should throw some light, hitherto unthought of, upon this carefully preserved darkness. What secret even there might be in it secret of hereditary tendency, of psychic force, of mental conformation, or of some curious ~mhination of circumstances at once more and less potent than these it was for him to find out. He gathered all his forces about him, reminded himself of modern enlightenment, and hade his nerves be steel to all vulgar horrors. He, too, felt his oxvn pulse as he followed his father. To spend the night perhaps amongst the skeletons of that old-world massacre, and to repent the sins of his ancestors to be brought xvithin the range of some optical illusion believed in hitherto by all the gen- erations, and which, no doubt, was of a startling kind, or his father would not look so serious, any of these he felt himself quite strong to encounter. His heart and spirit rose. A young man has but seldom the opportunity of distinguishing himself so early in his career; and his was such a chance as occurs to very few. No doubt it xvas something that would be extremely trying to the nerves and imagination. He called up all his powers to vanquish both. And along with this call upon himself to ex- ertion, there was the less serious impulse of curiosity: he would see at last what the se- cret chamber was, where it was, how it fitted into the labyrinths of the old house. This he tried to put in its due place as a most interesting object. He said to himself that he would willingly have done a long journey at any time to be present at such an exploration; and there is no doubt that in other circumstances a secret chamber, with probably some unthought-of historical interest in it, would have been a very fas- cinating discovery. He tried very hard to excite himself about this; but it was cu- rious boxy fictitious he felt the interest, and how conscious he was that it xvas an effort to feel any curiosity at all on the subject. The fact xvas, that the secret chamber was entirely secondary thrown back, as all accessories are, by a more pressing interest. The overpowering thought of what xvas in it drove aside all healthy, natural curiosity about itself. It must not be supposed, however, that the father and son had a long way to go to have time for all these thoughts. F houghts travel at lightning speed, and there was abundant leisure for this between the time they had left the door of Lindores room and gone down the corridor, no further off than to Lord Gowries own chamber, naturally one of the chief rooms of the house. Nearly opposite this, a few steps further on, was a little ne ~, lected room devoted to lumber, with which Lindores had been familiar all his life. Why this nest of old rubbish, dust, and cobwebs should be so near the bedroom of the head of the house had been a matter of surprise to many people to the guests who saw it while exploring, and to each new servant in succession who planned an attack upon its ancient stores, scandalized by finding it to have been neglected by their predecessors. All their attempts to clear it out had, however, been resisted, nobody could tell boxy, or indeed thought it worth while to inquire. As for Lindores, he had been used to the place from his childhood, and therefore accepted it as the most nat- ural thing in the xvorld. He had been in and out a hundred times in his play. And it was here, he remembered suddenly, that THE SECRET CHAMBER. 4 he had seen the bad picture of Earl Rob- ert which had so curiously come into his eves on his journeying here, by a mental movement which he had identified at once as unconscious cerebration. The first feeli~ng in his mind, as his father went to the open door of this lumber-room, was a mixture of amusement and surprise. What was he going to pick up there? some old pentacle, some amulet or scrap of antiquated magic to act as armor against the evil one? But Lord Gowrie, gomn~ on and setting down the lamp on the table, turned round upon his son with a face of agitation and pain which barred all further amusement: he grasped him by the hand, crushing it between his own. Now, my boy, my dear son, he said, in tones that were scarcely audible. His countenance was full of the dreary pain of a looker-on one who has no share in the excitement of personal danger, but has the more ter- rible part of watchin~, those who are in deadliest peril. He was a powerful man, and his larbe form shook with emotion; great beads of moisture stood upon his forehead. An old sword with a cross handle lay upon a dusty chair among other dusty and battered relics. Take this with you, he said, in the same inaudible, breathless way whether as a weapon, whether as a religious symbol, Lindores could not guess. The youn~ man took it mechanically. His father pmhed open a door which it seemed to him he had never seen before, and led him into another vaulted chamber. Here even the limited powers of speech Lord Gowrie had re- tained seemed to forsake him, and his voice became a mere hoarse murmur in his throat. Foil want of speech he pointed to another door in the further corner of this small vacant room, gave him to under- stand by a gesture that he was to knock there, and then went back into the lumber- room. The door into this was left open, and a faint glimmer of the lamp shed light into this little intermediate place this debatable land between the seen and the unseen. In spite of himself, Lindores heart began to beat. He made a breath- less pause, feeling his head go round. He held the old sword in his hand, not knowing what it was. Then, summoning all his courage, he xvent forward and knocked at the closed door. His knock was not loud, but it seemed to echo all over the silent house. Would everybody hear and xvake, and rush to see what had happened? This caprice of imagination seized upon him, ousting all the firmer thoughts, the steadfast calm of mind with which he ought to have encountered the mystery. Would they all rush in, in wild dfskabilld, in terror and dismay, before the door opened? How long it was of opening! He touched the panel with his hand again. This time there was no de- lay. In a moment, as if thrown suddenly open by some one within, the door moved. It opened just wide enongh to let him enter, stopping half-way as if some one invisible held it, wide enough for welcome, but no more. Lindores stepped across the threshold with a beating heart. What was he about to see? the skeletons of the murdered victims ? a ghostly charnel- house full of bloody traces-of crime? He seemed to be hurried and pushed in as he made that step. What was this world of mystery into which he was plunged what was it he saw? He sawnothinge xcept what was agreeable enough to behold, an anti- quated room hung with tapestry, very old tapestry of rude design, its colors faded into softness and harmony; between its folds here and there a panel of carved wood, rude too in design, with traces of half-worn gilding; a table covered with strange instruments, parchments, chemical tubes, and curious machinery, all with a quaintness of form and dimness of mate- rial that spoke of age. A heavy old vel- vet cover, thick with embroidery faded almost out of all color, was on the table; on the wall above it, something that looked like a very old Venetian mirror, the glass so dim and crusted that it scarcely reflected at all; on the floor an old soft Persian carpet, worn into a vague blending of all colors. This was all that he thought he saw. His heart, which had been thumping so loud as almost to choke him, stopped that tremendous upward and downward motion like a steam piston; and he grew calm. Perfectly still, dim, unoccupied: yet not so dim either; there was no apparent source of light, no win- dows, curtains of tapestry drawn every- where no lamp visible, no fire and yet a kind of strange light which made everything quite clear. He looked round, trying to smile at his terrors, trying to say to himself that it was the most curious place he had ever seenthat he must show Ffarrington some of tW t tapestry that he must really bring away a panel of that carving, when he suddenly saw that the door was shut by which he had en- tered nay, more than shut, undiscern- ible, covered like all.the rest of the walls by that. strange tapestry. At this his heart began to beat again in spite of him. 42 THE SECRET CHAMBER. He looked round once more, and woke after a moment it subsided back again up to more vivid being with a sudden start. into the chair subsided, for no sound, Had his eyes been incapable of vision on not the faintest, accompanied its move- his first entrance? Unoccupied? Who ments. It was the form of a man of mid- was that in the great chair? die age, the hair white, but the beard only It seemed to Lindores that he had seen crisped with grey, the features those of neither the chair nor the man when he the picture a familiar face, more e~ came in. There they were, however, less like all the Randolphs, but with an solid, and unmistakable; the chair carved air of domination and power altogether like the panels, the man seated in front of unlike that of the race. He was dressed the table. He looked at Lindores with a in a long robe of dark color, embroidered calm and open gaze, inspecting him. The with strange lines and angles. There young mans heart seemed in his throat was nothing repellent or terrible in his flutterin6 like a bird, but he was brave, air nothing except the noiselessness, and his mind made one final effort to the calm, the absolute stillness, which was break this spell. He tried to speak, labor- as much in the place as in him, to keep ing with a voice that would not sound, and up the involuntary trembling of the be- with lips too parched to form a word. I holder. His expression was full of dig- see how it is, was what he wanted to say. nity and thoughtfulness, and not malig- It was Earl Roberts face that was look- nant or unkind. He might have been the ing at him; and startled as he was, he kindly patriarch of the house, watching dragged forth his philosophy to support over its fortunes in a seclusion he had him. What could it be but optical delu- chosen. The pulses that had been beat. sions, unconscious cerebration, occult mb in Lindores were stilled. What was seizure by the impressed and stru~gli ug his panic for? a gleam even of self-ridicule mind of this one countenance? But he took possession of him, to be standing could not hear himself speak any word as there like an absurd hero of antiquated he stood convulsed struggling with dry romance with ~he rusty, dusty sword lips and choking voice, good for nothing, surely not adapted for The appearance smiled, as if knowing use against this noble old magician in his thoughts not unkindly, not malignly his hand. with a certain amusement mingled with You are right, said the voice, once scorn. Then he spoke, and the sound more answerin his thoughts; what seemed to breathe through the room not could you do with that sword against me, like any voice that Lindores had ever young Lindores? Put it by. Why should heard, a kind of utterance of the place, my children meet me like an enemy? like the rustle of the air or the ripple of You are my flesh and blood. Give me the sea. You will learn better to-night: your hand. this is no phantom of your brain; it is I. A shiver ran through -the young mans In Gods name, cried the young man frame. The hand that was held out to in his soul, he did not know whether the him was large and shapely and white, with words ever o~ot into the air or not, if there a straight line across the palm a family was any air, in Gods name, who are token upon which the Randolphs prided you? themselves a friendly hand and the The figure rose as if coming to him to face smiled upon him, fixing him with reply; and Lindores, overcome by the ap- those calm, profound, blue eyes. Come, parent approach, struggled into utterance, said the voice. The word seemed to fill A cry came from him he heard it this the place, melting upon him from every time and even in his extremity felt a corner, whisperin~ round him with softest pang the more to hear the terror in his persuasion. He was lulled and calmed in own voice. But he did not flinch, he spite of himself. Spirit or no spirit, why stood desperate, all his strength concen- should not he accept this proffered cour- trated in the act; he neither turned nor tesy? What harm could come of it? The recoiled. Vaguely gleaming through his chief thing that retained him was the mind came the thought that to be thus dragging of the old sword, heavy and use- brought in contact with the unseen was less, which he held mechanically, but the experiment to be most desired on which some internal feelinghe could earth, the final settlement of a hundred not tell what prevented him from put. questions; but his faculties were not ting down. Superstition, xvas it? sufficiently under command to entertain Yes, that is superstition, said his it. He only stood firm, that was all. ancestor, serenely; put it down and And the figure did not approach him; come. THE SECRET CHAMBER. You know my thoughts, said Lin- dores; I did not speak. Your mind spoke, and spoke justly. Put down that emblem of brute force and sul)erstition to ether. Here it is the in- 6 telligence that is supreme. Come. Lindores stood doubtful. He was calm; the power of thought was restored to him. If this benevolent venerable patriarch was all he seemed, why his fathers terror? why the secrecy in which his being was involved? His own mind, though calm, did not seem to act in the usual way. Thoughts seemed to be driven across it as by a wind. One of these came to him suddenly now how there looked him in the face, An angel beautiful and bright, And how he knew it was a fiend. The words were not ended, when Earl Robert replied suddenly with impatience in his voice, Fiends are of the fancy of men; like angels and other follies. I am your father. You know me; and you are mine, Lindores. I have power beyond what you can understand; but I want flesh and blood to reign and to enjoy. Come, Lindores I He put out his other hand. The action, the look, were those of kindness, almost of longing, and the face was familiar, the voice was that of the race. Supernatural! was it supernatural that this man should live here shut up forages? and why? and how? Was there any explanation of it? The youn6 mans brain began to reel. He could not tell which was real the life he had left half an hour ago, or this. He tried to look round him, but could not his eyes were caught by those other kin- dred eyes, which seemed to dilate and deepen as he looked at them, and drew him with a strange compulsion. He felt himself yielding, swaying towards the strange being who thus invited him. What might happen if be yielded? And he could not turn away, he could not tear himself from the fascination of those eyes. With a sudden strange impulse which was half despair and half a bewildering, half- conscious desire to try one potency against another, he thrust forward the cross of the old sword between him and those appeal- in6 hands. In the name of God! he said. Lindores never could tell whether it was that he himself grew faint, and that the dimness of swooning came into his eyes after this violence and strain of emotion, or if it was his spell that worked. But there was an instantaneous change. Ev 43 erything swam around him for the moment, a giddiness and blindness seized him, and he saw nothing but the vague outlines of the room, empty as when he entered it. But gradually his consciousness came back, and he found himself standing on the same spot as before, clutching the old sword, and gradually, as though a dream, recog- nized the same figure emerging out of the mist which was it solely in his own eyes? had enveloped everything. But it was no longer in the same attitude. The hands which had been stretched out to him were busy now with some of the strange instru- ments on the table, moving about, now in the action of writing, now as if managing the keys of a telegraph. Lindores felt that his brain was all atwist and set wrong but he was still a human being of his cen- tury. He thought of the telegraph with a keen thrill of curiosity in the midst of his revivin6 sensations. What communica- tion was this which was going on be fore his eyes? The magician worked on. He had his face turned towards his victim, but his hands moved with unceasing activity. And Lindores, as he grew accustomed to the position, began to weary to feel like a neglected suitor waiting for an audience. To be wound up to such a strain of feel- ing, then left to wait, was intolerable ; mi- patience seized upon him. What circum- stances can exist, however horrible, in which a human being will not feel impa- tience? He made a gre at many efforts to speak before lie could succeed. It seemed to him that his body felt more fear than he did that his muscles were contracted, his throat parched, his tongue refusing its office, althou6h his mind was unaffected and undismayed. At last he found an ut- terance in spite of all resistance of his flesh and blood. Who are you? he said hoarsely. You that live here and oppress this house? The vision raised its eyes full upon him, with again that strange shadow of a smile, mocking yet not unkind. Do you re- member me, he said, on your journey here? That was a delusion. The young man gasped for breath. More like that yqu are a delusion. You have lasted but one-and-twenty years, and I for centuries. How? For centuries and why? Answer me are you roan or demon? cried Lindores, tearing the words, as he felt, out of his own throat. Are you liv- ing or dead? The magician looked at him with the 44 THE SECRET CHAMBER. same intense gaze as before. Be on my tains and the carved panels but alone. side, and you shall know everything, Lin- He felt, too, that he was able to move, dores. I want one of my own race. 0th- but the strangest dual consciousness was ers I could have in plenty; but I want in him throughout all the rest of his trial. you. A Randolph, a Randolph! and you. His body felt to him as a frightened horse Dead! do I seem dead? You shall have feels to a traveller at night a thing sep- everythin~ more than dreams can give arate from him, more frightened than he if you will he on my side. was starting aside at every step, seeing Can he give what he has not? was the more than its master. His limbs shook thought that ran through the mind of Lin- with fear and weakness, almost refusing dores. But he could not speak it. Some- to obey the action of his will, trembling thino~ that choked and stifled him was in under him with jerks aside when he com his throat. pelled himself to move. The hair stood Can I give what I have not? I have upright on his head every finger trem- everything power, the one thing worth bled as with palsy his lips, his eyelids, having; and you shall have more than quivered with nervous agitation. But his power, for you are young my son! Lin- mind was strong, stimulated to a desperate dores! calm. He dragged himself round the To argue was natural, and gave the room, he crossed the very spot where the young man strength. Is this life, he maoician said, here? What is had been all was vacant all your power silent, clear. Had he vanquished the worth here? To sit for ages, and make enemy? This thought came into his mind a race unhappy? with an involuntary triumph. The old A momentary convulsion came across strain of feeling came back. Such efforts the still face. You scorn me, he cried, might~ be produced, perhaps, only by im- with an appearance of emotion, because agination, by excitement, by delusion you do not understand how I move the Lindores looked up by a sudden attrac- world. Power! Tis more than fancy can tion he could not tell what: and the blood grasp. And you shall have it! said the suddenly froze in his veins that had been wizard, with what looked like a show of so boiling and fermenting. Some one was of enthusiasm. 1-le seemed to come near- looking at him from the old mirror on er, to grow larger. He put forth his hand the wall. A face not human and lifelike, again, this time so close that it seemed like that of the inhabitant of this place, impossible to escape. And a crowd of but ghostly and terrible, like one of the wishes seemed to rush upon the mind of dead; and while he looked, a crowd of Lindores. What harm to try if this might other faces came behind all looking at be true? To try what it meant perhaps him, some mournfully, some with a men- nothing, delusions, vain show, and then ace in their terrible eyes. The mirror did there could be no harm; or perhaps there not change, but within its small dim space was knowledge to be had, which was seemed to contain an innumerable com-. power. Try, try, try! the air buzzed about pany, crowded above and below, all with him. The room seemed full of voices one gaze at him. His lips dropped apart urging him. His bodily frame rose into a with a gasp of horror. More and more tremendous whirl of excitement, his veins and more! He was standing close by the seemed to swell to bursting, his lips table when this crowd came. Then all at seemed to force a yes, in spite of him, once there was laid upon him a coJd hand. quivering as they came apart. The hiss He turned; close to his side, brushing of the s seemed in his ears. He changed him with his robe, holding him fast by it into the name which was a spell too, and the arm, sat.Earl Robert in his great chair. cried, Help me, God! not knowing A shriek came from the youn~ mans lips. why. He seemed to hear it echoing away into Then there came another pause he unfathomable distance. The cold touch felt as if he had been dropped from some- penetrated to his very soul. thing that had held him, and had fallen, Do you try spells upon me, Lindores? and was faint. Ttie excitement had been That is a tool of the past. You shall have more than he could bear. Once more something better to work with. And are everything swam around him, and he did you so sure of whom you call upon? If not know where he was. Had he escaped there is such a one, why should He help altogether? was the first waking wonder of you who never called on him before? ..~onsciousness in his mind? But when he Lindores could not tell if these words could think and see ao~ain he was still in were spoken ; it was a communication the same spot, surrounded by the old cur- rapid as the thoughts in the mind. And he felt as if something answered that was not all himself. He seemed to stand pas- sive and hear the argument. Does God reckon with a man in trouble, whether he has ever called to him before? I call now (now he felt it was himself that said): go, evil spirit !go, dead and cursed go, in the name of God ! He felt himself flung violently against the wall. A faint laugh, stifled in the throat, and followed by a groan, rolled round the room; the old curtains seemed to open here and there, and flutter, as if with com- ings and goings. Lindores leaned with his back against the wall, and all his senses restored to him. He felt blood trickle down his neck; and in this contact once more with the physical, his body, in its madness of fright, grew manageable. For the first time he felt wholly master of himself. Though the magician was stand- ing in his place, a great majestic, appall- ing figure, he did not shrink. Liar! he cried, in a voice that rang and echoed as in natural air clinging to miserable life like a xvorm like a reptile; promis- ing all things, having nothing, hut this den, unvisited by the light of day. Is this your poweryour superiority to men who die? is it for this that you oppress a race, and make a house unhappy? I vow, in Gods name, your reign is over! You and your secret shall last no more. There was no reply. But Lindores felt his terrible ancestors eyes getting once more that mesmeric mastery over him which had already almost overcome his powers. He must withdraw his own, or perish. He had a human horror of turn- ing l~is back upon that watchful adversary: to face him seemed the only safety; but to face him was to be conquered. Slowly, with a pang indescribable, he tore himself from that gaze: it seemed to drag his eyes out of their sockets, his heart out of his hosom. Resolutely, with the daring of des- peration, he turned round to the spot where he entered the spot where no door was, hearing already in anticipa- tion the step after him -:.feeling the grip that would crush and smother his ex- hausted life but too desperate to care. THE SECRET CHAMBER. 45 first hrightness come stealing upon the waiting skies, what mingled relief and re- newal of misery is in it I another long day to toil through yet another sad night over! Lord Gowrie sat among the dust and cobwebs, his lamp flaring idly into the blue morning. He had heard his sons human voice, though nothing more; and he expected to have him brought out by invisible hands, as had happened to him- self, and left lying in long deathly swoon outside that mystic door. This was how it had happened to heir after heir, as told from father to son, one after another, as the secret came down. One or two bearers of the name of Lindores had never recovered ; most of them had been saddened and subdued for life. He remembered sadly the freshness of ex- istence which had never come back tc himself; the hopes that had never blos- somed again; the assurance with which never more he had been able to go about the world. And now his son would be as himself the glory gone out of his living his ambitions, his aspirations wrecked. He had not been endowed as his boy was he had been a plain, honest man, and nothing more; but experience and life had given him wisdom enough to smile by times at the coquetries of mind in which Lindores indulged. Were they all over now, those freaks of young intelligence, those enthusiasms of the soul? The curse of the house had come upon him the magnetism of that strange presence, ever living, ever watchful, present in all the family history. His heart was sore for his son; and yet along with this there was a certain consolation to him in having henceforward a partner in the secret some one to whom he could talk of it as he had not been able to talk since his own father died. Almost all the mental strug- gles which Gowrie had known had been connected with this mystery; and he had been obliged to hide them in his bosom to conceal them even when they rent him in two. Now he had a partner in his trouble. This was what he was thinking as he sat through the night. How slowly the moments passed! He was not aware of the daylight coming in. After a while CHAPTER III even thought got suspended in listenino- Was not the time nearly over? He rose How wonderful is the blue dawning of and began to pace about the encumbered the new day before the sun I not rosy-fin- space, which was but a step or two in ex- gered, like that Aurora of the Greeks who tent. There was an old cupboard in the comes later with all her wealth; but still, wall, in which there were restoratives dreamy, wonderful, stealing out of the un- pungent essences and cordials, and fresh seen, abashed by the solemnity of the new water which he had himself brought birth. When anxious watchers see that everything was ready; presently the 46 THE SECRET CHAMBER. ghastly body of his boy, half-dead, would be thrust forth into his care. But this xvas not how it happened. While he waited, so intent that his whole frame seemed to be capable of hearing, he heard the closing of the door, boldly shut with a sound that rose in muffled echoes through the house, and Lindores himself appeared, ghastly indeed as a dead man, but walking upright and firmly, the lines of his face drawn, and his eyes staring. Lord Gowrie uttered a cry. He was more alarmed by this unexpected return than by the helpless prostration of the swoon which he had expected. He recoiled from his son a~ if he too had been a spirit. Lindores! he cried; was it Lindores, or some one else in his place? The boy seemed as if he did not see him. He went straight forward to where the water stood on the dusty table, and took a great draught, then turned to the door. Lin- dores ! said his father, in miserable anx- iety; dont you know ma? Even then the young man only half looked at him, and put out a hand almost as cold as the hand that had clutched himself in the se- cret chamber; a faint smile came upon his face. Dont stay here, he whispered; come.! come! Lord Gowrie drew his sons arm within his own, and felt the thrill through and through him of nerves strained beyond mortal strength. He could scarcely keep up with him as he stalked along the corri- dor to his room, stumbling as if he could not see, yet swift as an arrow. When they reached his room he turned and closed and locked the door, then laughed as he staggered to the bed. That will not keep him out, will it? he said. Lindores, said his father, I expected to find you unconscious, I am almost more frightened to find you like this. I need not ask if you have seen him Oh, I have seen him. The old liar! Father, promise to e~cpose him, to turn him out promise to clear out that ac- cursed old nest I It is our own fault. Why have we left such a place shut out from the eye of day? Isnt there some- thing in the Bible about those who do evil hating the light? Lindores! you dont often quote the Bible. No, I suppose not; but there is more truth in many thinns than we thought. Lie down, said the anxious father. Take some of this wine try to sleep. Take it away; give me no more of that devils drink. Talk to me thats better. Did you go through it all the same, poor papa? and hold me fast. You are warm you are honest! he cried. He put forth his hands over his fathers, warming them with the contact. He put his cheek like a child against his fathers arm. He gave a faint laugh, with the tears in his eyes. Warm and honest, he repeated. Kind flesh and blood! and did you go through it all the same My boy! cried the father, feeling his heart glow and swell over the son who had been parted from him for years by that development of young manhood and ripen- ing intellect which so often severs and loosens the ties of home. Lord Gowrie had felt that Lindores half despised his simple mind and duller imagination; but this childlike clinging overcame him, and tears stood in his eyes. I fainted, I suppose. I never knew how it ended. They made what they liked of me. But you, my brave boy, you came out of your own will. Lindores shivered. I fled! he said. No honor in that. I had not courage to face him longer. I will tell you by-and- by. But I want to know about you. What an ease it was to the father to speak! For years and years this had been shut up in his breast. It had made him lonely in the midst of his friends. Thank God, he said, that I can speak to you, Lindores. Often and often I have been tempted to tell your mother. But why should I make her miserable? She knows there is something; she knows when I see him, but she knows no more. When you see him? Lindores raised himself, with a return of his first ghastly look, in his bed. Then he raised his clenched fist wildly, and shook it in the air. Vile devil, coward, deceiver ! Oh hush, hush, hush, Lindores ! God help us! what troubles you may bring! And God help me, whatever troubles I brin6, said the young man. I defy him, father. An accursed being like that must be less, not more powerful, than we are with God to back us. Only stand by me: stand by me Hush, Lindores! You dont feel it yet never to get out of hearing of him all your life! He will make you pay for it if not now, after; when you remem- ber he is there, whatever happens, know- ing everythin~! But I hop~ it will not be so bad with you as with me, my poor boy. God help you indeed if it is, for you have more imagination and more mind. I am able to forget him sometimes when I am occupied when in the hunting-field, go- ing across country. But you are not a THE SECRET CHAMBER. 47 hunting man, my poor boy, said Lord Gowrie, with a curious mixture of a regret, which was less serious than the other. Then he lowered his voice. Lindores, this is what has happened to me since the moment I gave him my hand. I did not give him my hand. You did not give him your hand? God bless you, my boy! You stood out? he cried, with tears again rushing to his eyes and they say they say but I dont know if there is any truth in it. Lord Gowrie got up from his sons side, and walked up and down with excited steps. If there should be truth in it! Many people think the whole thing is a fancy. If there should be truth in it, Lin- dores! In what, father? They say, if he is once resisted his power is broken once refused. You could stand against him you! Ford ive me, my boy, as I hope God will forgive me, to have thought so little of his best gifts, cried Lord Gowrie, coming back with wet eyes and stooping, he kissed his sons hand. I thought you would be more shaken by being more mind than body, he said, humbly. I thought if I could but have saved you from the trial and you are the conqueror! Am I the conqueror? I think all my bones are broken, father out of their sockets, said the young man, in a low voice. I think I shall go to sleep. Yes, rest, my boy. It is the best thing for you, said the father, though with a pang of momentary disappointment. Lin- dores fell back upon the pillow. He was so pale that there were moments when the anxious watcher thought him not sleeping but dead. He put his hand out feebly, and grasped his fathers hand. Warm honest, he said, with a feeble smile about his lii~s, and fell asleep. The daylight was full in the room, break- ing through shutters and curtains, and mocking at the lamp that still flared on the table. It seemed an emblem of the disorders, mental and material, of this strange nWht; and, as such, it affected the plain imagination of Lord Gowrie, who would have fain got up to extinguish it, and whose mind returned a~ am and again, in spite of him, to this symptom of dis- turbance. By-and-by, when Lindores grasp relaxed, and he got his hand free, he got up from his sons bedside, and put out the lamp, putting it carefully out of the way. With equal care he put awiiy the wine rom the table, and gave the roim its ordinary aspect, softly opening a window to let in the fresh air of the morning. The park lay fresh in the early sunshine, still, except for the twitterin~ of the birds, refreshed with dews, and shining in that soft radiance of the morning which is over before mortal cares are stirring. Never, perhaps, had Gowrie looked out upon the beautiful world around his house without a thought of the weird existence which was going on so near to him, which had gone on for centuries, shut up out of sight of the sunshine. The secret chain- her had been present with him since ever he saw it. He had never been able to get free of the spell of it. He had felt him- self watched, surrounded, spied upon, day after day, since he was of the age of Lin- dores, and that was thirty years ago. He turned it all over in his mind, as he stood there and his son slept. It had been on his lips to tell it all to his boy, who had now come to inherit the enlightenment of his race. And it was a disappointment to him to have it all forced back again, and silence imposed upon him once more. Would he care to hear it when he woke? would he not rather, as Lord Gowrie re- membered to have done himself, thrust the thought as far as he could away from him, and endeavor to forget for the mo- ment until the time came when he would not be permitted to forget? He had been like that himself, he recollected now. He had not wished to hear his own fathers tale. I remember, he said to himself; I remember turning over everything in his mind if Lindores might only be willing to hear the story when he woke! But then he himself had not been willing when he was Lindores, and he could understand his son, and could not blame him; but it would be a disappointment. He was thinking this when he heard Lindores voice calling him. He went back hastily to his bedside. It was strange to see him in his evening dress with his worn face, in the fresh light of the morning, which poured in at every crevice. Does my mother know? said Lindores what will she think? She knows something; she knows you have some trial to go through. Most likely she will be praying for us both thats the way of women, said Lord Gowrie, with the tremulous tenderness which comes into a mans voice sometimes when he speaks of a good wife. Ill go and ease her mind, and tell her all is well over Not yet. Tell me first, said the young man, putting his hand upon his fathers arm. 48 THE SECRET CHAMBER. What an ease it was! I was not so good to my father, he thought to himself, with sudden penitence for the long-past, long-forgotten fault, which, indeed, he had never realized as a fault before. And then he told his son what had been the story of his life how he had scarcely ever sat alone without feeline. from some corner ot the room, from behind some curtain, those eyes upon him and how, in the difficulties of his life, that secret in- habitant of the house had been present, sitting by him and advising him. When- ever there has been anything to do: when there has been a question between two ways, all in a moment I have seen him by me: I feel when he is coming. It does not matter where I am here or any- where as soon as ever there is a ques- tion of family business; and always be persuades me to the wrong way, Lindores. Sometimes I yield to him, how can I help it? He makes everything so clear; he makes wrong seem right. If I have done unjust things in my day You have not, father. I have: there were these Highland people I turned out. I did not mean to do it, Lindores; but he showed me that it would be better for the family. And my poor sister that married Tweedside and was wretched all her life. It was his doing, that marriabe; he said she would be rich, and so she was, poor thing, poor thing! and died of it. And old Macalisters lease Lindores, Lindores! when there is any business it makes my heart sick. I know he will come, and advise wrong, and tell me something after. b j will repent The thing to do is to decide before- hand, that, good or bad, you will not take his advice. Lord Gowrie shivered. I am not strong like you, or clever; I cannot resist. Sometimes I repent in time and dont do it; and then! But for your mother and you children, there is many a day I would not have given a farthing for my life. Father, said Lindores, springin~ from his bed, two of us together can do many thinbs. Give me your word to clear out this cursed den of darkness this very day.~~ Lindores, hush, hush, for the sake of heaven! I will not, for the sake of heaven! Throw it openlet everybody who likes see it make an end of the secret pull down everything, curtains, wall. What do you say? sprinkle holy water? Are you laughing at me? I did not speak, said Earl Gowrie, growing very pale, and grasping his sony s arm with both his hands. Hush, boy; do you think he does not hear? And then there was a low laugh close to them so close that both shrank; a laugh no louder than a breath. Did you laughfather? No, Lindores. Lord Gowrie had his eyes fixed. He was as pale as the dead. He held his son tight for a moment; then his gaze and his grasp relaxed, and he fell back feebly in a chair. You see ! he said; whatever we do it will be the same; we are under his power.