LITTELLS LIVING AGE. From Beginning, Fifth Series, No. 1881. July 3, 1880. Vol. CXLVI. Volume XXXI. ) CONTENTS. I. THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON, II. THE CROOKIT MEG: A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE Part V III. ON ANTS IV. MRS. PIERREPOINT. A Sketch in Two Parts, V. A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CEN- TURY VI. FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. By John Rus- kin VII. THE CIVIL CODE OF THE JEWS Part IX., VIII. MILK FOR REPUBLICAN BABES, IX. THE DECAY OF REVENGE X. DAVID GARRICK THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, CLIFF ROSES MISCELLANY, Fortnz~htly Review, Frasers Magazine, Contemporary Review, Temple Bar, Temple Bar,. Nineteenth Century, Pall Mall Gazette, Saturday Review, Pall Mall Gazette, Chambers 7ournal, .3 3 20 30 35 43 56 61 63 i o E r R V. 2 BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, r~mstted directly fo tlse Publiskers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,free of ~stegV. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE IS sent gratis to any one getting op a ciub 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 LITrELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, iS cents. 2 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ETC. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. A PRETTY deer jg dear to me A hare with downy hair; I love a hart with all my heart, But barely hear a bear. Tis plain that no one takes a plane To have a pair of pairs; A rake, though, often takes a rake To tear away the tares. All rays raise thyme, time razes all; And, through the whole, hole wears. A writ, in writing right, may write It wright, and still be wrong For write and rite are neither right, And dont to write belong. Beer often brings a bier to man, Coughing a coffin brings, And too much ale will make us ail, As well as other things. The person lies who says he lies When he is but reclining; And, when consumptive folks decline, They all decline declining. A quail dont quail before a storm A bough will bow before it; We cannot rein the rain at all No earthly powers reign oer it. The dyer dyes awhile, then dies; To dye hes always trying, Until upon his dying-bed He thinks no more of dyeing. A son of Mars mars many a sun; All deys must have their days, And every knight should pray each night To him who weighs his ways. Tis meet that man should mete out meat To feed misfortunes son; The fair should fare on love alone, Else one cannot be won. A lass, alas is something false; Of faults a maid is made; Her waist is but a barren waste Though stayed, she is not staid. The springs spring forth in spring, and shoots Shoot forward one and all; Though summer kills the flowers, it leaves The leaves to fall in fall. I would a story here commence, But you might find it stale; So lets suppose that we have reached The tail end of our tale. CLIFF ROSES. PALE little sister of rich red roses, ~ATild little sister of garden queens, Art thou content that thy flower uncloses Here where the land to the ocean leans? They, where the lawns are soft and shaded, Hold their court amid eyes that gaze; Thou by the lone sea livst, and faded Fall thy leaves in the salt sea sprays. Smitten of every storm that blusters, Crushed by the mimic avalanche, Bravely still thy delicate clusters Laugh from thicket and thorny branch. Naught may we know of all thou knowest, All that the soft wind brings to thee? Under the cliff-top where thou growest Sail the ships to the open sea; Art not thou and thy flowers clinging Ghosts of many a sad farewell, Fluttering home from the ships, and bringing Tidings for loving hearts to tell? Or art thou, rather, a blithe fore-coiner, Blown by winds from the homeward ships, A kiss, turned flower in the breath of summer, A word that has quickened from eager lips? Nay, though sweet as the longed-for hour, Fair as the face that we yearn to see, Nothing thou art but a simple flower, Growing where God has planted thee. Spectator. F. W. B. BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA. THERES a joy without canker or cark, Theres a pleasure eternally new, Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of China thats ancient and blue. Unchipped all the centuries through It has passed since the chime of it rang, And they fashioned it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. These dragons their tails, you remark, Into bunches of gillyfloxvers grew When Noah came out of the Ark, Did these lie in wait for his crew? They snorted, they snapped, and they slew, They were mighty of fin and of fang, And their portraits Celestials drew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. Heres a pot with a cot in a park, In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died, and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may as they sang. Tis a tale was undoubtedly true In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. ENVOY. Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do, Kind critic, your tongue has a tang. But a sage never heeded a shrew In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. A. LANG. THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. 3 From The Fortnightly Review. THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. TilE island of Ceylon has been at all times part and parcel of India, and if the term body politic can be fitly employed with respect to that strange medley of races, castes, and creeds, it is a constitu- ent part of that body politic. By an acci- dent of nature it is separated from the continent by a narrow streak of sea, but its people are more closely allied to the thoroughly Indian races than are some of the great tribes who now inhabit the Indian peninsula. The Sinhalese, who form about two-thirds of the population, are the descendants of Aryan emigrants who left their homes in the Ganges valley more than five centuries before the Chris- tian era. Down to the time of Christ their intercourse with Bengal seems to have been intimate and constant, those being the days of missionary Buddhism: but after that period the course of Bengal and Ceylon history, as expressed in lan- guage, religion, and in the chronicles themselves, rapidly parted, and no~v little remains to indicate the common origin save the similarity of physical conforma- tion and temperament of the peoples and the present outgrowth of the primitive language. The Tamils, who nearly com- pose the remaining one-third, are the cousins and brothers of the great race of the presidency of Madras. The streak of sea, however, and her distant position, saved Ceylon from many waves of con- quest which passed over India; and its people were permitted to retain the sim- ple and humanizing doctrines of Bud- dhism, while their kin beyond the sea fell under the debasing influences of the Brahminist reaction. And in more re- cent times her insular position induced her English conquerors to diminish the too vast responsibility of the governor- general by placing Ceylon under the colo- nial instead of the Indian administra- tion. Though a crown colony, and under the Colonial Office, Ceylon has nothing to do with other crown colonies, such as Mauritius or Jamaica, and is to all intents a separate government. And it is for this reason that Ceylon is at all times a subject worthy of the consideration of those interested in Indian matters. She has indeed no foreign policy, nor any na- tive states within her borders; but in agriculture, the management of natives, administration of justice, and in Mofussil life generally, the difficulties to be en- countered are practically the same. In- dian problems have to be solved by a non-Indian government. And it is espe- cially interesting to note how this part of India has been governed by a modest and inexpensive local administration, without, indeed, the prestige and lustre of the In- dian service, and with perhaps fewer indi- viduals in proportion of marked ability, but untrammelled in the execution of their duty by the red-tape exigencies which beset the subordinates of that great bureaucracy. It may, without exagger- ation, be said that in Ceylon the people are quieter and more contented than in any part of India, taxation is considera- bly lighter, labor is more amply reward- ed; while alongside of bankrupt India we find the Ceylon revenue providing without any strain for large railway, irri- gati on, and other public works. The island has not, however, been al- ways prosperous in English hands. From the acquisition of the whole of it in 1815 down to 1850, at the close of the last Kandyan rebellion, the government had considerahle difficulty in paying its way. About that time an era of prosperity be- gan with the revival of the coffee enter- prise, and the abundant revenue was employed in public works and education under the direction of several able gov- ernors, among whom may be specially named Sir Henry Ward and Sir Hercules Robinson, the present governor of New Zealand. The two great works with which the name of Sir Henry Ward will always be connected are the Colombo and Kandy railway and the great irrigation works of the eastern province, by means of which thousands of acres of jungle have been converted into waving fields of paddy. Both these enterprises remained to be completed by Sir Hercules Robin- son, who in his turn struck out a new line of fame by the passing of what is known as the Village Communities Ordinance. It had long been known, although the 4 THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. general attention was emphasized by the appearance of Sir Henry Maines well- known work, that in the interior of Cey- lon the affairs of village life, comprising the conduct of agriculture, petty civil jus- tice, and to some extent criminal justice and police, were directed and adminis- tered by a council of elders of the village, whose authority was held in respect due to its vast antiquity, although for ages it had received but little sanction or support from the supreme governing powers of the land. Sir Hercules Robinsons law was passed with a view to saving this time-honored institution from the deca- dence with which it was threatened by the extension of the police courts, and to relieving the police courts of a mass of frivolous lawsuits of which they had be- come the scene. The Sinhalese people, though not wanting in wit and humor, have no national drama and few games or other amusements, and it is not surprising to find that the English courts have be- come to them all that the theatre is to the French. The pieces performed might be tragic or comic, highway robberies with thrilling details, or cattle-stealing with a pitched battle between a rescuing party and the thieves, or the acquisition of a coveted piece of field with elaborate tes- timony to lengthy pedigrees, deeds of gift, and disinheritings. In the course of all such dramas the various actors in the witness-box would perform their parts as a rule with conspicuous ability, while the knowledge possessed by some part of the audience of the falsehoods uttered, mak- ing them watch with keen interest the course of the magistrates thought, im- ported a sort of Sophoclean irony into the whole proceeding. The greater the dis- tance at which the English court was from the litigants, and the greater the ignorance of the magistrate of the coun- try language and life, the more zest had they in the sport. The government, on the other hand, hoped that by intrusting the trial of petty causes to the more intel- ligent of the natives themselves, with the right of appeal to competent European officers, not only would pressure be taken off the police courts, but the natives would gain a valuable schooling in self-govern- ment. And this hope has been fairly ful- filled. Native gentlemen have proved themselves competent presidents of these village tribunals, and have in some cases been appointed police magistrates of the same grade with junior civilians. An account of the establishment of these village councils and tribunals has already been given in the For/nz~ktly Review; * and it is only necessary, in alluding to them here, to remark that the village council and tribunal created by Sir Her- cules Robinson is not exactly a revival of the old institution. A native gentleman of the highest position is appointed pres- ident of a large district, and holds circuit courts in the smaller divisions of that district, where he is assisted by assessors drawn from a list similar to that of our special jurymen. There is a right of ap- peal from the village tribunal to the gov- ernment agent or collectorof the prov- ince, and from him to the governor in council. The small number of appeals even to the government agent testifies to the quality of the justice administered. The system was not introduced into all districts, but only into such as were from time to time deemed fitted for the experi- ment. And it has been found that the districts wherein the councils have an- swered best, have been those in which the old village system was still alive, viz., in the districts occupied by the Kandyan Sinhalese. The Village Communities Ordinance, although it provides forrules tobe passed in accordance with native customs for irrigation and cultivation of fields, was in the main a judicial reform. It was re- served to Sir William Gregory to extend its provisions to the execution of works of practical and lasting benefit. In the days of native government all public works had been performed by the people themselves, at the command of the king and under the direction of his officers. This kings business, called r4/akariya, differed from other service regularly performed for the holding of land in so far as it was limited by no fixed rules as to time, place, * Fo,-inzgA/ly Review, vol. xviii., p. 24I~ A Home-Rule Experiment in Ceylon. THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. 5 or extent. Like the oppressions of the Turks, it fell upon the people anoma- lously, and often at considerable intervals, and caused little disaffection in the nation at large. But when the same system came to be applied by the English to the making of soundly engineered roads and other such works, it was found to interfere too much with the liberty of the subject, and forced labor was abolished by the Magna Charta of 1833. The finances of the colony were not then in a very flourishing state, and, as may be supposed, public works did not get performed. Laws were afterwards passed by which every male adult, between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five, was rendered liable to perform six days labor a year on the public roads, or to pay the commuted value in money. The unskilled labor of the villagers could only be employed in the easier work of digging and gravelling, and the difficulties involved in calling together and superintending heterogene- ous gangs have led to the general adop- tion of commutation, and the mass of the people regularly pay their three shillings a year as road-tax. The aim of their rul- ers to get the country Sinhalese to do manual labor for their own benefit was thus found to be impracticable so far as the public roads were concerned. There remained the possibility of getting them to work with effect at the restoration of the magnificent irrigation tanks which had been the glory of the ancient kings, and which still in their dilapidated condition held small supplies of water for the culti- vation of insignificant fields. An experi- ment in this direction has been made during the last six years, and I now de- sire to record an account of its progress and results. The region in which the most of these tanks are situate is the interior country of the northern half of the island. The mountains of the southern and broader half are the sources of all the constant rivers of Ceylon. The valleys in the hills and the slopes lying between them and the sea towards the west, south, and east, are fairly supplied with perennial streams. But towards the north the two great rivers, the Maha Velliganga and the Kal~oya, emerging from the hill country, have their respective courses turned to the sea in an easterly and westerly direc- tion, leaving the vast plains of the north fed onlyby an intermittent and precarious rainfall. Travellers from Kandy by the great north road making the usual halt at Dambulla, forty-five miles distant, and climbing the steep rock to view the cav- ernous temples with their numberless images and curious paintings for ~vhich the place is famous, are invariably at- tracted by the sight of the ocean plain of jungle spread out before their eyes. Only a few pale green patches of field are seen close beneath the rock on which they stand. All fields and villages beyond are as much hidden from view as weeds that grow beneath the standing corn. Afew single rocks the fortified Sigiri with its winding galleries and inaccessible crown out towards the east, the haunted steeps of Ritigala, and the sacred heights of Mihintale, to the north are the only breaks between the spectator and the horizon of the darkest green. These are the backwoods of Ceylon. Yet this great jungle was once covered with villages and fields, and alive with an agricultural population. Those days the great period of the Sinhalese monarchy were the ten centuries between the third before and the eighth after Christ. The grand descriptions given by poetry and tradition of the size and population of Anuradhap~ira, of the wealth and lar- gesses of its kings, may well be treated with scepticism by reasonable men. But no one can dispute the evidences of a wealthy and populous city and of a highly cultivated country afforded by the monu- ments of that city which remain, by the historical muniments of title engraven on rocks and pillars, and chiefly by the em- bankments of thousands of tanks which at all available points in the undulations of the plain dam up the precious rains. This interesting district, inhabited by Kandyan Sinhalese, was for a few years after the annexation in x8i~ administered from Kandy, or more truly was left un- administered. In 1834 it was annexed to the northern, a thoroughly Tamil prov- ince, the capital of which, Jaffna, is sit. 6 THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. uate at the extreme north of the island an assistant officer was stationed at Anu- radhapura, and for the folio~ving forty years the prospects of the district were so far bettered in that it had a represen- tative of government in its midst, through whom its cries might go up to headquar- ters. But the government agent at Jaffna was always an of~cer interested in the Tarnils, and generally ignorant of the Sinhalese and their language. The dis- trict was on all sides far removed from the sea. No money was spent either in the construction of roads or in the repair of tanks, and the decadence of a thousand years was permitted to run towards abso- lute decay. It may be well to describe the district in brief detail, as its condition and char- acteristics differ considerably from those of all the other parts of the island. Al- though it may be considered a great plain, it is, in fact, composed of gentle undulations, across the little valleys of which are thrown the embankments, or bunds, forming the tanks. These em- bankrnents vary greatly in size, but the majority are from two hundred yards to half a mile in length ; while the greatest, such as Padawiya Kal~w~wa, and Mm- n~riya, are many miles in length, having, while perfect, held up waters covering areas of from ten to twenty square miles. The total number of tanks found to exist in the district is about three thousand, of which number about one-half have inhab- ited villages dependent upon them. The rest are said to be abandoned. In hardly any cases is there more than one village attached to a tank, though in former days the larger reservoirs sup- plied water for a series of hamlets. The village is a compact entity, the name gama (village) being applied to the tank fields, hamlet, and surrounding jungle; the hamlet itself is termed gam-mcedda (the centre of the village). The houses composing the hamlet are close together, and generally placed under the embank- ment or bund of the tank, and sur- rounded by a strong stockade for the purpose of excluding wild beasts and roaming cattle. The villages hardly av- erage fifty inhabitants apiece, and of these not more than fifteen will be adult males. The difficulties and wearisome labor en- dured by these children of the forest were sufficient to account for the sombre apathy which till lately characterized them. The tanks had no working sluices, and accordingly each year the embank- ment had to be cut to let the water out to the fields, a system which itself entailed a vast waste of precious water. If heavy rains came while the bund was cut, the waters burst through the opening, car- rying with them great pieces of the earth wall. When the time came for filling up the cutting, the villagers sometimes es- sayed to do the xvork themselves, and sometimes employed professional tank- menders from Jaffna, who for a consider- able sum built up a shoddy structure of earth and stakes, which could be easily removed for the next years cultivation, and too easily, alas! by the rains which had first to fall. The bund of the tank was covered with trees and undergrowth; the hamlet was hidden in jungle; and the only communication with the outer world was by paths unknown but to the villagers themselves, along which a passage was not easily effected without the aid of an axe or a bill-hook. Although the hamlet is termed the village centre, the tank has an~ equal title to the name, for it is the real bond of the village community, a fact which is recognized by the custom of calling the village by the name of its tank. And so men, when asked where they come from, say they are men of the tamarind- tree tank, or of the tank of