LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, No. 1725. July 7, 1377. From Bezinning, Volume XIX. Vol. CXXXIV. CONTENTS. I. LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS BECKET By James Anthony Froude II. PAULINE. By L. B. Walford, author of Mr. Smith, etc. Part VI. III. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL, IV. GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY By William Black. Part XIX., V. GENIUS AND VANITY VI. A GREAT SEA-WAVE VII. NORTH-COUNTRY FISHERMEN, AYE MARIA. A Breton Legend, Nineteenth Century, Advance Sheets, Blackwoods Magazine, Examiner, Corn/ziZi Magazine, .S/ectator, Pall Mali Gazette, P0 E T R V. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAy BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to tile Publisleers, the LIVING Aoa will be punctually forwarded for a year,free of~ostag-e. An extra copy of Ties LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting no a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draf I or check. oi by post-office money-order, if possible. If nebber of these can be procured, tile money shouid 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, x8 cents. .3 12 27 44 52 63 2, AVE MARIA. AVE MARIA. A JIRETON LEGEND. I. I~-r the ages of faith, before the day When men were too proud to weep or pray, There stood in a red-roofed Breton town Snugly nestled twixt sea and down, A chapel for simple souls to meet, Nightly, and sing with voices sweet, Ave Maria! II. Therewas an idiot, palsied, bleared, With unkempt Jocks and a matted beard, Hunched from the cradle, vacant-eyed, And whose head kept rolling from side to side; Yet who, when th~ sunset glow grew dim, Joined with the rest in the twilight hymn, Ave Maria! III. But when they up-got and wended home, Those up the hillside; these to the foam, He hobbled along in the narrowing dusk, Like a thing that is only hull and husk; On as he hobbled, chanting still, Now to himself, now loud and shrill, Ave Maria! IV. When morning smiled on the smiling deep, And the fisherman woke from dreamless sleep, And ran up his sail, and trimmed his craft, While his little ones leaped on the sand and laughed, The senseless cripple would stand and stare, Then suddenly hollo~ his wonted prayer, Ave Maria! V. Others might plough, and reap, and sow, Delve in the sunshine, spin in snow, Make sweet love in a shelter sweet, Or trundle their dead in a winding-sheet But he, through rapture, and pain, and wrong, Kept singing his one monotonous song, Ave Maria! VI. When thunder growled from the ravelled wrack, And ocean to welkin bellowed back, And the lightning sprang from its cloudy sheath, And tore through the forest with jagged teeth, Then leaped and laughed oer the havoc wreaked, The idiot clapped with his hands, and shrieked, Ave Mari~ VII. Children mocked, and mimicked his feet, As he slouched or sidled along the street Maidens shrank as he passed them by, And mothers with child eschewed his eye; And half in pity, half scorn, the folk Christened him, from the words be spoke, Ave Maria. VIII. One year when the harvest feasts were done, And the mending of tattered nets begun And the kittiwakes scream took a weirder key From the wailing wind and the moaning sea, He was found, at morn, on the fresh-strewn snow, Frozen, and faint, and crooning low, Ave Maria! IX. They stirred up the ashes between the dogs, And warmed his limbs by the blazing logs, Chafed his puckered and bloodless skin, And strove to quiet his chattering chin But, ebbing with unreturning tide, He kept on murmuring till he died, Ave Maria! X. Idiot, soulless, brute from birth. He could not be buried in sacred earth; So they laid him afar, apart, alone, Without or a cross, or turf, or stone, Senseless clay unto senseless clay, To which none ever came nigh to say, Ave Maria! XI. When the meads grew saffron, the hawthorns white, And the lark bore his music out of sight, And the swallow outraced the racing wave, Up from the lonely, outcast grave Sprouted a lily, straight and high, Such as She bears to whom men cry, Ave Maria! XII. None had planted it, no one knew How it had come there, why it grew; Grew up strong, till its stately stem Was crowned with a snow-white diadem, One pure lily, round which, behold Was written by God in veins of gold, Ave Maria! XIII. Over the lily they built a shrine, Where are mingled the mystic bread and xvine Shrine you may see in the little town That is snugly nestled twixt deep and down. Through the Breton land it hath wondrous And it fame, bears the unshriven idiots name, Ave Maria. XIV. Hunchbacked, gibbering, blear-eyed, halt, From forehead to footstep one foul fault, Crazy, contorted, mindless-born, The gentles pity, the cruels scorn, Who shall bar you the gates of day, So you have simple faith to say, Ave Maria? Cornhill Magazine. ALFRED AUsTIN. THOMAS BECKET. From The Nineteenth Century. LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS BECKET.* AMONG the earliest efforts of the mod- ern sacerdotal party in the Church of En- gland was an attempt to re-establish the memory of the martyr of Canterbury. The sacerdotal party, so far as their objects were acknowledged, aspired only to liber- ate the Church from bondage to the State. The choice of Becket as an object of ado- ration was a tacit confession of their real ambition. The theory of Becket was not that the Church had a right to self-admin- istration, but that the Church was the supreme administrator in this world, and perhaps in the next; that the secular sword as well as the spiritual had been de- liverecl to Peter; and that the civil power existed only as the delegate of Peters successors. If it be true that the clergy are possessed in any real sense of super- natural powers ; if the keys, as they are called, have been actually granted to them if through them, as the ordinary and ap- pointed channel, the will of God is alone made known to mankind then Becket was right, and the High Churchmen are right, and kings and cabinets ought to be superseded at once by commissions of bishops. If, on the other hand, the clergy are but like other orders of priesthoods in other ages and countries mere human beings set apart for peculiar functions, and tempted by the nature of those functions into fantastic notions of their own conse- quence then these recurring conflicts between Church and State resolve them- selves into phenomena of social evolution, the common sense of mankind exerting itself to control a groundless assumption. To the student of human nature the story of such conflicts is always interesting comedy and tragedy winding one into the other. They have furnished occasion for remarkable exhibitions of human character. And while Churchmen are raising up Becket as a brazen serpent, on which the world is to look to be healed of its incre- dulities, the incredulous world may look with advantage at him from its own point * H lena/s for I/se History of Thomas Becket, A nc/s bishoA of Canterbury. Edited hy James Craigie Eohertson, Canon of Canterhury. Puhlished under the direction of the lvi aster of the Rolls. 1876. 3 of view, and, if unconvinced that he was a saint, may still find instruction in a study of his actions and his fate. We take advantage, then, of the publi- cation of new materials and the republica- tion of old materials in an accessible form to draw a sketch of Becket as he appears to ourselves; and we must commence with an attempt to reproduce the mental condition of the times in which he lived. Human nature is said to be always the same. It is no less true that human nature is continuously changing. Motives which in one age are languid and even unintel- ligible have been in another alive and all- pQwerful. To comprehend these differ- ences, to take them up into his imagina- tion, to keep them present before him as the key to what he reads, is the chief difficulty and the chief duty of the student of history. Characteristic incidents, particular things which men representative of their age indisputably did, convey a cleamer idea than any general description. Let the reader attend to a few transactions which occurred either in Beckets lifetime, or immediately subsequent to it, in which the principal actors were persons known to himself. We select as the first a scene at Chinon in the year i8~. Henry Plantagenet, eldest son of Henry the Second, Prince of Wales as we should now call him, called then the young king, for he was crowned in his fathers lifetime, at that spot and in that year brought his dis- ordered existence to an end. His career had been wild and criminal. He had re- belled against his father again and a gain; again and again he had been forgiven. In a fit of remorse he had taken the cross, and intended to go to Jerusalem. He forgot Jerusalem in the next temptation. He joined himself to Lewis of France, broke once more into his last and worst revolt, and carried fire and sword into Normandy. He had hoped to bring the nobles to his side; he succeeded only in burning towns and churches, stripping shrines, and bringing general hatred on himself. Finding, we are told, that he could not injure his father as much as he had hoped to do, he chafed himself into a fever, and the fever kille~l him. Feeling 4 THOMAS BECKET. death to be near, he sent a message to his father, begging to see him. The old Henry, after past experience, dared not venture. The prince (I translate literally from a contemporary chronicler) then called his bishops and religious men to his side. He confessed his sins first in private, then openly to all who were present. He was absolved, lie gave his cross to a friend to carry to the Holy Sepulchre. Then, throwing off his soft clothing, he put on a shirt of hair, tied a rope about his neck, and said to the bishops, By this rope I deliver over myself, a guilty and unworthy sinner, to you the ministers of God. Through your intercession and of his own ineffable mercy, I beseech our Lord Jesus Christ, who forgave the thief upon the cross, to have pity on my unhappy soul. A bed of ashes had been prepared on the floor. Drag me, he went on, by this rope out of this bed, and lay me on the ashes. The bishops did so. They placed at his head and at his feet two larg~ square stones, and so he died. There is one aspect of the the twelfth cen- tury the darkest crimes and the most real superstition side by side co-existing in the same character. Turn from Chinon to Oxford, and go back seventeen years. Men who had so little pity on themselves were as pitiless to others. We quote from Stowe. The story is authenticated by contemporary chroniclers. i66. There came into England thirty Ger- mans, as well men as ~vomen, who called them- selves Publicans. Their head and ruler, named Gerardus, was somewhat learned; the residue very rude. They denied matrimony and the sacraments of baptism and the Lords Supper, with other articles. They being ap- prehended, the king caused a council to be called at Oxford, where the said Gerard an. swered for all his fellows, who being pressed with Scripture answered concerning their faith as they had been taught, and would not dis- pute thereof. After they could by no means be brought from their errours, the bishop gave sentence against them, and the king com- manded that they should be marked with a hot iron in the forehead and whipped, and that no man should succour them with house- room or otherwise. They took their punish- ment gladly, their captain going before them singing, Blessed are ye when men hate you. They were marked both in the fore. head and the chin. Thus being whipped and thrust out in winter, they died with cold, no man relieving them. To the bishops of Normandy Henry Plantagenet handed the rope to drag him to his death-bed of ashes. Under sen- tence from the bishops of England these German heretics were left to a fate more piteous than the stake. The privilege and authority of bishops and clergy was Beckets plea for convulsing Europe. What were the bishops and clergy like themselves? We will look at the bishops assembled at the Council of XVestminster in the year 1176. Cardinal Hugezun had come as legate from Rome. The council was attended by the two archbishops, each accompanied by his suifragans, the abbots, priors, and clergy of hi~ province. Before business began, there arose dira us et con/entlo, a dreadful strife and contention between these high personages as to which archbishop should sit on the car- dinals right hand. Richard of Canter- bury said the right was with him. Roger of York said the right was with him. Words turned to blows. The monks of Canterbury, zealous for their master, rushed upon the Archbishop of York, flung him down, kicked him, and danced upon him till he was almost dead. The car- dinal wrung his hands, and charged the Archbishop of Canterbury with having set them on. The Archbishop of York made his way, bruised and bleeding, to the king. Both parties in the first heat appealed to the pope. Canterbury on second thoughts repented, went privately to the cardinal, and bribed him into silence. The appeal was withdrawn, the affair dropped, and the council went on with its work. So much for the bishops. We may add that Beckets friend John of Salisbury accuses the Archbishop of York, on com- mon notoriety, of having committed the most infamous of crimes, and of having murdered the partners of his guilt to con- ceal it.* As to the inferior clergy, it might be * John of Salisbury to the Archbishop of Sens, xs~x. The Archbishop of York is spoken of under the name of Caiapbas. THOMAS BECKET. 5 enough to quote the language used about Fools ), contains the adventures of a them at the conference at Montmiraux in monk who leaves his cloister to better his 1169, where the ir general character was fortunes. The monk is introduced under said to be atrocious, a great number of the symbolic disguise of an ass. His them being church-robbers, adulterers, ambition is to grow a longer tail, and hiThwaymen, thieves, ravishers of virgins, he wanders unsuccessfully over Europe, incendiaries, and murderers.* For spe- meeting as many misfortunes as Don cial illustration we take a visitation of Quixote, in pursuit of his object. Finally St. Augustines Abbey at Canterbury in he arrives at Paris, where he resolves to the year I 173, undertaken by the popes remain and study, that at all events he order. The visitors reported not only may write after his name niag/ster art/urn. that the abbot was corrupt, extravagant, fhe seven years course being finished, he and tyrannical, but that he had more chil- speculates on his future career. He de- dren than the patriarchs, in one village as cides on the whole that he will be a bishop, many as ten or twelve bastards. Ve/ut and pictures to himself the delight of his equus k/unit in fw;n/nas, they said, mother when she sees him in his pontifi- adeo irnAudens ut lib/dinern n/si quarn cals. Sadly, however, he soon remem- p ubi/caverit voluptuosarn esse non r~~u- hers that bishops were not made of such let. Matres et earundern fl/las incestat stuff as learned members of the universi- ~ar/ter. Fornication/s abusurn corn~arat ties. Bishops were born in barons cas- necessitati. This pre~cious abbot was tIes, and named as children to the sees the host and entertainer of the four which they were to occupy. Little knights when they came to Canterbury. Bobby and little Willy were carried to Rome in their nurses arms before they could speak or walk, to have the keys of heaven committed to them. So young were they sometimes that a wit said once that it could not be told whether the bishop elect was a boy or a girl.* An abbey might suit better, he thought, and he ran over the various attractions of the different orders. All of them were more or less loose rogues, some worse, some better.t On the whole the monk-ass con- cluded that he would found a new order, the rules of which should be compounded of the indulgences allowed to each of the rest. The pope would consent if ap- proached with the proper temptations From separate pictures we pass to a sketch of the condition of the Church 6f England written by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, a contemporary of Becket, when the impression of the martyr- dom was fresh, and miracles were worked by his relics every day under the writers eyes. The monks name was Nigellus. He was precentor of the cathedral. His opinion of the wonders of which he was the witness may be inferred from the shrug of the shoulders with which, after describ- ing the disorders of the times, he says that they were but natural, for the age of mira- cles was past. In reading him we feel that we are looking on the old England through an extremely keen pair of eyes. We discern too, perhaps, that he was a clever fellow, constitutionally a satirist, and disappointed of promotion, and we make the necessary allowances. Two of his works survive, one in verse, the other in serious prose. The poem, which is called K~fteculurn Stultorurn ( The Looking-Glass of * Qoum tamen clerici immundissimi et atrocissimi sunt, utpote qui ex magna parte sacrilegi, aduiteri, prscdones, fures, raptores virginurn, incendiarii, et homicidze sunt. John of Salisbury to the Bishop of E:eter. Letters, 1169. * Ante prius patrem primum matremque vocare Q usm sciat, alit possit stare vel ire pedes, Suscipit ecciesise claves animasque regendas. In cools positos dummodo vagit adhuc Corn nutrice soS, Romam Rohekinus adihit, Q oem nova sive vetus sporsula tecta feret; Missus et in peram veniet Wilekinus in orhem, Curia Romana tota videhit sum. Impoheres poeros pastures ecciesiarum Vidimus effectos pootificesque sacros. Sic dixit quidam de quodam pootificando, Cum princeps regni solicitaret eum: Est poer, et nondum discernere possumus utrum Feemina vel mas 551, et modo pra~so1 enS. Satirical Poems of the Twelfth Century, vol. i., p. xo6. I Omnes soot fures, quocunque charactere sacro Signati veniant magoificeosque Deum. 6 THOMAS BECKET. and he was picturing to himself the de- lightful life which he was thenceforth to lead, when his master found him and cud- gelled him back to the stable. More instructive, if less amusin~, is the prose treatise Contra Curiales et Ojicia- les Ciericos ( Against Clerical Courtiers and Officials ), dedicated to De Long- champ, Bishop of Ely, C~ur de Lions chancellor, who was left in charge of the realm when Richard ~vent to Palestine. Dc Longchamps rule was brief and stormy. It lasted long enough, however, to induce Nigellus to appeal to him for a reform of the Church, and to draw a pic- ture of it which admirers of the ages of faith may profitably study. At whatever period we get a clearview of the Churcb of England, it was always in terrible need of reform. In the twelfth century it has been held to have been at its best. Let us look then at the actual condition of it. According to Nigellus, the Church hen- efices in England, almost without excep- tion, were either sold by the patrons to the highest bidders, or were given by them to their near relations. The pres- entees entered into possession more gen- erally even than the bishops when chil- dren. Infants in cradles (says Nigellus) are made archdeacons, that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings praise may be perfected. The child is still at.the breast and he is a priest of the Church. He can bind and loose before he can speak, and has the keys of heaven before he has the use of his understanding. At an age when an apple is more to him than a dozen churches, he is set to dispense the sacraments, and the only anxiety about him is a fear that he may die. He is sent to no school. He is idle and is never whipped. He goes to Paris to be polished, where he learns the essentials of a gentlemans education, dice and dominoes c/ catera qua seqauntur. He returns to England to hawk and hunt, and would that this were the worst! but he has the forehead of a harlot, and knows not to be ashamed. To such per- Sons as these a bishop without scruple com- mits the charge of soulsto men who are given over to the flesh, who rise in the morn- ing to eat, and sit down at evening to drink, who spend on loose women the offerings of the faithful, who do things which make their people blush to speak of them, while they themselves look for the Tordan to flow into their mouths, and expect each day to hear a voice say to them, Friend, go up higher. Bologna, and come back knowing medi- cine and law and speakin~ pure French and Italian. Clever fellows, so furnished, contrived to rise by pushing themselves into the service of bishop or baron, to whom they were as eyes to the blind and as feet to the lame. They managed the great mans business; they took care of his health. They went to Rome with his appeals, undertook negotiations for him in foreign courts, and were repaid in time by prebends and rectories. Others, in spite of laws of celibacy, married a patrons daughter, and got a benefice along with her. It was illegal, but the bishops winked at it. Others made interest at Rome with the cardinals, and by them were recommended home. Others con- trived to be of use to the king. Once on the road to preferment the ascent was easy. The lucky ones, not content with a church or two, would have a benefice in every diocese in England, and would lie, cheat, forget God, and not remember man. Their flrst gains were spent in bribes to purchase more, and nothing could satisfy them. Fifteen or twenty rectories were not enough without a stall in each cathedral. Next must come a deanery, and then an archdeaconry, and then peradventure God will yet add unto me something more. The somethincr more was of course a bishopric, and Nigellus proceeds to de- scribe the methods by which such of these high offices were reached as had not been already assigned to favorites. The pre- lates expectant hung about the court, mak- ing presents, giving dinners, or offering their services for difficult foreign embas- sies. Their friends meanwhile were on the watch for sees likely to be vacant and inquiring into their values. The age and health of the present occupants were dil- i~ently watched; the state of their teeth, their eyes, their stomachs, and reported disorders. If the accounts were conflict- ing, the aspirant would go himself to the spot under pretence of a pilgrimage. If the wretched bishop was found inconven- iently vigorous, rumors were spread that he was shamming youth, that he was as old as Nestor, and was in his dotage; if he was infirm, it was said that men ought not to remain in positions of which they could not discharge the duties; they should go into a cloister. The king and the primate should see to it. Those who had no money to buy their If intrigue failed, another road was way with, and no friends to help them, tried. The man of the world became a were obliged to study something. Havinb saint. He retired to one or other of his done with Paris they would ~o on to churches. He was weary of the earth and THOMAS ]3ECKET. 7 its vanities, and desired to spend his re- rnaining days in meditating upon heaven. The court dress was laid aside. The wolf clothed himself in a sheepskin, and the talk was only of prayers and ostenta- tious charities. Beggars were fed in the streets, the naked were covered, the sick were visited, the dead were buried. The rosy face grew pale, the plump cheeks became thin, and the admiring public ex- claimed, Who was like unto this man to keep the law of the Most High ? Final- ly some religious order was entered in such a manner that it should be heard of everywhere. Vows were taken with an affectation of special austerities. The worthy person (who cannot see and hear him?) would then bewail the desolations of the Church, speak in a low, sad voice, sigh, walk slowly, and droop his eyelids kings were charged with tyranny, and priests ivith incontinency, and all this that it might be spoken of in high places, that, when a see was vacant at last, it might be said to him, Friend, go up higher; he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Such, said Nigellus, are the steps in our days by whidh men go up into the house of the Lord. By one or other of these courses success was at last attained; the recommendation of the crown was secured, and the nomination was sent to the chapter. But the co;zgJ ddlire was not yet peremptory. The forms of liberty still retained some shadow of life in them, and fresh efforts were required to obtain the consent of the electors. The religious orders were the persons used on these oc- casions to produce the required effect; and flights of Templars, Cistercians, Car- thusians, hurried to the cathedral city to persuade the canons that the pastor whom they had never seen or never heard of, except by rumor, had more virtues than existed together in any other human being. Nigellus humorously describes the langua~ e in which these spiritual jack- als portrayed their patrons merits. He is a John the Baptist for sanctity, a Cato for wisdom, a Tully for eloquence, a Moses for meekness, a Phineas for zeal, au Abraham for faith. Elect him only, and he is all that you can desire. You ask what he has done to rec- ommend him. Granted that he has done nothing, God can raise sons to Abrabam out of the stones. He is a boy, you say, and too young for such an office . Daniel was a boy when he saved Susannah from the elders. He is of low birth you are choosing a successor to a fisherman, not an heir to Ca~sar. He is a dwarf Jeremiah was not large. He is illit- erate Peter and Andrew were not philos- ophers when they were called to be apostles. He can speak no English Augustine could speak no English, yet Augustine converted Britain. He is married and has a wife the apostles ordered such to be promoted. He has divorced his wife Christ separated St. John from his bride, lie is immoralso was St. Boniface. He is a fool God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, lie is a coward St. Josel)h was a coward. He is a glutton and a wiue- bibber so Christ was said to be. He is a sluggard St. Peter could not remain for an hour awake. He is a striker Peter struck Malchus. He is quarrelsome Paul quar- relled with Barnabas. He is disobedient to his superiors Paul withstood Peter. He is a man of blood Moses killed the Egyptian. He is blind so was Paul before he was con- verted. He is dumb Zacharias was (lumb. He is all faults, and possesses not a single vir- tue God will make his grace so much more to abound in him. Such eloquence and such advocates~ were generally irresistible. If, as some- times happened, the crown had named a. person exceptionally infamous, or if the chapter was exceptionally obdurate, other measures lay behind. Government offi- cers would come down and talk of enemies~ to the commonwealth. A bishop of an adjoining see would hint at excommunica- tion. The canons were worked on sepa- rately, bribed, coaxed, or threatened. The younger of them were promised the places. of the seniors. The seniors were prom- ised fresh offices for themselves, and pro- motion for their relations. If there were two candidates and two parties, both sides. bribed, and the longest purse gained the day. Finally the field was ~von. Decent members of the chapter sighed over the disgrace, but reflected that miracles could not be looked for.* The see could not remain vacant till a saint could be found to fill it. They gave their voices as de- sired. The choice was declared, the bells rang, the organ pealed, and the choir chanted Te Deu;n. The one touch necessary to complete the farce was then added The bishop elect, all in tears for joy, ex- claims, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Depart from me, for I am unworthy. I cannot bear the burden which you lay npon me. Alas for my calamity! Let me alone, my beloved brethren let me alone in my humble state. You know not what you do. - . . He falls back and affects to swoon. He is borne to the archbishop to be consecrated. Other bishops are summoned to assist, and all is finished.t * Non sunt h~ec miraculorum tempor5,~~ t Now and then it happened that bishopa refused to 8 THOMAS BECKET. The scene now changed. The object was gained, the mask was dropped, and the l)ishop, iraving reached the goal of his ambition, could afford to show himself in his true colors. He has bound himself [goes on Nigellus] to be a teacher of his flock. How can he teach those whom he sees but once a year, and not a hundredth part of whom he even sees at all If any one in the diocese wants the bishop, he is told the bishop is at court on affairs of state. He bears a hasty mass once a day, non sine tcedio (not without being bored). The rest of his time he gives to business or pleasure, and is not bored. The rich get justice from him; the poor get no justice. If his metropolitan interferes with him, he appeals to Rome, and Rome protects him if he is willing to pay for it. At Rome the abbot buys his freedom from the control of the bishop; the bishop buys his freedom from the control of the archbishop. The bishop dresses as the knights dress. When his cap is on you cannot distinguish him at council from a peer. The layman swears, the bishop swears, and the bishop swears the hardest. The layman hunts, the bishop hunts. The layman hawks, the bishop hawks. Bishop and layman sit side by side at council and treasury boards. Bishop and lay. man ride side by side into battle.* What will not bishops do? Was ever crime more atro- cious than that which was lately committed in the church at Coventry ? t When did pagan ever deal with Christian as the bishop did with the monks? I, Nigellus, saw with my own eyes, after the monks were ejected, harlots openly introduced into the cloister and chapter- bouse to lie all night there, as in a brothel, with their paramours.~ Such are the works of bishops in these days of ours. This is what they do, or permit to be done; and so cheap has grown the dignity of the ecclesiastical order that you will easier find a cowherd well educated than a presbyter, and an industrious duck than a literate parson. attend on these occasions, when the person to be con- secrated was notoriously infamous. Nigellus says that one bishop at least declined to assist at the consecra- tion of Roger, Archbishop of York. * Even in the discharge of their special functions the spiritual character was scarcely more apparent. When they went on visitation, and children were brought to them to be confirmed, they gave a general blessing and did not so much as alight from their horses. Becket was the only prelate who observed common decency on these occasions. Non enim erat ei Ut plerisque, ammo Ut fere omnibus episcopis moris est, ministerium confirmationis equo insidendo peragere, sed ob sacra- menti venerationem equn desilire et stando pueris nia- num imponere. ( Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. ii., p. i64.) In the year aa9a~ Hugh, Bishop of Coventry, violently expelled the monks from the cathedral there, and instituted canons in their places. $ Testis mihi Deus eat quod dolens et tristis ad- modum refero quod in ecclesia Coventrensi oculis propriis aspexi. In claustro et capitulo vidi ego et alil nonnulli ejectis monachis meretrices publice introduc- tas et tots nocte cern lenonibus decubare sicut in lupa- ziari.~ So far Nigellus. We are not to sup- pose that the state of the Church had changed unfavorably in the twenty years which followed Beckets martyrdom, or we should have to conclude that the spir- itual enthusiasm which the martyrdom undoubtedly excited had injured, and not improved, public morality. The prelates and clergy with whom Henry the Second contended, if different at all from those of the next generation, must have been rather worse than better, and we cease to be surprised at the lan- guage in which the king spoke of them at Mootmiraux. Speaking generally, at the time when Becket declared war against the State, the Church, from the Vatican to the smallest archdeaconry, was saturated with venality. The bishops were mere men of the world. The Church benefices were publicly bought and. sold, given away as a pro. vision to children or held in indefinite numbers by ambitious men who cared only for wealth and power. The mass of the common clergy were ignorant, dis- solute, and lawless, unable to be legally married, and living with concubines in contempt or evasion of their own rules. In character and conduct the laity were superior to the clergy. They had wives, and were therefore less profligate. They made no pretensions to mysterious power and responsibilities, and therefore they were not hypocrites. They were violent, they were vicious, yet they had the kind of belief in the truth of religion which bound the rope about young Henrys neck and dragged him from his bed to die upon the ashes, which sent them in tens of thou- sands to perish on the Syrian sands to recover the sepulchre of Christ from the infidel. The life beyond the grave was as assured to them as the life upon earth. In the sacraments and in the priests absolution lay the one hope of escaping eternal destruction. And while they could feel no respect for the clergy as men they feared their powers and reverenced their office. Both of laity and clergy the relig- ion was a superstition, but in the laity the superstition was combined with rever- ence, and implied a real belief in the divine authority which it symbolized. The clergy, the supposed depositaries of the supernatural qualities assigned to them, found it probably more difficult to believe in themselves, and the unreality revenged itself upon their natures. Bearing in mind these qualities in the two orders, we proceed to the history of Becket. THOMAS BECKET. 9 Thomas Becket was born in London in the year ii i8.* His father, Gilbert Becket, was a citizen in moderate circumstances.t His name denotes Saxon extraction. Few Normans as yet were to be found in the English towns condescending to trade. Of his mother nothing authentic is known,t except that she was a religious woman who brought up her children in the fear of God. Many anecdotes are related of his early years, but the atmosphere of legend in which his history was so early envel- oped renders them all suspicious. His parents, at any rate, both died when he was still very young, leaving him, ill provided for, to the care of his fathers friends. One of them, a man of wealth, Richard de lAigle, took charge of the tall, handsome, clever lad. He was sent to school at Merton Abbey, in Surrey, and afterwards to Oxford. In his vacations he was thrown among young men of rank and fortune, hunting and hawking with them, cultivating his mind with the ease of conscious ability, and doubtless not inattentive to the events which were going on around him. In his nursery he must have heard of the sinking of the White Ship in the Channel with Henry the Firsts three children, Prince William, his brother Richard, and their sister. When he was seven years old, he may have lis- tened to the jests of the citizens at his fathers table over the misadventure in London of the cardinal legate, John of Crema. The legate had come to England to preside at a council and pass laws to part the clergy from their wives. While the council was going forward, his Emi- nence was himself detected in re mere/ri- cid, to general astonishment and scandal. In the same year the emperor Henry died. His widow, the English Matilda, came home, and was married again soon after to Geoffrey of Anjou. In ii~~ the En- glish barons swore fealty to her and her young son, afterwards King Henry the Second. The year following her father died. Her cousin, Stephen of Blois, broke his oath and seized the crown, and general distraction and civil war followed, while from beyond the seas the Levant ships, as they came up the river, brought news of bloody battles in Syria and slaugh- ter of Christians and infidels. To live in Or 1119. The exact date is uncertain. t Nec omnino infimi are Beckets words as to the rank of his parents. ~ The story that she was a Saracen is a late legend. Becket was afterwards taunted with the lowness of his birth. The absence of any allusion to a fact so curious if it was true, either in the taunt or in l3eckets reply to it, may be taken as conclusive. stirring times is the best education of a youth of intellect. After spending three years in a house of business in the city, Becket contrived to recommend himself to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop saw his talents, sent him to Paris, and thence to Bologna to study law, and employed him afterwards in the most confidential negotiations. The cie- scription by Nigellus of the generation of a bishop might have been copied line for line from Beckets history. The question of the day was the succession to the crown. Was Stephens son, Eustace, the heir? Or was Matildas son, Henry of Anjou? Theobald was for Henry, so far as he dared to show himself. Becket was sent secretly to Rome to move the pope. The struggle ended with a compromise. Stephen ~vas to reign for his life. Henry was peaceably to follow him. The arrange- ment might have been cut again, by the sword. But Eustace immediately after- wards died. In the same year Stephen followed him, and Henry the Second be- came king of England. With all these intricate negotiations the future martyr was intimately connected, and by his remarkable talents especially recoin mend- ed himself to the new king. No one called afterwards to an important position had better opportunities of acquainting himself with the spirit of the age, or the characters of the principal actors in it.* If his services were valuable, his reward was magnificent. He was not a priest, but, again precisely as Nigellus describes, he was loaded with lucrative Church bene- fices. He was provost of Beverley, he was archdeacon of Canterbury, he was rector of an unknown number of parishes, and had stalls in several cathedrals. It is noticeable that afterwards, in the heat of the battle in which he earned his saintship, he was so far from looking back ~vith regret on this accumulation of preferments that he paraded them as an evidence of his early consequence4 A greater rise * Very strange things were continually happening. In 1154 the Archbishop of york was poisoned in the Eucharist by some of his clergy. Eodern anno Wil- helmus Eboracensis archiepiacopus, proditione clerico- rum suoruni post perceptionem Eucharisti~ infra ablu- tinIles liquore lethati infecrus, extinctus est. (Hove den, vol. i., p. 213.) Becket couhj not fail to have heard of this piece of villany and to have made his own reflections upon it. t Foliot, Bishop of London, told him that he owed his rise in life to the king. Becket replied: Ad tem- pos quo me rex ministerin suo pr~stitit, archidiacona ius Cantuarensis, pr~positura Beverlaci, plurim~ ec- cleshe, pratbendat nonnullat, alia etiam non pauca 4ute nominis mei erant possessin tuoc temporis, adeo tenuem ut dicis, quantum ad es quat mundi aunt, contradicunt mefuisac. I0 THOMAS BECKET. lay immediately before him. Henry the Second was twenty-two years old at his accession. At this time he was the most powerful prince in western Europe. He was Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou. His wife Eleanor, the divorced queen of Lewis of France, had brought with her Aquitaine and Poitou. The reignin~ pope, Adrian the Fourth, was an Englishman, and, to the grief and perplex- ity of later generations of Irishmen ,gave the new king l)ermission to add the Island of the Saints to his already vast domia- ions. Over Scotland the English mon- archs asserted a semi-feudal sovereignty, to which Stephen, at the Battle of the Standard, had given a semblance of reality. Few English princes have commenced their career with fairer prospects than the second Henry. The state of England itself demanded his first attention. The usurpation of Stephen had left behind it a legacy of dis- order. The authority of the crown had been shaken. The barons, secure behind the walls of their castles, limited their obedience by their inclinations. The Church, an im~erium liz im~erio, however corrupt in practice, was aggressive as an institution, and was encroaching on the State with organized system. The princi- ples asserted by Gregory the Seventh had been establishing themselves gradually for the past century, and in theory were no lonber questioned. The power of the crown, it was freely admitted, was derived from God. As little was it to be doubted that the clergy were the ministers of God in a nearer and hi ~her sense than a lay- man could pretend to be, holding as they did the power of the keys, and able to punish disobedience by final exclusion from heaven. The principle was simple. The application only was intricate. The clergy, though divine as an order, were as frail in their individual aspect as common mortals, as ambitious, as worldly, as licen- tious, as unprincipled, as violent, as wicked, as much needing the restraint of law and the policeman as their secular brethren, perhaps needing it more. How was the law to be brought to bear on a class of persons who claimed to be superior to law? King Henrys piety was above sus- picion, but he was at all points a sovereign, especially impatient of anarchy. The con- duct of too many ecclesiastics, regular and secular alike, was entirely intolerable, and a natural impatience was spreading through the country, with which the king perhaps showed early symptoms of sympathizing. Archbishop Theobald, at any rate, was uneasy at the part which he might take, and thought that he needed some one at his side to guide him in salutary courses. At Theobalds instance, in the second year of Henrys reign, Becket became chancel- lor of England, being then thirty.seven years old. In his new dignity he seemed at first likely to disappoint the archbishops ex- pectations of him. Some of his biogra- phers, indeed, claim as his perpetual merit that he opppsed the beslias crri~, or court wild beasts, as churchmen call the anti- clerical party. John of Salisbury, on the other hand, describes him as a magnificent trifler, a scorner of law and the clergy, and given to scurrilous jesting at laymens parties.* At any rate, except in the arbi- trariness of his character, he showed no features of the Becket of Catholic tradi. tion. Omnipotent as Wolsey after him, he was no less magnificent in his outward bearing. His dress was gorgeous, his retinue of knights as splendid as the kings. His hospitalities were boundless. His expen- diture was enormous. How the means for it were supplied is uncertain. The revenue was wholly in his hands. The king was often on the Continent, and at such times the chancellor governed every- thing. He retained bis church benefices the archdeaconry of Canterbury cer- tainly, and probably the rest. Vast sums fell irregularly into Chancery from ward- ships and vacant sees and abbeys. All these Becket received, and never account- ed for the whole of them. Whatever might be the explanation, the wealthiest peer in England did npt maintain a more costly household, or appear in public with a more princely surrounding. Of his administration his adoring and admiring biographer, the monk Grim, who was present at his martyrdom, draws a more than unfavorable picture, and even charges him with cruelty and ferocity. The persons that he slew, says Grim, the persons that he robbed of their prop- erty, nd one can enumerate. Attended by a large company of knights, he would assail whole communities, destroy cities and towns, villages and f~trms, and, with- out remorse or pity, would give them to devouring flames. ~ * Dum magnificus erat nugator in curiS, durn legit videbatur contempeor et den, dum scurrites cum poten- tioribus sectabatur ineptias, magnus isabebatur clams erat et acceptus omnibus. Jolsn of Salisbury to tbc l3isbop of Exeter. Letters, ss66. t Quantis autem necem, quantis rerum omnium proscriptionem intulerit, quis enumeret? valida nam que stipatus mibtum manu civitates aggressus est. THOMAS BECKET. II Such words give a new aspect to the demand afterwards made that he should answer for his procceciings as chancellor, and lend a newmeaning to his unwilling- ness to reply. At this period the only virtue which Grim allows him to have pre- served unsullied ~vas his chastity. In foreign politics he was meanwhile as much engaged as ever. The anomalous relations of the king with Lewis the Seventh, whose vassal he was for his Con- tinental dominions, while he was his supe- rior in power, were breaking continually into quarrels, and sometimes into war. The anxiety of Henry, however, was always to. keep the peace, if possible. In 1157 Becket ~vas sent to Paris to negotiate an alliance between the Princess Mar- garet, Lewiss daughter, and Henrys eldest son. The prince was then seven years old, the little lady was three. Three years later they were actually married, two cardinals, Henry of Pisa and William of Pavia, coming as legates from the pope to be present on the august occasion. France and England had been at that time drawn together by a special danger which threat- ened Christendom. In 1159 Pope Adrian died. Alexander the Third was chosen to succeed him with the usual formalities, but the election was challenged by Frederic Barbarossa, who set up an antipope. The Catholic Church was split in two. Fred- eric invaded Italy, Alexander was driven out of Rome and took shelter in France at Sens. Henry and Lewis gave him their united support, and forgot their own quar- rels in the common cause. Henry, it was universally ~admitted, was heartily in ear- nest for Pope Alexander. The pope, on his part, professed a willingness and an anxiety to be of corresponding service to Henry. The king considered the moment a favorable one for taking in hand the re- form of the clergy, not as against the Holy See, but with the Holy See in active co-operation with him. On this side he anticipated no difficulty if he could find a proper instrument at home, and that in- strument he considered himself to possess in his chancellor. Where the problem was to reconcile the rights of the clergy with the law of the land, it would be con- venient, even essential, that the chancellor- ship and the primacy should be combined in the same persomi. Barbarossa was find- ing the value of such a combination in Germany, where, with the Archbishop of Cologne for a chancellor of the empire, Delevit urbes et oppida; villas et pra~dia abaque misers- tionis intuita voraci consurupsit incendia. ( Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. ii., pp. 3645.) he was carrying out an ecclesiastical revo- lution. It is not conceivable that on a subject of such vast importance the king should l~ave never taken the trouble to ascertain Beck- ets views. The condition of the clergy was a pressing and practical perplexity. Becket was his confidential minister, the one person whose advice he most sought in any difficulty, and on whose judgment he most relied. Becket, in all probability, must have led the king to believe that he agreed with him. There can be no doubt whatever that he must have allowed the king to form his plans without having ad- vised him against them, and without hav- ing cautioned him that from himself there was to be looked for nothing but opposi- tion. The king, in fact, expected no opposition. So far as he had known Becket hitherto, he had known him as a statesman and a man of the world. If Becket had ever in this capacity expressed views unfavorable to the kin,.~s intentions, he would not have failed to remind him of it in their subsequent controversy. That he was unable to appeal for such a pur- pose to the kings recollection must be taken as a proof that he never did express unfavorable views. If we are not to sup- pose that he was deliberately insincere, we may believe that he changed his opin- ion in consequence of the German schism. But even so an honorable man would have given his master warning of the alteration, and it is certain that he did not. He did, we are told, feel some scruples. The ecclesiastical conscience had not wholly destroyed the human conscience, and the king had been a ~enerous master to him. But his difficulties were set aside by the casuistries of a Roman legate. Arch- bishop Theobald died when the two cardi- nals were in Normandy for the marri~tge of Prince Henry and the princess Mar- garet. There was ayear of delay before the choice was finally made. Becket asked the advice of Cardinal Henry oE Pisa. Cardinal Henry told him that it was for the interest of the Church that he should accept the archbishopric, and that he need not communicate convictions which would interfere with his appoint~ ment. They probably both felt that, if Becket declined, the king would find some other prelate who would be more pliant in his hands. Thus at last the decision was arrived at. The empress Matilda warned her son against Beckets dangerous char- acter, but the warning was in vain. Phe king pressed the archbishopric on Becket, and Becket accepted it. The chief justice I2~ PAULINE. Richard de Luci went over with three bishops to Canterbury in the spring of 162 to gain the con~ent of the chapter; the chapter yielded not without reluctance. The clergy of the province gave their ac- quiescence at a council held afterwards at Westminster, but with astonishment, mis- giving, and secret complaints. Becket at this time was not even a priest, and was known only to the world as an unscrupu- lous and tyrannical minister. The con- sent was given, however. The thing was done. On the znd of June ([162) Becket received his priests orders from the Bishop of Rochester. On the 3rd he was consecrated in his own cathedral. J. A. FROUDE. From Blackwood s Magazine. PAULINE. B LUN DELLS AYE. CHAPTER XVII. LITTLE THINGS PUT TOGETHER. Les absens ont toulours tort. THE day of departure came at length, and, with a throb of delight, Pauline hailed it as a day of release. Much, of course, was said about inter- course for the future; rides and drives were planned, and invitations were prop- erly given and accepted. This would, however, tone down with time; nothing definite was fixed upon; and she had, at all events, the satisfaction of hoping that she might never again be compelled to pass so long a period under the same roof with people whose tastes and feelings were so out of harmony with her own. For Charlotte alone could she enter- tain some regard. Charlotte was sincere, and Charlotte had been kind to her. Minnie was too entirely the reflection of those around her at the moment, to be worth notice; Dot was her mothers child; and that mother was Mrs. Jer- myn. Of Mr. Jermyn, she could only feel that he had been unfortunate in his choice of a wife, but that, for no reason, was he en- titled to be fortunate. He was inferior in person and in man- ners, whilst his attainments were purely professional. He wore a civil smile, made a deferential bow, and said the rudest things without being in the least aware he was doing so. The near neighborhood of such con- nections, Pauline decided, must ever be a drawback to the Grange. Had they been mere acquaintances, the distance four miles ~vould have been sufficient to prevent too frequent intru- sion; but it was evident that in the pres- ent instance it was to be accounted little of. Mrs. Wyndhams relations must be con- sidered, in a manner, hers. She must be subject, as her aunt would be, to early calls, interruptions at odd hours, and the other penalties of unceremoniousness be- tween two families. There would be inces- sant notes, arrangements for meeting, and for going into public in company. She foresaw, with a blush of mortification, that she might have again to follow Mrs. J ermyn into a room, and wait for her car- riage on Mr. Jermyn?s arm. Charlotte would kiss her, pull her aside, and whisper; Mrs. Jermyn would tap her with her fan, and beckon her up, to know with whom she had been talking. All this she had smarted under already; and the chance of its recurrence was the only alloy in the pleasure with which she seated herself by her aunts side, and looked back upon the cluster of faces around the hall-door. Well, they have been very good and kind, commented Mrs. Wyndham, as the carriage rolled away, amid the vociferous Goo~l-byes of the party on the door- step. And whatever little faults we might find, Pauline, we will keep to our- selves. We have shared their hospitality, we have partaken of their salt, you know; that will be sufficient for you; for me, they are relations of my dear husband, and in that light alone I will look upon them. Pauline was astonished and rehuked. They, are gone cried Charlotte, comi~g back to the drawing room. Gone! And good luck go with them I She is not a bad sort of girl, that Pauline. I have forgiven her defrauding me of Little Fen- nel, and Dolly, and all her other sins; she has expiated them by going to live with Aunt Camilla I Mrs. Jermyn, who had been airily wav- ing her hand and sending kisses after the retreating carriage, smiled no more di- rectly it was out of sight, and replied to her daughters tirade in a natural and cross voice. Expiated! Nonsense! I dont know what you mean. The girl has fallen on her feet, if ever any one did. Humph! said Charlotte. That is the sort of fall in which one breaks the BLUNDELLSAYE. 3 legs. When I fall on ray feet, may all my bones be ~vhole I Going to a charming place like the Grange, continued her mother. And Aunt Carnilla making so much of her al- ready! Quite as if she were her own daughter! Thats what I said, observed her hus- band with complacency. I told them they would be taken for mother and daugh- ter wherever they went. I)id you say it to Camilla? or to Pauline? To both. I said it to them as they were going away. Just what she would dislike of all things, muttered Mrs. Jermyn, under her breath. Dislike it? Why should she dislike it? You said yourself this minute, that she treated her like a daughter. And here is Charlotte thinks it would be a hardship to be so treated, replied his wife, aware that it would be useless to enter into explanations, and returning to the main point. With every lu~tury at her command, a poor homeless girl ..~ You would not like it yourself, mam- ma. At least, I daresay you would, but I should not. And as for Pauline, she hates it like poison. So she says. Says? No; she is not likely to say a thing like that. I could not even tempt her to much smaller confidences. But any one with half an eye can see it for themselves. You must, mamma, if you did not choose to be blind. But, oh, continued Charlotte, amuse- ment lighting up her countenance, what a pair they are! How could you, even you, mamma, say that they suited one an- 6ther? There they sat last night on the sofa, side by side. Aunt Camilla was smirking and smiling, and trying to get Pauline to tell her she was young and pretty. You tell her so, mamma, every hour in the day; but Pauline you have no idea how well she did it, or rather did not do it. She kept the little aunt in per- fect good-humor, and yet she never told a single fib I Says Aunt Camilla, My dear, what a pretty hat! What a becoming hat! You look like an old picture exactly like an old picture I One of the La Sartes come to life again! Our ancestors, you know, Pauline. The re- semblance is quite remarkable q ite. And so on. Says Pauline, in her slow, soft voice, I am ~lad you like it, Aunt Camilla. Evidently she would have worn a pie-dish on her head with equal content- ment. But this did not suit the aunt at all, for the upshot of it was, that she wanted to be told it would become her. You must know that although part of her great and sudden attachment to Pauline. consists in the belief that she is about to introduce to the world another Gun- Iling, she has by no means made up her mind to sink gracefully into the back- ground herself. Indeed she means to shine all the more, with the mild magic of reflected light. I daresay Pauline was very rude and unkind about it. Young people never seem to think that older ones can have any feeling on such subjects at all. They went off together arm in arm after~vards, so I dont think the feelings can have been lacerated to any great ex- tent, said Charlotte. My belief is, that they will shake together, in spite of every- thins, and Aunt Camilla will claim her half of every young man who finds his way over to the Grange. There is one young man who will find his way there, and that ere long, or I am mistaken, observed Mrs. Jermyn. One little man would be more to the purpose, if you mean Little Fennel, re- plied Charlotte. Minnie, as her sister entered, mamma thinks Little Fennel was hit hard. And so I daresay he was, for though I was his first love, I have never pretended to be his only one. He is not constant; pon my word, now, he isnt. But then one cant be expected to be constant, when theres no return, can one? Oh, dont begin in that stupid way, said Minnie; theres no fun in it. What were you going to say? To say? When? When I came in. You were going to tell me something About Little Fennel. I was going to tell you that mamma said he I never mentioned Mr. Fennel, Char- lotte. Oh, did you not? Who was it, then? Dolly? I knew it was all up with Dolly directly I saw him come into the room; hut he was not allowed to usurp her, I cm tell you. As for the beauty herself, I dont think she wished to be troubled with either of them. Nor was I thinking of either of them,~~ said her mother. No? Well, I have come to an end of my guesses; you must tell me. I think I . know, said the quieter Minnie. Mr. Blundell? Mr. Blundell! What are you both 4 PAULINE. dreaming of? cried Charlotte, as her mothers smile showed that the right name had been spoken. What put him into your heads? Because she did not like to hear him spoken against behind his back? You dont know that girl at all. She has not the wits to stand up for her- self, hut she would not let any one else be attacked, and keep quiet. It is a shame, too. I hate to hear the absent maligned, and given no chance of telling their ver- sion of the story; it seems so mean. You might have known it was just, the ~rery thing to make Pauline fire up. It seemed to be, indeed. I call that unfair, exclaimed Char- lotte, still further roused to generosi tyof feeling by her mothers sneer. Now you are turning upon her, mamma. She did not say a word that she mioht not have said for anybody not a~ And as for poor Ralpi& single word. Blundell, I always feel inclined to take his part, for the very same reason. I believe the only cause of all the outcry against both the brothers was, that they were better born and better looking than the rest of their neighbors, and that they looked down upon the whole of us. They could not well look down on Sir John and Lady Finch, said her mother, angrily. Oh, Sir John is an old-fashioned old stick, who wants everybody to be as fusty and musty as he is himself. He will have some trouble in cutting Dollys pretty curls to his straitlaced l)attern. Dolly hankers after the fun at Blundellsaye. His father will be very foolish if he gives in to him, retorted her mother. No son of mine should consort with Ralph I3lunclell, if I could help it. My dear mother, for two reasons your determination will never be put to the test. Firstly, because you have no son; and secondly, because, if you had a hundred, Monseigneur Ralph would never deign to take notice of one of them. Do be quiet for a single minute, Char- lotte, said Minnie. You talk on, and on, and no one else can get in a word. Mamma, what made you say that about Pauline? What made you guess what I was going to say? Oh, replied Minnie astutely, be- cause I had heard you say it before. To whom? To Aunt Camilla. I heard you hint- ing about him. I wanted to know how you took up the idea at first. Little things put together, replied her mother, rather hastily, as a little thing in the shape of Dot entered. Nothino in particular, I assure you. Now we have been idling here long enough. Come, Dot, and hold this skein of worsted for me. She was not to be entral)ped into fur- ther communications; and with an uneasy sensation of something wrong, she was aware, for the first time, that she would prefer none being made by any one else. Charlottes burst of indignation she could not face. CHAPTER XVIII. SIR JOHN FINCH. He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of suffering; he keeps his sympathy, lilce some curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, for isis own use only. IT may have been observed that Mrs. J ermyn, whenever she had an opportunity of introducing the name of Sir John and Lady Finch into her conversation, did not fail to take advantage of it. As usually happens in such cases, where the acquaintanceship is assumed, on one side, to be especially close, her real knowledge of them was slight. She had no true perception into the character or habits of either but she had their visiting-cards on her table, she could describe the interior of their mansion- house, and she could, command a bow when their carriawe village, passed hers in the On this foundation she romanced at large to her less fortunate acquaintance; for the Jermyns, although occasionally admitted to the neighboring Country- houses, could not be said to be intimate at any, but lived chiefly in a small world of their own, composed of the occul)ants of villas and river-side cOttaires of which a considerable number clustered round the hamlet at their gates. By these they were admired, envied, and imitated. To them would Mrs. Jermyn lay down the law, fearless of correction; and her favorite topic was seldom far from her lips. Sir Johns little ways were alluded to, and his old-fashioned foibles ~polo- gized for, in a way that, could he have heard it, would have brought some of them strongly to the front. Lady Finchs unfortunate shyness was likewise tenderly dealt with. She was really more to be pitied than any one else. It wore off entirely, entirely, when BLUNDELLSAYE. 