~~ And then there ensued the blank pause with which baffled men confront a hope- less situation. But at that moment the first faint stirrings of the house a xvin- dow being opened, a bar undone, a move- ment of feet, and subdued voices be- came audible in the stillness of the morn- ing. Lord Gowrie roused himself at once. We must not be found like this, he said; we must not show how we have spent the ni6 ht. It is over, thank God and oh, my boy, forgive me! I am thank- ful there are two of us to bear it; it makes the burden lighter though I ask your pardon humbly for saying so. I would have saved you if I could, Lindores. I dont wish to have been saved; but Iwill not bear it. I will end it, the young man said, with an oath out of which his emotion took all profanity. His father said, Hush, hush. With a look of ter- ror and pain, he left him; and yet there was a thrill of tender pride in his mind. How brave the boy was! even after he had been Ikere. Could it be that this would all come to nothing, as every other attempt to resist had done before? I suppose you know all about it now, Lindores, said his friend Ffarrington, after breakfast; luckily for us who are going over the house. What a glorious old place it is I dont think that Lindores enjoys the glorious old place to-day, said another of the guests under his breath. How pale he is ! He doesnt look as if he had slept. I will take you over every nook where I have ever been, said Lindores. He looked at his father with almost command in his eyes. Come with me, ail of you. We shall have no more secrets here. Are you mad? said his father in his ear. Never mind, cried the young man. THE SECRET CHAMBER. Oh, trust me; I will do it with judgment. Is everybody ready? There was an excitement about him that half frightened, half roused the party. They all rose, eag~r, yet doubtful. His mother came to him and took his arm. Lindores! you will do nothing to vex your father; dont make him unhappy. I dont know your secrets, you two but look, he has enough to bear. I xvant you to know our secrets, moth- er. Why should we have secrets from you? Why, indeed? she said, with tears in her eves. But, Lindores, my dearest boy, dont make it worse for him. I give you my word, I will be wary, he said; and she left him to go to his father, who followed the party, with an anxious look upon his face. Are you coming, too? he asked. I? No; I will not go: but trust him trust the boy, John. He can do nothing; he will not he able to do anythin6, he said. And thus the guests set out on their round the son in advance, excited and tremulous, the father anxious and watch- ful behind. They began in the usual way, with the old state rooms and picture-gal- lery; and in a short time the party had half forgotten that there was anything un- usual in the inspection. When, however, they were half-way down the gallery, Lin- dores stopped short with an air of wonder. You have had it put back then ? he said. He was standing in front of the vacant space where Earl Roberts portrait ought to have been. What is it ?they all cried, crowding upon him, ready for any marvel. But as there was nothing to he seen, the strangers smiled among themselves. Yes, to be sure, there is nothing so suggestive as a vacant place, said a lady who was of the party. Whose portrait ought ~to be there, Lord Lin- dores? He looked at his father, who made a slight assenting gesture, then shook his head drearily. Who put it there? Lindores said, in a whisper. It is not there; hut you and I see it, said Lord Gowrie, with a sigh. Then the strangers perceived that some- thing had moved the father and the son, and, notwithstanding their eager curiosity, obeyed the dictates of politeness, and dis- persed into groups looking at the other pictures. Lindores set his teeth and clenched his hands. Fury was growing upon him not the awe that filled his LiVING AGE. VOL. xvii. 836 49 fathers mind. We will leave fhe rest of this to another time, he cried, turning to the others, almost fiercely. Come, I will show you somethinb more striking now. He made no further pretence of going systematically over the house. He turned and went straight up-stairs, and along the corridor. Are we going over the bed- rooms? some one said. Lindores led the way straight to the old lumber-room, a strange place for such a gay party. The ladies drew their dresses about them. There was not room for half of them. Those who could get in began to handle the strange things that lay about, touching them with dainty fingers, exclaiming how dusty they were. The window was half blocked up by old armor and rusty weap- ons; but this did not hinder the full sum- mer daylight from penetrating in a flood of light. Lindores went in with fiery deter- mination on his face. He went straight to the wall, as if he would go through, then paused with a blank gaze. W here is the door? he said. You are forgetting yourself, said Lord Gowrie, speaking over the heads of the others. Lindores! you know very well there never was any door there; the wall is very thick; you can see by the depth of the window. There is no door there. The young man felt it over with his hand. The wall was smooth, and covered with the dust of ages. With a groan he turned away. At this moment a suppressed laugh, low, yet distinct, sounded close by him. You laughed? he said, fiercely, to Ffarringt on, striking his hand upon his shoulder. I laughed! Nothing was farther from my thoughts, said his friend, who was curiously examining something that lay upon an old carved chair. Look here! what a wonderful sword, cross- hilted! Is it an Andrea? YVhats the matter, Lindores ? Lindores had seized it from his hands; he dashed it against the wall with a sup- pressed oath. The two or three people in the room stood aghast. Lindores ! his father said, in a tone of warning. The young man dropped the useless weapon with a groan. Then God help us! he said; but I will find another way. There is a very interesting room close by, said Lord Gowrie, hastily this way! Lindores has been put out by some changes that have been made with- out his knowledge, he said, calmly. You must not mind him. He is disappointed. 50 ABRAHAM COWLEY. He is perhaps too much accustomed to have his own way. But Lord Gowrie knew that no one be- lieved him. He took them to the adjoin- ing room, and told them some easy story of an apparition that was supposed to haunt it. Have you ever seen it? the guests said, pretending interest. Not I hut we dont mind ghosts in this house, he answered, with a smile. And then they resumed their round of the old noble mys- tic house. I cannot tell the reader what young Lin- dores has done to carry out his pledged word and redeem his family. It may not he known, perhaps, for another generation, and it will not be for me to write that con- cluding chapter: but xvhen, in the ripeness of time, it can be narrated, no one will say that the mystery of Gowrie Castle has been a vulgar horror, though there are some who are disposed to think so now. From The Corohill Magazine. ABRAHAM COWLEY. THE period of English poetry which i1C5 between the decline of Ben Jonson and the rise of Dryden was ruled with undisputed sway by a man whose works are now as little read as those of any fifth- rate Elizabethan dramatist. During the whole lifetime of Milton, the fame of that glorious poet was obscured and dwarfed by the exaggerated reputation of this writer, and so general and so unshaken was the belief in the lyrist of the day, that a royalist gentleman of Cambridge or an exiled courtier at Paris in the year 1650 would have laughed in your face, had you suggested that time could ever wither the deathless laurels of Mr. Cowley, or untune the harmonies of his majestic numbers. Yet in a very short space this work of destruction was most thoroughly done. The generation of Dryden admired his genius passionately, but not without criti- cism. The generation of Pope praised him coldly, but without reading him, and within fifty years of his own decease this nonpareil of the Restoration fell into total disfavor and oblivion. With the revival of naturalistic poetry, the lyrists and dram- atists of the reign of Charles I. came once more into favor. Crashaw, Onarles, Lovelace, martyrs, pietists, and rakes, all the true children of the Muses, whatever their mode or matter, were restored and reprinted. Not these only, but some very small and unattractive talents have lately been presented anew to the public; but Cowley, the one representative genius of the age, as his contemporaries supposed, still lacks an editor who will collect his scattered works and give him the chance of a new lease of life. His prose essays, it must be acknowledged, have held their ground in our literature, but as a poet he is a dead name, or living only in deprecia- tion and ridicule. We hope to show that, however great his fan its, this depreciation is unjust and this ridicule absurd, and in doing so it will be necessary to solve two questions why Cowley ever attained so immense a poetic reputation, and why, having once gained it, he has so com- pletely lost it. A xvealthy citizen of London, stationer or grocer, dying in the summer of i6i8, left a sum of 1000/. to be divided among his six children and one other not yet born. In the autumn of the year this latter heir appeared, and was christened Abraham Cowley. We, looking back upon the his- tory of the time, see that it was a period of rapid poetic decadence into which this baby was born. Shakespeare was dead; J onson and the philosophic poets, to xvhom the newly awakened brain was to be so intimately indebted, were already past middle life. The years directly after the birth of Cowley were to be darkened by the deaths of many poets, but none were to be born, except Marvell, Vaughan, and, much later, Dryden, for nearly forty years. Of his immediate compeers, Milton was ten years of age, Denham three, Suckling nine years, and Lovelace only afew weeks older than himself. We know nothing of his early childhood but what he has him- self told us with a charming simplicity namely, that his mothers parlor was full of works of devotion, among which he was so fortunate as to find ~ copy of The Faery Queen. This became his contin- ual reading, and, without much under- standino of the matter, he became so in- terpenetrated with the delicious recur- rence of the rhyme and rhythm that he insensibly was made a poet. Before he was twelve years old he had read the entire works of Spenser. So much he himself tells us, but there can be no doubt to those who study his earliest writings that the magic of another name ~vas add- ed to the charm that woke him into verse. At ten years of age, the child composed an epical romance of Pyramus and This- be, which is one of the most extraordi- nary instances of precocity in the whole annals of literature. Indeed, to find a ABRAHAM COWLEY. 5 parallel to it, we must leave the art of well beguiled Theseus and Hippolyta to poetry altogether, and note what was done laub hter, is here told in all tragic serious- by Mozart in music, or Lucas van Leyden ness, but not without several signs, such as in engraving. But this was but the pre- the sucking of odoriferous breath, that lude to fresh infantine exertions. The show Cowley to have been familiar with precocious boy was very early sent to thedrama so unsuccessfully produced at Westminster School, and his intense inter- Athens with Bottom for the heroine. est in versification and the grace and The boy-poet has been ambitious enough charm of his manners won him many to invent a new stanza, and a rather good friends and patrons. To his schoolfellows one too, as will be acknowledged from this he rni~ht well seem the prodigy that we example. Thisbe finds Pyramus dead, know they considered him, and the mas- and after tearing her golden hair ters of the school, with a gentleness unu- sual in those austerer times, encouraged She blames all-powerful Jove, and strives to take his continued production of verses. In His bleeding body from the moistened 1630, two years after composing Pyra- ground; mus and Thisbe, he attempted a bolder She kisses his pale face till sh~ doth make flight in his little epic of Constantia and It red with kissing, and th en seeks to wake Philetus, being then twelve years of age, His parting soul with mournful words, his and by the year 1633 he had accumulated wound such a store of poems that his friends de- Washes with tears that her sweet voice con- termined to hide the treasure no longer found. from the world. Pyramus and Thisbe is a work which The first edition of the Poetical BIos- few of the adult poets of that day would soms, by A. C., is a charming little have been ashamed of writin~. It con- quarto of thirty two leaves. It is now one tains mistakes of rhyme and grammar that of the chief prizes of book-hunters, and a might be so easily corrected that they great bibliographical rarity. It ought to form an interesting proof that the poem possess, what is often lost, a large portrait was not touched up for the press by older of the author at the age of thirteen, as the hands, but in other respects it is smooth frontispiece. Referring to this volume in and singularly mature. The heroic verse after life, Cowley spoke of it as published in which it is written is nerveless, but cor- at the age of thirteen, in all probability rect, and the story is told in a straight- recollecting and being misled by this por- forward way, and with a regular progress, trait and this error has been repeated that are extraordinary in so young a child. ever since. As a matter of fact, however, One conceit is startling enough to be com- he was in his fifteenth year. It opens memorated: with a pompous little invocation to the Who lets slip Fortune, her shall never find: Muse Melpomene, and is then introduced Occasion once past by, is bald be/ibid. to the public, after the fashion of the day, by commendatory verses signed by two But no other such absurdity occurs in schoolfellows. One of these, Robert the whole of the fifty-three stanzas. Meade, became a man of some note, and, The amazing promise of Pyramus and twenty years after this, a candidate him- Tl~isbeis hardly justified by the clever- self for poetic honors in his comedy of ness of the poem written two years later, The Combat between Friendship and Constantia and Philetus. There is Love. Cowlevs contributions are five here hardly any sign at all of immaturity, in number, Constantia and Philetus, but a far worse fault than childishness has Pyramus and Thisbe, Elegy on the stepped in. Instead of bein~ like the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton, Elegy puerile poem of a little boy, it is like the on Mr. Richard Clark, and A Dream of correct and tedious work of some man Elysium. that never can be famous. In point of Let any reader of Pyramus and This- grammar and rhyme there is a great ad- be consider how nafve, artless, and in- vance apparent, and xve see the justice of fantine are the writings of the very clever- the pretty phrase Cowley afterwards used est child of ten that he has ever known in speaking of these juvenile pieces, that when compared xvith this first work of Cow- even so far backward there remain yet leys. After more than two hundred years some traces of me in the little footsteps it remains still readable much more of a child V for the language has already readable, in fact, than many of its authors begun to take the same ingenious turns more elaborate poems of maturity. The and involutions that characterize The story of that ~ palpable-gross play that Mistress and the Odes. It is in- 52 ABRAHAM COWLEY. deed singular that, at the age of twelve, the child should be so much the father of the man as to produce this most Cowleyan stanza, illustrative of the authors hi flown rhetoric as much as those I have just referred to are of his ingenuity : Oh! mighty Cupid! whose unbounded sway Hath often ruled the Olympian Thunderer, Whom all celestial deities obey, Whom men and gods both reverence and fear! Oh, force Constantias heart to yield to love, Of all/ky works Ike Master-piece twill prove. Constantia and Philetusis an extreme- ly tragical tale, not so briefly or so simply told as Pyramus and Thisbe, and is padded out by songs and letters to the extentof nearly seven hundred lines, an extraordinary feat, of course, for so young a child. Of the other pieces in the volume, the Elegy on Dudley, Lord Carlton, an imitation of Ben Jonson, must date from the year of that statesmans death, 1631 The Dream of Elysiu~~is almost a very charming reverie on the poets of old and the dreams of neo-pagan romance; we say almost, for something of the es- sence of poetry is wanting. While Cowley was posing as the child- genius at Westminster, a youth ten years his senior was about to retire to a solitude at Horton which was to enrich English poetry with some of its most exquisite and most perfect treasures. It is possible that the fame of Cowleys precocity had reached the ears of Milton when he lamented, in his first sonnet, that no bud or blossom adorned his late spring, such as endued more timely-happy spirits. However this may be, we have no reason to prefer to the slow maturity of such a manhood as his the exhausting precocity of Cow- leys marvellous boyhood. His contempo- raries, however, thought otherwise, and when the Poetical Blossoms appeared in 1633 it enjoyed an immediate popular- ity. A few months earlier, Miltons first printed English verses, the lines on Shakespeare, had appeared in front of the second folio. Whether Ben Jonson, now bedridden and almost blind, but still eager in poetic matters, expressed any favor for the verses of Cowley is not known. But various signs in the writings of the latter tend to show that he was increasingly in- fluenced by the style of Jonson, and anx- ious to write like one of his poetic sons. The very year that the public career of Cowley commenced, that of Jonson virtu- ally closed in the publication of The Tale of a Tub. But Randolph, that ad- mirable writer and dramatic poet, whose early death cut short a career that prom- ised great things in literature, was contin- uing the traditions of the school with the utmost brilliance. There can be no doubt that in longing to go to Cambridge, as we know that Cowley did, the desire of asso- ciating with Randolph was not the least inducement. His Loves Riddle proves that he was familiar with The Jealous Lovers, printed in 1632. But we shall presently return to this. Just as Cowley was leaving Westminster to go to Cambridge, in 1636, a second edi- tion of Poetical Blossoms was called for, and appeared in a smaller form, much augmented. Among the additions was an ode containing these fine and thoughtful verses, written at the age of thirteen: This only grant me, that my means may lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high; Some honor I would have, Not from great deeds, but good alone; Th unknown are better than ill-known. Rumour can ope the grave: Acquaintance I would have, but when t de- pends Not on the number, but the choice of friends. Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, trw night. My house a cottage, more Than palace, and should fitting be For all my use, no luxury. My garden painted oer With natures hand, not arts; and pleasures yield Horace might envy in his Sabine field. It was for strains of this elevated morality that Cowley won the enthusiastic praise of such ~. ter didactic writers as Denham and Roscommon, and in a certain sense origi- nated a school. As an example of another class of gifts, we may read with pleasure the amusing piece called The Poetical Revenge, the story of which maybe here told in prose. Cowley, 6 made an appointment with a young companion to meet him in Westminster Hall at a certain hour, waited in vain, till he despaired of his friend, and out of curiosity went into one of the courts. Here he found a va- cant seat, and made himself at home, when a fellow in a satin suit came and pushed him out. Whereupon Cowley ex- postulated so loudly that a barrister, a neat man in a ruff, rose and said, Boy, get you gone; this is no school ! To which Master Impudence replied, Oh no, for if it were, all you gowned men would go up for false Latin! At this The young man Aforesaid, in the satin suit, began To strike me; doubtless there had been a fray Had I not providently skipped away, Without replying, but not without inwardly murmuring this curse May he Be by his father in his study took At Shakespeares Plays, instead of my Lord Coke. The additional poems are all far better than the first infantine verses. There is more eloquence, more enthusiasm, more power, and some of the odes are fully worthy, at least in extract, of a place in all collections of En~lish poetry. They breathe a great pride in the art of poesy, great desire for and confidence of fame, and a scholastic turn of mind. Tis not a pyramid of marble stone, Though high as our ambition; Tis not a tomb cut out in brass, which can Give life to the ashes of a man, But verses only. Throughout Cowleys life, however occu- pied with courtly intrigue or with l)uhlic duty, he never failed to be true to this boyish declaration of faith. He was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, and proceeded thither with the MS. of his pastoral drama of Loves Riddle, written about the age of sixteen, in his pocket. Though Randolph was un- happily dead, there were others who would welcome the boy-genius to the banks of the Cam. Suckling, Cleveland, Fanshawe, and Crashaw were all at Cambridge; and with the last of these, at any rate, he struck up an immediate friendship. It is probable also that the needy and forlorn Butler, in some obscure corner of a col- lege, was picking up such odd scraps of learning as vary the pages of H udibras. Cowley, with a different fate, came into port with flowing sails, and lost no time in winninb a position. In 1637 a third edi- tion of the Poetical Blossoms was pub- lished, and in 1638 his pastoral comedy of Loves Riddle. This made what was then considered a very dainty little vol- ume, adorned with a portrait of the young author, pretty but pertly smiling, while a florid angel descends from heaven with a great quill pen in one hand, and in the other a garland of laurel that he lays on the flowing silky locks. A prologue to Sir Kenelm Digby apolobizes that The style is low, such as youll easily take For what a swain might say or a boy make. 53 This boyish drama is one of the most readable things that Cowley ever executed, and is in distinct following, without imita- tion, of Randolphs Jealous Lovers. It is written in good blank verse, with con- siderable sprightliness of dialogue, and with several threads of intrigues that are held well in hand, and drawn skilfully to- gether at last. Callidora, the heroine, flies from her fathers court, and Act I. describes her arrival and welcome by some vulgar but amusing shepherds; the next act shows how anguished at her loss every one at her fathers court is, but especially her lover Philistes; and the rest of the action, of course, records the vicissitudes that prevent their reunion until the fifth act. I have no space to quote, but may in passing be permitted to refer to the last scene of the second act, as containing a passage of genuine and delightful humor. In Loves Riddle there is much, as I have said, to praise ; but there is an ab- sence of many qualities that Cowley never possessed, and which are essential to pas- toral poetry. There i~ no genuine pas- sion, no knowledge of the phenomena of nature, no observant love of birds or flow- ers or the beauties of country life. All the exquisite touches that illuminate the Faithful Shepherdess are eminently absent; nor have we in the precocious humor of the world-wise boy any equivalent for the sweet garrulous music of Chalkhill or Browne. In February of the same year, 1638, was published a five-act Latin comedy, Nazi- fra glum 7oculare, in prose and verse, the scene laid at Dunkirk, but the style and persons strictly imitative of Plautus. In emulation of the Miles Gloriosus, there is a loud boasting soldier named Bombardomachides! Later on in 1638, Cowley completed his twentieth year. At the age when youths of talerrt are usually beginning to dream of future enterprise, he found himself an admired and popular poet, author of three successful works, and highly esteemed as a scholar. With long fair hair falling on his shoul- ders, and with a fresh, intelligent face, he must without doubt have been an ele- gant youth in the fashion of the day, even if with none of the superlative beauty of John Milton, the Lady of Trinity. With all the adulation which he received, his sensible young head does not seem to have been turned. Past all the praises of the present, he looked wistfully forward into the future; and with some inkling, perhaps, that his fine talents could not promise the lasting crown he sought for, ABRAH.AM COWLEY. ABRAHAM COWLEY. 54 he set himself the memorable enigma that commences his Miscellanies: What shall I do to be forever known And make the age to come my own? Wifh these same Miscellanies and with the preparation of the volume called The Mistress he seems to have been quietly and happily occupied until the breaking out of the civil war. We can at all events affix dates to the elegies on Sir Flenry Wootton (1636) and Sir Anthony Vandyke (1641), each displayin~ increased facility in skilful employment of the heroic coup- let. The visit of Prince Charles to Cam- bridge in 1641 gave occasion to the pro- duction of a more bulky work. In a great hurry Cowley was called upon to write a comedy, and The Guardian, an ill- digested, unre vised performance, was act- ed before his Royal Highness on March 12. The prologue fiercely satirized the Round- heads, and sneered at Prynne, who had just published his ridiculous Jersey poem of Mont-Orb ueil. The farcical part of the piece is in prose, but the grand per- sonages, Lucia and her lover Trueman Junior, talk in blank verse. The part of a poet, Doggrell, is amusing, but insisted on too much. One sentence put into the mouth of a girl, Aurelia, is worth record- ing: I shall never hear my virginals when I play upon em, for her daughter Tabithas singing of psalms; the first pious deed will be to banish Shakespeare and Ben Jonson out of the parlor, and to bring in their rooms Mar- prelate and Prynnes works. The Guardian was never included in the works of Cowley, and underwent some curious vicissitudes. It was not printed until 1650, when its author was in exile in Paris, and this, apparently, unauthorized edition is very rare. When Cowley re- turned to England, he entirely rewrote the play in the year 1658, and it was brought out on the stage as The Cutter of Coleman Street, but proved a complete failure. Cowley finally tried the effect of his piece in print by publishing it in 1663 but again to receive the disapproval of the critics. Happy in his work at the university, and in his newly attained fellowship, the young poet was busy on many literary schemes, and mainly on an epic, the Davideis, on the sorrows and victories of King David, when the great civil war broke upon him like a wave. After the indecisive battle of Edge Hill, Oxford be- came for a while the headquarters of the royalists. Thither Crashaw had already gone, in 1641, and Cowley was now fain to follow. Cambridge was now no longer a bed of roses to a royalist poet, and Cow- ley was soon torn thence by that l)ublic violent storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good for- tune as could have befallen me in such a tempest, for I was cast by it into the favor of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses of the world. These were Lord Falkland and Queen Henrietta Maria, to whom the sobriety and excellent fidelity of Cowley pointed him out as a fit staff to lean upon in such perilous times. Yet it was not in him not to cling to scholarship, and for two years more, or somewhat less, he pur- sued his studies at Oxford with no less ardor than before at Cambridge. But New- bury shook and Marston Moor broke the hopes of the Cavaliers. The queen ~ed to Paris, and Cowley followed her, leav- ing the Earl of Manchester and his Puri- tan divines to purge the university and eject the sixty-five fellows of whom Cra- shaw was one. The melancholy mystic repaired, like our poet, to Paris, where in 1646 Cowley found him in utter destitu- tion, and, with characteristic warmth of heart, insisted on laboring for his relief. In the mean time Cowley himself was on terms of confidential intimacy with the queen and the heads of her party. All his time and thought was dedicated to delicate diplomacy, and he was despatched to various parts of Jersey, Scotland, Flan- ders, and Holland on private State busi- ness. But when the king was given up by the Presbyterians into the custody of Cromwell, in 1647, Cowley was recalled to Paris to undertake a yet more onerous duty. To no one less trustworthy than himself would Henrietta Maria delegate the preparation of those letters in cipher by means of which she communicated with her husband till his execution in 1649. Cowley was next occupied in correspond- ing with the leaders of royalist reaction in Scotland and Ireland. But when the youn~ king Charles took refuge in 1-lol- land, and the Anglo-Parisian court was some measure broken up, it was sug- gested that Cowley should return to En- gland, and, under pretence of privacy and retirement, should take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this country. He was immediately caught, however, and imprisoned, appar- ently in the year I655; nor did he regaii~ ABRAHAM COWLEY. 55 his liberty on a less bail than of I,ooot. At Cromwells death in 1658 he ventured back into France, and remained there until the restoration. In the course of eighteen years of en- forced inaction, much had occurred to lit- erary men, though little in literature itself. Just before the civil war broke out, a whole group of eminent dramatists among whom may be named Jonson, Ford, Mas- singer, Field, and Carew, had passed away. The years of contention saw the deaths of Suckling. Cartwri ght, Quarles, and Drum- moncl. In 1650 Cowleys dear friend and brother, Richard Crashaxy, had breathed his last at the shrine of Loretto. A new generation bad meanwhile been born Shadwell, Wycherley, Soutberne, and Otway. Even in the civil wars, moreover, poetry was read and published. In 1647, the year before the Hesperides was brought out, an edition, probably pirated, of Cowleys love-cycle, called The Mis- tress, was issued in England. From the last of these pieces we learn, or are in- tended to believe, that Cowley wrote them in three years, during which time he was tormented with a love-passion that he saw at last to be hopeless. It is just possible that, like YValler, he was really devoted to some lady of rank beyond his reach, but the poems themselves breathe no ardor or tenderness, and such a supposition is directly at variance with his own singu- larly frank exposition of the genesis of the book. Poets, he says, are scarce thought freemen of their company, with- out paying some duties, and obliging them- selves to be true to love. Sooner or later they must all pass through their trial, like some Mahometan monks that are bound by their order, once at least in their life, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Mistress was fated to become one of the most admired books of the age. It was a pocket compendium of the science of being ingenious in affairs of the heart; and its purity and scholastic phrase rec- ommended it to many who were no judges of poetry, but very keen censors of sobri- ety. To us it is the most unreadable pro- duction of its author, dry and tedious, without tenderness, without melancholy, without music. Here and there we find a good rhetorical line, such as, Love is the soul of body and soul of me; and, what is very curious, almost all the pieces lead off with a sonorous and well- turned phrase. But not one is readable throughout; not one is even ridiculous enough for quotation. All are simply dull, overloaded with ihgenious prosaic fancy, and set to eccentric measures of the authors invention, that but serve to prove his metrical ineptitude. It is not correct to say that these poems continue and cul- tivate to excess the over-ornate style of the philosophical poets of the generation before. When Habington loads his pages with tasteless conceits, he over-colors his style in the manner learned from I yly, Marini, and Gongora. So Donne, in a more brilliant and masculine way, errs in the introduction of unsuitable and mon- strous ornament. But Cowley is hardly ornamented at all, and his heresy is not so much that of Marini as that of the in- flated, prosaic French poets of the class of Saint Amant. He seizes an idea, perhaps sensible, perhaps preposterous, but in no case beautiful; he clothes this idea with illustration, drawn, not from external nature or objects of any kind, but from the supposed phenomeua of the human mind. I think we can trace all this pe- dantic ingenuity to the personal training and example of Dr. Henry More, who was the great oracle of En6 lish Platonism at Cambridge during Cowleys residence there, and whose extraordinary volume of Philosophical Poems, published in 1640, may, I think, be constantly found reflected in the lyrics of the younger poet. And in considering why these poems of Cowleys were popular, we must not forget to note that the prose writin6 s of More and others of his stamp were greatly de- lighted in by the seventeenth century, and now entirely unread. The taste for these ingenuities and paradoxical turns of thought came like a disease, and passed away. So Cowley, who confidently be- lieved that time to come would admit him to have been Loves last and greatest prophet, and who was quoted as having written what ensphered the whole world~ of love, is now justly denied the humblest place among the erotic poets. One piece alone must be excepted in this sweeping condemnation. The poem called The Wish is so simple, sincere, and fresh, that we are disposed to wonder at finding so delicious a well in such an arid desert. Thus it begins Well then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall neer agree; The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy, And they, methinks, deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings, Of this great hive, the City. 56 ABRAHAM COWLEY. Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave, May I a small house and large garden have! And a few friends and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too! And since Love neer will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as guardian-angels are, Only beloved, and loving me. The moral purity of Cowleys muse in so licentious a time must not pass without praise, if only to rebut the foolish and fanatic rage of such critics as the Rev. Edmund Elys, who sought, after his death, to persuade the public to the contrary. As a matter of fact, Cowley seldom forgot to write as became a gentleman. In 1648 a very inferior satire, The Four Ages of England, an dagain apiece of doggerel called A Satire against Sep- aratists, were printed, with the name of Abraham Cowley on the title-pages. With these productions he had nothing to do, nor with the printing of The Guardian in 1650. The increased demand for his unpublished writings and the fear of piracy determined him, as soon as he was released on bail, to set about revising his genuine writings for the press. The re- sult was the appearance, in i6~6, of a very important volume, The Works of A. Cowley, in small folio. This contained many things long ago written or imagined, and never before presented to the public. The opening section of the book consisted of the Miscellanies, poems the compo- sition of which had extended over many years. Among the most notable pieces are The Motto, an admirable poem on his artistic aspirations and ambitions; The Ode of Wit, which contains an odd reference to a Bajazet on the stage, which seems just too early to be Racines; a horrid Ode to Dick, my Friend, which is worthy of study as a perfect summary of Cowleys sins of style; a prettily con- ceived poem called Friendship in Ab- sence, which is unhappily spoiled by an inherent wooden ingenuity that never ceases to obtrude itself; The Chronicle, an amusing ieu desprit, in which he feigns to make for himself such a list of conquered hearts as Leporello quotes on his masters account in Don Giovanni an epistle to Davenant from Jersey, com- plimenting him on the publication of Gondibert, and making fun of Prynnes absurd verses, and finally two really splendid elegies on William Harvey and on Richard Crashaw. These two poems, as perhaps the finest wheat that the win- flowing of criticism will finally leave on this wide granary-floor, we must examine more at leisure. William Harvey, who is not by any means to be confounded with the great physiologist, was a young friend and fellow-student of Cowleys with whom he was on terms of sympathetic and affec- tionate intimacy. This excellent and gifted lad, like another Hallam, was taken away suddenly by fever in the midst of his hopes and labors. Coxvley celebrated his memory in an elegy of unusual directness and tenderness Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say Have ye not seen us walking every day? Was there a tree about, which did not know The love betwixt us two? Henceforth, ye gentle trees, forever fade, Or your sad branches thicker join And into darksome shades combine, Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid. This seems to prophesy of that later lovely dirge of Thyrsis, and the tree that knew the soul of the Scholar-Gipsy. Cowley was incapable of lou6 sustaining these level flights, and the poem grows didactic and flat as it proceeds, but gathers fire and force in the last stanza And if the glorious saints cease not to know Their wretched friends who fight with life below, Thy flame to me doth still the same abide, Only more pure and rarified. There whilst immortal hymns thou dost re- hearse, Thou dost with holy pity see Our dull and earthly poesy Where grief and misery can be joined with verse. But the fine elegiac qualities of these memorial verses on Harvey are quickened into ardor, nay, we may almost say fired into rapture, in the lines on the death of Crashaw. In the first case, the poign- ant regret of an intimate and private sor- row inspired the poem; in the second, the public loss of a poet whom Cowley might be well forgiven for fancyin6 absolutely supreme, combined with personal grief at the loss of a friend. Friendship and poetry were the two subjects that alone set Cowleys peculiar gifts on flame. Lan- guid or insincere on other subjects, on these two he never failed to be eloquent. In the elegy on Crashaw these combined to stimulate his lyric powdrs to their ut- most, and the result was most brilliant. Crashaw, after suffering so much after his ejection from Oxford~,had been helped, as we have seen, by the noble exertions of Cowley. Henrietta Maria had gained him a lucrative post in the Vatican or near it, ABRAHAM COWLEY. 