mango- trees, as the case may be; and it 15 owing to the common interests which the management of the tank involves that s~ much of the ancient village community system survives here. Each little repub- lic has its president, the ga;nar~la (chief of the village), who, though in the village council only trimus i;zter pares, is the representative of the village, and respon- sible for its revenue and police to the higher powers. It is his duty to consult with the shareholders at the commence- ment of each season, for the purpose of deciding upon the extent of land which the water held up in the tank will suffice to irrigate. The village is theoretically divided into a certain number of equal shares, called ~angit, and each landowner has one, or by inheritance or purchase more than one Panguwa. The whole extent of arable mark is divided into two l)ortions or stretches, the ;nulpoia (princi- pal field) and the !zarena~oia (alternative field), and these are never used at the same time. The holder of az5ang-uwa in the village will have the same share in the ;nu~~ota and in the b~renapofa. Ac- cordingly the amount of land held by each owner is only nominally defined as to locality and extent. Thus it happens that if the gauzabe or village council decide THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. that only five acres of a ten~acre ;nulf olci can be irrigated, a five-acre portion of the whole will be fenced in, and each share- h6lder will have a ~angzwa assigned to him of half the extent which he would have had if the whole could have been cultivated. The stretch of field so fenced in is divided into as many shares as there are shareholders and three shares more. One of these is assigned to the garnar~la for the time being, as a compensation for the duties of his office. The necessity for the other two shares arises from the shape of the field. It is of a somewhat oval char- acter, stretching away from the direction of the water supply, and is terraced by little ridges to keep the water lying during the earlier stages of the paddy growth. These ridges run generally transversely across the oval, and the pangie are divided by them. It follows, therefore, that those who have shares assigned to them else- where than at the top or bottom of the field will have only a small piece of the side fence to construct and mend, and to defend against the irruption of wild beasts and cattle, while the two end pieces, requiring to be fenced all round three sides, are more liable to these attacks and to the ravages of birds. Accordingly the last strip at each end is assignec~ as an extra holding to the owner of the next adjoining strip, and in return it is his duty to protect the fence both at the sides of his own proper ~angzwa and around the extra strip at the end. At two or more places inside the fences are erected small covered platforms ten or twelve feet in height, used as watch-huts, in which each shareholder takes his turn, in person or by deputy, to watch the crops during the night, and to give the alarm in case the field should be invaded by buffaloes, jackals, or elephants. Between the village community, with the garnar~ia at its head, and the govern- ment agent, the mouthpiece of govern- ment, are a series of intermediate native officers. The duties of these several officers are principally connected with the revenue, but they are also in their several degrees responsible for the police. In the whole province there is not a single police constable; and in no part of the island is there so little crime. The peo- ple would cordially resent the presence among them of the low-caste aliens who compose the majority of the police force whose officious interference and subtile tyranny would only aggravate the petty quarrels of village life. Some years ago, on one occasion of the transport of coin under a police escort from Colombo to Anuradhapura, the policemen on their way robbed a wayside village of some poultry, and I well remember the jeers of the people which saluted their condemna- tion to a term of well-merited imprison- ment. The religion of the people is, I need hardly say, Buddhism, and Anuradhapura, the most sacred place in Ceylon, is their Mecca. Fifteen hundred years ago Fah Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, described with admiration this great and busy city, with its splendid temples, its royal and relig- ious processions, its crowded but well- ordered streets. After his day followed centuries of war and rapine, resulting in the ninth century in the abandonment of the city, until, in the seventeenth century, there was not a Sinhalese inhabitant left, save only the priests who kept guard over the sacred places supported by the offer- ings of pilgrims from afar. The rural natives of the district accordingly know the place better by the name of the Maha WiizeIre (Great Temple), than by the name of the ruined city; for, before it became the centre of their English government, it h~md long been only their chief place of worship. There are eight sacred places here renowned for the possession of relics of Buddha. These are principally en- shrined within the great dagobas, which in the grandeur of their scale surpass the topes of India, although in beauty of sculptured ornamentation they cannot stand comparison with the remains of Sanchi or Amravati. But the pre-emi; nently holy place, the Maka Wihiire, is that of the sacred ho-tree, the now aged growth of a cutting taken one hundred and fifty years before Christ from the ho-tree at Budagaya, in Bengal, under whose shade Gautama is said to have attained the Buddhahood. The most glori- ous epithets are applied to this venerable tree, its full title being 7aya Sri Maha Bodin Wa/zanse the victorious, royal, great, and worshipful ho-tree. Two miles off, at the village of Nuwara Wewa (city tank), resides the hereditary lay- guardian of this palladium, now one of the four principal native officers of the prov- ince; a gentleman who boasts of a lineal descent fi-om the chief into whose charge the sacred cutting was confided on its first arrival from the banks of the Ganges. The ruins of the city and temples and the great tanks have, for the last fifty years attracted the attention of educated travellers and residents, and in the year 11871 the late governor, Sir W. Gregory, 7 8 THE BACKWOODS OF C1~YLON. soon after his arrival visited the district with a thoroughly antiquarian interest. But the spectacle of these diminishing communities of men remote from the centres of modern Ceylon life, and waging an unequal war with tropical vegetation, wild animals, and a capricious climate, aroused in him the idea of effecting some practical amelioration of their condition. The first step was to dissociate the dis- tricts of Nuwarakal~wiya and Taman- kaduwa from their connection with the Tamil provinces of the north and east, and to form them into a separate provin- cial government, now called the North Central Province. The next was to place in charge of the new administration a civilian, thoroughly acquainted with the people, and energetic enough to overcome the difficulties attending ihe revival of prosperity after a thousand years of deca- dence. Such an officer was found in Mr. J. F. Dickson, one of the ablest civilians Ceylon has obtained, who had lately acquired a wide knowledge of native social law as chief commissioner for the registration of service tenures. By the middle of 1873 Mr. Dickson was installed as the government agent of the new prov- ince, and a new era was inaugurated for the backwoods of Ceylon. The new agent at once perceived that, in the face of the difficulties attending the introduction of paid skilled labor into the forest depths, as yet unpierced by ade- quate roads, it would be impossible, by the mere expenditure of large sums of government money, to effect any wide- spreading reform. He saw that, so long as the people were not themselves em- ployed in any schemes devised for their benefit, the best efforts of government would be thrown away. Assisted by gov- ernment in all that required expenditure of money and engineering apparatus, the main part of the work the clearing of jungle and the repairs of the earth em- bankments of the tanks mirht be done by the people themselves, i~ only they could be organized. The Village Com- munities Ordinance provided the neces- sary machinery for the compulsory per- formance of works for the common benefit, and the constitution of the prov- ince was aptly fitted for the working of that machinery. The whole province, wrote Mr. Dickson, is composed of a number of small agricultural republics, each of which has its tank with the field below it, and the duty of maintaining the tank with its channels in repair properly by custom devolves on the community, each member being hound to contribute his share of labor in proportion to his share in the field. But under our rule there has been hitherto no simple ma- chinery for compelling the idle and the absentee shareholders, who go and live in other villages but still retain their claims on the field, to perform their share of the work. The others are unwillino- to work for the benefit of the defaulters~ and the work is left undone. Mr. Dickson pro- posed to government that the Village Communities Ordinance should be at once introduced into the whole province, and that identical rules should be submitted to the various councils, by which their people should pledge themselves to or- ganized labor. The chief rules, which were loyally accepted by all the commu- nities, were as follows i. For the repair and improvement of vil- lage tanks. (a) Every panguwa shall give annually such labor, not exceeding thirty days labor of an able-bodied adult, as the gov- ernment agent may declare to be necessary for the repair or improve- ment of the tank on which it is de- pendent for its water-supply. (6) When government provides a sluice or other works for the improvement of the tank, the labor declared to be necessary as above shall not exceed sixty days for one year, and thirty days for each succeeding year. (c) Further labor may be required in spe- cial cases by order of the committee (the representatives of the people). 2. The labor shall be called out at such times and in such proportions as the govern- ment agent or any person deputed by him in that behalf may determine, and notice pub- lished by beat of tom-tom in the village (Ang-Zice, town crier ) shall be held to be notice to every shareholder. 3. Any panguwa may commute its labor by a payment in advance of 35 cents (about 7d.) per diem, and if any person who does not com- mute shall fail to give the labor due for his panguwa at the appointed time, he shall be liable to a fine of half a rupee a day. Other rules, which it is unnecessary here to quote, provide for the construc- tion and repair of communal roads, and for keeping them clear of vegetation; and a most important one required every vil- lage to clear and keep clear of jungle a considerable space around the hamlet. The light thus shed upon the dim recesses of the forest villages was the typical dawn of the new regime. A bargain was then struck between the government and the village communities to this effect: that in consideration of THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. 9 the people clearing the bunds of the tanks and raising them by their united labor to the full required height and strength, the government would put in an iron sluice fixed in solid masonry, in the whole cost- ing about /ioo. The labor of the vil- lagers would take, it was estimated, in most cases seven years to perform, and in these cases no return by way of rate or increased taxation was to be asked for by the government, either for the expense of the sluice, or for the engineers super- vision of the earthwork. When the system first began to be worked it was considered useless to em- ploy the people on the earthworks of the embankments, except under the super- vision of competent engineers, and the government was unable to supply a suffi- cient number. Over the greater part of the province, therefore, the first year s labor was expended on the felling of trees, on clearing away jungle, and on making roads. The contrast presented by the former and the present aspect of the back- woods in this respect is thus described by Mr. Dickson in one of his valuable re- ports to the Ceylon government: Before 1874 this province was one dense unroadecl forest, with villages scattered here and there buried in thick jungle, and ap- proached only by narrow footpaths. At a dis- tance of ten yards they were not to be seen; the jungle came up to the fence of the small enclosed space in which the cottages are built; the embankments or bonds of the tanks were covered with jungle, and it was impossible without cutting a path along the top to make out in what state of repair they were. There is now a north and south road through the province, and an east and west road is half finished. From these main trunk roads cer- tain minor roads made by the road committee (a semi-government department), and the com- munal roads made by the people gratuitously, branch off in every direction. Every village is opened up to light and air by having the jungle cut back so as to give a large space of cleared ground round it, and the bund of every inhabited village has been thoroughly cleared of jungle. The whole outward appearance of the province has been changed. But at a large number of tanks in di- visions of. the district in which the avail- able engineers had been stationed, the more important earthworks of the vil- lagers were commenced, and rapidly car- ried on, sometimes concurrently with the government sluice works, but in most cases in anticipation of the promised boon. A special engineer was appointed to make rough surveys of the tanks, to decide to what height the embankments should be raised, and to direct and super- vise the work of the villagers. This su- pervision was necessary, as Mr. Dickson pointed out, not only to see that the work is properly done, but to see that the rules requiring each man to give his share of labor are really enforced. When the earthwork was commenced, in 1874, the superintendents found it advisable to fix the amount reasonably answering to an adults thirty days labor in cubic feet of earth. A piece of ground was then staked out near the embankment which each shareholder was to excavate to the required depth, carrying the earth in bas- kets, and casting it as directed on the bund of the tank. By this method it was unnecessary to have all the shareholders at work at once. The years task had to be done by a given date, and each man knew his allotted share, and could choose his own time. I have many a time, in inspecting the works, come upon a singl~ man, perhaps the last to complete his task, assisted by wife and children work- ing steadily at his pit, taking care not to excavate an inch too much, but knowing that his neighbors would complain if he failed to give to the bund the whole of his allotted soil. The jealousy with which the villagers overlooked each others work insured its full performance, while their honest pride in the bund which they had cleared and raised some feet alon~ its whole length, in seeing that by their own united efforts they could do work equal to that of the giants of old (the traditional makers of the tanks) showed that their spirit was not entirely broken, and that if their efforts were rewarded ~vith some success they would be yet more confident in their own powers. At the commencement, it must be con- fessed, some villages declined to do any work at all. They did not understand the yoke they had put on their necks. It was necessary that an example should be made of such defaulters, and every share- holder was fined under the provisions of the village rules. Brought to their senses they set to work, and were soon as proud of their bunds as any of their more loyal neighbors. Some care had to be taken at first to discourage any general commu- tation of the labor, which would have rendered the whole scheme inoperative. But the people themselves soon settled the difficulties which arose in the cases of aged or absentee shareholders; the work was done by deputy or some other private arrangement, and it became un- necessary to keep any cash accounts. I0 THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. Once started, the system proved itself the results in their time. They must be con- thoroughly suited to the customs of the tent with the assurance that if the foundations people, and the rules were found adequate are well laid, and if the work is carried on for all emergencies. The engineers, on steadily and persistently, then in twenty or their part, displayed the most commenda- thirty years the face of this province will be ble energy in combatting the recurrino- changed; food and water will be abundant, the ~- population will increase, and the government difficulties of transport and commissariat, will receive largely increased revenues without viz., the ~vant of cart roads, and the having incurred any large or heavy expendi- poverty of the district, aggravated by ture. alternating seasons of flood and drought. If it bad been found that this great The statistics of work done are highly result was likely to be achieved by a gov- satisfactory. By the end of 1876, forty- eminent expenditure of only ioo on eight sluices were fixed in well-built ma- each tank, it is improbable that any ob- sonry ~valls; by the end of 1877, the num- jection would have been raised by those ber completed was raised to seventy-five; interested in the finances of the island. and by the end of 1878 to one hundred But it had been foreseen by Sir W. Greg- and seventeen. On the other hand, the - Mr. Dickson, and it became ap villagers were found at the close of the ory and parent after the embankments of a few last-mentioned year to have expended tanks had been strengthened and consid- various terms of labor upon eight hun- erably raised, that, although sufficient in dred and fifty-six tanks, the total earth- a season of due rainfall to retain an ample work being valued at nearly three hundred supply of water for that season, they were and ninety thousand rupees. Up to this not laro-e time the sum expended by government ~ enough to hold a supply suffi- cient to secure the villages during a sea- on village tank sluices had reached Oi~C son of deficient rainfall which might hundred and thirty thousand rupees ; in follow The system of irrigation of the other words, the villagers had given nearly ancient kings had been a most elaborate three rupees worth of work for one. A one and only by patient surveys will it government composed of Carlyles and be possible to discover its former opera- Ruskins might possibly be satisfied ~vith tion. All over the country are observed this result; but less sentimental econo- traces of great and small canals, anicuts mists would require some more tangible dammino- the river beds and large tanks return for large sums spent for the benefit ~vithout any apparent fields beneath them. of the people than the mere execution by All these evidences point to the exist- the people of other work, even to the ence of a network of irrigation works, by value of three times the government ex- which the smaller tanks were fed in case penditure. XVhat the government of Cey- of need from the rivers and from larger lon actually looked for was the increase store reservoirs. Of these larger works of the land revenue, the increase of P0P the one which preserves the best traces ulation, and the general development of of its former efficiency is the great tank the district. The province is about one- of Kalaw~wa, in the south of the district. sixth in extent of the whole island, and The embankment of this huge reservoir its broad valleys once provided with a is five and a half miles in length, and regular water supply ~re the most fertile faced along its inner side with massive in the country: yet its population is at stone. It was constructed to catch the present only sixteen to the square mile, waters of three rivers, which now meet while the average for the rest of Ceylon in its former bed and rush through a is considerably over one hundred. Its breach one thousand feet wide about the regeneration is therefore of general Th middle of the vast wall. Captain Wood- portance to the whole country. But it 15 ward, RE., who recently surveyed the apparent that with this sparse population tank at the request of Sir William Greg- having to battle with some difficulty for ory found evidence that it had been their daily b read, and having assumed breached at least three or four times. this great extra labor which they and their fathers thought too heavy to undertake This is at once a proof of its enormous - the complete restoration to prosperity catclment area and the value in which the need not be looked for as yet. As i\Ir. tank was held, as each repair must have been Dickson wrote when he commenced his a task of great magnitude, only to be under taken in the case of a work of extraordinary task : utility and the tank was of this extraordinary Those who have to devise the system and utility. From one of its sluices issues a mag- commence the work must not look for imme- nificent canal called the Yodaya Ela (giants~ diate results; they must not even expect to see canal), about forty feet wide, which after a THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. II zourse of fifty-three miles carried the copious drainage of the southern hills to Anuradha- pura. He found that along its course this canal must have supplied no less than sixty-six village tanks with water. So strong had the embankment seemed that the natives attributed its destruction to magic. The story ~vas told two centuries ago by Robert Knox, in his charming Historical Relation of Ceylon, after a captivity of twenty years. Speaking of the province I am describing, he says This countrey formerly brought forth great plenty of corn, occasioned by reason of its large watcrings. A neighbor kingdom (Ku- run~gala) in those times was brought to a grcat dearth; at which the king sends to the people of NLureca/aza that they would bring a supply of corn to his countrey, which they did in great store upon beasts in sacks, and arrived at the kings city. . . . Afterwards the king, to requite them, asked what they most needed in their countrey. They answered, They had plenty of all things, only they wanted Turmeric and Pepper. The king, to gratifie them, sent them such a quantity of each as his country could afford. As soon as this was brought to the people of iurccalava they went to meas- ure it out to every man his Portion; but find- ing it of so small a quantity, they resolved to grind it, as they do when they use it with their victuals, and put it into the river to give a seasoning to the water; and every man was to take up his Dish of water thus seasoned. The king hearing of this action of theirs was offended in that they so contemned his gift: but concealed his displeasure. Sometime after he took a journey to them, and being there desired to know how their countrey had be- come so fruitful. They told him it was the water of the river pent up for their use in a very vast pond (Kal5w~wa), out of which they made trenches to convey the ~vater down into their corn grountls. This Pond they had made with great art and labor with great stones and earth thrown up of a vast length and thickness, in the fashion of an half moon. The king afterwards took his leave of them and ~vent home, and by the help of his magicians broke tlown this vast clam that kept in the water, and so destroyed the Pond. And by this means this fruitful countrey wanting her water is be- come as ordinary land as the rest, having only what falls out of the sky.