1 alone with her friends. People called her proud, but such an appellation was, she need hardly assure them, altogether unde- served. She was a sweet woman. Even in allowing such little shortcom- ings, Mrs. Jermyn would appear to have a struggle with l~erself. She could not but be partial, be blind to anythin~ amiss in such friends. Their interests, she owned, were hers. She called on all to partici- pate in their anxieties, demanded elation for their successes, mournfully claimed sympathy for their bereavements. Titbits of gossip concerning their kind neighbors at the Hall must always, she felt, have a superior interest to any other subject, for the little coterie of which she had constituted herself the queen. Nice quiet folks, like ourselves, she would thus describe them. Such stay- at-homes! Sir John never can be brou~ht to go anywhere. Lady Finch assures me she exhausts herself in vain. Do, dear Mrs. Jermyn, try your persuasive powers, she said to me the other night we were dining there, you know; she began to me directly after dinner about it: Sir John may listen to you, she was good enough to say. She, poor thing, is quite tired of the Hall, and would like to have a few weeks abroad. I sympathized with her entirely. It is hard on a wife, and such a devoted wife too, not to be conside red more. Men, however, never are considerate. Sir John, dear good man, is a most excel- lent husband, to be sure, but he is like the rest in that respect. AJy persuasive pow- ers indeed! bridling. What could I say to that? I could only reply, Indeed, my dear Lady Finch, I am not vain enough to imagine that where your persuasive powers have failed, mine would succeed. She laughed at me, but we understand each other perfectly. Sir John is always most agreeable, most attentive; but I hope I know better than to misinte~~ret that politeness which is one of the dis- tin guishin~ marks of people of rank. Poor dear Mrs. Wyndham is perhaps a little apt to take such civilities as personal distinctions. My sister-in-law is a most amiable creature, but (to confidential ears) wantin(~ without doubt, in discretion, in ;udment. She will, however, be the greatest possible addition to the neigh- borhood, and we will take care that she is not suffered to make herself ridiculous. On this point the orater would become diffuse, not to say prosy; for although the glory of the Grange had become in a man- ner dimmed by the residence of Pauline therein, when not in her actual presence, Mrs. Jermyn still enjoyed much satisfac- tion from recounting details of the in en age, and. enumerating the servants, the horses, the carriages, and the visitors of Mrs. Wyndham. The Finches had called, of course. They had called among the very first. So thoughtful so like themselves. Mrs. Jermyn, however, did not know to whom she was ascribing honor. Dolly Finch had not only instigated his parents to the visit, but he had accom- panied them. He had been loud in his praises after- wards. What charming people they were What a delightful house it was to go to! Mrs. Wyndham so friendly, so easy! Such a nice, well-manered woman! \Viiy are there not more like her? cried the young man, enthusiastically. Usually if there is one thing in the world I hate more than another, it is to make a call. You give up your afternoon, and you ride, four or five miles, and you have to get down and oper~ half-a-dozen gates if you go up by a side entrance besides the nuisance of the door-bell at the end and all you get for your pains is a pair of cold fingers, and a seat on the ottoman, in the worst part of the whole room to get away from. Humph ! returned his father, drily. It seems to me there was another part of the room, very far from the ottoman, which you found still worse to get a way from to-day. I found no difficulty in get- ting away from the ottoman, but I thought you were never comino~ out of that orner. And as for the house, it is all one abomi- nable draught. I have been shivering ever since I came out of it. You were shivering before you went, sir; you complained of it this morning. You have caught cold, standing about in the farmyard yesterday. It was not the farmyard; there was nothing in the farmyard to give me cold. It was those hot, unwholesoriie rooms Unwholesome? They werd delicious. The scent of the flowers I tell you it was that made me ill; I know it was. Nasty, sickly atmosphere enon~h to poison any human being! And every time the door opened, a gale blew along th~ ground, and froze ones feet till they were like stones. I would not live i~ that house if I were paid for it. Dolly differed from him entirely. He liked the place and everythin~ about it. His mother agreed with him. Yes. PAULINE. Mrs. Wyndham was agreeable certainly agreeable, kind, and friendly. Good-look- ing too. Dolly thought her uncommonly good- looking. A little bit made up, you know, but what of that? Miss La Sarte is not made up, at all events. She is ah rather handsome, is she not? Not rather very. A lovely girl. So graceful, so retiring! Such a contrast to those awkward Miss Jermyns! Lady Finch protests that she cannot imagine how they come to belong to the same race. Hereupon Dolly grows quite excited. There is no relationship, none of any sort. Mrs. Wyndham had made a low sort of marriage, and had got a lot of money, and her husband was dead, and there was no more to be said about it. But with Miss La Sarte, the Jermyns have nothing to do; Miss La Sarte belongs to a good old fam- ily. He is so intelligible,and so deeply in earnest, that Sir Johns two grey eyebrows come to the front, and make a dead point. Beauty, birth, and money? He thinks it might do. He will not say more of the discomforts he has undergone; and if that invitation Mrs. Wvndham talked about should come, it must certainly be accepted, even if he should slip out of the engagement after- wards. There proved to be some cause for the latter provision. The next day he sat in his great arm- chair by the fire, in all the dignity of sick- ness. Slippers encased his feet, a dressing- gown buttoned to his chin, and a shawl overspread his shoulders. His grey locks of hair, instead of curling crisply round each temple as was their wont, were brushed straight. They had not been plunged into water that morning, nor had his heard been trimmed. He was really unwell, and unnaturally docile and meek. By midday Lady Finch sent for the doctor. He all~wed that she had done right. Perhaps the doctor could do him some little goo4. He was ill he was exceed- ingly ill. Headache, and a nasty depres- sion. He didnt know where. Every- where. Then he closed his hand and beat his breast sorrowfully, Pain, pain, pain! I told you you had got a cold, sir, said Dolly, smiling, but not undutifully. You never would have made such a fuss about those rooms, if there had not been something the matter with you. You dont care what a room is like, as a rule. I dare say you are right, mildly re- joined the invalid. This attack was coming upon me, and that must have been why I felt out of sorts altogether; I ought never to have been out of doors; I know I ought not. What the doctor will say to me Oh, youll be all right again in a day or two. You have only to take some gruel, and that sort of thing. Whats this? as a servant entered ~vith a tray. Your soup, Sir John, said the man, arranging it by his side. My soup? Eh? I didnt order any soup. What am I to do with it? Who sent it? demanded his master, eyeing the basin, but without ill-will. I dont know that I want that soup, he continued, irresolutely. The best thing in the world for a cold, said Dolly. And uncommonly good it smells, too. Heigh-ho I I wish it was din- ner-time. Do you? Perhaps I may take a little; a mouthful or two. What made you say it was good? I dont know that its good. I dont like eating soup at this hour; it is just some of Custards nonsense, sending it, breaking some bread into the bowl as he spoke. Dont have it, if you dont want it, said Dolly, whose appetite had been sharpened by a long ride in the cold air. If you are going to send it down again, give it to inc. Ill soon make short work of it. His evident partiality was as stimulating as a good sauce; more so, indeed, to Sir John, who hated sauces, as he hated every- thing that was not solid, substantial, and John Bull to the core. Oh, I suppose I had better take it, replied he, lifting a spoonful with an air of resignation. When one is weak and ill as I am, it sets one up a little. I wonder that Dr. Tyndall has not come yet! He should not have been so lon~ in coming, when I sent for him. Did he know it was for me, Anne ?to his ~vife, who entered. Oh, how comfortable you look, my dear ! cried she, disregarding him. I am so glad to see you can enjoy your soup. Custard told me she had ordered it for you. Humph I Im playing with it a little. Sir John hung his head, and almost blushed for the relish he had evinced. I knew it was that Custard, he con- tinued. As if I am to be cured by any- thing she can do! If I were on my death- bed she would concoct some trash of a jelly, and imagine nothing more could be BLUNDELLSAYE. needed! The only person who might do me some little good is Dr. Tyndall, and he keeps away. Send for a doctor, and you have as good a chance of getting a policeman when hes wanted. He has sent a message just now, to say that he had been called away, but will look in here this evening, said Lady Finch. This evening! Thats not when I want him. Am I to wait all that time to know what is the matter with me? Till this evening, indeed! Till he has been round the parish, and attended to every whipp& r-snapper in it. And how am I to tell what to do for myself, or what to send for, oror anything? Dr. Tyndall can have no idea how ill I am. That fool of a Thomas has given the wrong mes- sage Thoi~as was out with me, observed Dolly. William, then. One of them. He has been idling away his time in the ale- house He has not had time to idle, if he has been to Hexley and back. I tell you he has. He has made a mess of it somehow. Who saw him? Wbo received the answer? Lady Finch vouched for the authenticity of tbe answer. She had met the butler on his way to deliver it, and had cross- examined him. The groom, who had rid- den to Hexley, had met the doctors gig leaving the village, and had received the message from Dr. Tyndalls own lips. And what does this evening mean, I should like to know? muttered the inva- lid, relapsing into testiness. It may mean any time. Eight oclock, nine oclock, ten oclock. It is too bad (with rising sharp- ness) of Dr. Tyndall to put me off with this evenihg. Eight oclock Lady Finch pronounced to be the fated hour. Dr. Tyndall was rarely out after sight oclock. He prob- ably intended to take Finch Hall on his way home. Sir John humphed, grunted, and fretted as he listened to her. Three hours still to wait! Three mortal hours, in which there was nothing to be done but sit, sit, sit, and listen to the clock tickino-! He did not want any more of the newspaper. He never went to sleep at that hour. He spurned every overture made to him. Three hours! And I havent eaten a thing to-day! You neednt laugh, to Dolly. I tell you I have not. Nothing but that abominable soup; and why I todk LIVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 938 7 it I cant think. Messes at all hours of the day are enough to give one a fever. I feel much worse than I did, I can assure you. I wish I had thrown that soup out of the window. You do not look well, indeed, sympa- thized his wife. 147e1/? I tell you Im very ill. I cant get any one of you to understand how ill I am. If a proper account had been sent of ne by William, that doctor could never have had the face to put me off with this eveninct Oh, come, sir, said Dolly, you are getting round, or you would not be so lively. You were altogether too mild and tearful just now; I was growing really alarmed. You must be a long way bet- ter I tell you Im not better ! Dolly spread his hands, and pulled a face. Im not better, continued his father, angrily. You are just making a fool of me. None of you have any feeling. Dolly, be quiet, said his mother. Your father is very uncomfortable and feverish. Uncomfortable! Is that all you call it? I said feverish, dear. And since you dislike so much waiting for Dr. Tyndall, let us send over to R. for Dr. Bell. Thom- as can ride over at once. Shall I ring? No, no. He would not have Dr. Bell; he disliked strangers; and, twenty to one, Dr. Bell would be off on some wild-goose-chase too. It was not worth while sending, for he should not see him if he came. Dr. Tyndall understood his constitution. It was too bad of Dr. Txn- dali not to have obeyed his summ6ns sooner; but still he would wai ~for Dr. Tyndall, and none other would he have. The suggestion had done its part, how- ever. It had given him something to think and speak about. He was now will- ing to lie back in his chair again, and pat his hands softly together, and discuss the probable cause of the doctors delay. Was there any one ill in the neighbor- hood? Had he been sent for, to any dis- tance? Had he gone to London? The groom attested that he had not gone to London. He had driven off in the opposite direction: he had no lug- gage, and Sir John was in the act of listening, and the butler ~vas in the act of delivering the message, when the door- bell rang, with a sharp, authoritative de- mand. Dr. Tyndalls ring, Sir John, said the i8 PAULINE. man; with a smile; and in a few moments afterwards, Dr. Tyndall walked in. Finding that he should have to be out again that night, he had come, on second thoughts, to Finch Hall first. He was sorry to hear that Sir John was unwell. Y\That was the matter? Cold? Bilious attack? The patient gave himself little airs. Well, no. He did not think he was bilious. His liver might perhaps be a little affected. Dr. Tyndall would remem- ber how very ill he had been from his liver some years before. He thought he felt something of the same sort this time, only worse. What were the exact symp- toms of liver complaint? The doctor restrained his countenance, and mentioned several. And I have no appetite, continued the invalid. I thought I had a little just now, but its gone. They gave me some nasty soup, that took it all away again. You took the soup? I took it yes, a little. I wish now I had let it alone. You dont approve of such rubbish I am sure, Dr. Tyndall? These women, contemptuously, they have no sense; they are made up of fiddle- faddle crotchets. At the end of a quarter of an hour he was more composed; he had been dic- tated to, sympathized with, and prescribed for. All was going on satisfactorily, when, as ill luck would have it, the visitor rose. You are not going yet ! cried Sir John, from the depths of his armchair. You have hardly come in! Do you mean to say you cant sit down for five minutes? He was hurt, and a sense of desertion stole over him. Cant you stay an~ have some dinner? he con- tinued, almost plaintively. Let your car- riage go, and we will send you home. But Dr. Tyndall arrested the order. It must be owned that he had a certain pleasure in saying No ;that he felt all the importance of being hurried from one great house to another, as he announced that home was not his destination; he had been summoned to Blundellsaye. It was this visit which he had feared would detain him until the evening. He had been actually on his way there, when Sir Johns messenger overtook him, and it was not until after it was too late to re- call the man, that it had occurred to him to alter the arrangement. Sir John inquired, still with something of the peevishness of an injured man, which of the n-iadcaps had sent for him. The doctor was unable to say. In fact with a little irritability no proper message had been despatched. He had met the drag, with a party in it, near the station, and a footman had jumped down and run after him, with a request that he would go up to the house at once. Not having the pleasure of Mr. Ralph Blundells acquaintance, he had not looked into the carriage. Some one had bawled out to the man that they would be late for the train, and they had rattled off before he could understand clearly what was re- quired of him. Nevertheless, he must go, and with a motion of his hand he put aside further entreaties. They had to yield; and a dull evening, unenlivened by his cheerful chat, was endured by all. It was late ere the doctor left Blundell- saye that night, and he was there again be- times on the following morning. On his way he was overtaken by Mrs. Jermyn and her daughter, who were driving over to spend a few days at the Grange. The ladies pulled up, and he was consulted about Dots second teeth, and the illness of a servant. Then the waggonette took the lead, for the day was raw, and the doctor had en- closed himself in his brougham, which could not keep pace with the lighter vehi- cle. Also, he had halts to make, at one house and another.~ He made his bow, and they drove on. You have judeed been well received, my dear Camilla, began Mrs. Jermyn after luncheon, durino which full accounts of the past fortnights doings had been given and hearkened to. You are now fairly established as one of ourselves. But I said how it would be. It is the siege, you know, the siege that ~vas prog- nosticated. Come along with me, said Charlotte to Pauline. Mamma and Aunt Camilla like to palaver to each other with nobody by, to listen or interfere with them. They will dear, and quite, and so, as hap- pily as possible, for the next two hours. Now tell me all you have got to tell. What have you been about since you came? How do you get on together? And has she sent for the hat, yet? Pauline could not choose but smile. You have no idea how kind she is, Charlotte; nor how little silly she can be, when when we are quite alone. When mamma is not with her? Eh? I daresay. And so you are not absolutely bored to death, yet? You poor soul! I do pity you. And what says the Little Fennel to it all? And did Dolly come with the Finches ? Dolly? Oh yes, said Pauline, dream- ily. I wonder who is ill, in this direc- tion? Aunt Camilla allows Dr. Tyndall to drive through the grounds, as he used to do before she came, if he has to go that way; and this is the second time lie has passed up the Long Avenue to-day. I can tell you, said Charlotte, with an odd look in her face. Mamma would say you would not thank me, but of course thats nonsense. Only I know, she added, looking, with an assumption of en- tire carelessness, the other way, that it is not pleasant hearing of anything hap- pening to to ones brothers friends. Mr. I3lundell has got typhoid fever. CHAPTER XIX. THE DOCTOR S CARRIAGE. For it is with feelings as with waters, The shallow murmur, and the deep are dumb. IVJAMMA, you were wrong alto- gether ! cried Charlotte, afterwards. She did not care a straw. She said, Indeed! I am sorry, and then walked to her xvardrobe, and took out her shawl, as composedly as I should have done. I forestalled you with the intelligence, in case the effect might be too much for your tender heart; but I might have saved my- self the trouble. Mr. I3lundell has no chief mourner at present, at all events. Are you going out? No, indeed! not on such a day. It would bring my neuralgia back again di- rectly. I shall stay with your aunt, and you can take a walk with Pauline. We are going to drive, said Char- lotte. Aunt Camilla wants some sl~op- ping done in Hexley, and we are going in the pony-carriage. There it is coming out of the stables. What a smart little turn- out! Look, mamma! that is surely a new kind of carriage; I dont think I have seen one like it before. Who is going to drive? Pauline, of course. This is her car- riage. Aunt Camilla never goes out in it. It is quite absurd the way your aunt spoils Pauline, cried Mrs. Jermyn. I hear she is getting down an Erard grand piano on purpose for her. And she is to have masters in the spring. It is really quite quite ridiculous. A poor depen- dent girl! an absolute pauper! Most un- suitable, when she may have to earn her own bread Not she You cant tell; it is quite possible. BLUNDELLSAYE. 9 Accustoming her to all this luxury is no kindness. Itoh, come in, come in, my dear, in answer to a tap at the door. Come in, Pauline; so you and Charlotte are going to have a little drive together. If you want Charlotte to drive, she is not at all nervous, and perhaps rather more accustomed to ponies than you are Would Charlotte like to drive? said Pauline. Of course she would, said Charlotte, readily and so would Pauline; so you drive one way and I the other, and we shall both be happy. As for my being ac- customed to ponies, she confided on their way down-stairs, that is one of mammas little flights. I have never driven any- thing in my life but our old Tommy, who can by no means be started~ unless some one runs in front of him all the way down the drive. But as I dearly love to handle the reins, and as you have got such a sweet little rat of a thing to take along, I cant find it in my heart to refuse the l)Olite invitation. We look picturesque, dont we? you in your scarlet shawl, and I in my blue cloak? Something nice and bright to look at on this deplorable day. Dont you wear gloves? Of course, said Pauline, absently. Where are they then? Why, I de- clare you thought they were on your hands! Your wits are wool-gathering, I think, or you are dreaming of some one far away. Over the hills and far away. Let me see! Who can it be? ~ You had better drive first, Charlotte. Roger is apt to pull, coming home. Then you must wake up if you are go- ing to hold him in, my dear. Where is the button for this apron? Lower, We dont need a man, do we Not when there are two of us. I have one when I go alone. What are you wait- ing for? He has gone for umbrellas. Not that there is the slightest chance of rain, but, however, they do no harm. Now, shall I set off? They had not started many minutes when Pauline uttered a low ejaculation. What is it? inquired Charlotte. The doctor~ s carriage coming back. Dont you think we might XVhat? Nothino Dont drive quite so fast, Charlotte. Dont let us be in his way. Let him overtake us while the road is broad enough for his brougham to pass. It takes up some room. We need not be in his way, said Charlotte. We could run away from his 20 PAULINE. old rumble-tumble easily. I can hardly hold the pony in, as it is. Get on, Roger. Give me the reins. I forgot that he had been in the stables the whole of yes- terday. Of course he is too fresh for you. She attempted to take them, but Char- lotte laughed, and held them fast. No, no none of that. If he pulls when he is coming home, and if he is too fresh for me when he is going out, I shant get much driving between the two. Hie, Roger! That is the proper pace to take. There ,you see, the carriage is not even in sight behind us. Pauline said not a word. A few minutes later they came in sight of the lod be. Oh, I xvonder how the baby is to-day! cried Miss La Sarte. There is such a dear little baby bere, Charlotte only a week old; and I am to be godmother. I must look after my baby. It was not quite well when I was down on Tuesday. Stop, and let me ask how it is. We can ask when we come back, said Charlotte. Would that not do as well, as the gate is opennow? Oh, you can pull up just outside, said Pauline, readily. There is plenty of room beyond for the carriage to pass. Besides, now that I think of it, we might need to call in the doctor; it would be a pity to lose the opportunity, when he is actually passing the door. I will ask him to wait one moment till I see. The idea, wbich, in all truth, had only that moment flashed upon her, made Pau- line look almost bright. Just stop for a moment, Charlotte, and I will jump down. Why should you jump down? Call to some one to come out. There must be some woman or girl to look after the house. There! Oh! Will you come here for a moment? calling herself to a girl who ran hastily out, perceiving she might be wanted. How is the baby? inquired the other lady. Oh, baby is as well as can be, miss, mother says. It xyas that bottle as you sent down, that did her all the good. She has never had no return of nothink. And the pain is quite gone? Oh yes, miss. She is asleep, now. I have got her in the kitchen, to let mother have a bit of sleep too. Would you please to come in? No, no not to-day; not if there is no need. But there is Dr. Tyndall, you see, close behind us. You are sure your mother would not like him just to see the baby? Oh, he couldnt see nothink, miss. And mother said yesterday as no baby could be better than she is now, and ____ Then we had better go on, said Miss Jermyn, raising the reins, or we shall be in the way again. How heavy the roads are this afternoon! If I had taken Tommy out, he would have crawled at a foots pace; but this plucky little creature minds nothing. Look, Pauline! Is not that a fine lurid light upon Blundellsave? Ah, poor Ralph Blundell! Who would have thought this was to be the end of him trot, trot, trot, along the muddy high- way, and the doctors brouTham still rolls behind. b He had not turned, as Pauline had feared he would, in the opposite direction. He was going, as they were, to the vil- lage. Where shall we stop first? inquired Charlotte. At the chemists, boldly rejoined her companion. Drive straight there. The chemists? That is at the other end. We shall have to clatter all down the street first. Never mind, I like it. On such an afternoon it is something even to go to a chemists; shopping in Hexley is absolute dissipation. What a splendid road this is ! I like a great, broad road, with walls on each side, and not a hill anywhere to check our speed. I do like to go fast. My heart sinks at the sight of our long rising ground outside the hamlet. We are expected to get out and walk up, in hot weather. Oh, Pauline, look at the river! How like a sheet of glass it lies And those unearthly phantoms rising out of the mist are those the poplars ? What a ghostly landscape! And to crown it all, that passing-bell. That ~5asshvg-bell / It is not one, you know; it only sounds like it. It is for afternoon ser- vice. Afternoon service! repeated Pauline, turning two helpless eyes on her compan- ion. What afternoon service ? You are rather addle-pated to-day, my dear; excuse the polite remark. We always have afternoon services in Advent, and so I suppose have you. Yes, I know they have, at Hexley. Yes, certainly, I remember. And now for the chemists. Caudle? Is not that the man? We send over to him now and then, as mamma thinks his BLUNDELLSAXTE. -21 medicines are fresher than our little mans at Pipton. Softly over the bridge, Roger. Now, Pauline, look at the poplars. Look over your shoulder. I say! theres that old pill-box close to our heels again! It may pass now, for aught I care. There he goes, and gone to our chemist too! What is to be done? We must go some- where else. To the library? No, no never mind the carriacre said Pauline, sharply. What doe~it matter? We can pull up behind it. We cannot expect to have the shops all to our- selves. But he will keep you such a long time, remonstrated Charlotte. He will have all sorts of prescriptions to be made up, and potions to be mixed. Caudle can- not attend to you both. I shant keep him a moment. Pau- line put her hand upon the reins. No need to draw in, I can get out here. And, scarcely waiting till the whe~els stopped, she jumped out, and disappeared into the shop, Dr. Tyndall himself hold- ing the door open for her. She had caught him at last. How do you do? But the doctor drew back. I think, Miss La Sarte, I wont come very near you, if you please. I have just come from a fever patient; and although it is not an infectious kindstillallow me to wait outside while you are beincr attended to. Pray dont, said the poor girl, des- perately. But he had closed the door. Her purchase was made in a moment a box of lozenges and she came out again. Is your patient very ill, Dr. Tyndall? putting the change given by the shopman into her purse, with great deliberation. Typhoid fever, said he, concisely. Mr. Blundell, is it not? Yes, Mr. Ralph Blundell. He is very ill, Miss La Sarte. She closed the purse, and looked him full in the face. I used to know Mr. Blundell; he was a friend of my brother, who would be sorry tell me, said she, suddenly, with a catch of her breath, have you given up hope ? Given up hope? By no means. We shall make a fight of it, I can tell you; butab with an unavoidable inflec- tion of enjoyment, it is a bad case. You I know Mr. Ralph? He has not led the best kind of life to bring him through a fever. He has been fast, you know fast. And he is not as young as he once I was, and every year fells. Added to all this the stupid fellow has been going about for the last fortnight with the fever upon him, and without permitting anything to be done for it. I was not sent for till last night. I ought to have been with him ten days ago. This is a growing, creeping mischief; and of course, at the first, it is not unusual for people to be wholly un- aware of their state; but such neglect as this I never met with before. It was shameful, monstrous; and so I told them. They ought to have sent in spite of him. A sick mans orders ought to be looked upon as so much waste breath. However, all that C~fl be done now Allow me to hand you in. She was not going to get in, she would walk to the next shop. She detained him, however, for a few moments, under a pre- text so plausible, that it was spoken fear- lessly, eagerly. Dr. Tyndall, you will have to go often to Blundellsaye, of course. Shall I tell our lod~e-keeper to leave the gates open at night? My aunt would be vexed if you had to go round by the road; but unless I ive orders, you may find some difficulty in rousing anybody. They wait up, on the evenings that we go out. Thank you thank you. Yes, I may have to go through at all hours, and it saves my horses a good mile and a half taking that short cut. I am detaining you; Miss Jermyn is making signs. Shall I say you will pass through to- night? With her back turned on Char- lotte she could affect not to perceive the signs. For this once, Charlotte should not balk her. To-night? Well, no; I think not to- night, replied the doctor, thoughtfully. I have been already there twice, and we have got a good nurse. The crisis will not be yet. The thing is to keep him quiet and keep up his strength. He will have need of it all by-and-b . Mrs. Wyndham quite well? - y Quite, thank you. She is not out to- day. Ab! Not a day for her either. But you young ladies mind nothing I see you out in all weathers. I tell my daugh- ter I wish she would take a lesson. Good morning. He turned from her rather hastily. Two horsemen, whose appearance seemed to indicate tl)at they were returning from a iruitless run, were dejectedly traversing the village at a foots pace. To one of these the doctor signalled; and having made his bow to Miss La 22 PAULINE. Sarte, he ran out into the street. The elder of the pair reined up, Major Soames, who vied with Dr. Tyndall in his spring flower-beds; and they now held an ani- mated discussion on the possibility of ob- taining some Dutch tulip-roots which the doctor had an inkling were to be had cheap. They did excellently with the Thorn- sons last year, he said. You never saw a finer show. How is your soil for tulips ? Good, moderately good. But I mean to improve it. I fancy it is, if anything, too light. Did Thomson have a good show? What were the varieties? Chiefly Couleur Pouceau; magnificent blossoms. Oh, Mr. Finch, will you kindly say to Sir John But Dolly had passed on, and drawn up beside the pavement; at the moment, he was bending from his horse in close con- versation with a lady who stood upon it. Dr. Tyndall looked blankly round, and plunged anew into the congenial dialogue. His message to Sir John was not half so important to him as the culture of his tulips. Meanwhile Dolly, with a happy face, was doing his best. Good morning, he said, cheerily; do you patronize Caudles? For lozenges. Will you have some? Miss La Sarte fumbled with the string of her pocket. Will you have one, Char- lotte ? Charlotte put out her hand, keeping her eye on Roger all the while. Then the box was held up, and Dolly was a long time over his selection. You are sure they wont burn? he said. My mother gets hold of some of those long red things that look awfully good in the box, and they are the greatest shams. You take a handful, and when you have had them in your mouth half a minute, the tears are running down your cheeks. By the way, my governor is ill. I think Ill take him some. He made no motion of going in search of them, however. He dallied with his reins, patted his horses neck, and thought of something more to say. Coming to the Hunt ball, Miss La Sarte? She was not sure; her aunt had spoken of it. She must come; it was to be one of the best they had had for many years. He was beginning to expatiate, when she in- terrupted him in a motherly fashion. Do you know that you are very hoarse? Have you caught cold too? I have got what the doctor calls a throat, replied he. And what are you doing for it? Oh, nothing. I shall dance it off to- morrow at R. You are not going there, of course? With us it is a call of duty; we are always let in for it. You seem to me to have a very good excuse; but you are coming up to us to- night? Go and ask Dr. Tyndalls leave, or we shant receive you. Eh? said Dolly, opening his eyes. There he is! go and speak to ~ continued Pauline, excitedly. When there are so mahy dangerous complaints going a bout you ought to take care. He will tell you himself how ill some of his patients are. A sore throat ought not to be trifled with. Ill do it, to please you. His face beamed. Only, whatever he says, you know, youll see me to-night all the same. Pauline turned to go. Nice little pony, observed Dolly, still keeping alongside. He will trot as fast as your horse will, said Charlotte, who had with difficulty kept the creature quiet for so long. Well, I dare say, replied the horse- man. Are you going home, now? Let us have a trotting match. Major Soames has wheeled off as he speaks, and the little doctor is pattering back over the stones. Miss La Sarte turns round involuntarily, and sees the shop-door open and close after him. Then she re- plies to Dollys suggestion imperiously. No, no; we have a thousand things to do first, and we have no more time to waste. Charlotte, please go on to the library, take this list, and get the books changed. They are under the seat. I will walk there, when I have handed this note in at that red house over there. Good-bye, Mr. Finch. Pray (with an effort at arch- ness), pray dont forget your promise. Eh? my promise? said Dolly, stu- pidly. He is in there, continued Pauline, wishing Charlotte were not by, that she might speak more plainly. We are not going to have you (Charlotte moved on) following poor Mr. Blundells example. Ask how he is. The words had the ring of a command. They, were spoken she had determined that they should be spoken. Though terrified at her own audacity, she waited BLUNDELLSAYE. 23 not for any answer, but walked with rapid steps across the street. Once on the other side, however, she paused and glanced hack. Dr. Tyndall stood by Dolly, and she was so far content. What did he say to you? she in- quired in the evening. Eh? What about? said he. Your cold, of course. Oh, my cold is gone; that brown thing cured it. You must give me another after dinner, though, if they are all as good. The doctor was telling me about poor Ralph Blundell. So she had hoped, and for this she had man~uvred. Her womans wit had prompt- ed her to hold him in parley until the other was at liberty, and then, with her Parthian shot, she had flown. I rode up at once to ask after him, continued Dolly; that was how I came to miss you, I suppose. I thought Miss J ermyn and I were to have had that match we spoke about. Miss Jermyn would have been delight- ed, said Charlotte, overhearing him. And she would have backed Roger for anything you liked to name. You have no idea of the pace we took on the way home. He laughed. Come, it would be rather a joke; well have it. Will you put him into trainino~? And when shall it come off? They were wandering from the point, and Pauline sighed for patience that weary patience which may indeed help to bear, but which is itself almost intolerable to be borne. She was appealed to by the disputants. Would she not stand up for Roger, her own Roger, the best little Roger in the world? Charlotte was in her element, equal to any repartee, conversant with every sporting term. She was vauntingin extravagant terms the ponys beauty, swift- ness, and amiability of temper; and Dolly, who lived more in the stable than in the house, was entering, con arnore, into the discussion. He was surprised but not displeased at ~the luke~varmness of Pauline. Hang it! Im not clever, and that sort of thing, thought the poor hoy. I can get on very well with girls that chaff and talk humbug; but when that wont go down I dont know what to say. I dont like them any the better for it ; this one is worth a hundred of all the rest put to- gether: and I hope that my Lady Finch if ever there is one wont go in for horses, and that. And slangs odious. The last observation was called forth by the use of some cant term which Char- lotte had recently picked up. It was one which, in all probability, half the ladies in the county would have used, and which, up to the present time, would have been passed by, unnoticed, by Dolly. But at the moment it assailed his ears, two great, pure, penetrating eyes were turned upon his, and then and there his heart fell down dead before them. CHAPTER XX. CRIES AS IF HER HEART WOULD BREAK. IT seemed to Pauline that they fell to talking about Blundell quite naturally after this. I rode over to Blundellsaye, as I told you, said Dolly. Of course I did not go in there would have been no good in that; but I just paid him the attention, he added, with a little air of pomposity, be- coming the future head of the house. Would he hear that you had been there? Oh, of course. Well,I dont know. Is he so ill, then ? They think he is rather in for it. I am awfully sorry for poor Blundell, broke out Dolly, after a pause. There had been another controversy at the Hall he was full of his own opinion, and burning to confide it to impartial ears. The people here are such a prejudiced lot, he continued; you wouldnt believe the way they go on about him. They have got hold of the idea that because he plays rather high, and bets a little, and and that sort of thing that he is all thats bad. The one half of them cut him. My governor wont have him at the house. Now, I dont go in with it at all. He has lots of money, and why shouldnt he do what he likes with his own? Everybody says he is as straightforward and honorable as a fellow can be; and hes the best- hearted and kindest one you can find, if hes only let alone. They say he has a temper, and that; hut who cares for a temper? Thats not what people mind. Its justhecause he has got a bad name and my governors at the bottom of it. Is he? said she, faintly. Oh, by Jove! yes. You ought to have heard how he went on just now, when he was told where I had been. Of course he wasnt going to say anything to me, said the young man, with immense dignity; it was my mother who told me afterwards. Of course he would never attempt to inter- fere with what I choose to do, continued 24 PAULINE. Dolly, secretly cherishing the remem- brance of that a;nende honorable which had been made after the first battle; of course he knows better than that. But he would as soon think of riding into the river as going over himself. My mother quite goes in with me. Does she? cried Pauline. She thinks its a shame just as I do. My mother hates to hear people run down for nothino; and when I tell her what hard lines it is for Blundell, she quite under- stands. As indeed she did, for no one was more son-ridden than was Lady Finch. Her daughters had married almost immediately upon their emancipation from the school- room; and Dolly was her youngest, her spoilt darling, her Benjamin. To him she fondly deferred on all occasions; with him she took counsel on matters whereon most wives dutifully seek advice from their lords. He dictated to her, his principal subject, with perfect ease and engaging frankness; she admired, applauded, and echoed the words. Pauline, with a great burst of gratitude for the womanly tenderness, and more, for the womanly powers of discernment which she fancied had been revealed, turned to her companion. I honor your mother, she said. Oh, well, she is awfully good, replied he, rather astonished. By the way, she wants to know when you are comm,, over to see her. You were to look at some flowers, or something, werent you? Yes, certainly. We will arrange with my aunt before you go. But what I meant was, about about what you were saying just now. It is such a cruel thing to take up false reports, especially when they are, as they nearly always are, ill-natured and Oh, you mean about Blundell, said Dolly, shrewdly. Yes, thats what I say. Its all for nothing. Well, I wont exactly say for nothing. He was an awfully wild fellow, as a young fellow; but fellows change, you know. People hark back to what he was years ago, and bring it all up against him now. But he may have changed since then. Thats what I say. Of course he may. Do you think, said Pauline, he has? Well, I dont know. I daresay. I dont know much about him. You see, when he left thats about two years ago I was at Oxford; and so,of course, I wasnt much down here, for we were always off someWhere in the summer, and at Christmas I had a lot of places to go to. My mother used to make a fuss to have me at home, so I always came down for some part of the time, and we used to meet them, there were two of them then, you know there was a brother who was drowned afterwards. They were always out with the hounds, and that was pretty much all we ever saw of them. They were always civil, and its disagreeable not to be on good terms with your neighbors. By the way, how conveniently you are placed here for people dropping in. You musnt be surprised, with a little nervous, exploring laugh, to see me sometimes. I am often passing. We shall always be glad, replied Pauline, conventionally. My aunt is rather fond of having people dropping in. She wont turn me away, then? Please ask her not, for Im coming soon. I shall ride over to Blundellsaye every day this week. No one could have been kinder than Pauline was to Dolly, after this. She thought him the nicest, the bright- est, the handsomest of boys. She smiled upon him, chatted with him, humored him in a thousand unconsciously attractive ways. She reminded him of his promise. Would he be sure to fulfil it? Would he come in to amuse them when he passed that way? They were often very dull, very stupid. They wanted waking up. People ought to see more of each other, to hear more about each other, to to avoid being wrapt up in their own interests. The words were words of wisdom, but they were curiously at variance with the look of the girl who spoke them. The restless eye,the agitated air struck Dolly, and, alas! he misinterpreted their mean- ing. Come? Of course he would come. Was he likely to forget? He would come the very next day. Miss La Sarte met him in the porch. And how is Mr. Blundell? He had forgotten to inquire. He had meant to go up that very afternoon. By Jove, he had! and he had forootten. You see, he explained apologetically, when you asked me here it all went out of my head. Here was a blow. That visit on which she had been counting suddenly changed into a penance, her envoy into an ordinary mortal. Worse than all, it was her re- quest, her renewed invitation, that, with BLUNDELLSAYE. 25 which she had sought to strengthen her hold upon him, which had wrought the mischief. Perforce she had to entertain her guest, had to listen to his prattle, force herself to find topics, and make the weary mo- ments pass. She had brought it upon herself; she would not complain in fact, she could not. Mrs. Wyndham was greatly pleased with the young man, and surveyed her niece, on his departure, with new compla- cency. You look extremely well to-day, my love. Of late you have been pale rather, if anything, too pale ; but this afternoon your cheeks have quite a color. It is well that there is no one by to suggest a reason, is it not, my dear? Charlotte, you know, Charlotte, who is so quich-szghted, and makes such very such odd remarks at times; and my sister- in-law it is just as well they were not here. I pressed them to stay, I did in- deed; but they expect some friends to- night. Who they were, I did not hear; did you? Some of their own little set, I fancy, or Selina would have been sure to say. But, as it turned out, nothing could have been more lucky. If one of Paulines emissaries turned out faithless, others served her better. At the lodge, daily inquiries were made when the doctor passed through, and the answers were reported word for word. They were simple, and invariably the same. No change. On the seventh day she herself contrived to meet the car- riage in the avenue. A few grapes for Mrs. Tyndall, and my aunt hopes she is better? They are very poor ones, but the best we have. Thank you thank you; very kind, Im sure. Mrs. Tyndall is getting on well, and no fresh attack. I wish I could say as much for the patient I have just left. Mr. Blundell? How is he? It is life or death to-day, Miss La Sarte. I shall tell you to-morrow how he is, or there will be nothing more to tell. Good morning. She crept slowly home. Pauline, my love, I really cannot allow you to walk back and forward in that damp avenue a whole afternoon. I was watching you from my room, and wonder- ing if you would ever come in. I thought of sending to you. Wetherell could have taken the grapes, or you could have left them at the lodge. Did you meet the carriage? She had met the carriage. And he seemed pleased? And how is Mrs. Tyndall? He seemed very much pleased, and Mrs. Tyndall is better. Butyou must not do it again, my love. In this weather there is nothing worse for one than moping up and down in a damp, woody place like that. You look quite white. You have got a chill already. No, no she had no chill; she was well quite well. Then do keep more to the open ground in future, persisted her aunt. And now there are one or two little things that I want you to do for me. Quite little mat- ters; they wont take you many minutes. There is this head-dress it is frightful, positively frzghtfui! Just look at that feather! Imagine it sticking out above my ear like that! And Wetherell cant see it. She has unpicked it twice already, and each time it is made up worse than before. A single touch would put it to rights. Any one with a grain of taste could do it. I could, myself, only I want to lie down and take a little rest this after- noon, that 1 may be fresh for the evening. You dont care for needlework, I know, hut this only needs taste, and your taste, Pauline, is always good. That is why I have come to you. As to the work, it will be nothing, as you see. Just to unpick this ruffleit is far too full and lay it on flat; and a touch is wanted at the side. There is something wrong, something heavy-looking about it altogether. I cant wear a mountain on my head, can I? It would look ridiculous above my little face. Then, these notes. That one is an in- vitation: thats easy; well go. But this is rather tiresome, because it is about a servant who left me sometime ago, and I dont know what character to give her. She did not suit me, but then she was ex- cellent in her way. I should be sorry if she did not get the place; but I dont think she ought to have applied to me, so long afterwards. Just let them know that, dear Pauline, and make up the best sort of character you can. Quite honest, you know, and sober; and be sure you say she had a kitchen- maid. Then this wool: I want it matched at Helbronners. Dear me! where is the wool? It was in my hand two minutes ago, and I have been nowhere but in the drawing-room and conservatory! Just 26 PAULINE. find it, love, and say I will have two skeins more, or whatever you think is wanted to finish my cushion. You know the cush- ion? It is in the work-basket, if you would like to take a peep at it. And, Pauline, one thing more. I am so glad I remembered: the plants the plants for the dining-room table; would you choose them yourself this time? Bur- rows sent in such a shabby set last dinner- party we had, that I was quite vexed. When one has the plants, you know good plants it is ridiculous. I am par- ticularly anxious about the dinner-table looking well. By the way, what do you wear to-night, my love? To-nioht? moaned the poor girl. Yes, to-night. Make yourself very bright and pretty, for there will be many eyes on the watch. Your amber crape? It would blend with my satin nicely; and you would have the head-dress ready in time. Shall it be the crape? Was it luxury such as this that Mrs. Jermyn had pictured? The head-dress is finished; the notes have been written; and the plants changed. And You dear, good creature ! cries the aunt, you shall do one more thing for me, and then you must run to dress, for it is getting near the time. It is only to find my keys, Pauline, for where they are gone I cannot imagine. They were in my hand a little while ago, and I must have them if I am to wear my pearls to-night. Have you any pearls, love? If you have, put them on. Let us be as like each other as a fair and a dark person can be. Ah! I am many years older than you, Pauline I am indeed. But then, you know, we blondes never look our ages as you bru- nettes do. We cannot look old if ~ve would. As Colonel Grafton said to me oh, you clever child, you have found the keys already! Now you shall see my pearls. But what a long face you have got to-night, my dear! I know: you want to be off to your own toilet. Run away then, and try to be down before any one comes. But the guests are already at the door. Mrs. Wyndham shrieks, It is not time It is not nearly half past seven! It is a mistake ! Some one must have arrived by acci- dent. Wetherell must fly, and find out who it is. Fly, good Wetherell, fly! It is Sir John and Lady Finch; and neither Sir John nor his watch knows what it is to go wrong in the matter of punctuality. Nor, indeed, does Sir Johns cook dare go wrong, either. It is as much as her place is worth, to have the dinner two min- utes behind the hour, by the great clock in the hall. Her master arranges his walk up and down the long drawing-room, so as to bring him to the door the moment the gong has ceased to sound ; then there is just time left for him to swoop off his lady, and reach it aoain as exit. , it is opened for their Wyndham knows nothing of this; but she does know that the Finches are not people to be treated uncourteously. She must get down somehow, before Lady Finchs wraps are disentangled, and she has joined her gentlemen in the hall. And I must go down by myself, cries the hostess, fretfully. I did hope you would have been ready, Pauline, though it is not your fault, poor dear. But I am not half dressed, and I do so dislike to be hur- ried. One moment, childdo look: is this ribbon becoming? or shall I wear the pearls alone? Untie the ribbon, Wether- ell, quick! Now, clasp the pearls! No, I dont like that I think I will have the ribbon. Run off, dear, run off, and be down as soon as ever you can! The party is assembled ere Pauline is ready. Accordingly, every eye is fixed upon her as she slowly enters, in her clouds of amber, the fairest, finest, saddest-hearted woman present. Oh, what a mockery is this glistening raiment, and the flash of these lustrous gems! How ghastly in her eyes is this bril- liantly-lit-up saloon, with its rustle, and chatter, and mirth He may be dying as she speaks ! He may be dying as she walks along the floor! He may be dying as she takes her place at the table Any one of these trivial moments of her life may be to him that supreme moment of existence when the soul passes into the visible presence of its Maker Do you think that she can eat, and drink, and smile, and lauo~h with fore her eyes? b this be- Miss La Sarte is tired, very tired; she is not hungry; her head aches. Some one says, suddenly, Poor Blundells gone by this time, I suppose! and the room becomes unbearably hot. She escapes, and rushing to her cham- ber, alone and in the dark, cries as if her heart would break. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 27 From Blackwoods Magazine. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. THE marvellous way in which Africa has been eEplored during the last twenty years is scarcely less extraordinary than the sublying fact, that a continent so great and possessing such immense resources should have been reserved, as a terra in- cognita in its central regions, for the trav- ellers of our own generation. Within a century and a half almost the whole of North America has been explored, swept over and occupied by the ex.panding races of northern Europe; South America has been occupied, in great part, by offshoots of the Latin race; and yet Africa, with not greatly inferior possibilities of develop- ment, has been reserved for its own sin- gular people and for a few adventurous explorers. It is not difficult, ho~vever, to explain how such, in the circumstances, should have been the case. The great deserts of the northern portion of Africa, its unhealthy coast-line, and thick tropical vegetation on both sides of the equator, and on both sides of the continent, to- gether with the scanty vegetation and the Kaffir tribes of its long southern horn, presented most formidable obstacles to even an acquaintance with its elevated, temperate, and productive central regions. A quarter of a century ago our maps of Africa were almost an entire blank from ten degrees of north latitude to the tropic of Capricorn, with the exception of the coast- line, the valley of the Niger, and the cen- tral northern region. In some of our maps traces remained of older knowledge and more recent Portuguese exploration. Livingstones Lake Nyassa appeared as Nassa, and Tanganyika occupied an enormous, but quite indefinite space as Lake Uniamesi ; but these maps were exceptions rather than the rule, and the most important parts of Central Africa were either left entirely blank, or were filled up with great deserts, monks Zun~, and figures of lions and dragons. There was, no doubt, plenty of ancient knowledge to have taught us better. Ptol- emy appears to have known a good deal about the geography of Central Africa and even the unadventurons Hindu had contrived to get a rough idea of the great African lake region; but somehow or other all this older information had fallen back out of sight. A better fate might have been expected for the Portu~ uese explorations, which had advanced very far into the interior of Africa, and to points which it has been an achievement, on the part of Livingstone and Cameron, to reach within the last few years; but these explorations commanded no general attention, and scarcely affected the gen- eral European knowledge of the continent. If you spoke about African exploration, the minds of the listeners at once reverted to the journeys of Bruce and Park, which had become sort of household words, though in a very different way. Bruce was scarcely believed in as a narrator of facts; but he was accepted as a sort of gigantic liar, whose achievements in that ~vay were worthy of respect. An old Scotch lady who knew him well assured us that even in the society in which he was welcome, his African stories were never believed, though the credibility of them has since been abundantly estab- lished. Parks quiet, beautiful pictures of Africa met with a different reception, and were unhesitatingly accepted, and became so popular in their abbreviated form, that few visitors to Scotland drive up the valley of the Yarrow without looking with kindly interest upon the cottage where he was born. Bruces discoveries were the more important, because he had traced up the Blue Nile to its fountains among the mountains of Abyssinia; but the course of the White Nile, the real Upper Nile, re- mained entirely unknown; and the prog- ress of exploration for many years after Parks time was confined to points in the great west shoulder of Africa accessible from the Mediterranean coast or from the coast of Guinea. Such a state of matters was incompat- ible with our modern energy and means for exploration. Some time before twenty years ago the unknown regions of Africa began again to attract attention, and va- rious attacks were made upon them from various quarters. The most important of these was, unquestionably, the expedition subsidized by the British government, of Richardson, Overweg, and Barth, which started from Tripoli in 1849. The two former of these travellers did not live to return, and an affecting account has been given of Richardson, when he was dying, lying on the sand and calling on his far- distant wife. Dr. Barths five ponderous volumes recording the results of this expe- dition are probably the dullest narrative of a great journey which has ever been pre- sented to the world. Without going con- scientiously through them, it is difficult to realize how absolutely leaden they are, and what their effect might.be upon even the strongest mind. As to heaviness they almost rise to a kind of sublimity; but the 28 TWENtY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVELb journey they describe was a very wonder quite unknown. More than one expedi- ful one, extending over twenty-four degrees tion was sent out by Mehemet Au and his of latitude from north to south, and includ- successors for the exploration of that river, ing a visit to the dangerous and then al- but they did not advance far enough to most fabulous city of Timbuctoo, and to solve, or even to throw light upon, the. Kano, the great commercial emporium great problem; and, being to a large ex- of north-central Africa. Timbuctoo had tent slave-hunting expeditions, they rather been visited before by Park, and again by complicated matters, and did not im- Major Laing; but neither of these travel- prove the prospects of future travellers. lers lived to describe it, being murdered No less than three Egyptian expeditions on their way back. Lake Tehad had been were sent up about the year 1840 ; and reached b& fore by Clapperton and Den- Roman Catholic missionaries established ham, butDr. Barth examined it thoroughly, themselves in 1849 at Gondokoro, about and by coming on it from the north, he five degrees from the equator, or in north thus. struck the route of explorers from the latitude 40 54m. 5sec., and nearly about south-west; while also, on an excursion half that distance from the northern end of into the province of Bagirmi to the south- Bakers lake, Albert Nyanza. Quite a east of Lake Tchad, he approached Dar- large number of private travellers such fur, and thus nearly struck the route of as Brun, Malzac, Rollet, Miani, and Werne explorers like Werne starting from the took advantage of the Egyptian ad- Nile valley. It was an enormous journey vances to try to push up to the sources of this ~vhich Dr. Barth accomplished, and it the White Nile; but their advance to any threw much light on Africa, but not be- important point was prevented, owing to neath the twelfth degree of north latitude. the nature of the country, the martial char- He established the important fact that the acter of the native tribes, the animosity whole of Central Africa lying between the excited by the Egyptians, and the unset- western border of Bagirmi and Timbuctoo tled state caused by slave-hunting which was neither desert~nor mountainous, but the Egyptians set in motion, and which an elevated fertile plain affording many extended far beyond the points which products; but he did not touch the most they themselves held. Captain Speke, in important and interesting region. the last chapter of his Journal of the Voyages which have been made up the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, has Niger and its eastern continuations the given a graphic description of the brutal Chadda and Binue, by Allen, Laird, Old- conduct of the Egyptians at their advanced field, and Baikie, had discovered a water- posts in the upper Nile valley, and so has way towards the heart of north-central Colonel Grant. Something must be al- Africa, but nothing more was accomplished lowed to the martial and savage charac- in that direction. Elsewhere on the west ter of the negroes in that part of Africa; coast the pestiferous forests and wild but Speke managed to pass through them, tribes confined our knowledge to an ex- and so did Sir Samuel and Lady Baker tremely narrow coast-line except where afterwards; and it is chiefly owing to the some ~reat river afforded an inlet, and in E~yptians that this door into the lake the southern regions where adventurous region remained absolutely closed, and unscientific Portuguese traders had pushed that it is even now again closed, notwith- far into the interior. The valley of the standing all the humane efforts of Sir Congo especially had attracted notice, and Samuel Baker and of Colonel Gorddn, about iSx6 Captain Tuckey had l)assed up when in the employ of the khedive, to ar- it some way beyond the great Yellala Falls, range that northern frontier. It is worthy or in all about two hundred miles from the of special notice, however, that the lake coast; but there had been no further travel region was approached so closely from in that direction, and our settlements on that quarter long a go, without being the xvest of Africa were much more de- reached, and, indeed, without the lakes voted to, and fitted for, a coast trade than being even heard of except by Brun. The interior exploration, observations of these travellers may not In other directions, however, there were have been always accurate; but there indications of progress in African travel, seems no reason to doubt that Herr Mo- The Nile, instead of the Niger and the blecher, of the Gondokoro Mission, M. Congo, began once more to excite the dArnaud, in the Egyptian employ, Werne, attention of geographers. Bruce had, and Miani, got in this direction nearly to indeed, discovered the source of the Blue the third degree of north latitude, or about Nile; but the source and corn se of the two hundred and