57 and in i6~o Crashaw had been made a canon at Loretto, only to die there almost immediately in the sacred precincts. Out- cast and reviled as a renegade clergyman and a Papist, hardly a voice in England was raised to his honor save that of Cow- ley, who never failed in manly and cour- ageous acts of fidelity. Poet and saint, he begins, braving all criticism in the out- set, thou art now in heaven, companion of the angels, who, when they call on thee for songs, can have no greater pleasure than to hear thine old earthly hymns. Thy spotless muse, says Cowley, like Mary, did contain the Godhead; and did disdain to 5mb of any lower matter than eternity. In this strain he proceeds half through the elegy, and then in a sudden ecstasy of contemplation he cries How well, blest Swan, did Fate contrive thy death, And niade thee render up thy tuneful breath In thy great mistress arms! thou most divine And richest offering of Lorettos shrine! Where like some holy sacrifice to expire, A fever burns thee, and Love lights the fire, Angels, they say, brought the famed chapel there, And bore the sacred load in triumph through the air, Tis surer much they brought thee there, and they And thou, their charge, went singing all the way. But he feels it needful to apologize to the Anglican Church for saying that angels led Crashaw when from her he went, and thus the elegy finally winds up His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong ; his life, Im sure, was in the right, And I myself a Catholic will be, So far, at least, great Saint, to pray to thee. Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow On us, the poets militant below, Opposed by our old enemy, adverse Chance, Attacked by Envy and by Ignorance, Enchained by Beauty, tortured by Desires, Exposed by tyrant Love to savage beasts and fires. Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise, And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies, Elisha-like (but with a wish much less More fit thy greatness and my littleness) Lo, here I beg, I whom thou once didst prove So humble to esteem, so good to love, Not that thy spirit might on me doubled be, I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me, And when my Muse soars with so strong a wing Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee to sing. The reader will not want to be persuaded that these are very exquisite and very bril- liant lines. Had Cowley written often in such a nervous strain as this, he had need- ed no interpreter or apologist to-day; nay more, Dryden, his occupation gone, would have had to pour the vigor of his genius into some other channel. The tenderness of the allusion to Crashaws sufferings and persecution, the tact and sweetness of the plea for his saintship, the sudden passion of invocation, the modest yet fervent prayer at the close, all these are felicities of the first order of rhetorical poetry. At the close of the Miscellanies were printed, in the volume of i6~6, twelve translations or imitations of the .Odes of Anacreon done into octosyl- labic verse, or rather into that iambic meas- ure of either seven or eight syllables, but always of four cadences, which Milton used with such admirable effect in his mi- nQr poems and Comus. Cowley, whose ear was certainty not sensitive, could ill afford to compete with Milton in melody, and made some sad discords with this del- icate instrument. Stanley, again, in 1651, had introduced this kind of writing to the public with a great deal of spirit. Still Cowleys Anacreontics are frequently pretty and sparkling, and they have been praised even in our own time, at the ex- pense of all his other writings. In this judgment, however, I can by no means coincide. The second division of the folio is oc- cupied with The Mistress, reprinted from the edition of 1647. This, agai n,is followed by the Pindarique Odes. In publishing these odes Cowley performed a dangerous innovation; nothing at all like these pompous lyrics in vers Zibres had hitherto been attempted or suggested in English. In his preface lie acknowl- edged this with a proud humility charac- teristic of the man. I am in great doubt whether they will be understood by most readers, nay, even by very many who are well enough acquainted with the common roads and ordinary tracks of poesy. The figures are unusual and bold even to te- merity, and such as I durst not have to do withal in any other kind of poetry: the numbers are various and irregular, and sometimes, especially some of the. iono b ones, seem harsh and uncouth, if the just measures and cadences be not observed in the pronunciation. So that almost all their sweetness and numerosity, which is to be found, if I mistake not, in the rout, hes t,if rightly repeated, lies in a manner wholly at the mercy of the reader. The readers ABRAHAM COWLEY. of the day were very merciful or very un- critical, for it was chiefly on the score of those raucous odes that so many sweet words were said about the majestick numbers of Mr. Cowley. They became the rage, and founded a whole school of imitators. Bishop Sprat states in his Life of Cowley that the poet was set thinking on this style of poetry by finding himself with the works of Pindar in a place where there were no other books. It seems likely that this place was Jersey or some other temporary station of exile, while his headquarters were at Paris. The fashion of irrerular inflated verse of a rhetorical character was just coming into fashion in France. Although condemned by Boi- lean, it was frequently practised by Cor- neille, and still more characteristically in the last years of Cowlevs life, by Racine in Esther and A Ikahie. But to Cowley is due the praise of inventin~ or introducing a style of ode which was a new thing in modern literature, and which took firm hold of our poetry until, in Col- lins, it received its apotheosis and its death-blow. After a hundred years ap- peared the Pindaric Odes of Grey, the last and greatest follower of Cowley. But though the chaster form of ode designed by Collins from a Greek model has ever since his day ruled in our poetic art, there has always been a tendency to return to the old standard of Cowley. As lately as our own day, Mr. Lowells Commemora- tion Ode is a specimen of the formless poem of unequal lines and broken stanzas supposed to be in the manner of Pindar, but truly the descendant of our royalist poets majestick numbers. Keats Shelley, and Swinburne, on the other hand, have restored to the ode its har- mony and shapeliness. Until the days of Collins, however, the ode modelled upon Cowley was not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and pom- pous occasional pieces, but it was almost the only variety permitted to the melan- choly generations over whom the heroic couplet reigned supreme. Dryden, whose Song on St. Cecilias Day directly imi- tates Cowleys Ode on the Resurrec- tion, used it with grand effect for his rolling organ-music. The forgotten lyrists of the Restoration found it a peculiarly convenient instrument in their bound and inflexible fingers. Pope only once seri- ously diverged from the inevitable coup- let, and then to adopt the ode-form of Cowley. Yet so rapidly had the fame of the latter declined that Pope could ask, in 1737, Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit; Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art, But still I love the language of his heart. The language of the heart has not much to do with the Odes of i6~6. They are fifteen in number, and open with two paraphrases of Pindar himself, the second Olympic and the first Nemean. Follow- ing these is a praise of Pindars Unnav- igable Son~in imitation of Horace. The remaining twelve are supposed to be original, but two are taken from the pro- phetic Scriptures. One on Destiny contains the followin~, lines, which form a favorable example of Cowleys style of Pindarizing and of the construction of his odes. In a series of grotesque and rather unseemly images,, he declares that he was taken from his mothers childbed by the lyric Muse, and that she addressed him thus, as belay naked in her hands: Thou of my church shalt be; Hate and renounce, said she, Wealth, honor, pleasures, all the world for me. Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, Nor at the Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar. Content thyself with the small barren praise That neglected verse doth raise. She spake, and all my years to come Took their unlucky doom. Their several ways of life let others choose, Their several pleasures let them use, But I was born for love, and for a Muse. With fate what boots it to contend? Such I began, such am, and so must end. The star that did my being frame Was but a lambent flame. And some small light it did dispense, But neither heat nor influence. No matter, Cowley, let proud Fortune see That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee. Let all her gifts the portion be Of folly, lust, and flattery, Fraud, extortion, calumny, Murder, infidelity, Rebellion, and hypocrisy. Do not thou grieve or blush to be As all the inspired tuneful men, And all thy great forefathers were from Homer down to Ben. With such a sonorous alexandrine he loves to wind his odes up in a stormy close. Else, in spite of much well and nobly said, and in spiteof occasional lines and couplets such as Whether some brave young mans untimely fate In Words worth dying for he eelebrate, ABRAHAM COWLEY. 59 which linger in the memory, the grandiose language and the broken versification unite to weary the ear and defy the mem- ory; nor can ~the Odes ever again take a living place in literature. But to the student they are very interesting as the forerunners of a whole current of loud- mouthed lyric invocation not yet silent after more than two centuries. The folio of 1656 closed with the sacred epic of The Davideis, on the sorrows and achievements of David. We have already seen that this poem was conceived, and in great part written, while Cowley was at Cambridge. It is in four books, and composed in the heroic couplet, varied with occasional alexandrin es, another innovation introduced by Cowley and accepted by Dryden, but excluded from the rules of verse by Pope. The first book of The Davideis opens with an invocation, couched in language very sim- ilar to that employed in the Elegy on Crashaw, and bearing internal evidence of being of a later date than the rest of the piece. These lines may be quoted as exceptionally tuneful and earnest : Lo, with pure hands thy heavenly fires to take, My well-changed Muse I a chaste vestal make! From earths vain joys, and loves soft witch- craft free, I consecrate my Magdalene to thee! Lo, this great work, a temple to thy praise, On polished pillars of strong verse I raise The action commences in hell, where the devil calls for a spirit who will tempt Saul. Envy replies, and her figure is de- scribed in lines of great power and real- istic horror, which were evidently studied by Milton before he wrote his far finer de- scription of Sin and Death. Envy flies up to Sauls palace, and whispers jealousy of David in his ear. With that she takes One of her worst, her best-beloved snakes: Softly, dear worm, soft and unseen, said she, Into his bosom steal, and in it be My vice-roy. At that word she took her flight, And her loose shape dissolved into the night. We are then transported to heaven, and into the presence of God himself, who sends an angel to David. In consequence, David goes to play before Saul, and Saul in vain tries to kill him. The book closes with a lengthy description of the Proph- ets College, which appears to have been closely modelled on the University of Cambridge. In certain passages, such as the pretty description of David and his wife walking among the lemon-trees, Cow- ley approaches nearer than usual to a nat- uralistic style in poetry. The other three books of this epic are tedious and redun- dant beyond all endurance. It is, in fact, the sort of poem with which, if you sit on the grass in a quiet place sonic summer atternoon, you cannot by any means fail to slumber soundly. This is indeed its only merit, save that of marking a distinct in the process of the ossification of the English heroic couplet. I must not omit, however, to acknowledge that in the third book there is a serenade, Awake, awake, my lyre, which ought to rank among Cowleys most accomplished lyrics. At the end was printed a translation, by the author, of the first book only, into Latin hexameters. While the volume we have been exam- ininb in detail was bein~ prepared for the press, Cowleys position was considered so equivocal, that he was urged, by way of diverting political suspicion, to study for some profession. He chose that of med- icine, and although he was now forty years of age, xvork ed like a young student at anatomy and materia medica. In Decem- ber i6~6 he passed a final examination at Oxford, but it does not appear to be recorded whether he ever practised as a physician. The principal consequence of this line of labor was to interest Cowley in botany, which henceforward became in- creasingly his favorite study. At the death of Cromwell, as we have seen, he took occasion to slip back to his friends in France, and returned in i66o, only just in time to see through the press an Ode on his Majestys Restoration and Return, a Pindaric poem of immense length, very bombastic and rhetorical, but no doubt earnest enough, and, for those fulsome times, not extremely grovelling in its ad- dress to royalty. It was to be supposed that if any man deserved reward, it was he who with so much purity of purpose and devoted service had given the best years of a flourishing youth to the despair- ing cause of the king, and who, in spite of all temptations, had never wavered in his active fidelity. But Cowley was not the nian to win honors in such a court as that of Charles II. Of austere life, a siucere and even rigid religionist, an earnest lover of scholarship and holy livin~, lie was looked upon with suspicion by the gay butterflies that flocked to Whitehall. Charles himself, who admired his genius and respected his character, was preju- diced against him by spiteful tongues, who pointed to certain pacific passages in his 6o ABRAHAM COWLEY. writings, as if they proved his lukewarm- hooks were printed after Cowleys death ness in the royalist cause. Nothing could by Nahuin Tate, in an English translation he more wantonly unjust. In point of by the latter, by Mrs. Aphra Behn, a great fact, Charles was too ready to embrace his imitator of the style, though ~not the ethics, enemies and let his friends shift for them- of Cowley, and by certain other persons selves. The poets, however, managed to whose names are now forgotten. It must provide for themselves. The easy turn- have been about this time that he made coat, Waller, came ski~pping back to court; the acquaintance of the matchless Orin- Herrick regained his vicarage, and R os- da, Mrs. Katherine Philips, with whom common his wealth and influence. In he corresponded at great length, and for that year when manna rained on all, why whom he seems to have shared the pop- should the Muses fleece only be dry? ular admiration. Orinda was a poetess of lamented Cowley, who found himself alone the new school, who preferred force of unwatered by the golden shower of pre- thinking in poetry before harmony or ten- ferments. In his despair, he had resolved derness of style, and her verses were ex- to go to America, and seems to have made pressly modelled upon those of Cowley. arrangements for so doing, when he dis- This remarkable young woman, who was covered that his fortunes were at so low but t enty-nine years of age at the time of an ebb that he had not money enough for the Restoration, had already a great repu- the outward voyage. He had two faithful tation, and Elys declares that Cowley was friends, however, Lord St. Albans and the no less enamored of her poetry than im- young Duke of Buckiugham, afterwards pressed to a still more serious pietism by author of The Rehearsal. By the unit- her devotional austerity. When she died, ed efforts of these noblemen, a generous still young, in 1664, Cowley mourned her provision was made for the poet, who was in an ode that passes all bounds of discre- by these means relieved from all anxiety, tioh and moderation, in which he sets her the world being all before him where to above Sappho, and, what is still more choose. In the language of Bishop Sprat, funny, above Pope Joan! In an ode on He was now weary of the vexations and her poems, a year earlier, he had paid her formalities of an active condition. He a more just, and indeed a very fine com- had been perplexed with a long compli- pliment, ance to foreign manners. He was satiated I must admire to see thy well-knit sense, with the arts of court, which sort of life, Thy numbers gentle and thy fancies high, though his virtue had made innocent to Those as thy forehead smooth, these sparkling him, yet nothing could make it quiet. Im- as thine eve. mediately he gave over all pursuit of Tis solid and tis manly all, honor and riches in a time, when, if any Or rather tis angelical, ambitious or covetous thoughts had re- For, as in angels, we mained in his mind, he mi~ht justly have Do iu thy verses see expected to have them readily satisfied Both improved sexes eminently meet, In his last seven or eight years he wa~ They are than Man more strong, and more than Woman sweet. concealed in his beloved obscurity, and possessed that solitude which from his In 1663 he reprinted some poems that very childhood he had always most pas- had appeared in his Essays on Verse sionately desired. Though he had fre- and Prose. with other miscellaneous quent invitations to return into business, pieces. The publication of this volume, yet he never 6ave ear to any persuasions which he entitled Verses on Several of profit or preferment. His visits to the Occasions, was forced upon him by the city and court were very few; his stays in piratical printinb of a volume of his ined- town were only as a passenger, not as an ited poems at Dublin. This small quarto inhabitant. The places that he chose for contains fourteen copies of verses of an the seats of his declining life were two occasional kind. We find an ode on the or three villages on the banks of the death of Dr. William Harvey, the great Thames. anatomist; an Ode Sitting and Drinking In i66i he published A Discourse by in the Chair made out of the Relics of Sir Way of Vision concerning the Govern- Francis Drakes Ship is a capital instance ment of Oliver Cromwell, one of his finest of the authors fantastic wit. He further prose works, containing several pieces of included a number of gracefully-turned verses, of no very striking merit; and in paraphrases from the Latin poets, partic- 1662 two books of plants in Latin verse, ularly Horace, Martial, and Claudian. The the result of his enthusiastic but some- solitude he had so long desired suited his what pedantic studies in botany. These body less than his mind, and a bout the ABRAHAM COWLEY. 6i time that this volume was published, when he was living at Barnes, he fell into a low fever, from which with great difficulty he recovered. He therefore removed, in i666, to Chertsey, where he took the Porch House, towards the west end of that town, and bought some fields in the vicinity. He seems to have suffered again much during the one winter he spent there, but to have recovered in the spring; but through staying over long in the meadows one summer afternoon, superintending his laborers, he caught a cold, which he neg- lected. Within a fortnight he died, on July 28, 1667, not having quite completed his forty-eighth year. With his death his glory flourished. King Charles declared that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him. On August 3 he was laid in Westminster Abbey, beside the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser. The Earl of Orrery composed a funeral poem, and Sir John Denham, himself in a few months to die, wrote an elegy, beginning, Old Chaucer, like the morning star, which is quoted in all works on English literature. All the poets of the day wrote Pindarique Odes, in imi- tation of the transcendent poet of that form of verse, and his heroic couplet be- came the despair of all gentlemen who wrote with ease. He who would worthily adorn his hearse, Should write in his own way, in his immortal verse, said Thomas Higgins, who indited a very good Pindaric ode to his memory. His fame was more materially served by Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, who pub- lished a life of Cowley, which is one of the very best examples of memorial prose or elegiac monograph in the language, being pure, elegant, and forcible in style, and full of fine thought. George Duke of Buckingham raised a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and so, crowned with unusual honor, and liobted by the funeral flambeaux of temporal and spiritual peers, this poet also, like his ob- scurer brethren, went down into the place where all the incidental advantages of life are as if they had not been. If it be held that the two questions with which I started have not been wholly an- swered, and that I have still to show why Cowley once was the most popular poet of his age, and why he is now forgotten, a few words may, at all events, suffice to complete the reply. Every student of En- glish poetry will admit that two great op- posite influences have alternately ruled the writers of our verse. Before the age of Elizabeth, it is not quite so easy to mark the difference between the fresh and nat- ural spirit of Chaucer and some of his Scottish followers and the wholly didactic and scholastic spirit of Lydgate, Barclay, and Skelton; but at least from the Mir- ror for Magistrates, when poetry once more burst into sudden blossom, and every branch upon every tree rang with melodi- ous voices, it is easy enough to trace down to Herrick the unbroken chain of objec- tive and naturalistic poet~, born to teach through singing, and not through rhetoric. With Cowley a wholly new influence came in. From Cowley to Darwin all the poets made oratorical effect take the place of the observation and inspired interpreta- tion of nature. With Collins, through Cowper, and first fully in Wordsworth, there came that return to primal forms and primal feelinn which still breathes in our latest poetry. Cowley gave the read- ing public a new experience. Tired of the exotic and over-jewelled style of the religious and philosophical lyrists, tired of the romantic epic which had slipped from Shakespeare and Marlowe down into such hands as Chamberlaynes, tired of the Cavalier song-writers, who harped forever on the same strained string, and with no ears or hearts for Miltons glorious revival, the public of the day rejoiced in Cowley as Parisian society of a generation before had welcomed Malberbe. Versification had lost all nerve and shape in the lax lips of the last slovenly dramatists. In France the great Corneille was making the stage resound with the harmonious cadences of his heroical couplets; why should not England also aspire to such sublime eloquence, to such chaste numbers? F6el- mb, passion, romance, color, all these had been poured out so lavishly that the public palate was cloyed with sweetness. The severity of Cowleys writings, their intel- lectual quality, their cold elevation and dry intelligence, were as charming as they were novel. But the charm was not to last. A far greater man, Dryden, with assimilative genius of the most marvellous kind, was to tarnish the glory of Cowley by sheer superiority of imitation. No form of verse that the elder poet cultivated, with the single exception of the elegy, but was to be carried to far greater perfection in the same line by the younger. Even to the technicality of the occasional use of an alexandrine in heroic verse, Dryden was to illuminate the discoveries of Cow- ley, not to strike out new paths for himself. Three writers of less influence than Cow- 62 MR. RUSKIN S LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. ley gave in their adherence to the new school, and strengthened the determi na- tion of Dryden. These were Davenant in his stilted; Gallicizeci dramas, Denham in his correct, hut cold and measured de- scriptive poem of Coopers Hill, and Waller in his smooth. emasculated lyrics. Neither of these had Cowleys genius or power, hut they all had the tact to seize the turn of the tide to put out into new seas. To Cowley, and to Cowley alone, belongs the doubtful honor of inau~urating the reign of didactic and rhetorical poetry in England. It may be asked, why restore a memory so justly dishonored, why recall to our at- tention a writer whose verses were but galvanized at the outset, and now are long past all hope of revival? In the first place, if the judgment of a whole generation has unanimously set an unambitious man on a pedestal of supreme reputation, I am more ready to doubt my own perception than to stigmatize so many cultivated persons with folly. No poet universally admired in his own age can be wholly without lasting merit. In the second place, Cowley in particular, whether judged as a man or as a littJrate~ir, or even as a poet more or less malformed, has qualities of positive and intrinsic merit. I trust that my cita- tions have at least proved so much. For the rest, I confess that I find a particular fascination in the study of these maimed and broken poets, these well-strung instru- ments upon whose throbbing strings des- tiny has laid the pressure of her silencing fingers. The masters of song instil me with a sort of awe. I feel embarrassed when I write of Milton. But Cowley has surely grown humble in the long yeirs of his exile, and he will not exact too much homage from the last of his admirers. E. W. G. From The Spectator. MR. RUSKINS LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. MR. RUSKIN has reprinted from a recent number of his curious Fors Glavz~rera a very striking little letter to young girls, which deserves attention on many accounts. In the first place, it is full of that delicately mixed playfulness and sc~vc~ i;zdznaiio against the world as it is, which has al- ways characterized those who have tried to combine the gospel of righteousness with an attempt to interpret the claims of beauty on the human heart. It charac- terized Socrates. There never was a more delicate mixture of playful irony with a passionate sense of the interior clingingness of moral evil, than in the Socrates of Plato. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who, in our day, has been the great spokes- man of the duty of combininb the Greek teaching as to perfection and wholeness of purpose and action, with the Hebrew teaching as to righteousness of life, has shown precisely the same tendency to combine playfulness of manner with a deep belief in the value of self-renuncia- tion or, as he calls it, the secret of Je- sus; and here we have Mr. Ruskin incul- cating in the same breath on young girls the duty of accepting even joyfully their disappointments and troubles, as trials coming straight from the hand of Christ, teaching them that they must be liter- ally ready to forsake all they have to be Christs disciples, and yet enjoining upon them to open their minds to the fullest degree to all the play and humor in life, to cherish without straioing the natural powers of jest in others.~and yourselves ; and even inculcating on them that if their parents permit it, they are to dress i~ bright colors (if becoming), though in plain materials. His style, too, is full of irony. Irony, indeed, appears, in its higher sense, to be of the very soul of Christianity, if only because the teaching that this world is ruled in its minutest details by the di- vine will, implies in itself so many ulterior and covert meanings for human destiny, meanings of which the human instru- ments cannot possibly be conscious. There was assuredly a strange and mystic irony in Christs words to James and John, when they asked to sit on his right hand and his left in his kingdom, and assured him that they could drink of the cup that lie would drink of, and be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized, and when he, in reply, declared to them that they would indeed drink of that cup and be baptized with that baptism, though in a sense and with results of which they had then no dream. But the irony of prophets of the beautiful has necessarily more of playfulness in it than the irony of the prophets of the good taken alone. The little incongruities of life strike the former as keenly as the greater incongruities of moral paradox. Mr. Ruskin, for instance, not perhaps in the best taste, calls his young friends little monkeys when he bids them, whatever they do, not dream of preaching to the poor, of whom ,he says, the chances are that they are, without knowing it, infinitely truer Christians than their young-lady pafrons; and he evidently MR. RUSKIN S LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. 63 has a very graphic picture in his minds directly from Christs hand; and the more it eye of the naturally didactic redundancy is like to provoke you, thank him for it the of schoolgirl virtue, when girding itself more; as a young soldier would his general up to do the work of God. He quizzes, for trusting him with a hard place to hold on too, not without point, those who go about the rampart. And remember, it does not in with white crosses in an offensively the least matter what happens to you, whether a clumsy schoolfellow tears your celestial uniform, as if it were more their dress, or a shrewd one laughs at you, or the business or privilege than it is every- governess doesnt understand you. The one bodys to be Gods servants. And in thing needful is that none of these things general, it may be said that Mr. Ruskin should vex you. For your mind, at this time puts his advice to these young girls into a of your youth, is crystallizing like sugar-candy; somewhat playfully parabolic form, calling and the least jar to it flaws the crystal, and his letter a splinter of the lance of St. that permanently. Say to yourselves every George, the society which Mr. Ruskin morning, just after your prayers, Whoso has founded is called the St. Georges forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my the disciple. That is exactly and completely Society, and inveighing against true; meaning, that you are to give all you present basilisk power of society, all have to Christ, to take care of for you. Then which, we suppose, he intends his young if He doesnt take care of it, of course you friends to accept spiritually, and not in its know it wasnt worth anything. And if He most literal sense. In a word, the first takes anything from you, you know you are characteristic of Mr. Ruskins teaching better without it. You will not, indecd, at may be said to be that it unites with a your age, have to give up houses, or lands, or very hi~h doctrine of self-renunciation, a hoats, or nets; but you may perhaps break strong desire to recommend the constant your favorite teacup, or lose your favorite and very active enjoyment of the briulter thimhle, and might he vexed ahout it, but for side of life,of its slowing colors,its ~. this second St. Georges precept. quaint conceits, its ineradicable and sometimes It is striking enough to see that Mr. Rus- pathetic illusions, its grotesque contrasts. kins insight into moral beauty is so deep, Indeed, the preacher earnestly represents that he perceives at once that the whole this enjoying spirit as not only perfectly serenity and joy which accompanies the consistent with ri~hteous zeal, but in some abandoning of what is precious, however sense of positive obligation, if only by trifling, or however price less, can only way of using reverently a divine gift which, come of the faith that it is abandoned to instead of diminishing the earnestness of One who knows exactly what is needful life, helps to renew and increase it by and what is hurtful to those whom he rnterruptin0 that perpetual strain after a thus asks to abandon it. Without that single purpose, for which assuredly human profound conviction, there might be wis- nature at least as we now know it was dom, there might be the highest triumph of never intended, self-control, there might be the truest In the next place, it is remarkable that economy, in quietly accepting an inevitable Mr. Ruskin, though you might have ex- loss, but there could not be joy, there pected him to be more of a disciple of the could not be inward happiness, there beautiful and less of a purely spiritual could not be the serenity which comes of teacher than Mr. M. Arnold, yet, unlike following implicitly the guidance of an in- Mr. Arnold, has the religious instinct to exhaustible love, in such an act. Mr. see that in pressing self-renunciation Ruskin sees what Mr. Arnold does not, what Mr. Arnold calls the secret of that the beauty of this willingness Jesus on his young friends, he must and even gladness to lose, lies entirely in rest it on the same sure foundation on the faith that it is tlig act of love, and not which it was based originally by the Say- the mere operation of a law, which de- iour of mankind; that he cannot ask the mands the sacrifice. True feeling even human conscience to surrender itself to a for beauty will tell us that a light without fate or destiny, or a stream of tendency a source of light, joy without a fountain of not ourselves, with any prospect of turn- joy, peace without an object of trust, is ing a habit of surrender directed to such anomalous and unmeaning, xvarrantin~ not blind agencies as these, into a source of admiration, but aversion. It is wise not peace and serenity of spirit. Mr. Ruskin to fret at the inevitable ; it is noble not to makes no such hopeless attempt withhold sacrifices which the goncral well- being calls for; it is brave to make them Keep [he says] absolute calm of temper, without hesitation, and without giving under all chances; receiving everything that is more pain than is necessary to those for provoking or disagreeable to you as coming whom they are made. But it is not wise 64 MR. RUSKIN S LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. to feel the happier because the stream of tendency not ourselves has swept a new treasure out of our grasp; it is not noble to persuade ourselves that we are the bet- ter for that for which we are the worse; it is not brave to assure our own hearts that we are the richer for being positively poorer. Only if the loss is really bal- anced by a greater spiritual gain, only if the treasure lost is more than restored by the love of Him who takes it away, is this joy through sorrow, this springing-up of a new gladness in affliction, really reasona- ble. Mr. Ruskin sees this, which Mr. Matthew Arnold does not see, and it does credit, we think, to that fine instinct for beauty which no one carries on more truly than he does into the region of spiritual imagination. Finally, it is curious to perceive how even in advice to young girls, Mr. Rus- kins partly, no doubt, doctrinaire abhor- rence of great cities breaks out. Nothing can be bett~r than his advice as to their dress. He encourages them to be gay, he allows them to be swayed by the fluctuat- ing flowand ebb of social taste, though he prohibits their being either expensive, or disposed to follow fashion into its wasteful caprices. But then he teaches even these young girls, so far as he can, to abhor London, as the Jewish prophet taught the women of his people to abhor the Moab- itish or Amoritish women Dress as plainly as your parents will allow you, hut in bright colors (if they become you), and in the best materials, that is to say, in those which ~vill wear longest. When you are really in want of a new dress, huy it (or make it) in the fashion; hut never quit an old one merely because it has become unfashionable. And if the fashion be costly, you must not follow it. You may wear broad stripes or narrow, bright colors or dark, short petticoats or longin moderationas the public wish you, but you must not buy yards of useless stuff to make a knot or a flounce of, nor drag them behind you over the ground; and your walking-dress must never touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had in the common sense and even in the personal delicacy of the present race of average En~ glishwomen, by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets, if it is~ the fashion to be scavengers. If you can afford it, get your dresses made by a good dress- maker, with utmost attainable precision and perfection; but let this good dressmaker be a poor person, living in the country, not a rich person living in a large house in London. There are no good dressmakers in the coun- try? No; but there soon will be, if you obey St. Georges orders, which are very strict indeed, about never buying dresses in London. You bought one there the other day for your own pet! Yes; but that was because she was a wild Amorite, who had wild Amo- rites to please; not a companion of St. George. One does not exactly see why poor dressmakers who live in London are to be punished for livin~, there by getting no employment, unless it be regarded as a sin in itself to live in London, which is prob- ably Mr. Ruskins real view. He most likely believes society concentrated in such great masses as the great towns collect to be entirely incapable of any true organi- zation; and wishes, therefore, by every means in his power to discoura~, e such moral and spiritual crushes. But it is hard to conceive that great cities have not arisen as a consequence of action quite as inevitable, and therefore quite as certainly overruled by Providence, as any loss or gain which befalls the individual human life, and Mr. Ruskin would have taught, we think, what was more in consistency with his other lessons, if he had sug~est- ed the best way of alleviating the abuses of city life, instead of advising his pupils to ignore them. But his artistic genius is, we suppose, so much more revolted by the soiling and hiding of all the noblest de- tail, of all moral individuality, in these great dust-heaps of the world, than it is by still greater evils which admit of clear study and intelligent insight, that we are bound to make allowance for this little blot on the really fine taste and noble moral enthusiasm of Mr. Ruskins Letter to Young Girls.