* This tradition is especially interesting as showing that the date of the breach of embankment was long anterior to the sev- enteenth century; and it also shows that the natives were well aware that their village tanks were inadequate to maintain a perpetual supply of water. After the destruction of the vast pond, they had * Knoxs Ceylon, s68s, pp. iii, 112. only what falls out of the sky. The restoration of this invaluable work is esti- mated by Captain Woodward to cost up- wards of 50,000, not including the cost of the repair of the canal. Although this expenditure would not lead to any ade- quate return for many years, there is little doubt that had Sir W. Gregory remained longer in the island be would have taken it in hand. During the last year of his tenure of office he did, in fact, commence the work by the clearing and restoration of thirteen miles of the Giants Canal. It is to be hoped that his successors will not be induced to neglect the execution of so useful a work only because the re- turn will necessarily be a tardy one. The general improvement of the smaller vil- lage tanks may well be continued, but it is useless to look for absolute security against droughts, to which the backwoods are subject, until some of these larger xvork~ are completed and the secrets of the ancient system searched out and known.* Altl~ougl~,therefore, the full measure of prosperity cannot be expected for many years to be reached it is aratifying to be able to point to some tangible results of the interesting reformation of the com- munes, attained after labors of only five years. The tanks ~vhich the villagers have repaired have cauo~ht a sufficiency of the rain which has fallen, and they have been found strong enough to withstand the flood of 1877, one of the heaviest within memory. Larger fields have been sown, and the paddy revenue (one-tenth of the produce) has swelled proportion- ately. In 1878 it had risen to four times its amount in 1874 (a bad year), and greatly exceded its highest amount in any former year. For the first time since the En- glish conquest crown land (forest) has been put up for sale and has found pur- chasers. During the last five years culti- vated land on changing hands has been found to have doubled in value. The timber revenue in 1878 was four times its amount in 1874; while the total revenue of the province in 1878 was three times its amount in 1874. The time has hardly arrived for results, but they have shown themselves before they were expected. Chief among them * Recent advices from Ceylon lead to the conclusion that the present governor means to content himself with the hare performance of the goveromeut uromise as regards the village tank sluices, and to postpone in- definitely the larger works which are heyoud the power of tlse villagers to perform. If this he so, he may not be guilty of any grave breach of faith, but he will make a grave error in policy. 12 THE BACKWOODS OF CEYLON. is the phenomenon of a people, carrying on for centuries an apathetic struggle for existence, and entirely neglected by their rulers, at last waking up to the conscious- ness that they are cared for, and rousing themselves to a vigorous life. An effec- tual blow has at last been struck at what has long been supposed to be the vested birthright of every Indian subject of the queen the ribht to be idle. The con- trast, frequently drawn between Ceylon and Java, xvhere the Dutch do not recog- nize this right, and, indeed, override it somewhat roughly, may in time be ren- dered more favorable to Ceylon by a careful extension of the new policy. Its foundations have been laid upon a basis of ancient customary law, which is its strongest sanction in the eyes of the peo- ple; and the fair promise which the scheme gives of ultimate success is mainly due to an administrative officer who has done a difficult work with rare tact and ability, and to a governor who has accorded to it on all occasions his ready support and assistance. It cannot, in truth, be asserted that the people have as yet shown any radical change of habit or character. They are proud of the work they have accomplished and willing to continue it, but if the present strain be removed, they will quietly relapse into their old listless ways. Ihe individual leopard has a proverbial difficulty in changing his spots, yet it is possible that they may disappear from the leopard- race by a slow evolution. So it may be that the rural Sinhalese will in genera- tions l)rogress from an inherited torpor to inherited activity. Such a change cannot be effected in a day, but like other evolu- tions will result from a steady continu- ance in activity of the new forces brought to bear upon their life. And these forces are, in a word, the prompting, guiding, and assisting energies of the paternal despots to whom in turn their interests are confided. In this endeavor to give some idea of what is going on in these interesting and but little-known backwoods of Ceylon it has, I trust, been shown that much may be done towards the revival of a long- past prosperity, by no large expenditure of money, but by engaging the natives on the side of work and activity, and by using and enforcing for that purpose the rules which their own immemorial cus- toms have prescribed. It is not too much to say that if some such system had been brought into operation in parts of India where village communities are still extant, many lakhs of rupees might have been directed to other purposes than to dwindle away in the quicksands of the Public Works Department. There is little doubt that it is due to our vast an- nual expenditure on paper, viz., surveys, plans, correspondence, reports, minutes, accounts, auditings, and to our failing to organize into working parties the natives themselves, that we so often find ourselves unable in India to restore the small and great irrigation ~vorks of the old regime, except at a cost for which no adequate return can be foreseen. If it be said that the care now taken over preliminaries insures the success of the work, it may be replied that the ancient kings could hardly have exceeded the number of fail- ures laid to the charge of some of our Public Works Departments in the East. It is indeed asserted, with what truth still remains to be proved, that many of these ancient irrigation works never could be used, and that the expense of their construction was wasted. But if commu- nities of men have three or four months of leisure time in the year, and that pe- riod is employed for a year or two at the kings command in throwing up a great embankment, which may not prove a suc- cess for want of water, it cannot be con- tended that this is a wasteful expense in the same sense as the sinking of some thousands of pounds of public money in the building of a barrack that can never be lived in, or a bridge with its piers in the shifting sand. Unless the whole available labor of a country is habitually employed in productive work, the em- ployment of part of its non-productive energies in an unsuccessful enterprise cannot be said to impoverish the country at large. In this there is no advocacy of hasty and ill-considered schemes, but merely a deprecation of the costly delays of red-tapism in countries where thou- sands of human hands hang idle, while government officials report, refer, and wrangle. Had Sir William Gregory held the public purse closed until surveyors made elaborate plans, and engineers made elaborate reports, and until it was made evident to the meanest comprehen- sion that the works would return their five or ten per cent., the poor village com- munities of the backwoods would still be sunk in apathy and decay. ALBERT GRAY. THE CROOKIT MEG. 3 From Frasers Magazine. THE CROOKIT MEG: A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. XXIII. I DO not believe that in all their after lives that soft October evening, when the mellow autumn twilight melted into moon- light, was forgotten by Alister and Eppie. Eppie had at length abandoned herself to the stream which was bearing her gently to the Happy Islands; Alister was in- fected by her dreamy bliss. They xvan- dered among the rocks where they had wandered as children; they crossed in mere wantonness the rnauvazsj5as at the Bloody Hole; they laughed gleefully when their old friend the peregrine rose scream- ing and scolding from his rock. The Scrath Pillar was black with cormorants who were balancing themselves in all sorts of grotesque attitudes on impossi- ble pinnacles; they laughed again at the uncouth gambols of the solemn and fu- nereal birds. Then they went into the house, where supper had been prepared for them by Mennie. Eppie ran up to her mothers room, and returned radiant. Mrs. Holdfast was a shade better, and would see Alister. So Alister was taken into the sick-room, and the sick woman smiled into his face, and pressed his hand with an air of soft entreaty. Was she resign- ing to the lover the mothers jealous rights in her wilful pet? In these last hours the soul, ben- to be freed from the ligaments of the body, rises into a finer air, and sees right and wrong, the true and the false, the noble and the ignoble, as they are seen by the eyes of immortal- ity. But neither Eppie nor Alister knew that when the wan woman laid her trem- bling hands upon his hand it was a fare- well blessing she meant to convey to him. Then they returned into the little parlor which opened into Eppies sitting-room, where they found the simple fare of the farmhouse oat cakes, fresh butter, fra- n-rant honey, creamy milk (do not scorn it, on such fare the Ossianic heroes were bred) arranged for them on a heavy oaken buffet, elaborately carved in fruit and flowers, which Marie Touchet may have brought with her from Fontaine- bleau. Alister had been commissioned by Uncle Ned (who was confined to the house by a feverish attack) to implement a promise which he had long ago made to Eppie. The Saints Rest, the family Bi- ble (in which Eppies ~vas the latest entry among the births), and one or two manuals of Calvinistic divinity lay on the window sole of the parlor; but there was no Shakespeare in the limited library of the farmhouse. The whole of that won- derful fable-land (except for Uncle Neds reminiscences) was a terra incognita to Eppie, who, indeed, from her childhood, like the old lords of the district, had loved better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak. This day Alister had brought one of the prized volumes in his pocket, and when the meal was finished Eppie insisted that he should read her a bit of a play. Their conversation had begun to flag; the girl had grown shy and conscious adorably shy and con- scious; the open book was a barrier be- hind which she instinctively retreated. She pushed the volume across the table, and sat looking at him as he turned the leaves, with her hands in her lap. The volume had opened at Romeo and Ju- liet. Juliet ? ay, here was a braver Juliet, and as he ran rapidly over the earlier incidents of the tragic story, which is bitter with the bitterness of things too sweet, his thoughts wandered away from fair Verona to return to the Fontainbleau farmhouse. Romeos boyish rapture, in- deed, could poorly compare with his steadier and manlier love; but Juliets novel abandonment of passion suited Eppies mood. Here at last, set in ar- ticulate speech, was that ideal world of which she had been dreaming dream- ing since she awoke. She sat looking at him, her lips apart, her hands pressed together, as if fascinated. Had he spoken at that moment, all might have been well. But when he came to It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale Eppie started up: Stay, Alister, stay, I hear mither movin, she exclaimed in a voice that sounded tense and excited, as she darted out of the room. Alisters heart was full. Love had told him that Eppie was altered. Her voice was softer her mood more playful and yet more tender. There ~vas an un- familiar moisture of happiness in her eyes. Alister was a simple lad; but love quickens the apprehension. He felt that the spring-time had come at last. He waited for her to return. He would take her in his arms, and whisper the story of a devotion of which, after all, Romeos wayward vehemence was but a dim reflection. See how she leans her head upon her hand: O that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek! 4 THE CROOKIT MEG: No no, the direct energy of his pas- arms about him she was only obeying th. sion would employ no such tortuous mandate of his rival. diplomacy. And Eppie, this new Ep- Then the clock struck ten: the rosy pie, so changed from the Eppie who had hours as they read together had slipper listened with chilly acquiescence away unnoted. At this moment he heard a low whistle Ten oclock, by God, and the men ai outside (the window was open), Hist Collieston. hist Miss Eppie Miss Eppie! It was the first time that any one had and then a scrap of paper wrapped heard Alister take that high name in vain; round a l)ebble fell upon the floor at his but he was not himself. feet. He sprang to the window throu~h Then without another word he tore which it had been flung; but though the himself from the clinging arms, and went moonlight was clear as day on the moors, out swiftly into the moonlight. this side of the house was in deep shade, There might yet be time. and he saw no one. The image of love had been irreparably Then he picked up the scrap of paper fractured; but the failure of duty might which had become detached by the fall. be repaired. He looked at it involuntarily: involunta- Eppie stood where he had left her, rily his eyes followed the words. There dreary, hopeless, heart-broken. Then were only a couple of hastily scrawled she cast herself in hard, tearless silence lines; but he staggered as if struck by a upon her bed, where she lay for hours blow. Darling Eppie, it said, Eppie without moving. her face turned to the darling, dinn a let the gauger leave by wall. When, in the first light of the hook or by crook keep him from Hells chilly dawn, she rose up pale and silent, Lum. And it was initialed H. H. with black circles round the coal-black I need make no mystery about this eves, the bloom of young desire, the pur- fateful scroll. Harry Hacket on his way ple light of love, had passed out of her to the Cove had learned at the Alehouse face. Tavern that Alister (whose movements had been anxiously watched) was still at XXV. Fontainbleau; and he had immediately despatched the Deevilikie with the lines which he had hurriedly scrawled at the bar. The Deevilikie, with the perverse ingenuity of his connection, had cleverly conveyed it to the wrong hand. XXIV. I SWEAR by the God who made me that it is false! Eppie exclaimed pas- sionately, as with a bitterness of pain past all words she clung to her lover, seeking with one last frantic, despairing effort to detain him. Treachery was ab- horrent to every instinct of the better nature which love was fashioning, and this was treachery of which she was ac- cused, mean and base and senseless treachery to the man she loved. But Alister would not relentwould not indeed listen; the simple, honest heart had grown implacable in a moment. Had he known women better he would have known that this mad passion of de- spair was genuine, that no actress could have thrown all that heartb~-eak into spoken words, that only an agony of love and longing could have forced this icy maiden to cling to him as she did. But he did not believe herher trea- son was too patent, even thus with her UNCLE NED had that evening been as restless as Eppie. He was feverish and unsettled. His books, even his birds, had failed to interest him. He was con- tinually going to the open door, voices were sounding in his ears that seemed to come from the sea. When it was close upon midnight he looked out again. The moon was high in heaven,night was as clear as day. For many years he had tramped about the country by moonlight. To most of us nature is only known in her waking moods; we are asleep dur- ing those ineffable moments when she is dreaming, when the shy birds are fishing in the river mouth, when the owl and the fox and the dormice are alert, with listen- ing ears. But the night side of her life was as ~vell known to Uncle Ned as the other. The short summer nights were over for the year, and the old man had felt with a pang that, in the mean time, at least, he would go no more a gipsying. But the splendor of the moonlight tempted him until he could resist no longer. - There was a bank of whins above the Water of Slams from whence he had often ~vatched the water-birds all night. Yes, the air was soft and warm, he could take no harm. And if he should? How could a lover die better than in the lap ~f his mistress? Dianas foresters, gen. A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. 