twenty miles distant from more important White Nile remained the Victoria, and about ninety from the TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 29 Albert Nyanza, but they discovered noth- eronhas got great credit for his courage ing beyond the uninteresting points they and the amount of physical sufferings he attained. Speke, indeed, at the Geograph- endured though in these respects he ical Society, spoke of them as having got cannot, and (we doubt not) would not him- within fifty miles of the lakes; but that is self, claim any superiority to the great only a rough way Qf stating how nearly African explorers; but Dr. Krapf had one they approached to his own discoveries, experience, which was really more fright- and is evidently not intended to be a geo- ful than anything which Cameron or any graphical statement of the distance. of the other African travellers had to The source of the Nile was destined to endure except M. Maizan. On his second be reached from an entirely different quar- journey to Ukumbani, he was attacked by ter from the then almost unknown east robbers, lost all he had, was separated coast; but there, and also from the south- from his attendants and guides, and tray- ward, a good deal of preparatory explora- elled homewards alone and unarmed for tion went on before the commencement of some days till he reached a friendly tribe, the grand season of African travel. Espe- concealing himself during the day, walk- cial notice in this respect is due to the ing by night and subsisting on such raw work of Dr. Krapf, and his associates, the grain and fruits as he could stealthily pick Rev. Messrs. Rebmann and Erhardt, of up. Fancy a poor old German missionary what has been called the Mombas Mis- doing this in a country not only occupied sion a name which, for our general pur- by wild savages, but intersected by muddy pose, quite sufficiently indicates its locality. watercourses full of crocodiles and hippo- These reverend pioneers have hardly had potami, and covered with forests and thick sufficient justice done them by secular jungle full of lions, rhinoceroses, elephants, travellers: but there is no doubt that they wild buffaloes, leopards, and hyenas! did a good deal to prepare the way for the This was really enough to have turned any grand achievements which were to follow man mad; but praise and thanks be to their humbler efforts, especially in pre- God was the excellent Dr. Krapfs re- paring grammars and dictionaries of the sponse for this crowning mercy and mani- African dialects; in learning the modes festation of the divine favor; and he was of travel and exchange; in proving per- particularly pleased to find that though his sonally that it was not impossible to ad- gun was broken so as to be useless for vance into the interior some way from the firing, yet the barrels of it could be turned coast; in discovering the snow mountains, into water-bottles by corking their muzzles Kenia and Kilimandjaro; in collecting a with bits of rag cut off my trousers, vast mass of information in regard to the and that the water tasted delicious in interior; and in spreading amongst East spite of the gunpowder flavor imparted to Africans an idea of the white man, as just it by the barrels. and humane, and very different from the Mombas is the best port for starting Arab and half-caste slave-hunters. Coin- for the snowy mountains of eastern Afri- mander Cameron found a knowledge of ca; but Bagomayo, opposite Zanzibar, is Kisahueli sufficient to take him across the the point of departure for the lakes, and African continent; but it was Dr. Krapf an attempt was made in 1845 to enter that who reduced that language (besides sev- then wholly unknown region, by M. Mai- eral other African dialects) to grammar zan, a young French naval officer, who had and dictionary; and we need not say how made great preparations for the journey. arduous such a task is, with a purely He only succeeded in penetrating three spoken language and the aid of savages days march from the coast, and met with only. Dr. Krapf established himself near a dreadful fate, being seized by an African Mombas, on the east coast, about four chief Mazungera, tied up to a tree and dis- degrees south of the equator, so far back jointed, despite his groans and cries. as 1844, and he and his associates made Maizan had given no cause for this hid- long journeys into the interior. llnfor- eous barbarity, and he appears not even tunately, their geographical knowledge was to have had arms about him when he was not sufficient for original scientific obser- seized. The event was ascribed chiefly to vations, and their maps required not a lit- the jealousy of the Arab traders, who tIe correction; but still they made a worked upon the ignorance and supersti. be~inning, and, from native accounts, tions of the Africans, and to the fact that gave us information as to the existence of the unfortunate Frenchman injudiciously Lake Uniamesi or Tanganyika, which, carried articles with him such as a gilt however, they set down as of altogether knob to his tent-pole, which were sup- gigantic proportions. Commander Cam- posed to be of enormous value. His 30 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. death was certainly not an encouragement to future travellers; but it was a most useful warning, and so went some way to secure the opening up of the lake regions. Especially it taught the necessity of con- ciliating the Arabs, and of the traveller always having a revolver handy. Reck- less as the savage sometimes is of his own life, he will never attempt to seize a European who has a revolver in hand. African travel is sometimes thoughtlessly spoken of as if it were a very light and safe thing, xvhich almost any one might undertake; but events such as this which befell M. Maizan point to a very different conclusion. In East Africa alone since the death of Maizan, we have had the murder of Dr. Roscher, who made an independent discovery of Lake Nyassa nearly about the same time that Living- stone first visited it, and who was killed onhis way back to the coast; the murder of Von der Decken and his companions, who had long been travelling in the coun- try between the coast and the great snowy mountains; the murder of Mr. Thornton, the sportsman ; the suicide of Dr. Dillon, Commander Camerons companion, from the delirium of intolerable disease; the deaths of Dr Livino-stone Mr. Moffat, ~, and his nephew from disease; the loss of about half-a-dozen members of the Univer- sity Mission on the river Shir6; and the deaths, from whatever cause, of several Europeans who accompanied Mr. Stanley into Africa. Well might Colonel Chaill6 Long speak of Africas poisoned arrows and its poisoned air, and exclaim, when he started from Cairo as the chief of Colonel Gordons staff, Central Africa, with all its seductive fields of allurement to the adventurous, could not but be regarded as a bourne from which but few travellers returned, a path of glory which led but to the grave, and by an extremely un- pleasant route. While these perilous and only partially successful attempts upon Central Africa were being made from the east coast, one of the greatest of African traveliers was slowly advancing from the south, and pre- paring himself for his great work. In the employment of the London Missionary Society, Livingstone established himself, soon after his leaving En gland in 1840, in central southern Africa, about the twenty- fifth parallel of south latitude, with general instructions from his society to pay special attention to the regions lying to the north. These instructions he acted upon fully, both in letter and in spirit. He had none of the brilliant dash or the prodigious knowledge of some other explorers; but though he advanced slowly, he did so with marvellous persistence, ingratiating himself with the natives, and losing no op- portunity of acquiring the scientific and other knowledge which is required in an explorative traveller. To the last this was Dr. Livingstones style of travel; he al- ways moved slowly, allowing his reputa- tion to precede him, familiarizing himself with native customs, and creeping, as it were, from point to point. Cautiously pursuing this course, he in time achieved grand results; and probably no other Af- rican traveller (unless, perhaps, Mungo Park) ever so loved the uncomely and un- fortunate people of the dark continent. It stands to their credit that they seem in- stinctively to have felt and appreciated this affection. No other great African traveller has gone over such an extent of ground with such slender means, with so little defence, and meeting with so little dangerous opposition. When provoked beyond endurance, he reminded himself that our grandfather fell at the battle of Culloden: but the only occasions on which he even threatened with his revol- ver were when, on one of his earlier jour- neys, a chief called Kanaka attempted to take one of his attandents as a slave; and when, on one of his last journeys, he wit- nessed a brutal massacre by Arab slave- holders of unoffending villagers includ- ing women and children. Yet his courage was of the highest order; and Mr. Stan- ley was led to conclude from his demeanor when they were threatened with an attack, that he had literally no fear. Commander Cameron has mentioned that when he reached the west coast his health was drunk, to the honor of the first European who had ever succeeded in crossing tropical Africa from east to west and this is literally true; but long be- fore his day Livingstone had succeeded in crossing tropical Africa from ~vest to east, which was quite as difficult an achievement. Starting from St. Paul de Loanda, on the west coast, a considerable way north from Benguella, where Came- ron came out, Livingstone came out at the mouth of the Zambesi on the east coast, a considerable way farther south than Bagomayo, where Cameron went in. We shall afterwards point out where the lines of these two journeys intersect, and compare them with each other; but mean- while it is well to note that, so far back as the years i8~~~6, Livingstone did cross the African continent within the tropic of Capricorn; that at one point of his jour. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. ney, far in the interior, he approached within a few degree s of the equator; and that his missionary travels and researches, which were published in 1837, threw a flood of light upon the whole interior of the continent of Africa. It is almost un- necessary to say that we do not refer to this matter in order to detract in the slightest from the great achievement of Commander Cameron; but only in order to point out what the great lines of Afri- can exploration have been, and what are really the achievements which will stand the test 6f time, and obtain such immor- tal honor as human civilization has it in its power to bestow. It may thus be seen, to sum up gener- ally, how our knowledge of Central Afri- ca stood twenty years ago, when the great period of exploration began. The knowl- edge of the Greeks, the older Arabs, and the Hindus had been lost sight of. The unscientific journeys of the Portu- guese traders had attracted no attention, and established no interestino~ or b impor- tant facts. Explorations from the xvest tcoast had ceased. Barth had penetrated from the north to within twelve degrees of the equator, and established the exist- ence of an immense - fertile zone lying beyond the great desert of the Sahara. Explorations up the White Nile had near- ly approached the lake re6ion of Central Africa, but had entirely failed to reach it, or even to collect knowledge of its existenc& Explorations, attended with great dan er and difficulty, had begun on the east coast; and Livingstone had advanced far from the south ,gaining much knowledge of the interior of Africa, which at the time was commonly supposed to be occu- pied by great deserts. The great era of modern African travel commenced with the discovery of the lake rebion of Central Africa by Captain Rich- ard Burton and Captain Hanning Speke. They started from the coast of Africa op- posite Zanzibar, and discovered the great lakes Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza, the latter being more especially the dis- covery of Captain Speke, who made a sol- itary excursion to it, while his companion remained at Kazeh in Unyanyembe, col- lecting information and making prepara- tions for their return journey. It was a great exploration, looking alike at the re- sults oained and the tremendous difficul- ties in the way. As to the splendor of the results, we have only to remember that the head-waters of both the Nile and the Con- go were discovered on this expedition, for it was on it that Speke first visited Lake 3 I Victoria Nyanza; and notwithstanding Mr. Stanleys curious theory, there can be little doubt that Lake Tanganyika is the great head-water of the Congo, though Lake Bangweolo has also some claim to the distinction. We have already briefly indicated how great were the obstacles to entering Africa from the east coast how speedy and dreadful was the fate of M. Maizan, who first attempted to penetrate the interior from Bagomayo; and, if time allowed, it might be easy to show how enormous was the force of the slave-hold- ing, slave-hunting, commercial, and other interests opposed to any exploration of Africa from this quarter. And yet the most formidable source of opposition af- forded the only possible highway from this, then the only feasible, direction into the heart of Africa. The sovereignty of Zanzibar was an offshoot from that of the imaum of Muscat; and the Arabs of Zan- zibar knew about the great lakes, the paths to them, and the means of conveyance. Slave-dealers and slave-hunters as they all were, they were not all wholly corrupt, wholly vile. In the purer Arabs there was something left of the loftier feelings of the deserts of Arabia of that now al- most lost influence which contested with Charles Martel the battle of Tours, and enlightened the thick ecclesiastical gloom of the early Middle Ages of Europe with some knowledge of the elements of phys- ical science. At the time we write of there was only one European who could have turned this Arab element to account in breaking through what, at that time, appeared to be the impenetrable shell of Central Africa. This was Captain Richard Burton, who had not only wandered frequently in Sind in native disguise, but had even visited Medineh and Mecca, the sacred cities of Mohammedanism, disguised as a native- born Oriental Islamite, and was thoroughly acquainted with the language, character, and customs of the Arabs, besides pos- sessing a quite exceptional capacity for acquiring languages, and, as Mr. Win- wood Reade has remarked, an unusual combination of a most powerful brain and body. Commander Cameron who, even at this day, had such painful experience of the route to Tanganvika, On which lie lost two of his European companions, and nearly perished himself has said that Burtons Lake Regions of Central Africa is a work which, for minuteness of detail, must ever stand foremost amon ~ books of descriptive geography; ana Mr. Stanley well speaks of him as the 32 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. illustrious Burton. Captain Burton has aged to deal with some of the most pow~ the merit of having seen that Central erful and dangerous princes to be found in Africa could be best approached from the all Africa. Indeed, had Speke not pos- east coast, and of accomplishing that, sessed the most extraordinary powers for with Spekes aid, in spite of most for- dealing with savages and managing his midable difficulties, attendants, he could never have made that But the discovery of the lake region of great journey and though he was far Central Africa was not the only result of from being good at expressing his rea- Burtons expedition of 185759. He has, sons for the faith that was in him, he had unquestionably, the glory of having dis- an immense power of forming right con- covered the lake region, in so far as it was clusions; and, in this case, these conclu- a discovery of modern times, and not a sions have all been firmly established by mere re-echo of ancient knowlecbre and of later exploration. Victoria Nyanza is the unscientific travels of Arab and Portu- one immense lake, and not a series of guese slave-hunters; just as Speke has small lakes and overflooded swamps, as at the glory of being the modern discoverer one time there was some reason to sus- of the source of the Nile. The Egyptian pect. Mr. Stanleys extensive voyages expeditions, and the efforts of private upon Victoria Nyanza have set that ques- travellers up the Nile valley, had entirely tion at rest, though it is true there are failed to reach this lake region, or even to separate small lakes in its immediate bring word of it. Dr. Livingstone did not vicinity. Victoria Nyanza is the great dis~over Lake Nyassa until the end of reservoir, the head-water, of the Nile, 1858; and Dr. Roscher, who had pro- thoubh the river from it enters the north- ceeded almost directly to it from the east em extremity of Lake Albert Nyanza, coast, discovered it a little after. The which Speke first in a manner discov- Mombas missionaries got extremely vague ered, and which Baker first visited, and accounts of the lake region; but they did though the small lake Alexandra, which not even approach it, being cut off from Mr. Stanley claims to have discovered, is it, even at their furthest points of explora- a feeder of the great Victoria. There is tion (which were not very far in the inte- now no manner of doubt that Lake Vic- nor) by great snowy mountains. toria Nyanza is an enormous lake, the Spekes journey in t8~8 from Kazeb to largest in Africa, and the great source and Lake Victori a Nyanza, opened up an en- head-water of the Nile; but, as re,ards tirely new district of Africa, and, suc- Speke, that is only the verification of a ceeded as it was by his longer exploration special great discovery, and proof of his in company with Captain, now Colonel, truthfulness as a traveller and of his won- Grant, finally resolved the problem of the derful geographical judgment and instinct. sources of the Nile. On reaching this Even had it turned out otherwise, if Tan- new lake, it flashed upon him, almost by ganyika or Bangweolo had turned out to inspiration, that he had reached the great be the head-water of the Nile, Captain source of the Nile; but the inspiration Speke would still have had the great glory was that of a geographer and traveller of having been the first to pass from East who understood the country over which he Africa near the equator to the sources of. had passed, and saw that he was on a new the Nile, and frQm thence down its valley watershed. The mere journey itself into Egypt, or from the southern to the proved that he possessed explorative pow- northern hemisphere within the watershed ers of the highest order, and that, thou~h of the Nile. We could not desire all the deficieht in some respects, he was able, great African travellers to be exactly like like Drydens Alexander, to conquer men one another, and in order that they should if not their lan~,uages. His powers in differ, it is necessarily implied that the these respects were displayed in a still one should have powers and advantages more splendid manner, when, in his breat which the other does not possess, or, to journey of 18606163, in company with put it otherwise, that the one shall have Grant, he returned to Lake Victoria Ny- defects which the other has not. The anza, travelled round its western shore, discoverer of the source of the Nile was saw the White Nile issuing from its north- very different from his great compeers; em extremity, learned of the existence of he had greater dash and simple direct Lake Albert Nyanza under the name of power than any of them: and no finer the Luta Nsige, and pursued the valley of proof can be found of the impression the Nile. untilbe triumPhantly emerbed at which he made in Central Africa, than Gondokoro, after having passed through the fact that every one who has since gone a vast extent of new country, and man- up to Lake Victoria Nyanza Baker, TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 33 L~nant, Long, and Stanley has been welcomed by the savage chiefs on the ground of being Speekys brother. In his discovery of the source of the Nile, Speke had a most able coadjutor in Captain James Augustus Grant, an Indian officer of genuine and unpretentious char- acter, but singularly well fitted for the work of exploration which devolved upon him. His reputation, in that respect, may not have had full justice done to it by a portion of the public, owing to the den- erous manner in which he has kept him- self in the background, giving Speke all the praise of having discovered the source of the Nile; but his own share in the en- terprise was no small one. During a large portion of this arduous journey he was separated from his companion, having to bring up a separate portion of the expe dition, being laid up by severe illness, or being sent on in front while Speke made a detour. Even when entirely lame he man- agedt o push on alone, and sho.wed great tact in managing the savage and greedy chiefs with whom he had to deal. His Walk across Africa, in which he has recorded his personal experiences of this great journey, is a most interesting vol- ume, full of information as to the new and strange people whose countries he trav- ersed; and as to the botany and meteorol- ogy of these countries it is especially valuable , giving us an intelligible account of the products of Central Africa, and the modes of living of the people. In that respect he is superior to every other Afri- can traveller. In reading his unpretend- ing but most valuable pages, we are en- abled really to understand the life of the people whom he describes, the character of their country, and the conditions of their existence. The great supplement to Captain Spekes discoveries was afforded by Sir Samuel Baker, who, along with his heroic wife, in 1863 moved up the Upper Nile route which Speke had just descended, though not altogether on the same line; passed safely through the territories of several savage chiefs; struck the great lake Luta Nsige, which he named Albert Nyanza; coasted along it for sixty miles, and discovered that the Nile issuing from Victoria Nyanza falls into it, close to its northern extremity, and issues out of it towards the north. This was a great gain to African geography, and explained some curious matters which Speke did not see his way to understand, but upon which he was careful to avoid premature theorizing. Bakers journey was also very interesting LiVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 939 as proving that, under certain protecting conditions, even a European lady might penetrate into the centre of Africa. His succeeding journeys, when he was made a pasha, and appointed governor of the, Upper Nile province of Egypt, have added little to our geographical knowledge of Africa, though a good deal to our ethno- logical. They have aided in dispelling some illusions both as to the exalted char- acter of the savage negro and as to the real meaning and effects of the philan- thropic efforts of the Egyptian govern- ment to occupy and civilize new provinces. Some discredit and great distrust were brought upon Sir Samuel Baker by his doings as an Egyptian pasha; but the apparently similar results of Colonel Gor- dons pashaship show that the blame rests not so much directly upon the man as upon the position in which the man places him- self. Meanwhile, Livingstone had not been idle. The account of his travels, pub- lished in 1857, had brought him so much repute in England, that in 1858 he re- turned to the Zambesi as her Majestys consul to the Portuguese province there. Ample funds had been placed at his dis- posal for further exploration, a river steamboat, and European associates. In this way Livingstone did not distinguish himself so much as he had done before, and did afterwards, as a solitary traveller. Perhaps he expected too much from his companions, who could hardly be expected to equal him in explorative and African enthusiasm ; perhaps they were not well selected for the particular purpose. But in the end of i8~8 the veteran traveller, striking to the north of the Zambesi, dis- covered the minor lake Shirwa, and from that proceeded a few miles farther north to the great lake Nyassa, which had not been visited except by Portuguese traders. As we have mentioned, Dr. Roscher, a German savant who had for some time been working away as an explorer in East Africa, made an independent discovery of Nyasa very shortly after this, starting from the coast nearly opposite Zanzibar, thus pursuing a very difficult and danger- ous course; but, unfortunately, he was murdered on his return journey, and the narrative of his exploration has been almost entirely lost. Colonel Grant, be- fore starting on his great journey, had the satisfaction of witnessing, and almost directing, the execution of two of Rosch- ers murderers. These discoveries of Burton, Speke, Baker, and Livingstone completed, speak- 34 ing generally, our knowledge of the great African lakes which drain into the Medi- terranean and the Indian Ocean. They had also disclosed the existence of Lake Tanganyika, which, there is every proba- bility, is the head-water of the Congo, which drains into the Atlantic, and is part of a lacustrine region that lies between the ~vatersheds of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and which, considering where its outlet is, lies wonderfully close to the east coast of Africa. There re- mained to be accomplished the further examination of this central lake region, which has since been achieved by Dr. Livingstone and Commander Cameron. The interest thus excited in Africa led to some small explorations on the west coast, interesting enough in themselves, but of no great importance, and throwing little or no light on the interior of the con- tinent. M. Paul du Chaillu examined regions not far from the coast, between the equator and the Congo, which were chiefly remarkable as being the habitat of the gorilla, which was supposed at one time to supply the missing link between man and the monkey. Captain Burton availed himself of his position as British consul at Fernando Po, to run over the whole west coast of Africa, touching off its peculiarities, and those of its people, in various books, with his extraordinary knowledge, and in his usual sardonic man- ner. He explored the Cameroons Moun- tain, ~vent to Abeokuta, was commissioner to Dahomey, visited the gorilla country, ascended the Congo up to the Yellala Falls, and gathered an immense mass of interesting information in regard to West Africa, but seems to have made no attempt to attack the interior of the continent from that side. Mr. Winwood Reade, also, paid two visits to western Africa, and presented the English public with many very curious facts and graphic de- scriptions. Sir Garnet Wolseleys little war, and advance upon Coomassie, also did something to direct attention to that part of the world. The advance, however, in regard to West Africa, was not so much in the way of new exploration as in that of bringing the skill of trained ob- servers and accomplished lit6!rateurs to bear on the fauna of the country, includ- mb the aboriginal negro. Hitherto it can hardly be said that the centre of Africa has been reached from the portion of the west coast most contiguous to it. Them~e has been no exploration to speak of from that line, so great are the difficulties, and chiefly the climatic difficulties, though it is evident that the most formidable of these latter extend only a short way in- land. It is only south of the Congo that we come upon a coast-land which does not present almost impenetrable forests and a deadly miasma. Livingstone and the Portuguese who entered, or rather ap- proached, Central Africa from the west coast, had always to avoid the climatic, though not the geographic, tropical region, until they got far inland upon the elevated central plateau. In pointing out what had now been achieved, we have rather anticipated not so much actual results as the verification of these results. There still remained a reasonable doubt as to whether Tan- ganyika might not be the head source of the Nile; as to whether, on the contrary, it drained into Lake Nyassa; as to whether it drained anywhere at all; and, in general, as to the whole water-system of Central Africa. In order to solve these problems and continue his gre at system (for such it might be called) Dr. Livingsto ne again entered Africa, and this time alone, in i866. His funds were rather inadequate for his purpose, and would have been wholly inadequate but for mooo which were subscribed for him, at the last mo- ment, by the citizens of Bombay, from which place he proceeded to the east coast of Africa. From this his last and grand- est exploration, which extended over nearly seven years Dr. Livingstone was fated never to return; but it was a splen- did achievement, and promises eventually to be of incalculable importance to Africa. Dr. Livingstone started by a new route for Lake Nyassa, leaving the east coast a little north of the mouth of the Rovuma River, and about the tenth parallel of south latitude; and he desired to have at once struck the north end of Lake Nyassa; but the state of the country, desolated by slave-hunting carried on under the indirect (though, no doubt, as regards the home government, the unconscious) support of Portuguese authority, found him drawn towards the south, and compelled him to turn on his old tracks and go round the south end of Nyassa. This was a great disappointment to him; but it led him into regions where his explorative powers could be turned to better account than if he had at once struck the north end of Nyassa, turned immediately on Tanganyika, and followed out his intense desire of examin- ing the sources of the Nile, which had already been determined sufficiently for all immediate purposes. The result of this detour was that Livingstone struck upon TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. Lake Bangweolo, or Bemba, the river Lua- laba, and the great la custrine region which lies to the west of Tanganyika, a ndalong with that lake constitute the head-waters of the Congo the great highway into the centre of Africa. We need say little about the further journeyings of this great trav- eller, of the vast extent of unknown re- gions which he explored, of the uncer- tainty which for so long hung over his fate, of his relief by Mr. Stanley when his for- tunes were at the lowest, and when, sup- posing himself to have been forgotten and forsaken by the civilized world, he seems to have quietly made up his mind to sit still and die in Ujiji. XVhat a wonderful lifting of the clouds, what a wonderful change in the dreary, sad outlook it must have been, when Mr. Stanley burst in upon him with news that he was still valued, still cared for, and that American enter- prise had come to aid and encourage him! On this occasion even the fighting reporter becomes pious, recognizes the hand of an overruling Providence, and almost rivals the simple Suabian theology of Dr. Krapf. A hundred chances might have prevent- ed Mr. Stanley from meeting Dr. Living- stone he had no idea where Livings~one was until he almost stumbled upon him; he went straight on blindly, merely follow- ing (with certain necessai-y detours) the route, which had been twice traversed be- fore, from the coast to Lake Tanganyika; yet he xvent direct to his aim like an arrow from its bow, which, however, was only an incidental achievement, and is hardly a warrant for his wandering about Africa for unnumbered years, groping into the creeks of lakes and civilizing the negroes by means of explosive shells. While we can sympathize with Living- stone when he was relieved by Mr. Stan- ley, and with Stanley when he relieved Livingst one, we cannot but feel regret that the great, calm, unpretendin~ African traveller did not, in his last days, know the full value of his explorations. Livingstone had not even the consolation of Moses of seeing the promised land toward which he had wandered and endured for thirty years. In these his last explorations the idea occupied his mind that he was dis- covering the ultimate sources of the Nile, the Fountains of Herodotus, and, in gen eral, something new and decisive in regard to the old father of floods. It will be in the recollection of all how painful to him was the suspicion that he might be really working at the sources of the Con- go, and not at those of the glorious old Nile; and the homely way in which he 35 expressed his dislike at the idea of runnin the risk of becoming black mans meat for anything less, geographically speaking, than the sources of the Nile. It was, no doubt, one of those illusions which keep men up to their work, and so was one of those tricks of nature which Schopenhauer has so severely stigmatized; but it was hardly to be expected in so good and sen- sible a man. However, there it was; and in the painful state of uncertainty which thus arose Livingstone died, on the south- ern shore of his own lake, Bangweolo, his last thoughts and prayers being for the dark continent which he so much loved. What a consolation would it have been for him had he perceived that his discovery of the sources of the Congo was really a far more important matter than anything he could have done in regard to the sources of the Nile, and ~vas the commencement of opening up a highway for civilization into the heart of Africa! While Livingstone was thus completing his great life-work, another intrepid ex- plorer was working towards the sources of the Congo, and visiting an entirely new region of Africa. Dr. Georg Schweinfurth, the German bot-anist, supported by the Berlin Humboldt Institution of Natural Philosophy and Travels, turned his atten- tion to the equatorial districts traversed by the western affluents of the Upper Nile. Werne and others had done something in that direction; but Schweinfurth, in his expedition of 186870, advanced far beyond these travellers, and entered upon what, in every sense, was entirely virgin ground. Keeping always to the westward of the Nile, and advancing beyond the watershed of its tributaries to rivers which either join the Conbo or drain into Lake Tchad, he got to a parallel of latitude nearly cor- responding with the northern end of Lake Albert Nyanza. He was well entitled to call the record of his travels The Heart of Africa, because he really reached the heart of the African continent as no one has done either before or since. In the before unknown kingdom of Monbuttoo, which was his farthest point of exploration, Schweinfurth was to the xvest of the great lake system of Central Africa, and thus advanced into that vast unknown region which lies directly between it and the xvest coast. He was fortun~ te in hitting upon a region and a time when he had the aid of Egyptian traders suiting themselves to the necessities and wants of African chiefs, without everything having been thrown into confusion by the conquering ambition of the Egyptian government on 36 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. the one hand, and its attempt, on the other, to meet the European demand for putting down the slave-trade. Something, also, may be granted to Dr. Schweinfurths reputation as a botanist, which was a particularly harmless one, and was very gratifying to the quid;zuncs of that portion of Africa who are not less bent than th& similar class of men in civilized countries to find a satisfactory explanation of any- thing which appears to them extraordinary. Dr. Schweinfurths habit of going in to the jungle, examining leaves, and pulling up plants, while his negro attendants took every opportunity of having a sleep, was very naturally explained by the supposi- tion (as he had come from ye etationless regions, of which the negroes had some idea from the few of their number who had seen the sandy deserts of Nubia) that he was an enormous and abnormal eater of leaves. The Niam-Niam, and the strange Negro-Semitic people of Monbut- too, could quite sympathize with this weak- ness. They themselves were cannibals, and were quite conscious that their weak- ness in that respect was looked upon with a pardonable disgust by the Egyptian traders, by the Nubian soldiers, and by some surrounding tribes accompanying these traders. Even Munza, the aristo- cratic and really self-contained king of Monbuttoo, who, according to rumor, required a young child every day to supply him with tender food, acknowledged that he kept anthropophagism in the back- ground when he was visited by Dr. Schweinfurth. Colonel Long also mentions that, when he made a later visit to the N iam-N iam, which Schweinfurth passed through on his way to Monbuttoo, his Niam-Niam auxiliaries, after a battle with an opposing tribe, had the delicacy to encamp some distance off in order to carry out their culinary operations. It may thus be understood how Dr. Schweinfurths supposed weakness for the vegetable king- dorn was quite a passport of protection for him. It was an abnormal appetite to be sympathized with; and probably was largely availed of by all his attendants for his protection and for their own. Though they are cannibals, like the Fans of the west coast, whom they greatly resemble, the Niam-Niam and the people of Monbuttoo appear to be out of sight the most civilized and humane of the prim- itive savage tribes of Africa; and this goes to support the idea that cannibalism, like slavery, is one of the means which lead up to civilization. It can easily be understood how anthropophagism may give an exceptional advantage to a savage or semi-savage tribe, by increasing the supply of cheap food and by decreasing the number of unproductive people. It is interesting to notice thatamong the Niam- Niam and Monbuttoos, human fat seems to occupy a place very similar to that which Gdnsefett does in German cookery; and that persons who find themselves get- ting corpulent in that region become un- easy and alarmed for their own safety, which must be a very powerful incentive to keeping up muscular vigor with conse- quent health and strength. This is very horrible to contemplate: but modern scien- tific observation has to do with facts, not fictions; and there are many things much more revolting and much more dreadful involved in the basis and conditions of sentient existence in so far as we are ac- quainted with it. Geographically, Dr. Schweinfurth did not determine the most important problem which he had to deal with namely, whether the rivers he came across drained into the Congo or into Lake Tchad. One of them at least, supposed to be the Welle, was a very large stream. It flowed west- w~d, and, there could be little doubt, took its rise in the Blue Mountains, rising to the west of Bakers lake, Albert Nyanza. In his explorations, Dr. Schweinfurth approached Barths explorations from the north-west ; and though his book is inter- esting, it is, unfortunately, rather heavy, confused, not very well put together, far too long, and is wanting in that subordina- tion of particulars to generals which even the ordinary German scientific mind is usually so well able to supply. We may now turn to the explorations in the lake regions which have been lately made from the Nile valley by Colonel Gordons officers, in the employ of the khedive of Egypt. In i874, Colonel Chaill6 Lon~, the chief of Gordons staff, advanced from Gondokoro to Lake Victoria Nyanza, paying a visit to King Mtesa, whom Speke first introduced to the civil- ized world. Colonel Long suffered much from climate, as well as from the savage opposition of native tribes, and he writes of the country and of its people in the most condemnatory manner; but he does not seem to have had a sufficient ell/ourage, and he too pointedly brings out the moral that Central Africa is a place fitted only for native Egyptian troops. On by far the greater part of his short excursion T)r. Schweinfurth enjoyed perfect health, and Speke and Grant did not find the rainy climate of the lake regions tobe at TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 37 all so bad as it has been represented by Colonel Long. The contributions to geography afforded by the latter traveller are, that he personally determined a very small portion of the Niles course between the great lakes and Gondokoro the por- tion between Urondogani and Mrooli which neither Speke nor Baker had gone over; and that he discovered, on that line, an insignificant body of water, about twenty miles long, which he has called Lake Ibrahim, which is about north lat- itude 10 30111., and which, he seems to think, gives him a claim to be considered one of the discoverers of the Nile sources. He claims to have been the first explorer of the whole portion of the Nile between Urondogani and Kamma Falls; but Speke had gone over the part between Mrooli and the Falls. Colonel Long also made an excursion to the west of the Nile into the country of the Niam-Niam; but he has added little to the information which Schweinfurth had given us before in regard to these (for Africa) really refined canni- bals. The most extraordinary thing about his expedition is, that in summing up his results he claims as one of them ( Central Africa: Naked Truths of Naked Peo- ple, p. 306) that MTsd (Mtesa), king of Ugunda, had been visited, and the proud African monarch made a willing subject; and his country, rich in ivory, and popu- lous, created the southern limit of Egypt. But when we turn to his account of his interviews with the king we find nothing whatever to justify such a conclusion, but something quite the contrary. He says nothing whatever of having broached the subject of submission to Egypt to King Mtesa; and the probability is, that had he done so he would have been immediately beheaded. According even to his own account, the speech he made (in Arabic) to Mtesa (p. io6) was as follows: 0 MTs6, great kinr of Africa, I have come in the~ name of the great sultan at Cairo to present you his gracious salutations. The world has heard of a great African king, and my august sovereign, in sending me to him, wishes me thus to express his kindly friendship and interest for one for whom he wishes only continued health and greatness. This is quite incompat- ible with the assumption of having added this particular king to the list of Egyptian tributaries; and it is absurd to suppose that a powerful and proud African poten- tate, who had never bowed to a superior, would consent to, or for a moment enter- tain, such a proposal, made by a half-dead Egyptian officer, accompanied by a couple of soldiers. Yet it is noticeable that for this achievement the khedive paid Colonel Long the most flattering compliments, and gave him promotion and decorations. Another expedition to Lake Victoria Nyanza was made in 1875 by M. Ernest Linant, also one of Gordons officers, who met Mr. Stanley at the court of Mtesa, and brought back letters from that trav- eller; but he does not seem himself to have obtained any new geographical re- sults, and on his return he was massacred, along with thirty-six soldiers, actually within sight of Colonel Gordons head- quarters, and new capital of the l)rOvince, at Bedden, only fifteen miles distant from Gondokoro, which does not say much for the progress which had then been made in pacifying the country. After punishing the tribe guilty of this act, Colonel Gor- don himself advanced as far as Mrooli, and attacked the chief Keba Rega, who had always shown himself hostile to the Egyptians. The result of this was that as officially stated by Cherif Pasha, the Egyptian foreign minister a rival of Keba Rega a ~t6 appel6 ci ml succc~der comme reprcfsentant die gouvernement dcc khe~dive. Keba Rega is better known as Kamrasi, who behaved so badly to Speke, and wanted Lady Baker to be left with him; so it is gratifying to learn that he has at last been cast out on the cold world: but this does not justify the assumption that Mtesa is a vassal, and that the whole lake region has been annexed by a power itself tributary, insolvent, which manages its old territory so ill, and which uses one or two high-class Englishmen, such as Baker and Gordon, as mere warming-pans for itself and its negroid officers. Mili- tary posts have also been established by Colonel Gordon (though apparently not personally) at Urondogani, at a spot not far from the Ripon Falls and Lake Vic- toria Nyanza, and at Makungo, on the shore of Lake Albert Nyanza, near the mouth of the Somerset River. Certainly Colonel Gordon has not been idle; and Cherif Pasha, in his summing up of tile results which Gordon has achieved, goes on to make the following remarkable state- ment: Ainsi est accomplie lannexion ci tEgyj5te de tons les territoires sis ace/our des grands lacs Victoria et Albert, qcii, ecvec icier aftinecits ci le fleceve Somerset, ocevrent ci la navcgation nil vaste champ de4/orations qece Gordon Pasha~r~are Jeesquci ~re!sent. This is one of the most gigantic annexations on record, even though the most of it as yet has been done only by stroke of pen. If some nations 38 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. are now afraid to annex the smallest por- tion of territory, it is evident that some other nations can still do huge. convey- ances of that kind. Colonel Gordon has left that portion of Egyptian territory, and, so far as we are aware, there are no Englishmen now employed by Egypt in and near that African lake region which Englishmen have discovered, and which, it would even seem, Englishmen have con- quered. The Romans were advised not to attempt the Ethiopic portion of the Nile valley, and they drew back from the enter- prise: but it has been undertaken in our day by the great sultan at Cairo. Signor Gessi, another of Gordons agents , succeeded last year in achieving a performance of the same kind in regard to Albert Nyanza. He got up to that lake with a small steamer and two iron life- boats, and established a so-called military station at Makungo, as we have already mentioned. On this occasion, accordin~ to Colonel Gordons telegram to the Geo- graphical Society, they hoisted the E~yp- tian flag on the banks of Lake Albert, in the presence of the officers, soldiers, and natives; and all the assemblage prayed for long life and continued victory for his Highness the Khedive, and the princes his sons, and all Ikose regions and t/?eir inhabitants came under the rule of the .khedzval government. This style of an- nouncement is quite Scriptural in its brevity, reminding one of the dealings of Israel with the Canaanites; and there is a fine largeness of grasp in the phrase all those regions and their inhabitants. Signor Gessi, however, did something for geography in this rebion which he so summarily annexed. He managed, in his iron life-boats (we do not hear anything about the steamer), to reach the northern end of Albert Nyanza, and determined it to be a lake one hundred and ninety miles in length, with an average breadth of fifty miles, but was not able to make an entire circuit of the shore. At the south end the water is very shallow, and the lake is succeeded by great forests. On the ~vest there are high mountains and great forests, presenting al most impenetrable obstacles to travellers. On the east a river empties itself into the lake; but its current is so strong that navigation of it would be dangerous. There is not much new information here; but Bakers ac- counts are confirmed as well as a little added to, and it is interesting to notice that, as Colonel Gordon remarks, Speke, from native report, put Lake Albert in nearly the same position, and about the same size, as Gessi found it. The rapid river coming from the east is rather a cu- rious phenomenon, for it cannot be the Somerset Nile which is referred to. We must not altogether pass over the independent travels, for they can hardly as yet be called fresh explorations, of Mr. Henry Stanley. That gentlemans discov- ery of Livingstone brought him so much efelat with a large portion of the public that he was sent back into Central Africa, supported by the combined funds of a New York and a London newspaper. He was thus enabled to take an English-built boat from Zanzibar to Victoria Nyanza, and he made a detailed survey of that lake, fully supporting Spekes estimate of its magnitude and importance. M. Linant met him at the court of Mtesa, in Uganda, where he was very well received by that king, whom he claims to have half con- verted to Christianity. Mr. Stanleys own Christianity appears to be of a rather mar- tial order. On his journey to Lake Vic- toria, and when navigating that great in- land sea, he had many severe conflicts with the natives, killing and wounding great numbers of them by aid of our mod- ern firearms. Even according to his own showing (and he is not likely to be an un- favorable reporter of his own conduct) he exercised quite unnecessary severity in dealing with the people of the country, and has done almost as much as the Egyptians to make the neighborhood of Victoria Nyanza most dangerous for future trav- ellers. Mr. Stanley, like Colonel Long with Lake Ibrahim, also claims to be a discov- erer of the sources of the Nile. He has discovered an Alexandra Nile, and a small lake on a higher level than the great Victoria Nyanza, which smaller body of water he proposes to call Lake Alexan- dra, in honor of the Princess of Wales. We know about the Blue Nile and the White Nile, and even the Somerset Nile and the -Giraffe Nile may be~ allowed to pass; but the line must be drawn some- where, otherwise we shall have as many Niles as there are streams running into the Nyanza lakes. This Alexandra Nile was crossed by Speke and Grant when they were journeying round Lake Victoria, and they call it the Kitangule; but it did not seem to strike them as a very important though a noticeable river. Mr. Stanley does not appear even to have reached this new lake; and it is from native information and the lie of the countr~~ that he sets it down in his rough map, which was received in this country a TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 39 few weeks ago, as about forty miles long to some misrepresentation of Living- and thirty in breadth. This is far too stones wishes, or some misconception of sensational geography, and the name of them, Lieutenant Dawson withdrew from the Kitangule riyer and lake had better any attempt to carry out the object of the be retained, after the example of the first expedition, and his example was after- discoverers of the river, wards followed by its succeeding leaders, It was expected that, after his examina- Lieutenant Henn and Mr. New. This tion of the above-mentioned lake, Mr. was extremely unfortunate and provoking, Stanley, who was at Mtesas in 1875, because Dr. Livingstone continued to be would have taken his boat over to the in need of aid, as his failing health, and Albert Nyanza and explored that partially his death soon after, abundantly proved; unknown lake. This was clearly the most and because the expedition had been interesting field of exploration lefore him, fitted out in a very thorough manner at and it was even said that he was going to great expense. To repair this fiasco a push his perilous way from that latter lake second expedition was despatched from into the unknown regions lying to the London in the end of 1872, under Licuten- west of it, to determine the course of the ant Cameron of the Royal Navy, who was Congo, and to emerge triumphantly at the a novice in inland African travel, but who west coast. Instead of doing so, however, had acclimatized himself by three years of Mr. Stanley, for reasons which do not surveying work on the east coast of Africa, appear, returned to his old friend, Lake and had acquired a thorough knowledge Tanganyika, which he had already par- of the Kisahueli language, which, of all tially navigated in c ingstone, and omPany with Dr. Liv- the African dialects, is the most useful to already better the traveller moving to the centre of the known to us than any of the other great continent from the east coast, and which African lakes, thanks to the explorations Livingstone had found of essential service of Burton and Speke, Livingstone and almost wherever he went. Cameron was Commander Cameron. Here the bold accompanied from the outset by an old navigator, from his letters just received, friend, Dr. XV. E. Dillon, R. N.; and he claims to have made another great dis- was afterwards joined, as volunteers, by covery, and one even more wondcrful than Lieutenant Murphy, R. N., and Mr. Rob- that of Lake Alexandra; but we shall deal ert Moffat, a nephew of Livingstone, who with that in connection with Commander had sold off his inheritance in Natal, and Camerons discoveries. intended to devote all he possessed to the Leaving Mr. Stanley to continue his assistance of his great relative. travels, and just noticing the ascent, in Starting from Bagomayo, opposite Zan- 1871, by the Rev. Mr. New of the Mombas zibar, on the usual route for Lake Tan- Mission, of the great mountain Kilimand- ga nyika, this expedition met with even jaro, which had before been reached more than the usual difficulties and cli- (though not ascended to the snow-line) by matic dangers, and soon was deprived of Baron von der Decken, we now come to three out of its four Englishmen. Poor the last great African exploration that Moffat died of fever close to the coast, of Commander Cameron. This great almost at the same time as his uncle ex- journey has been fully described in pired by Lake Bangweolo. The expenses Camerons work which has just been pub- of the route were found to have so greatly lished, entitled Across Africa; and, increased beyond what they were when alike from the extent, danger, and novelty Burton and Speke first traversed it, that of the journey and the results achieved, it Cameron could get only twenty natives for gives him a place among the greater Afri- a doti where Burton got sixty-four. Lieu- can explorers, such as Bruce, Park, Barth, tenant Cameron had the advantage of hay- Burton, Speke, Grant, and Livingstone. ing with him the experienced Bombay, The circumstances in which Coin- a Seedy who had been in responsible p9si- mander Cameron started were peculiar, tions on all the three pieceding~ expedi- and must be in the remembrance of many tions into the lake region from the east readers. The first Livingstone Search coast; but we are sorry to observe that Expedition from England was sent out in this distinguished traveller had not im- 1872 under the command of Lieutenant proved with years and renown. Burton Dawson, and proved a great disappoint- had given him the highest character for ment; for, ere it had well started from the honesty, even saying in his sardonic way, east coast of Africa, Mr. Stanley met it of a distinguished British officer and con- with the news that he had already seen sul, that Bombays honest black face ap- and relieved Dr. Livingstone; and owing I peared beautiful by comparison. Speke 40 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. and Grant found him very useful on their great journey, and bestowed on him high praise, though they also pointed out his defects; but Stanley suffered some loss from relying on his trustworthiness, and Cameron found him all but useless, and was much provoked by his indifference and insolence. Something of the same falling off is often visible in Alpine guides, English butlers, and many other classes qf people who are not negroes; nor is it only in Africa that the ndt unreasonable idea prevails that when a man becomes unfit for the work which has gained his reputation, his experience and past labors should elevate him into an easier position. On reaching his first great stage in Unyanyembe, about four hundred and fifty miles from the coast, Lieutenant Cameron was most kindly received by Said ibn Salim, the governor of the Arab settlement, ~vho had accompanied Burton, and Speke and Grant, on a portion of their journeys, and who, we are glad to learn, cherished an affectionate memory for his former masters, and was very kind to us for their sakes; not only lending the house, but giving us a supply of milk morning and evening, and constantly send- ing presents of fowls, eggs, and goats. In this unhealthy place they were detained for several months, owing to the difficulty of obtaining porters, and from the direct route to Ujiji being closed by Mirambo, a native chief, who had formerly been a great friend of the Arab traders, and had shown much generosity in giving them credit when in difficulties, but had been turned into a bitter enemy by their repudia- tion of their engagements. Commander Cameron writes of this chief as if he were a new phenomenon; but Mr. Stanley had before described the position of Mi- rambo, and the unsettled state into which he had thrown the country. By aiding the Arabs in fighting Mirambo, Stanley committed a great and uncalled-for mis- take. It identified white travellers with Arab crimes. The Arabs, or half-castes, whom he joined for this purpose, deserted him at a critical moment, occasioned the death of some 9f his people, and nearly caused him to lose his own life. The sufferings endured by all the mem- bers of the expedition in this region show that previous accounts of the effects of its fever were not at all exaggerated; and they had also the misery of being nearly blinded by ophthalmia. When in this wretched condition, a letter arrived from Livingstones servant, Jacob Wainwright, announcing the doctors death, and that he and Chumah and Susi were close at hand with the dead body. A few days after the body arrived, and it remained to be determined what was to be done with the expedition. Lieutenant Murphy re- signed his position, and announced his determination of returning to the east coast, on the ground that the work of the expedition was completed. Dillon was desirous to go on; but he was so ill that he also resolved to return. Cameron at this time was nearly blind with ophthal- mia, almost unable to walk from pains in his back; and fever, which was still hang- ing about him, had ieduced him to a skel- eton, and to a weight little over seven stone. Nevertheless, in these desperate circumstances, he determined to go on, in order to secure a box of books which Liv- ingstone had left at Ujiji and had re- ferred to anxiously with his dying breath, and also to follow up the great travellers explorations. It was a heroic determina- tion, and was justified by the splendid result. He had a terrible warning imme- diately after starting; but even that did not deter him. He had only started when he learned that Dillon had destroyed him- self; and he made the next march in an almost unconscious state. Stron must have been the internal impulse which drov.e him across Africa. For the next two years Cameron was alone, so far as Europeans were concerned, and for the most part upon entirely new ground. On reaching Tanganyika he set to work to sail round that mysterious lake, and did so round its larger half that is to say, from Ujiji, on its east coast and on the fifth parallel of south latitude, to the southern end of the lake, and up the west coast to a point not far from opposite Ujiji. Burton and Speke had left that portion of the lake almost unexamined, and Livingstone had gone round the greater portion of it, but chiefly by land, so that Camerons was really the first sur- vey of the larger part of the ake upon the lake itself. Of much interesting information which Cameron gathered in regard to Tangan- yika, we shall only refer to his discovery of its outlet. This question as to an out- let had caused a great deal of curious sur- mise. When Burton and Speke visited its northern end they came to the conclu- sion that the river Lusize was an affluent, but they could not sufficiently determine the point; and afterwards Burton inclined to the opinion that it was an effluent, and connected Tanganyika with the Nile~ That idea was disproved by the examina TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 4 tion of the Rusize in 1871; but then Liv- ingstone found that the streams ran into it at the south end also, so that it had no connection with Lake Nyanza. No stream, it was well known, issued from its eastern side, towards the Indian Ocean; and Liv- ingstone sought, entirely without success, to find any effluent on its western side. Hence he inclined to the opinion that there must he a subterranean outlet for this immense lake, connecting it with the Lualaba River and series of lakes, which he believed to be the headquarters of the Nile, but which there is now scarcely a doubt are those of the Congo. It is no wonder Livin stone came to this conclu- sion about a subterranean outlet; and it is still far from improbable that there may be such an outlet among its limestone rocks, notwithstanding Camerons discov- ery and Mr. Stanleys ingenious but ab- surd supposition that Tangan vika is a lake which has not yet got filled up. Liv- ingsto nes objection to the notion that this lake has no outlet is, that if such a body of deep water were relieved only by evap- oration, the deposit of saline matter in it would long since have made it a salt lake there being no other instance in the world of a large, deep, fresh-water lake without an outlet, and there is a great deal of saline matter in the country rouitd it. Lake Tchad indeed, there is reason to be- lieve, has no outlet, and it is fresh water; hut then it is not so much a deep-water lake as an immense shallow lagoon, held within bounds by the surface which it ex- poses to evaporation, and kept fresh by the absorption of the ground, which is a kind of outlet. In the extremely salt Dead Sea, it is worthy of notice that the amount of river-water poured into it is extremely small. But whether a subter- ranean outlet exists or not, Livingstone detected the part of the coast where there might be a subterranean exit in Tangan- yika. Commander Cameron saw that there was a break in the mountains of the western shore where such an outlet was likely to be, and, from such examination as he was able to bestow upon it, came to the conclusion that the Lukuga River was that outlet. Livingstone had noticed the same break, and had suggested that the Logumba River, which appears to be the same as Camerons Lukuga, or at least is close to it, was an outlet; and he also opined that there might be some outlets farther north on the same coast. lJnf or- tunately, Commander Camerons exami na- tion of the Lukuga was not an altogether conclusive one. This part of the coast was between, and some distance from, the great trade-routes to the west, so that the Arabs knew nothing about it or about the river. A local chief declared that his peo- ple often travelled for more than a month along its banks until it fell into the Lu- alaba; but local chiefs appear to say anything on such points. The African traveller cannot always pursue the exact path he wishes, though he may continue in the direction, and Cameron was pre- vented from descending (or ascending) this river; but he went four or five miles into it, until progress was rendered impos- sible by dense masses of floating vegeta- tion. There was neither open water nor solid land; but he found in this large river, six hundred yards broad and three fathoms deep, an outward current from the lake of one knot and a half, sufficient to drive his boat well into the edge of the vegetation; and on various points of his journey afterwards, he obtained corrobora- tive evidence that this Lukuga River flows into the Lualaba. So far everything seems quite clear and satisfactory; but Mr. Stanley suddenly appears at this outlet, laboring under the painful burden that something new and extraordinary must be found to justify his wandering about in Africa for years with unlimited funds. His discovery is, that Lake Tanganyika has not yet been filled up, that it is a young and risinb lake, and that Cameron was both right and wrong, the Lukuga is not an outlet of the lake, but it is going to he, when Tan- ganyika has risen up to the height of its great destiny. We must give Mr. Stanley credit for his ingenuity in this matter, and all the more that it will be exceedingly difficult to prove that he is not right in his wonderful supposition. However satis- factorily it may be proved afterwards that Tanganyika has an outlet in the Lukuba, it will still remain open for Mr. Stanley to assert that it had no such outlet up to the period of his great discovery; and really there is some reason for being thankful that so ingenious a mind should have been relegated to the (comparatively) uninter- esting and innocuous region of African geography. It is alarming to contemplate what might 11 ave been the results had it been let loose on the more practically im- portant affairs of European or American politics But, to look at the matter scientifically, there are many reasons for supposing that Commander Cameron is right in regard to this subject. We should much more read- ily trust the observations and judgment of 42 TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. a practical and scientific sailor in regard been enabled, through the apposite discovery to whether the Lukuga is an affluent or an of Dr. Kirk, the companion of Livingstone, effluent, than those of a wandering Amen- not only to fortify my conjecture of 5852, but can reporter. The supposition that Lake greatly to extend the inferences concerning Tanganyika has not yet filled ~ to its the long period of time during which the cen- level is wholly incompatible with our tral parts of Africa have remained in their knowledge of that lake and of the geology present condition. of Central Africa. Had its basin been a One of the chief grounds for this con- creation of l)ost-tertiary times, it might clusion is the absence of all eruptive rocks possibly (though by no means probably) which could have been thrown up since the be now in process of being filled up to the tertiary rocks began to form. brim. I3ut Tanganyika dates far back in Had Mr. Stanley taken these consider- the geological ages to a period repre- ations into account, or had he possessed sented not by hundreds of thousands but more knowledge of science, he would millions, and perhaps hundreds of millions, probably have never brought forward his of years. The rainfall U~0fl it is itself fanciful hypothesis. What seems to have enormous. Besides the rainfall, there are misled him was the fact that the volume of the rivers which run into it, and of these water in Tanganyika has been increasing Cameron says ( Across Africa, ii. 304), of late years. This had been observed by I found no less than ninety-sir- rivers~, both Livingstone and Cameron; but they besides torrents and springs, flowing into had too much knowledge and judgment the portion of the lake which I surveyed. to jump to the conclusion that Tanganyika The drainao-e of an immense rainy area was a lake not yet filled up. The inhabi- flows into Tanganyika, and the country tants on its shores date this increase round it was like a huge sponge full of from after the visits of white men, and water. Commander Cameron further ascribe it to these visits. There is also came to the conclusion that this lake was evidence that Tan ~ an yika has been before fed by springs in its bed in addition to at a much higher level. In brief, its level the numerous rivers and torrents. Con- alters considerably, and the cause is not siderin6 these facts, it is extremely diffi- far to seek. Subterranean passages cult to believe that Tanganyika is a lake (sometimes blocked up by falling pieces of in process of being filled up. The enor- rock) may have something to do with it; mous rainfall and flow of streams into it but another cause is much more apparent. could hardly be arrested to any extent by The vast masses of floating vegetation evaporation under skies so often cloudy, ~vhich there are in this, as in other Central and would serve to fill up the basin ina African lakes, are quite sufficient to choke few centuries. It is hardly credible that up the outlets either periodically or for such excellent geologists as Livinbstone long irregular seasons.