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. ~fthS~~j ~ No. 1700.January 13, 1877. ~From Beginning, CXXXII, CONTENTS. I. THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS, . London Quar/erZy Review, II. WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. By Sarah Tytler, author of Lady Bell, etc. Part XXIV Good Words III. OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. An Unscientific Ac- Count. By the Chaplain of the Dis- covery, Frasers Magazine, IV. A PEASANT PROMETHEUS. Translated for THE LIVING AGE from the French of. . EmiZe Souvestre, V. POETRY AND CIVILIZATION ~g5ecfa1or, VI. ABSENCE OF WHITE COLOR IN ANIMALS, . Chambers 7ournal, LET IT BE, HALIDON HILL, P0 E TRY. HARVEST, .66 MISCELLANY, 128 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, rerni//ed directly 10 flee Pudlisleers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,free of~ostage. 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 draftor 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. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, ~S cents. 67 81 94 121 125 128 66 LET IT BE, ETC. LET IT BE. LET be the river! What does it avail To struggle with the currents destined course? The strongest effort does but faint and fail, Skill yields, out-tired, to resistless force. The highest rock is overleapt by spray, The silent waters fret each bar away. Vainly the bulwark fashioned deep and wide, New bed contrived, new turn by cunning wrought; Steady, resistless, onward flows the tide, Each gathering wave with gathering pur- pose fraught, Till, full and free, rejoicing in its strength, It sweeps to oceans mighty arms at length. Let be the river! Let the loved alone To meet the fate, and shape the circum- stance. We dream the future, fancying all our own, What does but wait the call of time and chance; Foredoomed, the path before the pilgrim lies, The sunset lurking in the morning skies. Let be the river! Hail its rippling smile, Listen its song, and shiver to its sigh Let its chafed beauty weary hours beguile, Watch how it darkens to the darkening sky; We cannot cloud or brighten, speed or check, Nor alter on its way the tiniest beck. Let be the river then! Where lilies float, And blue forget-me-nots beside it shimmer, Take gladness in its suns reflected mote, And soothing from its moonlights dreamy glimmer~ Happy if still your faltering footsteps tend Beside its varying currents to the end All The Year Round. HALIDON HILL. A BORDER aATTLE-FIELD. A SUN-CLAD slope of living green Under a cloudless autumn sky Say, can it be that this sweet scene, So bright, so sheltered, so serene, Once echoed with a battle-cry? Broad, golden fields of waving corn Tremble before the winds soft breath, While through the air is gaily borne The reapers song at early morn And this was once a field of death! No sculptured stone nor marble fair Now marks the spot where warriors bled; Only kind springs returning care, As though she knew who slumbers there, Bids her first primrose raise its head. What though this battle has no place In Scotlands roll of victories won The noblest of her patriot race Here met their foemen face to face, And bravely was their duty done. Stern fate is theirs who, conquering, die; But his an anguish keener far Who on the gory field must lie, And hear the foes exulting cry: Our arms have turned the tide of war Then tenderly let Scotland weep Over her unrequited brave, And in her heart their memory keep, All restfully the while they sl~ep In natures lone and peaceful grave. HARVEST. THE corn-land is lying in brief, deep rest, While tempest is sullen, or sunshine blithe; Sweet is the scent of the furrow refreshed After the raid of the pitiless scythe. Now recks it littlecome shower or sun The harvest is carried, the work is done. The jubilant summer has yielded its sway, And Augu~t has lavished its gold on the year; Magic of moonlight, dazzle of day, One long laughter with never a tear! Harvest of happiness, gathered and stored, Winds cannot scatter the ample hoard. Awe of the mountain, and calm of the lake, Mirth of the valley, and sigh of the breeze; Freedom of upland, and moorland, and brake, Music of forests, of torrents, of seas: Harvest of memories, golden and gay; Fear not for dearth in the wintry day. Smooth out the seaweed, and dream oer its spells; Tighten and tie up the salt-laden tresses; Little ones, lay by the basket and shells, Put on the shoes again, turn down the dresses. Harvest of health, in its happiest guise, Rosy-brown faces and laughter-lit eyes. Ah! but the woods in their midsummer greehl Bright with the flow of the musical river: Shading soft blushes with tenderest screen, Touched with an echo of voices that quiver. Harvest of love ! Is it anything new? Should Cupid not gather his harvest too? All The Year Round. THE MICROSCOPF~ AND ITS REVELATIONS. 67 From The London Quarterly Review. THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELA TJONS.* THE advance of human knowledge, dur- ing the past quarter of a century, has been nowhere so remarkable as in the re- gions of biology and physics. This has been due in both sciences to the rapid and almost complete perfection to which special instruments of research have been brought. In physics ~he spectroscope has suddenly wrought a revolution, and almost endowed physical and chemical research with a new sense. Science is only begin- ning to discover the immense possibilities which this instrument opens up. Already it has, with unerring precision of analysis, discovered the constituent elements of sun and stars ; estimated approximately their molecular condition; given evidence of the diverse thermal intensities of stel- lar bodies ; furnished proof of the exist- ence of suns in such a state of heat that compounds have not yet been able to form, of others cooler but still in a state of inconceivable thermal intensity, and of others distinctly cooling. It has been em- ployed, too, to detect what no other means could discover, the actual advance towards or recession from us of great stellar bodies and groups, and to indicate their speed. In the elements that lie around us on our own globe, it has been used to discover new metals which must have eluded all other processes; and to demonstrate the x. The Microscote and i/s Revelations. By W. B. CARPENTER, M.D., LL.D., etc. Fifth Edition. London: j; and A. Churchill. 1875. . The Border Terrilory between the A nimal a d the Vegetable Kingdom. By Prof. HUXLEY, F.R.S., etc. 11 cm/hans Mizgazine, February, 1876. 3. insectivorous Ri sits. By CIIAS. DArWIN, M.A., F.R.S. London: John Murray. 1875. 4. Movements and Habits of Climbing Fl nts. By CHAs. DARwiN, MA., F.R.S. London: John Mur- ray. 1876. ~. On British Wild Flowers Considered in Rela- tion to Insects. By Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F.R.S., M.P. London: Macmillan and Co. 1875. 6. Ecolntionandthe Origin ofL. By H. CHARL -rON BASTIAN, i\I.A., M.D., F.R.S. London: Mac- millan and Co. 1874. 7. The 0/tical Condition of the A tmos/here in its Bearings on Iatrefaction and h~fection. By Prof. TYNDALL, F.R.S, etc. Abstract Printed for the An- nual Volume of the Proceedings of the Royal institu- tion of Great Britain. 18751876. And Natnre, Jan- uary zi, p. 252, and February 3, p. 268, 1876. presence of chemical substances in quan- tities so minute as to be practically non- existent to the ordinary analyses of the chemist. Scarcely less remarkable have been the rapid perfection and wonderful revelations of the microscope. It is now probably the most perfect physical embodiment of exact abstract science existing. It cer- tainly is the rival, if not the peer, of the telescope in this sense. It almost abso- lutely realizes theoretical optics, and a certain group of mathematicians and phys- icists, at least, strongly incline to the opinion, which they believe they can ap- proximately demonstrate, that we have reached the limits of power possible by this means that, in fact, the vibrations of the luminiferous ether are too coarse to reveal minuter objects than those at pres- ent reached by our most powerful and re- fined lenses. Even if this be so which, from practical evidence, put into contrast with calculations based upon hypotheses, we are inclined to doubt the resources placed at the disposal of science by this instrument have a value and importance the limit of which no sagacity or penetra- tion is competent to measure. Indeed, at the present time, the finest English and American lenses ar~ greatly in advance of the skill and competence of the major- ity of microscopists and specialists who employ the microscope. Our text-books are almost silent on the subject of the employment of lenses exceeding in magni- fying power a thousand diameters. Yet we do not hesitate to say that at least one English house furnishes an instrument, with almost perfect corrections, which magnifies ten times this amount; but an instrument like this, just as it involves in-. comparably higher skill in its device and manufacture, so it demands patience, per- severance, and suitable culture, in a far more than ordinary degree, to employ it as a real aid to vision. It cannot be doubted that remarkable results have been attained in the past, in all suitable depart- ments of science, by the use of what are known as low powers. But these re- sults, which now often astonish the pos- sessors of far more powerful instruments, depended upon the fact that the investi 68 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. gators who used them did, by incessant labor, make themselves masters of their instruments. It too frequently happens, now, that the purchaser of a good micro- scope supposes himself forth with compe- tent to make manifest its utmost powers. But the truth is that there are thousands of microscopists, possessed of costly instruments, who obtain a reputation as good exhibitors, but who pass their fine instruments on to their heirs without ever having discovered the full powers of even their moderate lenses. Instead of employing them in original research, and thus discovering their capacities, and de- vising means, which practice and patient labor are always suggesting, for utilizing them in the most efficient manner, they are content to exhibit hrilliantly what may dazzle but fails to instruct, and the qual- ities of the lens, which only the cunning of practice develops, is undiscovered. But if the users of microscopes, both for amusement and for scientific purposes, do not exhaustively master the use of mod- erate and moderately high lenses, how can they successfully manipulate and make the best of such instruments as Powell and Lealands lenses, capable of magnifying from three to twenty thousand diameters? The men who, as true scien- tific workers, can employ the one-fiftieth of an inch lens, or even higher powers, with the same ease as they can a one eighth of an inch, or a one-twelfth of an inch, are extremely few in England, fewer still in America, and scarcely to be found at all on the Continent. All this arises from a repugnance to enter upon the laborious apprenticeship which their successful employment involves, and with- out this even the benefit of their employ- ment cannot be seen. Hence amongst the most skilful and competent histologists there is a constant advocacy of moder- ate powers, with occasional reminders that the best of work has been done by their employment. Without doubt they have done much, and there remain generations of work for them yet to do. But they have their limits ; and that the highest powers now made can, in the hands of practised experts, go immeasurably be- yond them, we need only the records of recent microscopical research to demon- strate. To Dr. Carpenter we are indebted for a concise and thoroughly able summary of these. His Microscope and its Rev- elations is undoubtedly the most com- plete and trustworthy book which has yet appeared on the whole subject in any lan- guage. We question whether that l)art of the work which details and discusses the results of microscopical work could pos- sibly, in the space allotted, be better done. The matter cannot fail to be interesting to any reader, and it certainly has not suf- fered in its mode of presentation. But with this testimony of thoroughly de- served commendation, we cannot with- hold an expression of regret that this the best book on the subjectshould be silent on the method and advantages of using the highest powers which our opti- cians can produce. It is only from such a treatise as this that we can hope that the skilful and ardent student, who has mas- tered the use of lenses magnifying six or ei~ht hundred diameters, will be in- duced to attempt the use of the highest lenses the optician can provide. But the difficulties must be shown, and, as far as they can be, met in a practical manner; and if this were fairly done, and some of the advantages of high-power research simply illustrated, as they might be, from recent labors in several departments of science, there can be little question that the utmost benefit would accrue, espec- ially in biological inquiries. We would not be understood to imply that Dr. Car- penter should himself, have mastered all the detail ; the matter for surprise is that he is practically acquainted with so much; but if this part of the book had been put into thoroughly practicaf hands been given to men who had specialized them- selves as workers with high powers as the theory and general practice of micro- scopy has been, it would have given the book a freshness and a real value which, excellent as it is, it does not now possess. It may be added that Dr. Carpenters beautiful series of illustrations of the rev- elations of the microscope will of them- selves not only indicate, but in several instances show clearly the vast fields of THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. 69 research, and the rich harvest of facts, There are animals, with which every which are open only to the highest and zoologist is familiar, definitely understood best combination of lenses which the first to he such, which are so low in the scale English opticians can produce. of being that they possess no definite The extremely interesting lecture of form, and reveal to our most refined scru- Professor Huxley, delivered at the Royal tiny only the feeblest traces of organiza- Institution so recently, is an illustration in tion; they move, hut without framework point. He gathers up and summarizes, in or muscles, they creep without limbs, they his own clear and concise manner, all that feel without discoverable nerves, they eat is now known of the border territory be- without mouths, they digest without stom- tween the animal and vegetable series. achs: in short, they have all the proper- The question is rich in interest from any ties of life, but without a trace of organ- aspect. What is an animal, what a vege- ized structure. table? Is there a sharp partition between Because such a creature is ranked as an them, or do they insensibly graduate into animal we are prone to associate with each other until they meet, and their con- it a measure at least of consciousness and tinuity is seen? There can be little doubt volition. But, on the other hand, there that such continuity exists throughout or- are plants of the highest and most corn- ganic nature, and it may exist beyond; plex structure, in which delicacy of organ- but before this can be scientifically an- ization, refinement of mechanical contriv- nounced it must have received irresistible ance, and exquisite adaptation of means to proof. To ordinary observation there is ends, are combined with majesty and an apparent demarcation of the strongest grace, form and elegance, and even splen- kind between animal and vegetable organ- dor of product; and yet, because they are isms. The oak, the fern, and the fungus labelled plants, or vegetables, we as- appear to have nothing in common with sume that they are without consciousness, the ox, the swallow, and the cheese-mite, and wholly devoid of will. Do the facts But in the fourth and fifth decades of of nature justify such an inference? We this century the greatest and most rapid venture to think that they go a long way revolution which biological science has towards making such an inference void. ever undergone was effected by the appli- Let us consider carefully some of the cation of the modern microscope to the facts. Cuvier relied on motion voli- investigation of organic structure; by the tional change of place as a feature by introduction of exact and easily manage- which the animal might be clearly distin- able methods of conductin~ the chemical guished from the vegetable. But the dis- analysis of organic compounds; and finally tinction is not true of all animals. The by the employment of instruments of pre- spon~e and the corals are made up of cision for the measurement of the physical colonies of animals as incapable of change forces which are at work in the living of place as the cedar or the sycamore; economy. * And the result is that, while the modern microscope has revealed speaking scientifically, the difference be- to us a realm of vegetable organization of tween an animal and a plant is one of which individual motion is as essentially degree rather than of kind; and the prob- an attribute as it is of the eagle or the lem whether in a given case an organism swallow. The earliest forms of true veg- is an animal or a plant may be essentially etable life minute single cells of proto insoluble. plasm spend a large proportion of their The truth is that there is not a single little lives in intense activity. But when feature belonging to either series of or- we leave the simple cell, and look upon it ganic forms which is not in some measure as grouped into complex forms, the life- shared by some representative of the history of such forms is one of unceasing other. activity. The well-known Vo7vo~-g7obator On the Border Territory between the Animal is one of an assemblage of minute plants~ and vegetable Kingdom. Macmillans Magazine, common inhabitants of the pond February, 1876, p. 374. whose minuteness and beauty of form vie 70 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. only with its inexpressible grace and power of motion. It is a minute sphere, elegantly reticulated and covered with fine vibratile hairs, or cilia, and by their united and harmonious action its motion is effected. At times it whirls like a top upon a rigid axis again it rolls forward with the combined motions of a planet in space, or darts with almost lightning ra- pidity across the field. Nothing can sur- pass the ease and beauty of its move- ments, and the joyous sense of freedom it suggests. Yet it is a plant of the lowest structure, and millions of them would find an ample ocean in a wineglass. Not less wonderful and even more beau- tiful are the still minuter desmids. These are the commonest and most persistent dwellers in our ponds and streams ,of all their invisible inhabitants. They are a rich green in color, and of every conceiv- able form: the crescent, the cross, the sphere, the triangle, the straight line, the curve, and every possible combination of them, is to be found in the symmetrical forms of these invisible atoms of beauty. All these delicate plants can move; and many of them do so habitually with appar- ent purpose, and a grace that cannot be surpassed. But even these are exceeded in minute- ness and delicacy of structure by the closely allied Diato;nacec~. These differ from the desmids in the possession of an imperishable siliceous skeleton; and al- though some forms are so minute that twenty thousand of them, if placed between the finger and thumb, would be invisible to the eye and impalpable to the most delicate touch, yet they have lived for such a vast period in the history of the earth that the myriads of successive ~enerations have laid their imperishable skeletons down and actually built up solid rocks. They are found now in every quarter of the globe, in our oceans and rivers, and ponds and ditches, and moist places, from the arctic to the antarctic pole. And these little vegetables chased and engraved as many of them are with a delicacy which surpasses the analytical power of even the modern microscope are in many cases free to move, and do so with the utmost elegance and ease. How such minute atoms of matter effect their unerring and evidently controlled movements, the utmost power of research yet brought to hear upon them has failed to discover. But two recent observers of the minutest living forms at all amenable * Mon//dy Microscoj~ical Yourna4 voL xiv., p. ios. to even the great powers of our modern lenses, have demonstrated that these minutest organisms the bacteria, rod- like bodies present in putrefaction effect their movements, which are intensely rapid, by means of a pair of motile fila- ments or flagella, one at either end of their rod-shaped bodies. Professor Hux- ley says that as to the vegetable nature of these there is now no doubt; and therefore it is extremely probable that some such organs of locomotion might, with sufficient power, be found to belong to the desmid and the diatom. Be that as it may, voluntary motion is as clearly, although not as universally, an attribute of the vegetable as of the animal kingdom. Nor is it only in minute vegetable forms that this is seen. The exquisite researches of Mr. Charles Darwin upon the habits of the climbing plants have made manifest something nearly akin to instinct in their deportment and motion. When a climbing plant first springs from the ground, the extremity of the shoot per- forms slow gyrations in the air, as if searching for a support, a motion clearly voluntary. The climbing plant twines round its support either with or against the sun. The object is to expose as large a surface as possible to the sun and air, but how the motion is accomplished cannot be determined ; yet it is impossible to study the deportment of the whole group of creepers without becomin~ assured of their possession of some almost sentient controllinb power. The tendrils of some of these plants coil, others are sensitive to a touch and bend, while others yet secrete a glutinous fluid which attaches it to its support. The tendrils of a bignonia, for example, are sensitive; hence in growing and revolving amid the hranched twigs of some supporting tree the tendrils wanting supports soon get touched, and at once they clasp the twig like a bird when perched. The tendrils of another species were seen to slowly travel over the surface of a piece of wood, and when the apex of one of them came to a hole or fissure it inserted itself; the same tendril frequently withdrew itself from one hole to insert itself into another, as if seeking for what exactly pleased it; and Mr. Darwin has seen a tendril withdrawn from a hole after having chosen it and remained fixed there for thirty-six hours. And this apparent selective power is carried still farther in some climbing plants of tropical forests, which will travel on, prolonging their growth indefinitely, and avoiding all other supports that present themselves, until THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. they reach the tree which they peculiarly affect, and then they will at once attach themselves. It is not too much to say that the same behavior in a definite ani- mal would be taken as an evidence of instinct. But even commoner instances of loco- motion amongst plants present themselves. In the deep ponds and watercourses of England the common bladderwort is often found. This plant is usually at the bottom of the pond, its roots immersed in the mud. But it cannot expand its flowers and be fertilized in this position. At the right time, therefore, it rises to the surface of the water, opens its flowers, the pollen is shed upon the pistil, and once more it sinks to its former position. Yet more remarkable are the habits of the Vallis;zeria s~iralis, a plant com- mon in the rivers of the south of France. The female, or seed-bearing parts, and the male, or pollen-bearing parts, grow on separate plants. The female flowers grow on spiral stems, so that if the stream in which they grow should receive an accession of water and rise, by a simple lengthening or pullin~ out of the corkscrew stem they rise with it; if the water diminishes, hy simply compressing the spiral stem they sink with it. Thus they are always on the surface of the water. But the male flowers of the l)lant grow on short stalks in the water. How, then, is fertilization effected? When the pistils are ripe to receive the pollen, the ~xiale flowers absolutely break off, rise to the surface, and, floating round the female flowers, shed their pollen and fer- tilize the seed. Clearly then motion, and even motion directed to a distinct object, is not absolutely a monopoly of the animal kingdom, and in no way serves to distin- guish it from the vegetable. Not less remarkable is the fact that sen- sitiveness and reflex movement is as strik- ingly possessed by the vegetable as by the animal world. It has long been known that certain plants exhibit intense suscep- tibility to external influences. The Mi- mosa j5udica, or sensitive plant, is one of these. Not only do the leaflets fold their upper surfaces together, the branches of the leaf-stalks bend-to each other, and the whole leaf-stalk falls, instantly, when touched; but if the leaves are only breathed upon, if one of them is touched with a speck of acid, or sunlight focussed upon it by a lens, the same results ensue. Nay, it has been affirmed by Dr. Masters that in the savannahs of tropical America, where this beautiful plant abounds, the vibrations caused by the hoofs of an ap- proaching horse will cause all the ii~imosas instantly to contract; and, just as in the animal organism a cessation of sensation supervenes, and numbness results, from a diminution of temperature, so if this plant be placed in an atmosphere below J50 centigrade all sensibility is gone. Now, we must no longer suppose that this plant is singular, or in any very re- markable sense an exception. The re- searches of Charles Darwin and others now prove irresistibly that sensation, or what is a remarkable approach to it, is very widely distributed in vegetable or~an- isms. Nothing can be more remarkable than the sensitiveness or irritability dis- played by some plants as a means em- ploved to secure fertilization.* In the common berberry, for example, the sta- mens lie down upon the petals, and the nectar which the insect seeks is produced by six pairs of honey-glands at the bases of the petals; but the stamens are at their bases highly sensitive or irritable, the consequence being that when the insect touches them they spring forward and throw their pollen upon the intruder, to be carried to another flower. Still more striking is the sensitiveness of a group of orchids, of the genus Catasetuin. In these plants the pollinia, or pollen-caskets, and the stigmata the surfaces prepared for the reception of the fertilizing pollen are in different flowers. Of necessity, then, the pollen must be carried by some active agent to the stigma. This is done by insects, but the adaptations are remark- able in a high degree. The flower con- tainin~ the pollinia, which is highly elastic, carries it under considerable tension in a part which the insect visitino the flower for nectar never approaches; but in ob- taininb the nectar the insect comes into contact with a delicate spur, which is so sensitive that the excitement of the touch is carried along the tissues of the plant until it reaches the extremely thin mem- brane which confines the pollen mass; the membrane is instantly ruptured, the pollinia, with a force that will carry it three feet from the flower, flies out, and, being armed with a gummy disc, it sticks to the insect, which carries it to the next flower, and thus eventually fertilizes the female flower. In other genera of plants the same means conserve another end. The Via- ;zwa muscz~5ula (Venus fly-trap), for ex- ample, is one of the plants which affects * Fertilisation of Flowers by Insects. Lubbock. 7 72 ThE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. bogs and swamps, and derives but small of a grain, and a particle of human hair, nourishment, little else than water, from the eight-thousandth of an inch in length, its roots, and is therefore dependent on weighing less than the seventy-eight thou- some other source for pabulum. This is sandth of a grain, have been proved suffi- secured by the sensitiveness of the leaf. cient to excite a tentacle to action, and This organ is bi-lobed; it is capable of cause it to bend or arch over one hundred being closed like a book. On each lobe and eighty degrees. Yet it must be re- there are three delicate spikes, which are membered that the minute pressure exquisitely sensitive. If one of these he thus so remarkably perceived does not touched with a cotton fibre, or even a hair, directly affect the gland; but it has to the lobes snap together like the sudden come through the cushion of viscid ~uid closing of a book, the act being instan- which crowns it, and on which the parti- taneous. The object of this is the secur- des rest. In fact, therefore, the pressure ing of animal food in the shape of insects, exerted by the smallest of these bodies for the di es/b of which the closed leaf does not exceed the millionth of a grain or sensitive trap is specially endowed. But, if so large a particle as the one-fif- Nor can there be any very remarkable tieth of an inch of human hair be placed difference in such an organized action in upon the human tongue or in the eye, it is the plant and the animal; for Dr. Burden actually unperceived. In sensitiveness, Sanderson has shown that the same elec- then, the vegetable actually surpasses the trical changes ensue in the substance of most complex and refined animal! But the plant on contraction, as ensue when this is by no means the limit of suscep- the muscle of an animal is similarly tibility in the sundew. Drops of water affected. containing the minutest quantities of or- But all this is surpassed by the almost ganic compounds or ammoniacal salts inconceivable susceptibility whi6h the in- placed on the leaves, or the leaves im- vestigations of Darwin have shown to be mersed in them, produce still more won- possessed by the common sundew. This derful results. The most remarkable may elegant little plant is dependent upon ani- suffice for illustration. A quantity of mal foocb Its root contributes but little phosphate of ammonia in solution not to its support; but the leaf is a beautiful more than the thirty mi//ion//i of a grain, organ for entrapping and digesting food. suffices not only to incurve the whole of The insects on which it preys are not the tentacles, but to cause a bending of the secured as in the Dionxa by a sudden entire leaf itself. This is a fact which mechanical action, but by means of a repeated experiments by the present writer viscid fluid, to which, on the slightest con- have fully corroborated. tact, it adheres. The leaf itself is nearly At present the mechanism by which this round, and is armed with tentacles wonderful susceptibility and reaction are crowned with glands, on the top of which effected is not known. It is one of the the clear, colorless, viscid fluid rests. problems which await solution with the There may be as many as two huiidred highest powers of the microscope, and we tentacles upon a leaf, and each of these is have reason to believe that it is already intensely sensitive, and has a power of fairly attacked. But, in the mean time, it reflex motion. As soon as an insect is abundantly clear that if there be a dis- alights upon the glands, the irritation is tinction between animals and vegetables, conveyed front tentacle to tentacle, until it must be sought outside of the phenom- they have all curved over and directed ena of sensitiveness or irritability. their glands with their viscid secretion Even sleep, apparently so peculiarly a upon the prey, and digestion ensues. feature of animal organization, is almost If an insect alight upon only a few of as characteristic of the. vegetable. The the glands of the exterior tentacles, the phenomena are caused by the organs results are the same; they become, in- which produce spontaneous movement, flected or bent, and carry it with a rolling and the nocturnal position or position in motion to the centre of the leaf. And sleep is generally the opposite of that this action will be excited by the presence taken in waking. This is specially clear of the minutest insect; nay, by the pres- in the Legii;ni;ios~. The great water-lily ence of particles both the size and weight of the Amazons, when it slumbers, closes of which are too minute for appreciation. its gorgeous corolla, and sinks into the A piece of soft thread, the one-fiftieth of water. Almost every flower of the field an inch in length, weighing the eight has its hour for slumber; and in virgin thousand one hundred and ninety-seventh forests, or vast savannahs, the difference THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. 73 of aspect between the sleeping and the nervous system of animals converge to. wakeful state is not only unmistakable but wards the conclusion that the nerve fibres, impressive. which we have hitherto regarded as ulti- A remarkably characteristic feature of mate elements of nervous tissue, are not the vegetable kingdom is the power which such, but are simply the visible aggrega- the organisms constituting it possess of tions of vastly more attenuated filaments, beino- propagated by artificial division. A the diameter of which dwindles down to slip cut from a healthy plant it is well the limits of our present microscopic vis- known will strike root in suitable soil, ion, greatly as these have been extended and become a distinct individual. But by modern improvements of the micro- even this has its counterpart in the animal scope, and that a xierve is, in its existence, series. The common Hydra of our ponds nothing but a linear tract of specially mod- may be cut into twenty or even fbrty ified protoplasm between two points of an pieces, and each will become a distinct organism one of which is able to affect and perfect individual: if the body be cut the other by means of the communication into two lengthwise, the parts will become so established. Hence it is conceivable re-soldered, and form a perfect hydra; that even the simplest living being may while, if the dissevered parts be kept possess a nervous system. * Thus, the asunder, each half will become complete. sensibility of plants, like that of animals, The same is true of another and better which to our present instrume:-its of re- known order of the class. Writing of the search are without a nervous system, 11Iedusid~, or jelly-fishes, Haeckel says, may, in fact, be the result of delicate In several species of the family Laodicez, tracts of nerve substance distributed over I could divide the umbrella into more than the entire organism. Nor does the phys. a hundred pieces, and from each piece, ical basis of the vitality of the vegetable provided it only contained a portion of the differ in the least from that of the animal. margin of the umbrella, grew in a few The protoplasm of both is the same. It days a complete small medusa. The pres- was long firmly held that plants were made ent writer has grafted the body of a 1-Ijydra up of /er;zary comtou;zds; cellulose, dex- vulgaris on to the mouth and tentacles of trine, starch, and so forth. In animals a Hydra viridis, and the blending was these were said to be subordinate, the body perfect, the two creatures becoming one, being mainly composed of albumen, fibrin, just as a graft of gb/re de Df~u will re- ~eiatine, etc. But it is now well known tam its distinctive vitality soldered to a that starch and sugar are always present wild-rose stem. Indeed, the records of in the higher animals, whether normal or vivisection, and even sur6ery, give evi- morbid; while chlorophyl so distinct- dence of budding and grafting that ively vegetable has been found in the proves even these to be no distinctive bodies of the S/eu/or and the green hy- attribute of plants. dra, which are without question animal Respiration and circulation are both and cellulose, the product of vegetables, simulated in a striking way by vegetables, has been found in the testa of ascidians. The circulation so clearly seen in the web lt is clear, then, that no discoverable of a frogs foot with a moderate power of distinction, which will include the whole the microscope, is a remarkable sight to of the animal and the whole of the vege- those who first behold it. But the circula- table series, has yet been found; and only tion of protoplasm with its contained one other test remains. It is the nature of chlorophyl granules in the cells of Va//is- the materials assimilated by both classes neria sjira/is or Nile//a is as clear, and of organisms. Are they distinct? Must certainly as strikin~. On the other hand, they he of one kind for the animal, and of there are animals, such as the Forami- another kind for the vegetable nzj~ra, the Radio/aria, or the Paramav-ia, It is here that Professor Huxley finds in xvhich there is either no circulation at the borderland. As a broad general- all, or the most shadowy semblance of it. ization it is undoubtedly true that animals Plants, like animals, may be rendered depend directly upon plants for the mate- unconscious by anrnsthetics, intoxicated rials of their bodies ; that is, either they by narcotics, and killed by electricity. In- are herbivorous, or they eat other animals deed, althou~h a nervous system proper which are herbivorous. On the other has not been yet found as belonging to hand, plants can work up mineral matters any distinctive vegetable, yet there are into complex organic compounds. But many unmistakable animals in precisely the same condition. Bat the results of * The Oorder Territory between the Animal and inquiries Vegetable Kingdom, M~ecrni1lans Magezii , Feb recent into the structure of the ruary, 1876, p. 3y6. THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. 