5 tiemen of the shade, minions of the moon, he said, with a soft laugh. Then he went into the inner sanctum, to take a farewell look at the birds. There was a small family of kittiwakes downy lit- tle morselswhich he had still in hand. The group was not quite to his mind, so he sat down and deftly touched them here and there. Then he rose, and locking the outer door, took the road to the Ward, walking rather unsteadily at times. His feet did not seem to move as freely as they once did, he confessed, rather sadly. I know that whin-bank myselfonce, long ago (when on a summer fishing ram- ble) I slept among the furze. Then I saw something by snatches of the life that Uncle Ned knew by heart. It is a mem- orable experience in its way. The un- quiet and unrest of the daytime are grad- ually subdued as the evening descends. Anon the hoarse cry of the heron, the shrill plaint of the plover, or the wild cry of some belated sea-bird, break at long intervals the quiet murmur that comes seaward across the sandhills. Then there is an hour or so of perfect stillness in the deep of the dead night, which lasts until the grey light begins slowly to gather along the sullen sky. When we are able to look abroad the world is motionless and inanimate, and a heavy cloud of mil- dew hangs over the river. The black- faced sheep had begun to bleat when it was still dark, and now the voices of countless water-birds, who have been waiting for the retreat of the tide, answer each other mournfully through the damp air of the early morning. The air bites shrewdly, said Uncle Ned, by this time settled comfortably in a furze brush. It maun be nigh the dawnin. What a congregation o lang- necked herons a perfect presbytery! I wonder to what relioious persuasion they belano? Maybe they howld wi John Calvin I suld na be surprised. This brae is fairly alive wi bunnies. Dinna mind me, my furry friend; nibble awa wioot stanin on ceremony. The verra witchin time o night! Surely Shake- speare is ~vrang when he maks it of evil repute theres far less evil afoot by night than by day. But he pits the words nae doobt into the mouth of some sinful man, devoured by greed and ambition. The noon of night the innocent, angel- haunted hour when even the inaudible and noiseless foot o time may be heard by the listening ear. See what a fair pro- cession o spiritual forces are on the move, passing across the face of heaven, like the Northern Dancers. And theres the first streak o licht in the east the grey-eyed morn will be moving presently. A heavenly birth! Dayrise that is, the hour before the sun himsel is up to my thinking, is just perfectly divine. The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning. Truly thae auld Hebrew poets had a wonnerfu knack of saying pre- ceesly the richt thing at the richt time. But it was soon clear to Uncle Ned that more than the birds were stirring. In fact their clamor quacking of wild ducks, shrill piping of sandpipers, scream- ing of sea-mews proved that they had been disturbed by man. And in the bright moonlight he discovered across the river a column of men moving down to the ford. The moonlight oleamed upon steel the men had cutlasses in their hands. It was the coastguard. The incoming tide fills all the low ground which lies between the sandhills. When Uncle Ned arrived, the wide level space was flooded. A bright, unquiet plain of waters quivered beneath his feet. But the tide even then was ebbingrun- ning back like a mill-race; and now only a shallow streamlet flowed lazily through the centre of a wide, sandy plain. There was a little delay at the ford; but the men were quickly across. The path from the ford, passing below Char- lies Pot (a noted pool for sea trout), leads almost directly to the bank where Uncle Ned was established. Here it joins the road which runs. up-stream to Ardallie; down-stream across the sandhills to the fishing hamlets at Hells Lum. The night was so still that the hoarse, cheery voice of Captain Knock was rec- ognizable by Uncle Ned. Well, you see, Alister, when I had skewered the first Johnny Crawpaw, I turned upon the ither twa. The ane was a complete Go- liath o Gath in the uniform o the auld Guard. He cam at me like a mad bull o Bashan: but I cauTht him aneath his oxter, and he gaed down like a shot dead as Julius Ca~sar. The last o the three a little, black, pock-marked chiel, wi a lang mustache turned to rin, but I had him on the grun before he could say Jock Wabster. I was a first-rate rinner, Alister, in those days I had taen a the prizes that simmer at the Strath- bogie meetin; so when the general Marlboro, ye ken comes up, Captain Knock, says he I think, sir, said Alister, that this is the place we spoke of; it commands baith the road and the foord. i6 THE CROOKIT MEG: The verra spot so get the men un- der cover, and a mouthfu o speerits, added the gallant captain, diving into his pocket for his flask, will keep the mil- dew oot o the stamack. The men were lying down among the whins and heather, when Uncle Ned, looking towards the sea, saw the advance- guard of the free-traders appear over the sandhills. The richest cargo that the Crookit Meg had yet run was at hand. Slung in panniers on the back of some thirty or forty hill ponies, and guarded by the crew, accompanied by fishermen and farm-laborers, silks from Lyons, gin from Holland, lace from Brussels (and one golden cross set in pearls from Ant- werp), were being conveyed to the inte- rior. At the head of the band came the skipper a noted smuggler of the day. Harry Hacket rode beside the leader; on his other hand a youngster, with a look of premature dare-devilry in his face, but bearing a striking resemblance to Eppie, was laughing merrily like a boy; and indeed Dick Holdfast (the spoiled urchin had been the merest youngster when he ran away to sea, leaving Eppie to monop- olize all the tenderness of the mothers heart in that late autumn of her love) was even yet barely more than a boy. The moonlight was still brilliant, though morning was at hand. The free-traders moved quickly; but at the ford there was a moments pause. It had been arranged that one half of the party should keep to the river road leading to the bog of Ar- dallie, whence the merchandise could be distributed at leisure ; the other halE cross- ing at the ford and making for the old tower of Udny near which the great south road passed. Of this pause the coastguard took advantage. The men sprang to their feet, barred the way, and Captain Knock, who in spite of his brag was as brave as a lion, advanced upon the leaders. Alister was by his side. Hulloo, my freens, have the goodness to stop for one minute. Now, Mr. Skip- per, what may be the meaning of this moonlicht flittin? Come, come, captain, said a deep, rough voice in reply. Dont try any of your tricks upon us. We are good sub- jects of King George, and have no will to meddle with you. So please stand out of the way. The speaker was an English- man. The free-traders were taken by sur- prise. They had heard that the coast- guard were at Collieston, and they fan- cied that the road was clear to the hills. But the cargo was worth fighting for; and, if it came to the worst, they meant to fight. The crew of the lugger were heavily armed. Hang it, skipper, said young Dick, throwing his plaid aside and drawing a pistol from his belt, as he pushed for- ward, the sooner we get this business through the better. He was followed by the crew. There was a confused tumult in the moonlight. Uncle Ned from his perch saw the flash of steel, saw more than one man fall, heard a pistol shot or two, heard Dicks cheery voice and the commodores deep growl. It was clear from the first, indeed, that the fight was one-sided. The crew were out-numbered; the fishermen and the farm-laborers had disappeared before a shot was fired, taking the ponies with them; but the sailors blood was up, and they knew beside that the venture on which each had an interest would be a dead loss, unless they stood their ground. So many oaths were uttered, and some deep gashes given before they yielded. Yet it was all over in a quarter of an hour or less, and Dick, with an ugly cut in his face, when he saw that there was no more fight in the men, managed to reach the close cover of the furze, and crawl, cat- like, aloncr the bank dered. . The rest surren Harry Hacket ~vould have gladly es- caped at the outset had it been possible. But he could not help himself; the crew were behind him, the revenue officers in front. He inwardly cursed his luck: this was the worst scrape of his life; and in truth the whizz of bullets and the flash of steel made his blood run cold. He was a coward at heart; the mere presence of danger of death unnerved and un- manned him. But the rage of despair sometimes takes the semblance of man- hood. One of the coastguard had singled out the horseman (his features obscured by his broad felt hat), and rushed at him with cutlass drawn. Harrys heart beat as if it would burst; but forcEed to face the instant peril, he drove his spurs deep into the mares sides, and sent her at his assailant. He had only a heavy hunting- whip in his hand; but he flung it in the mans face as he raised the cutlass, and it blinded him for the moment., Before lie could recover himself, Hacket had seized the weapon. There was now only a sin- gle man between him and the open. It was Alister. By this time the taste of blood was in his mouth; the wild beast was roused; he could have charged a bat- terx- without winking. Alister was his rival; Alister was his foe. XVith a bitter imprecation, raising the cutlass above his head, and digging the spurs once more into the terrified animal mad with fright he rushed at Alister. Down came the heavy, clumsy weapon; but Alister was unhurt. For just as the mare was plung- ing forward, an old man had risen up out of the thick whins, close in front of the young coastguardsman. Oh, bairns, bairns! said Uncle Ned, lifting his hands. To save his own life Hacket could not have diverted the blow. The heavy weapon came down upon the old mans head with murderous force. Hacket reeled in his saddle, the horror of the deed had sobered him. He gave a wild, startled glance at Alister, into whose arms Uncle Ned had fallen, and then, seeing that the coast was clear, set the mare at the low fence, and disappeared among the sand- hills. The laird himsel, muttered Alister, as he laid the old man on the grass, and knelt tenderly beside him. God be thanked, he continued, as he bound his handkerchief across the wound, its just gashed his cheek. So, Mr. Harry Hacket, this is your doing a braw nichts wark, a braw nichts wark. xxv. BUT Dicks troubles that morning were not yet over. \Vhen he had crawled for half an hour through the furze, he descended into the deep cleft cut by the burn of Forvie, before it joins the greater stream. Then for the first time he ventured to rise to his feet. Thereafter his path lay up the course of the burn, until at a sharp angle, ibout a mile further on, he was able to plunge at one step into the shelter of the ;andhiils. These sandhills are the domi- oant feature of this arid land. The vege- tation is salt and bitter; the prickly bent wounds the hand; there are no living creatures to be seen except the conies, or lo be heard except the curlew; even the ~ardy black-faced sheep, when it loses tself in this Dead Sea valley, simply 4arves. And it is easy to lose your way -- these monotonous undulations are as )ewilderino- as the monotonous levels of he desert. But Dick knew his way veil; and before the morning xvas far ad- :anced he had reached the long tongue ~f rock which runs into the sea between ~ort Erroll and Hells Lum. A sward of hort, sweet, velvety turf carpets the pla- LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXL 1562 7 teau; while on either side the black rock dips sheer into the sea five hundred feet below. The morning iva s simply faultless; and save for one obvious blemish the picture was as perfect as it could be. The sea or what of it was visible was blue as the sky; but the broad, luminous plain did not carry the eye with it as it sometimes does to the outermost horizon; on the contrary, less than a mile from the land an impenetrable bank of fog lay upon the water, a damp and humid veil. To enter into that bank ivas to leave the sheen of the sunlight, and all the pleasant sparkle of the morning, behind you. Dick, lying at full lenoTh along the sward, peered cautiously over the edge of the precipice. It was one of those places where the brain is apt to lose control over the body; where men born on the flats become sick and giddy; where the perilous fascination of knowing the ivorst of it becomes at times imperious and overmastering. But Dick was visited by no imaginative tremors. The verra place, he remarked, as he looked coolly about him. The hoodys nest is not fifty feet awa, and it maun still be possible to swing roun beneath the bank. I learnt the trick from Cummin Summers its a trick worth learnin. Then down the laigh end o that lang, smooth shelf I can see a fute-print here and there and then theres the deep gully that takes you stracht to the water. side. The bit o rotten rock at the corner is not canny the maist part cam awa in my hand the last time I passtbut its only a bit loup after a. And theres the graceless cutty hersel, I declare, safe and snug in the cut. It needs a keen eye, to be sure, to discover the Crookit Meg in Hells Lum, shes as black as the verra rock. Dander has a ready to rin thats clear but how the three o us are to handle her across the water is mair than I can tell. And not a breath o wind in the sky. 0 for a bit breeze, and we might won thro yet Dick appeared to be satisfied with his survey, for he drew back from the brink and threw himself into a clump of heath- er. I wonner, he continued, if I micht venture to steal across to Fontainbleau; the sight o Eppie is gude for sair een. And the auld mither! But the haili coun- try will be up, and we maun manage to creep awa or ever the boats won roun frae Collieston. But what bit lass is this? he continued, as the figure of a A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. iS THE CROOKIT MEG: young girl appeared at the summit of the rocky footpath leading from Port Er- roll. If were not to start till dark she might warn Eppie. A sweet slip of a lass ~ canna surely he little Nan? But little Nan it was, the slim little maiden whom we met the other day at the St. Fergu s ford, a comrade of Dicks in the old days when he had run wild about the country side. Not out of her teens yet, it would seem ; little more than a bairn indeed; innocent as a lamb; adorably unconscious as a bird or a flower. Yet Nan had been early initiated in a sense into the mysteries of love, Dick having been her sweetheart when she was barely five. And eveii to-day though she looks on herself as a great girl now, she is fifteen come March she keeps a very soft place in her heart for Dick, for Dick the truant, who had found his land loves too tame, and was now a rover upon the sea. She gave a great start when she saw him. And then a glad cry of childish delight. 0 Dick Dick! she said, throwing her arms innocently round his neck. But they have hurt you, she continued, with a half sob, as she noticed the cut on his face, and the blood plastered over his cheek. The boy laughed gleefully as he stooped and kissed hershakino- the clotted curls off his forehead. b And its you, little Nan! And youve grown quite a big lass, Nan! And its only a scart on my cheek, my clear! And hows auld Lucky? And is Wasp still to the fore? And now sit you down, my bonny Nan, and tell me what brought you here in the nick o time. She had come to spend the Sabbath with her grandfather at Port Erroll for hes auld and doited, and Peter is aft to the sea, sobbed Nan, in an April storm of tears and laughter. But,O Dick, whar, whar have you been sae lang? rhere was much to tell: but at last the boy roused himself from a pleasant dream. Would it be possible, I wonner, to let Eppie ken that I am here? he asked, somewhat anxiously. Ill tell her, Nan replied eagerly. I ken the short cut thro the moss Nan was still speaking when a low, cautious whistle sounded a note of warn- Look, Dick, look! she exclaimed breathlessly. Her quick eye had caught the gleam of steel in the low morning sun- light. Its the coastguard, she said, pointing towards the land. Oh, Dick, they will kill you. Stand whar you are, Nan; dinna muve. Gie Eppie a kiss frae me, an the dear auld mither: and heres anither for yoursel, my bonny bairn. They wonna touch you, be sure; but dinna muve, dinna muve. They were standing on the very edge of the cliff. Sure enough it was the coastguard: the enemy had run him down at last. The tongue of rock was long and narrow, and the men were well between him and the land. Dick was in a trap: the door of escape was barred. As the men advanced towards the spot where the figure of the girl stood erect and motionless against the sky, one of them raised his gun. But the other in- terposed. Dinna, Cohn, dinna ye may hurt the lass. Its not possible that he can jink us now; hes fairly trapped. The men came closer and closer to where she stood. There were two of them Cohn and Jim handsome, dash- ing young fellows as one could wish to see among the rigging of a man-of-war. Little Nan for the moment was in the heroic mood, or very near it. She stood there breathless white - lipped with round, wide-open blue eyes her hands pressed tightly together. But the heroic mood was not suited for Nan. As one of the men caught her roughly by the shoul- der and pushed her aside with an angry oath Dn it, man, h& s awa, she broke down of a sudden, and sobbed bit- terly bitterly as if her heart would break. Puir Dick ! puir Dick! The men crawled cautiously towards the brink; but they quickly drew back. The bank of turf on which they rested xvas a mere cornice projecting over a giddy void; it had been undermined by wind and rain; it shook, or seemed to shake, with their weight. The wall itself of which it formed the coping leancJ towards the sea; so that unle~s you chose to bend your neck, as Dick had done, clean over the abyss, it was impossible to scan the face of the precipice, or to see ingas it seemed to them. It came what was going on at its base. from among the rocks about the point. And yet they did see something They started to their feet. A flock of something that arrested their practised grey plover were wheeling overhead, eyes in a moment. A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. 9 The Crookit Meg, by God! the Crookit Meg hersel! She ~vas lying in a deep gash or cut in the rock, a splendid natural basin in which a three-decker might have rode. There was not a soul to be seen on board; yet the slim little craft looked instinct with eager life, like the captive animal through whose veins the yearning to be free pulses with a fierce thrill. Her half-furled sails flapped idly as if wooing the reluctant breeze; a line that ran across her bow was fastened to the buoy outside the reef, where through the long summer days the Port Erroll boats are moored; yes, she is ready to slip away at any moment, like a bird in the hand, or a greyhound on the leash. Not a soul stirring, says Cohn, and the sea like glass. There maun be boats at Port Erroll handy, well stop her yet. But, 0 Jim, my man, shes a rare beauty! But as it turned out, the boats at Port Erroll ~vere not handy; were, indeed, for some reason or other, quite the reverse of handy. They had been dragged far up the beach past the big boulders, and the oars had been care- fully stowed away. It takes half-a-dozen men to move these unwieldy craft, and there ~vas not a man about the place that morning ~vho was not bedridden. The women stood at the doors, and looked moodily at the gauger bodies. At last they succeeded in launching a boat. But in the interval a good half- hour had passed. The stout young fellows settle to their oars, however, and pull like grim death. But ere they round the headland, which rises sheer out of the deep water, they feel a breath of air upon their faces; and even as they round it they see, not the bare masts and the black hull of the becalmed lugger amo nb the rocks, but the Crookit Meg, the Crookit Meg in her finest dress and queenliest mood, a shining mass of snow-white canvas, stealing a way like a cloud. And yet the breeze had barely touched her as yet. Shes a precious beauty, said Cohn again, unable, in spite of his mortifica- tion, to repress a deep-drawn sioh rap- turous as a lovers. They laid down their oars, and, rising to their feet, watched her as she stood straight out to sea. But even while they looked the fresh- ening breeze filled her sails, and she passed from their eyes as a dream passes. A close, warm, steamy mist thick and impenetrable as night rested on the wa ter, not five hundred yards from the shore. Into this she entered cutting the solid fog cleanlylike a knife. It was the last they saw of the Crookit Meg. The last of the Crookit Meo- so far as this story is concerned. For the strange adventures of Dick Holdfast in the earlier years of the century must form the subject of a separate record. xxvii. EPPIE went down next morning to her mothers room in a sort of stupor. Utter weariness and hopelessness had taken possession of her. Her heart had opened out to the sun, and a frost had come and nipped it to the core. To her the blos- soming spring-time had been the time of death not of physical death, but of spir- itualthe death of hope, of joy, and of love. Had Mrs. Holdfast been herself she must have noticed her daughters apathy. But her hold on life had got weaker and weaker, the silver cord that moors us to time had been slackened, and sh& was drifting away to that still, strange land the shadowy home of the shadows. The things of this world were falling from her. Even her engrossing love for her cherished pet had begun to grow feeble,she was making new friends, seeking out fresh interests elsewhere. Where? Still there was a soft o4eam of satisfaction in her eye when Eppie pressed her hand and kissed her cheek. Eppie went mechanically ahout the du- ties of the house. She made no mis- takes; but she was quite unconscious of what she said, and of what was said to her. It was a close, sultry day for October; but she had not the least notion whether it was fair or foul. Exciting scraps of news were brought into the kitchen, and stolidly discussed by the farm-laborers when they returned to their early dinners: but she did not notice that anything was amiss. About midday she took her hat in her hand and went out of doors. She went as far as the garden. Some late yellow roses still hung on the bushes; she gath- ered a handful mechanically and stuck them into the breast of her dress. lt had been her habit since she was a child; but if any one had asked her that day where she had plucked them, she could not have told. There was a rustling among the elder bushes, and the elfish face of the Dee- vilikie peered through the branches. Eppies ear was sharper than a black- 20 ON ANTS. cocks; but to-day it appeared that her Wilhelm Platz at Berlin, under which senses had grown torpid as her soul. they have written (or is it only in the old The Deevilikie had to touch her dress church at Hochkirch ?) an inscription not before she noticed him. Miss Eppie, easily surpassable in the lapidary way.--- Miss Eppie, said the imp, I was bid- words which go through you like the den to tell you that for Gods sake youre clang of steel. * to meet him at Cairnbannow. Hell be There was no sound in the sick-chain- waitin for you at fowr. Then he ~vent ber that night: it had ceased to be the on, leering at her maliciously: Theres chamber of sickness and had become the been a gran splore at Hells Lum. So chamber of death. There had been no they sax. The tae half hae been sticket, sound in it, at least, since Mark, hastily and the tither drooned. The rest ill be summoned, threw himself on his knees hangit. And an expression of impish beside the bed, which, with its still occu- delight pervaded the impish face, which pant, had been made smooth, and decent, had been turned prematurely into a leath- and comely for the grave. 