* and Burton could have examined the Unable, from various circumstances, to shores of Tanganyika without perceiving trace down the Lukuga River, Commander traces of its chasm having been recently Cameron moved westward from Tangan- formed if such had been the case. Sfr yika to Nyangwe, on the Lualaba River, the Samuel Baker says ( Albert Nyanza, ii. farthest point which Livingstone had 317) that Central Africa is composed of reached in his last great explorations. granitic and sandstone rocks, which do not His tiesire was to float down this river to appear to have been submerged, or to have the Congo as it is already known to us, undergone any volcanic or aqueous and so emerge on the west coast of Africa, changes, and have been affected only by but scarcity of means and local difficulties time workino- through countless aO- no geological change I 0e~, prevented him front carrying out this de- ~avmng occurred sign. The disappointment was exceed- in ages long anterior to man. One of ingly great to our traveller; and it is so to the greatest of geologists, Sir Roderick his readers also; because before him, and Murchison, said, in his address to the almost inviting his footsteps, lay the im- Royal Geographical Society of the 23d mense unknown regions lyin~ between May 5864, Nyangwe and the western sea, includ~ in former addresses I suggested that the lug the mysterious Lake Sankorra and interior mass and central portions of Africa, * Colonel Long says of Lake Ibrahim, The almost constituting a great plateau, occupied by lakes tranquil lake is only relieved of its heavy pressure of and marshes, from which the waters escaped water when the vegetable matter decays, is annually by cracks or depressions in the subtendi ng loosened, and bearing uoon its bosom the Pisf Ia s/ra- tio/es, and detached islands of papyrus, rushes down older rocks, had been in that position during and past Karuma Falls into the Lake Albeit, and an enormously long period. 1 have recently thence to the north. TWENTY YEARS OF AFRICAN TRAVEL. 43 the great valley of the Congo. There was no help for it; but the interest of the journey which Cameron might have achieved, had circumstances been more favorable, detracts from the interest of that which it remained for him to achieve, and where he had to descend so far to the south as to cross the previous lines of ex- ploration. Nyangwe had been visited before by Livingstone; and from thence Cameron had to strike almost directly south to Lake Kassali, between the eighth and ninth par- allels of south latitude. All this was en- tirely new ground; but, having after this to strike still further south, though now also in a westerly direction, he crossed the line of exploration of Dr. Lacerda in 1798, and of Livingstones early journey across Africa. Lacerda went up from the east coast as far as Kabebe, a place about S. lat. 8~, and long. 23~, and lying between Camerons route and the great valley of the Congo and the Lake Sankorra. Liv- ingstone, again, in his journeys of 185556, crossed Camerons route at.Katema about 120 3O~. S. lat., and 2I~ long., and went as far north as Kabango, about nine degrees south of the equator. We also notice that in 1796 Pereira reached a point on the twelfth degree of south latitude, and the twenty-fourth of east longitude. Hence as an exploration, Camerons journey is not so new as some might think; but still, from Nyangwe it was over almost entirely new ground, though crossed at points by Livin stones and Lacerdas routes. His laborious determination Qf positions by astronomical observations has been of im- mense service to our knowledge of Africa. He has also determined the heights along his route, so as to be able to present in his map a most interesting section of the country, displaying at a glance the eleva- tions from sea to sea. He has exposed the villanies of the slave-trade, still carried on by negroid Portuguese; and he man- aged so well with the natives as to open, not shut, the way for future travellers. And though the literary excellences of his narrative are riot of a very striking charac- ter, yet they are charming in their way, the details being very clearly presented, and there being throughout an unobtrusive tinge of humor and almost poetic feeling. We have now indicated the great explo- rations which have penetrated and lit up the darkness of the African continent. A very fair general idea has been obtained of what that continent is, of what it is capable of being made, and of the people by whom it is occupied at present. The most important facts which all this discov- ery has brought to light are the existence in Central Africa of great lakes and great navigable rivers, and innumerable smaller rivers, many of which are also navigable the existence of a fertile soil and of an ele. vated region, with, in many parts, a tem- perate climate. These facts obviously point out the existence of a vast region in Central Africa where, by means of the in- troduction and judicious employment of the members of the more civilized races of the world, there may be a new field for the development of humanity. As to the peo- ple of these regions, much is to be hoped for. It is quite clear, from the accounts of all the great travellers, that the more we get away from the miasmatic swamps of the coast-lands, and from the absolutely ruinous effects of slave-hunting whether Arab, Portuguese, or Egyptianthe more do we find a half-savage, but also half-civ- ilized, people, with many fine and attractive qualities. The truth seems to lie between Dr. Livingstones extreme affection for them, and Colonel Longs horror of their naked deformities. It seems clear that in the African (speaking generally) there are qualities of much promise. He has a larger, more exuberant physique than any other of the savage or semi-civilized races. His inconsequence and fancifulness are those of the undeveloped human being, and are not stereotyped in his nature as in that of the ordinary Hindu. If we take his stage of development into account, we find a remarkable amount of common sense. In this respect he approaches the Chinaman; but he has more affection and sentiment. He has not that hardness of nature which gives such a metallic sound to the Chinese voice, and that square- skulled immobility which prevents the Chinaman, even under the most favorable circumstances, from amalgamating with other races, or departing from the lines of his own stereotyped civilization. There is good hope that the African may improve vastly under more favorable circumstances than those in which, hitherto, he has been imbedded. The history of that dark continent, so far as known to us, presents an awful ret- rospect, and one all the more dreadful when we take into account the kindly and affectionate qualities of so many of its primitive people, to which Mungo Park, Livingston e, Grant, Schweinfurth, and Cameron have borne witness. It is inex- pressibly sad to think of the unnumbered 44 GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. ages through which these poor dark sav- ages have continued, scarcely advancing beyond the elements of art and science and even of language: from within, de- stroying and devouring one another, will- ingly. offering their throats to the knives of sorcerers, or paving the deep grave-pit of some bloody monarch with the living trembling bodies of a hundred of his young wives: from without, hunted down and destroyed or captured by aid of the weap- ons of civilization, until every mans hand is turned against his brother, and terror reigns over vast regions. Tb e bounty of nature has provided for them such abun- dance that they continue to exist despite all the cruel conditions of that existence. But they are arrested at a position, not so much between heaven and earth, as be- tween earth and hell. There is an old touch, a. tertiary or pre-tertiary touch about them, affiliating them with the ancient hip- popotamus and the crocodile; but there is also a touch of a sensitiveness and of an affection as keen as any te. which the more civilized races have attained. This has exposed them to a torture which the croc- odile and the hippopotamus do not know; but it has been insufficient to elevate them to a platform of order and happiness. Surely here is a case where the introduc- tion of European civilization would be most justifiable, and might well repay the cost. But if that is to be done at all, it should be done effectually, not as in In- dia, to the great loss of the agents of civil- ization, and in the fostering of a weak native conceit, in itself incapable of devel- oping or even retaining the benefits which have been conferred upon the country, not as in America, to the extermination of the aborigines. In the interests of En- gland, the African continent might be made really to correct the balance of the Old World, and enable us to keep in front of such expanding nations as Germany and Russia. Then, perhaps, it might be given us, in the evening of our days, to wander meditatively on the shore of Tan- ganyika, that mighty Ulleswater of Africa, or of Lake Nyassa, its softer Windermere. It does not seem at all likely at present that En~land will undertake such a work, but Germany has of late displayed some distinct symptoms of being inclined to do so. But however that may be, it is to En- glish men belongs the gloi-y of having first penetrated into the centre of tropical Af- rica, and of having achieved there a series of grand individual explprations which has no parallel in the history of the human race. From The Examiner. GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. BY WILLIAM BLACK. AUTHOR OF THE ADVENTURES OF A ~ THE PRINCESS OF THULE, ETC. CHAPTER XXI. (continued.) WHAT the result of this mission of theirs was need not be stated at present. Enough that Balfour and his wife, having spent the best part of the afternoon with these neighboring friends of theirs, went home to dine by themselves in the even- ing. And Balfour had been looking for- ward during fhis past fortnight to the de- light of having his wife all to himself again; and be had pictured the still little room, her seated at the piano, perhaps, or perhaps both seated at the fire, and all troubles and annoyances hunted out into the cold winter night. This was the new plan. When he looked at her at the true, sweet, serious, trusting eyes, and at the calm, pensive, guileless forehead he began to wonder bow be could ever, in his selfish imaginations, have thought of hav- ing her become a sort of appanage of him- self in his public life. Would he wish her to become a shifting and dexterous wire- puller, paying court to this man, flattering another, patronizing a third, all to further her husbands interests? That, at all events, was not what he wished her, to be now. He admired her for her courageous protest against that suggested scheme for the bribing of Englebury. Not for a hun- dred seats in Parliament would be have his wife make interested professions of friendship for such people as the Chorleys. The proper place for the high-soul~d young matron was the head of her own table, or a seat by the fire in her own drawing-room; and it was there that be hoped to gain rest, and sweet encourage- ment, and a happy forgetfulness of all the vulgar strife of the outside world. Sylvia, be said, suddenly, at dinner, why do you look so depressed? What is the matter with you? Oh, nothino she said, rousing her- self, and making an effort not very suc- cessful to talk about this American trip. Then she relapsed into silence again; and the dinner was not a cheerful feast. Are you tired? he asked again. Perhaps you had better go and lie down for a while. No, she was not tired. Nor did she go, as was her wont after dinner, into the next room and begin to play a few. of the airs GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. and pieces that he liked. She sat down by the fire, opposite him. Her face was troubled; and her eyes distant and sad. Come, Sylvia, he said, as he lit his pipe, you are vexed about somethincr What is it? What is the trouble? b I am not vexed, really. It is no mat- ter, she again answered. Well, as his motto was Live, and let live, he was not bound to goad her into confidences she was unwilling to make; and as the enforced silence of the room was a rather painful and luoubrious busi- ness, he thought he might as well have a look at one or two of the papers he had hrought down. He went and fetched his hag. He sat down with his back to the light; and was soon deep in some report as to the water supply of London. Happening to look up, however, he found that his wife was silently crying. Then he impatiently threw the book on the table, and demanded to know the cause. Perhaps there was some rough- ness in his voice; but, at all events, she suddenly flung herself down before him, buried her face in his knees, and burst into a fit of wild sobbing, in which she made her stammering confession. It was all about her father. She could not bear to see him suffering this terrible anxiety. It was killinb him. She was sure the man who had come down in the train had some- thing to do with these pecuniary troubles, and it was dreadful to her to think that she and her husband had all they could desire, while her father was driven to despair. All this and more she sobbed out like a penitent child. Balfour put his hand gently on her soft brown hair. Is that all, Sylvia ? he said. If it is only money your father wants, he can have that. I will ask him. She rose her eyes still streaming with tears and kissed him twice. And then she grew gayer in spirit, and went and played some music for him, while he smoked his pipe. But as he smoked, he thought; and his thoughts were rather bit- ter about a man who, wantin ~ money, had not the courage to ask for it, but had de- graded his daughter into the position of being abeggarfor it. And as Mr. Balfour was a business-like person, though he had not been trained up to commerce, he de- termined to ascertain exactly how Lord Willowbys affairs stood, before proffering him this promised help. 45 CHAPTER XXII. FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. THERE was a brisk fire burning in the breakfast-room at the Lilacs; and the frosty December sunlight, streaming through the window, touched the white table-cloth with a ruddy and cheerful glow. A man of about thirty, tall, stalwart-look- ing, ~vith a huge brown moustache and a partially cropped beard, light-blue eyes, and a healthy complexion, stood on the hearthrug, with his hands complacently fixed in his pocket. This was Count or rather, as he had dropped his courtesy title since settling down in England, Mr. Von Rosen, who had served as lieuten- ant in the Franco-German war, and had subsequently fallen in love with, and mar- ried, a young English lady, who had per- suaded him to make England his home. He was a young man of superfluous energy, of great good humor, and good spirits, who made himself a nuisance to the neighborhood in which he lived by the fashion in which he insisted on other peo- ple joining him in his industrious idleness. For example, he had on this very morn- ing, at seven oclock, sent a letter to Mr. Hugh Balfour, of whose arrival at the Lilacs he had only heard on the previous night, urging him to join a certain shoot- ing party. Lady Sylvia was to drive over with them; and spend the day with two ladies whom she knew, lie himself would call at nine. And so he stood here, with his hands in his pocket, apparently quite contented, but nevertheless wondering why English people should be so late with their breakfast. Ah, said he, with his face brighten- ing, as Balfour entered the room. You are ready to go ? But I have to beg your pardon very much my man says you were not awake when he brought the letter it was stupid of him to send it to your room On the contrary, said Balfour as he mechanically took up a handful of letters that were lying on the table I have to beg your pardon for keeping you waiting. I thought I would put on my shooting- boots before coming down, Lady Sylvia will be here presently; come, what do you say to having some breakfast with us? 1-le was scanning the outside of the various envelopes with somethincr of an absent air. There was nothing medita- tive about the German ex-lieutenant. He had once or twice allowed ~his highly prac- tical gaze to fall on a certain game-pie. A second breakfast? said he. Yes, GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. perhaps it is better. My first breakfast was at six. And in these short days, it is foolishness to waste time at the luncheon. Oh yes, I will have some breakfast. And in the mean tixie why do you not read your letters ? XVell, the fact is, said Balfour, my wife thinks I should have a clear holiday down here; and I have been wondering whether it is any use But quite mechanically, while he was speaking, he had opened one of the letters, and he paused in his speech as he read its contents. By Jove, said he, partly to himself and partly to his companion, they must be pretty certain that I shall be in the next Parliament, or they would not offer to put this in my hands. Perhaps they dont know that I am sure to be kicked out of Ballinascroon. At this moment Lady Sylvia entered the room; and that young lady went up to the German lieutenant in the most winning and gracious way, for he was a great friend of hers, and thanked him very prettily for the trouble he had taken about this invita- tion. Trouble? he said, with a laugh. No, no. It is a good drive over to Mr. Lefevres, and I shall have nice company. And you will find him such a fine fellow such a good, fine fellow, if you will meet him some night at our house, Lady Sylvia; and your husband will see, when we begin the shooting, that there is no selfishness in him at allhe will prefer that his friends have more shooting than himself, and his keepers they know that too and my wife, she says if you will be so good as to stay with her all the day, we will come back that way in the afternoon and it is better still, a great deal better, if you and Mr. Balfour will stay to dine with us. Lady Sylvia was very pleased and grate- ful. Apart from her personal liking for these friends of hers, she was glad to find her husband taking to the amusements and interests of this country life. She said that Mr. Von Rosens plan would be very agreeable to her if it suited her hus- band; and then she turned to him. He was still regarding that letter. What do you say, Hugh? she asked. Oh, yes, he answered, as if startled out of some reverie. That is very kind of you, Von Rosen. It would be a de- lightful day. The fact is, however, I am not quite sure that I ought to go, though nothing would give me greater pleasure, as I have just got an offer here that is rather flattering to a young member who has not done much work in the House it is rather an important measure they pro- pose to put into my hands well, I sup- pose I shall only be a sort of junior counsel to Lord , but at least I could get up his case for him. Well, now, I must see these two men at once. Sylvia, he continued, turning to his wife, if I asked these two friends of mine to run down here to-morrow to dinner, I suppose you could put them up for the night? All the glad light had gone from her face. They had sat down at the table by this time; and before answering hi mshe asked Mr. Von Rosen whether he would not help himself~to something or other that was near him. Then she said, in a somewhat precise fashion, I think it would look rather singular to ask two strangers down here for a sin- gle night at the present time. Why singular? said he, with a stare. So near Christmas, she continued, in the same proud and cold way, people are supposed to have made up their fam- ily parties. It is scarcely a time to invite strangers. Oh, well, said he, with a good-na- tured laugh, I did not mean to offend you. I dare say you are right; an even- ing devoted to talking about this bill would not have been lively for you. How- ever, I must see my two patrons and that at once; Von Rosen, would you mind saying to Mr. Lefevre how much I thank him for his friendly offer? I fear I must let you have your drive over by yourself. It was by the merest accident that he happened to notice his wifes face. When he saw the look of pain and disappoint- ment that passed over it, he did not quite know what he had done to produce that feeling, but he altered his determination in a second. By the way, said he, I might as well go up to London to-morrow. Yes; that will be better. I will telegraph to them to dine with me at the club; and to- day I can give up to your first-rate little arrangement. Come, Von Rosen, you have not finished already?~ I do not wish to waste time, said that inveterate idler. The daylight is very short now. You have finished, too? And so they set out; Lady Sylvia hav- ing promised to go over to Mrs. Von Ro- sen during the day, and remain until the evening. As they drove off in the dog- cart, Balfour seemed rather preoccupied. When he remarked, Things hav~ come to a bonny cripus! what was his com GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. panion to make of that absurd phrase? VonRosen did not know the story of the small boy in northern parts who was found bitterly sobbing, and digging his knuckles into his eyes; and who, on being asked what was the matter, replied, in language which has to be softened for southern eais, Things have come to a bonny cripus; I only called my father an old fool, and he went and kicked me behind. It was the introductory phrase of this insulted boy that Balfour used. Things have come to a bonny cripus, said he. They drove along the crisp and crack- ling road. The hoarfrost on the hed_ es was beginning to melt; the sunlight had draped the bare twigs in a million of rain- bow jewels. The copper-colored sun shone over the black woods and the dank green fields. Women are strange creatures, said Balfour again; and this was a more intel- Ii bible remark. Why do you say that? asked the simple lieutenant, who had noticed noth- ing at breakfast beyond the coffee and the game-pie. I do believe, said Balfour, with a smile which was not altogether a glad one, that my wife is beginning positively to hate everybody and everything connected with Parliament and politics ; ~nd that is a lively look-out for me. You know I cant go on staying down here. And yet I shouldnt wonder if, when Parliament meets, she refused to go up to London. No, no, no, said the lieutenant, there you are very wrong. It is not rea- sonable not at all reasonable. She may like the country better; but it is not rea- sonable. That is what I tell my wife now she declares she will not go to live in America for a year and leave her children and I say to her, You will think again about that. It is a great trouble that you will leave your children it will be a great sorrow for a time; but what will you think of yourself after, if you do not do what is right for them? When they grow up, when they want money, what will you think if you have thrust away all that property and only for a single years absence? And has your wife proved reasonable; has she consented to go? asked Balfour. Von Rosen shrugged his shoulders. No not yet. But I will not argue with her. I will leave her to think. Oh, you do not know what a woman will do, if she thinks it is for the ood of her chil- dren. At present, it is all Oh, never, never! Leave my darling little girl, so that she wont know me when I come 47 back? Not for all the money in Amer. ica! Well, that is natural too, though it is foolishness. You would not like to have your wife with too hard a heart. And I say to her, Yes, I will not ask you. We are not so very poor that you must suffer great pain. If you will give up the Amer- ican property, give it up, and no more to be said. But I know. She is reasoning with herself now. She will ~o Do you think she will, said Balfour, thoughtfully. Do you think she will give up so much of her own feeling if she thinks it right? Know? said the tall young German, with one of his hearty laughs. Yes, I know that very well. Oh, there is no one so sensible as my wife not any one that I know anywhere if you can show her what is right. But if you ask me what I think of her uncle, that will cause so much trouble all for his nonsense, then I think he was a most wretched fellow, a most wretched and pitiful fellow. . Here occurred an unintelligible growl, whether in German or English phraseol- ogy his companion could not say; but doubtless the muttered words were not polite. Another man would probably have given additional force to this expression of feeling by twitching at the reins ; but Von Rosen never vented his rage on a horse. They had a capital days sport, although Balfour, who was evidently thinking of anything in the world rather than pheas- ants, rabbits, and hares, shot very badly indeed. Their luncheon was brought to them at a farmhouse, the mistress of the farm giving them the use of her sacred parlor, in which all the curiosities of orna- ment and natural history contributed by three generations were religiously stored. They got back to Von Rosens house about six; just in time for a cup of tea and a chat before dressing for an early country dinner. Surely, one or two of us who were sit- ting round the table that evening must have thought, surely these two young peo- ple ought to have been happy enough, if outward circumstances have anything to do with content of mind. Thei~e was he, in the prime of youthful manhood, with strength written in every outline of the bony frame, and in every lineament of the firm, resolute, and sufficiently handsome head, rich beyond the possibilities of care, and having before him all the hopefulness and stimulus of a distinguished public career ; she, young, hi b h-born, and beau ti- ful, with those serious and shy eyes that 48 GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. went straight to the heart of the person she addressed and secured her friends everywhere, also beyond the reach of sor- did cares, and most evidently regarded by her husband with all affection and admira- tion. What trouble, other than mere im- aginary nonsense,could enter into these linked lives? Well, there was present at this dinnerthat Cassandra of married life who was mentioned in the first chapter of this highly moral and instructive tale; and she would have answered these questions ~juickly enough. She would have assumed for she knew nothing positive about the matter that these two were now begin- ning to encounter the. bitter disillusioniz- ing experience of post-nuptial life. The husband was be~innin~ to recognize the fact that his wife was not quite the glori- ous creature he had imagined her to be; he was looking back with a wistful regret to -the perfectly false ideal of her he had formed before marriage; while she, having dreamed that she was marrying a lover, and having woke up to find she had only married a husband, was suffering untold and secret misery because she found her husbands heart transferred from her real self to that old ideal picture of herself which he had drawn in the dream-like past. This was what she would have said. This was what she was alwayspreaching to us. And we generally found it best in our neighborhood to give her Most Gracious Majesty her own way; so that this theory, as regarded the conjugal relations of nearly everybody we knew, was supposed to be strictly accurate. At least, nobody had the temerity to question it. Lady Sylvia, said this very person, why dont you ever go up to London? Mr. Balfour must think he is a bachelor again when he is all by himself in Picca- dilly. I dont like London much, said Lady Sylvia, with great composure. Besides, my husband is chiefly there on business matters; and I should only be in the way. But-you take a great interest in poli- tics, observed this monitress, who doubt- less considered that she was administering some wholesome discipline. My wife may take some interest in politics, said Balfour, but she has no great love for politicians. I confess they are not picturesque or interesting per- sons, as a rule. I am afraid their worldly wisdom their callousness is a trifle shockin(r at all events, said our Most Gracious. Lady, for she was determined to~ put in a little bit of remonstrance, though she ~vould gravely have rebuked anybody else for daring to do so, you have not much political work to distract your attention at present Parliament not sittino and all that excitement about a dissolutioti having passed away. My dear Mrs. .~-------, said he, with a laugh, now is the worst time of all ; for a good many of us dont know whether we shall be in the next Parliament, and we are trying what we can do to make our callin and election sure. It is a disa- greeable business; but necessary. To- morrow, for example, I am going to town to ~see two gentleman about a bill they propose I should introduce; but I shall have to ask them first what is the betting about my being able to get into Parliament at all. My present constituents have proved very ungrateful, after the unfailing attention and courtesy I have lavished upon them. Here the German ex-soldier burst into a great roar of laughter, as if there was any- thing amusing in a youhg mans throwing contumely on a number of persons who had done hint the honor of returning him to the House of Commons. But after all it was not our business at this little dinner-party to speculate on the hidden griefs that might accompany the outward good fortune of these two young people. We had more palpable trouble near at hand, as was revealed by an odd little accident that evening. Our hostess had a great affection for two boisterous young lads, who were the sons of the august little woman just referred to; and she had invited them to come into the din- ing-room after dessert. Surely a mother ought to teach these brats not to make remarks on what does not concern them? Now, as we were talking in an aimless fashion about the Ashantee War, the re- cent. elections and what not, a sudden sound outside stilled us into silence. It was the children of the church choir who had come up to sing us a Christmas carol; and the sound of their voices, outside in the still night, recalled many a vivid recollection and awoke some strange fancies about the coming year. What were most of us thinking of then? This young ass of a boy all at once says, Oh, Auntie Bell, where will you be next Christmas?~ And do they sing Christmas carols far away in America? And Auntie Bell, being taken rather aback, said she did no~ know, and smiled; but the smile was not a glad one, for we knew that sudden tears had started to the soft and kindly eyes. We GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. were not quite so happy as we went home that night. And when some one remarked to the mother of those boys but there, it is no use remonstrating with women. CHAPTER XXIII. A CONFESSION. ON the morning of his departure for London Balfour would take no notice of the marked disfavor with which Lady Syl- via regarded his setting out. It was hard on the poor child, no doubt, that he should leave her in the midst of these few Christ- mas holidays; and all for the sake of some trumpery Parliamentary business. He might have remonstrated with her, it is true; might have reminded her that she knew what his life must be when she mar- ried him; might have recalled her own professions of extreme interest in public affairs; might have asked her if a sin~le days absence which he had tried to avert by a proposal which she had reject- edwas, after all, such a desperate busi- ness. But no. He had no wish to gain an argumentative victory over his beauti- ful young wife. He would allow her to cherish that consolatory sense of having been wronged. Nay more; since she had plainly chosen to live in a world apart from his, he would make her life there as happy as possible. And so, as he kissed her in bidding her good-by, he said, By the way, Sylvia, I might as well go round by the Hall, and see your father. If he is in all that trouble this is Christ- mas-time you know perhaps he will let me help him. Well, she did look a little grateful. And I shall be down as soon as I can to-morrow forenoon, he added. But as he drove away from the Lilacs in the direction of Willowby Hall, he did not at all feel so amiably disposed towards his wifes father; whom he conjectured and conjectured quite wronglyto have been secretly soliciting this help from Lady Sylvia. But at all events, Balfdur said to himself, the relations between him- self and his wife were of more importance than his opinion of Lord Willowby. The sacrifice of a few thousand pounds was not of much concern to him; it was of great concern to him that his wife should not remain unhappy if this matter of money could restore her usual cheerful- ness. When he reached the Hall, he found that Major and Mrs. Blythe had left the day before, but would return for Christ- mas. Lord Willowby was smoking an LIVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 940 49 after-breakfast cigarette in the library. He looked surprised when Balfour entered; his son-in-law had not often paid him a visit unaccompanied by Lady Sylvia. The fact is, said Balfour, coming straight to the point, Sylvia is rather distressed at present because she imagines you are in some trouble about business matters. She thinks I ought to ask you about it, and see if I can help you. Well, I dont like interfering in any ones affairs, especially when I have not been solicited to interfere; but really, you know, if I can be of any service to you Ah ! the good girl the dear girl! said Lord Willowby, with that effusiveness of tone that his daughter had learned to love as the only true expression of affec- tion. I can see it all! Her tender instinct told her who that man was whom you drove over the day before yesterday she recognized my despair, my shame, at being so beset by a leech, a blood- sucker, a miserable wretch who has no more sense of honor And at this point Lord Willowby thought fit to get into a hot and indignant rage, which in no measure imposed on his son- in-law. Balfour waited patiently until the outburst was over. Perhaps he may have been employing his leisure considering how a man could be beset by a leech; but inadvertently he looked out of window at his horses, and then he thought of his train. And, indeed, Balfour, said his lord- ship, altering his tone and appealing in a personal and plaintive way to his son-in- law, how could I speak to you about these matters? All your life you have been too well off to know anything about the shifts that other men have sometimes to adopt. My dear Lord Willowby, said Bal- four with a smile, I am afraid it is those very shifts that have led you into your present troubles. If you only knew if you only knew, said the other, shaking his head. But there; as my dear girl is anxious, I may as well make a clean breast of it. Will you sit down? Balfour sat down; he was thinking more of the train than of his father-in-laws affairs. Do you know, said Lord Willowby, with something of a pathetic air, that you are about the last man in the world to whom I should like to reveal the cause of my present anxieties? You are you will forgive me for saving soapt to be harsh in your judgments; you do not know what temptations poverty puts be- 50 GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. fore you. But my dear girl must plead his amazement. Surely the jobbers for me. could have appealed to the mans books, Balfour, who did not at all like this ab- in which all your names would have been ject tone, merely waited in mute attention. found! If this revelation was to be protracted, he I assure you, Balfour, said his lord- would have to take a later train, ship, with a look of earnest sincerity, About a year and a half acro said his that so much was I opposed to the lordship, letting his eyes rest vaguely on scheme that I dont know how that diffi- the arm of Balfours easy-chair, things culty was avoided. Perhaps he had a had gone very badly with me, and I was new set of books prepared, and burned easily induced into joinin~ a speculation, the old ones. Perhaps he had from the or rather a series of speculations on the outset been induced to enter his own Stock Exchange, which had been project- name as the purchaser of the various ed by several friends of mine who had stocks. been with me in other undertakings. But that would have been worse and They were rich men, and coul~d have worse a downright conspiracy to swin- borne their previous losses; I was a poor dIe from the very beginning! Why, Lord man, andand in short, desperate. More- Willowby, you dont mean to say that you over, they were all business men, one or allowed yourself to be associated with such two of them merchants whose names are a well, perhaps I had better not give known all over the world; and I had a it a name! fair right to trust to their prudence had My dear Balfour, said his lordship, I not ? ~ returning to his pathetic tone, it is xvell Prudence is not of much avail in gain- for you that you have never suffered from blincr said Balfour. However, how did the temptations of poverty. I feared your you succeed? judgment of my conduct would be harsh. Our operations, which they conducted, You see, you dont think of the extenuat- mind you, were certainly on a large scale ing circumstances. I knew nothing of an enormous scale. If they had come this plan when I went into the copartner- out successfully, I should never have ship of speculation I cannot even say touched a company, or a share, or a bond that it existed. Very well: when my for the rest of my life. But instead of partners came to me and showed me a that, everything went against us; while scheme that would save them from ruin, one or two of us could have borne the was I openly to denounce and betray them loss, others of us must have been simply merely because my own conscience did ruined. XVell, it occurred to one or two not exactly approve of the means they of these persons I must beg you to be- were adopting? lieve, Balfour, that the su6gestion did not To condone a felony, even with the come from methat we might induce our purest and highest motives, said Bal- broker, by promises of what we should do four; and with that Lord Willowby su& for him afterwards, to assume the respon- denly rose from his chair. That single sibility of these purchases and become phrase had touched him into reality. bankrupt Look here, Balfour said he, A sudden look of wondermerely of angrily. wonder, not yet of indignation leapt to But the younger man went on with the younger mans face. great calmness, to explain that he had My dear fellow, pleaded Lord Wil- probably been too hasty in using these lowby, who had been watching for this words before hearin~ the whole story. look, dont be too rash in condemninb He begged Lord Willowby to regard him, us in condemning me, at all events. I Balfour, as one of the public: what would assure you I at once opposed this plan the public, knowing nothing of Lord Wil- when it was suggested. But they had a lowbys private character, think of the great many reasons to advance against whole transaction? And then he prayed mine. It was making one man bankrupt to be allowed to know how the affair had instead of several. Thenon whom would ended. the losses fall? Why, on the jobbers; I wish it was ended, said Lord Wil- who are the real gamblers of the Stock lowby, subsiding into his chair again, and Exchange, and who can easily suffer a into his customary gloomy expression. few losses when pitted against their enor- This man appears to consider us as mous gains bein~ quite at his mercy. Th~ey have given But how was it possible? exclaimed him more money than ever they promised Balfour, who had not yet recovered from yet he is not satisfied. He knows quite GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. 5 well that the jobbers suspected what was the cause of his bankruptcy, though they could do nothing to him; now he threat- ens to disclose the whole business, and set them on us. He says he is ruined as far as is practicable; and that if we dont give him enough to retire on, and live at his ease, he will ruin every one of us in public reputation. Now do you see how the case stands? He saw very clearly. He saw that he dared not explain to his wife the story he had been told; and he knew she would never be satisfied until he had advanced money in order to hush up a gigantic fraud. What he thought of this dilemma can easily be surmised ; what he said about it was simolv nothino at all. b And why should he come at me? said Lord Willowby, in an injured way. I have-no money. When he was down here the day before yesterday he used the plainest threats. But what can I do? Prosecute him for attempting to ob- tain money by threats. But then the whole story would come out. Why not if you can clear yourself of all complicity in the matter? Surey this was plain, obvious good sense. But Lord Willowby had always taken this young man to be a person of poor imagination, limited sympathies, and coli, practical ways. It was all very well for him to think that the case lay in a nut- shell. He knew better. He had a senti- ment of honor. He would not betray his companions. In order to revenge him- self on this wretched worm of a blood- sucker, would he stoop to become an in- former, and damage the fair reputations of friends of his who had done their best to retrieve his fallen fortunes? He did not frankly say all this; hut he hinted at something of it. Your generosity, said Balfour, appar- ently with no intention of sarcasm, may be very noble; but let us see exactly what it may lead to. What does this man pro- pose to do, if he is not paid sufficient money? Oh, he threatens everything to bring an action ab.ainst us to give the jobbers information which will enable them to bring an action and so forth. Then your friends, at all events, will have to pay a large sum and both you and they will be ruined in character. That is so isnt it? I dont know about character, said this poor hunted creature. I think I could make some defence about that. I dont think your defence would affect the public verdict, said this blunt-spoken son-in-law. Well, be it so! said his lordshipin desperation. Let us say that the general voice of business-men who, of course, never employ any stratagems to get out of predicaments in their own affairs will say that we conspired to commit a fraud. Is that plain enough language? And now perhaps you will sa.y that the threat is not a sufficiently serious one? I will say nothing of the kind, said Balfour, quietly. The whole case seems much more serious than any one could have imagined. Of course if you believe you could clear yourself, I say again, as I said before, bring an action against the man, and have the whole thing out, who- ever suffers. If you are disinclined to take that course Well, suppose I am? In that case, said Balfour, rising, will you give me a day or two to think over the affair? Certainly; as many as you like, said Lord Willowby, who had never expected much from the generosity of this son-in- law of his. And so Balfour got into his trap again, arid drove on to the station. Nothin, that had happened to him since his marriage had disturbed him so much as the revela- tion of this story. He had always had a certain nameless, indefinable dislike to Lord Willowby; but he had never sus- pected him capable of conduct calculated to bring dishonor on the family name. And oddly enough, in this emergency, his greatest apprehension was that he might not be able to conceal the almost inevita- ble public scandal from Lady Sylvia. She had always loved her father. She had believed in his redundant expressions of affection. In the event of this great scan- dal coming to her ears, would she not indi~,nantly repudiate it, and challenge her husband to repudiate it also? That evening, by appointment, Balfours two friends dined with him at his club; and they had a more or less discursive chat over the bill which it was proposed he should introduce in the case of his be- ing re-seated at the following general elec- tion. Strangely eno~igh, he did not enter into this talk with any particular zest. He seemed abstracted and absorbed; several times he vaguely assented to an opinion which he found it necessary to dispute directly afterwards. For what the mem- ber of Ballinascroon was really saying to himself was this: To-morrow I go down 52 GENIUS AND VANITY. again to the country. My wife will want to know what I am going to do about her fathers affairs. I shall he thrown a good deal during the next few days into the society of Lord Willowby and his brother. And on Christmas-day I shall have the sipgular felicity of dining in the company of two of the most promising scoundrels in this country. From The Cornhill Magazine. GENIUS AND VANITY. THE critic who aims at the highest tri- umph of his art, the revelation to the world of unrecognized genius, must often feel a disagree able qualm. May he not be puffing a charlatan, instead of heralding the advent of a great man? The doubt is still more perplexing when the genius to be proclaimed is his own, and the respon- sibility correspondingly greater. And hence arises a problem which has often occurred to me when reading about two eminent men of the last generation. Wordsworth and Haydon were friends. Each sympathized with the aims of the other. Wordsworth wished to reform poetry as Haydon wished to reform paint- ing. Each of them endeavored to breathe a loftier spirit into the devotees of his favorite art. Each of them persevered heroically in spite of the most depressing reception. The enthusiasm which ani- mated Haydon was not less elevated above the ends of a commonplace selfishness than that which animated Wordsworth. If the painter was undeniably vain, the poet pushed vanity to the verge of the sublime. One, however, failed where the other suc- ceeded. Poor Haydons life-long exer- tions were not, one may hope, entirely thrown away; but his most cherished am- bition came to naught. He produced no work which might entitle the English school to rank amongst the b reat schools of the world. Wordsworth, on the con- trary, breathed new life even into the rich and vigorous growth of English poetry; he set his mark upon a generation; and enjoyed, before he died, the profound hom- age of the best and purest minds of the succeedinggeneration. Haydon, then, made a fatal mistake, whereas Wordsworths daring was justi- fied by the result. That is clearly a rea- son for pity in the one case and congratu- lation in the other. But is it a reason as it is certainly a common pretext for pronouncing a different moral judgment upon the two men? Is success to be the sole test of virtue in this as in so many other cases? When a hero burns his ship~, scorns the counsels of cool common sense, plucks the flower safety from the nettle danger, and ends by winning an empire in defiance of all calculation, we are ready with our hosannahs. But, if he fails, should we therefore stone him? If Columbus had met with a little more ad- verse weather, his courage would not have prevented the failure of his enterprise. Had our Arctic voyagers chanced upon a better route, they might have reached the pole without expending more devotion. The hero is the man who dares to run a risk; who is not deterred, because an ele- ment of the radically unknowable enters into his calculations. If he knew more than others he would be a wiser, but not a better, man than his fellows. He would be playing the great game with loaded dice. His insight, not his daring, would deserve our wonder. But he who risks life and fame upon an uncertainty deserves equal credit, for his intrinsic merit is the same, whether the cards turn up for him or against him. Our life is little but a wan- dering in a trackless desert. We throw ojit exploring parties in every direction. Ten die of starvation and misery; one hits upon the right path. Too often we praise the man already rewarded by for- tune, and attribute his ood luck to some mysterious power of intuitive judgment. But, if we were just, we should bestow equal praise and more sympathy upon the luckless ones whose steps led them to the barren places, and whose failures, it may be, served as warning beacons to their more favored successors. Why not apply this rule to the pioneers of intellectual or artistic progress? Hun- dreds of men have wasted lives of ener- getic endeavor in following delusive paths in that great labyrinth of human knowl- edge, where the clue is so hard to find, and where at every stage so many paths hold out equal promise. We, enlightened by slow experience, or by wider knowl- edge, can see that these wanderings were predestined to failure. But why not honor equally the high faith which scorned meaner aims, and was unchilled by the in- difference of the vulgar? Is devotion to knowledge so common a quality that we can afford to despise it unless it bears fruit in appreciable results? We often laugh at the poor would-be philosophers who waste years in trying to discover per- petual motion, or to square the circle. They are, we may be sure, grossly igno GENIUS AND VANITY. rant, and, in all likelihood, intolerably ar- rogant. They must be ignorant of other mens work, or blind to the vast improb- ability that they should be right, and all the great intellects of the world hopelessly wrong. Yet, even in this case, pity as much as scorn may be due to the igno- rance; and the arrogance itself is but the ugly side or the exaggerated development of the quality which, more than any other, is necessary for intellectual progress. We have never a sufficient supply of original- ity and intellectual daring. We always need more men able to cast aside the tra- ditional spectacles, to see for themselves and once more test the dogmas which our indolence tempts us to accept with too easy a faith. Such courage is good, even when misguided. Find men who will dare, and all is possible. Let obedience to authority be installed as the first intel- lectual Virtue, and knowledge will be pet- rified into Chinese finality. And, if even such eccentricity deserves that contempt should be temp~ered with mercy, may we not rightfully honor many others who have thrown away their lives, like poor Casaubon in Middlemarch, in labors fruitless because accidentally misdirected? It is a great misfortune, but it is not a vice, to be an anachronism. But what are we to say to that great army of martyrs, amongst whorn poor Haydon is to be reckoned the epic poets, the rivals of Shakespeare, the would-be eclipsers of Raphael or Phidias the men whose efforts to sing or to paint have supplied the world with moun- tains of waste-paper, and spoiled acres of good canvas? One of the most pathetic of Balzacs minor stories describes the fate of a poor painter, who had labored for years at a picture destined to create a new era in art. All his hopes in life, his love and his ambition, were involved in its suc- cess. No one had been admitted to the room in which he labored with unremitted devotion. At last, the day came when the favored person stood before the curtain which concealed the masterpiece. The painter drew it aside, slowly and solemnly,. and revealed a meaningless confusion of chaotic coloring. The artists mind was of course unhinged; but his melancholy story is a symbol of the fate of many men still outside Bedlam. Any one who has seen the darker side of the literary and artistic worlds can match Balzacs hero with numerous instances of similar self- delusion. The pictures are not often mere blotches of color; the poems fre- quently obey the laws of gram mar, and 53 even of metre; but, for all good purposes, the artist might as well have thrown his brush at the canvas, or the author taken his words at random from the dictionary. And what should be our feelings? Con- tempt or pity or admiration for the devo- tion, combined with compassion for the error? Should we honor, say, a Chatter- ton who is a martyr to his ambition, be- cause the poems unrecognized during his lifetime turned out really to have some- thing in them (though, after all, not very much!) and despise the numerous Chat- tertons who have hopelessly failed, be- cause there was nothinb in them at all? The moral quality was the same. The dif- ference was that one man judged his pow- ers rightly, whilst the hundreds judge of their powers wrongly. But this is an error to which almost every man is liable. Our squarers of the circle are silly, be- cause they can appeal to a court which is practically infallible. A hundred profess- ors of mathematics are ready not only to tell them that they are wrong, but to ex- plain to them how and why they are wrong. But the poet can appeal to no such court. If he is not appreciated, it may be that he is in advance, not in rear of his time. A century hence, his work may be winning recognition, and his descendants be ridi- culing the blindness of their ancestors. Why, then, should he not persevere, and trust his work to time? Do we not, in any case, owe to him the tribute of admi- ration for a devotion, of which it is prema- ture to pronounce that it was directed to a mistaken object? The easiest answer is that a false esti- mate of our own merits is in fact immoral. Vanity is weakness which we can all con- demn unreservedly, because we all feel that we are free from it ourselves, and recognize its existence throughout the rest of the species. The appointed chastise- ment of vanity is ridicule. Therefore we are right in laughing at the man who thinks himself to be a Milton when he is merely a Satan Montgomery. The victim may reply that we are be~ging the ques- tion, and that what we call his vanity will hereafter be called consciousness of gen- ius. And, in truth, the dilemma is in one sense insoluble. Critics are fallible; cliques are fallible. The outside public is so fallible as to be generally wrong; no literary court is infallible except that to which the best minds of all ages are ad- mitted as judges, and in which many of our most dogmatic utterances would look fool- ish enough. Yet we must take our chance. Judges must sentence pri~oners, though 54 GENIUS AND VANITY. now and then they may condemn an inno- cent person. Critics must laugh at charla- tans, though they may now and then mis- take a man of genius for a fool. But there is a more fundamental difficulty. Granting that a mans confidence in his own powers really implies vanity, are we therefore justified in condemning him? Is vanity a vice at all? Is it not in any case a vice so universal that none of us have a right to cast the first stone? Nay, if we lay aside the conventional attitude of mind, in which our little cut-and-dried maxims pass for legitimate currency, ought we not rather to call vanity a virtue, or at lowest a desirable quality? Listen to the ordinary moralizing of the pulpit and the moral essayist, and we, of course, must condemn vanity, as on the same showing we condemn many of the most essential qualities by which the world is carried on. There is a sense nobody denies it in which these commonplaces have a sound, if a rather obvious, meaning. But all maxims that have been much used by preachers lay or clerical become so strained and perverted in the process that, like worn-out muskets, they are apt to pro- duce very random shooting. Who that has looked at the world for himself can deny that vanity may be reckoned amongst the most enViable of possessions ? It de- serves, even more than the original object of the panegyric, the praise which Sancho bestowed upon sleep. Vanity does indeed wrap a man up like a cloak. It bestows its blessings freely upon the poet striving against general rnisappreciation; it enables the poor loser in the great battle of life to make himself happy with some trifling success; it softens the bitter pangs of disappointment and gives for new struggles ; it preve fresh strength nts resentment and facilitates the intercourse of society it can make any man contented with his lot and lets the poor drudge in the kitchen think without envy of the statesman in the parlor. Who would not be tempted to frequent irritation if he could enjoy that gift for which the poet so foolishly prayed, the gift of seeing himself as others saw him, and recognize his infinitesimal im- portance in the eyes of his fellows? It is because of the tender illusions of vanity that a man can accept the petty sphere of his own activity for the wider circle of the world, and shut out the annihilating image of the vast forces beyond. It is the safe- guard against a depressing fatalism. Van- ity has as many virtues as the vaunted panaceas of medical quackery; and were it not for that softening oil, the wheels of life ~vould grate harsh music too discordant for mortal ears. Yet in singing the praises of vanity we become aware of a certain vagueness of outline about this Protean goddess. She can take many shapes; and changes so rapidly and completely that we are unable to fix any definite portrait upon our canvas. Sometimes there is a scowl upon her feat- ures, and sometimes a complacent smile. She can pass herself off in the likeness of her conventional opposite, humility, or ape the gestures of pride, or be undistinguish- able from mere sullen egotism. All our definitions of the passions have this pro- voking vagueness, because, in truth, we do not know what are the ultimate ele- ments of character. We cannot find chemical formuk~ for human nature, or say how many atoms of spiritual oxygen or hydrogen must be combined to form a definite product. Our efforts at analysis break down at every instant. Every new li~ht thrown by new circumstances brings out previously unsuspected aspects of be- wildering complexity. Every nexv charac- ter seems to require a new categoryforits description. There seem to be as many species of men as there are individuals. Our complacent little formul~ may guide our conduct with tolerable accuracy; but, when we confront theory with the infinite variety of facts, we recognize the futility of any claim to scientific accuracy. We class men as good or bad, humble or vain; and when looking at exceptional cases, or deal- ing only with large classes and average results, our words have a kind of meaning. The saint and the sinner, Saint John and Judas Iscariot, may be distinguished easily enough. But between the extremes we may interpose any humber of terms, vary- ing so strangely, in so many directions, and combining so many apparent contradic- tions, that our lines of demarcation be- come hopelessly blurred and confused. Our compartments may be most logically subdivided, but no real being will quite fit into any one of them. The inferior classes multiply on our lands; they cross, blend, overlap and confuse each other till we ad- mit them to be useless. We can seldom apply a rule to a dozen cases without find- ing twelve exceptions. The qualifications to our statements become so numerous that the statements are practically worth- less. The poet can create characters; the man of science cannot define them or as- sign their composition. Thus the condemnation of vanity col- lapses when we try to answer the plain question, what is vanity? Try to define accurately the various cognate terms, van- ity, conceit, pride, egotism, and. their nu- merous allies, to mark out accurately their points of resemblance and contrast, and then test your conclusions by appropriate examples. Take a few cases at random. Here is Miss Martiaeau, for example, who says in her autobiography that all the dis- tinguished men of her time were vain and she does not add that the limits of time or sex are a necessary part of the assertion. But was she not vain herself? No, for she formed a singularly modest and sound estimate of her own abilities. But again, yes, for she certainly seems to have considered that to one person at least Miss Martineau was incomparably the most inter- esting person in the universe, that coming generations would be profoundly interested in the analysis of her character and the genesis pf her works ; and also that the merits of her contemporaries might be ac- curately gauged by the extent to which they did or did not sympathize with Har- riet Martineau. Is not egotism of this kind mere vanity disguised by a superficial air of impartiality? Take the vanity, again, which is revealed so curiously in the recently published letters of Balzac. Here it becomes a force which leads a man to reckon himself amongst the four greatest heroes of his age and goes far to make him what he supposes hituself to be. It develops a kind of monomania leading to utter absorption in his own affairs, in his literary ambition, and, above all, in cal- culations as to the number of francs into which his genius can be coined. Was it a strength or a weakness? Contrast it with the vanity for many people will call it vanity of his contemporary Doudan. Doudans letters reveal to us a man of that admirable fineness of intellect so conspic- uous in the best French writers, which may be defined as the sublimated essence of common sense. But his exqusiite sen- sibility was pushed to such a point as to destroy his fertility, and but for his letters his name would have been known to his fellows only through a passing allusion of Ste.