74 broad as the basis of this distinction is,it wings are useless from want of space does not cover all the facts. All the Jiigher and the body of the insect becomes animals assimilate salt a mineral pressed all round by the narrow neck of while plants, such as the mistletoe, can the trumpet, which is thickly set with stiff only exist on the organic juices provided needle-like hairs, all pointing downwards, by the trees on which they are parasitic. so that every struggle to be free simply But besides this it has now been demon- drives the animal down, until, in the cases strated beyond dispute, that vegetable or- where it is provided, reaching the fluid ganisms entrap and assimilate animal which is said to be an~esthetic in its effects, food; that it is indeed essential to their it speedily succumbs. The enormous existence. For fifty years neglected ob- number of insects thus entrapped is al- servations have been on record concern- most incredible. We have carefully ing the carnivorous habits of a genus of watched one of them named S. flazuz, and plafts known as Sarracenia. There are are convinced that it is a most successful only eight species, and they are all natives lure. An old leaf cut open will always of the eastern states of North America. show the shells and remains of insects, as Like most of the carnivorous plants they well as their eggs and chrysalides, pressed affect bogs, and even land covered with closely together for several inches up the shallow water. Their leaves are modified tube. We cut recently twenty old leaves into inverted trumpets or ewers. The from a S. flava that had been in the same flower is solitary. In some of these place for seven years, and had thus be- plants the ewer-shaped leaves are fur- come thoroughly at home, and certain- nished with a protecting lid or cover; in ly the number of flies in a recognizable other species, although the lid is there, condition, in all the leaves, could not have its position is such that it cannot protect been less than four thousand; while for the contents of the leaf. Speaking gen- some distance at the base of the tubes erally, there is placed at the bottom of these was a black unrecognizable debris. As a hollow leaves a mitcilaginous and some- rule, in their native state, these plants, in what astringent fluid. This has been satis- consequence of the animal matter in decay factorily ascertained by Dr. Mellichamp, which they thus contain, emit a strongly from observations upon native specimens noxious odor; and there can be no ques- in their natural state; though it is rarely tion that the leaves, thus heavily laden true of cultivated specimens in this coun- with rich manure, fall to the ground and try. But these tubes are veritable traps provide the plant with the sustenance for insects. The flying prey are attracted which, from the nature of the soil, it would to the leaf, in several instances, by the not otherwise obtain. In order to attract fact that the cover of the ewer-shaped leaf wingless insects into these tubes they are is colored like the flower. Now the flower furnished almost to the root with a hon- contains nectar, which the insect seeks. eyed tract, up which animals such as the This is peculiarly the case in an allied ant are lured until they too reach the fatal form known as Darlinjonia Galifornica. snare and perish in its depths. In this plant the cover of the leaf serves This, it will be seen, is not an instance as such, and is developed into a long and of the actual dzgestion and assimilation of brilliantly colored flap, marked just like the animal food, although it closely approxi- flower. Further than this, the only open- mates to it. Cases, however, are now well ings into the hollow leaf are shaped like known and carefully attested, in which not the openings into the nectar-bearing parts only the organ for securing th epreyis of the flower. Thus, doubtless, many an complete, but the function of digestion is unwary fly takes the leaf for the flower; added, so that the plant, like the animal, is and so far as the object of its search is supported by animal food. The Ne~en- concerned it suffers no disappointment, Ilies, or true pitcher-plants, are an in- for the whole of the cover of the leaf and stance in point. These are climbing the rim for some distance down into the shrubs growing freely in the regions of tube is richly smeared with honey, secret- the tropics. They produce the pitchers, ed by glands specially designed to this or vase-like appendages, at the ends of end. Once in this rich feasting-ground, their leaves; and these are provided with the animal is lured farther down. But tendril-like stalks, by means of which having reached a certain point the tube the plant can climb. Some of the pitch- becomes delicately enamelled, consisting ers are very large and strong, and might of glassy cells. No insect can retain a even entrap small birds. The rim of the foothold here, so that it inevitably glides pitcher is richly smeared with honey, and down. But the tube narrows rapidly now is often attractive in color. The honey- THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. 75 glands are continued a small distance into the vase, and then the surface hecomes exquisitely glazed, so that the insect, at- tracted in by the nectar, glides down its sides until it reaches an acid fluid con- tained in the bottom of the vase, into which it falls and is killed. The glands for secreting this fluid are enormous in number: in one species not less than a million are found in every pitcher, and, in fact, they are nothing less than stomachs. As is well known, the digestion of albuminous compounds by animals is effected by a ferment called pepsin, which is the active agent, together with weak hydrochloric and lactic acids. And both are essential to the act of di- gestion. The fluid in these pitchers is a weak acid; and as soon as an organic body is put into the pitcher j5e~siz is poured out in addition, and digestion prop- er takes place. If an inorganic substance be dropped in, no effect is produced the pepsin is not poured out; but if a frag- ment of beef or mutton, or an insect, be placed in the fluid, precisely the same changes take place as occur when the same substances are put into the stomach of a doo or a mm Nor can digestion be effectecfby the fluid alone when withdrawn from the pitcher, because then we have the acid only, and the pepsin, which the pitcher would be stimulated to pour out, is wanting. Darwin has shown the same to be the case with Venus fly-trap. When the leaf bas closed upon its prey, pepsin and acid are poured out in such quantity as actually to fall off the leaf in drops. In this way the toughest insects are digested, and the digested matter is thus transformed into the protoplasm of the plant. But the same careful observer has shown that even a more striking instance is pre- sented to us in the common sun-dew. It is not only furnished with a beautiful ap- paratus for entrapping its prey, and a per- fect digestive apparatus for the digestion and assimilation of the same to its own support; but it possesses to some extent at least a discriminative power, and can distinguish between what is nutritive and what is not. A piece of beef or mutton, or an insect, placed upon the tentacles leads to their speedy action, and the tenta- cles do not relax until digestion is com- plete. But if a piece of cinder, or cork, or glass, or other non-nutritious substance be put upon the leaf, it is probable that no action at all will take place in the tenta- cles; or if they should move towards and close upon it, they are speedily withdrawn. Mrs. Treat, of America, who has experi- mented upon them, affirms that not only the tentacles but the leaf will move a minute distance upwards after a fly, which is fixed in a position very near to it, but not in contact with it. In this case, too, the components of the digestive fluid have been most carefully analyzed, and are found to consist of pen- sin and acid; and Mr. Darwin has proved it capable of digestin0 not only raw and roast meats, but cartilage, bone, and even enamel. But digestion maybe completely stopped if the acid in the fluid be neutral- ized by an alkali, or the alkali he rendered neutral by an acid. Thus the analogy is complete. Hence it will be seen that although it is generally true that plants are character- ized by their power of working up mere mineral matters into complex organic com- pounds, it is yet not true without excep- tions, and some of these are significant in a very high degree. But on the other hand, it is simply impossible in the present state of science to prove that in the com- paratively unknown borderland there are not animals which, with equal facility, manufacture aiziy inorganic elements into the life-stuff of which they consist. During the past four years some care- fully digested observations of an exhaust- ive character have been made upon the extremely minute living forms that people amost the outmost fringe of the area over which our optical aids, as at present pro- vided, extend. The importance of exact knowledge of the whole life-cycle of even a few of these excessively minute organ- isms is extremely great. Dr. Carpenter tells us that such~ a study has recently been very carefully prosecuted, with really impoc-tant results, by Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale, who have worked not only with the highest powers, but with appli- ances specially devised to keep the same drop of water under continuous view. * And Professor Huxley has carefully, and with his usual penetration, applied the in- formation thus afforded to a most critical analysis of the points, if any, in which in this region of minuteness the last ref- uge the animal may differ froni the veg- etable. His attention was specially drawn to it by the fact that Professor Tyndall some months before asked him to examine a drop of hay infusion placed under an ex- cellent and powerful microscope. and to tell him what some organisms visible in it were. Besides bacteria the special or- * The Microscope, p. 494. 76 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. ganism present in putrefactive processes there were other organisms attaining the comparatively gigantic dimensions of one three-thousandth of an inch. Each of these had a pear-shaped body with the small end slightly incurved, and produced into a long filament of extreme tenuity and behind this another filament, equally fine, trailed. By lashing the front flagel- lum, motion was effected, and sometimes it was anchored by the hinder one. These tiny creatures carefully avoided collision when in full career towards each other, and often collected in crowds and jostled one another with as much sem- blance of individual effort as a spectator on the Grand Mulets might observe with a telescope among the specks representing men in the valley of Chamounix. Pro- fessor Huxley continues The spectacle, though always surprising, was not new to me. So my reply to the question put to me was that these or~anisi~s were what biologists call monads, and though they might be animals, it ~vas also possible that they might, like the bacteria, be plants. To any but the close and critical student of such vital forms, this reply would ap- pear almost absurd; we believe it would have done so to many a well-read biologist a very short time since. We are not sur- prised, therefore, to find that Professor Tyndall received this verdict with an expression which showed a sad want of respect for authority. For he would as soon believe that a sheep was a plant. This led Dr. Huxley carefully to recon- sider the subject; and he is obliged to adhere to his former view that it is impos- sible to determine whether the monad is an animal or a plant. Professor Huxley was not, however, able to afford the weeks or months re- quired to xvork out the life-history of this form; but he regrets this the less as the remarkable observations, recently pub- lished by Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale on certain monads, relate in part to a form so similar . . . that the history of the one may be used to illustrate that of the other. That history is briefly this At first the normal, almost oval form divides into two, even to the exquisitely delicate cilium. This was accomplished in six or seven minutes. At this rate a single form would give rise to a thousand like itself in the course of an hour, to about a million in two hours, and to a number reater than the generally assumed num- ber of human beings now living in the world in three hours. . . . The apparent suddenness of the appearance of multi tudes of such organisms as these in any nutritive fluid to which one obtains access is thus easily explained. This method of multiplication by division has, however, been long known as characteristic of such organisms, although the details of the method were never before explained. But a still more remarkable fact is the discov- ery by these observers, in this and the five other monad forms they so persistently worked out, of a true sexual method of increase. Two of the monads meet, come into contact, and coalesce; the whole of each flowing into the other. The result of the fusion is a triangular body, at first retaining the activity of the component bodies, but at lend t h falling into a state of rest. Eventually the apices of the trian- gle open, and give exit to a dense yellow- ish glairy fluid, filled with inconceivably minute granules. These were watched, and seen to develop into the parent form, commence self-division, and once more indeed repeat the cycle. Professor Huxley says that the form shown him by Dr. Tyndall very closely resembled this one, but he is not certain that it is the same. First, because the nucleus or central particle described by Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale could not clearly be made out; and second, because nothing is said by these observers of the existence of a contractile vacuole in this particular monad, thou~h they de- scribe it in another. We are, however, inclined to think that the form seen by Professors Huxley and Tyndali is identical with that described by those observers. The presence or ab- sence of the central particle, we gather, can only be determined by very continuous observation at times, and may, perhaps, be dismissed. But on referring to the paper in the Proceedin b5 of the Royal Microscopical Society, we find that they do describe a contractile vacuole in this organism, but not by that designation. It is thus pointed out: A large disc is constantly present in this stage, and exhibits an opehin~ and shutting motion like that of the eyelid, opening at either hand from a median line, and sna~~ing with great force. * This is evidently the description of a contractile vesiele or vac- unle having, as in the Arnwba, some remote relation to circulation or its equivalent; but not being described as usual, might readily escape notice. This being so, it would appear that Pro- fessor Huxleys monad is idefrtical with * Monthly Microscopical ~ourna4 vol. X., p. 248. THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. 77 the one he aptly uses to illustrate its na- ture. Now the question is, Does this group of minute organisms, of which we now have some accurate information, throw any light upon the question of what an animal is, as contradistinguished from a vege- table? When Professor Huxley wrote his paper in Alacmillaus Magazine, he had only seen four out of the seven papers which we noxv find Messrs. Dallinger and Drys- dale have contributed on this subject. Hence he says: I am not aware that the investirators from whom I have borrowed b this history have endeavored to ascertain whether their monads take solid nutri- ment or not; so that, though they help us very much to fill up the blanks in the his- tory of my heteromita,* their observa- tions throw no light on the problem we are trying to solve, Is it an animal or is it a plant? But in the last paper con- tributed by these gentlemen we find an extremely instructive passage : We do not profess [they write] to decide what is the true nature of the monads we have studied that is, to decide whether they be animal or vegetable. We nevertheless strongly believe in their animal nature. But if this be so, they afford another illustration of the in- efficiency of the distinction between the ani- mal and vegetable kin0doms, which assumes that animals can only assimilate organic corn- pounds, while vegetables can elaborate their protoplasm from those that are inorganic. We made a series of experiments on the transplantation of known forms to Cohns nutritive fluid, which contains no alburni- nous matter, but only mineral salts and tar- tarate of ammonia. The result was that we found that not only the bacteria but the flagellate monads lived, throve, and multiplied in it, although supplied with no other pabti- lum. If it be affirmed that this is a proof of their vegetable nature, we can only say that the same must be said of the Kerona of Ehren- berg and Dujardin, which flourish side by side with the monads, with this nutritive fluid as the sole source of pabulum. And both alike lived and multiplied in the dark.t Now Professor Huxley shows clearly, that, as to their mode of development, these minute creatures are simulated by definite plants; and there is no reason why they may not be such, save the very cogent one that there is also no reason why they should not be animals. But by the above quotation another fact is pre * This is the name Professor Huxley uses in pref- erence to monad. t Mon//dy Microscojiical 7ournal, vol. xiii., p. 190. sented~ A definite animal, the Kerona, lives in a purely inorganic fluid wit/i the monads, and, therefore, whether the mo- nads be animal or not, it is now clear that animals can assimilate purely inorganic nutriment. Thus the last distinction of a scientific nature is gone ; and we are obliged to look upon the entire region of biology the whole realm of vital exist- ences as without absolute distinction. The continuity is complete; and organic- ally considered, the difference between animal and plant is one of degree rather than of kind. This is a generalization to which all the investigations of recent years have pointed. The chemistry of the ultimate substance in which life inheres in both plant and animal is alike ; this gives them the same physical basis. It might, therefore, be anticipated that similarity of function would display itself in an almost infinite diversity of manifestation. But in Evolution and the Origin of Life Dr. Bastian would lead us to con- cl.ude that because an organic continuity can be scientifically shown to exist, that continuity must be continued from the organic to the inorganic, and that lie kas found the link. He affirms that the minute organisms present in decaying matters originate de novo; and that even inorganic, that is mineral, matter suitably combined will give rise to them. Now it is unfortunate that Dr. Bastian is obliged to make the testing ground of his hypoth- esis a region of organic forms so minute that our most powerful lenses cannot fully reach them, and concerning the life-his- tory of ~vhich nothing of real value for gen- eralization is known; while, on the other hand, the hypothesis itself is directly ad- verse to all the facts furnished by exper- imental biology. We apprehend that there is no man of science and no lover of truth living, ~vho would either reject or wish to refute the spontaneous origin of living things from things non-living, if the facts of nature warranted. But it is too large a question to be lightly treated, and involves too much to allow of unjustified generaliz- ation. Nothing can be clearer than the fact that Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley, for example, would, as believers in the doctrine of evolution ,gain much by the proof that there was a demonstrable continuity a visible point of junction between the now sharply separated organic and inorganic realms. But it is a clear proof of their proverbial honesty that they will not admit the hypothesis upon doubt- ful data. Dr. Bastian crosses from the 78 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. organic to the inorganic world, not by the aid of facts, but upon the most transpar- ently fallacious assumptions. There are scores of prominent biologists, willing enough to cross from the inorganic to the organicfrom the non-livin~ to the living under the leadership of facts; but it is a fatal feature that, with all Dr. Bastian s almost passionate enforcement of his so- called facts, there is not an English biolo- gist of note xvho accepts his doctrine In the last published volume (the third) of the Encyclop~edia Britannica, * there is a fine article by Huxley and Thystle- ton Dyer on Biology. It is there dis- tinctly stated that the biological sciences are sharply marked off from the abiologi- cal, or those which treat of the phenom- ena manifested by not-living matter, in so far as the properties of living matter dis- tingztish it absolutely from all other kinds of things, and as the present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link be- tween the living and the not-living. t This, of itself, is enough; it is nota state- ment of opinion, but of fact. But we have statements of this fact in detail in all the recent writings of competent biologists. And this has greatly exercised Dr. Bas- tian. He pleads with them as if it were a matter to be determined by their own will. He asks why they should dare to take up a position so adverse to his facts. ~ As if the consensus of the finest intellects in Europe specially devoted to the phenom- ena of life, and knowing all that Dr. Bas- tian can know, were not an answer that makes the very question absurd! Dr. Bastian evidently prefers what to his mind would be the coherence of the doctrine of evolution to a patient discov- ery of natures own methods. To make evolution a satisfactory means by which the inorganic and the organic realms are alike developed, there must be to his mind a visible pathway. So he chooses the bacteria-organisms, as we have said, quite unknown, and almost inaccessible to us and from some undigested and conflicting facts obtained by dubious methods, he tells us that the chasm is crossed. The bacteria originate spontaneously, origi- nate without parents, in dead matter and, therefore, evolution is established! In other words, as a recent writer has mdi- cated, evolution requires spontaneous generation, and therefore spontaneous generation must be true! * Ninth edition. t P. 679. 1 Evolution, pp. 1316. Foj5uiar .Scie7we Review, May, 1876, p. 115. The evidence on which Dr. Bastian re- lies for his hypothesis is in itself utterly incompetent, even if it were trustworthy. In conspicuous living forms it is not diffi- cult to discover what the mode of origin really is. But in more obscure and less accessible organisms imagination has free scope. There was a time when water- birds were believed to originate in trees! But without any knowledge of such mi- nute and puzzling organisms as bacteria, manifestly peoplin~ in some form air and water, and deposited on every solid, it might be supposed that a scientific biolo- gist would interpret their mode of origin by the mode of origin of all other living things, down to the limit of mans present knowledge, and not attempt to infer from questionable experiments that sponta- neity of origin which research has grad- ually exploded and narrowed down amongst organized beings until it can now be assumed concerning no other form than the bacteria. Yet Dr. Bastian re- lies for the truth of his hypothesis simply on thermal experiments on these minute creatures, of whose development we are ignorant. Certain flasks containing them are boiled and sealed while boiling: no airnothing, indeed, containing Bacteria or their germs can now come into con- tact with the fluid. The organisms are said to be killed at a much lower temper- ature than the boiling-point, so that now if they reappear in the flask they must have originated in dead matter. Now the fact is, that the most careful and precise experiments agree in proving that these specks of organized matter do not sur- vive the boiling-point if the infusion be filtered, carefully boiled, and the vessel carefully closed. But a few very exception- al instances are on record, in which, al- though the boiling has been continued for some minutes, yet, on the openin of the flasks after the lapse of a suitable time, bacteria have appeared. And it is only on the evidence of these facts that Dr. Bas- tian requires that the biological world re- ceive the doctrine of spontaneous gen- ration I Two assumptions lurk in every instance presented to the world by this writer. The first is that a given heat destroys every form or condition of bacterial life: this he has never either proved or taken means to prove. The second is, that in the given instance he had raised every part of a given infusion to this required temperature: a matter needing the utmost caution in a fluid charged with solid matter. THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. A striking instance of the looseness of the method has rece.ntly been presented to usA1 Dr. Bastian put an infusion of cress with some of the leaves and stalks of the plants into a flask, and while it was boiling hermetically sealed it, and then raised it to a temperature of 27o~ to 2750 Fahr. It was not opened for nine weeks; but when it was opened the experimenter found more than a dozen very active monads. He took these and heated them, and found that he could kill them absolutely at a temperature of 1400 Fahr. So he triumphantly concludes that they must have originated in dead matter.j- In- deed he declares any other conclusion to be in effect absurd, and advises his oppo- nents that their only refuge is to doubt the facts. Now, we have seen above, that the mo- nads have recently been most fully and carefully examined, and typical life-histo- ries completely made out. In all theforms studied, after a most rapid and curious series of metamorphoses, evidently all conserving the great end of rapid multi- plication, they all, without a single excep- tion, were found to produce myriads of spore or eggs. These were submitted to thermal tests to discover the amount of heat they could bear, and yet develop into perfect monads. It was well established that the creatures themselves were killed at I4o~ Fahr. or thereabout. But now it was demonstrated that two out of six of the monads produced spore, which devel- oped under observation, after exposure to 3000 Fahr., and that the average heat-re- sistance possessed by the spore was nearly double that of the adult. Now, Dr. Bastian drew, measured, and described his monad the triumphant product of spontaneous generation and it has since been absolutely identified as one of the forms whose life-history is now so completely known. It is no other than one of the two forms whose spore were proved to be able to re~ist 3oo~ Fahr. But since Dr. Bastian only raised his infusion up to 275~ Fahr., 25~ less than this, it is.obvious that his conclusion as to its spontaneous origin so tri- umphantly and even defiantly flourished before his scientific opponents is a delu- sion and a snare. The monads were not parentless waifs, but the natural products of the heat-resisting spore. But having established the existence of genetic products eggs in the monads, * Polzehzr Science Review, April, 1876. t Evolution, pp. 175-180. 79 the series next in order to the bacteria themselves, and having shown what falla- cies may arise from want of knowledge of this fact, we are the more fully prepared to perceive the weakness of Dr. Bastians method and his inferences. But this is what he wholly fails to do; and the same kind of reasoning as was employed to transform a naturally begotten monad into a spontaneous product, is now em- ployed though certainly, whether Dr. Bastian knows it or not, with diminished effect upon the bacteria. The most speedy way in which to render futile any further efforts to establish the hypothesis of the transition of not-living into living in atter by way of the bacteria would be to demonstrate the oerms through which they ultimately multiply. We say ultimately, because they increase at an enormous rate by self-division. But the discovery by the microscope of even the germs of the moizads evidently taxed the utmost powers of the finest modern microscopes, worked in the most delicate way. It is manifest, therefore, that, since these are comparatively giants to the bac- teria the germs of the latter must be ultra- microscopic. Hence, although they have been indicated distinctly by all the best and most careful experimenters, yet they have never been seen. But their exist- ence was made almost absolutely certain when it was shown that the organisms nearest them in form, size, and deportment produced and emitted germs, out of which the perfect form developed. The matter must have rested here, so far as our present optical appliances were concerned, but for the fact that Dr. Tyn- dall devised another method of solving the important problem. It is well known that the passage of a powerful beam of libht through a dark room is made strik- ingly manifest by the presence of dancing motes. The beam is more or less mani- fest in proportion to their size and multi- tude. But if the air of any chamber be allowed sufficient time, these motes will deposit themselves upon the lowest sur- faces of the chamber, leaving the air clear; so that the intensest beam of light is ab- solutely invisible in its passaze across a chamber in such a condition, while the most inconceivably minute pirticles are capable if they still remain in the air of being made manifest by light condensed and sent in a beam across it.* Dr. Tyn- dall immedately saw that this might be applied to the discovery of the presence * Na/ure, January 27, 1876, p 252. 8o THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. or absence of bacterial germs. To put it into practice air-tight chambers were pre- pared, in which filtered infusions of every kind might be boiled, when, by the passage of a beam from the electric light, it was shown that the air in the chamber was moteless. The result was that such infu- sions, however long exposed, produced no bacteria. XVhat bacteria and germs they had contained had been destroyed hy the boiling temperature; and the surrounding air being deprived of germs or particles of matter carrying tl~ein, the infusions were sterile to the end, proving clearly that it was by the presence of germs the putre- factive organism originated; for no sooner were these same infusions exposed to the open air to the extent of six hundred cases than they were infallibly smit- ten, while in the air freed of its motes there was absolute immunity the infu- sions were free to the last. Clearly then the motes are a determin- ing cause of the presence of bacteria, and it is amongst the least and most densely packed of these particles im- mensely beyond the reach of any lens that Dr. Tyndall discovers the essential precursors of these organisms. Now, the question is, What are they? To suppase they are inorganic is in itself absurd; but it is rendered more so by the fact that calcined air, however much charged with motes, is as powerless as optically pure air to determine the presence of the pu- trefactive organisms. And, therefore, if what is know;z of the monads as to their ultimate origin in germs be taken beside what is here given, the fact that the germs of bacteria have been reached, approaches much nearer to certainty than many things which even science unhesitatingly accepts. But even this certainty has been strengthened by an investigation into the deportment of the germs of the monads treated in precisely the same way. This investigation has been conducted by Mr. Dallin er.* The decaying animal matter in which the monads thrive after being in a putrescent state for a year or more may be dried, and becomes then, it appears, a porous flaky mass, friable in many parts, and specifically very light. Now the pres- ence of two well-known monads was de- monstrated in a putrescent mass of this kind, and it was seen by careful observa- tion that they were actively depositing germs or spore. The mass was then dried, and heated up to a temperature of ten de- Potniar Science Review, April, 1576. Mon/iziy Microscc~j5ic ~7ournai, vol. xii., p. 262. grees higher than that required to kill the adult forms, but much lower than was needed to destroy the germs. The fine light powder resulting from the breaking up of the baked mass was then distributed through a chamber, such as Dr. Tyndall used, and an i;zorganic fluid the Cohns nutritive fluid referred to on p. 77which had been shown to be capable of sustainin~, the monads was inserted, when the beam of light showed that the air in the chamber was full of motes. The whole was then left for five days. After that time had elapsed, the fluids were taken out and examined. The two monads were found to be copiously present in all the cups o~ fluid. But the air in the chamber was now inoteless; it had deposited all its particles this the beam demonstrated so more fluid, perfectly clean, was in- serted. At the expirat.ion of five days this was examined, and not a trace of monads was to be found. More dust from the baked mass was now diffused through the chamber, and these sterile cups of fluid again inserted. At the expiratiOn of five days more each of the cups swarmed with monads. Nothing can be more decisive than this. The germ known to be such acted in the production of monads precisely as the motes believed to be germs acted in the production of bacteria. The inference is irresistible. The lowest organisms known to science are the product of an- terior life, and the line of continuity con- necting the living and the non-living spite of Dr. Bastians hypothesis has, on the evidence of the most accomplished biologists in the world, yet to be discov- ered. This is an important fact. In living matter as such, whether animal or vegeta- ble, there is no sharp line of demarcation. But when we reach the outmost border of the livino- we find no demonstrable connection with the inorganic. That there are lines of continuity from the non- living to the living is in one sense certain, for both states inhere in matter. The living state of matter differs from the dead state in only one essential the property of vitality, a property which by its very nature cannot be destroyed. This prop- erty is not found in the proximate princi- ples or constituents of an orbanized body when dead. So that the property of matter called life results from no known or even conceivable combination of these, but is an entirely new, peculiar, and unknown combination isometric with the sum of them. When this combination breaks up WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 8i into what are known as the organic ele- philosophy and in fact. Nature is not ments, that is the act of death. However capricious; and by whatever means evolu- this property was acquired, it is only mat- tion may, under Dr. Bastians conscious- ter possessing it that can endow other ness of necessity, be spurred across the matter with the same property. Hence, chasm which divides the not-living from philosophically, we might have anticipated the living, he must henceforth abandon what experiment demonstrates the non- ~he spontaneous origin of bacteria. living and the vital present us with no visible link. The one cannot become the _____________ other by any combination or adjustment of atoms, except under the control of From Good Words. matter endowed with the vital property, WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. any more than lead could become gold by ~ 5ARAH TvTLER, any process of the alchemist. That matter at some remote period in AUTHOR OF LADY BELL, ETC. the past history of this globe was en- CHAPTER LVI. dowed ~vith this property is certain. But palpably it was endowed with it once and RICA S PRIVATE MISSION. for all. By whatever process the great WHEN Pleasance was back at Stone Creator wrought out the universe, there Cross for the weeks that were left her was a period when dead matter had to re- there, she consented to go through the ceive a new property sul generis and, form of paying a visit to her aunt, amidst once given, it could no more repeat itself the dignities of Gable House. without the same original power acting Such a visit was no pleasure, but a pen- whether a first or a second cause alty to Pleasance; but she could not in than inorganic elements can now become her conscience withhold it, when she took organic without the intervention of a liv- into account that Mrs. Wyndham was her ing thing. This is true whatever theory fathers sister, and actually, save Pleas- of the universe be maintained. It is as ances husband, her nearest surviving re- true of evolution as it is of the doctrine of lation. Pleasance could not comply even distinct and separate creations. There in the most restricted manner with the can be no question about this fact. So requirements of society where other re- that when the eager advocate of spontane- cent visitors were concerned and leave out ous generation urges upon evolutionists Mrs. Wyndham, without inflicting on her that they are bound to believe it if they a marked slight. It might even involve a would be consistent, Professor Huxley false suspicion on the part of the world of properly answers, If it were so, it would the close, and the neighborhood, that be so much the worse for the doctrine of Pleasance accused her aunt of having evolution. * But the truth is that no been in some measure privy to the will conceivable mode of origin of the present which had so long lain in abeyance. universe whether it be projected upon All Pleasances rampant justice rose up the assumption of either a direct or mdi- in arms against subjecting Mrs. Wynd- rect action of the first great cause re- ham or any member of her family to so quires to postulate spontaneous generation unfounded a suspicion. Pleasance would if it be in any sense logical. There was a call every day of her life at the Gable period when all conditions and forces, House and have the Wyodhams calling however directed, converged to the en- every day back again at Willow Uquse, dowment of matter with a new the high- invading her privacy and disturbing her est property, life: and life was the trod- peace, sooner than do them or any other uct the work done by the forces ex- human being such a wrong in cold blood.. pended. It was not an indefinite power Pleasance would rather sit half an hour given to non-living matter to become vital with her aunt and endure the associations when it chose. The conception is absurd. which she recalled. The younger woman It is no more to be looked for, than that a would look at the elders slow, pompous crystal of quartz should have the power to movements, and at the traces of the beauty become a diamond, or a molecule of water which had remained so long unfaded and to become a molecule of sulphuric acid. unfor~otten. Pleasance would listen to It is clear then that the hypothesis of Mrs. Wyndhams confidently imperious Dr. Bastian is without foundation, alike in apologies and excuses in reference to the past, and her labored attempts at promot * Encyclopxdia Britannica, vol. iii., p. 689, ninth ing greater friendliness for her familys edition, ends in the future. The listener would LiVING AGE. VOL. XVIL 838 82 