0 mither, ery brown by the fire of the forge. mither, but I did love you, cried poor Eppie never thought of resisting re- Mark, who in the grim reticence of his sistance would not avail her. She must love had never said so much before. But dree her weird. She must meet her a Scotsman is a grim animal. doom. The stars had been too strong Do not blame Eppie overmuch. To do for her, her justice (and as the old proverb says, Ill be there, she said, in a voice Its a sin to lee on the deil,) she had which sounded dry and out of tune. Ill no notion whatever that the end was be there in time. near. XVithout even looking at the boy she returned to the house. She told Watty to have the pony caught and saddled. It could wait in the stable till she was ready, and he might go with the men to their work. Then she mounted the stairs to her bed-room, and changed her dress. Putting her hand into the pocket of her riding-habit, she found some papers. She looked at them with a puzzled air; she could not at all remember how they had come there. Then the scene with Corbie flashed across her mind. Yes: they were Harry Hackets; she would take them to him. It was now three oclock; Cairn- bannow was an hours ride. So she went into her mothers room, stool)ed do~vn, and kissed her, and said, How are you, mither? There was no reply; only a wan smile on the worn face. Eppie kissed her again, falling on her knees beside the bed. Then she rose up and went out: the anxious, questioning eyes following her to the door. How long they followed her was never known. It was an hour or two before Mennie could go back to her mistress, and during that hour they must some- times have sought the door through which Eppie had passed, and by which she would return. But she did not return in time; nor did any one. The appealing eyes grew dim; the heart beat fainter and fainter; and Mrs. Holdfast died as she I had lived a strong, solitary, self-reliant soul, a true daughter of the masterful Keiths: recalling to me, indeed, when I think of her, the bronze statue in the ASTRONOMY has made us all familiar with the conception of world on world above our heads. We no longer specu- late with Epicurus and Anaxagoras whether the sun may not be as large as a quoit, or even as large as Peloponnesus. We are satisfied that the greater and the lesser hi5hts are worlds, some of them greatly exceeding our own in magnitude. But few of us realize the worlds on worlds at our feet, worlds which leave us as com- pletely outside as if we belonged to an- other planet; worlds not set to our clocks, that probably have a wholly different time to ours; worlds full of sounds, which are dead silence to us, but across which our loudest thunder breaks not in the faintest * The reader must turn to carlyles Frederick the Great, vol. V., p. 373. Or stay. Here it is Dum in Prtelio non procul bloc Inclinatum suorum aciem Mente inanu yore et exemplo Restituehat Pugnans ut heroas decet Occubuit n.xiv. Octobris. This of course (under the modest urn of black marble on the pedestal of grey) is in the neighboring church at Hochkirch; the bronze statue at Berlin is another affair altogether. Of which, however, (let me say here), a copy in bronze was sent not many sears since by the king of Prussia to the capital ef ihe granite countries from whence the Keiths cameless in re- membrance, I suspect, of the Scotch captain than of the Scotch historian of his great ancestor. So said Bismarck at least, if I am not mistaken. From The contemporary Review. ON ANTS. ON ANTS. whisper; inarticulate worlds, yet pos- sessed of some kind of unknown lan- guage; worlds full of inexplicable phe- nomena, moving to other ends than ours, and governed by mental laws to which our own give us only the faintest clue. In a little poem of Dante Rossettis, he describes a mood of violent grief in which, sitting with his head bowed between his knees, he unconsciously eyes the wood- spurge growing at his feet, till from those terrible moments he carries off the one trivial fact, cut into his brain for all time, that the wood-spurge has a cup of three.~~ in some such mood of troubled thought, flung perhaps full-length on the turf, have we not as unconsciously and intently watched a little ant, trudging across our prostrate form intent upon its glorious polity; a creature to which we, with our great spiritual world of thought and emo- tion and ~vill, have no existence, except as a sudden and inconvenient upheaval of parti-colored earth to be scaled, of un- known geological formation, but wholly worthless as having no bearing upon the one great end of life, the care of larwe. But if the lower life completely shuts out the higher, the higher life, while in- cluding the lower, has the greatest diffi- culty in penetrating beyond its threshold. Our keys are too large to fit the wards of the lock that would open to us its re- cesses. Our very touch is too often death. We have mostly but the sense of sight to carry us within these other worlds of sentient life. We stand as spectators on its threshold, trying to guess the meaning of all this dumb show, trying to penetrate to its secret springs, trying to surprise some answering look of intelli- gence. Michelet, the poet-observer of nature, tells us of his quaint efforts to find out whether insects have a physiog- nomy, to look into their averted faces and detect some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner existence, some reflection from within of the intelligence of ant and bee, which, judging by its work, so closely resembles our own; some an- swering look, such as in the dog kindles into wistful tenderness, or patiently abides in the large, melancholy eyes of oxen. But at length, when he had turned the little creature on its back, and looked it straio-ht in the face, with its external teeth cr mandibles moving horizontally, its mo- tionless composite eyes consisting of fifty facets, its palpi at the entrance of the mouth, and its vibrating and mobile an- tenn~e, all fixed in a horny case, he found imself confronted with a strange, im 21 movable mask rather than a living physi- ogno my. That mailed insect face is ex- pressionless to us. There are no win- dows looking our way from the insect world. Whatever knowledge we gain of it must be gained by patient observation from ~vithout, and inferences verified by careful and repeated experiments. To this patient observation of the lower forms of life and exl)erimental research with regard to their laws and limitations, the great modern doctrine of evolution has given an additional incentive, teach- ing us that One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. Whatever perplexity still besets us with regard to their inner nature, Cuviers idea that animals are givenus as simpler sec- tions of the infinitely complex problem, man diagrams leading up to the more complicated structure must be funda- mentally true; and in the philosophy of the future we shall probably live to be amazed at the way metaphysicians have rushed at natures last and most difficult proposition, man, and spent themselves in vain efforts to solve it, while neglect- ing all the humbler steps afforded by ani- mal life, by which physiology would have gradually led them up to it. Even those who hold, with Mr. Wallace, that the dif- ference between men and animals is one of kind, and not only of degree man, possessed of an intelligent will that fore- appoints its own ends, of a conscience that imposes upon him a categorical im- perative, of spiritual faculties that can apprehend and worship the invisible yet even they must hold that his lower animal nature, which forms as it were the platform of the spiritual, is built up from lower organisms. If we hold, with Pro- fessor AlIman, that thought, and still more will and conscience, though only mani- festing themselves through the medium of cerebral protoplasm, are not its prop- erties, any more than the invisible rays which lie beyond the violet are the prop- erty of the medium which, by altering their refrangibility, makes them manifest, the study of the exact nature and proper- ties of the transmitting medium is equally necessary. Indeed, the whole position can only be finally established by defining experimentally the necessary limitations of the medium, and proving the insuf- ficiency of the lower data to account for the higher. It is these higher considerations and wicLer issues that give such a peculiar in. 22 ON ANTS. terest to the patient observation which has been recently brought to bear upon the habits of the social insects, especially of ants, which, living in community, pre- sent so many of the conditions of human life, and the development of the tribal self from those conditions, to which Professor Clifford attributed the genesis of the moral sense. In order to pass in review these in- teresting observations and bring out their significance, I must go over ground which is doubtless familiar to many of my readers. The associative industry of ants has excited wonder and admiration from the earliest ages. That some were winged among swarms of wingless individuals was a fact that could not escape the most cursory observation but so little have we cared to know about these other pop- ulous worlds of sentient life so closely imitating our own, and therefore appeal- ing the more to our curiosity, that it was not till the seventeenth century that the Dutch naturalist, Swammerdam, first as- certained by dissection that the winged individuals ~vere the males and females, and that the others were sterile females, and, in fact, belonged to that despised class of old maids by which so much useful ~vork is done in the human as well as in the insect world. It would seem as if suppressed instincts of sex in nature were intended to supply the finest poten- tial energy or stored-up force. In these sterile females the organs of reproduq- tion remain in a rudimentary state. Some individuals, however, prove fertile; but, strange to say, seem only capable of pro- ducing males. The queen, or fertile ant, is probably brought up, as in the case of bees, upon different food, though we have no direct knowledge of this fact with regard to ants. Sir John Lubbock is disposed to believe it because, as lie states, while hundreds, I might say thousands, of workers have been bred in my nests, and a large number of males, not a single queen has been produced in any one of them. * it is these sterile females that, as in bees, form the workers, and to which the task of building, excavating, purveying, tending the young, and I reluctantly add, in some species, the less feminine func- tion of fighting belongs. Some, like the common Formica rufa, build vast struc- tures of all sorts of alien materials, sink- ing fairy piles into the ground, and with * Linnecin Socielys 7curna? vol. xiv., p. 609(1879). indescribable art dovetailing in little bits of ~vood to form durable partitions. Others, like the mason-ant, build of earth alone, moistened with rain-water, and kneaded into tiny bricks while others, again, the mining ants, making use of a flat stone for their canopy, excavate ex- tensive subterranean galleries and chain. hers. Some make themselves a city to dwell in within the heart of a tree, sculp- turing out numberless stories whose floors and ceilings are as thin as paper, sup- ported sometimes by vertical partitions, sometimes by concentric rows of slender pillars, the whole imbued with a blackish tint, by what agency remains obscure. For all these marvellous works they have no other chisel than their teeth, no other compass or carpenters rule than their antenn~, and no other trowel than their fore-feet, with which they affix and con- solidate the moistened earth. The Bra- zilian -Ecodouza ce~haio1es, as well as some other species, use the leaves of trees in the construction of their nests. On a perfectly calm day the passer-by is surprised to see the leaves of a tree in full foliage falling in a shower. Closer observation betrays an ant sawing dil- lig~ntly at the foot-stalk, while other ants at the foot of the tree are engaged in cutting the fallen leaves into circular pieces. The singular sight of thousands of these ants returning from their de- structive harvest, and presenting the aspect of a multitude of animated leaves of a circular shape, has given them the name of parasol ants, in Surinam. With these leaves interposed between the layers of kneaded earth they manage to felt the large domes which cover their exten- sive edifices, many of them from three to six feet in height, and as much as thirty to forty yards in circumference, and thus render them imliervious to even the tor- rents of tropical rain. One knows not which to admire the most, their ingenuity in perceiving that no layer of earth, how- ever tempered, would resist a tropical downpour, or the admirable method with which they work, one band of ants being told off to bring the materials to a central depot, and another to place the leafy tiles in due order on the roof. But the architectural labors of ants, as is well known, form but the least part of the life-work of these industrious little creatures. Their chief labor is bestowed on the care of the young. The eggs ~vhen first laid are extremely minute, but, not being enclosed in a rigid envelope, have the power of growth when in con- ON ANTS. 23 tact with the air. The workers collect them and place them in special chambers, moving them from one to the other to secure the right temperature. The larv~ which issue from them are helpless crea- tures, only just able to raise their heads a little, and open their mouths to receive the food with which their devoted nurses supply them from their own mouth. Every morning they carry them up to the surface chambers, and on fine days ex- pose them to the gentle heat of the sun. But when the rays grow too powerful they are carried down to the underground cellars, the action of each day being varied according to the atmospheric con- ditions. When come to maturity, the larv~ of most species spin a cocoon, and inside this satin shroud pass into pup~. The insect in this state has acquired the figure and size it will finally present, strength and consistence alone being wanting. It continues to move for some moments after quitting the larva state, but soon becomes immovable; it afterwards changes gradually in color, passing from fine white to a pale yellow, then becom- in~ red or brown or black, to its species. When the perfect insect is ready to come forth, it is powerless to liberate itself, like other insects, from its silken grave-clothes. This the workers proceed to do, employing their teeth as we should a pair of scissors, the operation being apparently conducted with much joyous excitement and bustle in the ant- hill, the ants relieving themselves in turn with the utmost alacrity. Even when the outer cocoon is rent away, the insect is still enclosed in a cobwebby structure, from ~vhich it has again to be rescued, when it is able to walk about a little and receive nourishment. A process of education seems then to be carried on, the workers accompanying the young ants everywhere, guiding them through the labyrinths of their habitation, nourishing them, training the workers to their xvork, and performing the difficult task of extending the delicate wings of the males and females without injuring the gauzy texture. At length, on some warm, midsummer day, the temperature not below 67~ Fah- renheit, the ant-hill is seen to be in a state of great commotion. Its surface glitters with the winged males that come forth by hundreds from their subterranean dwell- ing, soon followed by the females, who are in much smaller numbers and of a larger size, but clothed with the same rainbow- hued investiture of wings; crowds of workers mingle with the bridal throng, continually running from one to the other of their winged charges, proffering them their tender offices for the last tune. Suddenly, as with one general impulse, the inspiration of flight comes upon them, and these creatures, the inheritors of dark cellars and sunless, underground corri- dors, soar away with one consent into the boundless sunshine, joyously playing about the tops of trees or moving in light clouds above the sunny pastures, while they consummate their union beneath the liberal sky as their bridal chamber, the ~vorkers meantime retiring into the nest and closing the doors, feeling, one would say, a little flat. It is curious that notwithstanding the labor of so many excellent observers, and though ant-nests swarm in every field and wood, we should find so much diffi- culty in tracing the after-history of these winged myriads after they disappear into the air, and that so much obscurity should rest on the mode of origin of new, com- munities. Unlike the queen-bee, which adopts a circling flight round her hive when she goes forth to meet the male in the air, the male and female ants fly straight off in a right line from the nest, and seemingly never return to it, a few impregnated females being detained by the workers, and despoiled of their wings, to keep up the population. The male al)- parently p!ays that distressin~ly subordi- nate part which nature seems to assign to him in the insect world, and which makes one wonder by what action of the environment on his feeble endowments he has developed his preposterous pre- tensions in higher circles. Unendowed with weapons of offence, without chisel- shaped teeth, or sting, or ovipositor, Huber considers the life of the male ant cannot be of long continuance after he has fulfilled his office of reproduction. His privileges in the ant-world are purely negative. He is not exposed to the dan- ger of being eaten by his cannibal spouse, as among spiders, nor to be set upon and assassinated by infuriated spinsters, as among bees, who might have learned gen- tler manners from the flowers. Nature simply dismisses him with contemptuous starvation. The female, after impregnation, falls to the ground, and proceeds deliberately to despoil herself of her bridal finery and pull off her own wings, in token, it would seem, of beginning housekeeping life in earnest. No sooner does she fall to the ground than she extends her wings, cross- 24 ON ANTS. ing them in every direction, throwing them from side to side, and going through the most singular contortions, till all four wings fall off, often simultaneously. But does she, under ordinary circumstances, either join an old nest, or associate her- self with a certain number of ~vorkers, and ~vith their assistance begin a new nest; or does she found a new nest by herself, as Huber and Blanchard both assert, becoming at once mother and nurse till the laborers are come to matu- rity? Forel and Ebrard, after repeated observations, maintain that in no single case has an isolated female been known to bring her young to maturity. Lepele- tier St. Farge au is of opinion that ants nests originate in the manner first sug- gested. This may possibly be the case with some species; but Sir John Lub- bock repeatedly tried introducing a new fertile queen into another nest of Lasius favus, and always with the result that the workers became very excited and killed her, even though in one case the nest was without a queen. Of the other kinds, he isolated two pairs of Myrmica rugluodis, and though the males died the queens lived, and brought their offspring to per- fection ; and nearly a year after their capture, Sir John Lubbock watched the first young workers carrying the larv~ about, thereby proving the accuracy of Hubers statement, with at least some species. The workers remained about six weeks in the egg, a mon th in the larva state, and twenty-five or twenty-seven days as pup~. Our indigenous ants, besides feeding on small flies, insects, and caterpillars, the carcases of which they may be seen drag- ging back to the nest with the energy of a Homeric hero preparing a feast, show the greatest avidity for sweet liquids. They are capable of absorbing large quantities, which they disgorge into the mouths of their companions. In winter- time, when the ants are nearly torpid and do not require much nourishment, two or three ants told off as foragers are suffi- cient to provide for the whole nest. We all know how ants keep their herds in the shape of the aphides, which supply them with the sweet liquid they exude. Most of us have observed a stream of ants ascending a tree, and another stream as regularly descending, like a troop of dairy-maids forth to their pastures. Some species, principally the masons and miners, remove their aphides to plants in the immediate vicinity of their ant-hill, or even introduce them into the nest. In the interior of some nests is also found the small blind beetle, Glavz~rer, glisten- ing and of a uniform red, its mouth of so singular a conformation that it is inca- pable of feeding itself. The ants care- fully feed these poor little dependent creatures, and in turn lick the sweet liquid which they secrete and exude. These little coleoptera are only found in the nests of some species. When intro- duced into the nests of others they excite great bewilderment, and having been carefully turned over and examined, are in a short time killed, as useless com- inodity. Another active species of cole- optera, of the family of Stap/zyliul, is also found in ant-nests. Furnished with wings, it does not remain in the nest but is forced to return thither by the same strange incapacity to feed itself. Like the Ciavz~er it repays its kind nurses by the sweet liquid it exudes, and which is retained by a tuft of hair on either side of the abdomen beneath the wings, that the creature liftsln order that the ant may get at its honeyed recom- pense. Such mutual services between creatures in no way allied is a most curi- ous fact in the animal world. Still stranger is the fact that there should be ~vhole species of ants that are themselves incapable of supplying their own food or feeding themselves when it is provided. These are the fa. mous slave-making Amazon ants, with slender-arched and finely-pointed mandi- bles, fitted for scimitars, but useless as instruments of labor; weapons with which they attack the nest of another species and carry off the larv~ and l~uP~e to swell the retinue of their slaves, who feed and clean them, nurse their young, and build their dwellings. Parted from their slaves, they perish miserably. It is no use, says Sir John Lubbock, giving them foodsay, honey; they will not touch it. Or rather, they walk carefully over it, smear their legs and die, if a slave is not put in to clean and dry them. I found, however, that I could keep even a single Polyergus rufesceus alive for more than three months by giving her a slave for about an hour a day to attend on and feed her. I have one at this mo- ment which has been so treated since November, and ~vhich is still alive and well ; and he adds, in a foot-note, April 