-Beuve. Shall we say that Balzacs vanity led him to produce the Gom~die Humaille, and Doudans humility made him producenothing? Then vanity is so far a good and humility a bad thing. Or shall we saythat this excessive sensi- bility is but vanity disguised? that a man who trembles before criticism thinks too much of his own importance? The theory is a common one and enables us verbally to condemn vanity in all forms; but it implicitly admits, too, that vanity 55 may produce diametrically opposite results and at times co-operate hand-in-hand with humility. Infuse vanity into such a man as Gold- smith, and it adds a childlike charm to his character; it gives a tinge of delightful humor to his writing, and enables his friends to love him the more heartily be- cause they have a right also to pay them- selves by a little kindly contempt. Make a Byron vain, and half his magnificent force of mind will be wasted by silly efforts to attract the notice of his contemporaries by attacking their best feelings and affecting (a superfluous task!) vices which he does not possess. The vanity of a Wordsworth cnables him to treat with profound disdain the sneers of Edinburgh reviewers, and the dull indifference of the mass of readers; but it encourages him also to become a literary sloven, to spoil noble thought by grovelling language, and to subside into supine obstructiveness. Con- versely, the vanity of a Pope makes him suffer unspeakable tortures from the stings of critics compared to whom Jeffrey was a giant, condescend to the meanest artifices to catch the applause of his con- temporaries, and hunger and thirst for the food which Wordsworth rejected with contempt. But it also enables him to be- come within his own limits the most ex- quisite of artists in words ; to increase in skill as he increased in years; and to coin phrases for a distant posterity even out of the most trifling ebullition of passing spite. The vanity of a Milton excites something approaching to awe. The vanity of a Con- greve ekcites our rightful contempt. Vanity seems to be at once the source of the greatest weaknesses, and of the great- est achievements. To write a history of vanity would be to write the history of the greatest men of our race; for soldiers and statesmen have been as vain as poets and artists. Chatham was vain; Wolfe was vain; Nelson was childishly vain; and the great Napoleon was as vain as the vainest. Must not our condemnation of the quality undergo some modification before we can lay it down as an absolute principle? if, to set aside some ambiguities, we de- clare that man to be vain, who, for whatever reason, overestimates his own merit or im- portance in the world, we shall naturally infer that vanity is so far bad as it implies an error. A man is the better for know- ing the truth, in this as in all other cases. But we may still ask whether the error is of such a nature as to deserve moral disap- provaL We do not blame a man because GENIUS AND VANITY. GENIUS AND VANITY. he gives the wrong answer to one of those to the fool, the knave, and the charlatan as problems which have tasked the ingenuity to the neglected martyr of the race. Is of countless thinkers of the highest ability. your firs t judgment beyond all suspicion The difficulty of discovering the truth not only of error but of sincerity? Are about one individual, especially about our you not biassed by some baser motive, own individuai~ty, is as great as the diffi- when you pronounce yourself to be one culty of discovering the truth about a gen- of the elect? If yqu really hold that your eral problem of philosophy and theology, wretched dribble of mechanical metre is The moralist who, in this latter case, equal to the mighty harmony of a Milton, admits that sincerity is no guarantee you must be wanting in ear for the music against error, orders men to be candid, of verse if you take your tinsel-decked but cannot order them to arrive at right platitudes for the passionate utterance of a conclusions. A mistake in judgment is great intellect, stirred to its depth by the not wicked, precisely because mistakes are sadness of the worlds tragedies, you are the necessary consequence of candid ex- probably deficient in philosophical insight amination by our imperfect reason. Sin- if you cannot see the difference between cerity, not infallibility, is our moral duty. your conception of the world as a gigantic Similarly, it is right to judge of ourselves pot-house, or a magnified stock-exchange, as fairly as we can; but the difficulties and that which represents in their full which beset the task of at once seating force the purifying and ennobling passions, ourselves on the bench and taking our it is probable that there is a gap or two in place at the bar are so great, that the least your morality. Making all allowances for prejudiced of self-critics will often blun- the difficulty of self-judgment, there re- der. The sanguine observer will differ mains a strong presumption that the man from the melancholy; the man of quick who takes a daub even a daub of his sympathies will be more apt to be affected own manufacture for a true master- for good or evil by his neighbors judg- piece, is deficient in the power of sharing, ment, tha~i the man whose affections may as well as in the power of uttering, the be stronger though less mobile; the excit- loftiest thoughts. You cannot put colors able man will be led into one extreme or on canvas because you cannot see them in the other more easily than the phlegmatic; nature. Your artistic standard is low be- a vivid imagination predisposes us to ac- cause you are incapable of the high emo- cept a set of tests different from that tions which it is the true function of the which would commend themselves to the best art to express, and the full utterance severe logician ; and, moreover, a mans of which is the one true test of artistic judgment of his own character will vary excellence. You appeal to vulgar tastes from day to day, like his judgment of all because you are wanting in innate refine- other matters, according to the state of ment. It it due to other bad qualities his liver or his bankers balance. All if you take size for sublimity, contortion these and many other difficulties are for force, intricacy for subtlety; if brutal- so inevitable, that we must look with com- ity appears to you to be strength of feel- passion upon a wrong estimate so long as ing, and sensuality to be masculine vigor. it is not palpably due to some irrelevant If you succeed, you are a charlatan; and cause. Only when a man is vain for some if you fail, your failure is deserved. Your bad reason because he has a longer vanity is the index, not of the inevitable purse or a more uncommon disease than illusion of self-contemplation, but of a his neighbors and cases of far more mean, or narrow, or degraded nature. eccentric judgment are not uncommon Such a verdict would be inevitable, if he is admitting evidence which he clearly the power of representing, were always ought to have excluded. The errors of proportioned to the power of feeling, emo- the judge in this case imply not only falli- tions; if productivity and receptivity were bility but corruption; he has taken a bribe but opposite forms of the same power. from some of his passions, and he deserves Notoriously this is not the case. Silence some of the indignation due to such un- may sometimes indicate a defect of the worthy leanings. organs of speech, not an absence of I am, you say, capable of being a great thought. Many a man enjoys nature heart- poet; my talents shall not be lost to the ily, who cannot put together two lines of world; 1 will brave poverty, anxiety, con- description; and yet he may fancy him- tempt; my fellow-creatures may repent self to be eloquent, because he naturally their indifference, and render a tardy hom- infers that the clumsy phrases which ex~ age over my grave or to my declining press his own sentiment must express the years. Brave words! but words as easy sentiments of others. Moli~res old woman is a typical case. Thousands can enjoy for one who can create, or even assign intelligible reasons for his judg- ment. Unluckily, many such old women fancy that their appreciation of their Moh~re entitles them to write comedies. The weakness is an amiable one. We ought to pity those poor dumb poets who have music in their souls, and strive in vain to embody it in artistic shape. So long as they do not insist upon our reading their verses, we will tolerate and even love them. Sincere devotion to art is perhaps most touching in those to whom art never makes any return of praise and success. But it is the more necessary to distinguish clearly between these victims of an inno- cent delusion and those whose delusion implies incapacity, not only to produce but to enjoy. One class worships at the true shrine, though its offerings are poor ; the other grovels before an ugly idol, because it is dead to the true instinct of venera- tion, and admires the reflection of its own base passions. How shall we tell whether the vanity of an artist be of the noxious or innocent kind? The most applicable test is per- haps to be found in the nature of the alleged motive. When a man says or in- sinuates that his primary object is the good of the world, we may reasonably set him down as a humbug. The transparency of the pretext is too obvious; and the im- plied belief that his final success is really a result in which the world at large can be seriously interested, indicates a vanity too gigantic to be quite innocent. In truth, there are two and only two excuses which can be accepted as a sufficient justification for adding to the masses of existing liter- ature. One is that you want money; the other that you cannot help it. Johnson went so far as to say that any man must be a fool who wrote for anything but money. The statement is a little too sweeping; but we must admit when it is genuine the plea of necessity. Writ- ing, at all events, is an honest trade pro- vided that the author does not lie or flat- ter base passions. It is rather difficult for a professional author to comply with that proviso; but, so long as he supplies good wholesome food, sells his wares for what they are worth, and pretends to no higher motive, he is an innocent and even useful member of society. He may rank with other honest tradesmen, and is at least as well employed in selling his literary talents to publishers as a lawyer in selling his rhetorical powers to attorneys. The best work, indeed, is probably as- 57 cribable to loftier motives. It has been accomplished not under pressure of want, but because an active mind, dominated by new thoughts, or set on fire by an imagi- native impulse, is constrained to utter itself in some way to the world. It must speak or burst; action of some kind is an imperative necessity; and it is a question of circumstance and character whether the impulse spends itself in producing philoso- phy, or poetry, or art, or practical activity. The spontaneity characteristic of such work is the quality which determines whether a poem is to live or to die ; it is the discriminadng mark between the man- ufactured article and the genuine organic growth. The test, of course, covers that other variety of literature including much of the very highest in which the writing is considered not as an end, but a means; where the polished style and strict order are the symptoms of an intense de- sire to accomplish some ulterior object to strike down a pestilent fallacy, to en- courage the supporters of a good cause, to disseminate ideas which may lift mankind to a higher social order. In such cases a man may be excused if he is eager for some testimony of success. The degree of attention which he excites is the meas- ure of the work which he has done. He looks for praise as the artillery officer looks for the cloud of dust which shows that his shot has struck home at the right point of the hostile lines. Unluckily, there are many people who seem to be content so long as they can make the dust fly without reference to the means adopted or to the purpose contemplated. This is, in fact, the motive which is ex- cluded by our suggested tests. The affected desire to do good to the world means really a desire that the world may sing our praises. The love of praise as praise, the simple appetite for incense, as thick and stupefying as may be, is the really bad symptom, as it is the bane of our modern literature. This is the true mark of the charlatan, and the natural fruit of that kind of vanity which deserves all the contempt that can be poured upon it. No stings can be too severe which help to kill down the noxious swarm of parasites which find their natural food in the fulsome stream of adulation. For, unluckily for us, there was never a time when this weak- ness was so prevalent, because there never was a time when the power of advertising, and therefore of winning notoriety without attaining excellence, was so enormous. The evil tends to corrupt the highest and most sensitive natures. A man can GENIUS AND VANITY. 58 GENIUS AND VANITY. scarcely keep his head, when the voice of real sympathy is drowned by the chorus of insincere jubilation. By an anachro- nism which has too many parallels we are still employed in denouncing an excess which has long been supplanted by its contrary. We abuse the severe critics who quench youthful genius. The true evil is different. The really mischievous persons are those appreciative and gen- erous critics who force all eminent writers to live, whether they wish it or not, in an atmosphere so thick with the fumes of incense as to be enervating to the strong- est constitutions. A clique is notoriously bad; with our customary twaddle about generous criticism, we are going far to make the whole literary world into one gigantic clique. Youthful genius is no longer crushed it is puffed into imbecil- ity. We long for some of the bracing air of the old slashing criticism, which, if it caused much useless pain, did at least promote the growth of tough fibres instead of fatty degeneration of tissue. But, leaving this aside, let us assume that a mans vanity is harmless and his ambition pure. He really thinks that he can bestow upon his fellow-men gifts of truth and beauty. He fancies, to put the case distinctly, that he can produce a new Hamlet. He sees that he must choose bet~veen his bread-and-butter and his lit- erary ambition. Which course deserves our approval? Shall we praise him for daring greatly or for listening to the voice of respectability? If we prefer the more venturous course, we must, of course, ad- mire the Haydons, and many men without Haydons talent, who have been martyrs to their courage. If not, we prefer Philistia to Bohemia, and sympathize with the nu- merous parents who have condemned Pegasus to harness. There are, it is to be observed, two distinct problems. First, ~ve may ask whether it is better to pay your bills or to produce a Hamlet? Secondly, as nobody can be certain that his work is really a Hamlet, we must ask whether it is better to pay or take the chance of producing what may possibly turn out to be a Hamlet ? Most people will answer the first ques- tion with little hesitation. Better, they will say, that Shakespeares butchers, bakers, and landlady should have gone unpaid, though want of payment had meant starvation; better that the debt should have gone on accumulatin~ at compound interest from that day to the present, than that Hamlet should have been burked. What would be the loss of a few trades- men compared to the loss of one of the few imperishable monuments of human genius? The two things are not compar- able. A man who could pronounce against Hamlet would he capable of breaking up Westminster Abbey to mend the Thames embankment. But is this so very clear? Are we perfectly certain that our valuation is just? Assuming that Ham- let deserves all the praises it has received from Shakespeares most slavish idolaters, I confess that I should still have certain twinges of doubt. What, after all, is the worth of any creation of human genius? What is the proportion between the value of a work of art and the artists ordinary discharge of his daily duties? What for that seems to be the real question is the value to the world of its greatest men? What is the value of a Shakespeare, as measured against the value of an honest grocer? We cannot adjust the proportion to a nicety, nor even with approximate accu- racy. The right point would doubtless lie somewhere between the extravagance of the hero-worshipper and the deprecatory view of that kind of spiritual democracy which holds that the individual is nothing and the multitude everything. But it is equally clear that the average opinion has been hitherto deflected from the true line by the enthusiast far more than by the cynic. The more we know, the more clearly we realize the vastness of the debt which even the greatest owe to their ob- scure contemporaries. Every advance of criticism diminishes the share of glory due to the great man, and increases the merit of his co-operators. History sees every- where, not the work of a solitary legisla- tor, but processes implying the slow growth of many generations. The scattered stars of the firmament are but bright points iii vast nebuke revealed by closer observa- tion. In art, the importance of the social medium, relatively to the single performer, assumes ever greater proportions. But what is this but to diminish the extrav- agant value attributed to single perform- ances? Their intrinsic excellence may not be lessened, but we must Lwer our estimate of their importance as self-orig- inated and creative forces. Hamlet may be incomparably superior to The Maids Tra~edy or The Duchess of Malfi; but we must admit that Shake- speare was but a co-operator with Fletcher and Webster. The ~eneral character of the period would not have been greatly altered had Shakespeare died of the measles ; though it would have left behind GENIUS AND VANITY. it a less superlative relic. The disregard of the second-rate performers has fallen in with the tendency to adulate success. What passes for criticism of great men has become a mere competition in extrav- agance. Each man tries to raise a loftier cloud of incense, and grovel more pro- foundly in the dust. He wins a cheap praise of generosity and generality by tacitly depressing the mass, in order to give a more imposing air to the pinnacle on which he erects his solitary hero. Without speaking, however, of those monstrous accumulations of hyperbolic panegyrics, which form the monuments of our great men, we should rather alter our view of the importance than of the excel- lence of the supreme poets and thinkers. Let them tower above their fellows as much as you please. Say, if you will, that the powers implied by the greatest achievements are different in kind, as well as degree, from those possessed by their humbler brethren. Still it will remain true, first that the greatest of men is but the organ through which thoughts and feelings common to thousands and millions of his fellows find their fullest expression. He is not an isolated phenomenon dropped into the world from without, but the finest of flowers, which appears when the soil and the atmosphere are fully prepared for his development. Cut the flower down and it could not be replaced; but its dis- appearance would have but a minor influ- ence upon the conditions to which it was due. The same conceptions of the world and of mans place in it would mould the thoughts of the time, though they would be less sharply impressed and less obvious to their successors. And, in the next place, a mans influence upon his own con- temporaries is that which is incomparably the most important. We are what we are because Shakespeares contemporaries were what they were; and doubtless Shake- speares influence in forming them must count for something. But we are not what we are because we read Shake- speares plays. Of course we derive a good deal of pleasure from them. They influence our literature very often for evil and they supply us with innumer- able quotations and imaginative symbols. But their effect upon the race is almost a vanishing quantity. For, first, not one man in a hundred reads them; secondly, of those who read, few understand; and, finally, of those who understand, few can count the influence of any particular author as amongst the forces which have really moulded their lives. Do half a 59 dozen men in a generation really trace any great spiritual change to the power of any one writer especially of a distant pe- riod? This is indeed a point upon which we wilfully deceive ourselves, and doubt- less the implied assertion may at first sight be denied. But let any man exam- ine frankly what are the forces which have reall~ moulded his nature. He has been profoundly affected by his family, by his school, by his profession; by the religious faith in which he has been educated; by the moral standard accepted around him; and sometimes by the artistic tastes and intellectual biasses which are prevalent in his day. But how many men can say frankly, after real self-examination, that their characters have been altered or their views of life materially modified by read- ing any author, whatever his fame, who died even a century ago? So far as he affected the development of the thoughts and history of his race, he has, of course, affected the development of all subsequent time. But I speak of the direct influence of the difference between our character as it actually is, and that which it would have been if we had not read a particular book of a past century. A few literary persons will, of course, attribute great weight to such readings, and literary peo- ple generally speak as if they were the whole world. They are really, I fancy, a superficial ornament, counting almost for zero in the great forces which really move mankind. But, of course, this is a senti- ment not to be indulged even in private. If, however, there be any share of truth in these statements, they naturally limit our estimate of the value even of the greatest works. Every man has an influ- ence, powerful in proportion to his char acter, upon his o~vn circle. That will be exerted, whether he wishes it or not, and whether he puts his thoughts in print or expresses them in life. His influence as a writer reaches and affects often very deeply a wide circle of congenial minds, who are prepared to receive his teaching. Beyond that circle , again, he has a vague influence upon people who may bear his name and think it becoming to have some opinion about him. But this last influ- ence, if it deserves the name, is one which no wise man should desire, and which has but a small and uncertain effect. Why should I care whether a number of ignorant people clatter about my name or not, when of me, as I really am, they are radically in- cal)able of knowing anything whatever? Yet the knowledge which an indifferent contemporary has of a Shakespeare is 6o GENIUS AND VANITY. probably as vivid and as influential as the knowledge of any but the very finest critics in the later generations, when the writers language is already growing dim, and his thoughts are embodied in unfamiliar im- ages. Even of great men it may be true that their influence either upon their chil- dren, their friends, or their dependents is far more importa.~nt than that which they exercise by direct communication with distant ages. The most powerful voice becomes faint as it spreads into ever- widening spheres. It then becomes but the ghost of a real utterance a faint murmur of half-forgotten meaning, loud enough to be heard in the study, but not to guide men amidst the rough shocks of vivid present experience. My relations to my butcher and baker belong to the inner sphere, where my influence is still potent; and my dealings with them may be more effectual than my dealings with posterity, though bearing upon smaller matters. But you cannot be certain that you are a Shakespeare, or even distantly akin to Shakespeare. The difficulty of judgin~ ourselves, which makes error venial, makes dogmatism madness. Nobody has a right to say positively that he has drawn the one prize out of the many million blanks. The English writers of past cen- turies, whose books are still alive for any but professed students, may be counted on the fingers. Granting that you have talents and even genius, the probability that you will be added to the sacred band, instead of perishing with the unknown rank and file, is almost infinitesimal. The lad who runs away to sea in hopes of be- coming an admiral or a Captain Cook, is scarcely making a less judicious venture. Genius is rare enough, and it is the rare exception when even genius bears its per- fect fruit. The Shakespeare is not merely the man of ~reater power than his neigh- bors, but that particular man of great powers who appeared when the times were ripe and circumstances propitious. To stake your happiness on the chance that you are an exceptional being under exceptional circumstances, is, to say the least, daring to the verge of rashness. But, if I do not, the world will lose its chance of another great poet! Make yourself easy; the world will get on per- fectly well. Nobody is so great in politics, but that society could struggle along its path of development without him; nor so great in song, but that somehow the emo- tions of the world will find some channel of utterance. Death to our ignorance at least is like a dark power stalking through the world, striking left and rio~ht at random, crushing the happy and lebav~ ing~ the miserable, and destroying the genius as well as the fool. But his blow never strikes an individual with whom we could not dispense. Thought will con- tinue to push along every line of develop- ment. The disappearance of one inquirer only transfers to another the discoveries which are held to confer immortality; the social problem is being worked out by un- consciously co-operating millions, and they will find a leader to replace the old one if one man is removed, posterity will have to inscribe the name of the immortal Jones in its pantheon instead of honoring the immortal Smith; the problem may be solved a day later or a day sooner, and there may be some differences in the terms of the answer; but the answer will be found, and must be the same in essence. The great man puts the clock on; he does not determine the direction of its movement. And it is equally true that when thoughts are fermenting in the mind of age, and new aspects of nature become conspicuous, and new emotional phases diminish utterance, people will be found to provide the imaginative symbols fitted for the embodiment; and the man who does, at last will be regarded as the creator instead of the product. At anj rate, it is quite needless for any man to fret himself about the fate of the universe. There are within this realm five hundred, probably five thousand as good as he, and those will do best who leave the world and their fame to take their chance, and aim only at doing the work which lies next to hand. Leave the universe alone. When a regard for the interests of things in general is not hypocritical, it is the very madness of arrogance. Here, as in so many cases, it is the law, though it is an apparent paradox, that a man contributes to an end most effectually by putting any direct reference to the end out of his mind. Here, in deed, is a plainer, if not more powerful, consideration. Is not the sup- posed act of heroism a folly in any case? It requires courage to neglect ones bread- and-butter in order to win glory; but what if the neglect of bread-and-butter be the shortest way to wreck your genius as well as your prospects? Good work, as a rule, is only done by people who have paid their bills. Why was Shakespeare so far ahead of all contemporary dramatists? Because Shakespeare had the good sense to make money, and was therefore able to A GREAT SEA-WAVE. 6r command the market, and write his later works without undue pressure. Others could only write in a tavern, or to get out of a creditors clutches. Shakespeares mind was at ease by the consciousness of his comfortable investments at Stratford. Hamlet was written because Shake- speare was solvent. Pope was able to pol- ish his verses because he judiciously made himself independent by his Homer. Wordsworth, like Haydon, wished to shake the world; but unlike Haydon, he recog- nized and acted upon the truth that the first condition of such power is personal independence. Live for art, if you will; but. first be sure that you have not to live by your art, otherwise the only harvest that you can reap will be that of the first reck- less ebullitions, when the responsibility of life does not weigh upon the buoyancy of youth. Some good work has come out of Bohemia ; but any one who sojourns per- manently in that seductive region is sure to loose his vigor as well as his money, and produces in the end mere scraps and outlines and rough indications of what he might have done. When we are asked to consider how much may have been crushed in poets condemned to writing ledgers, we can only reply by pointing out how much has certainly been lost by poets who have run to seed in spunging-houses. From the days of Marlowe to those of the un- happy Edgar Poe, we have innumerable warnings that genius runs to waste when it does not condescend to be respectable. We have fallen upon a very common- place and humble moral. It is none the worse for that, and certainly not the less often overlooked. The truth which it is really important to enforce more than ever is the simple one, that all really good and permanent work is the expression, not of a single mood of passionate excitement or prurient desire for enjoyment, but of a mind fully developed, strengthened by conflict with the world, and enriched by reflection and experience. The first con- dition of such a development is indepen- dence of spirit, which is seldom obtaina- able without independence of pocket. The first, thou h not the loftiest, duty of man is to pay his way; though it must, of course, be added, that limitation of wants, rather than increase of means, is the legiti- mate mode of securing that object If, like Wordsworth, you think that you can be a great man by living upon bread and water, you are certainly right in not aim- ing at the vulgar prizes of money and pre- ferment. But a career is honorable even if it fails; and we may safely honor the man who limits himself to a modest liveli- hood in order to devote himself to great work. The evil is that most men want to have both advantages; to live splendidly, and yet to stake their means of living upon literary fame; to gain the praise of the world as well as the praise of poster- ity; and, in short, to set about a cam- p aign which can only be justified by suc- cess without counting the cost beforehand. That is why so many men of genius run to seed, and so many men of no genius fancy that they are acting nobly when they neglect their ordinary duties in search for glory, and fancy that the greatness of their ambition is an apology for the imperfec- tion of their work. From The Spectator. A GREAT SEA-WAVE. THE great sea-wave which, after the recent earthquake at Peru, swept across the Pacific to the Sandwich Islands, affords fresh illustration of the vital energy which still pervades the frame of our earth. If those theories be sound according to which each planet during its extreme youth is as a sun glowing with fiery heat, and in ex- treme old age is, like our moon, cold (save where the suns rays pour upon it) even to its very centre, we should regard the va- rious portions of the middle age of a planet as indicating more or less of vitality ac- cording as the signs of internal heat and activity were greater or less. Assuredly, thus viewing our earth, we have no reason to accept the melancholy doctrine that she is approaching the stage of planetaryde- crepitude. She still shows signs of intense vitality, not indeed that all parts of her surface are moved at this present time by what Humboldt called the reaction of her interior. In this respect, doubtless, changes slowly take place, the region of disturbance at one time becoming after many centuries a region of rest, and vice versd. But regarding the earth as a whole, we find reason for believing that she still has abundant life in her. The astronomer who should perceive, even with the aid of the most powerful tele- scope, the signs of any change in another planet (Mar, for example, our nearest neighbor among the superior planets), the progress of the change being actually dis- cernible as he watched, would certainly conclude that that planet was moved by mighty internal forces. Now it is not too much to say, though at first it may per- 62 A GREAT SEA-WAVE. haps seem so, that the mighty sea-wave which, on May io, rushed in upon the shores of the group of Sandwich Islands, would have been discernible from Venus, supposing an observer there had been watching the earth with a telescope as powerful as the best yet made on this earth. The wave was caused, as we know, by a tremendous subterranean disturbance in Peru a few hours earlier. Here, at least, was the centre of subterranean ac- tion, for a land wave also travelled from that region along the Pacific coast of Mex- ico, and was felt at the Sandwich Isles, where the Kilanea volcano was set in mo- tion almost at the same time that the sea- wave came in. But there can be no doubt whatever that, as in the case of the great Peruvian earthquake of August, i868, the sea-wave had its origin not in the local subterranean disturbances, but in the great upheaval by which Iquique and other places wer~ destroyed. We shall no doubt, hear before long, as in that case, of the arrival of the great wave at the Samoa Isles, at the Japanese Archipelago, on the shores of New Zealand, Australia, and so forth. Now, the great circular wave which spread on May so last from the Peruvian shore as a centre athwart the entire Pacific was probably not felt by a single shi pin the open sea, any more than the still vast- er wave of the 13th and 14th of August, s868, and for the same reason. With a height of some fifteen feet (or thirty feet vertical difference between crest and hol- low), the wave had yet so gentle a slope that, though it rushed at the rate of three or four hundred miles an hour across the Pacific, the rise and fall of a ship upon its surface would be altogether imperceptible. The great sea-wave, as Mallet long since pointed out, consists, in the deep ocean, of a long, lo xv swell of enormous volume, having an equal slope before and behind, and that so gentle that it might pass under a ship without being noticed. And we are told, in fact, by a modern writer, that during the rush of the great sea-wave across the Pacific on August 1314, s868, though where the wave reached island shores it seemed as though the land were first sinking bodily into the ocean and then risin~ bodily out of it, there was not one amon~ the hundreds of vessels which were sailing.upon the Pacific when it was trav- ersed by the sea-wave in xvhich any un- usual motion was perceived. How, then, it may be asked, can we sup- pose that a wave which was not perceived by those actually sailing upon the ocean traversed by it, could have been visible with suitable telescopic power from a dis- tant planet? The very circumstance which rendered the rise and fall of ships upon the sea-waves of i868 and of last May imperceptible, assures us that the progress of the wave would so have been visible. Besides its enormous range in length, for when it struck the Sandwich Isles its crest must have formed the arc of a great curve, having for radius the distance of sixty- three hundred miles, separating that group from Peru, the wave had great breadth, otherwise, its height being about thirty feet, the rapid advance of the wave would have caused a rapid rise and fall, instead of a slow motion only discernible along shore-lines. Probably the distance from valley to valley, on either side of the mighty crest of the wave, was not less than two hundred miles in the open sea. So far as mere dimensions, then, are con- cerned, the great wave would certainly have been visible from a planet placed as Venus is, when most favorably situated for observing the earth. To show this, it is only necessary to point out that Venus is then much nearer to us than Mars ever is, that the entire diameter of Mars is but about forty-five hundred miles, while the radius of the great wave, when it reached the Sandwich Jsles, was fully six thousand miles, and that its probable breadth of two hundred miles very far exceeds the breadth of many of the well-known markings upon the planet Mars. But it may be asked h6w the wave would become discernible at all, viewed, as it were, from above. How should an ob- server in Venus know that the highest part of the wave was thirty feet or so nearer to him than the hollow of the val- leys on either side of it? The way in which the wave would become visible cor- responds in some degree to the way in which those stranne radiations which ex- tend from several of the lunar craters are visible, though they have very little eleva- tion, cast no perceptible shadows, and are many of them undiscernible when other lunar features are clearly seen, and be- come discernible only when those other features are scarcely visible at all. Under the suns rays, the two opposite faces of the advancing waves would be differently illuminated. One face, a hundred miles broad, be it remembered, would catch the light more fully than the ocean as yet un- disturbed, while the other would catch the light less fully. Thus the mighty arc of the wave would appear as a double arc, one-half of its breadth being bright, the other (relatively) dark. We do not say NORTH-COUNTRY FISHERMEN. 63 that the wave would be a very striking or those of another, to recognize not in full obvious feature of the earths disc as seen perhaps, but in great degree the influ- from Venus, but that it would be discerni- ence of time as an important factor in ble under the same telescopic power which geological development, they are able to the Hersehels, Lassell, Rosse, and others make a juster comparison between past have applied to the celestial objects as and present disturbances. The result is, seen from the earth, we have little doubt. that, although we cannot doubt that. the If so, since not only would it be perceived earth is parting with the heat which is the as a new feature, but also its motion across source of its Vulcanian ener ies we find the Pacific be traceable, and the tran- every reason to believe that the loss of sience of the phenomenon quickly recob- energy is taking place so slowly that the nized, it would afford observers on that diminution during many generations is planet the clearest evidence of the activity altogether imperceptible. As a modern of subterranean forces within our earth. writer has remarked, when we see that Those among the observers living on while mountain ranges were being up- Venus who were not content merely to heaved or valleys depressed to their pres- observe, but exercised also their reasoning e nt position, race after race and type after faculties to determine the meaning of what type lived out on the earth the long lives they saw, would perceive that on or about which belong to races and to types, we August 1314, i868, and again on May to recognize the great work which the earths last, tremendous throes bad shaken some subterranean forces are still engaged upon. portion of the southern half of that long Even now continents are beinb slowly de- double continent lying north and south pressed or upheaved, even now mountain which they have long since recognized on ranges are being raised to a different our globe ; that the waters of the ocean level, table-lands are being formed ,great had thus been mightily disturbed; and valleys are being gradually scooped out, that a great wave, or rather a succession old shore-lines shift their place, old sound- of several great waves, had swept across ings vary, the sea advances in one place the largest of the terrestrial oceans. They and retires in another; on every side, would be able even; by noting the velocity natures plastic hand is still at work, mod- and variations of velocity of the great elling and remodelling the earth, and mak- wave, to determine the depth of the Pacific ing it constantly a fit abode for those who Ocean, and the manner according to which dwell upon it. the depth varies in the neighborhood of different island groups. It is not alto- gether impossible, indeed, that what we have here described may actually have occurred, though on neither of the occa- From The Pall Mall Gazette. sions when the Pacific has of late been NORTH-COUNTRy FISHERMEN. swept by a sea-wave was Venus very suit- IF contrasts go far to make life pleasant, ably placed for observing our planet. the North-country fisherman has no cause Apart from thoughts such as these, there to complain. Day after day you may see is much in a phenomenon like this great him lounging listlessly in thick blue jersey sea-wave well worth considering. When and souwester hat, with hands plunged in we recognize in the subterranean forces of the pockets of the woolly pantaloons, that our earth an energy competent to disturb are thrust in their turn into the well-oiled the entire surface of the Pacific, we per- boots. But we must hasten to add that ceive how vain are the fears of those who on these occasions he is thrown back upon imagine that the earths Vulcanian ener- idleness in spite of himself. A rattling gies are very nearly exhausted. There is gale is blowing on shore; the laden steam. nothing to show that at any time of which vessels of the northern coal-fleet are lying geology affords evidence throes more storm-bound in the mouths of the rivers mighty than those which have shaken Peru the waves are rolling landwards in tum- and Chili within the last half-century have blinb banks of foaming~water, and break- disturbed any portion of the earths frame. ing in sheets of spray over the reefs on In former times indeed, when geologists that rugged coast. Then the fisherman were accustomed to regard the processes compromises with the elements. He does of an entire era as completed in a single not sit solitary in his cottage, mopin~ over throe, men might well believe that the the fire; but though he exposes himself in earth had sunk into relative quiescence. the open, he is as careful to be sheltered But now that close study has enabled them from the blast as if he were afraid of its to separate the effects of one process from taking the bloom off his delicate complex. 64 NORTH-COUNTRY FISHERMEN. ion. Nothing can well be more ludicrous than these groups of sturdy men, with fig- ures that seem half as broad as they are long, stepping the quarterdeck under the lee of some shed that allows them about a couple of strides either way. Now and again ~ne of them who constitutes himself the look-out will show his head cautiously round the corner and take a circular ob- servation seaward, drawing back the mo- ment the duty is discharged. To be sure, there is nothing in the world to note. The odds are, with the wind in that quar- ter, that it may go on blowing great guns for days; and when the wind has fallen it must be many hours more before the waves follow its example. That stolid resignation to the inevitable is a triumph of patience, and savors in some degree of Mohammedan fatalism. For all the time the bread-winning is in suspense, and noone has a better notion of the worth of a lays wage than these unemotional vic- tims of uncontrollable circumstances. But, thanks to strong tobacco and short pipes, they tide over the interval in seem- ing contentment; and even when the long- looked-for time comes at last they are not flurried out of their constitutional deliber- ation. The wind, that had been whistling through the chimney-pots more fitfully, sank fairly down with the sun; and the whole of the village is a foot at daybreak, with everything carefully prepared before- hand. The lines are knotted and coiled, the supplies of bait laid in, and the boats all ready for launching. One after another they ar~ hoisted upon wheels, and run down the shelving beach by dozens of will- ing arms. The crews tumble in, three or four men and a boy. The heavy oars are out, and away they labor through the winding channel among the half-submerged rocks. It is no easy navi~ation even now, for the groundswell is chafing in the pas- sage which confines it, and were the weather-worn planks dashed against the jagged points the broad-bottomed boat would shiver like a walnut-shell. But strength and skill run the gauntlet safely, and one by one they are tossing in the offing. It is a pretty sight to any one looking down from the bluffs, the scatter- ing of the little fishing fleet. The sun has been getting the better of the breaking mist; he is shining brilliantly on the white- crested waves, and gilding the brown patches o.f seaweed. The damp on the dark rocks, with their fluttering fringes of weed, makes them glisten like polished ebony. The flocks of white-breasted seagulls are stooping and screaming overhead, or gath- ering clamorously on the spits of sand in search of materials for a voracious break- fast. The broad black boats are dancing and disappearing like so many corks, in a way that would be terribly trying to un- seasoned diaphragms. But a day like that, supposing the take to be successful, is one of the white-letter days in the fish- erman s calendar. He strips his tarpaulin coat and over-jersey, and he goes about his work luxuriously in the pleasant warmth. That is literally the sunny side of his life; but then comes the reverse. We do not speak of habitual exposure to wet and cold, for to that he is comparatively insen- sible, or he endures it in the way of his business. But there is always the chance of a surprise which may be fatal, or which, at all events, may cost him his nets or lines. Though tolerably well read in the signs of the weather, he is very far from infallible. Besides, he cannot always be shirking the risks he apprehends, and it is not his way to sin on the side of over- caution. The wind shifts round suddenly, or a storm blows up from the land. Then his return iscut off as effectually as if the beach were sealed by a shoal of torpedoes. Many of the fishing hamlets, like the one we have described, are only to be approached through such a labyrinth of reefs as we have noticed. In a gale off the shore, the passage is impracticable, for even steering in after dark in favorable weather you must take the bearings by the lights that are run up to landmarks. If the worst come to the worst, there is nothing for it but to run, keeping the boat before the wind and trusting in Providence. The men must do their best to give a berth to the dangerous shore where their wives and families are anxiously expecting them; and if they can keep the boat afloat by skilful steering and indefatigable baling, and if they can support sinking nature on their scanty stores, they drive past harbors that offer them no refuge, till they are drifted at last on the dunes of the Dutch coast or to an anchorage in one of the northern estuaries.

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, No~ 1726. July 14, 1877. From Beginning, Volume XIX. C Vol. CXXXIV. CONTENTS. I. PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. By Edward A. Freeman Contemporary Review, . II. THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. By George Mac Donald, author of Malcolm, etc. Part XX Advance Sheets III. VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. From the Dutch of Jhr. C. A. van Sypesteyn, Temple Bar, 97 IV. PAULINE. By L. B. Walford, author of Mr. Smith, etc. Part VII Advance Sheets 105 V. MORDEcAI: A PROTEST AGAINST THE CRIT- ICS. By a Jew Macmillans Mao-azzne 112 VI. GREEN PASTURES AND PIccADILLT. By William Black. Part XX., . . Examiner 121 VII. POPULAR ERRORS Pall Mall Gazette, 124 VIII. LITTLE TORTURES Liberal Review 126 IX. WILLIAM CAXTON Fireside, 127 X. A NEW STIMULANT PITURT, . . Nature, . 128 POETRY. THISBE 66 To VICTOR HUGO. By Alfred Tenny. A HOPE 661 son 66 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,free of jtostage. An extra copy of THE Livsuo AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, iS cents. 66 THISBE, ETC. THISI3E. I. SHE lives in the smoky city, Low down by the railway line; But she asks for no mans pity, Nor cares for verse of mine. 2. Shes moving hither and thither, And often her work is hard; But sometimes in fine weather She rests a bit in the yard. 3. With the empty pail behind her, She leans her arms on the wall, And hopes that there hell find her, Her lover, strong and tall. 4. Up in the air above her, The great trains outward go; And many a lass and her lover May journey to Jericho. 