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. endure the speakers lengthened emphatic dissertations on her childrens merits, and her half-indignant remonstrances against~ and lamentations over Pleasances perversity in not grasping at their over- tures. She ought to make it her very first arrangement to go to Rome for the coming winter, to live with Nelly in her pal- ace and see the first society in Rome. Pleasance should seek to pick up such a tolerable foreign style, that, on her return to England Mrs. Wyndham and Rica might have no difficulty in taking her up and going out with her. Of course, Pleas- ance was too young, and above all too peculiarly situated to dispense with influ- ential countenance. Rica never stayed much beaide the mother, who idolized her, so that in con- senting to sit with Mrs. Wyndham, Pleas- ance was at least safe from Ricas more direct assaults, whether of mere flippant levity or reckless importunity. For Pleas- ance had learned to take the true measure of Ricas hilarity and frankness. But the best-established inferences sometimes fail~ so Pleasance was forced to admit, when after doing her utmost to hear and for- bear with her aunt at Gable House, she returned home to find Rica established in the drawing-room at Willow House. There she was turning it upside down for her own convenience and amusement, flinging any market flowers with a sus- picion of herbs in them out of the window, tossing about Pleasances hooks, med- dling with and scaring her birds, and in- serting the most villanouslv destructive stitches into a little bit of old and fine embroidery which Pleasance was trying to repair. Here you are, cousin Pleasance, and here I am sick to death of waiting for you, the culprit hailed the mistress of the house. What can you find to say to the poor poky old 7/later with whom you were not such great friends, to begin with But you had better take a chair, she in- vited Pleasance to a seat in her own house, before I open my budget, which happens to he a long and special one. I wonder if I feel like the chancellor of the exchequer when he prepares to lay his before the House? I dare say I am a great deal more in earnest, since, except in the light of his office, he cannot care a straw for what no more concerns him than it concerns the other millions in the kin - dom. I hope people are sometimes in earnest about what concerns their neighbors. I need not say, I hope, I dont doubt that there are such feelings as philanthropy even true patriotism, said Pleasance with something between a twinkle and a spar- kle in her eye. Well, there are such hobbies, said Rica, and people mount them and ride then-i to death, pretending all the time that they are disinterested; hut what is a hobby, unless a mans way of entertaining himself, and proving his superiority to his fellows? I should like nothing better than to come out as a public benefactress, bnt then I should always be candid, and own that I did it for a whim and to amuse myself. The new Lady I3ountiful, with her womans rights, 1-icr advanced education, and her extended charities, has a good deal of go in 1-icr, and is great fun. She is not half such a do to herself, at least, as her predecessor was. Do you n-iean, asked Pleasance, that you cannot conceive of any real wrongs which any class or section of women may suffer, with redressors of such wrongs, working in the dark and making mistakes and messes, doubtless, but perhaps work- ing towards the light all the same. Do you intend me to believe tl-iat you cannot imagine an actual amount of shallow, nar- row ignorance which well-instructed peo- ple have a genuine desire to lessen? Have you no faith in much patent sore suffering which the friendly souls in the world ~vould seek on the highest authority to relieve? Is it to you an idle play of shams and by-words, assumptions and fashions, of which you can freely make game? I)o you see nothing above and beyond the folly of it? Not I, said Rica with unabashed coolness. But, although I dont be- lieve in saints and martyrs since the time of the apostles, I suppose and if I had lived in the days of these old gentlemen I dare say I should have had a crow to pluck with them too still, I have no par- ticular quarrel with the one-idead souls who think they are serving God and man, when they are only airing their own sneak- ing good-nature and fondness for popular- ity, or their spite against son-ic neighbor who goes and does the reverse. I think they are worthy enough a little blind, that is all. They are much obliged to you, Miss Wyndham, said Pleasance; for she had never been able to give Rica the right hand of intimacy, in responding to her freedom of address, by calling her cousin by 1-icr Christian nan-ic. What xvould you have? said Rica, a little impatiently; I am a humorist. As WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 83 for you, if you cannot see a joke, you should make a pretence you do. Your solemn people, who take everything an grand serialLy, are too terrible, even when they are not atrocious hypocrites. j do not think I could stand them. I used to fancy I could see a joke, said Pleasance, but to turn everything into a joke is being too much of a light princess to suit my conscience. It seems to me that it is left for the most modern humorists or those who profess to be so tp put irreverent, unfeeling hands on human nature, as a xvhole, and treat it as beneath respect, if not beneath contempt. Well, so it is, said Rica with a yawn, there is no breat thing in it I am sure you have lived long enough to find the truth of my wordsexcept that it is mostly good for a laugh. But spare me sermonizing; it aint quite fair to impose it just yet. By-and-by I shall take my doses, but I need not anticipate the horri- ble process, need I? I assure you that wiiile I thrust my tongue in my cheek and laugh in my sleeve you will not be so tyrannical as to refuse me so much liberty I shall turn out a good, fat, jolly asso- ciate sister of a morning, if you make reforming the world your cue, when we keep house together. Keep house together exclaimed Pleasance astounded. Yes, my dear child, that is just what we are going to do, said Rica with frank decision, and if I were not stupidly hon- est, I might come over you by hintinb that you would do me no end of good. To win such a light-minded, worldly sinner to the side of earnestness, self-denial, and good works would be a grand tribute to your power. But you see I am honest, and I dont hint at having lost my senses, and fallen over head and ears in love with you and your Christian socialism, or what- ever it i~, though you are very handsome, and have grown rich at our expense, alas The utmost that I propose is to make a highly judicious manage cia conva- ~zauce between us two. Seriously, cousin Pleasance, I do not wonder that you have repulsed mammas heavy artillery of pro- posals. It is trial enough for me to be tied to her apron-string, and dragged about in her cumbrous, slumbrous way. Then the idea of you going to Nelly, which was so plausible at the first glance, and to which I lent my support, had its disadvantages. You might be gone ever so long, and N elly and her count might appropriate you altogether, since you have no near tie, or none the bolder of which cares to claim it. That is my side of the objection. For yours, the count is exqui- sitely noble and high-bred, like his palace but he is as empty of all, save ancestral distinction, a~ the wide staircase and vast rooms of his dwelling. I have already told you that he is as proud as Lucifer, and as vain as a peacock; he is not easy to get on with. Poor Nelly has her own trials. She is apt to be dismal and occu- pied with calculations concerning the death of the old count, and she cannot understand why the last should not be as interesting and enlivening to her audience as to herself. Honestly, I think it would be pleasanter for you to stay at home, or merely to travel here and there with me for your duenna, governess, whip what shall I call it? But I have no idea that I want a duenna or a governess, not to say a whip, whose duties to me I cannot fathom. Oh, I should keep in order, fight ,and bring recalcitrant members of society to xTote that you xvould not only pass muster, but that you were quite good style, ex- plained Rica, as the Parliamentary whips serve their leaders. And where would your mother be? Oh, mamma would learn to do without me, as she has to do without Tom and Nelly, as she must do if I can manage to marry to suit me I make no secret that it is a question of management and suit- ability. Home is the best place for dowa- gers, and if mamma is not a dowager, it is all Toms fault. He ought to have pro- vided me, long ere this, with a presentable, tolerably energetic sister-in-law to take me about. Nelly is hors cia combat, and I protest mamma makes a spectacle of her- self, dragging on some unhappy man s arm, at breakfasts and garden parties, and nodding on her seat durinb the last waltz after supper, cried Rica in pettish dis- gust. As for yachting, she and I to- gether would sink any yacht of light burden; and as for fishing in Norway, or scrambling and roughing it among the Dolomite or any other mountains, or doing anything that one really cares to do, or that is worth doing, it is as entirely be- yond her capacity as a flight to the moon. I am always preaching that to sit still is the strength of age,, but she will not ap- propriate the text. Now, you may come in quite handy you are a matron in name at least, which is all that is neces- sary. If we can persuade her that it will be for Tom and Nellys good. as well as for mine, I have no doubt that mamma may be induced to depute the care of me 84 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. to you, and you to me. I should write to her of course, and Jobbins, my new maid, writes a legible hand, and could keep her still more az~ fill, with regard to our movements. And where should we move to ?in- quired Pleasance curiously. Oh, wherever there is anything good going on. You are a free woman without any encumbrance, as people take care to advertise, but you do not half prize your freedom. To town in the season, of course, for I have had just enough of country society this summer, at Stone Cross, to whet my taste for blood again. Where shall we go do you ask? where- ever there are worlds and men to conquer, to be sure and it will go hard with us, if with your beauty, money, novelty, and strange eventful history I am too mod- est to say anything of my poor little at- tractions, centring in my tonguewe do not revenge ourselves on Archie Douglas, and take the world by storm. But Archie Douglas is my husband; and I do not care in the least for taking the world by storm. Besides, Rica Wyndham, if I were so happy as to have a mother, or even a loving old friend left to me, I should not think there was any pleasure in the world worth beino~ with her. Do you mean to say that you reject my suggestion as you did mammas? ques- tioned Rica, speaking slowly and seriously, for her. Yes, I do, absolutely, answered Pleas- ance. I should have said that I was obliged to you for coveting my company, or caring to serve me, only that I might appear to be mocking you, for you have been telling me in every word it was your own greater freedom and fancied better entertainment you coveted, and that it was LO serve yourself you spoke. Quite so, you are perfectly right, Mrs. Douglas, ~ said Rica, getting up with a laugh which sounded harsh. Ricas face had till now been lookin, its best, in its dimpling, rippling laughter, with only the slightest tinge of excitement coloring its ivory hue; but as she rose to go, a Purple flush of passion spoilt the delicacy of coloring, and the curves of the mouth were drawn, into a sneer which looked bitter and fierce upon a face that was young, and a woman s. What, she said, you can decline every favor we demean ourselves to ask of y6u, after we forgave your supplanting us in Heron Hill and its wealth, by a base piece of intrigue on the part of your low- minded and cowardly father! But I do not wonder at it, for you, too, have had something to forgive something that no woman ever can forgive. I do not understand you, said Pleas- ance, standing up stiff and cold, taken aback by the sudden burst of race and its reviling. I mean, said Rica, that you drew Archie Douglas into a low marriage, which was no sooner committed than it became detestable to him, and which he did his best to ignore and escape from. I mean that he sought his solace in me, that he would fain have taken refuge in a pursuit idle it must have been since, like your father, he could only have been half a vil- lain of me and my society; but you, perhaps, because you condemn fine ladies on principle, were not burdened with a ladys scruples of pride or delicacy you followed and exposed him. It is not true, said Pleasance in vehe- ment indignation, but calming down even while she spoke. You know that you are not speaking the whole, or even the least part of the truth, that you are twistinb and distorting facts to suit your own bad pur- pose. I believe, however, that mine is the general version of the story, said Rica, recovering her self-control in part, and smothering the rab e she felt in addition to every other ~round of offence, at having been detrayed into a rage for was not her role that of a laughing philosopher, and did it not detract from her mercurial philosophy to show feeling of any kind? My theory was held at the time by the persons who should have known best Mrs. Douglas amongst the rest. If you take my advice, cousin Pleasance, you will have nothing to say to your gentle, enthu- siastic mother-in-law when she comes to the neighborhood of Stone Cross next week, that she may be no longer able to avoid making your acquaintance, and when she is so charmed with you at first sight, as to fall into your arms. She has been very fond of you, all alon~, has she not? stood by you and taken your part? She has not come to you late in the day, when by the shameful misappropriation of grandpapas property, you are a rich wom- an? You snubbed poor little Jane Doug- las, you know, when she took it into her foolish head to patronize you. But really Jane could do it much more gracefully, for you were only Archies poor, low-born wife in those days. Archie Douglas has not been particularly strong-minded, hon- est, and faithful in the course of the his. WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 85 tory, in spite of his juvenile heroics. It is so easy to be heroic before the time. However, he has left it to a refined, scnsi- tive model woman, like his mother, to be shamelessly mercenary. Or is it that his objections are insuperable? You should know, since it seems I have given a gar- bled version of your relations. Do you know you have given me the lie direct; hut of course you were in jestyou said you could jest, not a very polite jest, but you despise politeness. It may pass be- tween cousins only I had better take my leave for the present. Pleasance was left alone to realize what an insulted woman feels, and to ask her- self was this really the worlds version of Archie Douglass conduct and hers? Did the light-minded and ill-natured and how many people were light-minded and ill-natured in her world judge him es- pecially according to this definition? Pleasance was certain that it was false. She had told herself down at Shardleigh the other day, listening unperceived to his light-heartedness, that Archie Douglas had forgotten her. She had accused him of being cruel and heartless in the complete- ness of his forgetfulness; but now she in- dignantly repelled Rica Wyndhams inso- lent assertion, and told herself that she knew better. He might have learned to laugh since then, so that she, listenin~ to the light laughter, had said that his love was dead, and he had never loved her. But she had slandered him, and that true love which could never die, and that had once ruled his heart. It must awake, stir, and fill him with vain longing, whenever his better nature spoke to him out of the silence. Could the world not see the difference between the truth and Rica Wyndhams malicious statement? Could it be that the difference might cease to exist, and that in the course of years, in the void in his heart, and the sense of failure in the life, to which he was sentenced in the middle of his outward prosperity, Archie Douglas would harden, sour, and sink into seeking ever lower and lower compensations, until she who had thought to save him, still more than herself, from the consequences of his folly, would have too surely wrought his destruction? In addition, was Mrs. Douglas really coming soon to Stone Cross, confirming the report of one of Pleasances visitors, to mock Pleasance with advances, to bring upon her all the evils of an unsuitable connection, from which she had fled with everything that was hateful rendered posi- tively loathsome by mean hypocrisy being joined to resentful scorn? Ah, how Pleas- ance wished she could get away from the strife, take to herself the wings of a bird, and flee. into the wilderness and be at rest! CHAPTER LVII. SPEEDING THE WILLING TRAVELLER. PLEASANCE was more fortunate than most people, when they desire to go aside for a season, and leave behind them the conflict of their lives. An opportunity presented itself to her at that time to quit Stone Cross and forget her troubles, as she hoped, in the renewal of old ties. A lettcr came from Lizzie Blennerhasset, in which the writing, in place of being blurred with the dismay of a false alarm, like Mr. Woodcocks, was all tremulous performing fantastic flourishes w5th justi- fiable exultafion. Lizzie had received another letter from Dick Blennerhasset, detailing his rapid rise in the world beyond the Atlantic, and, as if that were not sufficient to swell Liz- zies tender, unselfish heart with gratitude, the letter said a great deal more. Long Dick promised stoutly that he was taking care not to risk the success of which he was so proud, and had entirely left off sprees, when he had no village cronies. He did not seem, thank God, so much as to feel he wanted sprees any more; he was so thundering busy with his forge, his lot of land and his shanty; only he drove his Whitechapel cart every Sunday a dozen miles to the nearest church, not merely to see his neighbors, but to say his prayers, as he had done at home. But his lo~ house, which he was taking so much trouble with, and his garden which he was clearing and sowing with English seeds, were a thought lonesome. He had taken it into his head that if his cousin Lizzie would come out to him and be his wife, she mio-ht cheer him a bit, and give him all that he missed. He did not fear that he could give her a return for what he got, and the two be as happy as the day was long. All that was past was like a dream to him he did not mean that it could be dreamed over again but he had begun to think that Pleasance might have been right, since she had not only come of gentlefolks herself, but had found a gentleman for her husband in Joel Wray. As to Joels thinking light of her, and being parted from her by his friends, Dick could not take that in; he knew a 86 thing worth two of that. Joel was not made of such miserable stuff;. he had been as sweet as man could be on Pleas- ance. And where could he find among all his grand belon~ings of fine kin, a lass like Pleasance Hatton? However, Long Dick was not writing about Pleasance, who had dropped out of his horizon, and in dropping had carried away all the burning pain, and left but the pensive memory of his first love. He had thdught that the wild fresh air of these far western woods might do wonders for his cousin Lizzies health. Somehow he had always seemed to have a special interest, equivalent to a right of ownership in her, since he had saved her life when she was a child. And in the gradual fading and dying out of his passion for Pleasance, he could recall, in his lonely well-doing, noth- ing so sweet and satisfying as the devoted presence of his little cousin. To say that Lizzie was acquiescent, to say even that she was happy, was to say literally nothing in the presence of what she felt. Even under all the labor and restraint which a written letter cost to Lizzie, the pride and joy of her heart danced and sung so as to ring through the heart of ~he reader. To think that I d be to be married at all! I as everybody thought were a owd maid, branded and told off as any shorn sheep, and before Nancy and Kitty, as are well favored, and hale in wind and limb, and as never looked to dance at my bridal, or at my way-goin, which is all the same. Well, it d sound stammin, kinder hard on en, and I wonder, I do, they beant more spitefuller than they be at times; but married right off to sich a man! I am to be lady of three cows, not to speak on Dicks pair of bosses; and there d be a servant man; and us is to drive in the Whitechapel cartdev you remember driving me, Pleasance ? like gentlefolks or farmers to church on Sundays: but thats nowt to the man. Why, Pleasance, its not for me to sing his praises not no longer; but you d know there beant Long Dicks marrow not in Saxford, nor Applethorpe, nor Cheam, nor in the world! I a done norn to deserve such a fine lot. Im like to go crazed along on pride, I am; but the thought do keep me down a bit, that he as were evened to you, is only to get a poor silly lameter like me, whose wery passage he a offered to pay. But I ould not rob him in money, me as is to get all and bring so little to him. I up and towd farer I could make out part on the passage with my savings in the dress- WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. makin and if he ould not give me the rest, to get inc off his hands, and well cared for in time to come, I ould bide till I could work for the money. At the same time it were not very likely Long Dick, when he came to take second thoughts, ould bide by so fine an offer, and so a grand chance for farers own darter and his poor cripple darter as were not, by no manner on means, every mans bargain would be lost. Then morer, and even Kitty and Nancy, backed me up. And so I am to sail in ten days for Merika no less; and if so be you ould care to see me once more afore I go, nows the time, for I a come to be a lass in re- quest. Folk d say you mon be growed too grand a lady to care to see me again, or to hear on Dick; but Ill believe none on it of the gal as knew my Long Dick as you knowed he, and as he cared for oon- common, as were natral the days when you were both wanters, and were the like- liest lad and gal far or near. And if you d think on comm, Pleas- ance, I a spoken to Missus Gooch as a taken Missus Ballss place up in your owd house at manor; and her is a quiet, pur- pose oman, and says they a a room and to spare, and ould not objec to a lodger for a week or thatten. It has been said no woman hears that a man who has once loved her, is consoled for her loss, and has replaced, or is in the act of replacing her by another woman, without a little recoil of mortification and displeasure. But Pleasance only thought, If Archie Douglas has forgotten me in part Long Dick may well have forgotten me altogether. I will come, Lizzie; I shall see one woman under Gods sun perfectly happy. I shall bet away from Stone Cross~, from society with all its claims, from mocking mischief-makers and furious assailants like Rica Wyndham, from the speciously bland apparition of my mother-in-law, to some- thing simpler, ruder, truer. I shall return to the folk of Saxford whom I know, to Lizzie whom I love, and who does not in her day of triumph bear me a particle of malice because I was Long Dicks orib- inal choice, but has love to spare for me even from the huge mountain of love that is his due. I have the advantage of being free, as Rica Wyndham said. There is some good in being a woman of independent fortune, after dl. I shall write to Mr. Woodcock. I am afraid he will disapprove ; but I must vex the friendly old bentleman on this occasion. There is no help for it, that WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 87 the nest is flown, and the bird has gone hack, with her clipped wings and encum- bered feet, to the spot of earth whence she took flight. Pleasance was as good as her word, and arrived at the nearest station to Saxford within several days of Lizzies sailing. Pleasance did not take a cab, like Mr. Selincourt, when he was on his mission of inquiry, and xvas forced to invade the precincts of the Brown Cow. She did not come down in style and impress her grandeur on the natives, as they had pre- dicted she xvould do from the moment they had heard of her expected arrival. She xvalked to the ir~anor-house, as she had walked from it, though she left her luggage, rendered more bulky by special marriage-gifts a travelling-suit to Lizzie the last improved set of harness to Long Dick, and by sundry other gifts to old acquaintances and allies. And Pleas- ance wore her plainest striped calicot i~orning-gown, the nearest in material to the old gowns which she had worn when she was a dairy-maid, deputy housekeeper, and farm servant under her cousin at the manor. It was just about the equinox when the bare pastures and the abounding water of the east country were being scoured and tossed out of their last remnant of sum- mer verdure and tranquillity. The manor-house had undergone changes since Pleasance had quitted it in early sprin~. Its yellow walls had been subjected to a process which had removed its weather-stains and restored its pristine ochry hue in somewhat glaring contrast to its wavering, b ulgin~ out, sunken-down outline. A gre at part of its old olive thatch, with its luxuriant houseleek, had been removed and replaced by new bris- tling straw, hard in outline and pale in tonc. At the lattice window, instead of stout, hearty Mrs. Balls, there looked out the quiet purpose, Mrs. Gooch, a young, thin hesitatincr woman, shrinkin~ from the respon~ibility which she had incurred. She curt eyed to Pleasance, and did not usher her into the great kitchen, where Anne and Plcasance had once done their best to fill th two oaken chairs, and round whose x~ dls Pleasances crows scratches of dviwin~s had been wont to flutter. It had lonx been her home, but it had ceased to 1 now her dnd she ceased to know it as the house-ph ce of Joe Gooch, his missus and family. Pleasance was shown she could no longer take it upon her to walk where she would into the best room, made up of cast-off relics of ancient ~entility, and of out-of-keeping, coarse bits of modern Cheam upholstery the room which Pleasance had always avoided as the least habitable and likable room of the manor- house. Pleasance had a meal there no longer of souse cheese, apple turnover, cyder and ale, but of a slice of stale, shop-bought cake, with a glass of sour wine. She found it discomposed Mrs. Gooch, when Pleasance crossed the threshold of the room assigned to her.. Mrs. Gooch, and even her husband, could by no means comprehend, but were inclined to be sus- picious though they were themselves honest people enoughof Pleasances eager interest in the farm-stock and of her impulse to go and greet every animal that had been there six months before. She be in Lawyer Lockwoods interest; she be here to report any shortcomings; you never oughtnt to have had her here; ware on her, missus, was Joe Gooch~ ~varning to his missus. Pleasance had to put up with the altered lines in the house and its inhabitants with the oblivion into which she had begun to fall where the bucolic, equine, and canine memories of Daisy, Dobbin, Growler, and their compeers were in question. She was the sooner reconciled to it, that she felt with a mixture of proud regret, of half-sorrowful diversion, and nascent un- confessed hopefulness, that there was a change in herself. The little world of the manor farm could not be to her, any more than she could be to it, what it had been. She had gone beyond it; her bands were enlarged. The place no longer fitted her, nOr she the place. It was like her own image in Long Dicks mind a vision of the past to be fondly remembered, but to be left behind. She stood in that room to which regard for the Gooches feelings confined her, and looked out with the greatest interest on all the operations in which she had once taken so prominent a part, but with no great desire to resume them. She felt ~s if she had engaged in them in another state of existence and another world. It was the same in her intercourse with the natives of Saxford, always excepting Lizzie Blennerhasset. Upon the whole, Pleasance thought the villagers the girls took it less amiss that she should have been carried back to her natural sphere, by Joel Wrays doing her justice in money matters, or by her coming into a fortune they were not at all particular which ~ 88 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. owned that the girls luck had been prodi- gious. Pleasance was wrong in begging Lizzie to say no more of her Lizzies unworthi- ness, because it moved Pleasance strange- ly, and brought the tears to her eyes to hear it, since it was a safeguard to keep the fragile human heart from bursting, as it has been known to burst under a mighty flood of happiness. As it was, Lizzies health had never been so good as oii the eve of her voyage and marriage; a little color flickered in her cheek, her blue eyes were bluer and sweeter than ever. Pleas- ance even fancied that, by dint of sheer happiness, Lizzie limped less, or else the limp was less perceptible. It was a small matter to quit herparents who were pleased to get rid of her credita- bly, who had never taken much heed of, not to say pride in her, till now, and whose very pride at present was mingled with doubtful apologies. She did not mind parting from her sisters, with whom she had little in common even from Clem, who had his music at last to his hearts content, and needed her no longer or from Pleasance, who had become again outwardly the lady that she had always been inwardly. Nothing was any trial worth speaking of to Lizzie Blennerhasset, when it was counterbalanced by her going a thousand and odd miles to marry her cousin, Long Dick. Across the hills and far away, Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the nibht, beyond the day, Through all the world shed follow him. than they had regarded her presuming to wear spectacles while she stood in the rank of a working-s irl. But they were shy of her, while interested in her, as the better specimens of the poor people of Stone Cross had been shy. True, in this instance the shyness wore off a little, and the girls got the length of asking Pleasance, and of listenin~ with curiosity to her answer, what she did when she was no longer called upon to dirty her fingers. They required a catalo~ue of her wardrobe, were amazed and a little scandalized to find it no finer than it was, but were greatly pleased when Pleasance showed them a new fashion and offered them a pattern. Still, it was as impossi- ble for Pleasance and them to go back and reoccupy the old footing, as it was impossible to gather up the drops of water which had flown miles in their prog- ress to the sea, and restore them to their place at the source of the brook. Only Lizzie Blennerhasset, with Anne and Mrs. Balls in their graves, remained the same as ever to Pleasance. Great joy, like great grief, smooths out artificial distinctions. Lizzie in her ex- altation could not realize that Pleasance had been removed from her sphere. And where there was no realization there was no removal. So far from Lizzie feeling that Pleasance was raised above her, Lizzie, in her glory of rewarded, satisfied love, recobnized that Pleasance had suffered a great, irremedia- ble loss, and was far below her old com- panion whom she had helped and fa- vored. What was Pleasance, the grand lady Although Lizzie had never been on a living in alienation as Lizzie compre- sheet of water bigger or more exposed hended by instinct, from Joel Wray than the Saxford Board, while she had though Pleasance never said a word to seen the sea and heard of its wild work at Lizzie, the thrice-happy bride of Long Cheam, she was not afraid to propose, in Dick? Lizzie intensely pitied Pleasance, the middle of a raging equinox, to cross to whom she was stooping; she almost an ocean, a sickly little steerage passenger, reproached herself, only Pleasance en- alone, unprotected, save by her very weak- couraged her, for pouring out, as Lizzie ness, in an unruly crowd, to reach Dick. poured, her bliss in Pleasances ears. The discomforts and hardships of a voy- The strain rang always with the same a~e howe changes. Who would have thought that , ver prosperous, even to a homely girl like Lizzie, would pass lightly over Lizzie would have been married at all, and her, in her long ecstasy. Doubtless, she to such a man Lizzies king of men! would entertain all her felloxv-passen ers Not as she had once been fain to crave who would listen to her, for the whole when he was worn and worsted, soiled and length of the voyage, with tales of her beggared of all that men and women matchless felicity and her grand man. prize, but while still in the flow-er of his And the strangers would listen and mar- youth, in his conquest over his lower inch- vel, and laugh in her poor little face. nations, in that worldly victory of which They would ask each other if she were men approve so highly under the name of crazy, or if some rascal were taking a success. Even Lizzies cool and but rise out of her, so that she would find him slightly sympathetic neighbors readily gone out of sight and sound, or married to WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 89 another woman when she arrived till the last moment, when they might chance to see Dick, stalwart and faithful, ready pre- pared with a tender welcome. Lizzie would have been willing to pass abain through flrc as well as throuoh flood to attain that bourne. b Pleasance became familiar with the end of the story in anticipation, until in a short time it ceased to fill her imagination, which would stray irresistibly to her own affairs and those of Archie Douglas. It was a bad choice that Pleasance had made of a place to forget herself and him in. She had come back unwittingly to the very locality where. their short, close con- nection had its beginning and ending. Every spot was associated, not only with the tranquil years which had succeeded the one great tempest of Pleasances youth, but with the halcyon days of Joel Wrays coming a poor stranger and days man to Manor Farm; of their working to- gether and knowing each oth eras if by intuition; of his swiftly developed, openly- shown preference and frank, fearless ri- valry with Long Dick; of his wooing and winning her, up to the disastrous expos- ure in the church, and the bitter parting which followed. Why had the love, so much more spon- taneous and equal after all been so much less fortunate than Lizzie~ s one- sided worship and her cousin Dicks mild liking? Was the contrast between the twowomens experiences a case of Dives and Lazarus? Had Pleasances and Liz- zie s gifts, their good and evil things, been apportioned in the beginning to be reversed in the end? It was close upon the very season of Pleasances wedding only a year before, that season whose sober and chastened charms Archie Douglas in the wilful and headstrong passion of his youth, had been able to teach her fully to perceive. How kind he had been then, not only in his keen sympathy with the ship- wrecked sailors at Cheam, or in the first devotion of the love which she had ac- cepted and returned, but in his patience with the obligations which she had as- serted, and his indulgence to her partiali- ties and prejudices. These arrangements had been but a makeshift; he had been consciously de- ceiving her all the while. Therein had lain the fatal flaw. But he had been so eager to spare, so reluctant to thwart, so fain to gratify her to the last moment, when concealment came to an end, and when she had repaid his wistful breaking of the blow with unmixed scorn and rep- robation. That girl of whom he had told her, in the play, that beautiful, ambitious girl whom the gardener lad had wedded under the guise of a prince, though she had met the discovery with furious revilings, had relented, after it was too late, indeed, but still long within the proverbial year and a day. Had she been less upright, or had she been more loving than Pleasance? Was it true, what he had said, that she had not only been unforgiving, but that she had suffered the accidents of fortune, which he had refused to count where she was concerned, to come between and part them? that she, the poor woman, had shown herself more influenced by the xvorld in the end, than he, the rich man, had proved in the beginning? And by her incapacity for forbearance had she forsaken the man whom she had chosen as he had chosen her, failed in her obligations and her solemn vow, and left him to struggle and to perisl~ as he might in the weakness of his error? Was death more sacred than life ? Would she have gone to him for a brief reconciliation and a passing satisfaction, and would she continue to stand aside and let two lives be wasted? Within the sight and sound of Lizzies primitive bliss, primi- tive passions took larger proportions. Pleasance turned from the ceaseless wearing reiteration and discipline of these questions to go with Lizzie to Cheam, to see her on board the ship, and be the last of her friends to leave her. Lizzies happiness underwent no cloud; the dull October evening was a June morn- ing to her; and the tar-smelling, confu- sion, and noise on the deck of the emi- grant ship was already Dicks white- washed house in the lone green woods. Notwithstanding, she was touched by the assiduity of Pleasances friendship, and she suggested, Happen youll come out and pay us a visit, Pleasance you, who are your own mistress, and a more money than you can spend, else I ould never a let you spend so much on me. Dick and me as are one now, eh, we ould be mortal glad to see you out there. Or happen well come back and see how all you owd folk ci be farm. To Lizzie, in spite of her modesty, Dick and herself, in their approaching honey- moon, were invested with a kind of peren- nial youth, in keeping with the new and fresh land in which their lots were cast. The people and the world she was leaving behind her, were alike old and faded to 90 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. be regarded with gentle patronizing toler- which the sight of the manor-house and of ation and pity, which in a less meek little Lizzie Blennerhassets willing feet starting woman would have been allied to contempt. on their loving pilgrimage, quickened to There is something to come before tormenting activity. Then Pleasance that, said Pleasance. Dick will have yielded to the compulsion which was on word of the arrival of the vessel, and be her, and took another desperate resolution, in the port waiting for you. carrying it out in her uncompromising I hope not, answered Lizzie seriously, fashion. if there he his hay to take in, or his patch She did not write and ask the advice of on corn to sow, or his cows ailin, or any her friend Mr. Woodcock; she did not press on hoss-shoein. Whatten for should appeal to Mrs. Doublas, who, as she had he take the trouble? Arter I a gone so been told, was now much inclined to play far alone, I can go a bit farer, it stands to the part of peacemaker; she did not reason. And I should not like to begin solicit the more unsophisticated kindness by burdening he, that ould be a bad, oon- of Archie Douglass sister. These were handsome, and ooncalled-for beginnin. the old bites noirs of Archies friends and How should you like to find him then? kindred, whom she would face at the What circumstances would you choose for proper time and place, but she would never those of your meetin~? seek their help. Pleasance would have no Wool, I a no petickler choice; if so go-betweens, no mediators between her be hisself is there, anything will do fa- and Archie Douglas. mously, said Lizzie brightly, as she looked She left the manor-house where she, with dazzled eyes over the side of the yes- had still lingered, and travelled ~traight sel, out to the heavin~, moaning sea, and across the autumn country to Shardleigh. not back to England. Tell ee what She passed through the same woodlands though, Pleasance, I mean to lay up the that she had traversed in early September, pretty goxvnd, cloak, and bonnet you a gin when she had come from Stone Cross, me to travel inanything is good for salt believing Archie Douglas lying near to water and ships company, Dick not hem death in his house. The sombre monot- there. Ill put en on spick and span the ony of the late summer green, had been day we Lind, for I a a fear sometimes, broken up by October into a splendid though you are good enough to say appi- wealth and variety of color. The beeches ness d be main settin, Dick mun a for- were red gold, the chestnuts yellow gold, gotten my looks, my limp and that; and I the hedge-maples straw color, the oaks ould giv en all the help I can for the first tawny, while the ash had re~ained, in fad- day. Arter thatwool, I can lay my hair in~, a vivid apple-green. Where orna- among s feet to prevent him ever mindin mental trees of foreign origin had been be were that generous and kind.