13th. She is still well. * Many of us are familiar with Huber~s charming description of the warlike expe * Linnean Sociefys rournal, vol. xiii., p. 246 (1878). ON ANTS. 25 ditions of the Amazons (Polyergus riefes- cens), starting between three and five on a fine midsummer afternoon, in a close column, eight or ten inches in width, the signal to march being conveyed by strik- ing the breasts and foreheads of their companions with their antennx. There is no commander-in-chief, but there is always a small number constantly return- ing from the van to the rear, and it is probably in this way- that the movement of the whole army is guided. When they reach a nest of the negro ant (Formica fasca) or the miners (Formica cuniceela- i-ia) they attack it with the utmost fury, carrying off the larv~ and pup~e of work- ers alone, which are recognizable by their small size, and sometimes returning three times to the assault. On one occasion Huher witnessed a whole army, appa- rently deceived as to its route. It halted several times, and at length, after d verg- ing in fruitless search on all sides, it fell again into column, and marched back with empty mandibles. Upon their re- turn the negro ants behaved much like Englishmen buffeting the unsuccessful warriors, and dragging them to the out- side of the nest, and only after a time suffering them to re-enter their dwelling. On the appearance of some of the fero- cious legionary ants of South America (Eci/on Izamata and Eciton dretanot/zora) marching in formidable cohorts, armed with large trenchant mandibles and stings, the traveller can only save himself by instant flight. Should he be foolhardy enough to stand his ground he is rap- idly reduced to the exclamation wrung from the Scotch open-air preacher, who, yielding to the fatigue of standing through a long discourse, incautiously sat down on an ant-hill, and, having been observed to fidget a good deal, at last interrupted his fifthly by pathetically remarking, My hearers, I trust the grace of God is in my heart, but I think the deil himsel has got into my breeks! From the earliest times poets have sung the providence of the ant in storing up grain against the day of dearth, from He- siod, who speaks of the time when the provident one harvests the grain, T t6ptr a~pbv fiJu2Tat, and the well-known words of Solomon, do~vn to 1-brace, who alludes to the fore- sight of the ant hand z~nara ac non incauta fat un. But the naturalists, after careful observations, pronounced the poets in the wrong; that ants did not garner grain, that it would be impossible for them to eat such hard substances as seeds; and moreover, since they become torpid in winter, they have no need of stored-up provisions. It was reserved for Charles Lesp~s to vinoicate poetical insight, and to suggest the true solution, that the naturalists had been observing the ants of the north, and that the harvesting ants chiefly inhabit the borders of the Mediterranean. From the careful observation of the ants of Provence he ascertained that certain spe- cies do store seeds, and their object in so doing. It is well known that seeds, in germinating, produce a certain amount of sugar, while the outer coating of the seed becomes soft. It is on germination that ants devour the sweet pulp of the seed. These observations were confirmed by a young Englishman, Treherne Mog- gridge, exiled to Mentone for the disease which was to cause his early death, and spending the last years of his life in ob- serving the habits of the harvesting ants (At/a barbara and A/ta structor) of the guarrzgwes, as the wild, uncultivated up- land soil, with its sparse vegetation, is called. He unearthed their granaries, beautifully paved with little glistening flags of mica and silex to secure the seed from rotting, and reached by long corri- dors. By what means they prevent the numerous seeds of fumitory, veronica, flax, etc., from germinating before they are wanted for use in these underground cav- erns, only a few inches removed from the heat of the sun, is a mystery, more espe- cially as, when planted, they appear quite uninjured. Moggridge does not hesitate to attribute to ants some curious charm exerted over seeds! It is a satisfaction to find that even ants are not infallible. On strewing some large, seed-like beads in their path, they were eagerly seized on, the little creatures struggling bravely with their porcelain loads. But an hour or two seemed sufficient to teach them their innutritious nature, and streams of ants passed the remaining beads without tak- ing the least notice of them. Moggridge was also an interested ob- server of the fierce predatory wars waged between rivals ant-nests inhabited by the same species, with a view to carry off the coveted grain. Ants fight with the utmost fury. So deadly is their grip that fre- quently the whole abdomen of the enemy is torn away; and yet, though little more than an infuriated head and legs, she still keeps up the fight. Sir John Lubbock states that he has frequently found an 26 ON ANTS. enemys head hanging on to the legs of a reach, though they could touch it with living ant, who, through the tenacity of their antenn~ but it did not occur to the grip, is obliged to carry about with them to heap up the earth a little, though her on the most festive occasions this if they had moved half a dozen particles ghastly and inconvenient memento of her of earth they would have secured for victory. M. Mocqueys even assures us themselves direct access to the food. At that the Indians of Brazil make use of length they gave up all attempts to reach this tenacity in the case of wounds; caus- up to the glass and went round by the ing the ant to bite the lips of the cut and paper bridge. I left the arrangement for thus bring them together, after which several weeks, but they continued to go they cut off the ants head, which thus round by the long paper bridge. * holds the lips of the wound together. He Again, he placed a straw so as to form asserts that he has often seen natives a tiny bridge communicating with some with ~vounds in course of healing with the larwe. After twenty-five ants were en- assistance of seven or eight ants heads! gaged in removing the larv~, he removed The curious migratory ant (Tcz~i;zoma the bridge slightly so as to leave a chasm erra/idum) has, however, a stran e and just so wide that the ants could not reach most distinct method of defendinb itself. across. They tried hard to do so, but it Should an ordinary ant menace it with its did not occur to them to push the straw mandibles it immediately turns round, across the gap of one-third of an inch. On and agitating its abdomen, dans bus les the other hand, on filling up the hole as Mr. Blanchard expresses it, leading to some provisions to the depth ejects an extremely volatile and strongly- of half an inch, some individuals of Lasius smelling liquid, followed by a sazeve qul niger began immediately tunnelling down pezet on the part of the adversary, who, exactly over the hole, carrying off the if not swift enough to escape the unex- grains of earth until they had excavated pected doz2c/ze, is seen to roll in the dust down to the doorway, this intelligent as if a prey to convulsions, action lying in the line of their habitual After so many wonderful instances of activities. This experiment was tried adaptation of means to an end, of mov- with another species, Lashis flavus, xvith ing one thing to or from another and put- the same result. ting them into fit places for being acted That ants have, to quote from upon by their own internal forces or by Messrs. Kirby and Spence, the means those residing in other natural objects, of communicating to each other informa- in which J. S. Mill states the whole of tion of various occurrences and use a kind mans action on nature consists, we are of language which is mutually understood prepared for yet more marvellous revela- . . . and is not confined merely to giving tions of the intelligence of ants from the intelligence of the approach or absence of series of experiments and careful obser- danger, but is also co-ordinate ~vith all vations Sir John Lubbock has been carry- their other occasions for communicating ing out. Yet their result has been rather their ideas to each other, most natural- to prove its curious limitations outside ists are agreed. Indeed, no creatures certain trunk lines of age-long habit, its could live in community without some strictly stored-up accumulative and heredi- simple method of communication by signs. tary character, residing rat her in the race That the antenn~ are the means of com- than in the individual. On one occa munication admits of no doubt, and it is sion, he says, I suspended some honey also generally held that they are in addi- in a glass about half an inch above a nest tion organs of sense; but whether their of Lasius Jiazus, and accessible by a functions are olfactory or auditory is a paper bridge more than ten feet long, point in which naturalists are divided. Under the glass I then placed a small There are in the antenn~e of ants certain heap of earth. The ants soon swarmed curious or~ans which over the earth on to the glass, and began considers b Sir John Lubbock may be of an auditory charac- feeding on the honey. I then removed a ter. These, says Sir John Lubbock, little of the earth, so that there was an consist of three parts, a curved spher- interval of about one-third of an inch be- ical cup, opening to the outside, a long, tween the glass and the earth; but, though narrow tube, and a hollow body shaped the distance was so small, they would not like an elongated clock-weight. T hey are jump down but preferred going round by about ten in number, and may serve to the long bridge. They tried in vain to increase the resonance of sounds, acting, stretch up from the earth to the glass, which, ho~vever, was just out of their * Linnean Socie/ys Yourna4 vol. xiv., p. 267 (1879). ON ANTS. 27 in fact, to use the words of Professor Tyndall, who was good enough to look at them with me, like microscopic steth- oscopes. Several of the other seg- ments of the antenna~ also contain these curious organs. The fact of ants being apparently stone- deaf to our loudest sounds of course proves nothing, only that their octave is different from ours. Approaching an ant which was standing quietly, Sir John Lubbock over and over again made the loudest and shrillest noises, using a penny pipe, a dog whistle, a violin, as well, he says, as the most piercing and start- ling sounds I could produce with my own voice, without any effect except, per- haps, that of startling his own household. But whether ants are susceptible to sound or not, there is no doubt of the sensitiveness of their olfactory nerves, though the exact seat of those nerves is a matter of great dispute. Latreille makes the following statement: Le sens de Podorat, se manifestant dune inani~re aussi sensible, je voulais profiter de cette remarque pour en d~couvrir ]e si~ge. On a soup~onn~ depuis longtemps quil residait dans les antennes, je les arrachai ~ plusicurs fourmis fauves ouvri~res aupr~s du nid des- quelles je me trouvais. Je vis aussitflt les petits animaux que javais ainsi mutilds tomber dans un dtat divresse, ou une esp~ce de folie. us erraient ~a et l~, et ne reconnaissait plus leur chemin. We are glad that Sir John Lubbock dryly remarks, I have not felt disposed to repeat M. Latreilles experiment; but more merciful experiments of his show at least the sensitiveness of ants to smells. A camel-hair brush dipped in peppermint water, essence of cloves, etc., and suspended about a quarter of an inch .Wove them, produced the most marked effect, inducing some to turn back and retrace their steps. His observations also prove that ants track one another, even when in company, rather by scent than by sight, and that single ants find their way backwards and forwards to a store of food entirely by tracking their own scent; in experiments where the honey was moved t~vo or three inches to the right or the left while the ant was feeding, she appeared utterly at fault, and wandered about aimlessly, though her true route was marked out by conspicuous landmarks with which in former journeys she must have become familiar, and though she had previously gone backwards and forwards to the nest with extreme direct- ness, guided evidently by scent. The evidence of observation would therefore tend to show that the antennae of ants are organs of touch, that their structure seems to betoken some acous- tic functions, and that they may~be the seat of the olfactory nerves, though, as they present no humid surface, this has been contested by many naturalists. un- questionably, in some insects they are auditory organs, as in the case of the Loczistz vzridissima, which, though very sensitive to sound, lost all power of hear- ing when the antenn~ were removed, though apparently not otherwise affected. May not this sense of smell account for the power that individuals of the same nest have of recognizing each other after a separation of a years duration? May it not be that they recognize not the indi- vidual, but a certain generic smell which gives to the individual in possession of it the odor of sanctity? When we remem- ber the, to us, altogether unthinkable sensitiveness of the olfactory nerves of a dog, which enables him to track his mas- ter and distinguish the scent left by his passing footsteps from all others, this is surely not an impossible channel of rec- ognition, and more likely than such an astonishing effort of memory as we must otherwise suppose, many nests possessing as many as one hundred thousand indi- viduals. Sir John Lubbock considers the fact of intoxicated ants reeking with whiskey being recognized as fatal to this explanation. But surely even with our, by comparison, inconceivably coarser ol- factory nerves, we could discern a friend who had supped on whiskey and onions; and may not their immeasurably acuter sense be able to distinguish smells to a degree inconceivable to us? Sir John Lubbock has proved by repeated experi- ments that they do not recognize one an- other by any password or sign, placing the larv~ or pup~e of a species, of which the ants of every nest are deadly enemies, out at nurse in a strange nest, the young being always well received, and when they had come to maturity returning them to the original nest, where they are always received as friends, though brought up in a strange nest, of which they could in this case alone have known the sign or pass- word. Ants, like bees, can distinguish colors; colored glasses, curiously enough, seem- ing to affect them inversely to their action on a photographic plate. They have a most sensitive dislike to violet, and, much as they dislike light, would lay their pup~ under a strip of yellow glass rather 28 ON ANTS. than under one of violet, though the yel- them had got thoroughly entangled in it. I low scarcely intercepted the light and the took her and put her down just in front of an- violet was comparatively opaque. As other specimen belonging to the same nest, and they prefer red to yellow or green, and close by placed a drop of honey. The ant these again to violet, it was suggested devoted herself to the honey, and entirely that it might be the chemical rays that neglected her friend, whom she left to perish. were distasteful to them; but on these Again being cut off, or rather turned into visible rays by fluorescent liquids, the result was the same. Lastly, we come to the very interesting question, How far can social conditions evolve a morality? How far does the mutual dependence of ants develop the altruistic sentiments? How far does natural selection under socialistic condi- tions, or the survival of the serviceable to the community, necessitate the gradual evolution of disinterested affection, self- sacrifice, and benevolence, the vivre tour autrui of Comte, and of one greater than Comte? Positive morality, says Mr. Grote, in his Fragments on Ethical Subjects, under some form or other has existed in every society of which the world has ever had experience. Are there any tokens of, at any rate, the rudi- ments of positive morality in the societies of ants which display such complex ad- justment of acts to ends? From Sir John Lubbocks experiments the answer would seem to be in the neg- ative. That the social habits of ants tend to evolve habits of scrupulous clean- liness, prompting them to much kindly cleaning and shampooing of one another, there is no doubt. But as they live in crowded communities, in comparison with which the Seven Dials is sparsely popu- lated, these habits are obviously the necessary outcome of the law of natural selection. So also in the state of in- ternecine warfare, in which they mostly exist even with the same species in a dif- ferent nest, is their habit of fetching wounded ants into the nest and avoiding decimation as far as possible. But be- yond the baldest utilitarianism, at which Jeremy Bentham himself would have stood aghast, they seem incapable of going. Sir John Lubbock repeatedly buried ants, but their friends trudged backwards and forwards over their living grave without an effort to rescue them. Even when the sufferer xvas actually in sight it by no means followed that her friends would assist her. Of this [says Sir John] I could give almost any number of instances. Thus, on one occa- sion, several specimens of Formica fusca be- longing to one of my nests were feeding on some honey spread on a slip of glass. One of A number of Lasiusfiavus from one of my captive nests were out feeding at 6 P.M. on some honey. I chloroformed four of them, and also four from a nest in the park at some distance from the place where the first had been originally procured, and put them close to the honey. Up to 8.30 the ants had taken no notice of their insensible fellow-creatures. At 9.20 I found the four friends were still lying as before, while the four strangers had been removed. Two of them I found had been thrown over the edge of the board on which the honey was placed. The other two I could not see. But as in the case of chloroformed ants their friends might reasonably conclude they were dead and done for, Sir John Lubbock repeatedly intoxicated an equal proportion of friends and foes. Whether the antenn~ language lends itself to talking fustian with ones own shadow we know not, but, at any rate, the sober ants seemed much perplexed and dis- mayed at finding their intoxicated fellow- creatures in such a melancholy and disgraceful condition, and at first took them up and carried them about in an aimless manner. But this temporary in- decision soon gave place to Draconic severity in dealing with the evils of drunk- enness. The enemies were drowned, or otherwise destroyed, to a man. But even of the thirty-eight friends seven were thrust into the water. The rest were carried into the nest.* More conclusive still are the following experiments. To test the affection of ants belonging to the same nest for one another, I tried the fol- lowing experiments: I took six ants from a nest of For,nica flisca, imprisoned them in a small bottle, one end of which was left open, but covered by a layer of muslin. I then put the bottle close to the door of the nest. The muslin was of open texture, the meshes, how- ever, being sufficiently large to prevent the ants from escaping. - They could not only, however, see one another, but communicate freely with their antenn~. We now watched to see whether the prisoners would he tended or fed by their friends. We could not, how. ever, observe that the least notice was taken of them. The experiment, nevertheless, was less conclusive than could be wished, because * Linnean Societys 7ourna?, vol. xiii., p. 226. ON ANTS. 29 they might have fed at night, or at some time when we were not looking. It struck me, therefore, that it would be interesting to treat some strangers also in the same manner. On September 2nd, therefore, I put two ants from one of my nests of F. ,bISCa into a bottle, the end of which was tied up with muslin as de- scribed, and laid it down close to the nest. In a second bottle I put t~vo ants from another nest of the same species. The ants which were at liberty took no notice of the bottle containing their imprisoned friends. The strangers in the other bottle, on the contrary, excited them considerably. The whole day one, two, or more ants stood sentry, as it were, over the bottle. In the evening no less than twelve were collected round it, a larger num- ber than usually came out of the nest at any one time. The whole of the next two days, in the same way, there were more or less ants round the bottle containing the strangers; while, as far as we could see, no notice what- ever was taken of the friends. On the pth the ants had eaten through the muslin, and effected an entrance. We did not chance to be on the spot at the moment, but as I found two ants lying dead, one in the bottle and one just outside, I think there can be no doubt that the strangers were put to death. The friends throughout were quite neglected. Sep- tember 2 1st. I then repeated the experiment, puttin~ three ants from another nest into a bottle as before. The same scene was re- l)eated. The friends were neglected. On the other hand, some of the ants were always watching over the bottle containing the stran- gers, and biting at the muslin which protected them. The next morning at 6 AM. I found five ants thus occupied. One had caught hold of the leg of one of the strangers, which had unwarily been allowed to protrude through the meshes of the muslin. They worked and watched, though not, as far as I could see, with any system, till 7.30 in the evening, when they effected an entrance, and immediately attacked the strangers. September 24th. I repeated the s:me experiment with the same nest. Again the ants came and sat over the bottle containing the strangers, while no notice was taken of the friends. The next morning again, when I got up, I found five ants round the bottle containing the strangers, none near the friends. As in the former case, one of the ants had seized a stranger by the leg, and was trying to drag her through the muslin. All day the ants clustered round the bottle, and hit perseveri nglv, though not systematically, at the muslin. The same thing happened all the following day. These observations seemed to me sufficiently to test the behavior of the ants belonging to this nest under these circum- stances. I thought it desirable, ho-,vever, to try also other communities. I selected, there- fore, two other nests. One was a community of Folyorgits rifescens, with numerous slaves. Close to where the ants of this nest came to feed I placed as before two small bottles, closed in the same way one containing two slave ants from the nest, the other two stran- gers. These ants, however, behaved quite un- like the preceding, for they took no notice of either bottle, and showed no sign either of affection or hatred. One is almost tempted to surmise that the warlike spirit of these ants was broken by slavery. The other nest which I tried, also a community of Formica frsca, behaved exactly like the first. They took no notice of the bottle containing the friends, but clustered round and eventually forced their way into that containing the strangers. It seems, therefore, that in these curious insects hatred is a stronger passion than affection.