5. But when he stoops from his doorway, And leans his arms on tle wall, The world would he in a poor way If that were not best of all. Blackwoods Magazine. J. R. S. A HOPE. I. SLOWLY we gather and with pain From many toils a scanty gain; We strive to know, but scant our powers, And short the time and strait the bounds, And ever-unsurmounted towers The mortal barrier that surrounds Our being; and the body still, Imperious slave, betrays the will. Slowly we gather and with pain, But quick the scattering again; Whether it chance the failing brain Lets slip the treasure it hath won Through weary days, or sudden blow Lays the unshattered fabric low, And all our doing is undone. II. Slowly a nation builds its life From barbarous chaos into law And kindly social ties and awe Of powers divine. For civil strife Still opens wide within the walls The yawning gulf that will not close Until the noblest victim falls; Or, fierce without, the shock of foes In one wild hour of blood oerthrows The labor of the patient years; And when at last the work appears Complete in stately strength to stand, Riot ~vith parricidal blow, Or mad ambitions traitor hand, Fierce clutching at the tyrants crown, In headlong ruin lays it low, Or brute battalions tread it down, Or ease and luxury and sin, Fell cankers sown of peace, devour, Till trappings of imperial power Hide but the living death within. III. But doubtless growth repairs decay, And still the great ~vorld grows to more, Though men and nations p~55 away. But what if at the source of day Some cosmic change exhaust the store Which feeds the myriad forms of life? What if some unimagined strife Should raise so high the solar fire, That all this solid earthly frame Should in as brief a space expire As raindrops in a furnace-flame? IV. Yet, if our faith is not the scheme Of priestly conning, nor a dream Which with some fair illusion caught Our ungrown manhoods childish thought; If Christmas tells us true, To-day The Child Divine in Bethlehem lay; If He is Man who, past the ken Of Science in her widest range, Orders the law of ceaseless change, Content we know that lives of men Pass as the leaves of spring away, That time will bring its final day To the great world itself, secure The Eternal Manhood shall endure. Spectator. ALFRED CHURCH. TO VICTOR HUGO. VICTOR in poesy, Victor in romance, Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, French of the French, and lord of human tears; Child-lover; bard whose fame-lit laurels glance Darkenin~, the wreaths of all that would ad- vance, Beyond our strait, their claim to he thy peers; Weird Titan by thy winter weight of years As yet unbroken, stormy voice of France! Who dost not love our Englandso they say; I know notEngland, France, all man to he Will make one people ere mans race be run: And I, desiring that diviner day, Yield thee full thanks for thy fujI courtesy To younger England in the koymy son. Nineteenth Century. ALFP,EPT~ENNYSON. PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 67 From The Contemporary Review, false. As a rule, it is not only false, but PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS, impossible. There is, as a rule, no need S/emma/a quid faciunt? was the to turn to authorities to confute the tale. well-known question of the Roman satir- In the eyes of any one who knows the 1st, a question which has offended many times in which the tale is placed, the tale whose one ground for self-complacency confutes itself. When a pedigree goes would be taken away if the answer were back as far as the eleventh century, in a to be the sweeping negative doctrine that vast majority of cases there is not only no all pedigrees go for nothing. But when authority for the alleged facts, but there Juvenal said or implied that pedigrees could be no authority. The names, the went for nothing, he was thinking of pedi- descriptions, the titles, are for the most grees which really were pedigrees. His part such as were altogether unknown at doctrine was that it did not matter what the time when they are supposed to have forefathers a man had, that what did mat- been borne. The historical circumstances, ter was what the man was himself. This when any are introduced, are for the most doctrirre is one which is true and which is part, not merely fictions, but exactly that not true, according as we admit or reject kind of fiction which. is, in its beginning, the belief that the question what a man is deliberate and interested falsehood. at all depends on the question who his fore- In so saying, there is no reason to blame fathers were. In some cases it is quite the present representatives of the families certain that what a man is himself does concerned. There is at least no reason depend to some extent upon who his fore- to blame them for anything more serious fathers were. It made a difference at than failing to examine tales which they Rome whether a mans forefathers were have heard ~from their childhood, and Fabii or Claudii. There was a likelihood, which it is a kind of point of family honor amounting almost to a moral certainty, that to believe. On those who edit the volumes a Fabius would be one kind of man, and in which the tales appear one might be that a Claudius would be quite another inclined to be harsher. What, for in- kind of man. In such cases the pedigree stance, can be the state of mind of Sir did matter; it was a thoroughly practical Bernard Burke? Does he know, or does thing. But all this went on the assump- he not know, the manifest falsehood of tion that the pedigree was at least true, the tales which he reprints year after year? that its stages could be really made out, He may, one is tempted to say, be reason- either by natural descent or by legal adop- ably called on for a more critical examina- tion. And, whatever we say as to the god tion than we can ask from people who or hero with whom the pedigree commonly simply send him the stories which they started, the stages within historical times have been taught to believe about their were doubtless for the most part genuine, own families. If he says that he is not But when we turn over an English peer- responsible for them, that he simply puts age, or a book of En~lish pedigrees of into his book what is sent to him without any kind, we are tempted to put Juvenals examining into its truth, if he says that question in another sense. S/emma/a the responsibility for the truth or false- quid faciun/? What are pedigrees hood of the stories rests with those who worth? when stage after stage, not in send them to him, he shows a very imper- mythical but in recorded ages, not amon ~ fe ct notion of the duties of authorship or gods and heroes, but among men who editorship, even in its lowest form. No ought to be real, is purely mythical if man can have a ribht to publish, without indeed mythical is not too respectable a contradiction or comment, as alleged fact name for what must be in many cases the and not as avowed fiction, a number of work of deliberate invention. I turn over stories which are false on the face of them. a peerage or other book of genealogy, and The readers of the book accept the stories I find that, when a pedigree professes to on the faith of the author or editor. If be traced back to the times of which I they think about the matter at all, they know most iii detail, it is all but invariably hold that it is his business to examine and 68 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. verify the statements which are sent to him. Indeed Sir Bernard Burke himself tells us, in his Prefatory Notice pre- fixed to the the thirty-second edition of his Peerage and Baronetage, that he has again subjected its pages to searching revision and extensive amendment. Here then Sir Bernard Burke distinctly takes on himself, what reason would have laid upon him even if he had not taken it upon him- self, namely, responsibility for his own book. It is the Ulster king-at-arms, not the unknown persons who send him the accounts of this or that family, whom we must in fairness blame for the monstrous fictions which appear as the early history of so many families. We have no right to expect much historical criticism from th~ man who sends in the account of his own family which has for some genera- tions, perhaps for some centuries, passed current as the history of that family. He very naturally accepts it as he finds it, without examination of any kind. It would indeed be a kind of heroic sacrifice on behalf of truth, if he did critically ex- amine what his father and grandfather and great-grandfather have handed down as something which tends to the honor of the family. He is in no way blameworthy simply for believing the fable in the first instance. He becomes blameworthy only if he sticks to the fable after it has been clearly shown to him that it is a fable. But a harsher measure must be dealt to the editor who year after year puts forth these monstrous fictions, without contra- diction, commonly without qualification or hesitation of any kind. For it is practi- cally no qualification to bring a story in with some such formula as it is said or tradition affirms. Readers, especially readers of books of this class, need to be told in very plain words that the stories are false, that in most cases they must be false, that they carry their own confutation with them. Nothing short of this clear warning will make the mass of people see the real state of the case; and this warn- ing Sir Bernard Burke never gives them. The fault therefore lies wholly with those ~vho invented the tales in past times, and with those who spread them abroad now without giving any help towards contra- dicting them. From Sir Bernard Burke we have a right to except historical crit- icism, and we do not get it. He subjects his pages to searching revision and exten- sive amendment. But such is the abiding life of the fables that they live through all revision and all amendment. The battle lies therefore with those who actively put forth fables when it is their business to put forth truths. The peer or baronet or esquire who does nothing worse than pas- sively accept what his forefathers accepted before him need be the object of no quar- rel at all. It is only when he has been often rebuked and still hardens his neck that he can be set down as a conscious accomplice of the Ulster king-at-arms. In pointing out some of the strange fic- tions which disfigure the pages of our peerages and other books of pedigrees, I shall keep myself strictly to those pedi- grees which touch the English history of those tires of which I believe myself to have some minute knowledge. I leave the Scots and the Britons to settle their own forefathers; nor do I stop to exam- ine pedigrees of much later date. And I do this, not only because I am most at home in a particular period, but because the period in which I am most at home happens to be the period where it is most needful unsparingly to wield the critical hatchet against the thick growth of genea logical falsehood. Several special causes of falsehood affect the genealogical his- tory of the eleventh and twelfth centuries which do not affect either earlier or later times. It is only a very eccentric geneal- ogist here and there who insists on car- rying back his detailed pedigree into times before the eleventh century. As a rule, the inventors of pedigrees did not know enough or care enough about those ages to invent any fictions about them. There are plenty of fables in vogue about those ages; but they are seldom genealogical fables, and, when they are, they are easily exposed. With later times, the nearer we get to modern days, the means of detec- tion become easier, and the danger of invention therefore becomes greater. If a pedigree is satisfied to start in Stewart or Tudor times, it is safe to believe it, unless there is some special reason to dis PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 69 believe it. If it goes back to the fifteenth, fourteenth, or thirteenth century, this or that stage may he doubtful, but the thing as a whole has a fair chance of being gen- uine. But when a pedigree goes back to the eleventh century or to the early part of the twelfth, things are altogether changed. Some pedigrees which go back to that time are undoubtedly true. Some, whether true or false, are at least not pal- pably false; they could not be refuted by the general historian who does not spe- cially give himself to genealogical or local study. But these certain and probable pedigrees are quite exceptional. The mass of pedigrees which go back to those times are, by the man who knQws those times, at once cast aside as false on the face of them. They need no examination; their very statement shows that they are impossible. When a man says either that his forefathers came in with the Conqueror, or that his forefathers lived at this or that place before the coming of the Conqueror, it may so happen that the pedigree is true, but there is a strong presumption in favor of its falsehood. There are some obvious special reasons why this age is specially open above all others to the inroads of genealogical false- hood. I have already hinted at the two motives which specially tell this way. The time of the Normai~ Conquest is the time to which it became fashionable for people to trace up their pedigrees. To be of the blood of the invaders of En- gland was thought to be something cred- itable. Some people undoubtedly came of such blood, and could prove that they came of it. And of course there must have been many others who did come of it who could not in the same way prove the fact. It thus became a point of honor with most families to think themselves descended from the companions of the Norman Conqueror. Those who had no real pedigrees to prove it invented false pedigrees, which in a few generations did just as well. Now we should bear in mind that, in some states of the human mind, invention of this kind bears a somewhat different moral character from what it would bear among ourselves. It is really part of the myth g~ceic process which Mr. Grote expounded long ago. It belongs to a state of mind when the distinction be- tween truth and falsehood in historical matters was not very accurately drawn. It was taken for granted as a matter of hon- est belief, that the family must have sprung from some companion of the Con- queror, just as it was taken for granted that every patrician gens at Athens must have sprung from some god or hero. It was taken for granted, just as it was taken for granted that every nation and every city must have been called after the name of some personal founder. In all these cases, the dishonesty, so far as there is any, con- sisted in the particular name chosen. That there must have been some founder of the received class was a matter of hon- est superstition. And, in choosing a forefather who should have fought in Wil- liams army, any little accidental circum- stance of name, place, or incident was naturally seized on as proof. A number of little chances might guide a man, either in attaching his pedigree to some real per- son or in inventinb an imaginary person as his forefather. When the forefather was chosen, exploits grew around him. When I say grew, I know perfectly well that what we call the growth of a story is really the result of the action of a number of human wills. The convenient meta- phor must not delude us into thinking that a story really grows of itself, as a tree grows. But in some states of the human mind, the acts of the human will by which this or that touch is added to a story are acts which are barely conscious acts; they are very far from implying that guilty consciousness of falsehood which they would imply in an age when the distinction between historical truth and historical falsehood is fully understood. We may then fairly say that the story grows. There must have been some fore- father. The vagueness of a nameless forefather was unpleasant; a name for him was lighted on or invented. The forefather must have performed some ex- ploits. The vagueness of exploits with- out statement of time, place, or circum- stance was unpleasant. Particular ex- ploits were devised; almost any chance hint would suggest one kind of exploit 70 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. rather than another. And all this was done, if with no clear belief in the truth of the story, yet with no clear conviction of its falsehood. The legend of the fam- ily is something like the legend of the saint. It either was true or it ought to have been true. In both cases there may have been sheer, conscious, guilty, inven- tion; but there is no need to suppose sheer, conscious, guilty, invention in every case either of family legends or of saintly legends. In a crowd of cases of both kinds the story comes of a state of mind which does not wilfully sin against histori- cal truth, but which has not yet learned that there is such a thing as historical truth. It comes of a state of mind which at all events has not yet learned that his- torical truth has anything to do with the matter of family or saintly legends. In this way there arose endless stories, how this and that family was descended from this and that real or imaginary com- panion of the Conqueror, and how the real or imaginary hero did such and such commonly imaginary exploits. The family tree was drawn out according to the eternal fitness of the case. In the mind of the pedigree-maker the family tree is a very venerable thing. In the mind of the historian it goes for nothing. Descents may be proved; but they must he proved by something very different from the family tree or the family legend. They must be proved by evidence which was meant to prove something else. There is, we will say, a deed, whatever may be its object a sale of lands, a pur- chase of lands, a grant of lands, the enfranchisement of a villain, or anything else which is done, say by John of Sut- ton, with the consent of his wife Agnes and his son Richard. There is another deed done by Richard of Sutton with the consent of his mother Agnes and his son William. Here, is real evidence for three stages of the pedigree. Even if the deeds should chance to be forgeries, as many deeds are, they would still be evi- dence. For the object of the forger would not be to prove steps in the pedigree, but to make good some claim or other. He would have no motive for falsifying the pedigree, and if he made any mistake in it, the mistake would be purely accidental.* * It must be remembered tbat tbere are deeds which seem to have been forged on purpose to make out false pedigrees. But I am speaking of deeds of tbe ordinary kinds, sorb as one finds in the cartularies of monas- teries, wbich, wbether genuine or spurious, whether the claims which they meant to assert were good or bad, were not written to prove a pedigree. In either case the witness to genealogy is incidental, and has the value of incidental witness. So, if a man is mentioned in a Pipe-roll or any other public document, and his son is mentioned in the same or another Pipe- roll, there is real evidence for the pedi- gree. So again, there may be the state- ments of credible chroniclers, whose story may lead them to mention that such and such a man was the son or grandson of such or such another man. All these are different forms of real evidence; and, the less the writer of the document wasthink- ing of proving the pedigree, the further his statement goes towards proving it. There undoubtedly are people who can prove by real evidence of this kind that they are descended from companions of the Conqueror. But the family tree does not prove it; the family tradition does not prove it; the Battle Abbey Roll~ does nof prove it. In genealogical books we sometimes see this last source of false- hood seriously referred to. But it is only the pedigree-maker who will ever refer to it. The historian will pass by such trans- parent fiction without a word of notice. With the true Roll of Winchester before. him, he need not stop to trouble himself for a moment with any of the endless forms of the false Roll of Battle. In short, if in this particular period we are specially exposed to the assaults of falsehood, we have a weapon such as few other periods supply us with to wield on behalf of truth. It is wonderful how many of the absurd tales which fill the pages of Sir Bernard Burke may be at once cast to the winds by the simple proc- ess of turning to Domesday. One is tempted to ask whether the inventors of pedigrees knew that there was any Domes- day. Sometimes indeed a pedigree refers to it; sometimes its statements even help to make out a pedigree. But it far more commonly happens that, in order to refute a pedigree, there is nothing to be done but to turn to the proper place in the great Survey. Sometimes it is enough to turn to the Index to the great Survey. When we are told that a certain man came over with the Conqueror, that he did wonderful exploits and was rewarded with grants of land, we can at once put the story to the truest of tests. If anything of the kind ever happened, the record of it would be in Domesday. The Survey would not indeed charge itself with describin the exploits; but if the man ~vas a real man at all, his name, his lands, most likely his title of office, his patronymic or other sur- name, if he had one, would all be written in the great book. Be he tenant-in-chief or under-tenant, he ~vould alike be there. PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 7 Even if he had died or suffered forfeiture before the time of the Survey, he would be there as the former owner. The test is sure; the test is easy; the certain evidence which in earlier or later times can some- times not he had at all, or which, if it is to be had, can he had only by searching through and comparing endless separate documents, can be had in the days of King William by a process almost as easy as looking out a word in a dictionary. The hatchet to the argument is in this case easily found. It is wonderful, how many and how stately fabrics of falsehood fall away before the touch of the great record. I open Sir Bernard Burke at a venture, and I light upon the following wonderful statements Totilus de Leton, whose name appears in the Domesday Book as a landed proprietor in the co. Satop, was grandfather of Sir Titus de Leighton, Knight of the Sepul- chre; who, on his return from the Holy Land, was a joint-founder of the abbey of Buildwas in Salop. His son, Sir Richard de Leighton, Knight, led a re- conveyance from William Fitz-alan, soon after the Conquest, of the manor of Leighton; and from him descended John Leighton, Esquire, of Stretton, who was thrice High Sheriff of Shropshire in the reign of Edward the Fourth. Sheriff John and those who come after him are doubtless real people. It is not worth while to search them out. But Totilus and Titus are quite another kind of thing. When are they supposed to have lived? How did they come by their strange names? If Totilus was a landed proprietor in Domesday, how came his grands on to be getting re-conveyances soon after the Conquest? Are Totilus and Titus supposed to be Englishmen or Normans? Nomenclature, commonly a safe guide, here fails us, as Totilus and Titus would certainly have had their names all to themselves among the men of either nation. In short, Totilus, and Titus the Knight of the Sepulchre, are both so grotesquely absurd that it is hardly worth while looking for their names in Domesday or its Index. Still it is well to be able to say that no such names are there, and that in Shropshire, where they are quartered, there is not even any name which the most perverse transcriber could have turned into any such form. Hamp- shire has a Tostil/zis that is of course a diminutive form of Tostz~- and Essex has a Totius, a Latinized shape of one of our queer English names, Totzg. But no such near approach as this can be found in Shropshire. But Richard of Leighton is a perfectly possible man; nay, there is every reason to think that he is a real man. He is a man who might perfectly well be in Domesday; only it is not in Domesday that we find him. He is a real man, and he may be likely enough local knowledge could settle the point the forefather of the later Leightons; only, in order to make the pedigree longer, he has been moved to an earlier time than that to which he rightly belongs. Shrop- shire has among its loidships as entered in Domesday both a Leton and a Lecton, one or other of which is doubtless the Leton or Leighton of the pedigree. And, what is not very wonderful, Shrop- shire had also a Richard among its land- owners. But the union of Richard and Leighton has produced a person who, as far as the age of Domesday is concerned, is purely imaginary. If the place meant is the Leton of Domesday, that was held by Anschitil under Roger, Earl of Shrews- bury. If it be the Lecton of Domesday, that was held by Ralph of Mortemer. As far then as Domesd~iy is concerned, Rich- ard might pass away along with Totilus and Titus. Yet Richard of Leighton is a real man, though he has go t put out of his place and has been provided with an im- possible father and grandfather.* Those documents with which the general histo- rian is bound to be familiar prove his existence at some time not later than the reign of Edward the First, and they prove also that, though he was not a co-founder of Buildwas abbey, yet he was a benefac- tor of the house. His name is found twice in the Buildwas documents in the Monas- ticon (v. 357, 358), as himself making a grant to the abbey and as witnessing the grant of another benefactor. The docu- ments come under an Ins~eximus of 1292, so that the persons mentioned cannot be later than that date; but on the other hand, as Buildwas abbey was not founded till 1135, no one who had a conveyance soon after the Conquest could have been its founder or benefactor. We thus at once get rid of the fiction, and we find our way to the small foundation of truth on which it is piled up. Without any sl)ecial local knowledge, by evidence which every * It is possible that one might go further back than Richard. Rohertus et Aiwoldus de Lectona ap- pear in the Pipe-roll of Henry the First, ~. 47. The second of the two names is proof positive of English descent. But they appear, not in Shropahire hut in I-tuntingdonshire, and, as they were excused a payment of five marks g5roAauz5eritsle sue, it is to he sup- posed that no one would wish to put them in his pedi- gree. 72 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. student of English history must be able to turn to, we can reform to some extent the mythical Leighton pedigree in Sir Bernard Burkes volume. We have got rid of To- tilus, Titus, and the imaginary Richard, and we have found a real Richard instead. We have found that a Leigh ton family exist- ed in the thirteenth century. Some lord of Leighton, Norman or English as might happen, with a pedigree or without one as might happen, perhaps a descendant, per- haps not, of the Domesday possessor, had, at some time later than Henry the First but earlier than the latter years of Edward the First, taken, like crowds of other peo- ple, the name of his lordship as his sur- name. The Richard of Leighton of the Ins~erirnus may or may not have been the forefather of the sheriff. The general inquirer, with his evidence, can say noth- ing either way; the answer must come from the man of special local knowledge. But it is plain that, by the time of the sheriff, the family of Leighton had reached that degree of importance which implied that they ought to have had Domesday forefathers. A pedigree was therefore invented; the real Richard was moved back to the times of the Conquest, and his benefaction to Buildwas abbey was en- larged into co-foundership. Titus and Totilus were added by an unlucky play of fancy. Local knowledge might possibly explain why such names were hit upon, whether they are the corruption of any real names of persons or places. General history can only set them aside, as being, in the form in which they appear in the Peerage and Baronetage, not only imagi- nary but impossible. But when the story had once been invented and often repeat- ed, it was naturally believed. To believe it would become a point of honor with the family and with its neighbors. Nor need we greatly blame those for believing it to whom it seemed fine to have a Titus and a Totilus among their forefathers. But what shall we say to the Ulster king-at- arms, who must have the means of know- ing better, but who reprints all this folly in a thirty-second edition which has gone through searching revision and extensive amendment? In this case it is by no means clear whether Totilus, Titus, and Richard are supposed to be of English or of Norman birth. The inventor of the legend was perhaps Indifferent on that point. The inventors of other legends were more par- ticular; they were commonly, as we have seen, anxious to make out that the patri- arch of the family had come in with the Conqueror. Let us take a remarkably unlucky shot. We are told that The Bedingfields deduce from the Con- quest. The founder of the family, according to the pedigree in the History of Norfolk, was Ogerus de Puges, a Norman knight, and fellow-soldier of Duke William, who ohtained, after the Conquest, the manor of Bedingfleld, from which he assumed his surname. I am not deeply versed in county his- tories, because I have commonly found that, when there is anything which con- nects this or that place or this or that fain- ily with the general history of England, the local writer most commonly leaves it out altogether, or, if he mentions it at all, mentions it in a purely mythical shape. But in this case a pedigree has been sent to me which I presume is the same as the pedigree in the History of Norfolk. The pedigree, which starts with Oger, is patched up by a deed of which I have a copy before me, and which is plainly one of the class of deeds which were invented to make out a pedigree. Pedigree and deed together go down before the fact that there was no such person as Oger de Puges, and that Bedingfield had quite another owner. There is no Bedingfield in Norfolk; but Bedingfield in Suffolk appears twice in Domesday, at p. 368 and p. 428b. In neither case is any one of the name of Oger set down as either past or present owner. On the other hand, there is a real Oger in Norfolk; but he was not lord of Bedingfield or of anything else. If he was a Norman knight and a fellow- soldier of Duke William, either his ser- vices must have been very small, or his master must have been very niggardly in rewarding them. The Oger of Norfolk, who is not distinguished as de Puges or by any other surname of any kind, held noth- ing in chief of the king, but held a small estate of two carucates under William of Warren. The place of this small posses- sion is Dudelingafunci that is doubtless Didlington; and Oge r, whatever may have been his nationality, the name, which survives in Odger is in Domesday Breton rather than either Norman or English, seems to have been simply one of a num- ber of small owners who had held the land before the Conquest, and who went on holding it under the new lord. Next in the pedigree comes Sir Edmund Bed- ingfield, who died in 1446, and who is likely enough to have been a real man, as the Sir Henry Bedingfieldof the next cen- tury undoubtedly was. Here again we have a family, of whatever origin, who, when they rose to importance, looked about for forefathers in the Conquerors army, and made this unlucky guess about Qger. In most of these stories the great object was, as has been already said, to make out that the forefather of the family came in with William the Conqueror. That was the most striking and obvious proof of good birth. But alongside of this feeling there was another, a feeling for which Englishmen must have greater sympathy. On the principle that the longer the pedi- gree was the nobler it was, if it was some- thing to trace the family back to a com- panion of the Conqueror, it was something more to trace it back to those who were here before the Conqueror came. At- tempts of this kind may have sprung from the mere wish to make the family seem older. But a better feeling may have had a share in them. There may be in them some trace of real, sturdy, English feeling, which thought it after all a finer thing to be an Englishman than to be a French- man. But, whatever the motive may have been, it is certain that, in the case of a good many families, an attempt has been made to trace their pedigree up to times before the Conquest. These attempts to trace up to the conquered are not so many as the attempts to trace up to the con- querors; still there are a fair stock of them. In many cases the story may actu- ally be true in a sense. That is, the fam- ily may really be descended from persons who did hold lands, perhaps even the same lands, before the Conquest. There is nothing impossible, nothing absurd, in the claim itself; only it is a claim which it must always be very hard to make out. And in the shape in which the claim is commonly put, it is absurd and impossi- ble. There is for instance a Devonshire rime wlich says that three families I forget the names of the first two, but all begin with C, and the third is the well- known name of Coplestone * were all at home when tbe Conqueror came. Now * I have since lighted on the other two names in a small paper on Coplestone Cross and a Charter of Eadgar by Mr. R. J. King, who, though a Devon- shire man, does not fear to upset Devonshire fables. The rinse runs Crocker, Cruwys, and Coplestone, When the Conqueror came, were found at home. I cannot answer for Cruwys, whose name certainly has a British look. Crocker would seem to point to the trade of a forefather who had lien among the pots. But, if his descendants ever came to be lifted up on silver wings, the name would doubtless do as well as Plantagenet itself. Mr. King goes minutely into the real history of Coplestone. 73 it is quite certain that Coplestone, or any- body else, must have had forefathers of some kind living in the year io66. People who talk about old families sometimes forget the obvious fact that one family is really as old as another. Every family had some forefathers at any given moment since the beginning of the world. The only difference is that the old~ family knows, or thinks that it knows, who its forefathers were at a particular time. At any rate, as I just said, Coplestone or any- body else had forefathers in io66; and, in the absence of proof to the contrary, those forefathers are more likely to have been English than either British or Norman. Further it is quite possible, though the case is certainly a rare one, that Cople- stone or anybody else might be able to prove who his forefathers who lived in io66 were, to prove that they were En- glishmen recorded in Domesday, and even to prove that he now holds the lands which they held. Such a claim is in noway absurd in itself; the story is perfectly pos- sible; we only ask for the proof. Show us the proof; make out every step by authentic documents; then we will be- lieve. Without such a proof we will not believe. But one thing cannot be proved, because it is impossible on the face of it. The forefather of Coplestone may have been at home in Coplestones present quarters when the Conqueror came; but it is certain that Coplestone himself, by that name, John or Edward or Richard Coplestone, was not at home there at that time. What is commonly meant by these stories is that the land was held, not what is perfectly possible by a fore- father of those who afterwards bore the name of Coplestone, but what is alto- gether impossible by a forefather who himself bore the name of Coplestone. Those who invented these stories, and those who believe them, forget that, in the times before the Conquest, there were no hereditary surnames. Edward at Cople- stone is a perfectly possible personal description of a man at any time; but Ed- ward Coplestone or Edward de Cople- stone, as the hereditary surname of a family, is utterly impossible before the Norman Conquest. It is not even likely to be found in any family under the high- est nobility till at least two or three gener- ations after the Norman Conquest. This plain fact at once upsets all these stories in the shape which they commonly take. It does not disprove the bare statement that a man is descended from one who held lands before io66. But it does upset PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 74 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. all stories which represent a family as such, with a hereditary surname, as hold- ing lands before the Norman Conquest. The tale would grow in this way. If a man could prove, or if he believed on some ground less than absolute proof, or if he simply wished to believe without any ground at all, that he could trace up his descent to those who held his land before the Conquest, he would most likely not know that surnames were unknown in those days, and he would assume that his remote forefather must have borne the same surname as himself. In some of these cases then the story may really be true in substance, though false in form. It may be true, even though it cannot be proved to be true, even in substance. Tradition, in such a case as this, would count for something more than it counts for in the tales which trace pedigrees up to companions of the Conqueror. But most of the stories of this kind can be up- set on other, grounds. Domesday upsets a great many without going any further. Others contain historical statements which are wrong, and often impossible. And in many cases the process has been simply this. A man bears as his surname one of the ancient English names which have gone out of use as Christian names. He finds in early English his tory some one who bears that name as a Christian name. He first mistakes the Christian name fora surname, and fancies that the ancient worthy bore the same surname, perhaps an unusual one, as himself. Having got thus far, it would be almost impossible for any man to keep himself back from the next step, to refrain from claiming the an- cient worthy as a forefather. A most grotesque instance of this kind is found only a few pages on after the pedi- gree of Leighton. But the myth of Leighton is fairly beaten by the myth of Levinge. There is a kind of perverse simplicity about this last legend which makes it specially charming. Here it fol- lows The family of Levinge is one of great an- tiquity, and traces back its pedigree to Saxon times. The Archbishop of Canterhury who crowned CANUTE was Leovingus, and, in 1803 j~sic], another Livingus was Bishop of Worces- ter. At the Domesday survey, it is stated that the nephew of the last-named prelate held six lordships in Derbyshire and two in Notts. Passing down to a modern epoch, we come to Thomas Levinge, Esq. of Baddesley Ensore, co. Warwick, living in 1434, who was an- cestor of Thomas Levinge, Esq. (elder brother of Mr. Serjeant Levinge, M.P. and recorder of Derhy temp. JAMES I.), who purchased the manor of Parwick, co. Derby, 1561. Now we may be sure that the serjeant-at- law and the purchaser of the manor of Parwick are perfectly well-ascertained men. Nor is there any particular reason to boggle at the esquire of two centuries earlier, though the gap between the two Thomases is certainly a little suspicious. Here again local knowledge would doubt- less easily solve the question one way or .the other. But we may be quite sure that the Thomas of the fifteenth century is the earliest Levinge of whom anytfiing is known. Otherwise the pedigree-maker would never have hit on such a rash ex- pedient as laying violent hands on the two eleventh-century bishops. Both are real and well-known men; the second is one of the worthies of English history, the patriot prelate who stood by Godwine, as his successor Walter of Cantelupe stood by Simon. Only what is there to con- nect them with the house of Levinge rather than with the house of Snooks? Simply that the hapless pedigree-maker, in his ignorance of the ways of the eleventh century, took their Christian name for a surname. There is exactly as much sense to connect the modern family of Levinge with either of those bishops as there is to connect any family called Edwards or Edmunds with any of the kings who bore their names. Only Ed- ward and Edmund are still names in com- mon use, and it does not occur to every man who bears either of these as a sur- name to think that he must come of the stock of Eadward the Unconquered or Eadmund the Doer-of-great-deeds. But Leofing, Lyfing, Living the spellings are of course endless never was a common Christian name at any time, and it has gone out of use for ages. The pedigree- maker therefore did not understand that it was a Christian name at all. He thought that Bishop Lyfing was the same formula as Bishop Smith or Bishop Brown, not the same formula as Bishop John or Bishop Peter. He thought that two bishops of the same name must be of the same family, and that the modern bearer of the same name must be of the same family too. And the thing becomes all the funnier, because, after all, there is a certain faint likelihood that it may be true. The use of an uncommon Christian name by two persons about the same time, PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 75 though no proof, is a certain faint pre- sumption, of kindred betvzeen them. It is just enough to make us think of looking to see whether there was any kindred. Again, the first man who bore the name Leofing in any of its forms as a sur- name must have been the son of a man who bore it as a Christian name. And the name is more likely to have kept in use among the kinsfolk of those who bore it in earlier times, especially among the kinsfolk of a man so famous as the Bishop of Worcester in Devonshire and Corn- wall. There is then just this amount of likelihood in the story, just this amount of likelihood to connect Squire Levinge in the fifteenth century with Bishop Lyfing in the eleventh. But we may be quite sure this is not what the pedigree-maker had in his head. He was not thinidng of a faint likelihood in the form of a Chris- tian nanie; he thought that he had got proof positive in the form of a surname. He was, we may suspect, a contemporary of the serjeant-at-law and the second Squire Thomas. In the days of the first Squire Thomas, people were not likely to be thinking of establishing kindred with bishops of the days of Cnut. As for the nephew of Bishop Lyfing who at the time of the Domesday Sur- vey held six lordships in Derbyshire and two in Notts, it is too much to expect that any one should read through all the en- tries in those two shires to see whether anybody can he found hearing any such description. Those who expect their statements to be verified should put them in such a shape that they may be verified without needless trouble. They should give us either the names of the lordships or the name of the bishops nephew. I can only say that I do not remember any person so described, and that none such is to be found in the Index. If, as one is tempted to suspect, the nephew of Bishop Lyfing wa~ supposed to bear his uncles name, such an one is certainly not to be found. Another point here suggests itself. Why did the pedigree-maker provide Bishop Lyfing only with a nephew? Why did he not give him a son? Clearly be- cause, for several centuries, no bishop could have ventured to acknowledge a son. But this was not the feeling of Lyfin~s age or of the age next after him. There is no evidence that Lyfin~ himself ~vas married; but several bishops of his time were, and it is perfectly possible that Lyfing may have left legitimate posterity. But the pedigree-maker did not know this; he accordingly framed his story according to the ideas of aoes with which he was more familiar. b After all, absurd as it is in itself to mis- take the Christian name for a surname and to build a pedigree on the mistake, still the pedigree-maker erred in good com- pany. It is not at all clear whether the young Siward of Shakespeare means Siwards own son Osbeorn or his sisters son Siward. But it looks very much as if Shakespeare took Siward for a surname, and thought that the son of old Siward must be young Siward. In the case of Macbeth, he certainly did so; otherwise that much calumniated woman Gruach Queen of Scots, who appears in real his- tory simply as a benefactress of certain churches, could never have been turned into Lady Macbeth. In the ears of a con- temporary, for Gruach to be called Lady Macbeth would have sounded as odd as for Gytha to be called Lady Godwine. But I am not at all clear that there are not people who would call her so. I cannot say that I have seen it with my own eyes, but I have been told by a trustworthy person, that there is a book in which the son of Godwine and Gytha appears as Harold, Earl Godwin. The sainted queen of Scots, not Gruach, is not uncom- monly spoken of as Margaret Athelino~ as if iEthelino were the family. b surname of the In all these stories the pedigree-makers power of invention did not go beyond mere invention of names, or the putting of real names in their wrong places. But there are pedigrees which take a much more daring flight, and which bring in large pieces of professed history xvhich are nothinb in the world but sheer inven- tion. Take for instance the pedigree of the house of Stourton: This noble family, which derives its sur- name from the town of Stourton, co. Wilts, was of considerable rank antecedently to the Conquest; for we find at that period one of its members, Botolph Stourton, the most active in gallantly disputing every inch of ground with the foreigner, and finally obtaining from the duke his own terms. Having broken down the sea-walls of the Severn, and guarded the passes by land, Botolph entered Glaston- bury when that victorious Norman had niade his appearance in the West; and, thus pro- tected, compelled William to grant whatso- ever he demanded. From this patriotic and gallant soldier lineally descended such and such people without dates, till we come to a John de Stourton, who is placed in the time of Edward the Third, 76 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. and who is likely enough to be a real man. Now if we did not know that a pedigree- maker will do anything, it would really be past belief that anybody could have ven- tured on such monstrous fiction as this. It would have been more respectable to trace the house of Stourton to Jack the Giant-Killer or Jack and the bean-stalk, for they have at least a received legendary being, while Botolph Sto urton and his exploits are invented of set purpose to swell the supposed credit of a family whose real beginnings seem to be in the four- teenth century. Here abain we see the delusion of the surname. It was supposed that there could be before the Conquest a family of Stourton, one of whom was called Botolph, as another perhaps might be called John or Thomas. But the whole thing is fiction. There is nothing of the kind anywhere in history or in legend. We have a Gesta Herewardi, mythical enough to be sure in part; but we have no Gestci Botolthz. Yet the exploits of Bo- tolph greatly surpass the exploits of Here- ward. But within the mass of legend ~which has grown around the name of Hereward there is a kernel of truth in his story. Domesday knows him; the Chron- icles know him, but Botolph Stourton or any other Botolph is not to be found there. If William granted to Botolph whatever he demanded, it was clearly not land that he demanded, least of all the lands of Stourton. At page 72 of Domesday we find Stourton in Wiltshire plainly enough; but its lord is not any Botolph; its actual holder is not any Botolph; its former owner is not any Botolph. Of the two lordships in Wiltshire held by Walscin of Douay, one of them has the fatal entry: Radulfils tenet de W. Stor/one. AZ ii- acre tenuit TEE. So Botolph Stourton vanishes from Stourton, and he equally vanishes from every other spot; for not a man of the name appears in Domesday as holding or having held a rood of land any- where. The tale is sheer invention; it is mere falsehood, which might at any time be confuted by the simple process of turn- ing to Domesday. Yet even here we may mark how the true history has some influ- ence even on the wildest tales. The in- ventor of the story had most likely heard or read that William really met with no small resistance in the west, just as in the north, long after south-eastern England was conquered. He had heard something of the sieges of Exeter and Montacute, and he thought that it would be fine to connect the family whose praises he was singing with a warfare so honorable to the western lands. With a little pains, a little study of Domesday and the authentic his- tory, he might have put together a story which, if not true, might have been at least possible. But he set to work with- out a thought of bringing his tale into har- mony with the great record from which there is no appeal. When the pedigree was invented, Domesday was doubtless still in manuscript ; but is it possible that there is no copy of those precious volumes in the library of the Ulster king-at-arms? In the last specimen we have seen the pedigree-maker try his hand at history; sometimes he makes a dash at etymology. Let us take the following from the pedi- gree of the Earl of Dysart : The very ancient family of Tollemache claims Saxon descent, and the name is said to be a corruption of the word tollmack, toll- ing of the bell; the Tollemaches having flour- ished with the greatest honor, in the co. of Suffolk, since the first arrival of the Saxons in England, a period of more than thirteen cen- turies. Tollemache, Lord of Bentley, in Suffolk, and Stoke-Tollemache, co. Oxford, lived in the ninth century; and upon the old manor- house at Bentley appeared the following in- scription : Before the Normans into England came, Bentley was my seat, and Tollemache was my name. This whole account is somewhat remark- able on the face of it. In what language tollmack means tolling of the bell is not explained. Nor is it easy to see the connection of cause and effect between tolling of the bell and flourishing with the greatest honor since the first arrival of the Saxons in England. Again, if by the first arrival of the Saxons in England is meant the first settlement of the Saxons in Britain, it is cruel, especially when a pedigree is concerned, to cut down the date of the settlement, and therefore of the pedigree, from fourteen centuries to thirteen. On the other hand, it is not at all clear how the first Saxon settlement in Sussex could have led to anybody flour- ishing in Suffolk. The only chance is that the house of Tollemache may have been one of those small unrecorded An- glian tribes which seem to have come over one by one, and to have grown into the South-Folk and North-Folk of East An- glia. Then again, as Sir Bernard Burke tells the story, it would almost seem as if the Tollemache of the ninth century had been possessed of a prophetic spirit in two ways. He knew that the Normans would come some time; so he made it his PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 7? business to write up in advance that he was at Bentley before they came. And, that he might be quite sure of being un- derstood in ages that were to come, he wrote his verses in a form of English which certainly could not have been under- stood by any man of his own age. It is needless to say that all this flourishing and bell-tolling is pure fiction. It so hap- pens that something can be made out about the history of Bentley, not quite so early as the arrival of the Saxons, but as far back as the reign of Eadgar. There are places of the name in Hampshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, as well as in Suffolk. But it is to the Suffolk Bentley that Kemble refers the will printed in Codex Diplomaticus, iv. 287. There a lady named Leofgifu leaves land at Bentley to iElfward, Bishop of London, thus fixing the date to the reign of Edward the Confessor. She had a steward at Bentley of the name of iElfwig. In the two earlier documents, one of Eadgars reign and the other of Cnuts (Codex Dip- lomaticus, vi. 37, 176), I do not know whether the Bentley spoken of is Bentley in Suffolk or not. Either local knowledge or a searching examination of the signa- tures would doubtless settle the point; but it is hardly worth while, as, among the many persons mentioned in them, there is no one who can by any kind of shift be twisted into a Tollemache tolling a bell. Bentley in Suffolk is mentioned three times in Domesday, ii. 287, 287b, 2956. It passed through the hands of such well- known people as Earl Gyrth and Ralph the Staller; but alas! there is no sign of Tollemache, of his bell or of his verses. From this purely imaginary being in the ninth century the pedigree leaps, without any intermediate steps, to a real man: Hugh de Tollemache subscribed the charter sans date (about the reign of King Stephen), made by John de St. John to Eve, the first abbess of Godstow, in Oxfordshire. Now Hugo Talmashe nearly the same spelling of the name which is to be found in Macaulay does appear as a witness to a charter of John of St. John in favor of Godstow in the Monasticon, iv. 363. But, as a pedigree-maker must bring in some- thing grotesque at every stage, the abbess Editha or Ediva, in modern form Edith, is cut short into Eve. Hugo Talemasche appears again in company with John of St. John in the Pipe-roll of Henry the First, p. 3. I cannot explain the name. As it has no de, it would seem not to be a local name. In the time of Henry the First the name Hugh is still a very strong presumption of Norman descent, though it is no longer the absolute proof which it is in the time of Domesday. No one ap- pears in Domesday by the name of Tolle- mache in any form; but there is a Hugh who holds lands at Stoke in Oxfordshire, partly of Walter Giffard, partly of Roger of Ivry. He may well be either the 1-lugh of the Pipe-roll and of the Godstow char- ter, or his father. More than this, the whole Gloucester part of Hughs history, all about his wife and his son, seems to be quite trustworthy. And we again in the Gloucester cartulary (i. 331) find the gifts of Hugh Talamasche confirmed by Thomas of St. John. We may therefore strike out from the Tollemache pedigree everything before Hugh, and professed genealogists and local antiquaries may find out the exact nature of the relation between Hugh and the house of St. John. These last are real people, though one would like to know the authority for the statement that William de St. John came into England with the Conqueror, as grand master of the artillery, and supervisor of the wagons and carriages. Thus far ~ve have had to deal with fic- tions against which we have nothing to say but that they are fictions; they show no further perversion of the moral sense. If Tollemache had tolled a bell in the ninth century, the act would at least have been harmless; and if Botolph Stourton had withstood the Conqueror in the valiant way which the legend speaks of, it would have been greatly to his honor. But it is hard to understand why any man should have gone out of his way, first of all to invent imaginary forefathers for himself, and then, when he had invented them, to take away their characters. When one is inventing falsehoods about a family, it is as easy to invent falsehoods to its credit as false- hoods to its dishonor. Whoever invented the pedigree of Earl Fitzwilliam was of another way of thinking. He had the strange fancy of wishing to be descended from a traitor. We there read : Sir William Fitz-Godrick, cousin to King Edward the Confessor, left a son and heir, Sir William Fitzwilliam, who being am- bassador at the court of William Duke of Normandy, attended that prince in his victo- rious expedition against England, as marshal of the army AD. io66: and for his valor at the battle of Hastings the Conqueror presented him with a scarf from his own arm. This Sir William was father of Sir William Fitzwilliam, Knight, who mar- ried Eleanor, daughter and heir of Sir John 78 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. Elmley, of Elmicy and Sprotburgh, which lordships continued with the Fitzwilliams until the reign of Henry VIII., when they were carried, by coheirs, to Suthill and Copley. It is perhaps needless to say that all this is a pure fable; but one really stands aghast at the utterly shameless nature of the fable. Sir William Fitzwilliam is sup- posed to be an English ambassador at the court of Normandy. The inventor of the fable had so little knowledge as not to see that the Sir, the first William, the Fitz, and the second William, was, each of them by itself, as much proof as could be needed that a man of whose name they formed any part could not have been an English- man of the days of Eadward the Confessor. Furthermore it would seem that the in- ventor thought it honorable for an ambas- sador sent to a foreign prince to join that prince in an invasion of his own country, and to bear arms in battle against his own sovereign. As for the scarf from Wil- hams own arm, we need hardly look in the Bayeux tapestry to prove that the duke who knew so well how to wield his mace of iron did not cumber his arms with any frippery of scarves on the day of the great battle. It is almost refining too much; but it is worth while to mark that this imaginary traitor is described as the grandson of Godric. The choice of the name is lucky; there was a traitor Godric in the fight at Maldon, and his doings are set forth in the son~ which records that fight. TI~ose who like traitors for their forefathers may, if they think good, make choice of him. Can there be a wilder fable than this? Yes; there is one a good deal wilder, which Sir Bernard Burke repeats without a shadow of doubt, in the pedigree of Ber- tie Earl of Lindsey. This astonishing house, whose name in olden deeds seems to be spelled in many ways as is also the case in olden deeds with the name of Smith, Brown, or any other were a very ancient house, derivin de- sceht from a family of free barons of Bertisland in Prussia. For some centu- ries past a Frei/zerr vox Bertisla;id would not be an impossible being; but in what age of the world would any one guess that these free barons lived who were the fore- fathers of Bertie of Kent? They first landed in England in company with the Saxons. Mark the dignity of the race. The Berties, it would seem, were alto- gether on a level with their companions the Saxons, and they must have quite overshadowed the Angles and Jutes. Shame on the chroniclers, shame on the earliest poets whose songs have been pre- served to us by Henry of Huntingdon, who are so full of the deeds of the Saxons on their first landing, but who, from some mean jealousy, have left out all mention of the Berties. Mark too the unexpected element in our national being; the Prus- sian race, extinct in its own land, still flourishes among us in Kent and in Lincoln- shire. Unhappily however from the fifth century to the eleventh we have no men- tion of this remarkable stock. It even may be that, in the course of those ages, they dropped the venerable speech of their own land, and took up with the vastly younger dialects of Angles and Saxons. In the eleventh century however the Prus- sian stock put forth a remarkable shoot in the form of Leopold Bertie. The student of nomenclature might amuse himself by the question whether Leopold Bertie or Bill Snooks would be the more impossi- sible forefather at the time. By the eleventh century however the Berties, whether they remembered their Prussian or not, had learned a little French, per- haps from the Lady Emma or some one in her train. By some astounding forestall- ing of language, fortification, and every- thing else, this Leopold Bertie in the time of Athelred was not only Constable of Dover Castle, but had a private castle at Bertiested, now Bersted. (The old form of Bersted happens to be Ber- izarns/ede, but of course that does not mat- ter.) Leopold then fell into a violent dis- pute with a body of men described as the Augustine monks of Canterbury. This formula may point to some confusion in the mind of the pedigree-maker between the abbey of Saint Augustine and Austin canons or Austin friars. The dispute is about tithes; the Augustine monks en- deavor to enforce their demands by force of arms; a fray ensues, in which Leopolds son is slain. The king giving Leopold no satisfaction, he solicited Sweyn, king of the Danes, and induced him to invade England. Then the Danes join Leo- polds forces in Kent; the siege of Canterbury and the captivity of /Elfheah follow. On the death of Sweyn, Bur- bach Bertie, the only survivin,, son of Leopold, conscious of his fathers actions, flees to France. A descendant comes hack in the twelfth century and recovers Bersted. In the time bf Henry the Fifth, 1-lieronimus Bertieis excommunicated for trying to kill a monk who in a ser- mon uttered assertions injurious to his ancestor Leopold. He undergoes great penances, one of them being of a most PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 79 singular kind. Besides paying two thou- who seemingly lived in the sixteenth cen- sand crowns of gold how boundless tury. must have been the wealth of Bersted in A good many odd questions are here the fifteenth century ~to the monas- started. The reference to Brompton tery of the monk whom he had assailed, so called proves to be one of those he further, in proof of his repentance, ridiculous French riming lists of names, rebuilt at his own expense the north part which pedigree-makers so greatly respe~ct, of the temple belonging to the same mon- and of which historians think so little. astery, and his armorial bearings, three But one would really like to know who battering-rams and a shattered castle, were the antiquaries were who took for granted placed there on one of the pillows. It is that there were some persons who, beina said that the monks of Saint Albans, be- weary of Harolds rule fled into Normandy ing straitened for room in the dormitory, and invited Duke William. One might once made up a dozen beds in the rood- have thought that the nine months of little loft. Perhaps some strange chance of the stillness were hardly long enough to same kind may account for the presence bring about much weariness of Harolds of pillows in the north part of this mys- rule. And surely, if there had been such terious temple. people, it would hardly have been left for On the whole, this is perhaps the most the antiquaries of the Wake family to monstrous of all our fictions. Tollemache find out their existence. We could hardly and his bell are fairly beaten. He cannot expect the Peterborough Chronicler to be comparewith the free barons who came very full on the subject; but we may be from Prussia in company with the Saxons. sure that, if such people had been heard But how strange the choice of forefathers! of in the eleveflth century, William of Where a man might, with so little trouble, Poitiers would have been delighted to tell have made himself out to be the descend- us somethino- about them. And who is ant of one of the heroes of Maldon or Augustine? As it can hardly be either of Assandun, why invent a traitor? Or, if a the saints of that name, we can only guess traitor was wanted, why not at once fasten that it may be a familiar way of speaking the parentage upon Eadric? of Augustine Thierry. Then what is the In these stories there seems to be a historical novel? Does it mean that writ- deliberate preference for traitors; in an- ten by the late Mr. Kingsley? Or is it other we find a sublime indifference the earlier Latin novel headed Gesta between an imaginary traitor and a real Herewardi Saxonis? Or is it the hero. This is to be seen in the pedigree false Ingulf himself? Then again, if the of the family of Wake. It stands thus in abbey of Brun was founded by a man who Sir Bernard Burke: died in i156, it is hard to understand how it could have been defended by Hereward The Wakes are mentioned by Brompton as about ninety years earlier. The history in the immediate train of the Conqueror; but of Bourne priory is rather scanty; but it it is the opinion of antiquaries that the mdi- does appear from the documents in the vidual of the name of Wake recorded in the Monasticon that its founder, Baldwin roll of Battle Abbey, was one of those who, Fitz-Gilbert, had a daughter who figures being weary of Harolds rule, fled into Nor- as Emma Wac, and her husband and mandy, and invited Duke William hence the son as Hugh and Baldwin Wac; and with- family is supposed to have been of importance out searching into pedigrees, everybody prior to the Conquest. The celebrated Arch- knows that the name of Wake does here bishop Wake, mentioned below, wrote a his- tory of the Wake family, in which he ascribes and there appear in English history. So to Hereward le Wake the feat of having sue- we may well believe that it is possible to cessfully opposed and finally made terp]s with trace the descent of the Wake family up to William the Conqueror. As Augustine also this Hugh and Emma. These are matters mentions XVakes in Normandy, it is probable primarily for the genealo~ist; they only that there were two parties in the family at secondarily touch the historian. But it that time. An historical novel has been does very directly touch the historian, written on the feats of Hereward, in harass- when pedigree-makers not only lay their ing the Normans and defending the abbey of hands on one of our national heroes in Brun after the Conquest. His tomb is still, form of Hereward, but when they further or was to be seen, not many years ago, in o-o on Liucolnshire. From calmly to assume that William was Baldwin Lord Wake, founder of the abbey invited into England by English traitors. of Brun, who died ii~6, descended, through a The odd thing is that, to Sir Bernard long line of eminent ancestors, Richard Wake, Burke or to those who sent him the Wake Esq. story, a traitor and a hero seem to be ex 8o PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. actly the same. Whether a man fought for England or betrayed England, it is all one. In either case he was a forefather a long while ago who did something; and a forefather a long whil9 ago who did something, whether what he did was good or bad, is commonly quite enough to sat- isfy family vanity. But those with whom family vanity goes for nothing, but with whom the honor of their country and the truth of its history goes for much, will not lightly forgive the base slander on the Englishmen of the eleventh century which is implied in this trumpery piece of genea- logical fiction. Nor can the historian calmly look on while Hereward becomes the sport of pedigree-makers. His authentic history is short, but he has an authentic history. It is to be looked for not in Broughton, not in historical novels old or new, not in Augustine, whether Thierry or any other, not even in the family history by Archbishop Wake, but in the few unerr- ing notices in Domesday and the Chroni- cles. Casting pedigrees and legends aside, Hereward remains as the man whose heart failed him not when all other mens hearts failed them, as the man ~vhom the English Chronicle speaks of in the same formul~ by which it speaks of ~lf red. But as for connecting him with the family of Wake or any other existing family, there is not a scrap of evidence for it. With regard to Wakes the only point is that, though the surname of Ze Wake is not give~n to Hereward in any authentic writing, it is given him in writ- ings which are not of yesterday. This may or may not point to an early claim of the Wake family to descend from him. In no case does it prove such descent. Still those who gave him the name must have been led to give him the name for some cause or other, and one would like to know what that cause was. After these astounding performances, which it would be hard for any pedigree- maker to outdo, pedigrees some of which seem to pick out a traitor by choice, while others seem to be sublimely. indifferent between a traitor and a hero, there is a certain comfort in turning to another fable, equally groundless, but which shows a better moral sense in those who invented it. This is the fable which is quoted to prove the stupendous antiquity of the family of Ashburnham. Sir Bernard Burke gives two pedigrees of Ashburn- ham in the Peerage and Baronetage, and they both seem to go back to the sixteenth, or perhaps the fifteenth century. This was not long enough ago; so somebodyi invented an early progenitor who is thus described Bertram Ashburnham, a Baron of Kent, was Constable of Dover Castle, A.D. io66; which Bertram was beheaded by William the Con- queror, because he did so valiantly defend the same against the Duke of Normandy. Here again we have pure fiction, and im- possible fiction. Bertram Ashburnham, baron and constable, proves his imagi. nary character by every word of his description. Dover Castle was not val- iantly defended by any one against the Duke of Normandy, and most assuredly William the Great never beheaded any man for defending any place valiantly against him. The slander on the Con- queror may well raise our indignation. But the Ashburnham fable is at least better than the Fitzwilliam fable. The crime is imaginary; but it is at least understood to be a crime, and it is at- tributed to a stranger and not to a coun- tryman. From all these people who so freely devise for themselves imaginary and im- possible forefathers, we turn to a yet more amazing class, those who seem anxious to get rid of real forefathers to whom they have a thorough right. A pedigree of this kind is that of Lord Sudeley. As given by Sir Bernard Burke, the pedigree begins with John de Sudeley, Lord of Sudeley and Toddington, AD. 1140. It is no business of mine to test the accu- racy of the steps by which the pedigree is traced up to John of Sudeley. All that concerns me is the fact that, if it can be traced up to John of Sudeley, it can be traced up a great deal further. It can be traced, not among everyday people, but among the great ones of the earth on both sides of the sea. John of Sudeley might boast of fathers who were princes, and of grandmothers through whom he might trace up to Woden himself. John of Sudeley was son of Harold of Ewias, who was son of Ralph Earl of Hereford, who was son of Drogo Count of Mantes and of Godgifu daughter of King iEthelred and his queen Emma. Let French an- tiquaries trace back the descent of the house of Mantes. But many pedioTees are allowed to go through grandmothers, and in this case the grandmothers take the pedigree up to Rolf and Cerdic. Every step of this magnificent descent is absolutely certain; yet Sir Bernard Burke, or those from whom he got his story, puts John of Sudeley at the begin- ning of the tree, as if he had come of him- PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. 