~ recently introduced into some of the gen- Hell never rue it, Lizzie, nor will you. themens parks which she passed, the su- I? I dessay not, exclaimed Lizzie in mach was a flaming crimson, and the last lauohino disdain. I a been born under imported oak a royal scarlet. The bracken what folk call a lucky star; and its luckiest seen between the trees was a rusty shinin were when our owd smithy went brown or a pale maize. Pleasance was on fire, and Dick he thought on me, sure that there must be a new spell of life wakened me up, and carried me out with in the woods after the slumbrous pause of the stair cracking aneath his brave feet. overblown summer; acorns and chestnuts I remember, that I do. Tell ee what, must be dropping on every side, rabbits Pleasance, I should like just to find Dick and hares must be scudding, squirrels a-sleepin soun hisself, that he should heaping, and little robins trilling from bough a-waken up and fin me in his own house- to bough. It was the Indian summer be- place, with nobody but our two sens to fore the nightly frosts grew sharper and see. I think he ouldnt be disappointed more biting; before mists gathered earlier then not as if he ad been a-waitin and in the evening, and lingered hater in the a-watchin with folk a-speakin and a-twit- morning, and the branches stood picked tin him about his gal. out in their thinning leaves, and waxed barer and barertill ~vhat with the mists CHAPTER LVIII. and the darkness, wanness, and greyness PLEASANCE DOUGLAS S OBLIGATIONS. contrasting with the black-green of such foliage as was left, brown October waned PLEASANCE struggled a little longer into a chill, shadowy forerunner of the with the gall and fret of the obligations to dreariness and deadness of November and which she was gradually awakening, and December. WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 9 It was still far from the desolation of the year, and Pleasance, spurred on to a great effort at self-abnegation, to an entire yielding up of her will, and a full atone- ment, took some comfort from the beauty which was born of rough wind and weather, of icy frost as well as of genial sunshine. Pleasance did not go to Westbrook this time. There was not a prince every day at Westbrook to divide and distract public attention, and coming deliberately, as it were, of, her own free-will, knowing her purpose, Pleasance shrank more than ever from observation, and seemed to appre- hend detection in every encounter. She travelled by a slow train, and came out at the little Woodgreen Station, near the farmhouse, where the gentleman who had suffered from the accident had lain for several weeks. It was too late to go further that night, and Pleasance, asking where accommoda- tion could be had near at hand, was re- ferred to that very farmhouse, and per- mitted to lodge in the same rooms where Archie Douglas had watched. She was entertained, as a matter of course, by the farmers sister, who served her with the great story of the gentlemans accident, danger, sufferings, and recovery, and the attention paid to him by the squire. The chair which Archie Douglas used to occu- py during the watches of the night was pointed out to Pleasance. When she was alone she went and sat down in it, and leaned back her head, with her eyes fixed on the bed, saying, So I might have sat here, and he lain yonder. Then she started up in fright lest her senses had forsaken her. In the morninb Pleasance found on inquiry that there was a little pony-car- riage kept for the farmers old mother, and which she might have for a consid- eration to the boy who drove it, to take her over to Shardleigh. No one wondered that after she had been ciceroned to the corner of the field where the gentleman was accidentally shot, she should go on to Shardleigh, the show-place of the neighborhood. With Westbrook and its abundant rail- way opportunities in the immediate vicin- ity, there seemed no occasion for her to return to Woodgreen, and its little sta- tion, where few trains stopped. Something in Pleasances beauty, her independent mode of travelling, and per- haps, who knows ? an utterly uncon- scious tragic element in her simple speech and manners at this time, put it into her last hostesss head that the stranger was a play-acting lady, wonderfully civil and quiet for her kind, connected with a com- pany of actors in the neighboring town. Unaware of the inference, which she would not have heeded had she guessed it, Pleasance, in the intensity of her deter- mination, stepped like a queen (albeit a stage-queen, to the mind of her hostess) into the little carriage. She was driven along the pleasant shady road to Shard- leigh, up to the great old stone gateway, old and stately enough to dispense with armorial bearings. The lodgekeeper threw open the gates, as it was a public day. When Pleasance dismissed her little curricle and driver with his gratuity, and announced that she meant to walk up the avenue, the woman prepared to chat affably with the new- comer, to tell her the points of interest in the views of the house and conservato- ries, and to indicate the special groups of trees which she was to look at on the road. Pleasance interrupted the speaker to ask briefly if the family were at home. Yes, some of the family were staying at the house, but that made no difference, not the least in the world, on a public day. I hold the place on trust, dont you know, Jenkins? the squire had once said to the lodgekeepers husband, when, as under-~ai~e keeper, he had objected to visitors straying as far as the head-keep- ers cottabe, and disturbing the young pheasants, and I wish I. could give the public more enjoyment than they get in Shardleigh. Them were the squire s very sentiments, and his fathers before him, the speaker continued to recount. Of course visitors dont ought to go and abuse such kindness, picking and stealing flowers, and disturbing any game as is about. Pleasance only responded to the hint, if it were meant for her benefit, to respect her husbands property by saying, Is the squire The word spoken by her sounded so strangely in her ears that she stopped and began again, Which of the family is at home U The squire himself, the woman an- swered promptly, and Pleasances heart gave a great throb; she could not have told whether of thankfulness or reluc- tance. But he is going to-morrow for a great way, and a long while, th mores the pity, the servant volunteered the informa- tion. Pleasance was silent, considering how nearly she had missed her obj~ct. The lodgekeeper liked a gossip. She 92 WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. had by this time made up her mind that she would pay the handsome, solitary lady who had come so early, the compliment (the squire liked the visitors to be attended to) of strolling with her as far as the road which turned aside to the offices, where the woman had, or imagined she had, business with half-a-dozen satellites. Her little girl H emmar would look to the gate, as well as her mother could, in her absence. The squire objected to fees paid to his servants, but he was not the hard- hearted a,entleman to find fault with pence chucked to a child. If Pleasance pleased, the lodgekeeper would take her the length of the sycamores, which were older than the house, and the stone-pines, which had been planted by the former family. Pleasance could not choose but please and as they walked, she kept askin0 her- self where her feet were carryin0 her, and getting giddier under the knowledge, while her companion furnished an under-current of monologue by way of conversation, out of which Pleasance caught snatches of information that nearly concerned her. The squire was going away as far as Queensland, if the lady knew where that was. The lodgekeeper was aware that it was a deal further off than France or Italy, where Mrs. Douglas had often gone for her health. But it was nothing that the ladies of the family should not make any stay at Shardl~igh the neighbors and servants were used to that; and as it hap- pened this year, Mrs. and Miss Douglas were gone to pay visits before meeting the squire in London to see him off, after which they were to try wintering at Tor- quay. But everybody had depended on the squires remaining at home when he was done with his colleoe and his travel- ling, and since all connection had been broken off with the great Lancashire mills on his fathers death. His mother was not the least disappointed of all at this last flight; she had done what she could to prevent it, and she quite took on about it. So fond as the squire had been of the country when he was young, too, and so little as he cared for a fine gentlemans life in London. People had hoped that he would have stayed still, though his mis- fortune, which was not connected with the place, prevented him settling in life as he might have done. The speaker caught herself up, and broke off her confidences for a moment. With all her communicativeness, she was too well disposed and honestly attached to her master to desire to impart the slur of the squires unhappy marriage to a stranger. Pleasance need not have kept her eyes riveted on the ground, and felt her cheeks begin to burn, in anticipation of a repeti- tion of the farmers talk in the railway car- ria~, e six weeks before. She could tell the lodgekeeper has- tened to resume the one-sided, and, on that account, all the more enjoyable, conversa- tion why the squire had fixed on Queens- land for his present destination. He had a friend one of his many friends, whose father had been made hefid man of some sort (governor it was called) of that end of the world, and the squire he would go and help him and his son. The squire was mad to help to govern, to see after the emigrants who sailed there, and to find whether it was a good settlement for any poor bodies who could not get on at Shard Common or in Westbrook. It was like the squire, and his going might be of ser- vice to many, the woman owned; but it was disheartening to the folk at hom~, and the servants at the house she for one, would miss him. He had always been coming and going, with a pleasant word for everybody, and an interest in every- thing. He overweighted himself with interest. Only this last night there had been word of poachers about; and though the squire might have trusted Warwick, the head-keel~er, who had been in the place before his master was born, and her husband, a keepers son, bred to the work, nothing would serve the squire but he would go with the men to hinder mischief, and speak the rogues fair in the first place, if the gamekeepers fell in with their ene- mies; but of course the prowling scamps took bood care to be out of the way, when they were sought for. The guide had forgotten to point out to Pleasance the sycamores and the stone- pines, and she was at the road which led to the offices, where she turned off with a parting assurance to Pleasance that she could not lose her way. She had only to hold straight on, when she would have fine views of the house and conservatories. Just as she was close upon them, she would come to the laurel walk, which would lead her to the south garden door, and there one of the under-gardeners would be sure to be in waiting. Pleasance did not think it necessary to say that the laurel walk and the gardens, even the winter oard her plans. b en, had no place in She walked on alone through all the stateliness, beauty, and sweet scdnts of an WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. 93 old avenue of fine trees, in one of the two seasons of the year when such an avenue is most attractive. The flowering shruhs of spring had put on their wealth of ber- ries, which the hirds had not yet plundered. The gloss and bloom, and subtle or splen- did tints of these berries were hardly in- ferior to the loveliness of the flowers, while the glory of the leaves could he compared to nothing save that sunset glory which is too beauti-ful to last. Pleasance walked along as in a dream, with a dim sense of harmonyand grace all around her; but she failed altogether to mark the fine porch, after, Inigo Jones, which was the pride of Mr. Woodcocks heart. The hall-door was standing open, and as she put her hand on the hell, the butler, who was crossing the hall, came to her. There is no order required for seeing the gardens on Toosdays, madam, he told her courteously, hefore her lips could frame a question. He was a stout, elderly man in an un- dress of grey, instead of the cloth of his order, and looked more hearty and less solemn than butlers generally look. He struck Pleasance ~vith a passing, ridic- ulous sense of acquaintance, from a slight resemblance which he bore to the manor- house bailiff. As he stood, speculating what she wanted farther, and feeling,, disinclined, though he was an obliging man , to go out, and that on an October morning, in his slippers, only to take one of the already sufficiently indebted public even a hand- some young lady round to the gardens, Pleasance managed to say in a low voice, Can I speak with Mr. Douglas Then he concluded that she had some special favor to ask of the squire, perhaps had hrought a letter of introduction, though it was odd that she should deliver it in person, hetimes of a morning. Only ladies were. learning to do their own errands nowadays, and were less mealy-mouthed than they were formerly. Will you walk in? said the hutler, followinb up this idea, till I send some one to inquire. We were late up last night; indeed, I do not know if Mr. Doug- las went to hed at all, or if he has not lain down now.~~ He did not explain why the head of the house had heen at large during the small hours. Probably, though he was remark- ahly free from official pride, he had a con- ventional prejudice that it would he more to Mr. Dou6 lass credit as a gentleman, and less to his discredit as an eccentric; rich democrat, to let it be supposed that he had heen racketing the night away. Mr. Dehree took Pleasance to the lihrary, and after glancing round, showed her in, and shut the door hehind her, while he proceeded to look up a footman to look up his master. Pleasance stood for a moment staring in her agitation at the hookcases, with their volumes ahd husts, the long tahle covered at this moment with maps, the chair standing empty before it. Something, she could not tell what, made her turn quickly round the next mo- ment, and there on a couch behind the door lay Archie Douglas with his arms above his head, fast asleep, undisturbed either by the opening door, or a presence he little wotted of. The very circumstances which Lizzie l3lennerhasset had idly projected in the height of her happiness, as those in which she should choose to meet Lon~ Dick in the backwoods, were those in which Pleas- ance found Archie Douglas at Shardleigh, in the midst of their trouble, and while she was altogether uncertain what his awak- ening might bring forth. Archie Douglas slept, and Pleasance held her breath, to feed her famished eyes on the traits which had been and were so dear to her. There was no chance of his offending her with his levity and indiffer- ence at this moment. He did not look a fellow who could be extravagantly gay, though there came back to his face in sleep, in contrast to the fast-maturing lines which Mr. Woodcock had remarked in Glen Ard, a certain abiding youthfulness which hardly leaves some faces. Still Archie Douglas looked sad, even stern, with the set muscles of the face relaxed and unformed into the pleasant look which they were wont to wear, for the benefit of his fellows, in his waking moments. In his dress, and in his wearied air, he was infinitely more like the Joel Wray the footsorCtramp that had first presented himself to Pleasance than the joyous, gorgeous young yeomanry officer just come from entertaining his prince. He had put on an old shooting-jacket to be neighbor-like with his gamekeepers, in whose company he had spent the night, when he had gone out to keep the peace, and speak a last protesting word to the inveterate delinquents against his own and his fathers liberality. The nights adven- ture, foiled as it had been in so far as a close encounter with the poachers was concerned, had taken him through hedges and ditches, and along byways muddy 94 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. after recent rain, so that though he had changed his hoots his shabby, disordered dress was full of earth-stains. They went at once to Pleasances heart, reminding her of the traces of a laborinb man~ s toil, for which she had seemed to love Joel \Vrav more passionately, than for the grace of his address and the softness of his speech, or the cleverness of his resources, and the amount of his ho ok-knowledge. He slept soundly, and si~ch sleep in its de- fencelessness and unconsciousness appeals strongly to the bystander, he he friend or foe. Deaths twin brother sometimes simulates death wonderfully. Pleasances heart began to flutter with indescribable awe, terror, and anguish, when the lively dark eyes continued closed and immova- ble. As it seemed to her, she could no longer distinguish the rising and falling breath on the lips, pale with recent fatigue, and grave with an absolute gravity, which had struck Pleasance with the first sensa- tion of timidity that Archie Douglas had inspired in her, But she hegan to feel that she would not mind, thouo-h he should prove hard and unbending in his reception of her submission as she never could have imagined him; nay, that she would welcome cold rebuke and harsh repulse with delirious gratitude, if he would but stir and give some sign of life. Only a few weeks ago 5he had been in a degree prepared for seeing her old lover, her husband, dead or dying. Then she had set out for Shardleigh with small prospect before her eyes of a more merci- ful conclusion. Now when she had come on a different errand, with other thoughts in her heart, was she to find the threatened dread awfully fulfilled? Was she to be too late after all? In her paroxysm of fear and despair, Pleasance did not call out, or touch him to put her ghastly doubt to the test; she did not summon help, or drop down senseless herself. She drew nearer and nearer to the recumbent figure, as if drawn by an irresistible fascination. She bent over it for a second, with a face as blanched and lips as breathless as its own. From Frasers Magazine. OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. (AN UNSCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT.) BY THE CHAPLAIN OF THE DISCOVERY. IN the spring of last year, a few weeks before the Arctic Expedition was to leave England, some old shipmates from the Naval College at Greenwich were dining with me, and told me that a question would be asked in the House that evening relative to the appointment of chaplains for the ships. My friend advised me to make application to the Admiralty to go in that capacity, if there aI)peared to be any chance of success ; and I at once resolved to do so, for I had been rusting on half- pay for nearly a year and a half, and de- spaired of ever getting work again. On consulting the paper next day, I saw a re- port of a discussion in the House, from which it appeared that want of space was the only hindrance to the appointment of chaplains. So I at once wrote off to say that if they would only allow me to go I should be contented with a sea-chest and a hammock, as room was of so much im- portance. In a few days I was summoned to the Admiralty, where the first lord most kindly promised to nominate me to the Discovery, provided I could satisfy the doctors. I accordingly went to Spring Gardens, and reminded the director- general that when invalided from the East, a few months before, he had joking- ly told me that as I could not stand the tropics, the North Pole was evidently the place for me to visit next, and I begged him to allow me to act on his advice. I was pronounced to have just the constitu- tion for the Arctic -regions, and was dis- missed with~kind wishes and congratula- tions. At the Admiralty I was told that my appointment would be sent to me that evening, and that I should at once pro- ceed to Portsmouth to join my ship. So the next morning saw me rapidly whirling past the sunny hills of Surrey on my way to the great naval port. Strolling from the station towards the dockyard, I saw alongside the jetty a little ship, with a band of green paint running round her hull, and the xvord Discovery inscribed in letters of gold on her stern. I stqpped on board, but was at once ordered out of the ship by a young officer on deck, who doubtless took me for a British tourist. But I found the captain, and delivered to him my commission ; and, kindly welcom- ing me, he introduced me to such of my future messmates as were present, and showed me the ship and my own cabin (for the hammock and sea-chest arrange- ment was unnecessary), introducing inc to the foreman of the joiners, and giving him instructions to fit it up according to my directions. My new comrades advised me to get my outfit from Mr. Lack, of the Strand, as every one was employing him, OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. and I should see by his books what others had ordered. So on my return to town to Mr. Lacks I repaired, and ordered an extensive stock of flannel, chamois-leather, and lambswool clothing, which served me well in the cold Arctic winter. Preparations on board the ships, though energetically pushed on, were not corn- pleteci till within a day or two of the ex- peditions departure. But for weeks be- fore that time numbers of visitors daily presented themselves at the dockyard, anxious to see the ships. The good peo- ple crowded the two vessels in the dinner- hour and at other vacant times, regardless of paint, coal-dust, crushed hats, and other inevitable drawbacks, which they always submitted to with cheerfulness and even amusement. One day a special train ran from Victoria Station to Portsmouth for the convenience of London sightseers. The naval cadets from the Britannia training-ship were brought to Portsmouth to see the Arctic ships, and so were the boys from the Naval School at Greenwich. Amon6 the visitors were the Prince of Wales and Duke of Edinhurgh, who paid us a visit about a week before our depart- ure, and brought us valuable presents of books. The ex-empress of the French also visited the ships, and her thoughtful kindness in supplying us with comfortable woollen head-dresses, or Welsh wigs, for the cold weather, was much appreciated. In fact, we received quite a number of presents piano, billiard-table, hooks, Christmas gifts, eatables, and articles of clothing. Nothing could exceed the kind- ness shown us on all hands, by strangers and friends alike. Dinners were given us by all sorts of societies, naval and military, scientific and civic, and many invitations we were com- pelled to decline, not having sufficient time at our disposal to enable us to accept them. Amongst others, one may mention a dinner given at the Admiralty by the first lord, at which were present, in addi- tion to the officers of the expedition, sev- eral Arctic heroes, such as Admirals B ck, McClintock, and Richards, and other dis- tingui shed persons. Also a splendid ban- quet given by the mayor of Portsmouth to the officers of the expedition ought not to be forgotten. A day or two after this the mayor gave a dinner in the same hall to the crews of the Arctic ships. After the dinner the men were joined at the tables by their ~~ives, toasts were proposed and speeches made, and some of the men sang songs. All seemed thoroughly to enjoy 95 themselves, and to appreciate the mayors kindness and hospitality; and the enter- tainment was remembered and talked of long after, when livino on frozen north. b pemmican in the But May 29, the day fixed for our de- parture, at length arrived, and all was ready for sea. It was a magnificent day, and the country looked lovely, causing a half-regret at having to leave it, perhaps for years. Of course, as the queens birthday, this is a general holiday at Portsmouth, and the dockyard was closed to every one, ex- cept those belonging to the Arctic ships and their friends. In the forenoon the lords of the Admiralty came down from town, and inspected the ships and their companies, examining everything and shaking hands with the officers on parting with kindly good wishes and hopes of a successful cruise. After this two photo- ~raphs were taken on the upper deck one of the officers, the other of the men. XVe then bid farewell to our friends, many of whom had formed a colony at Sonthsea for the last week or two. But some of them insisted on accompanying us to the dockyard, and once more going on board, so that we were pleasantly employed till the last. The indefatigable carpenter, who had superintended the fitting of our cabins, was still with us, not a little proud of the cheerful appearance that his paint and gilt work had given them, and ready as ever to drive in a nail or re-hang a pic- ture. At the last a telegram arrived from the queen addressed to the commander of the expedition, wishing us success in the kindest terms. Four in the afternoon was the hour fixed for our departure; and a few min- utes before that time visitors had to leave the ships. Seamen embraced their wives and kissed their children ; officers waved adieus to their friends; and, punctual to the appointed hour, we left the jetty, and began to pass through the harbor. This was a signal for cheers from the ships in the neighborhood. As we passed them, we were greeted with shouts from the huge Indian troop-ships. Further on we found the Duke of Wellington and Victory gay with bunting, their yards manned by seamen, who chzered in true naval style. Nor were the future sailors in the St. Vincent trainin~-ship at all behind, but raised their voices as only boys can. Our men, their caps decorated with royal oak, were in the shrouds, and replied to their comrades greeting with hearty good-will. Now, approaching 96 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. Southsea beach, we see the old ramparts and the pier and common, thronged with people, the garrison drawn up amongst them looking like a scarlet thread on a black ground. The cheering was deaf- ening, and was joined in hy people on hoard the numerous hoats and yachts with which the water was studded. The Alert led, followed by the Discov- ery. At Spithead we were joined by the Valorous, which was to accompany us to Disco with stores. As we ap- proached Warren Lights, we sheeted home topsails to a breeze from the N.E., and lifted the screw. The yacht Heath- er Bell, with the mayor of Portsmouth and many of his fellow-townsmen, was still with us but after a time they left, and night began to close in as we dropped pleasantly down channel with a fair breeze. Now that we are left alone, though hoarse from shouting, we surround the piano, and employ what remains of our voices in singing choruses and old sea-songs. At length we go to dinner, which is served to-. day in our best style, in honor of the occa- sion, champagne sparkling on the board, and the table covered with roses and spring flowers. Now that we are fairly off, let us take a view of our own shipthe Discovery. The upper deck is literally crowded, for there is a deck cargo of coals, and ice- saws, gouges, chisels, planks, boats, and live stock are found everywhere. As she was built for a whaler, the arrangements below are quite different to those of an ordinary man-of-war. Beginning at the stern, one first finds the captains cabin, with first lieutenants adjacent. Then comes the engine-room. J?assing this by a narrow wing passage, one arrives at the ward-room, a low chamber lighted from above. It measures about twenty two feet in length by eighteen in breadth, reaching from the mainmast forard. Great part of this apartment is occupied by the table, which takes up all the centre space. Beneath it is a great box, or jolly-boat, crammed with potted-meat tins, and caus- ing considerable perplexity to those seated at the table as to the bestowal of their nether members. Woe to the luckless wight who thoughtlessly attempts to walk upright in the ward-room, for his head will assuredly make the acquaintance of a beam or stove-pipe, and be none the bet- ter for the encounter! Surrounding the ward-room arc seven officers cabins, each measuring but six feet in all three direc- tions. Notwithstanding this small size, it is made to contain a chest of drawers, bed, wash-stand, table, chair, bookcase, bath, etc., etc., besides clothing sufficient for several years of the thickest and most cumbersome kind. Some of the junior officers cabins, althoucrh two feet nar- rower, were found to afford sufficient ac- commodation. Passing forards, we arrive on the lower deck, and the first thing we come to is the galley, where cooking goes on for all hands. Overhead a number of poles, spars, and other things are stowed, and even some cutlasses. The crew are di- vided into six messes, and on each side of the ship, suspended from above, are three mess-tables. These run athwart ship, and are flanked by lockers, covered with Brus- sels carpet, in which the men stow their clothes, and on which they sit at their mess-tables. These messes have a cheer- ful, homelike appearance, as the men have decorated them with pictures and photo- graphs of friends. You will find the hands sittinb here in their leisure hours, mending their clothes, or reading, playing games, or accompanying a nigger melody with the banjo in St-Jamess-Hall style. The first mess we come to on the port side is occupied by the marines, who are the officers servants. The seamen, and re- mainder of the ships company, have the other five. Going on towards the bows, we reach the sail-room. Beneath the lower deck is the hold, where the ships stores are placed, and in one part of which hammocks are stowed during the day. Rising the morning after leaving Ports- mouth, and going on deck, one found that we were dropping dowp channel with a fair wind, and at eight oclock we passed the Start. Being Sunday, there was church service on the upper deck at ten oclock. At noon we were off Plymouth, the ~breakwater being just visible in the distance. We then saw a sInall steamer coming out towards us with the admirals flag at the main. It was the Princess Alice, bearing Sir Harry Keppel, port admiral of Plymouth, accompanied by a few friends. These visitors came on board each ship, staying an hour xvith us. Amongst them was a sailor of a former generation, a naval officer who had joined the service in i8o4, and been on duty at Nelsons funeral. The enthusiastic non- agenarian declared that, had he been forty years younger, he would certainly have accompanied us if possible, and that his hearty sympathies went with us on gain- ing his boat he waved his hat, and gave us three cheers. About seven in the OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. 97 evening we were off the Lizard, and the belonging to County Cork, which was the Valorous left us for Queenstown. She last land we should see till we reached was to fill up with coal there, and to take Greenland. charge of the letters which she might find Now that we were fairly at sea, sou- awaiting us. After that she would join westers, sea-boots, and other articles of us in J3antry Bay. clothing began to be issued, and the men, Next morning at seven oclock we were with their usual love of new things, to between the Scilly Islands and the Seven appear in them, presenting a different ap- Sisters. The day was bright and fine, pearance to ordinary man-of-wars-men. the two ships keeping well together, and The weather was fair during the first sailing seven knots an hour with a N.E. week;, but became bad on June 9, from breeze. All hands were in capital spirits, which time we had it rough for nearly and one constantly heard the sound of three weeks. This caused much delay, drum and fife on the lower deck, whilst as the wind was almost always against us, the officers enlivened their leisure by play- though it occasionally shifted, and we ing the piano. Next morning Cape Clear sometimes went back one day over the was seen on the starboard bow; at noon course of the previous one. We parted the Mizen Head was in sight, and at three company with the other ships, and did not in the afternoon we anchored at Castle see them again till we had crossed the Town, Beer Haven, Bantry Bay. The Atlantic. We shipped many heavy seas, country here is wild and mountainous ; which often found their way to the ward- Hungry Hill, the highest point, having an room or lower deck, causing much dis- altitude of more than two thousand feet. comfort, but no one seemed to mind it. Of course we soon went ashore, and Sometimes we had to abandon the idea of walked about the single street of the little a regular meal, and eat hashed i~eat out of town, chiefly of poor white houses, with a soup-plates anywhere that we could place few small shops. Those of us who were ourselves most steadily, some choosing to acquainted with the west of Ireland were stand in their cabins, whilst others sat on much struck by the beautiful deep blue the ward-room deck, leaning against the eyes of the inhabitants, and also by the bulkhead. June 13 was the worst day that Irish language, which appears to be very we had; we were in a cyclone, and the generally spoken here. The stewards force of wind and wave was tremendous. busied themselves in procuring milk and A whale-boat which hung from the davits poultry, and different visitors came off to parted in two and had to be cut adrift, and the ships. A solitary coast-guard officer two other boats were damaged, but after- is stationed here, who was pleased to meet wards repaired. We subsequently heard with some comrades in this remote part of that in the matter of boats the Alert the world. The Princess Alexandra, suffered as much as we did. Going on one of the Dublin Trinity H o~ise boats, deck, I was astonished to see a white ball was lying in Beer haven, and her officers rolling along it pursued by a wave. This~ hospitably entertained some friends of proved to be the officer of the watch, who theirs whom they found to be in our ship. had borrowed a mackintosh a foot too long In the evening some betook themselves to for him, and whose dignity had been dis- bathing, and a race was rowed between composed by a heavy sea breaking over two boats, one from the Alert, the other the bulwarks and striking him full on the from the Discovery, which terminated back. Hardly had I ceased laughing at in the victory of the latter. the misfortune of my friend, when Nem- The next day about noon we steamed esis overtook me in the form of a sea, out by the western passa~e, having re- drenching me to the skin, and compelling ceived some letters and telegrams at the me to rush below and shift my clothes. last moment. About one oclock we fell But the real grievance is when a sea comes in with the Valorous, bringing us more t hrou~h the skylight and drenches you as letters the last we were to have. They you are peaceably sitting at table. One also lent us a signal-boy, who was to re- such time I well remember, when I had. turn to them at Disco. The Princess just been dealt a fine hand at whist, and Alexandra, which had accompanied us was on the point of drawing the adver-. out of the harbor, gave three parting cheers saries trumps, when several buckets full. to each ship. We then shaped our course of salt water suddenly fell into the middle N.W. There was little wind, but an east- of the table, spoiling my design, and, in- erly swell, which caused the ship to roll deed, reducing the cards to a pulp. But considerably towards evening About as our cabins had no ports, we avoided the ~ P.M. we left some small roci~y islands, acme of misery, which, I take it, is a LIVING AGE. VOL. xvii. 839 98 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. shower-bath in bed. Oh, the horror of waking, with a yell, to find gallons of water streaming over you! I once experi- enced it three times in a fortnight. Sev- eral were more or less ill during the whole of our passage across the Atlantic, for there are some men who never ca~n quite conquer the feeling of sea-sickness. Our unhappy signal-boy, bein~ on his first voy- age, was naturally very ill, but he struggled on bravely and stuck to his work, which is, after all, the only way to meet this evil. However, the rough weather was occa- sionally varied by a calm day, when we were able to steam and make some prog- ress towards Cape Farewell, and on June 27 wer~ seventy miles south of it. During our whole passage across the Atlantic we had only sighted one sail. This was -a barque flying British colors, which passed us at some miles distance on the 22nd. On June 28 we came upon the ground-ice for the first time. This ice comes down the east coast of Greenland and rounds Cape Farewell. It is different to the ice which comes south from Baffins Bay, which passes more to the west side of Davis Strait. The next two days we were in the pack, and we felt the difference in more ways than one. The sea became quite calm, for the wind dropped. Some- times we had sleet and drizzle; and in the middle watch the glass marked as low as 360. This ice is a magnificent sight, and most striking when seen for the first time. Some pieces of it appear like monstrous toadstools, being eaten away from beneath by the water. The delicate blue tints on the lower part of these are most beautiful, resembling those seen on the Rh6ne or Grindeiwald glaciers. Some bergs were imposing from their size, for we already began to observe them as high as our main truck. Yet for every foot out of water there are, I believe, seven beneath the surface, and as they are often very long, their dimensions are huge. We also saw a number of bottle-nose whales, spout- ing large jets of water into the air. The crows nest was now hoisted to the top of the main-top.