* But surely the fact that hatred is a stronger passion than affection, or rather, to put it less inadequately, that no trace of personal affection ~er so exists in these creatures, is not curious, but the inev- table result of the law of natural selection working under social conditions. Keen- ness in detecting and exterminating enemies would be an essential to the preservation of the nest, and the commu- nities most endued with these instincts would be the most likely to live~ and thrive. I3ut personal affection, except in the one form in which we trace it, econ- omy of life in aggressive warfare, by introducing, in Mr. Grotes words, the caprices, the desires, and the passions of each separate individual would tend to render the maintenance of any estab- lished community impossible, natural selection or the survival of the servicea- ble would tend to suppress rather than evolve it. Mere gregariousness is pow- erless to evolve the most elementary factors necessary for the construction of the moral life. And granted that moral forces have apl)eared on the scene, our knowledge supplies us, as Dr. Marti- neau says, with the when rather than the whence. Something more is needed than mere theory to prove their linear development. Instead of advancing from behind they may have entered from the side. + I conclude my brief summary of mod- ern observations on the nature and sociol- ogy of these curious and interesting creatures with Emile l3lanchards words. Tout en reconnaissant les fourmis pour des bates dou6es de discernernent et dune sorte de raison, il faut, n~anmoins, se tenir en garde contre des appr6ciations trol) favorables. Les fourmis sont dhabiies architectes gui ne sor- tent pas dune sp6cialit6, des nourrices par- * Lz~nnean Socielys ~ourncti, vol. xiii., p. 175 (iS7o). Modern Materialism, hy Jamei Martineaii, LL.D., D.D., p. 50 Sixth edition, i575. 30 MRS. PIERREPOINT. faites, des guerri~res vaillantes et rus4es, elles entendent l~conomie domestique, un peu Ia ])Olitique; cela ne va pits plus loin.* ELLICE HOPKINS. * Les Four,nis, Revue des Deux lifrudes, x~th October, 1875. From Temple Bar. MRS. PIERREPOINT. A SKETCH IN TXVO PARTS. Soot, qui Crustis et pomis vicluas venentur avaras, Excipianique senes quos in vivaria mittant. Horace, Ep. I. i. PART I. PRINCES GATE. THE funeral was over; the great mourning CoaChes had deposited their highly respectable burdens at the door of the large house in Princes Gate, and peol)le, standing in little groups about hall and dining-room, were beginning to grow quite conversational, and to forget, in the light from the freshly unshuttered windows, what cause had brought them togeth er. When a man gets beyond the portion of life allotted to him by public opinion and the Bible, he must not expect to be very deeply mourhecl when he does die; and Mr. Pierrepoint, at whose last rites his friends had just assisted, had outlived by two years those threescore and ten years of Scripture. Under the circum- stances immoderate grief at his loss was not to be expected; it was reserved for disappointed legatees to mourn, as a wag- gish cousin, a briefless barrister, whis- perecl to his neighbor. Up-stairs the newly-made widow was sitting, with Clasped hands and pensive eyes, alone in her dainty boudoir. The sunlight, falling upon her, called up points of gold in the rich broxvn of her thick, coiled hair, and put to severe test the del- icate pureness of her skin. There was a tap at the door, and in answer to her sub- dued come in a tall gentleman en- tered, whose stout prol)ortions and sleek grey head seemed thoroughly in keeping with his clerical coat and gaiters. Mrs. Pierrepoint rose and stood gravely be- fore him. Do you want me, uncle? she said. You had better go down-stairs, my dear, he answered; Mr. XVormit is about to read the will. Do you think it better that I should be present? Yes, I do, said the dean, deliber- ately, it was your husbands special wish. Now, my dear Minnie, if you are ready, we will go at once; and, taking her on his arm, he led his niece to the drawino--room, where the people, includ- ing Lawyer XVormit, had assembled. There was a little hush as the widow came into the room; naturally enough she was the subject of no small amount of specu- lation and curiosity. When a man dies possessed of something like 20,000 a year, his possible inheritors acquire an importance which they have never had before. All eyes turned openly or fur- tively on to the young figure sitti ngnear the dean, looking very pale and pathetic in the heavy crape dress. Then the first tones of the lawyers voice directed every ones thoughts to the matter in hand. It was not a long will; in spite of legal intricacies and repetitions it took hardly ten minutes to read. There were a few legacies to relatives, a few to servants but the testator had unconditionally- be- queathed the bulk of his huge property to his wife Mrs. Minnie Pierrepoint. There ~vas a hush, a pause ; if the wid- ow had been an object of interest before, she was one of something like awe now; and all eyes were turned upon her. Her face was very pale; her full, red lips pressed tightly together; her bosom rose and fell ; for a moment she closed her eyesthat was all. She turned to the dean and spoke in a low, tremulous voice, Please, uncle, would you see to all these people? I have ordered dinner for them at six; I should like to stairs. go up- Certainly, my dear, said the clergy-- man, offering her his arm, and looking at her with no little respect he had had no expectations from the dead man, and consequently could rejoice the more thor- oughly in his nieces good fortune. Cer- tainly. I suppose you will dine in your own room? No, thank you, uncle. Jenkinson will bring me up some tea presently. I am not hungry. Mrs. Pierrepoint went back into her boudoir, which led into the great, empty bedroom. She would stay there alone that evening, and would not dine. Not that, as a rule, she was indifferent to del- icate cookery on the contrary, there was a (rood deal of the epicure in hei 0 MRS. PIERREPOINT. 3 nature; it was this very epicureanism which kept her fasting to-night. She had a subtler, more exquisite feast in store for herself; she would not spoil the effect of either banquet by indulging in both at the same time. There was a soft, golden light in the little room, a soft breath of summer blow- ing in through the open window; beyond the roofs of the houses she could see the tops of the trees in Kensington Gardens, standing out against a sky bright with all the glory of the declining day. Mrs. Pierrepoint drew a low chair to the open window, and lay hack with closed eves. She could not believe it, could not realize it; that for which she had given up so much was hers at last, her very own, not held at the caprice of a sickly, jealous old man. Only six months, and she was free; long, dreary months of self-repres- sion they had been; but they were over, and her reward was greater than she had ever dared to hope (though, to do her jus- tice, she had never much occupied herself with unworthy speculation). She clasped her hands tightly together, and the fingers of her right hand came in contact with her xvedding-ring. I~oor Mr. Pierrepoint! He must have loved her very much to have made such a will. She really did feel sorry for him, that he had died so suddenly. No one should ever be able to say that she had not respected his memory. She rose and, taking a key from her watch-chain, ~vent towards an escri- toire standing in a far corner of the room. On the way she paused before a tall mirror let into the ~vall, and stood pen- sively observing her own reflection. Minnie Pierrepoint was not a tall woman, but the exquisiteness of her pro- portions made up for any deficiency in height; nor was she very slight for her twenty-two years, indeed, kind friends ~vere fond of prophesying for her an obese middle age, grounding their prophesies on a certain, by no means unbecoming, fulness and roundness in her form. She stood for a few minutes peering gravely into her own large, grey eyes, critically observing the curves of her short nose and red lips, which latter, some one had often told her; looked as though some bee had newly stung them. Perhaps it was this thought which brought the flush to her pale face, and sent her into the corner where stood the escritoire. She sat down on the floor, and unlocking it, pulled out a little drawer whence came a faint scent of rose- leaves, from which she took a packet of letters tied together with a blue riband. She took it out carefully, tenderly, and let it lie on her lap, with her hands lightly crossed above it. Then her thoughts wander far away, beyond the room, be~ yond Kensington, beyond great, smoky London. She is wandering down a deep Devonshire lane, with its straggling vege- tation growing up the sides of its reddish banks. Some one is by her side; and they are laughing and talking softly to- gether. As they emerge from the lane, an ivy-grown church comes in sight. A picturesque old house, built of red sand- stone, nestles close by, whence a white- haired clergyman passes out into the churchyard. Again her thoughts take her back to the deep lane. Once more it is summer, and the same two people are there together, only they are not laughing and talking as before. She is standing still, with downcast face, and her com- panion, pale and trembling, looks down upon her from his great height The train of thoubht broke off suddenly. Minnie stroked her letters, and pfessed them to her lips. Poor Frank, she thought, poor Frank! It was cruel of me to break his heart like that but I was so young, so easily persuaded; and who can resist the dean when he becomes argumentative And Frank how terribly he looked that day he came home from Cambridge and heard about it ! I dont think I shall ever forget his face in the lane it makes me shudder to recall it! Will he ever forgive me, I wonder? She leaned back against the wall with closed eves, and a soft smile broke over her face; how inexpressibly sweet it was to be able to let imagination loose and think freely of Frank Quornham, to recall with a less sharp pang of remorse those far-away days before Mr. Pierrepoint had dawned upon her horizon. Looking back, it seemed to her that she must have been very impulsive, very child- ish, and very helpless in the hands of the people about her. Ones memory is apt to grow rusty with respect to ones old self; we nearly always look upon our- selves as the products of certain causes, setting down anything unsatisfactory to the charge of training and circumstances. Ab, if my aunt had only whipped me for stealing her horn-book, I should not now be here ! whimpers the wretched crim- inal on his way to the gallows. So Minnie forgot the remarkably clear- sighted, intelligent young woman who had given to Mr. Pierrepoint the hand long 32 MRS. PIERREPOINT. promised to another; and substituted in excited mind with one of those long fits of her memory a creature of her own imag- sobbing such as only women know. ination an innocent, unformed thing, much more picturesque, and in every re- spect more satisfactory. PART ir. Long she sat there, deep in such thoughts, with closed eyes and half-smil- ing lips. When she awoke from her reverie the sun had set, and the air was beginning to blow in chilly through the open window. She rose hastily, a little shocked perhaps at her own abstraction it seemed a sort of disrespect to the old man lying in his newly-made grave, and Minnie, as per- haps you have seen, craved, like most of us, her own respect as well as that of others. If her notions lacked grandeur, if even they may seem to you (oh, high- minded reader!) to have had a tinge of meanness in them, we should set them down to the particular twist which nature and training had oiven to her mind. She had meant, she told herself, to think over things in a general way that night her thoughts had insisted on gathering defi- niteness, and she, half-unconsciously, had given herself up to their delights. There was an irresistible charm in recalling the long past, and in figuring a still happier future. But she checked herself sud- denly, and rising, rang the bell for her maid. Jenkinson, she said, when the woman appeared, have any letters come for me?~ A great number, maam. I did not like to disturb you.~, Yes, of course. Please bring them up to me now, and light the candles. I shall not want you again to-night. In a few moments she was impatiently turning over a little pile of black-rimmed envelopes, all containing the same stereotyped form of condolence. She opened each one, then shaking her head with a half-disgusted movement, rose, and began pacing the little room with impatient footsteps. No sign, no token (she could not help thinking). I might have expected it he is very proud. I shall have hard ~vork. But one thing I feel, I know Frank is not a man to love twice; his character was always nobler and stronger than mine; he always seemed so far above me. She stopped and buried her face in her hands, while the slow tears trickled through her fingers; then she flung back her head and spoke aloud. Only a year a ~-ear a whole year! Oh, Frank, will you forgive me? She sank do~vn on her knees, and relieved her WHITECHAPEL. THE way which lies between Princes Gate and Whitechapel is neither short nor pleasant: there is a whole series of cuts and windings and unexpected turn- ings to be taken: yet neither locality ex- periences any serious inconvenience from the comparative inaccessibility of the other. The glaring July sun beat down upon the pavement, shedding a fierce libht on all around; making the staring geraniums in the flower-boxes look redder than ever, and brin~ing out sudden points of bright- ness in the steel harness and glossy coats of Mrs. Pierrepoints carriage-horses, which stood impatiently champihg before the door of a certain house in Princes Gate. Jarvis and John, one on the box of the victoria, the other standing on the hot pavement, were by no means in a good temper. Havent no patience with missus s whims, said the coachman, grumpily; Whitechapel indeed! and on such a day as this. Maybe shes taken to distric visitin, suggested John, mildly. Not er! (contemptuously) thats not er line. Mark my words, shes up to some game or other Jarvis never finished that sentence, for at this point the door was flung open, and Mrs. Pierrepoint came forth to the outer air. Whitechapel or not Whitechapel (as Jarvis said), the missus had certainly shown no carelessness with respect to tomlette that afternoon. Perhaps some stiffbacked people might have considered her costume hardly suit- able to a one-year-old widow; she had cast off the heavy crape dress, bonnet, and mantle, to which she had so rigidly adhered during the first twelve months of her widowhood, and ~vore some soft, transparent, web-like material, with a dark line rippling down it, which lost itself every now and then in the folds. Her hat was soft and feathery, of some grace- ful, indefinite shape; in the front of her dress were two heavy, half-opened roses of a deep creamy color. She stepped into the Carriage, and re- peated her orders of the morning to the obsequious John, Number 2, St. Gibbs Buildings, near the Bethnal Green Mu., seum. MRS. PIERREPOINT. 33 An observer more penetrating than the footman might have remarked a rather higher note than usual in the well-trained voice, a l)righter sparkle in the eyes, a faint quiver in the full, red lips ; but John was thinking about the long, hot journey before himenvying his mistress the lace l)arasol, which made her look so cool and comfortable. The carriage rolled from the door; Mrs. Pierrepoint lay back with wide eyes and parted lips, through which came the short, quick breath. She could not think: her head seemed in a confused whirl, half-delicious, half-terrible. Tn-day, to- day she was to reap the reward of long months of self-denial and self-repression. There would be a struggle she was pre- pared for that, for Frank was terribly proud; but of ultimate victory she felt sure. Her whole being seemed in a sweet fever, swayed by a prodigal inward joy, such as she had not experienced since the old rectory days; a joy enhanced per- haps by its very want of a sure founda- tion on which to rest. Absorbed in her own thoughts, it was not till she had been borne far beyond familiar places that she was aware of the change of scene. When she was roused from her reverie by the unaccustomed sights, sounds, and smells, she looked around her with a little start of surprise and horror. Frank a curate in Whitechapel! it seemed impossible. Frank, with his ul- tra-sensitiveness to external surround- ings; his shrinking from anything harsh, or discordant, or unsightly; his keen de- light in the soft, the harmonious, the beautiful! She saw the narrow, crowded streets~ the endless rows of houses, from whose every window hard, worn faces of half- starved people were peering; women were leaning far out over the sills, with the disregard of danger characteristic of their class, screaming harshly to over- the-way or street acquaintances. Chil- dren swarmed over doorsteps, on the footway, in the roadway, jostling the chaffering crowd round the costers barrows, eliciting oaths from the men, ~vho lo~in ged, smoking and swearing, about the pavement. Mrs. Pierrepoint shuddered and closed her eyes, and a terrible fear struck her like a chill. What if Frank should be ill, dying? he was always delicate, and the life ~vhich he must have been lately leading must have tried him sorely. What a long way off was her destina LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI. 1563 tion! how slowly the carriage was mov- mo- She called to the coachman to drive faster, but he answered that he was go- ing at a greater rate than usual; the neighborhood was crowded, he dared not increase his pace. At last they emero-ed from the more crowded thoroughfares into a closely in- terlacing network of small streets ; to the right, round by the left, to the right again then the carriage stopped before a dingy block of high, narrow-windowed houses. Mrs. Pierrepoint felt her color coming and going, and her heart beating faster and faster; she got out and told the man to drive on; then she knocked steadily at a crazy door with a great chalk 2 marked on it. A little pause, which seemed an age, the sound of a scuffle within, followed by the heavy tramp of advancing footsteps, and in another mo- ment Minnie found herself face to face with a worn-out, sullen looking woman, who stood in silent wonder before her. The Rev. Mr. Quornham lives here, I believe? said Mrs. Pierrepoint in her most conciliatory tones. The womans naturally sullen expres- sion gathered definiteness; there were suspicion and hostile questioning in her glance, as she said shortly, Yes. I wish to see him, Minnie xvent on, with a contintied effort at extreme suavity of manner. The woman put her hands on her hips, and looked uncompromisingly at the dainty figure before her. Dont know if you can seen im, Im sure, s genly busy bout this time. But I wish to see him very particu- larlyon very urgent business in fact, said Minnie, controlling her irritation, but speakino- half fore. b a note higher than be S not had is tea yet e never makes much of a dinner, so I give im s tea early. The woman spoke defiantly, yet with a certain undertone of protectiveness and grim tenderness, which the other dis- tinctly felt. But will you please tell Mr. Quorn- ham that I am here? There was a deeper flush on Mrs. Pierrepoints face, a softer brightness in her eyeevery one it seemed loved Frank, even this hard, worn-out creature. The woman closed the door; then, without a word, led the way, up the dark, narrow stairs which creaked and shook at every step. On the second storey she stopped before a door and knocked. No answer. Es not jn there. Ill 34 MRS. PIERREPOINT. tell im youve come, panted the sullen janitress, at the same time sho~ving the visitor into the room, and slamming the door upon her. Minnie was not sorry for the respite; now that the moment had come for which, consciously or unconsciously, she had shaped the latter part of her life, she felt a vague fear, a terrible anxiety, though deep down in her heart lay the certainty of success, diffusing a strange happiness through all her doubts. She glanced around her with tender scrutiny, and her eyes filled as she noted the pathetic little attempts at refinement amidst the utter poverty of the