8i self, as if he had had no right to trace up Take again another case where a real to counts, dukes, kings, heroes, the gods pedigree is not made the most of. The of Asgard themselves. Can the cause .of pedigree of DOyly is traced up in Sir the omission l)e because Ralph of Here- Bernard Burke, though with a good many ford ran away from the Weishmen? To gaps, to the founder of Oxford Castle. have described him as beating the Welsh- Robert of Oily or Ouilly, and his nephe~v men, instead of running away from them, of the same name, are men of the first would have been so small a liberty com- importance in the local history of Oxford. pared with the liberties which pedigree- Themselves, their wives, their sons and makers take every day that it might almost stepsons, the castle, the abbey, the have been forgiven. churches, the bridges, of their making, Take another pedigree, that of Berkeley. stand out very prominently for several This is one to the eaj~ly stages of which generations. And men who are of this my own work has led me to give some first-rate importance in local history do not attention. I trust that I have shown * fail to be of some importance in general that there is every probability that Robert history. But the pedigree does not bring Fitz-Hardin~, the patriarch of the House in either the elder or the younger Robert of Berkeley, ~vas son of a Harding whose by name. Their particular doings all name often occurs in Domesday and else- seem to go to the general credit of the where, and grandson of Eadnoth the family. The entry stands thus Staller, a man who, whether it be thought to his credit or otherwise, havince been a This family, one of great eminence both in great officer under Edward and Harold England and France, came to England at the passed after the Conquest into the period of the Conquest, and obtained the service dignity of feudal Baron of Hocknorton, in of William. Eadnoth and Harding are Oxfordshire, and hereditary constable of Ox- perfectly well-ascertained men, and there ford Castle (anno 1067), from William the is no other Harding to whom we can 50 Conqueror. readily assign the otherwise unknown parentage of Robert Fitz-Harding. But Hence the pedigree runs aboutter sal/urn while other people have been so anxious to people in the thirteen.th, fifteenth, and to devise for themselves imaginary En- sixteenth centuries. glish forefathers, the Berkeleys seem anx- One does not see why Ouilly should be ious to get rid of their real English fore- moved from Normandy into France. Nor fathers. By Sir Bernard Burke all that we does one see why, of all the endless pos- are told of the father of Robert Fitz-I-Iard- sessions of Robert of Ouilly, Hocknorton ing, in other words of Harding. is that he should be picked out specially to give him was one of the companions of William the the digni.ty of feudal Baron. But a Conqueror. This is pure fiction no such good deal might have been said of the Harding can he found still it is some- acts of the family during the wars of thins for Sir Bernard Burke to have fore- Stephen and Matilda. And we can never borne to put in some of the grosser absur- forgive those who have so little sense of a dities of the local antiquaries. Those good story as to leave out the tale, which who call Harding Mayor of Bristol say the grave Monasticon does not shrink what is in one sense likely enough, though from telling, about Edith and the chatter- I do not know that there is any proof, pies, and the foundation of Osney. and I cannot say oft-hand whether Bristol So it goes with pedigrees. The pedi- had a mayor so early. But the favorite gree-maker in The Spectator, who blot- thing is to call him a son of the King of ted out the weaver who was burned for his Denmark. Sometimes he is mayor of religion, who kept the knight who was Bristol, follower of the Conqueror, and hanged for treason, and who added Es- son of the king of Denmark, all at quireto all those forefathers who had no once. It is amusing to ask a Glou- particular description, is typical of his cestershire antiquary what king of Den- class. One family thinks Englishmen mark he means. You soon find that one more creditable than Normans, and so in- king of Denmark is the same to him as vents English forefathers which historxr another. The grotesque absurdity of Wil- does not give them. Another famil~r ham being accompanied by a son of the thinks Normans more creditable than only possible king of Denmark, Sven Englishmen, and so gets rid of the En- Estrithsson, the cousin and ally of Harold, glish forefathers which history does give never comes into their heads. them. Another, with a stranger taste than * See History of tise Norman Conquest, iv., pp. ~55, all, gets rid of Englishmen, Danes, Nor- 758. Ed. 2. mans, Frenchmen, all at a blow, and is LiVING .AGE. VOL. XIX. 942 82 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. satisfied to begin its pedigree in the twelfth century, when it might with a perfectly good conscience have beo~un it in the fifth. There is another class of pedigree-mak- ers who either are wise in their genera- tion, or else have been greatly favored by good luck. These are those whose tales are just as unlikely, often just as impossi- ble, in themselves as those that we have just gone through, but who provide for themselves a means of escape by taking shelter in those parts of the kingdom where we cannot at once apply the infalli- ble touchstone of Domesday. It is well known that a considerable part of what is now northern England is not entered in Domesday. Part of it, it would seem, was left out because it was so wasted as not to be worth surveying. Part of it was left out for the still better reason that it did not form part of the kingdom of England. The former region takes in Northumber- land in the modern sense and the bishop- ric of Durham. The second takes in those parts of the modern counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland which, till late ecclesiastical changes, formed the diocese of Carlisle, a district which was not added to England till the time of Wil- liam Rufus. XVithin this last district the pedigree-makers can be refuted only in a general way. XVhen we are told that such and such a mans forefather received a grant from William within this district, if the forefather is an altogether impossible man, we can reject him on the ground of his general impossibility. If he is an otherwise possible man, we can only say that he may have had a grant from Wil- liam somewhere else, and that we will look in Domesday to see whether he had. Or again, he may have had lands in Old Cum- berland by a grant from some of the old rulers before the land became English, or from some of the later kings after it be came English. The former proposition would be hard to prove or to disprove. The 1 tter could be cdmmonly tested by local knowledge. But ode thing at least is certain, that no man had a grant from William in Old Cumberland, because Wil- ham never held Old Cumberland to grant anything there to anybody. Thus xvhen we are told, under the pedigree of the Earl of Bessborough, that this family takes its surname from the lordship of Ponsonby, in Cumberland, which its patri- arch acquired with other considerable estates at the time of the Conquest, we may say with perfect safety that, ~vhenever this patriarch of whom his tribe does not seem to know enough to give him a name may have acquired its estates, it was not at the time of the Conquest. When we get into Northumberland and Durham, the conditions are somewhat changed. When a man says either that his forefather received a grant from Wil- liam in those parts, or that his forefather held lands there before William came, we cannot meet him either with the usual Domesday argument or with the special Cumbrian argument. If the forefather, Norman or EngliTh, is a possible man, open to no cz triori objection, the general historian cannot of himself say that it is not so. He must leave the story to be confirmed or upset by those who have local knowledge. Take for instance the pedigree of the house of Lumley. I am told by those who know the history of the bishopric better than I do that it is really possible to trace up the descent of this family to Ligulf or Liulf, whose story is told at larbe by Florence of Worcester and Simeon of Durham, and whose mur- der led to the famous slaughter of Bishop Walcher at Gateshead. I accept the ped- igree on this showing. But I turn to Sir Bernard Burke, and I find that, even where there is a perfectly plain story, where there is nothing to do but to copy from the his- torians of the time, the pedigree-maker cannot put his hand upon it without spoil- ing every detail. Liguif, or his softened form Liulf, gets spelled in various gro- tesque ways, Liulph, Lyulph, and what notpeople of ~his kind seem to think that the more needless letters are stuck into a name, the more venerable it looks. Then Ligulf, the Englishman, is provided with an impossible and Norman- sounding father, Osbert de Lumley; his wifes father is turned from Ealdred into Alfred; his wifes mother e~lfgifu in Latin form Elfgiva daughter of King iEthelred, is turned into Edgina, and the unready king himself is promoted to a feminine form in the shape of Ethel- dred. The murderer, perhaps from a creditable feeling, is not allowed to keep his name any more than the rest. Leob- wine, in the hands of Sir Bernard Burke, takes the grotesque shape of Leoferiso. One is again driven to ask, has the Ulster king-at-arms no books, or, if he has any books, does he never look at them, that he goes on printing this hideous nonsense in thirty-two editions ? All is alike to Sir Bernard Burke; whether it be the mere form of a name, or whether it be the great and broad facts of English history, it is all the same in his pages. Impossible men PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. with impossible names, bearing impossible titles and offices, do impossible acts in impossible places at impossible times. Such is history when itfalls into the hands of pedigree-makers, even when they sub- ject their pages to searchino- r extensive amendment. 6 evision and In short we have nothing to do but to turn over the pages of Sir Bernard Burkes Peerage and Baronetage, and almost every step we come to somebody who had a forefather settled in such a place before the Conquest or at the Conquest, whose name Domesday knows not. Of the one class there is St. Leger, Viscount Done- raile, ~vhose name in the days of the Con- queror was written Sent Legere. Sir Robert Sent Leo-ere, Knt., all except his Sir and his Knight, has so natural an air that one looks to see whether he is in Domesday. The search is vain; but according to a tradition in the family, he was the person who supported the Con4ueror with his arm when he quitted his ship to land in Sussex. As another tradition, at least better than that of the family, makes the Conqueror stumble as he landed, it would seem that Sir Roberts arm was but a frail support. Nevertheless he overcame a Jagan Dane (/) who in- habited the manor of Ulcombe, in Kent, and fixed his abode there. Of the other type we have Lofthouse of Lofthouse, forefather of the Marquesses of Ely forefather too seemingly of an Archbishop of Dublin of somewhat doubtful reputation who was, we are told, great in York- shire as early as the time of A~lfred. What happened to him during the Danish invasion we are not told. But when we turn to Domesday, we find Lofthouse held by three nameless thegns, of whose fore- fathers and descendants there is nothing to be said. We may turn over a few more pages, and we light on the singular fact that a family named Morres in Ire- land, dissatisfied with a very respectable name which might .have reminded them of the Theban legion, thought proper in the last century to change it into Monimo- re9uy, and to give out that a branch of the house of the first Christian baron followed the banner of the Norman, and received from him a grant of land in the princi- pality of Wales. The part of the island was well chosen; for, in the nature of things, only a very small part of what we call Wales could appear in Domesday. But there is an index of persons as well as an index of places, and the name of Montmorency may be looked for in vain in any part of. the great Survey. This 83 story is worth some notice, because it is one of the very few cases where the faith even of Sir Bernard Burke gives way. He had stood a good deal; but even he must draw the line somewhere, and the change of Morres into Montmorency was too much for him. When he comes to this monstrous fable, we do for once hear, this family claims, it is said, pre- sumed descent, and the like, showing that there is somewhere a last pound which breaks the back even of an Ulster king-at-arms. But Sir Bernard Burkes faith regains its usual robustness when he reaches the pedigree of Temple, with its imaginary descent from Leofric Earl of the Mercians. The Montmorency fable itself, though more daring, is hardly more easily refuted. The children of Earl Leofric are well known, and most cer- tainly no man, not even Peter Temple who lived in the time of Edward the Sixth, can claim to spring of him in the main line.* Such are a few of the best specimens of the different classes of absurd tales into which history has been perverted by family vanity. One family or its flatterers pervert in one way, another perverts in another way; but all who have the unlucky fancy of not being satisfied with real, or at least with possilile, forefathers, pervert in one way or another. But it is only right to say that this unlucky fancy has by no means spread itself over the whole peerage and baronetage of England. In turning over the pages of Sir Bernard Burke, if we light on much wild nonsense, we also light on much sound sense. We come to many who claim long pedigrees because they have a real right to them. We come to many who, seeing that destiny has given them only short pedigrees, have not felt any call to make them longer by dint of falsehood. When a man is bold enough to begin his pedigree in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, still more when he is bold enough to begin it in the nineteenth, lovers of truth will respect him as a fellow-lover of truth. At the same time a little curiosity * I believe that I have got together all that can be found out of the family of Leofric at vol. ii., p. 368, of the Historyof the Norman Coffquest. But there is something amusing in Sir Bernard Burkes descrip- tion of him as Leofric, Earl of Chester (erroneously styled Earl of Leicester). The errorlies in degrading the great Earl of the Mercians into a mere local earl, sometimes of Chester, sometimes of Coventry. Sir Bernard Burke might understand the difference,, if the lord lieutenant of Ireland were to he called lord lieutenant of Cork. But supposing Leofric to have been a mere Earl of Chester, there would have heen no error whatever, in the language of his own day, in call- ing him Earl of Leicester. For L.egeceasler, civi/as leg-baum, most commonly means the city wbich we now call Chester. 84 PEDIGREES AND PEDIGREE-MAKERS. is raised to know whether an Ulster king- at-arms does not look down on such hon- est men with scorn. It would have been so easy to invent a few names, to devise a few exploits, and to stick in at random some one who, according to taste, either came in with the Conqueror or was here before the Conqueror. One respects two baronets of the name of Smith, who do not claim a single forefather so much as a hun- dred years back. One hardly extends the same feeling to another, who perverts the great Teutonic name into Smijth, who fathers the grotesque misspelling on the great Sir Thomas Smith of Elizabeths reign . a man who had too much sense for such folly and who finally makes the Smijth so created, though without any mention of the intermediate stages, a descendant from Sir Roger de Clarendon, Knight, natural son of the Black Prince. Of tales like these I have perhaps got together enough. I have got to~ether enough to show what pedigree-making is like, enough to show that the family tree, the family tradition, the roll of Battle Ab- bey, are simply so many forms of sheer falsehood. Let no man believe a pedigree which goes further back than the last three or four centuries, unless he has the means of testing it by the touchstone of true history. it is something that the particular time which pedigree-makers have chosen for the display of their wild- est pranks is the time when it is easier than at any other time to refute them by the easy process of turning to the great Survey. Let no man believe him who says that his forefathers, bearing his name, were seated at such and such a place be- fore the Conquest. Here there is no need to turn to the Survey; the impossible fic- tion refutes itself. And let no man believe him who says that his forefather received such and such land from the Conqueror, until he has looked in the Survey to see whether it be so. The assertion is not impossible, like the other; but in a vast number of cases it turns out to be no less false. Men are wiser if, in the absence of authentic records, they are satisfied with the certain fact that they must have had some forefathers in the eleventh century, and with the hope, which may be cherished till it is disproved, that those forefathers were neither Norman invaders nor English traitors. He may believe, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that he comes of the blood of some one who fought and died for England. But he must be satis- fied with the reasonable hope ; he cannot assert it as a fact which can be proved. If men read their history aright, the-point of honor would be, not to make out that they are the descendants of the invaders, not that they are the descendants of those who kept their lands by submission to the invaders, hut that they are the descendants of the men who gave their lives for their country, and whose sons lost their lands because they were the sons of patriots. One word more, let no one deem that, because a false pedigree is a thing to be eschewed and scouted, therefore a true pedigree is a thing to be despised. A true pedigree, be it long or short, is a fact; and, like any other fact, it is to be re- spected. To those to whom it belongs it is a possession ; and, like any other pos- session, it is to be respected. It is only the false imitation of the true which is to be despised. The inheritance of a really great name is a great inheritance, an inheritance which should be matter, not of pride but of responsibility. It was something to be a Fabius or a Valerius; it is something to be an Erlach or a Re- ding. But in truth the inheritance of a great name is an inheritance which can be had in its fulness only in a common- wealth. XVhere a king can ennoble, where the ancient name can be over- shadowed by some new-fangled title, changing perhaps in each generation, the magic of immemorial descent is lost. A man runs up the stages from baron to duke, and at each stage something of the feeling of antiquity is lost. But Quintus Fabius Maximus, bearing the name of his fathers and sent to do the work of his fathers, might be said to have lived on from generation to generation. In the pure democracy of Schwyz, Rudolf Re- ding commanded at Morgarten; Aloys Reding commanded four hundred and eighty-three years later, when the sham democrats of Paris came to overthrow the true democracy of the mountains. Under a monarchy, the glorious and abiding name might have been forgotten in end- less changes of title. Instead of a mem- ory living fresh in the minds of men, one might have had to turn to a peerage to find out whether the later hero was or was not a descendant of the earlier. There is no country which offers such strong temp- tations to fiction in the way of pedigree as our own. No other country in Europe has any event in its history which exactly answers to our Norman Conquest, an event which calls forth two veins of senti- ment, the desire to trace up the pedigree to the conquerors and the desire to trace up the pedigree to somethin~ older than THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. the conquerors. Between these two contending feelings, our English genealo- gies have become a mass of fables. At Rome and at Sparta, at Venice and at Bern, there were doubtless temptations to genealogical fictions of other kinds. Most pedigrees in all times and places have some mythical stages at the beginning. The Greek king was bound to trace his descent up to Zeus; the Teutonic king was bound to trace his descent up to Woden. Every age and country had some temptation of the kind; but there was none anywhere that so completely sapped every principle of truth as the necessity which is laid on an old family in England, either to have come in with the Conqueror or else to be older than the Conquest. All the more honor then to those, and there are not a few, who with- stand the temptation, and who claim no forefathers save those to whom they can prove a right. We may pass by the imag- inary claims on either side, and suppose that the men whose descendants have a regard for truth now were themselves men of loyalty and patriotism in past ages. When a man has the moral courage to send Sir Bernard Burke a pedigree which stretches only over three or four gener- ations, there is the more reason to believe that if he could name his forefathers in the twentieth generation, he would find them to have been men of whoni he need not be ashamed. EDWARD A. FREEMAN. THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. BY GEORGE MACDONALD, AUTHOR OF MALCOLM, ETC. CHAPTER LXI. THOUGHTS. WHEN Malcolm took Kelpie to her stall the night of the arrival of Lady Bellair and her nephew, he was rushed upon by Demon, and nearly prostrated between his immoderate welcome and the startled rear- ing of the mare. The hound had arrived a couple of hours before, while Malcolm was out. He wondered he had not seen him with the carriage he had passed, never suspecting he had had another conduc- tress, or dreaming what his presence there signified for him. I have not said much concerning Mal- colms feelings with regard to Lady Clem- entina, but all this time the sense of her 85 existence had been like an atmosphere surrounding and pervading his thought. He saw in her the promise of all he could desire to see in woman. His love was not of the blind-little-boy sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind, that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleep- less in him and there was eternal con- tent in the thought that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of old, whose religion was simply what re- ligion is life, neither more nor less than life. She w6uld be a saint without know- ing it, the only grand kind of sainthood. Whoever can think of religion as an addi- tion to life, however glorious a starry crown, say, set upon the head of humanity is not yet the least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever thinks of life as a something that could be without religion is in deathly ignorance of both. Life and religion are one, or neither is anything: I will not say neither is growing to be anything. Religion is no way of life, no show of life, no observance of any sort. It is neither the food nor medicine of be- ing. It is life essential. To think other- wise is as if a man should pride himself on his honesty or his parental kindness, or hold up his head amongst men because he never killed one: were he less than honest or kind or free from blood, he would yet think something of himself. The man to whom virtue is but the orna- ment of character, something over and above, not essential to it, is not yet a man. If I say, then, that Malcolm was always thinking about Lady Clementina when he was not thinking about something he had to think about, have I not said nearly enough on the matter? Should I ever dream of attempting to set forth what love is in such a man for such a woman? There are comparatively few that have more than the glimmer of a notion of what love means. God only knows how grandly, how pas- sionately, yet how calmly, how divinely, the man and the woman he has made might, may, shall love each other. One thing only I will dare to say that the love that belonged to Malcolms nature was one through the very nerves of which the love of God must rise and flow and return as its essential life. If any man think that such a love could no longer be the love of the man for the woman, he 86 THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. knows his own nature and that of the that her convictions were the souls of ac- woman he pretends or thinks he adores, tions to be born of them, his daring of but in the darkest of glasses. belief in her strengthened until he began Malcolms lowly idea of himself did not to think that perhaps it would be neither at all interfere with his loving Clementina, his early history nor his defective educa- for at first his love was entirely dissociated tion nor his clumsiness that would prevent from any thought of hers. When the her from listening to such words where- idea, the mere idea, of her loving him pre- with he burned to throw open the gates of sented itself, from whatever quarter sug- his world and pray her to enter and sit gested, he turned from it with shame and upon its loftiest throne its loftiest throne self-reproof: the thought was in its own but one. And with the thought he felt as nature too unfit. That splendor regard if he must run to her, calling aloud that him! From a social point of view there he was the Marquis of Lossie, and throw was of course little presumption in it. himself at her feet. The Marquis of Lossie bore a name that But the wheels of his thoucrht~chariot, might pair itself with any in the land; but self-moved, were rushing, and here was no Malcolm did not yet feel that the title goal at which to halt or turn ; for, feeling made much difference to the fisherman, thus, where was his faith in her principles ? He was what he was, and that was some- how now was he treating the truth of her thing very lowly indeed. Yet the thought nature? where now were his convictions would at times dawn up from somewhere of the genuineness of her professions? in the infinite matrix of thought that per- Where were those principles, that truth~ haps if he xvent to college and graduated those piofessions, if after all she would and dressed like a gentleman, and did listen to a marquis and would not listen to everything as gentlemen do in short, a broom? To suppose such a thing was claimed his rank and lived as a marquis to wrong her grievously. To herald his should, as well as a fisherman might suit with his rank would be to insult her, then then was it not, might it not, be declaring that he regarded her theories of within the bounds of possibilityjust humanity as wordy froth. And what a within them that the great-hearted, gen- chance of proving her truth would he not erous, liberty-loving Lady Clementina, deprive her of if, as he approached her, groom as he had been, menial as he had he called on the marquis to supplement heard himself called, and as, ere yet he the man! But what, then, was the man, knew his birth, he had laughed to hear, fisherman or marquis, to dare even himself knowing that his service was true that to such a glory as the Lady Clementina? she, who despised nothing human, would This much of a man, at least, answered be neither disgusted nor contemptuous nor his waking di~nity, that he could not con- wrathful if, from a great way off, at an descend to be accepted as Malcolm, Mar- awful remove of humility and worship, he quis of Lossie, knowing he would have were to wake in her a surmise that he been rejected as Malcolm MacPhail, fish- dared feel toward her as he had never erman and groom. Accepted as marquis, felt and never could feel toward any other? he would forever be haunted with the For would it not be altogether counter to e4annering question whether she would the principles he had so often heard her have accepted him as groom. And if in announce and defend to despise him be- his pain he were one day to utter it, and cause he had earned his bread by doing she in her honesty were to confess she honorable work work hearty and up to would not, must she not then fall prone the worth of his wages? Was she one to from her pedestal in his imagination? say and not see, to opine and not believe? Could he then, in love for the woman her- or was she one to hold and not practice self, condescend as marquis to marry one to believe for the heart, and not for the who ;nz~h/ not have married him as any hand to say I go, and not go I love, something else he could honestly have and not help? If such she were, then been under the all-enliThtenino- su there were for him no further searchings but agai ~ n? Aim, n,wasthatfairtoheryet? Might of the heart upon her account: he could she not see in the marquis the truth and but hold up her name in the common worth which the blinding falsehoods of prayer for all men, only praying besides society prevented her from seeing in the not to dream about her when he slept. groom? Might not a ladyhe tried to At length, such thoughts rising again think of a lady in the abstract might not and again, and ever accompanied by such a lady in marrying a marquis a lady to reflections concerning the truth of her whom from her own position a marquis character, and by the growing certainty wa~ just a man on the level marry in THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 87 him the man he was, and not the marquis he seemed? Most certainly, he answered: he must not be unfair. Not the less, however, did he shrink from the thought of taking her prisoner under the shield of his marquisate, beclouding her nobility, and depriving her of the rare chance of shinin~ forth as the sun in the splendor of womanly truth. No: he would choose the greater risk of losing her for the chance of winning her greater. So far Malcolm got with his theories, but the moment he began to think in the least practically he recoiled altogether from the presumption. Under no circum- stances could he ever have the courage to approach Lady Clementina with a thought of himself in his mind. How could he have dared even raise her imagined eido- ion for his thoughts to deal withal? She had never shown him personal favor. He could not tell whether she had listened to what he had tried to lay before her. He did not know that she had gone to hear his master: Florimel had never referred to their visit to Hope Chapel. His sur- prise would have equalled his delight at the news that she had already become as a daughter to the schoolmaster. And what had been. Clemintinas thoughts since learning that Florimel had not run away with her groom? It were hard to say with completeness. Accuracy, however, may not be equally unattainable. Her first feeling was an utterly inarticu- late, undefined pleasure that Malcolm was free to be thought about. She was clear next that it would be matter for honest re- joicing if the truest man she had ever met except his master was not going to marry such an unreality as Florimel one con- cerning whom, as things had been going of late, it was impossible to say that she was not more likely to turn to evil than to good. Clementina with all her generosity could not help being doubtful of a woman who could make a companion of such a man as Liftore a man to whom every individualparticle of Clementinas nature seemed for itself to object. But she was not yet past befriending. Then she began to grow more curious about Malcolm. She had already much real knowledge of him ,gathered both from himself and from Mr. Graham. As to what went to make the man, she knew him, indeed, not thoroughly, but well; and just therefore, she said to herself, there were some points in his history and condition concerning which she had curi- osity. The principal of these was whether he might not be engaged to some yo~1ng woman in his own station of life. It was not merely possible, but was it likely he could have escaped it? In the lower ranks of society men married younger they had no false aims to prevent them: that implied earlier engagements. On the other hand, was it likely that in a fishing village there would be any choice of girls who could understand him when he talked about Plato and the New Testament? If there were one, however, that might be worse? Yes, worse: she accepted the word. Neither was it absolutely necessary in a wife that she should under- stand more of her husband than his heart. Many learned men had had mere house- keepers for wives, and been satisfied at least never complained. And what did she know about the fishers, men or wom- en? There were none at Wastbeach. For anything she knew to the contrary, they might all be philosophers together, and a fitting match for Malcolm might be far more easy to find amongst them than in the society to which she herself be- longed, where in truth the philosophical element was rare enough. Then arose in her mind, she could not have told how, the vision, half logical, halt pictorial, of a whole family of brave, believing, daring, saving fisherfolk, father, mother, boys and girls, each sacrificing to the rest, each sacrificed to by all, and all devoted to. their neighbors. Grand it was and bliss- ful, and the borders of the great sea alone seemed fit place for such beings amphib- ious of time and eternity. Their very toils and dangers were but additional at- mospheres to press their souls together. It was glorious! Why had she been born an earls daughter, never to look a danger in the face, never to have a chance of a true life that is, a grand, simple, noble one? Who, then, denied her the chance? Had she no power to order her own steps, to determine her own beino.? Was she nailed to her rank? Or who was there that could part her from it? Was she a prisoner in the dungeons of the housc of pride? When the gates of Paradise closed behind Adam and Eve, they had this consolation left, that the world was all before them where to choose. Was she not a free woman, without even a guardian to trouble her with advice? She had no excuse to act ignobly, but had she any for being unmaidenly? Would it then be would it be a very unmaidenly thing if ? The rest of the sentence did not even take the shape of words. But she answered it, nevertheless, in th~ words, Not so unmaidenly as presumptuous. 88 THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. And, alas! there was little hope that he would ever presume to He was such a modest youth with all his directness and fearlessness. If he had no respect for rank - and that was yes, she would say the word, hotefulhe had, on the other hand, the profoundest respect for the hu- man, and she could not tell how that might in the individual matter operate. Then she fell a-thinking of the differ- ence between Malcolm and any other ser- vant she had ever known. She hated the servile. She knew that it was false as well as low: she had not got so far as to see that it was low through its being false. She knew that most servants, while they spoke with the appearance of respect in presence, altered their tone entirely when beyond the circle of the eye: theirs was eye-service, they were men-pleasers, they were servile. She had overheard her maid speak of her as Lady Clem, and that not without a streak of contempt in the tone. But here was a man who touched no imaginary hat while he stood in the presence of his mistress, neither swore at her in the stable-yard. He looked her straight in the face, and would upon occa- sion speak, not his mind, but the truth to her. Even his slight mistress had the conviction that if one dared in his presence but utter her name lightly, whoever he were, he would have to answer to him for it. What a lovely thing ~vas true service! absolutely divine! But, alas! such a youth would never, could never, dare offer other than such service. Were she even to encourage him as a maiden might, he would but serve her the better would but embody his recognitio n of her favor in fervor of ministering devotion. Was it not a recognized law, however, in the rela- tion of superiors and inferiors, that with regard to such matters, as well as others of no moment, the lady Ah, but for her to take the initiative would provoke the conclusion as revolting to her as unavoidable to him that she judged her- self his superior, so greatly his superior as to be absolved from the necessity of behaving to him on the ordinary footing of man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hate- ful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a supe- riority in social standing, but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so im- measurably her superior that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a can- dle in the sunlight, and she laughed her- self to scorn. Fancy, she laughed, a midge, on the strength of having wings, condescending to offer marriage to a horse! It would argue the assumption of equality in other and more important things than rank, or at least the confidence that her social superiority not only coun- terbalanced the difference, but left enough over to her credit to justify her initiative. And what a miserable fiction that money and position had a right to the first move before greatness of living fact that hay. lug had the precedence of being! That Malcolm should imagine such ii er judg- ment! No, let all go let himself go rather! And then he might not choose to accept her munificent offer! Or worse, far worse, what if he should be tempted by rank and wealth, and, accepting her, be shorn of his glory and proved of the ordi- nary human type after all? A thousand times rather would she see the bright par- ticular star blazing unreachable above her. What! would she carry it about a cinder in her pocket? And yet if he could be turned to a coal, why should she go on worship- ping him? Alas! the offer itself was the only test severe enough to try him withal, and if he proved a cinder she would by the very use of the test be bound to love, honor, and obey her cinder. She could not well reject him for accepting her, neither could she marry him if he rose grandly superior to her temptations. No! he could~be nothing to her nearer than the bright particular star. Thus went the thoughts to and fro in the minds of each. Neither could see the way. Both feared the risk of loss: neither could hope greatly for gain. CHAPTER LXII. THE DUNE. HAVING put Kelpie up, and fed and bedded her, Malcolm took his way to the Seaton, full of busily anxious thought. Things had taken a bad turn, and he was worse off for counsel than before. The enemy was in the house with his sister, and he had no longer any chance of judging how matters were going, as now he never rode out with her. But at least he could haunt the house. He would run, there- fore, to his grandfather, and tell him that he was going to occupy his old quarters at the house that night. Returning directly, and passing, as had been his custom, through the kitchen to ascend the small corkscrew stair the ser- vants generally used, he encountered Mrs. Courthope, who told him that her ladyship had given orders that her maid, who had come with Lady Bellair, should have his THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 89 room. He was at once convinced that Florimel had done so with the intention of banishing him from the house, for there were dozens of rooms vacant, and many of them more suitable. It was a hard blow. How he wished for Mr. Graham to consult! And yet Mr. Graham was not of much use where any sort of plotting was wanting. He asked Mrs. Courthope to let him have another room, but she looked so doubtful that he withdrew his request and went back to his grand- father. It was Saturday, and not many of the boats would go fishing. Among the rest, Findlays would not leave the harbor till Sunday was over, and therefore Malcolm was free. But he could not rest, and would o line-fishing. Daddy, he said, Im gaein oot to catch a haddick or sae to oor denner the morn. Ye micht jist sit doon upo ane o the Boars Taes an tak a play o yer pipes. Ill hear ye fine, an itll du me guid. The Boars Toes were two or three small rocks that rose out of the sand near the end of the dune. Duncan agreed right willingly, and Malcolm, borrowing some lines and taking the Psyches dinghy, rowed out into the bay. The sun was down, the moon was up, and he had caught more fish than he wanted. His grandfather had got tired and gone home, and the fountain of his anxious thoughts began to flow more rap- idly. He must go ashore. He must go up to the house: who could tell what might not be going on there? He drew in his line, purposing to take the best of the fish to 1\liss Horn and some to Mrs. Court- hope, as in the old days. The Psyche still lay on the sands, and he was rowing the dinghy toward her, when, looking round to direct his course, he thought he caught a glimpse of some one seated on the slope of the dune. Yes, there was some one there, sure enough. The old times rushed back on his mem- ory: could it be Florimel? Alas! it was not likely she would now be wandering about alone. But if it were! Then for one endeavor more to rouse her slumber- ing conscience! He would call up all the associations of the last few months she had spent in the place, and, with the spirit of her father, as it were, hovering ever her, conjure her, in his name, to break with Lif tore. He rowed swiftly to the Psyche, beached and drew up the dinghy, and climbed the dune. Plainly enough, it was a lady who sat there. It might be one from the upper town enjoying the lovely night: it rnzg~kt be Florimel, but how could she have got away, or wished to get away, from her newly-arrived guests ? The voices of sev- eral groups of walkers came from the high-road behind the dune, but there was no other figure to be seen all along the sands. He drew nearer. The lady did not move. If itwere Florimel, would she not know him as he came, and would she wait for him? He drew nearer still. His heart gave a gredt throb. Could it be, or was the moon weaving some hallucination in his troubled brain? If it was a phantom, it was that of Lady Clementina: if but mod- elled of the filmy vapors of the moonlight, and the artist his own brain, the phantom was welcome as joy. His spirit seemed to soar aloft in the yellow air and hang hovering over and around her, while his body stood rooted to the spot, like one who fears, by moving nigher, to lose the lovely vision of a mirage. She sat motion- less, her gaze on the sea. Malcolm be- thought himself that she could not know him in his fisher-dress, and must take him for some rude fisherman staring at her. He must go at once, or approach and ad- dress her. He came forward at once. My lady! he said. She did not start, neither did she speak. She did not even turn her face. She rose first, then turned and held out her hand. Three steps more and he had it in his, and his eyes looked straight into hers. Neither spoke. The moon shone full on Clementinas face. There was no illumina- tion fitter for that face than the moonlight, and to Malcolm it was lovelier than ever. Nor was it any wonder it should seem so to him, for certainly never had the eyes in it rested on his with such a lovely and trust- ing light in them. A moment she stood, then slowly sank again upon the sand and drew her skirts about her with a dumb show of invitation. The place where she sat was a little terraced hollow in the slope, forming a convenient seat. Malcolm saw, but could not believe she actually made room for him to sit beside her alone with her in the universe. It was too much: he dared not believe it. And now, by one of those wondrous duplications which are not always at least born of the fancy, the same scene in which he had found Florimel thus seated on the slope of the dune appeared to be passing again through Malcolms consciousness, only instead of Florimel was Clementina, and instead of the sun was the moon. And creature of the sun- light as Florimel was, bright and gay and THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 90 beautiful, she paled into a creature of the cloud beside this maiden of the moonlight, tall and stately, silent and soft and grand. Again she made a movement. This time he could not doubt her invitation. It was as if her soul made room in her un- seen world for him to enter and sit beside her. But who could enter heaven in his work-day garments? Wont you sit by me, Malcolm? see- ing his more than hesitation, she said at last, with a slight tremble in the voice that was music itself in his ears. I have been catching fish, my lady, he answered, and my clothes must be unpleasant. I will sit here. He went a little lower on the slope and laid himself down, leaning on his elbow. Do fresh-water fishes smell the same as the sea-fishes, Malcolm? she asked. Indeed I am not certain, my lady. Why? Because if they do You remem- ber what you said to me as we passed the saw-mill in the wood? It was by silence Malcolm showed he did remember. Does not this night remind you of that one at Wastbeach when we came upon you singing? said Clementina. It is like it, my ladynow. But,a little ago, before I saw you, I was think- ing of that night, and thinking how differ- ent this was. Again a moon-filled silence fell, and once more it was the lady who broke it. Do you know who are at the house? she asked. I do, my lady, he replied. I had not been there more than an hour or two, she went on, when they arrived. I suppose Florimel Lady Los- sie thought I would not come if she told me she expected them. And would you have come, my lady? I cannot endure the earl. Neither can I. But then I know more about him than your ladyship does, and I am miserable for my mistress. It stung Clementina as if her heart had taken a beat backward. But her voice was steadier than it had yet been as she returned, Why should you be miserable for Lady Lossie? I would die rather than see ~her marry that wretch, he answered. Again her blood stung her in the left side. You do not want her to marry, then? she said. I do, answered Malcolm, emphati- cally, but not that fellow. Whom, then, if I may ask? ven- tured Clementina trembling. But Malcolm was silent. He did not feel it would be righ ttosay. Clementina turned sick at heart. I have heard there is something dangerous about the moonlight, she said, I think it does not suit me to-nioht I w home. . ill go Malcolm sprang to his feet and offered his hand. She did not take it, but rose more lightly, though more slowly, than he. How did you come from the park, my lady? he asked. By a gate over there, she answered, pointing. I wandered out after dinner, and the sea drew me. If your ladyship will allow me, I will take you a much nearer way back, he said. Do, then, she returned. He thought she spoke a little sadly, and set it down to her having to go back to her fellow-guests. What if she should leave to-morrow mornino-? he thought. He could never then be sure she had really been with him that night. He must sometimes think it then a dream. But oh what a dream! He could thank God for it all his life if he should never dream so again. They walked across the grassy sand toward the tunnel in silence, he pondering what he could say that might comfort her and keep her from going so soon. My lady never takes me out with her now, he said at lenbth. He was going to add that if she pleased he could wait upon her with Kelpie and show her the country. But then he saw that if she were not with Florimel, his sister would be riding everywhere alone with Liftore. Therefore he stopped short. And you feel forsaken deserted? returned Clementina, sadly still. Rather, my lady. They had reached the tunnel. It looked very black when he opened the door, but there was just a glimmer through the trees at the other end. This is the valley of the shadow of death, she said. Do I walk straight through? Yes, my lady. You will soon come out in the light again, he said. Are there no steps to fall down? she~ asked. None, my lady. But I will go first, if you wish. No, that would but cut off the little light I have, she said. Come beside me. THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 9 They passed through in silence, save for the rustle of her dress and the dull echo that haunted their steps. In a few moments they came out among the trees, hut both continued silent. The still, thoughtful moon-night seemed to press them close together, but neither knew that the other felt the same. They reached a point in the road where another step would bring them in sight of the house. You cannot go wrong now, my lady, said Malcolm. If you please I will go no farther. Do you not live in the house? she asked. I used to do as I liked, and could be there or with my grandfather. I did mean to be at the house to-night, but my lady has given my room to her maid. What! that woman Caley? I su~ipose so, my lady. I must sleep to-night in the village. If you could, my lady he added, after a pause, and fal- tered, hesitating. She did not help him, but waited. If you couldif you would not be displeased at my asking you, he resumed if you could keep my lady from going farther with that I shall call him names if I go on. It is a strange request, Clementina replied after a moments reflection. I hardly know, as the guest of Lady Lossie, what answer I ought to make to it. One thing I will say, however, that, though you may know more of the man than I, you can hardly dislike him more. Whether I can interfere is another matter. Hon- estly, I do not think it would be of any use. But I do not say that I will not. Good-night. She hurried away, and did not again offer her hand. Malcolm walked back through the tun- nel, his heart singing and making melody. Oh how lovely how more than lovely, how divinely beautiful she was! And so kind and friendly! Yet she seemed just the least bit fitful too. Something troubled her, he said to himself. But he little thought that he, and no one else, had spoiled the moonlight for her. He went home to glorious dreams she to a troubled, half-wakeful night. Ndt until she had made up her mind to do her ut- most to rescue Florimel from Liftore, even if it gave her to Malcolm, did she find a moments quiet. It was morning then, but she fell fast asleep, slept late and woke refreshed. CHAPTER LXIII. CONFESSION OF SIN. MR. CRATHIE was slowly recovering, but still very weak. He did not, after having turned the corner, get well so fast as his medical minister judged he ought, and the reason was plain to Lizzy, dimly perceptible to his wife: he was ill at ease. A man may have more mind and more conscience, and more discomfort in both or either, than his neighbors give him credit for. They may be in the right about him up to a certain point of his history, but then a crisis by them unper- ceived, perhaps to them inappreciable, arrived, after which the man to all eter- nity could never be the same as they had known him. Such a change must appear improbable, and save on the theory of a higher operative power is improbable be- cause impossible. But a man who has not created himself can never secure him- self against the inroad of the glorious ter- ror of that Goodness which was able to utter him into being, with all its possible wrongs and repentances. The fact that a man has never, up to any point yet, been aware of aught beyond himself cannot shut Him out who is beyond him, when at last he means to enter. Not even the soul- benuinbing visits of his clerical minister could repress the swell of the slow-mount- ing dayspring in the soul of the hard, com- monplace, business-worshipping man, Hec- tor Crathie. The hireling would talk to him kindly enough, of his illness or the events of the day, especially those of the town and neighborhood, and encourage him with reiterated expression of the hope that ere many days they would enjoy a tumbler together as of old; but as to wrong done, apolo6y to i~ake, forgiveness to be sought or consolation to be found, the dumb dog had not uttered a bark. The sources of the factors restless dis- comfort were now two the first, that he had lifted his hand to women; the sec- ond, the old ground of his quarrel with Malcolm brought up by Lizzy. All his life, since ever he had had busi- ness, Mr. Crathie had prided himself on his honesty, and was therefore in one of the most dangerous moral positions a man could occupy ruinous, even to the hon- esty itself. Asleep in the mud, he dreamed himself awake on a pedestal. At best, such a man is but perched on a needle- point when he thinketh he standeth. Of him who prided himself on his honor I should expect that one day, in the long run it might be, he would do some vile 92 THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. thing. Not, probably, within the small circle of illumination around his wretched rushlight; but in the great region beyond it, of what to him is a moral darkness or twilight vague, he may be or may become capable of doing a deed that will stink in the nostrils of the universe ; and in his own when he knows it as it is. The hun- estv in which a man can pride himself must be a small one, for more honesty will never think of itself at all. The lim- ited honesty of the factor dave to the interests of his employers, and let the rights he encountered take care of them- selves. Those he dealt with were to him rather as enemies than friends not en- emies to be prayed for, but to be spoiled. Malcolms doctrine of honesty in horse- dealing was to him ludicrously new. His notion of honesty in that kind was to cheat the buyer for his master if he could, proud to Write in his book a large sum against the name of the animal. He would have scorned in his very soul the idea of making a farthing by it himself through any busi- ness quirk whatever, but he would not have been the least ashamed if, having sold Kelpie, he had heard let me say after a week of possession that she had dashed out her purchasers brains. He would have been a little shocked, a little sorry perhaps, but nowise ashamed. By this time, he would have said, the man ought to have been up to her, and either taken care of himself or sold her ag-aiez to dash out another mans brains instead That the bastard Malcolm, or the igno- rant and indeed fallen fisher-girl Lizzy, should judge differently, nowise troubled him: what could they know about the rights and wrongs of business? The fact which Lizzy sought to bring to bear upon him, that our Lord would not have done such a thing, was to him no argument at all. He said to himself, with the superior smile of arrogated common sense ,that no mere man since the fall~ could be expected to do like him; that he was di- vine, and had not to fight for a living; that he sets us an example that we might see what sinners we were; that religion was one thing, and a very proper thing, but business was another, and a very proper thing also with customs, and indeed laws, of its own far more determinate, at least definite, than those of religion: and that to mingle the one with the other ~vas not merely absurdit was irreverent and wrong, and certainly never intended in the Bible, which must surely be common sense. It was the Bible always with him never the will of christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus sat- isfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, with- out any distracting occupation, the thing haunted him. Now, in his fathers cot- tage had lain, much dabbled in of the children, a certain boardless copy of the Pilgrims Progress,~ round in the face and hollow in the back, in which, amongst other pictures, was one of the wicket gate. This scripture of his childhood; given by inspiration of God, threw out, in one of his troubled and feverish nights, a dream-bud in the brain of the man. He saw the face of Jesus looking on him over the top of the wicket gate, at which he had been for some time knocking in vain, while the cruel dog barked loud from the enemys yard. But tha~t face, when at last it came, was full of sorrowful displeasure. And in his heart he knew that it was be- cause of a certain transaction in horse- dealing wherein he had hitherto lauded his own cunning adroitness, he considered it and success. One ~vord only he heard from the lips of the Man, Worker of iniquity! and ~voke with a great start, From that moment truths begall to be facts to him. The beginning of the change was indeed very small, but every beginning is small, and every beginning is a creation. Monad, molecule, protoplasm, whatever word may be attached to it when it be- comes appreciable by menbeing then, however, many stages, I believe, upon its journey beginning is an irrepressible fact; and, however far from good or hum- ble even after many days, the man here began to grow good and humble. His dull, unimaginative nature, a perfect lum- ber-room of the world and its rusting affairs, had received a gift in a dream a truth from the lips of the Lord, remod- elled in the brain and heart of the tinker of Elstow, and sent forth in his wondrous parable to be pictured and printed, and lie in old Hector Crathies cottage, that it might enter and lie in young Hector Crathies brain until he grew old and had done wrong enough to heed it, when it rose upon him in a dream, and had its way. Henceforth the claims of his neigh- bor began to reveal themselves, and his mind to breed conscientious doubts and scruples, with which, struoole as he might ao-ainst it, a certain b respect for Malcolm would keep coming and minglin~, a feel- ing which grew with its returns, until, by slow changes, he began at length to re- gard him as the minister of Gods ven- geance for his punishment, and perhaps salvation who could tell? THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. Lizzys nightly ministrations had not been resumed, but she often called, and was a good deal with him; for Mrs. Crathie had learned to like the humble, helpful girl still better when she found she had taken no offence at being deprived of her post of honor by his bedside. One day, when Malcolm was seated, mending a net, among the thin grass and great red daisies of the links by the bank of the burn where it crossed the sands from the Lossie grounds to the sea, Lizzy came up to him and said, The factor ~vad like to see ye, Macolm, as sune s ye till im. can gang She waited no reply. Malcolm rose and went. At the factors the door was opened by Mrs. Crathie herself, who, looking myste- rious, led him to the dining-room, where she plunged at once into business, doing her best to keep down all manifestation of the profound resentment she cherished against him. Her manner was confiden- tial, almost coaxing. Ye see, Macolm, she said, as if pursuing instead of com- mencing a conversation, hes some sore about the little fraicass between him an you. Jest make your apoalogies till im, an tell im you had a drop too much, and youre soary for misbehavin yerself to wann sae much your shuperrior. Tell im that, Macolm, an theres a half-croon to ye. She wished much to speak English, and I have tried to represent the thing she did speak, which was neither honest Scotch nor anything like English. Alas! the good, pithy, old Anglo-Saxon dialect is fast perishing, and a jargon of corrupt English taking its place! But, mem, said Malcolm, taking no notice either of the coin or the words that accompanied the offer of it, I canna lee: I wasna in drink, an Im no sorry. Hoot! returned Mrs. Crathie, blurt- ing out her Scotch fast enough now, I s warran ye can lee weel eneuch when ye hae occasion. Tak yer siller an du as I tell ye. Wad ye hae me damned, mem? Mrs. Crathie gave a cry and held up her hands. She was too well accustomed to imprecations from the lips of her husband for any but an affected horror, but regard- ing the honest word as a bad one, she assumed an air of injury. Wad ye daur to sweir afore a leddy, she exclaimed, shaking her uplifted hands in pretence of ghasted astonishment. If Mr. Crathie wishes to see me, maam, rejoined Malcolm, taking up the 93 shield of English, I am ready. If not, please allow me to go. The same moment the bell whose rope was at the head of the factors bed rang violently, and Mrs. Crathies importance collapsed. Come this wy, she said, and turning led him up the stair to the room where her husband lay. Entering, Malcolm stood astonished at the change he saw upon the stron~ man of rubicund countenance, and his heart filled with compassion. The factor was sitting up in bed, looking very white and worn and troubled. Even his nose had grown thin and white. He held out his hand to him, and said to his wife, Tak the door to ye, Mistress Crathie, indicat- - ing which side he wished it closed from. Ye was some sair upo me, Macolm, he went on, grasping the youths hand. I doobt I was ower sair, said Mal- colm, who could hardly speak for a lump in his throat. Weel, I deserved it. But eh, Ma- colml I canna believe it was me: it bude to be the drink. It was the drink, rejoined Malcolm; an eh, sir, afore ye rise frae that bed sweir to the great God at yell never drink nae mair drains, nor onytfiing ayont ae tumler at a sittin. I sweir t, I sweir t, Macolm! cried the factor. Its easy to sweir t noo, sir, but whan yere up again, itll be hard to keep yer faith. 