~allant mast, for the use of the look-out. This is indispensable in passing through ice, for one can only see a short way ahead from the deck, and without a look-out aloft it would be im- possible to select the right channels or lanes of water, by which ships pass through the floes. We sighted the coast of Greenland for the first time on July i, and steamed north- wards, havin~ the land at about fourteen miles distance on the starboard side. These hills, the icy mountains of Heber, are very bleak and bare, and were powdered with snow when we saw them. Occasionally a glacier is seen in a fiord, running down to the sea, and it is these glaciers which shed the large bergs. The land here exceeds twelve hundred feet in height. Later in the day we sighted the Alert about eight miles distant. We had not seen her since we parted in the cyclone on June 13. The next clay we came up with her, and it appeared that her course had been much the same as ours. Both ships lay to for some hours in the afternoon, and some of our officers and men fished for hallibut, of which we caught seven very fine ones. They are caught by letting down a baited hook to the bottom, and wheh a bite is felt, the fish is drawn up to the surface, and then har- pooned. Four days after this we arrived at Godhavn (Port Lievely), Disco Island, on July 6, at P.M., the Alert having pre- ceded us by about two hours. We found the Valorous in the harbor, she having arrived on the previous day. This ship was only to accompany us as far as Disco, there to fill us up with coal, and then to return to England. We found the Alert alongside the Valorous, taking in coal. Some scientific gentlemen, who had come in the Valorous, were in a boat dredg- ing for marine animaL. fhe island of Disco is about sixty miles long, and of the same breadth. It is sep- arated from the Greenland coast by the Waigattet, a strait of some twelve or fifteen miles broad. Godhavn is situated in the southern extremity of the island, be- tween the 6pth and the 70th parallels of lati- tude. It is a Danish trading settlement, placed in a commodious harbor. To the left, as one enters it, are rocky mountains, covered with snow at the top. When we arrived, quantities of snow still remained in the ravines, through whic6 torrents, formed by the melting of the snows, rushed down to the more level, grassy land be- tween the mountains and the sea. These mountains, which are about two thousand or three thousand feet high, may easily be ascended by the ravines. On the right hand, or opposite side of the harbor, is the settlement. It is built on hilly, rocky ground. It has nearly a hundred inhabit- ants, and is therefore a place of some im- portance in fact the governor of north Greenland has his residence here. His house is a good type of the better class of dwellings in the settlements which we vis- ited. Both wails and roof are of wood, and, for the most part, painted black. OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. 99 The house is low, consisting only of ground- dyed yellow white, or pink, and above floor and attics in the roof, which is very them, round the knees, is often worn a high, like those in old German towns. In small piece of white linen about five inches front of the residence is a flagstaff with broad. The women wear cotton jackets the Danish flab; also a battery of three over their sealskin onesblue, green, small guns, which are used for firing sa- or pink in colorand so do the men lutes we were greeted with nine on our sometimes. Unlike the men, the women arrival. Within one finds the arrange- have the hair gathered up in a knot at the ments of a European house varnished back of the head, bound round with a piece floors, white porcelain stoves, tables, pic- of ribbon, and they wear a colored hand- tures, and bookshelves. There is a simi- kerchief round the head. About the lar house at which two Danish merchants houses, or near the beach, one sees the reside, one of whom is governor of God- dogs, basking in the sun. Sometimes havn. The other inhabitants live in small- there is a tremendous noise, when they er black wooden houses, with a room be- fight, or all set on one unfortunate animal, low for the family, and a loft above, and worry him without mercy. They are reached by a ladder from without, for fine animals, with shaggy thick coats, stores. Enterinb a cottage, you find your- rather wolfish though in their appearance. self in a comfortable apartment, libhted They are possessed of great strength, and by glass windows, and decorated with pic- are most useful in dragging sledges over tures of Copenhagen or scenes from the the snow and ice. One also sees kyaks war of 64. Along the whole of one side placed on a rock or on the roof of a shed. runs a raised platform, on which the family These are long, narrow canoes, made of sleep at night and sit in the daytime. sealskin stretched over slight frames, 4nd There are also other seats and benches. very light. They are dyed black when In the centre of the room stands a stove, new, but lose this in time and become making the place unpleasantly warm ; white. The legs must be introduced added to which discomfort, there is a dis- through a small hole in the centre, which agreeable odor of the sealskin clothes, so is so narrow that few people unaccustomed that one makes only a short visit of it. to a kyak can get into one. The Esqui- The people always seem pleased to receive maux manage them with great adroitness; strangers, display their different treasures, they can turn a somersault in one, their and offer for sale model kyaks, slippers, bodies passing beneath the canoe, im- and tobacco-pouches of home manufac- mersed in the water, and the cande making ture: all made of sealskin. You may even a complete revolution on its shorter axis. be entertained by a tune played on a con- But if an inexperienced person capsized certina, and you often find a clock and sev- in one he would, in default of help, be eral books. The people are of a mixed drowned, as he could neither extricate him- race, in some the Danish and in others self from the kyak nor right her again. the Esquimaux characteristics preponder- Two only of our party were able to man- ating. Thus some of them have blue age these canoes. One officer attempting eyes and fair hair, and others stunted it was half drowned by the canoe capsiz- forms not much above five feet high, huge mb. flat brown faces and coarse black hair. There is always a store at a settlement Some of those who look least European to supply the wants of the inhabitants. live in rude, low huts, built of stones They buy cotton and linen for clothes, and turf. These are entered on hands rice and flour for food, and tobacco. and knees by a long, low passage, or Powder and shot are sold to them for rather tunnel. Yet even these huts are hunting at a very cheap rate, and with a xvell libhted by large glass windows ; small rifle, which they obtain for 30s. from walls, roof, and floor, on the inside, being the governor, they make certain of a seal lined with wood, and the internal arrange- at a short range. This animal is the main ments the same as in the other houses. support of these people. It provides The dress of the people is mostly Esqui- good wholesome food for themselves and maux, but the Danes partially retain the their doo~s~ the skin being made into European costume. The habit of both clothing, and the oil from blubbers sup- sexes is very similar, but one soon learns plying light and warmth. But they shoot to distinguish between them. Both men many more than would. suffice for their and women wear sealskin jacket and trou- own wants, and the surplus skins and oil sers, the jacket having a hood to be drawn are exchanged for articles of European over the head. The women wear hi b h manufacture, and form the principal ex- sealskin boots, made of dressed leather, ports of Greenland. I00 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. The weather was splendid during our week at God havn, and those who were free to do so availed themselves of the opportunity of rambling about the moun- tains and valleys, and shooting the eider- ducks on the sea. One was well repaid for a hard climb by a splendid view from the snow-covered plateaux at the top of the mountains. On the day after our arrival I set out with three companions to ascend the neighboring hei~hts. I chose one of the ravines, which I found pretty severe climbing, it being filled with snow. A little more than an hour sufficed to reach the summit, where I was knee deep in snow. My friends had hoped to find an easier as- cent round a shoulder of the mountain, but they had very hard work, and were compelled to take twice as long. We saw no signs of life up there, except a solitary ptarmigan, still wearing its white winter plumage. Our descent by glissade over the snow in a ravine was most rapid, and at the base of the mountains we found more vegetation than we saw anywhere else in the Arctic regions. By the sides of the rapid streams was an abundance of velvety moss, of the most beautiful green that can be imagined. A number of dwarf willows several inches high were also seen, and a quantity of small, though lovely Arctic flowers, of which the red saxifrage makes the most show. A num- ber of stacks of peat were standing here; the people using it for fuel and for build- ing-purposes. On reaching the sea one of my comrades was venturesome enough to bathe, but he did not remain long in the icy water. This excursion was our first experience of Arctic mountaineer- ing Duck-shooting is very good fun. The best way to get at the water-fowl is to take a small boat at night and paddle up to them as they are feeding on the water. It hardly does to shoot them on shore, for though one may get a shot as they fly past, the birds mostly fall into the water. Outside the harbor a number of ice- bergs floated about, which looked very beautiful, especially when the sun was at its lowest at night ; for of course it never set now: we had been enjoying perpetual daylight for some time. Frequently there was a beautiful mirage, doubling the size of the bergs on the horizon, and showing the mainland very plainly; about midnight, tin~ed by the glorious orange and crimson hues in the sky, this appearance was mag- nificent. We were somewhat troubled by gnats, or mosquitos, as they are sometimes called, thou~ h they are much smaller and less formidable than the pests of tropical marshes which go by that name. Still they were able to attack one or two to such purpose that they were unfitted for work, and had to be put on the doctors list. There are two graveyards at Godhavn, and the graves are marked by wooden crosses, painted black and white, with names and ages of the deceased. The names appear to be all Danish, with the exception of a few Scotch ones marking the resting-places of men who have be- longed to xvhalers. But these cemeteries are neither of them situated near the church a plain, black, xvooden structure, with low sash windows and high-pitched roof. Within one fiads the arrangements customary in a Lutheran place of wor- ship. Opposite the entrance is a small altar with candlesticks, pewter paten and chalice, and plaster-of-Paris image of Christ after the celebrated statue of Thor- waldsen. Behind this hangs an engraving of the Ascension. There are plain deal benches for the accommodation of more than fifty people. The services are per- formed by the schoolmaster, a worthy man of mixed race ; and such c~remonies as marriages and baptisms are deferred for an occasional visit from the pastor of Upernavik. The use of this humble fane was borrowed by us on the Sunday that we spent at Godhavn, and holy communion was celebrated there by the chaplains of the three ships, the service being at- tended by a large portion of the officers and men. The inhabitants of Disco resemble the German peasants in their love of waltzing. There is a shed adjoining the store, which is sometimes used as a ball-room in the evening, and on different nights during our stay officers and men from the Arctic ships led out the fair Esquimaux. We finally adjourned to the green sward out- side, as the atmosphere in a small room full of sealskins proved very oppressive. After a stay of nine days we quitted Godhavn on the evening of July 15. The Alert took the governor of north Green- land to Ritenbank, our destination. Be- fore leaving, salutes were fired on shore, and replied to by the Valorous. There being no wind, the Alert steame~l and towed the Discovery, the Valorous following. The sea was as smooth as glass, but the weather cold and foggy, so that it was necessary to keep sounding the fog-horn from time to time. On starting we steered to the north-east, and reached Ritenbank at eleven oclock next morning. OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. This settlement consists of a few turf hovels, and one or two wooden houses. It is situated on an island hetween Disco Island and the mainland. Here we took in twentyfive dogs. The Alert ~ had obtained the same number at Godhavn. The day being beautifully fine and bright, each ship sent a boat party to a loom- eryin the neighborhood. We sailed and rowed in our boats for several hours before reachin~ it. There we found numbers of looms and gulls flying over our heads, and thousands of them perched in long rows on the ledges of the fine lofty cliffs. It was a most remarkable sight, and we expected at first to fill our boat with birds. But most of them were out of range, and of those that we did shoot many remained on the ledges of the rocks where they were perched. However, we bagged a fair number; hut, hoping to obtain more, landed, and tried to reach them. I left my boots behind, thinking that bare feet would hold the rock better than hobnailed hoots, hut had them larcerated for my pains by the sharp stones. Attempting to approach the looms by a narrow ledge on the face of the cliff I lost my balance, and picked myself up, cut and bruised, among the rocks below. We then proceeded to the head of the hay, where we found another loomery nd got more birds, also some eggs. At the extreme end of this hay a mountain stream runs down to the sea through beautiful mossy banks. Here we landed, and climbing the hills for some distance, arrived at a position from which we obtained a glorious view. At a great depth immediately beneath us was an ex- tensive sea of ice, hardly distinguishable from water, so smooth was its surface. Large bergs appeared at intervals on this icy lake, and in the centre stood a rocky island. On the farther side of the lake a glacier flowed into it, from which the bergs are shed. This was one of the most striking sights that we saw in the Arctic regions. On our way back we made another halt at the gre at loomery, and got a few more birds. A great many cartridges were fired with little effect. I had purchased an old-fashioned fowling- piece from the governor at Godhavn, such as is used hy the Esquimaux, paying for it the enormous sum of il., and had now an opportunity of testing its powers. But it was all to no purpose that I persever- ingly loaded the piece time after time, labo- riously pouring powder and shot from rude horns, after the manner of our grand- fathers, and ramming down newspapers as a wad. The only result of firing was a I0I great noise, which, however, did not at all discompose the digniiThd gravity of the looms, who continued perched on the ledges of the cliff, solemnly surveying the whole affair. Growing discouraged, I at length handed the gun over to one of the men, but after four repeated essays to knock over a bird, he gave it up as useless. A wag remarked that the looms evidently thought that we had come to hring them the latest news from the outer world, and that he could see them curiously peering down the oun~barrel with one eye, to read the newspaper. We afterwards found that this gun scattered the shot so much as to be of very little use, and it was con- sequently called the distributor. I had also bought a small rifle at Godhavn for 3os., of the sort which the Esquimaux use for seal-shooting. Its fire is most accu- rate at a short range, as I have often l)roved; hut as the only bullet-mould I could obtain made a bullet far too large; this weapon was of little service. It was derisively named the tickler, and Disco smooth-bore and rifle were both put on the shelf, with sincere pity for the unhappy natives who are compelled to use these primitive weapons. But to return to the boat excursion. Having collected the looms, and stowed them at the bottom of the boat, we rowed for the ship, and tried to enliven the time with sonb~, every one taking his turn, and Three Jolly Post-Boys, When we were boys to~ether,? Ten thousand miles away, and sea-songs too numerous to mention, were shouted out with great en- thusiasm. As I was toiling at a cutters oar in the bows, a halt was called to drink the last of the grog, and a little was passed to me in the cup of a flask by my mess- mates in the stern. Being rather fatigued with rowing, and not wishing to keep them waiting, I finished it at a draught, and returned the empty cup. I heard nothing of it at the time; but it afterwards trans- pired that I had unconsciously swallowed all the remaining liquor, on which my friends had been reckoning for some time, and though I vainly pleaded ignorance, it was many a long day before I heard the last of the Ritenbank grog. But as every- thing has an end, we at last reached the ship at three oclock in the morning, and foraging parties immediately commenced to explore the recesses of the stewards office and the meat-safe. Thence we at length procured meat-pies, poultry, mut- ton, andtdtd defolegras, which, tobether with our allowance of beer and sherry, formed a sumptuous repast, which we im 102 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. mediately attacked in a ravenous manner; for, with the exception of a few sardines and such like trifles, we had taken nothing since the previous morning. Thus ended a delightful little excursion, in which we were well repaid for our labors by a small addition to our stock of fresh provisions and by most magnificent scenery. About an hour after our return to the ship, the Valorous left us and proceeded up the Waigat to coal at a mine there. Two hours after we weib hed an- chor and followed her, signalling farewell as we passed her in the evening. There is fine scenery in the Waigattet, the moun- tains being bold and lofty ; also many fine bergs were on the sea when we passed through it. Proceeding northwards, we arrived at Proven on the evening of the 19th. This is a settlement of much the same size as Godhavn. It is on a small island a little north of the 72nd parallel. We only stopped here for two days, taking a number of soundings and making a rough survey of the harbor. Before leaving, we took on board Hans Christian, our Esqui- maux hunter and dog-driver, a most use- ful man, who had accompanied Kane, Hayes, and Hall in their expeditions. He brought his kyak and rifle with him, for, like David, he preferred the rude weapon which he had proved to the more finished arms of strangers. And right well did he use his muzzle-loader, and many times we had to thank him for a meal of seal-meat, when otherwise we should have been com- pelled to content ourselves with navy salt beef. He wore a rather rueful counte- nance on leaving home for his fourth ex- pedition, introducing himself to us by saying, My wife she plenty cry all night; she lovvey me too motch. The Alert~ had shipped an Esquimaux at Disco, named Frederik. At Proven we found the governors wife rather in distress about her baby. The annual brig from Copen- hagen had not yet arrived, and there was consequently a dearth of suitable food. We were happy to be able to supply a few tins of Swiss milk for the babys use, for which the mother was exceedingly grate- ful. One would think that life in these little isolated places must be misery to a lady accustomed to the amenities of Eu- ropean civilization. The governor received us with hospitality, and gave us some beer of native manufacture not quite equal to Bass, but still a very tolerable beverage. In a shed I saw a large iron tank filled with seal-oil for exportation; it appeared to be particularly clear and good. A few hours after leaving Proven, we stopped at a loomery for an hour or two, and man- aged to bag a couple of hundred birds. Shortly after we anchored at Upernivik, where we left our letters, to be forwarded to Europe by the Danish vessels which annually visit the Greenland coast. This was our last opportunity of communicat- ing with home. Going on shore, we were hospitably received by the governor and pastor. We only stayed here for the day, leaving in the evening, and passing through a quantity of ice amidst rocky islands. At night we saw the Upernivik glacier, stretching away on the eastern horizon mile after mile. We could hardly believe it to be a glacier at first, so immense did it appear. Yet I suppose it is as nothing compared with the great tracts of ice in the interior of the continent. As seen in the far distance it has the appearance of an undulating extent of arable land. In the morning we stopped for a few hours near the Esquimaux village of Kangitok, where our Hans had once acted for a short time as schoolmaster. Some of the natives came off to the ships in their kyaks, hoping to barter fish or sealskin boots. The next day we saw a bear on an ex- tensive floe near which we stopped, and several officers went in pursuit. But being alarmed at so many assailants, the bear went off at a quick, shufiiihg trot, and was soon out of range. This was most unfor- tunate, as we never saw another. So the bear which had been selected as a crest for our crockery proved to be rather inap- posite. Yet traces of these animals were once or twice seen near our winter quar- ters ; but it must be rarely that one ven- tures so far north, as they would find hardly any seals. We not only lost the bear, but also one of the dogs, which ran away over the floe, and refused to return or to allow himself to be caught. On the evening of the next day, July 25, we reached Cape York. This is the north- western point of Melville Bay. Here are high bold cliffs, having a little moss on the slopes. A number of huge bergs were seen, they having been shed from a neigh- boring glacier. One part of the sea was covered with ice, and over this we soon saw several Esquimaux approaching. They picketed their dogs, driving their spears into the ice, and walked to the ships, which were anchored to the floe. They were much finer men than their cousins of the Danish settlements, but are quite uncivilized, for they do not coin- municate with the settlements, and only have a chance visit from the whalers. We gave them some matches and a few other OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. 103 trifles, and a little sugar gave them great delight. In the course of the night they returned with a few others to the ships, which had moved some miles. They had four sled b es drawn by twenty-fdur dogs. Their weapon is a spear six feet long tipped with narwhal ivory. Their dress is similar to the Esquimaux that we had already seen, except that the trousers are of bearskin. We gave them some of the skin and blubber of a narwhal, and they ate it most voraciously, cramming as large a portion as possible into their mouths, and cutting it off, close to their noses,with their knives. In fact they are as thorough savages as one could find anywhere. These people were very friendly with Dr. Kane, and Hans at that time chose one of them for his xvife. We wished to take a brother of hers with us, but that was im- possible, as he was absent on a hunting excursion. The narwhal of which I spoke was a female of about twelve feet in length, with a beautiful straight horn four feet long. It was speared by a harpoon gun from one of the boats. A number of seals were seen, and a great many little awks were shot. However, we did not stay many hours at Cape York, but con- tinued our voyage northwards, with fine, lofty cliffs on the starboard side. In the fords, descending to the sea, are glaciers, from which huge masses of ice became detached. We now saw bergs much larger than those which we had previously met with, some being about three hundred feet high. On July 26 we passed by the Crimson Cliffs, and Cape Dudley Digges of Baffin, and arrived next morning at the Carey Islands. Here we stopped for a couple of hours, whilst the Alert landed a d~p~t of provisions, in case of need on our return to the south. D6pflts were to be established at different places on our way. A little after leaving the Carey Islands, we passed between Hakluyt and Northumberland Islands. The day was fine and bright, and the effect of the high cliffs was magnificent. Huge bergs float- ed on the sea, on which numbers of little awks were seen. Thousands of them also perched on the cliffs at one part of Hak- luyt Island. The next morning we anchored in a bay a little to the north of Port Foulke, the winter quarters of Dr. Hayes expedition in iS6o6~. Several excursions were made, and a few hares were obtained. Little awks were shot on the sea. One party had a very lon~, but most interesting day, crossing the magnificent Brother John glacier, which flows to the sea from an enormous Mer de Glace. One of them, had the luck to shoot a reindeer, the only one we ever obtained. It was cut up, and the haunches, and most of the meat, car- ried back to the ship. Deer are said to be most abundant here in the winter, and we saw a number of horns, but only four of the animals themselves. The skull of a musk-ox we also found. We only stayed at Port Foulke one day, continuing our voyage next morning. We were now in the narrowest part Qf Smiths Sound; there is less than thirty miles between the east and the west land, a little to north of Port Foulke. We crossed over to the west land, somewhat encumbered by large masses of floe, which were drifting about in mid-channel. The next day, July 30, we reached Cape Sabine, the southern point of Hayes Sound. Here we stayed for some hours to raise a cairn, and place a d6p6t. Hayes Sound is a wide channel leading from Smiths Sound westward. We tried to leave this place, but were soon compelled by the state of the ice to put back again, and remain for four or five days in a small harbor near Cape Sabine, thence named Wait-a-bit Harbor. After this, we cruised about in the south part of Hayes Sound for about five days more, being still prevented by the ice from going north. The weather was now becoming bleak, snow falling at times. Excursions on shore were made,but only a few hares were obtained. Some ruined Esquimaux huts were discovered, sur- rounded by musk-ox and reindeer bones; a fox-trap and knife-handle were also found near them. However, we at last found a lead across the sound, and an- chored to the floe in Franklin Pierce Bay on August 9. This is near Cape Pres- cott, the north-east point of Hayes Sound. We were detained here for another three days. Several walruses were seen, lying in groups on the floe. Two of them were shot by harpoon guns from the boats bows. Their flesh was very useful as food for the dogs a year later we would gladly have eaten it ourselves. On our voyage, whether from want of exer- cise, or from some other cause, a number of the dogs went mad, and a great many died. This was a most unfortunate thing, as they are invaluable for sledging. Dur- ing these tedious delays we whiled away the time by sledgin~ over the floe, learn- ing to manage the dogs. In the evenings we got up football matches between the two ships companies, and a game of rounders was sometimes attempted. We then crept a few miles further along the 104 OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. coast to Dobbin Bay where we had to re- main some days. A few ptarmigan and hares were shot here, and a sledge party went one day to Cape Louis Napoleon, some of the men getting thoroughly wet from falling into the sea through cracks in the ice. At Dohhin Bay docks had to he cut in the floe, in which to place the ships. This was to prevent them being nipt between the floe and moving masses of ice. A dock is made by cutting the floe with ice-saws, suspended from wood- en tripods which were erected on the ice. The masses of ice thus detached from the floe are then pushed out with long poles, or ice-points as they are called. A shel- tered place is thus formed, in which the ship may lie secure. For some time we continued to move slowly to the north along the west coast of Kennedy Channel, travelling a few miles when the ice opened out from the shore and left a passage, and then anchoring to the floe again. Sometimes a hare would be shot on shore. We were now able to skate in the evenings, on the pools of frozen fresh water which are found on the floe. These pools are formed hy the melt- ing of the snow on the surface of the ice in warm weather. From time to time d6- p6ts of provisions were landed. At last we got into open water, and ar- rived at Bessel Bay, on the east side of the channel, on August 23. But we only re- mained one day there, and then crossed over again to the west land, anchoring in a convenient hay somewhat farther to the northward. We reached this early in the morning of August 25, and it was fixed upon as a good place for us to winter in. So in that harbor we remained for nearly a year, and it was thence named Discov- ery Bay. It is a large, well-sheltered har- bor, separated by a large island, called Expedition Island, from Lady Franklins Channel, or Bay, as it was afterwards shown to be. The harbor can be entered on either side of the island we came in by the eastern entrance, where a long breakwater, running from the island, nar- rows the mouth of the harbor. Moun- tains of two thousand feet high surround the harbor, but close to the ships anchor- age a gently sloping valley gave access to the land. This place is situated in lat. 8i~ 44m. N., long. 650 3m. W., so that the winter quarters of the American ship Po- laris were nearly opposite on the east side of Halls Basin. The Alert ac- companied us in, but left next day, her object being to proceed as far north as possible before winter set in. She took with her an officer and seven men from our ship, with a sledge and its equipments. They were to return to us as soon as pos- sible, brin0ing us news of the Alerts position, but were unable to reach us be- fore the spring. Cheers were given by the crew of each ship as the Alert left us. She was prevented by the ice from going more than a couple of miles for some days, but on the 28th she found a lane of water leading north, and we finally lost sight of her. As soon as we had settled down in our winter quarters, the captain ordered the crew to fall in on deck, and told them that we had reached our final destination. On this they gave three cheers for winter quarters, and three more for the captain, and were thankful that such a ood place had been selected, as it was, without ex- ception, the best harbor that we had met with for hundreds of miles. The winter was fast approaching, snow already lying several inches thick on the land. Without loss of time all hands commenced carry- ing boats and spare spars on shore. Also timber, sledges, and e verythin~ that could be got rid of. A large tent was made of yards and sails, in which part of the pro- visions, ammunition, and other stores were placed. This work occupied several days. In the mean time such of the officers as were free to do so were exploring the neighboring country, making long excur- sions over the mountains, and through the valleys, and often returnin_ with fine hares hanging from their belts. Our Esquimaux hunter was now in his proper element, and of course did better than any one else. He procured a few seals which were given to the dogs. But the game of most im- portance was the musk-ox. We managed to shoot thirty or forty of these animals during the first fortnight, but after this saw no more of them till the next sprin ~. A herd of oxen was close to the shore as we entered the harbor, and some of the Alerts officers landed and shot nine in fact, nearly all that were there. Very few were ever permitted to escape. If the bull, who is the leader of the herd, be shot, the others seem to be uncertain what to do. They may then be approached and slaughtered at pleasure. When attacked, they defend themselves by keeping close to each other, with their tails together, and heads outwards, which they toss defiantly. But there is little sport in musk-ox hunt- ingit is mere butchery, and as such we regarded it, for the fresh meat was of course invaluable for winter use. The frozen carcases, hung in the shrouds, OUR ARCTIC VOYAGE. 105 would keep fresh for an indefinite period, and were well out of reach of the dogs. The Alert, being further north than we, hardly got any musk-oxen, for they proba- bly travel south before winter sets in. They are not unlike Kylo cattle in appear- ance, being small, sturdy animals, with enormous heads, and massive horns. Their hair, which is black, slightly tinged ~vith a reddish brown, is very lon~, and in the winter, beneath this, is a quantity of thick wool. The oxen are very active, ascending the steep rocky hills as easily as goats. The flesh is occasionally nearly as good as English beef, but it often has an unpleasant musky smell and flavor, at times so strong that some people are una- ble to eat it. We could not account for this muskiness, neither age, sex, nor time of year, appearing to regulate it. In the same herd some of the animals would have perfectly sweet meat, whilst others would be atrociously musky. But if the cooking be thorough, this evil is much modified. We were obliged to make sev- eral sledge journeys, with strong parties of men, to bring home the game from places where they had been shot, some- times miles distant from the ship. When skinned and cleaned, and the head taken off, the carcase would often weigh nearly three hundred pounds. This preparing the slaughtered beasts for carrying off xvas most repulsive work, to say nothing of the cold. There can be few things more unpleasant than standing for hours in sev- eral inches of snow, with a biting, cold wind blowing, skinnin b a frozen carcase, redolent of musk. This task completed, we would stand round the small stove, and eat hot steaks which the cook had been frying for us. Then nothing would re- main to be done but to load the sledges, and proceed homewards. We had several such laborious, but most satisfactory days, and only wished that we had occasion for yet more of them. But the winter was rapidly approachin~ and the musk-oxen were leaving us. Once some which had been skinned, and left on the hillside where they had been shot, xvere found by the party going to fetch them to be so strongly frozen to the rocks that six or eight men hardly sufficed to tear them off by means of a rope in fact, part of a rock came off adhering to the ribs of one of the carcases. Most of the sheep had been killed on the voyage, but the few which remained on reaching winter quar- ters were landed, whereupon a great up- roar was heard, the dogs having attacked them. Some of them being nearly wor ned to death, had to be killed out of hand, and were hung up in the rigging with the frozen hares and musk-oxen. The winter began in earnest soon after our arrival, as 2O~ was about the avera~ e temperature at the commencement of September, and something below zero at the close of the month. Consequently the sea began to freeze rapidly, and the ice would bear by the ioth of September. In the course of the winter it became three feet thick. We tried skating on the newly-formed ice, but found it hard work for the shins,.very different to skating on fresh-water ice. After a week or two we made a rink, which we kept in order and used during the whole winter. We formed it by making a hole in the ice, drawing water out in buckets, and pouring it over a large circular path, which we had previ- ously marked out. This path was about eight feet broad, and some hundreds of feet long. The water poured on to the floe formed very good ice. After a gale of wind or snow-fall we had to brush the snow off the rink, and this snow at last formed a regular wall round it. The country now became completely covered with snow; but we had no heavy snow- storms, and it never was thicker than a few inches, except in hollows and drifts. Tobog~ onin~ now became a favorite amusement. Sitting or lying on a small sledge, one descends the hillsides at a tremendous pace, amidst a cloud of snow, and, on reachinb the bottom, the beard and eyebrows are found to be caked with it. A little preliminary sledgin~ was done in the autumn, in the early part of October, but the important work was reserved for the spring. The survey of the harbor was, however, made on our arrival in winter quarters, flags being taken in boats,and erected at conspicuous points, as marks. As soon as the ice would bear, the stir vey- ing officers set out in a dog-sledge, putting up more marks, and taking measurements and angles. One party tried a journey over the hills with a light cart instead of a sledge, but this proved quite impractica- ble, the wheels sticking in the snow, and the party soon had to rcturn. The cart proved more useful in the summer, when the hills were bare of snow. We now built several houses on the floe, near to