0 Lord! spoke the youth, break- ing out into almost involuntary prayer, help this man to baud troth wi Thee ! 4n noo, Maister Crathie, he resumed, Im yer servan, ready to du onything I can.,, Forgie me, sir, for layin on ower I forgie ye wi a my hert, returned the factor, inly delighted to have some- thing to forgive. I thank ye frae mine, answered Mal- colm, and again they shook hands. But eb, Macolm, my man! he added, boo will I ever shaw my face again? Fine that! returned Malcolm, eager- ly. Fowks terrible guid-naturd whan ye alloo at yere i the wrang. I do be- lieve at whan a man confesses till s nee- bor an says hes sorry, he thinks mair o im nor afore he did it. Ye see we a ken we hae dune wrang, but we haena a con- fessed. An its a queer thing, but a man 11 think it gran o s neebor to confess, when a the time theres something he winna repent o himsel, for fear o the shame o haein to confess t. To me, the shame lies in no confessin efter ye ken 94, THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. yere wrang. Yell see, sir, the fisher- fowk 11 mm what ye say to them a h better eap Div ye railly think it, Macolm? sighed the factor with a flush. I div that, sir. Only whan ye grow better, gien yell alloo me to sayt, sir, ye maunna lat Sawtan temp ye to think at this same repentin was but a wakeness o the flesh, an no an enlichtenment o the speerit. I s tie mysel up till t, cried the fac- tor eagerly. Gang an tell them i my name at I tak back ilka scart o a nottice I ever gae ane o them to quit, only we maun hae nae mair stanin o honest fowk at comes to bigg herbors till them. Div ye think it wad be weel taen gien ye tuik a poun-nott the piece to the twa woinen? I wadna du that, sir, gien I was you, answered Malcolm. For yer am sake, I wadna to Mistress Mair, for naething wad gar her tak it: it wad only affront her; an for Nancy Tackets sake, I wadna to her, for as her name sos her natur: she would not only tak it, but she wad lat ye play the same as aften s ye likit for less siller. Yell hae mony a chance o makin t up to them baith, ten times ower, afore you an them pairt, sir. I maun lea the cuintry, Macolm. Deed, sir, yell du naething o the kin. The fishers themsels wad rise no to lat ye, as they did wi Blew Peter! As sunes yere able to be ahoot again, yell see plain eneuch at theres no occasion for onything like that, sir. Portlossie wadna ken tsel wantin ye. Jist gie me a commission to say to the twa honest women at yere sorry for what ye did, an thats a at need be said atween you an them, or their men aither. The result showed that Malcolm was right, for the very next day, instead of looking for gifts from him, the two injured women came to the factors door first Annie Mair with the offering of a few fresh eggs, scarce at the season, and after her Nancy Tacket with a great lobster. CHAPTER LXIV. A VISITATION. MALCOLMS custom was first, immedi- ately after breakfast, to give Kelpie her airing and a tremendous amount of air she wanted for the huge animal furnace of her frame and the fiery spirit that kept it ali~httben, returning to the Seaton, to change the dress of the groom, in which he always appeared about the house, lest by any Chance his mistress should want him, for that of the fisherman, and help with the nets or the boats, or in whatever was going on. As often as he might he did what seldom a man wouldwent to the long shed where the women prepared the fish for salting, took a knife and wrought as deftly as any of them, throw- ing a marvellously rapid succession of cleaned herrings into the preserving brine. It was no wonder he was a favorite with the women. Although, however, the place was malodorous and the work dirty, I can- nOt claim so much for Malcolm as may at first appear to belong to him, fo rhehad been accustomed to the sight and smell from earliest childhood. Still, as I say, it was work the men would not do. He had such a chivalrous humanity that it was misery to him to see a man or woman at anything scorned except he bore a hand himself. He did it half in love, half in terror of being unjust. He had gone to Mr. Crathie in his fish- er-clothes, thinking it better the sick man should not be reminded of the cause of his illness more forcibly than could not be helped. The nearest way led him past a corner of the house overlooked by one of the drawing-room windows. Clementina saw him pass, and, judging by his garb that he would probably return presently, went out in the hope of meeting him, and as he was going back to his net by the sea-gate he caught sight of her on the op- posite side of the burn, accompanied only by a book. He walked through it, climbed the bank and approached her. It was a hot summer afternoon. The burn ran dark and brown and cool in deep shade, but the sea beyond was glowing in light, and the laburnum blossoms hung like cocoons of sunbeams. No breath of air was stirring; no bird sang; the sun was burning high in the west. Clementina stood waiting him, like a moon that could hold her own in the face of the sun. Malcolm, she said, I have been watching all day, but have not found a ~single opportunity of speaking to your mistress as you wished. But to tell the truth, I am not sorry, for the more I think about it the less I see what to say. That another does not like a person can have little weight with one who does, and I know nothing against him. I wish you would release me from my promise. It is such an ugly thing to speak to ones host- ess to the disadvantage of a fellow- guest! I understand, said Malcolm. It was not a right thing to ask ofyou. I beg your pardon, my lady, and give you back THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. 95 your promise, if such you count it. But my lady. Look ~vhat clothes, what boots, indeed I do not think you promised. we fishers must wear to be fit for our Thank you. I would rather be free. work! But you shall have a true idea as far Had it been before you left London! Lady as it reaches, and one that will go a long Lossie is very kind, but does not seen-i to way towards enabling you to understand put the same confidence in me as former- the rest. You shall go in a real fishing ly. She and Lady Bellair and th~at man boat, with a full crew and all the nets, and make a trio, and I am left outside. I al- you shall catch real herrings only you most think I ought to go. Even Caley is shall not be out longer than you please. more of a friend than I am. I cannot get But there is hardly time to arrange for it rid of the suspicion that something not to-night, my lady. right is going on. There seems a bad air To-morrow, then? about the place. Those two are playing Yes. I have no doubt I can manage their game with the inexperience of that it then. poor child, your mistress. Oh, thank you ! said Clementina. I know that very well, my lady, but I It will be a great delight. hope yet they will not succeed, said Mal- And now, suggested Malcolm, would colm. you like to go through the village and By this time they were near the tunnel. see some of the cottages, and how the Could you let me through to the fishers live? shore? asked Clementina. If they would not think me inquisitive Certainly, my lady. I wish you could or intrusive, answered Clementina. see the boats go out. From the Boars There ~s no danger of that, rejoined Tail it is a pretty sight. They will all be Malcolm. If it were my Lady Bellair, starting together as soon as the tide to patronize and deal praise and blame, turns. as if what she calls poverty were fault and Thereupon Clementina began question- childishness, and she their spiritual as ing him about the night-fishing, and Mal- well as social superior, they might very colm described its pleasures and dangers, likely be what she would call rude. She was and the pleasures of its dangers, in such here once before, and we have some notion fashion that Clementina listened with de- of her about the Seaton. I venture to say light. He dwelt especially on the feeling there is not a woman in it who, is not her almost of disembodiment, and existence moral superior, and many of them are her as pure thought, arisino from the all-per- superiors in intellect and true knowledge, vading clarity and fluidity, the suspension if they are not so familiar with London and the unceasing motion. scandal. Mr. Graham says that in the I wish I could once feel like that, kingdom of heaven every superior is a exclaimed Clementina. Could I not go ruler, for there to rule is to raise, and a with you for one night just for once, mans rank is his power to uplift. Malcolm? I would I were in the kingdom of My lady, it would hardly do, I am heaven if it be such as you and Mr. Gra- afraid. If you knew the discomforts that han-i take it for! said Clementina. must assail one unaccustomed I cannot You must be in it, my lady, or you tell but I doubt if you would go. All couldnt wish it to be such as it is. the doors to bliss have their defences of Can one then be in it, and yet seem to swamps and thorny thickets through which be out of it, Malcolm? alone they can be gained. You would So many are out of it that seem to be need to be a fishermans sister or wife in it, my lady, that one might well imagine I fear, my lady, to get through to this it the other way with some. one. Are you not uncharitable, Malcolm ? Clementina smiled gravely, but did not Our Lord speaks of many coming up reply, and Malcolm too ~vas silent, think- to his door confident of admission, whom ins. Yes, he said at last: I see how yet he sends from him. Faith is obedi- we can manage it. You shall have a boat ence, not confidence. for your own use, my lady, and ____ Then I do well to fear. But I want to see just what you see, Yes, my lady, so long as your fear and to feel, as nearly as I may, what you makes you knock the louder. feel. I dont want a downy, rose-leaf no- But if I be in, as you say, how can I tion of the thing. I want to understand go on knocking? what you fishermen encounter and expe- There are a thousand more doors to rience. knock at after you are in, my lady. No We must make a difference, though, one content to stand just inside the gate 96 THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. will be inside it long. But it is one thing to be in, and another to be satisfied that we are in. Such a satisfying as comes from our o~vn feelings may, you see from what our Lord says, be a false one. It is one thing to gather the conviction for our- selves, and another to have it from God. What wise man would have jt before he gives it? He who does what his Lord tells him is in the kingdom, if every feel- ing of heart and brain told him he was not. And his Lord will see that he knows it one day. But I do not think, my lady, one can ever be quite sure until the King himself has come in to sup with him, and has let him know that he is altogether one with him. During the talk of which this is the sub- stance they reached the Seaton, and Mal- colm took her to see his grandfather. Taal and faer and chentle and coot! murmured the old man as he held her band for a moment in his. With a start of suspicion he dropped it, and cried out in alarm, Shell not pe a Camell, 1\lal- colrn ? Na, na, daddy far frae that, an- swered Malcolm. Then my laty will pe right welcome to Tuncans heart, he replied, and taking her hand again led her to a chair. When they left she expressed herself charmed with the piper, but when she learned the cause of his peculiar behavior at first she looked grave and found his feeling difficult to understand. They next visited the Partaness, with whom she was far more amused than puz- zled. But her heart was drawn to the young woman who sat in a corner rocking her child in its woodeu cradle and never lifting her eyes from her needle-work she knew her for the fisher-girl of Mal- colms picture. From house to house he took her, and where they went they were welcomed. If the man was smoking, he put away his pipe, and the woman left her work and sat down to talk with her. They did the honors of their poor houses in a homely and dig- nified fashion. Clementina was delighted. But Malcolm told her he had taken her only to the best houses in the place to be- gin with. The village, though a fair sam- ple of fishing villages, was no ex-sample, he said: there were all kinds of people in it as in every other. It was a class in the big life-school of the world, whose special masters were the sea and the herrings. What would you do now if you were lord of the place? asked Clementina as they were walking by the sea-gate :. I mean, what would be the first thing you would do? As it would he my business to know my tenants that I might rule them, he answered, I would first court the society and confidence of the best men among them. I should he in no hurry to make changes, but would talk openly with them, and try to be worthy of their confidence. Of course I would see a little better to their houses, and improve their harbor; and I would build a boat for myself that would show them a better kind; but my main hope for them would be the same as for myself the knowledge of Him whose is the sea and all its store, who cares for every fish in its bosom, but for the fisher more than many herrings. I would spend my best efforts to make them follow Him whose first servants were the fishermen of Galilee, for with all my. heart I believe that that Man holds the secret of life, and that only the man who obeys him can ever come to know the God who is the root and crown of our being, and whom to know is freedom and bliss. A pause followed. But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work? asked Clementina. Not very hard, my lady. Sometimes I wake up to find that I have been in an evil mood and forgetting Him, and then life is hard until I get near him a~ain. But it is not my work that makes me forget him. When I go a-fishing, I go to catch Gods fish; when I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of Gods wild creatures; when I read the Bible or Shakespeare, I am listening to the word of God,~ uttered in each after its kind. When the wind blows on my face, what matter that the chymist pulls it to pieces? He cannot hurt it, for his knowledge of it cannot make my feeling of it a folly, so long as he can- not pull that to pieces with his retorts and crucibles: it is to me the wind of him who makes it blow, the sign of something in him, the fit emblem of his Spirit, that breathes into my spirit the breath of life. When Mr. Graham talks to me, it is a prophet come from God that teaches me, as certainly as if his fiery chariot were waiting to carry him back when he had spoken; for the word he utters at once humbles and uplifts my soul, telling it that God is all in all and my God and the Lord Christ is the truth and the life, and the way home to the Father. After a little pause, And when you are talking to a rich, ignorant, proud lady, said Clementina, what do you feel then? VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. That I would it were my Lady Clem- entina instead, answered Malcolm with a smile. She held her peace. When he left her, Malcolm hurried to Scaurnose and arranged with Blue Peter for his boat and crew the next night. Re- turning to his grandfather, he found a note waiting him from Mrs. Courthope to the effect that, as Miss Caley, her ladyships maid, had preferred another room, there was no reason why, if he pleased, he should not reoccupy his own. From Temple Bar. VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. FROM THE DUTCH OF JHR. c. A. VAN SYPEsTEYN. BEFORE proceeding to collect a few par- ticulars about Voltaires different journeys to Holland, it will be necessary briefly to describe those circumstances of his life which first induced him to visit that coun- try. Fran~ois-Marie Arouet was born at Paris, November 21st, 1694. His father, after having been for many years a notary, was treasurer of the Chamber of Accounts at Paris; his mother, Marguerite dAu- mard, was of an old noble family. It has been said that she possessed a small property in Poitou, from which her second son derived his name, but modern en- quirers have been unable to establish its existence, and it appears more probable that the name Voltaire was simply an ana- gram of his usual signature, Arouet 1. J. (le Jeune.) From his early youth he re- ceived an excellent education, and neither his father nor his godfather, the Abbd de Chfiteauneuf, spared anything to develop his extraordinary gifts. The abbd, who was much attached to Ninon de lEnclos, introduced the youth to her, and he soon became a favorite in her brilliant circle. Though of a weak constitution, his mind was so precocious that he already wrote ,, ood poetry at the age of twelve. He was accustomed to take for the subject of his epigrams his elder brother, who was devel- oping into a desperate fanatic, and whom he called mon 7ans~1nisIe do fr?re, and these verses gave the Abb6 Le Jay occa- sion to say that he would one day be the standard-bearer of impiety. When the father heard, to his Vexation, that his younger son was a poet, he exclaimed: My sons are two madmen; one in verse, and one in prose. The pleasure-loving LiVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 943 97 abb~ brought his godchild into the com- pany of his friends the Duc de Sully, the Marquis de la Fare, and other gay and witty gentlemen, whose greatest am use- ment consisted in the so-called ~eflts souj5ers. The life which resulted from this, added to Voltaires love of poetry, and his dislike to the legal profe~sion, which his father wished him to follow, gave rise to quarrels between them, and ended in his being sent to the Hague, to serve as page in the suite of the French ambassa- dor, then the Marquis de Ch~teauneuf, elder brother of the abbd. Voltaire arrived at the Hague in Sep- tember 1713, at the age of nineteen. He took up his quarters at the French Em- bassy, a large buildin~ situated on the Prinsessegracht (Boschkant) the site now occupied by the Roman Catholic church and he very soon made a sen- sation by his wit, his poetry, and, above all, his love adventures. There lived then at the Hague a Madame Dunoyer, a clever but very singular woman, who had been unhappily married in Paris to a French nobleman and writer, named Dunoyer, and had fled to Holland with her two dauTh- ters. Originally a strict Protestant she had even been imprisoned for two years on ac- count of her religion. She abjured it at the time of her marriage, but resumed it in Holland, where she was living in desti- tute circumstances, principally by the profits of her pen. Her most lucrative publication consisted of certain periodical letters, a pretended correspondence be- tween two journalists, one in France and the other in Holland, which appeared for several years at the Hague and at Amster- dam, under the title of La Quintessence des Nouvelles Histori ques, Critiques, Politiques, Morales et Galantes (princi- pally the latter), and of Le Mercure Galant. It was a doubly profitable spec- ulation, for she was paid not only for what she printed, but also for much that she consented to suppress. Her youngest daughter, Olympe, who went by the name of Mlle. Pimpette, was a clever, beautiful, and coquettish girl. Young Arouet was soon caught in hei- nets, and desperately in love. He com- mitted all sorts of follies with a complete indifference to the remarks of the inhabi- tants of the Hague, and was even on the point of eloping with his beloved Olympe, at whose feet the painter Schlesinger has represented him,* when the mother, who * This picture belonged to Mr. Hoffmans collec- tion, and is now in the possession of the Baroness de Wassenser, Isis daughter. 98 VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. seemed to have other plans with her daughter, and did not wish to bestow her on a page like Voltaire, put an end to the affair. She complained to the Mar- quis de Ch~teauneuf, who was afraid of the writer of the Lettres Historiques, and specially of the Mercure Galant, and who soon, by the strong measures he took, showed that he was less indulgent than his brother the abb6 had been. He wrote a long letter to the father, ending, I hope nothing more from your son now: he is twice mad in love and a poet. Voltaires departure was immediately decided upon. He wrote in despair to Pimpette that all he had been able to do was to obtain a de- lay, but he was forbidden to leave his rooms. He complains bitterly about this arrest, and urges her to leave her unnatu- ral mother and follow him to France. Without her portrait he cannot live, nor without her letters to assure him of her eternal love. These sentimental effusions are accompanied with the prosaic recom- mendation to send the shoemaker with her letters, as if he came to try on a pair of boots. The shoemaker apparently accom- plished his task, but fourteen letters writ- ten by Voltaire to Pimpette, November 1713 to February 1714, fell into the hands of Mine. Dunoyer, who, to the astonish- ment of everyone, disregarding the injury they did to her daughters reputation, pub- lished them in the ~ Lettres Historiques. The letter received from Olympe called forth an answer, in which he asks her for a rendezvous to go to Scheveningen, where he proposed that they should write letters to her father and uncle, to seek for a re- treat in Paris. It appears, however, that these plans did not succeed, that he was unable to leave his rooms, hut that Pim- pette, disguised as a boy, contrived to ob- tain an interview with him. Si vous ~tes adorable en cornettes [he after- wards wrote to her], ma foi, vous ~tes un aimable cavalier, et notre portier, qui nest point amonreux de vous, vous a trouv6 un tr~s-joli gar9on. La premi~re fois que vous viendrez, 11 vous recevra a merveille. Je crams que vous nayez tir~ lep~e dans Ia rue, afin quil ne vous manqu& t plus rien dun jeune homme; apr~s tout, tout jeune homme que vous ~tes, vous ~tes sage comme une file. The mother discovered the meeting, and again complained to the ambassador, who now gave orders that four lackeys instead of two should watch over the prisoner. Once more Voltaire met his beloved, and we may gather from a letter he wrote her on the ioth of December 1713, that she received such a reprimand from her mother, that she had to remain ill in bed. He succeeded, however, in sending her letters, full of declarations of love and lamentations over the sad situation of the two lovers, the one in bed, and the other a prisoner. On Mondaythe r3th of December 1713, Voltaire was put in a coach with M. de M. and the ambassadors valet Lef~vre, and proceeded to Rotterdam. There he was taken on board a yacht which lay ready to leave for Ghent. From this vessel he writes to her on the ipth of Decem- ber: Nous avons un beau temps et un hon vent, et par-dessus cela de hon yin, de bons p& t~s, de bons jambons et de hons lits. Nous ne sommes que nous deux, M. de M. et moi, dans un grand yacht; il soccupe f ~crire, ~t manger, f boire et f dormir, et moi f penser f vous. J e ne vous vois point, et je vous jure que je ne maper~ois pas que je suis dans Ia corn- pagnie dun hon p~t~ et dun homme desprit. Ma ch~re Pimpette me manque, mais je me flatte quelle ne me manquera pas toujours, puisque je ne voyage que pour vous faire voyager vous-meme. On his return to Paris, Thursday the 28th of December 1713, Voltaire found his father extremely angry. A lettre de cachet lay ready for him, a will in which he was quite disinherited was drawn up, and the only condition on which the old gentleman would hear of a reconciliation was the de- parture of his son for an American colony. The latter succeeded, however, in obtain- ing a delay, provided he would work as clerk with atrocureur, to which condition he for a short time submitted. From a few letters of Voltaire to Pim. pette at this time, we see that he gave him- self great trouble to get her over to Paris with the help of the clergy on the condi- tion that she should change her religion. But for this Pimpette was not at all dis- posed, and he soon complained of the scarcity of her letters. She speedily con- soled herself by other love adventures, and afterwards married an officer in the French army, a Baron de Winterfeld, who in 1736 came to live in Paris (rue Pldlri?re). Voltaire met her again several times, and even helped her out of some money difficulties. He mentions her once more in his answer to his enemy La Beaumelle, who had violently attacked his Si~cle ce Louis XIV. La Beaumelle had asserted that Cavalier, the head of the Cevennes insurgents, had been the rival of Voltaire, that they had both loved the daughter of Mine. Dunoyer, and that, as might he VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. 99 expected, the hero had prevailed over the poet, and the gentle and agreeable physi- ognomy over the wild and wicked one. * Voltaire contradicts this as wholly untrue, as he did not know Cavalier till the year 1726, in London, but he admits that Cava- lier made the acquaintance of Olympe at the Hague, in 1708 (when he himself was still a schoolboy), and even proposed to her, and was refused. He was at that time col- onel in a Dutch regiment, which was partly paid hy England. Uffenbach, who knew Cavalier in London, in 1710, also mentions Olympes beauty, and confirms the account of her relations with Cavalier. It is a curi- ous coincidence that two men distinguished in such very different ways, should both have been attached to this frivolous little coquette. Voltaire did not remain long with the i~ rocureur Alain, and he soon became entirely immersed in literature. His verses were often satirical, and more than once brought him into trouble.t It is well known what a favorite he was with women, and how the breat ladies of the time sought him. Thus in 1722, he made the acquaintance of a very beautiful wid- ow, the Comtesse de Rdpelmonde, who expressed the wish to see Beloium and Holland. Voltaire was at once~ready to accompany her, all the more as he could then arrange in person the publication of his H enriade at the Hague. They started together, and lodged for some time in an hfltel at Brussels, where Jean- Baptiste Rousseau was at that time stay- ing. Voltaire visited him. At first they liked each other, but they parted mortal ene mies. On the 7th of October 1722, Voltaire writes a very detailed letter from the Hague to the Prdsidente de Berni~res about his adventures in Holland, from whicl) we borrow the following flattering description of the Dutch Je partirai de Ia Haye lorsque les beaux jours fuiront. 11 ny a non de plus agr~able que la Haye, quand le soleil daigne sy mon- trer. On ne voit ici quo des prairies, des canaux, des arbres verts; cest un paradis * Some curious particulars about Cavalier sod Vol- taires iuterviews with La Beaumelle in 1748, are to be found iu an article, Les Lettres de Mine. de Main- tenou, in the Revue de Deux id/andes of January 55th, 1869. Suspected of having written a very bitter poem agalust tbe Duc dOrl~ans, be was put in the Bastille in 1717. Wheu be was fouud to be innocent, he was released in 1758 and received a compensation from the duke. Munseigneur,~~ Voltaire is supposed to have said, Je remercie V. A. R. de vouloir bieu continuer se charger de ma nourriture, mais je Ia prie de ne plus se charger de mon logement. terrestre depuis la Hayc jusquit Amsterdam. Jai vu avec respect cette ville, qui est le magasin de Iunivers. Il y a plus de mille vaisseaux dans le port. De cinq cent mule hommes qui hahitent Amsterdam il ny en a pas un doisif, pas un pauvre, pas un petit- maitre, pas un insolent.* Nous rencontrames le pensiunnaire ~ pied, sans laquais, an milieu de la populace. On ne voit l~ personne qui alt de cour ~ faire. On ne se met point en haie pour voir passer un prince. On ne con- nait que le travail et Ia modestie. Il y a ~t Ia Haye plus do magnificence et plus de soci~t~ par le concours des amhassadenrs. Jy passe ma vie entre le travail et le plaisir, et je vis ainsi ~ Ia hollandaise et ~ la fran9aise. Nuns avons ici un op~ra d& oatable; mais, en revan- che, je vois des ministres calvinistes, des Arminiens, des Sociniens, des rabbins, des Anabaptistes, qni parlent tons ~ merveille, et qul en vdritd out tons raison. Not much more is known of this stay of Voltaire in the Netherlands, and we soon see him reappear in the great world of Paris, while Mine. de Riipelmonde con- tinued to live at Brussels. In 1726, he was obliged to go to En- gland, under circumstances well calculated to inspire him with a bitter hatred against the French aristocracy. XVlien dining at the house of the DUo de Sully, he hap- pehed to differ from some statement of the Chevalier do Rohan Chabot, who asked in a contemptuous tone, Quel est donc ce jeune homme qui parle si haut? M. le Chevalier, answered Voltaire, cest unhomme q ni no traine P25 un grand n om, mais qui honore celni quil porte; or, according to another version, Cest un homme qui est le premier de sa race, commo vous 6tes lo dernier de la vfltre. Rohan, whose life was very open to cen- sure, got up in a passion and loft the house. A few days later, while Voltaire was again dining with the Duc do Sully, ho was called from the table, and on conn- ing down-stairs was seized by two lackeys, and beaten with sticks in the presence of Rohan, who was looking on in a carriage, and who is said to have cried out, Frap- pez bien fort; mais mdnagez la t6te, parce quil pout encore en sortir quelque chose do hon plus tard. Voltaire informed his host of this affront, but the latter, though an old friend, refused to take his part, for * In a pamphlet of the time, Requeste an nom do Roy qui demaude une place dana le r~giment de Ia Caloste pour Voltaire son coufr6re. it is said that in 1722 at Anisterdam, Voltaire received blows frons a few enraged Israelites, because, on a visit to their synagogue, be ridiculed their religious ceremonies. That Voltaires statements are not always accurate, we may infer from his estimate of the population of Am- sterdam. 100 VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. which he was punished by the erasure of avis~ de prendre pour enseigne Ia tate de the name of his grandfather, the great votre ami Voltaire. La modestie quil faut Sully, from the Henriade, which was avoir, ddfend ~ ma sincdritd de vous dire about this time published under the name lexc~s de consid6ration quon a ici pour of the Ligne. Voltaire was obliged to moi. To the Marquis dArgens he sends, do himself justice; he challenged Roban, a few days later, a piece about Dutch man- but was immediately arrested by letire de ners, called LEpftre du fils du.n bourg- cachet, and carried to the Bastille on the mestre sur Ia politesse Hollandaise, in- 17th April 1726, and only released onltended to have been published in the promising to go to England. Lettres Juives of DArgens. This, boxy- During his stay in London, he occupied ever, did not happen, and unfortunately it himself mainly with mathematics, and is now lost. made himself familiar with the philosophy Voltaire left Holland for Paris at the of Newton, of which he made a more end of February 1737. and was soon again special study afterwards at the Leyden settled at the Chateau de Cirey, with his University. He remained three years in friend the Marquis du Ch~telet. From London, then returned to Paris, made sev- there he wrote a remarkable letter to Pro- eral journeys, and we find him settled at fessor s Gravesande. J.-B. Rousseau had Leyden in 1736, under the assumed name spread the calumny that Voltaire, being of Revol, which he dropped when he found driven from France, had gone to the uni- the pseudonym was useless. In a letter to versity of Leyden to preach atheism, and the cPown prince of Prussia (afterwards had even had a public discussion with Frederick the Great), with whom he had s Gravesande on the existence of God. that year entered into an active corre- s Gravesande had contradicted this in a spondence, he says that he is in a town Dutch newspaper, but Voltaire now com- where two simple citizens, Boerhaave and plains that the refutation had not pene- s Gravesande attract from four to five trated into France, and that the report had hundred strangers. He further mentions reached the highest quarters, and xvas that he is busy arranging an edition of all seriously injuring him. He begs s Grave- his works at Amsterdam,* and offers his sande to address himself to the Cardinal services to Frederick, begging him to ad- de Fleury, but the professor, while strenu- dress the answer to Messrs. Servan et ously denying the truth of the report, cx dArti, at Amsterdam. cused himself from taking this step, on Frederick, who had visited Holland the ground that owing to his retired life, several times, answered in a few days his name was not sufficiently known in Je mint6resserai toujours vivement k cc France to have any influence; in fact, that qui vous rebarde; ct la Hollande, pays he could not suppose people to know that qui ne ma jamais d~plu, me deviendra une there was at Leyden a man whose name terre sacr6e puisquelle vous contient. began with an apostrophe. Voltaire for- Voltaire was then very busy xvriting a warded this letter to the Duc de Richelieu, work on the philosophy of Newton, and who showed it to Cardinal de Fleury, and received great assistance from the learned the minister Dc Maurepas, and it appears Gravesande. Boerhaave, also, was use- to have answered its purpose. ful to him in an illness: Jai dt6 tr~s-ma- In 1739 Voltaire resolted to visit the lade, he writes to Thieriot on the 17th Netherlands, with his friend Mine. du January 1737; je suis venu ~t Leyde, Ch~telet, principally because her presence consulter le docteur Boerhaave sur ma was required at Brussels for a lawsuit be- sant6, et s Gravesande sur la philosophic tween her and the Comte de Honsbroek, de Newton. This contradicts the story about an inheritance left her by her uncle, that Boerhaave refused to attend Voltaire the Marquis de Trich~teau. At Brussels on the ground that he would not assist they were received with open arms, and any one who denied his Saviour. In the Voltaire and his friend soon became the same letter he adds that he goes from favorite guests of the DArembergs and time to time to Amsterdam to his publisher Chimays. The jdurney to Holland was Ledet: Ii ma forc6 de loger chez lui, given up for the present, and they re- quand je viens k Amsterdam voir comment mained some time at Brussels. Prince va la philosophie Newtonienne. Il scst Frederick of Prussia had about that time written a remarkable book, LAnti-Ma * The first edition of Voltaires collected works chiavel, and had submitted the manu- came out in 1728, at P. Gosse and Neaulmes, at th~ to the judgment of Voltaire in Jan- script Hague. Further editinna appeared in 1732 and 17 3o at Amsterdam, in 1740 at Paupies, at the Hague, and uary 1740. The latter occupied himself in ~~x, 1743, and 1764, at Amsterdam. at once with the publication of the book, VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. with which he was greatly pleased. He promised to look over it carefully, write a preface, and, at the princes request, not to mention the authors name. The corre- spondence about the publication with the Dutch bookseller Van Duren began the 1st of June 1740, and, according as the manuscript was revised by Voltaire, it was sent from Brussels to the publisher and printed.* In the mean time King Fred- erick William had died the 31st of May 1740, and Frederick the Second mounted the throne at the age of twenty-eight. He remained the same friendly correspondent with Voltaire, but wished now that the Anti-Machiavel should not be pub- lished. Van Duren, however, who had had no difficulty in guessing from Voltaire who the unknown writer was, and who in consequence expected large profits,f was determined not to stop the publication, and Voltaire accordingly thought it necessary to go in person to the Hague, where he arrived on the 17th of June 1740. On the 20th of the same month he tells Frederick of his experiences among the Dutch Un peuple libre et mercenaire V~g~tant dans ce coin de terre, Et vivant tonjours en bateau, Vend aux voyageurs lair et lean, Q noique tous deux ny valent gu~re. Li. plus dun fripon de libraire D~bite ce quil nentend pas, Comme fait un pr& cheur en chaire, Vend de lesprit de tous ~tats, Et fait passer en Germanie Une cargaison de romans Ft dinsipides sentiments Q ue toujours la France a fournie. That scoundrel of a Jean van Duren, as Voltaire called him, refused, and appar- ently with good reason, to return the man- uscript, which was already half printed, as he now wanted to publish the book to pay its expenses. What follows gives no favorable idea of Voltaires honesty and morality in the means he chose to obtain an object En effet [he writes] je suis venu ~s temps; le sc~l~rat avait d~j2s ref us~ de rendre une page du manuscrit. Je lenvoyai chercher, je le sondai, je le tournai de tous les sens; 11 me fit entendre que, maitre du manuscrit, il ne sen * Voltaire asked for no honorarium, but stipulated only for four dozen well-bound copies, two dozen of these hound in red morocco to he sent i la cour dAllemagne qul vous sera indiqu~e. t Voltaire himself was to blame for this. He wrote, among other things, to Van Duren, Si vous saviez de quelle main est le manuscrit, vous m~auriez une obli- gation tr~s-singuli~re, et vons ne tarderiez pas ~ en profiter.~~ And again, Si vous ne me r~pondez pas, trouvez bon que je gratifie un autre de ce pr~s~ut~~ I0I dessaisirait jamais pour quelque avantage que ce pfit ~tre, gull avait commenc6 limpression, quil la finirait. Quand je vis que javais ii faire fi un Hollandais qul abusait de Ia lihertfi de son pays, et ~ un libraire qui poussait ~ lexc~s son droit de pers6cuter les auteurs, ne pouvant ici confier mon secret fl personne, ni implorer le secours de lautorit~, je me souvins que Votre Majest~ dit, dans un des chapitres de LAnti-Machiavel, gull est permis dem- ployer quclque honn~te finesse en fait de n& gociation. Je dis done it Jean van Duren que je ne venais que pour corriger quelgues pages du manuscrit. Tr~s-volontiers, monsi cur, me dit-il, Si vous vonlez venir chez moi, je vous le confieral g~n~reusement, fenille a fenille; vous corrigerez ce gull vous plaira, enferme dans ma chambre, en pr~sence de ma famille et de mes gar~ons.~ Jacceptai son offre cordiale; jallal chez lui et je corrigeai en effet quelgues feuliles quil reprenait it mesure, et quil lisait pour voir si je ne le trompais point. Lui ayant inspir6 par lit un peu moms de d~fiancg, je snis retourn6 au- jourdhui dans la m~me prison ois 11 ma enferm~ de m~me, et ayant obtenu six chapi- tres it la fois pour les confronter, je les ai ratures de fa~on, Ct jai ~crit dans les inter- lignes de si horribles galimatias et des cog-it- l& ne si ridicules, que cela ne ressemble plus it un ouvrage. Cela sapl)elle faire sauter son vaisseau en lair pour n ~tre point pris par lennemi. J& ais an d~sespoir de sacrifier un si bel ouvrage; mais enfin job~issais au roi gue jidol~tre, et je vous r~ponds que jy allais de hon cceur. Qui est ~tonn6 it pr~sent, et confondu? cest mon vilain. Jespire demain faire avec Ini no march6 honn& e et le forcer it me rendre le tout, nianuscrit et imprim~, et je continuerai it rendre compte it Votre Majest~. A few days later Voltaire writes that with the help of lawyers he is negotiating with Van Duren, and he adds that either the work must be entirely suppressed, or else it must appear in a foim worthy of its author, and Frederick replied that the book was not yet worthy of being pub- lished, and that it had to be thoroughly recast. In the mean time Van Duren, who had had all tne illegible sentences restored by a French corrector, La Martini~re, con- tinued printing, and Frederick reluctantly submits to this publication, and says: Faites donc rouler Ia presse puisquil le faut, pour punir la sc6l6ratesse dun mis6- rable. Rayez, changez, corrigez et rem- placez tons les endroits quil vous plaira. J e men remets it Votre discernement. He was, however, not much pleased with the book afterwards, and complained that it was too much Voltaires work. During his three weeks stay at the Hague, Voltaire made attempts, in the VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. 102 name of Frederick, to persuade the Ley- den professors s Gravesande and Muss- chenbroek to enter the Prussian service, promising them great consideration and large emoluments. Neither could be per- suaded to leave their country, which is all the more creditable to them, as Voltaire, to the surprise of most people, had at once succeeded with the French savant Mau- pertuis, the great friend of s Gravesande. Besides these transactions Voltaire mixed much with politicians at the Hague, and he writes to Frederick that he had heard secret rumors of his coming. Jai de plus entendu dire que ce voyage pourrait & re utile aux int~r~ts de Votre Ma- jest~. Tout ce que je sais cest que si votre humanit6 vient ici, elle gagnera les cceurs tout Hollandais quils sont. Votre Majest~ a ici de grands partisans. Voltaire returned to Brussels on the 9th of August, and remained until he went to Cleves on the sith of September 1740, where Frederick met him for the first time, and begged him to take charge of a new edition of the Anti-Machiavel at the Hague. lie was very reluctant to return to Holland, as appears from a let- ter which he wrote on the i8th of Sep- tember to his friend Maupertuis. Q uand nous partinies tous deux de Cl~ves, et que vous prites ii droite et moi ~ gauche, je crus & re an jugement dernier oii le bon Dieu s~pare ses ~lus des damn~s. Divus Fredericus vous dit, Assevez-vous it ma droite dans Ic paradis dc Berlin, et it moi, Allez, mandit, en Hollande. Je snis dans cet enfer flegmatique, loin du feu divin qni anime les Fr~d~ric, les Maupertuis, les Alga- rotti. Pour Dieu, faites-moi Ia charit~ de quelques ~tincelles dans les eaux croupissantes cii je suis morfondu. This was written in a moment of bad temper, such as Voltaire frequently in- dulged in. There are sufficient proofs to show that he had no real dislike to Hol- land. Voltaire superintended the new edition at the publisher Paupies, and had to carry on a lawsuit against Van Duren, who maintained that by the laws of Holland the bookseller who brought the book out first, acquired an exclusive right to sell it. On the 7th October, Voltaire wrote to the king of Prussia, Jattends que jaie bien mis les choses en train pour quitter le champ de bataille, et men retourner aupris de mon autre monarque it Bru- xelles. This was Madame do Chfltelet, who was still occupied with her lawsuit, and for whom Voltaire had asked Fred- ericks aid. Frederick had answered, Si je puis, je ferai marcher la tortue de Breda, meaning William IV., Prince of Orange, who then lived chiefly at Breda and at Leenwarden. J e suis en attendant [the letter goes on to say] dans votre palais oii M. de Raesfeld [the ambassador] ma donn~ on appartement sons Ic bon plaisir de Votre Majcst~. Votre palais de Ia Haye est lembl~me des grandeurs hu- maines. Sur des planches pourris, sons des toits d6- labr~s Soot des appartements dignes de notre maitre Mais malbeur aux lambris dor~s Q ni nont ni porte ni fen~tre! J e vois dans no grenier les armures antiques, Les rondaches et les brassards Et les charni~res des cuissarts, Q ne portaient aux combats vos afeux hero- ~ques. Leurs sabres tout rouill~s soot rang~s dans ces licux, Et les bois vermoulos de leurs lances gothiques, Sur la terre couches, soot en poudre comme eux. Il y a aussi des livres que les rats seuls cot In depois cinqoante ans, et qui soot converts des plus larges toiles daraign~cs de lEurope, de peur que Ics profanes oco approchent. Si les p6natcs de cc palais ponvaient parler, ils vous diraient sans donte Sc pent-il que ce roi, que tout le monde ad- mire, Nous abandonne pour jamais, Et quil n~glige son palais Quand il r~tablit son empire? The building then used for the Prussian embassy at the Hague was known as the 0 ode Hof or Old Court, and is now the palace of the kin~ of the Netherlands. Built by William Goudt, recee~iir-gbz~ral of Holland, it passed after his death into different hands, and xvas at length bought by the States of Holland, in 1595, for the abode of Louise de Coligny, the widow of William the Silent, who lived there till her death. It was then purchased by her son Frederick Henry, who considerably en- larged and restored it. His widow, Ama- ha van Solms, remained in the same building till her death. At the death, in 1702, of Prince William III kin~ of En- gland, great disputes arose about his inheritance, specially between his cousin Johan Willem Friso, stadthokler of Fries- land, Groningen, and Drenthe, whom Wil- liam had appointed his heir, and Fred- erick I., king of Prossia, who based his claims on the will of his grandfather, Fred- erick Henry, Prince of Orange. When these disputes were settled, the king ac VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. 103 quired several possessions in the Nether- lands, among others the house at Hond- sholredijk, and the old court in the Noordeinde. The widow of Prince Wil- liam IV. of Orange, Princess Anna of England, bought in 7A all this property with the exception of Meurs, Lingen, and Montfo~rt back from the great Frederick for 700,000 fI., besides 5,000 fi. for furniture. In consequence of a pressing invitation from the king, Voltaire left the Hague in the beginning of November for Berlin, where he arrived on the 12th or 13th, but we find him again at the I-Iague on the 27th December. Going from thence in a ship, probably by Antwerp to Brussels, he was delayed by ice and an adverse wind for twelve days on the Zeeland rivers. He dates a letter to Frederick, Dans un vaisseau sur les c6tes de la Z6lande, oCt jenrage, 31st December 1740, and ar- rives on the ~th January at Madame du Ch~telets at Brussels. The following years Voltaire spent chiefly at Brussels, though he made occasional excursions to Paris or to the Chateau de Cirey. The death of Cardinal de Fleury, in January 1743, made a great change in the court and politics of France. A desire grew up for a closer connection with Prus- sia, and in order to attain it the minister De Maurepas thought of taking advantage of Voltaires influence over his royal friend. A secret mission * to Berlin was entrusted to Voltaire, who left Paris the 14th June 1743, and went by Brussels to the Hague, where he remained till the end of August, and stopped again at the Old Court, of which he gives a description somewhat similar to the former, on 28th June 1743. Sous vos magnifiques lamhris Tr~s-dor~s autrefois, maintenant tr~s-pourris, Embl~me et monument des grandeurs de cc monde, O mon maitre, je vous ecris Navr~ dune douleur profonde! Je suis dans votre Vieille Cour; Mais je veux une cour nouvelle, Une cour ois les arts ont fix~ leur s~jour, Une cour oCt mon roi les suit et les appelle Et les prot~ge tour Ct tour. Es~voyez-moi P~gase et je pars d~s cc jour. Jattends donc Ct la Haye, chez M. de Pode- wills, les ordres de votre humanitd et Ic for- span de Votre Majest~. J e suis ici chez votre digne et aimable ministre, qui est inconsolable, et qui ne dort * A contemporary writes: Ii vs Is la Haye; ii est chargd de broujiler les Etats-G~n~raux de Hollande avec le roi de Prusse et de faire recommencer la guerre avec 1Autriche. It is said also that he owed this mission to the influence of Madame de Chateauroux.. ni ne mange parce que les Hollandais veulent Ct trop bon marchd la terre dun grand roi. Ii faut pourtant, sire, saccoutumer Ct voir les Hollandais ai mer largent autant que je vous aime. Quand quittersi-je, h~las, cette humide pro. vince, Pour voir mon heros et mon prince? The negotiation mentioned in this letter probably refers to the sale of Fredericks Dutch possessions, which was accom- plished in January 1754. Count Podewills was the successor of M. de Raesfeld. Through the favor of the wife of one of the chief members of the State, with whom he was in love, he succeeded in obtaining copies of all the secret resolutions of their High Mighti nesses, which Voltaire for- warded to France. Frederick answers on the 30th of July: Je vous envoie le passe-port pour des che- vaux avec bien de lempressement. Cc ne seront pas de P~gases, mais ils am~neront Apollon Ct Berlin, oCt vous screz re~u Ct bras ouverts. Voltaire mixed a great deal in society at the Hague, and had frequent inter- course, among others, with the celebrat- ed poet \Villiam van Haren, a deputy of Friesland in the States-General. The lat- ter, with his brother Onno Zwier, had put himself at the head of the party who wanted to force the government of the republic to assist Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary, with troops as well as with money. A large party, and especially those republicans who dreaded the ap- pointment of a stadtholder, objected to this step, on the ground that it would in- evitably lead to a war, not only with Prus- sia, but with France, and also to a ~eviva1 of the stadtholdership, a prediction which was in fact verified in 1747. Van Haren, by his eloquent speeches, but especially by his poem,* contributed largely to the resolution of their High Mightinesses to assist Austria with twenty thousand men, commanded by the infantry-general, Wil- liam Maurice, Count of Nassau-Ouwer- kerk. Voltaire learnt all the most secret particulars about the equippin~ and orders for the troops, and communicated them to the French minister of war, DArgenson. He was perfectly satisfied with his life at the Hague, as he writes to Thicriot: Je mane ici une vie ddlicieuse, dont les agr& ments ne sont combattus que par le regret que minspirent mes amis. * He wrote to his cousin Van Grovestius, ~~J~ai fait lever zo,ooo hommes par 3 piIsces en vers. 104 VOLTAIRE IN THE NETHERLANDS. To DArgenson he gives a more de- tailed description: II y a ici des homrnes tr~s-estimables. La Haye est un s~jour d~licieux l~t~, et la libert~ y rend les hivers moms rudes. Jaime ~t voir les maitres de lEtat simples citoyens. Il y a des partis, et ii faut bien quil y en ait dans une r~publique; mais lesprit de parti nOte rien ~ lamour de Ia patrie, et je vois de grands hommes oppos~s ~ de grands hommes. Je suis bien aise, pour Ihonneur de Ia po~sie, que ce soit un po~te qui ait contribu~ ici ~ procurer des secours ~ la reine de Hongrie, et que la trompette de la guerre ait dt~ Ia tr~s- humble servante de la lyre dApollon. Je vois dun autre c6t~, aved non moms dadmiration, un des principaux membres de lEtat dont le syst~me est tout pacifique marcher ~t pied sans domestiques, habiter une maison faite pour ces consuls romains qui fesaient cuire leurs idgumes, ddpenser ~t peine deux mule forms pour sa personne et en donner plus de vingt mills ~t des familles indigentes; ces grands exemples dchappent ~ la plupart des voya- geurs; mais, ne vaut-il pas mieux voir de telles curiositds que les l)rocessions de Rome, les rdcolets au Capitole et Ic miracle de Saint- Janvier? Des hommes de bien. des hommes de gdnie, voil~ mes miracles. Ce gouverne- ment-ci vous plairait infiniment, m~me avec les defauts qui en sont inseparables. Ii est tout municipal, et voil~ ce que vous aimex. Le Haye dailleurs est le pays des nouvelles et des livres; cest proprement la ville des am- bassadeurs; leur socidtd est toujours tr~s-utile a qui veut sinstruire. On les voit tous en un jour. On sort, on rentre chez soi; chaque rue est une promenade; on pent se montrer, se retirer tant quon veut. Cest Fontaine- blean, et point de cour ~ faire. Voltaires praises of Van Haren are gen- uine, and are confirmed by his later letters and by the following poem : STANCE A M. VAN HAREN, DEPUTE DES ETATS-GENERAUX, 1743. Demosth~ne au conseil, et Pindare an Par- nasse, Lauguste v6rit~ marche devant tes pas; Tyrtde a dans ton sein repandu son audace, Et tu tiens sa trompette, organe des combats. Je ne puis timiter, mais jaime ton courage Nd pour la libertd, tu penses en hdros: Mais qui naquit sujet ne doit penser quen sage, Et vivre obseurement, sil veut vivre en repos. Notre esprit est conforme aux lieux qul lont vu naitre; A Rome on est eselave, ~ Londres citoyen. La grandeur dun Batave est de vivre sans maitre; Et mon premier devoir est de servir le mien. Voltaires friends warned him that it would have been safer for a Frenchman to make the last lines, if not the whole verse, somewhat less pointed. In consequence of a remonstrance from tbe Marquis de F6- nelon, then ambassador at the Hague, he replaced the two middle lines of the last stanza, by the following: Tout dtat a ses mceurs et tout homme a son lien, Ta gloire, ta vertu, est de vivre sans maitre; and put the word chdrir instead of ser- vir, in the last line. A Dutchman also had sent Voltaire a number of observations, which the latter answered shortly on the margin, adding: Style Hollandais: cent paroles ~ une. To M. Thieriot Voltaire writes soon after, on the i6th of August: Ne vous meprenex plus sur le nom dun homme qui sera immortel dans ce pays-ch Ce nest point van Hyden, cest van Haren quil sappelle. Il lui est arrivd Ia m~me chose qu~ Hom& e; on gagnait sa vie ~ reciter ses vers aux portes des temples et des villes; la multitude court aprds lui quand il va ~ Am- sterdam. On la grave avec cette belle in- scription: Qu~ canit ipse fecit. Vous ne sauriex croire combien cette fadaise [the above stanzas] par laquelle jai repondu ~t ses poli- tesses et ~ ses amities, ma concilid ici les esprits. On en a imprimd plus de vingt tra- ductions. Il nest rien tel que l~ propos. Voltaires praises of Van Haren seem to have given rise to a wish on the part of France to buy his services; at least, Vol- taire writes to the French minister for foreign affairs : A legard de M. van Haren, il faut le re- garder comme un homme incorruptible, mais il parait aimer la gloire et les ambassades. Il voulait aller en Turquie; cest de l~ que jai pris occasion de Ini representer quil trouve- rait plus damis et dapprobateurs ~ Paris qu~ Constantinople. Cette idde a pam le fatter. On pourrait en faire Usage, en cas que les yeux des Hollandais commen9assent ~ souvrir sur la ridicule injustice dattaquer Ia France, sous prdtexte dun secours quils out refusd ~ la reine de Hongrie quand elle en avait besoin, et quils lui donnent quand elle pent sen passer. En ce cas, van Haren pouvant avec honneur employer ~ la conciliation les talents quil a consacrds ~t Ia discorde, lespdrance ddtre nommd ambassadeur en France, malgrd lusage qui len exclut, comme Frison, pourrait le flatter et le determiner ~t servir Ia cause de la justice et de la raison. The reason why Van Haren, whose money matters were in great confusion, wished to go to Constantinople, ~vas that it was then the only place where an am- bassador could make a large fortune in a short time; but he went neither to Con- PAULINE. 105 stantinople nor to Paris. He was sent in 1748 as ambassador to Brussels, where he died in 1768. Voltaire left the Hague on the 22nd August 1743, for Berlin, and he does not seem to havekept up any correspondence with Van Haren, or indeed with any other Dutchman, if we except some purely sci- entific letters to s Gravesande. He visit- ed the Hague once more in October 1745, hut the war soon afterwards broke out, and as far as we have been able to ascer- tain, he never again made a stay there. One more edition of all his works ap- peared at Amsterdam in 1764. We know that Voltaire stayed, in 1713, at the French Embassy, Boschkant, and ifl 1740 and 1743 at the Old Court in the Noordeinde, but of the place of his resi- dence during his earlier visits to the Hague, in 1722, 1736, and 1737, little or nothing is known, except that he once stayed with Mr. Pailleret, wine-merchant in the Hoogstraat, whose wife spent a great deal of money on her dress. Pail- leret asked him for a few lines of remein- brance at parting, and Voltaire wrote down the following Q ue Pailleret aime sa femme, je nen doute, Puisque pour ihabiller ii a fait trois banque- routes. It will probably always remain a riddle whether or not Voltaire, on leaving Hol- land, pronounced the famous words, Adieu canaux, canards, canaille. Some attribute them to Boileau, others to a French banished general, who suffered much from the gout in Holland, and was extremely glad to return to France. It scarcely agrees with the enthusiasm Vol- taire was accustomed to express for the character, manners, and customs of the Dutch, but it must not be forgotten that he was very versatile and impressionable by nature, and that he left Holland after a violent quarrel with Dutch booksellers. PAULINE. IILUN DELLS AYE. CHAPTER XXI. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR. Yet think not that he comes helow The modern average ratio; The corrent coin of fashions mint, The common hailroom-going stint. Of trifling cost his stock-in-trade is Whose hosiness is to please the ladies, Or who to honors may aspire Of a town hean or dandy sqoire. A YOUNG woman does not fly from the dinner-table, while yet the second course is circling round, without provoking com- ment; and many and varied were the interpretations put upon Paulines behav. ior. What a pity that she should be so deli- cate What an unfortunate thing ner- vousness was! The weather was trying. Lady Finch brought forward a headache on her own account; and Mrs. Wyndbam, not to be outdone, averred that she had felt unequal to being out of her room the whole afternoon. To Mr. Fennel, however, was due the happy suggestion of the evening. It was wholly, entirely, and gloriously his own: and it was acknowledged at once, and by universal consent, to be the most rational explanation that had been given of the unfortunate con1retc;n~s. No xvon- der he was proud of it. No wonder he repeated it, with increased faith in his own genius, and glory in his success, when he rode over to the Grange on the following morning, to make the proper inquiries. Mrs. Wyndham was alone in the draw- ing-room, and accordingly to her he ad- dressed himself. it was the venison now, wasnt it? said he. I know lots of ladies cant stand a haunch. It is sosonot unpleasant, you know, because venison cant be unpleasant. And what a haunch it was I Splendid! But then there is something peculiar, you know, something unlike anythin else about a haunch, and it was carried past just the moment be- fore. So, then, I made up my mind it was at the bottom of the mischief. It might have been, Mr. Fennel. My dear niece is certainly e.a-cessively sus- ceptible. So am I; and so are all our family. We are quite focus/dy particular; it really becomes a misfortune. I am surprised, I own, apologetically, that Miss La Sarte was the only sufferer last night. I am most thankful, I assure you, that I was too far off to be endangered. With good kind Sir John sitting by my side the donor, you understand; the haunch came from him it would really have been awkward. And over little accidents of this kind, over faintness, one has no manner of control. It is all nerves, you know, nerves. There can he nothing disagreeable, nothing in any way offensive, about venison, ktrk venison, too, continued the lady, feeling as if she must emphasize the difference; but un- fortunately it is not a question of argu- ment it is an effect on the imagination too subtle to be analyzed. xo6 PAULINE. This was quite good enough sense for Mr. Fennel, who was willing to be sup- ported in any way agreeable to his com- panion. It is a pity, isnt it? said he ; be- cause, you see, we cant do without veni- son, although certainly we might Oh, fie ! exclaimed she, briskly; you are not going to say you could do without us poor women? I should never have expected this from you, Mr. Fennel! I should not indeed! He l)rotested, she feigned to be exasper- ateci afresh ; he explained, she would mis- understand; he apologized, and she was content. All this was amusing enough to Mrs. Wyndham, who was never better pleased than when carrying on a nonsensical ban- ter, and who was as confident of her charms as any belle in her first season; but it began shortly to pall on the young man. He wondered why Miss La Sarte did not appear. He began to look out of the window, tap his boots with his cane, and exhibit other signs of restlessness. You are surprised that my niece should choose that walk, I daresay, commented Mrs. Wyodham, who, while following the direction of his eyes, had been indulging in a tirade against damp avenues, dead leaves, and closed-in grounds. It is a foolish whim, and so I tell her. So many nicer places as there are to be had, it is really odd, and imprudent too. But we women never are prudent; that, you know, is proverbial. We leave prudence, like all the sterner virtues, to your sex. Pauline is not to be turned from her own way, when once her heart is set upon it. I told her, warned her; I should not be sur- l~rised (with a bright idea) if, after all, it was not more of a chill, caught out of doors on such a miserable afternoon as yesterday, than the venison! A chill! I have no doubt about it, now. Foolish girl! And there she is in it again, at this moment! Where? cried he eagerly, where? That scarlet dot among the trees. That is her red shawl. Now that the branches are bare, one can see a long way down the walk He gasped with dismay. Did she know he was there? Did she not mean to come in? Worse than all, had she gone out to avoid him? It certainly appeared so, and yet he could not yield the point without a strug- gle~ He had not passed that way, antt as he had not seen her, it was quite possible that neither had she seen him. Really, it is a foolhardy thing to do! As Mrs. Wyndham spoke, she moved towards the bell, but, divining her purpose, her companion forestalled her, stammering with eagerness. Now, do send me, cried he. Its its really awfully bad, you know; and Ill tell her you said