surroundings. The room was rather large but miser ably fitted and furnished, yet somehow it ~vas stamped with the unmistakable mark of culture and refinement. The patched window was open, and the scent of inignonette was wafted in from the pots on the sill; two or three fine engravings hung on the wall (one, she remembered with a thrill, she had given him); there was a set of bookshelves with their well-worn books, many of them those little brown- backed red-leaved volumes, of which she had been rather jealous in the old days; on the table was a blue vase with creamy flo~vers in it, one of which had fallen on an open volume of The Earthly Para- dise. Footsteps sounded outside, then the handle of the door turned; her heart beat faster and faster; only by a mighty effort did she raise her eyes to the tall figure advancing towards her. Some people said, speakino~ of him not wholly admiringly, that Frank Quornham was like a lily; and the simile was not altogether ill-chosen. Something in the lines of the tall, slight figure, in the curve of the exquisitely graceful neck support- ing the fine, fair head ~vith its pale face and long, delicate features, might have suggested the most graceful of all flow- ers; but there the resemblance ceased; there was no flower-like weakness or mere sweetness in the mans strong grave face, with its ~vell-controlled lips and deep-set eyes. He came slowly towards Mrs. Pierre- point, who rose and stood calm and pale before him. A faint, almost impercepti- ble flush sprang for an instant to his cheek, but slight and fleeting as it was, she saw it, and gave it her own interpre- tation. Mrs. Pierrepoint, he said bowing, gravely, this is an unexpected pleas. ure. - Minnies thought was, How dreadfully pale and thin he is looking! her words were, You see it is a case of Mahomet and the mountain. You did not come and see me, so I have come to see you. She spoke lightly and with strict impersonal- ity, carefully steering clear of the familiar Frank and the formal Mr. Quorn- ham. Frank was puzzled. Pray sit down, he said, indicating a chair, and speaking with marked formality. Minnie obeyed, feeling somehow a little chill and frightened; she had told herself over and over again that such would be her reception her fear had no solid foundation, was only the recurrence of a certain feeling of something like awe which she had always had for Frank, even in the days when she had tyrannized over him. I did not know where you lived, till the other day, when the dean told me, she said; it must be a great change after Trinity. Yes, indeed. College is the little bit of poetry xvhich comes into so many oth- erwise prosaic lives. It is something to store up in ones memory. I can quite think it; one must need a great many pleasant memories in White- chapel. Though even Whitechapel is not with- out its charms, when one comes to know them. I think it would take me a long time to find them out, said Minnie with a little laugh. She was wondering how she could give the conversation a less imper- sonal turn, for she felt that very soon the tumultuous inner emotions must burst through the outer crust of composure. There was a little pause; Mr. Quorn- ham leaned back in his chair, rather wearily; Mrs. Pierrepoint tapped the ground impatiently with her foot. She had meant to be cautious, to lead up to the d~nouement very slowly and carefully, feeling her ground at every step; but she had miscalculated her own strength she could bear the silence,the coldness no longer, she must set at rest the wild desires and terrors raging in her bosom. - For a moment she buried her face in her hands, then clasping them tightly together and looking straight at the young man, she spoke in a clear, high voice. I dare say you are surprised at seeing me here to-day, Frank, after all that has happened. If it ~vere to any other thami yourself, to any one less great and noble, A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 35 I should not have come. I have been very cruel, very wicked but remember, I was young and inexperienced. Oh, Frank, wont you forgive me? wont you give me back what you offered me once and I threw away so blindly? You were willing then to take my worthless self, now I offer you my worthless self and all I have. Frank Quornham sprang to his feet, the delicate nostrils quivering, the pale cheek glowing for an instant with a pink flush. Minnie Pierrepoint. too, had risen and stood exactly facing him ; but when she saw that swift action of his she came nearer and looked up into his eyes; a sudden thrill of pain, and dread, and joy passed through her she spoke quickly, to stay the words on his lips, Frank, dear, I cant help being rich! She stood with flushed, uplifted face, and extended hands; her breath caine and ~vent; there ~vas a half-smile on her parted lips, and a great tear o-athered in her eyes, which rolled down her cheek. Frank Quornham did not hesitate; the flush had faded from his cheek, his whole face was white, even to the lips ; but there was no faltering in the low, deliberate voice. Mrs. Pierrepoint, he said, let there be no misunderstanding between us. I hope I should not be guilty of that form of cowardice which sacrifices the happi- ness of two lives out of fear of the worlds judgment. But there is a barrier between us greater than any difference of station could have raised up. Once I trusted you, believed in you, was ready to shape my life for you. By your own act you destroyed that faith; of faith in other things, which you nearly destroyed, I will not speak. I am deeply grieved that this should have happened. I can appreciate the generosity of your offer, but I cannot accept it. She stood like a statue before him; her hands still extended, her face uplifted towards him; the joyful tear of a moment ago lay on her cheek, the smile was frozen on her lips; but the cheek was ghastly pale, there was no color in the full lips. She felt as if some one were stabbing her, and her heart-blood was flowing, drop by drop, as she stood. He had spoken quite gently, quite im- personally; but the scorn, whose expres- sion he had been so careful to repress in voice and words, seemed conveyed to her ~vith all the more force by some subtler means; she felt paralyzed by it; suddenly her own acts and motives stood before her in all their miserable smallness, she seemed to feel dimly at something greater and nobler, to see a great gulf stretching between herself and this man, a gulf never to be spanned. When Frank ceased speaking, there was a pause; he stood with head thrown back, and eyes fixed straight before hini; Minnies arms dropped nervelessly to her side, her head fell on her bosom, she made a few steps to the door; Frank caine forward and held it open for her as she passed through; the folds of her dress touched him, and she felt his breath on her forehead in the narrow doorway, but she did not look up. Back, back, through dirty, crowded streets, to stately mansions and pleasant parks. Forever and forever! She had received her sentence, and there was no reprieve a relentless though impalpable force held them apart; there was no hope. On, on! Were the hungry women, crowding and pushing at the stall, fiercely eager for the cheapest bits of foul meat, more pitiable than this lady leaning back in her luxurious carriage, with the de- mons of despair and self-contempt gnaw- ing at her heart? She could see the long years stretching before her, and for the first time she realized what she had forfeited; and her heart sickened as she came within sight of her 0-reat house, and thought of the emptiness of all her splendor and her wealth ~vithout love. From Temple Bar. A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. WHEN Louis XIV. gathered round him the most brilliant court in Europe, and erected for it a palace lined with precious marbles and gorgeous with paintings re- cording his praise, it might have been hard to persuade the peasantry of that period, whose lot seemed so widely different, that the sum of happiness contained by their mud-plastered walls was about equal to that held by the gilded salons of Ver- sailles. And in truth, when we read of the gay doings of the palace, of f~tes rival- ling the fairy imaginings of childhood, of fancy balls where ingenuity laid plans un- shackled by considerations of cost, of parties on the water, parties in the for- est, all following one another in brilliant successionwhen ~ve read of these, and A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. compare them with the monotonous and care-bound life of the peasant, we may at first sio~ht conclude that this was indeed impossible. But on studying some of those wonderful written memoirs with which this period abounds, we find that beneath all the gay glitter of court life the human heart panted after unattained happiness, and that even the princess in her almost idolized position endured mis- ery and mortifications beyond the ordi- nary griefs of humanity. Among those records whose pathos is not lessened by the absence of tragedy or of those events which lend color to history, stand pre-eminent the letters of Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, and mother of the celebrated reoent This princess was the daughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, by his consort Charlotte of Hesse Cassel, and was granddaughter of Elizabeth Stuart (sister of Charles I.), and a descendant of the heroic William of Orange. She was horn in the historic castle of 1-leidel- berg in the year 1632, but lived there only four years. Soon after her birth, her aunt Sophia, afterwards electress of Hanover, and mother of George 1. of England, was appointed to be her state governess, and became a second mother to her. Her own mother was a woman of a temper too haughty and too violent to bear patiently the wrongs she experi- enced from her husband, and escaping from Heidelberg, after many miserable scenes, lived for the rest of her life in her own country. Charles Louis, unable to persuade her to consent toa divorce, married morganatically a Countess of Degenfeldt, by whom he had a numer- ous family. It is to one of her half-sisters that many of Elizabeth Charlottes letters are addressed, always in terms of respect and affection. After her mothers sad catastrophe the young princess lived with her aunt, first at the Hague, with the old queen of Bo- hemia, paying occasional visits to her fathers court, and finally, after her aunts marriage, at Osnabruck and Hanover. We cannot doubt that her intercourse with Sophia, of whose intellect and strength of character it is difficult to speak too highly, imbued her with many- of those qualities which in after-life stood her in good stead. Every year, as it shortened her not unhappy girlhood, added to the conse- quence of her political position. The great delicacy of her only legitimate brother showed that he would probably be the last male of his line, and leave his sister with claims to the Palatinate, doubtful though they might be. This attracted the attention of Louis XIV., who saw the political use that might be made of such claims, and proposed a mar- riage between her and his brother Philip, Duke of Orleans, then a young widower. The proposal ~vas accepted by her father and her aunt, and agreed to by her as a matter of simple duty. Sophia apparently regretted her l)art in the transaction, for we find her niece long afterwards ten- derly trying to comfort her on the subject. The young bride was married on the i6th of November, 1671, after a tearful journey, and made her appearance in the brilliant court of France. Her husbands first wife had been the beautiful and gay Henrietta of England, whose sad death seems, among the many doubtful stories of poisoning of that time, to afford only too probable evidence that she met her end by such means. Madame, for such was her simple but distinguishing title, could only excite comparison ~vith the beauty of her predecessor. The account she gives of herself in later life is far from flattering. She writes to her half- sister, You must remember little about me if you do not class me with the ugly. I have always been, and now am still more so from the effect of small-pox. I have no features, small eyes, a short, thick nose, long and flat lips, large, hang- ing cheeks, and a big face, and with all this I am short and stout. When we remember that at this time the court worshipped beauty, and forgave everything to Madame de Montespan and to Louise de Ia Valli~re on account of theirs, we may imagine how the proud young German princess suffered, though she speaks so lightly of it. She further describes herself as fallen from the clouds on her arrival at St. Germain, where the court then resided, and says that she saw she was displeasing to her husband, add- ing with touching humility that this was not astonishing, as she was so ugly. It is pleasant to learn from other sources that the king took pity on the friendless girl, and exerted himself to please and amuse her in a way that he bad never done for the more attractive Henrietta. It was well that in her earlier married life she kad a friend so powerful, for in her husband she had none. Philip of Orleans was the younger son of Louis XlII., and strongly resembled his father. He is described as being small, but well-made, in person handsome, 36 A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. though effeminate in face. He was as dark as his brother was fair. His educa- tion had been almost entirely neglected, and his only acquirement, an intimate knowledge of the great families of France, with their histories, connections, and ramifications, must have been a poor sub- stitute, though undoubtedly useful to a royal person. He was exceedingly dissi- pated, incapable of a real attachment, vain, frivolous, and fonder of dress than any woman loading himself with rings, bracelets, and jewels. He chattered so incessantly that the king used jestingly to assign this as the cause of his own dis- taste for talking; and Saint Simon de- clares that when Monsieur was oppressed by his approaching fatal fit of apoplexy, he became much less loquacious than usualthat is, he talked only about as much as four women. With all this Philip possessed much tact, and ~vas undoubtedly brave. In the campaigns, which he made with great credit, the soldiers used to say that he feared the sun and the dust more than he feared musket-balls. And yet, except in time of ~var, he never mounted a horse, devoting himself only to effeminate amuse- ments. How unsuited he was to his sturdy German wife, her character will show. Madame left her heart in Germany, and even the birth of children and of grand- children never seems to have reconciled her to France. She showed her patriot- ism in ways that seem almost absurd. To the end of her life she never could endure French cookery, preferrin~ Sauer- ki-aut and beer-soup to the most delicate of French dishes, and declared that she could not tolerate such foreign dr ugsas coffee, tea, or chocolate. The inactivity of the French ladies was distasteful to her, and she could never be persuaded to give up what we should call constitu- tionals. Her greatest consolation was in writing innumerable letters to her friends in Germany. Those to her aunt commenced on her arrival, and were writ- ten with wonderful regularity and pa- tience. Even though they contain many gossipping details, we can still see that they are the outlet of her affections and sympathies. One of the conditions of her marriage had been her conversion to the Church of Rome. We may take this, in the daugh- ter of the head of the Protestant league, as a proof of the lukewarmness of the German Lutheran princes, and may won- der that the bitterness of the Thirty 37 Years War permitted such an alliance. But the court of Louis XIV. was already beginning to exercise that influence over the German courts which later produced such fatal results. Madame was only nineteen when she was married, and she had been brought up in the broad and large-minded school of Leibnitz. But her letters show that whatever might be her State creed, her religion was sound and practical. H~r father had contented himself with recom- mending her to turn her attention to points of resemblance between the two religions, i-ather than to regard their con- troversial side. She tells us that on her arrival in France, she was instructed by three bishops, each of whom inculcated different doctrines, so that she was obliged to construct a serviceable Cathol- icism for herself. Many years afterwards she asks her half-sister if she really be- lieves that the Catholics have none of the real truths of Christianity, assuring her that all Christians have the same aiim the differences betw~en them being but the old songs of priests; and all that con- cerns us is to live well, and, according to the precepts of Christianity, to be merci- ful and inclined to charity. She contin- ually read the Bible, explaining in her correspondence that this was not forbid- den by the liberal Gallican Church, which differed widely from that in Rome-bound Germany. She declares that the French and German religious books sent her to sleep, but that she never wearied of the Bible. The trials of Madame beo-an with her household. Two of its principal officers were the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis dEffiat, both men of shamefully debauched life, who had Monsieur com- pletely in their power, being his ministers and associates in depravity. The former had incurred the enmity of Henrietta, who prevailed upon the king to exile him into Italy. Rumor declared that he took his revenge by sending poison from thence, which DEffiat managed to put in her cup. All this was well known to her successor, who, seeing that it was both dangerous and hopeless to attempt anythin~ against them, was obliged to tolerate them, con- scious that they were the cause of the misunderstandings with her husband, and of most of the unhappiness of her early married life. She did indeed at one time iml)lore the king to consent to her own retirement, as their persecution had be- come beyond endurance, and he interfered in a way that silenced them ~vithout rais 38 A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ing too much enmity by actual dismis- sal. But Madames heaviest trials came in connection with the son she so tenderly loved. Her first little boy died when only four years old, killed, she declares, by the doctors, for whom she always expresses the most profound contempt. Philip, Duke of Chartres, afterwards the Regent dOrleans, born in 1674, survived a very delicate childhood, during which his mother often wished she could send him in a letter to Madame de Harling, her old governess, that he might be brought up in a sensible German way. It might have been happier for Madame had he died like his little brother. When his education ceased to be under her control, she was forced to see the innocent boy led astray and corrupted by these two men, whose lives were a scandal even in a universally immoral age. His tutor was the Abb6 Dubois, afterwards the noto- rious cardinal, whose life and teaching are only too well known to the world. Madame implored her husband to con- sider the infamous character of the men he was placing about his son, but in vain. No wonder that she fumed inwardly, as she declares, and, quoting her father, re- covered patience in raging. She turned then to the education of her only daughter, named, after herself, Elizabeth Charlotte, and succeeded so far that this princess, like herself, was an example of virtuous conduct. She was married in 1698 to Leopold Joseph, duke of Lorraine, and so gained the respect of her husbands subjects that, on his death, she was appointed regent of his domin- ions. Her marriage, though it was less splendid than those of her half-sisters, the queen of Spain and the duchess of Savoy, was a great relief to Madame. She had long been kept in terror of a dif- ferent destiny for her daughter. It was the policy of Louis XIV., the proudest king in Europe, to marry his base-born children into the royal family of France. Thus one daughter became Princess of Conti, a second Duchess of Bourbon, and a third Duchess of Orleans, while the Duc du Maine married a Cond6. In pursuance of this ignoble plan, he turned his eyes upon his brothers chil- dren, urged by Madame de Maintenon, who constantly intrigued for the offspring of the mistress whom she supplanted. Louis met with little or no opposition from his brother, whom he could always bribe by pensions and favors, but he found it far otherwise with his proud German sister-in-law. Madame says that it was for this reason the king refused to interfere in the appointment of her sons household, as he hoped, by their influence, to induce his nephew to consent to his plans. Saint Simon tells, with the most graphic force, how the young Duke of Chartres, then only a boy of seventeen, came to his mother in the grand gallery of Versailles, and announced his engagement to Made- moiselle du Blois; how Madame, beside herself with rage and grief, promptly boxed his ears by way of reply, and then walked up and down the gallery with long strides, not caring to restrain her expressions of anger; how she was called into the kings room to receive the for- mal announcement, and acknowledoed his deep ceremonious bow by turning ~harply on her heel, so that when he looked up again he saw her retreating back ; and how she sat out the royal dinner with tear-stained face, scarcely noticing the kings marked attentions. Then it became a question of marrying her daughter to the Duc du Maine, a lame, pusillanimous bastard. Even if he were not the offspring of a double adultery, she says bitterly to her aunt, I should not have wished him for a son- in-law. But this humiliation was spared her, as it was found that the marriage would be extremely unpopular with the Parisians, who liked Madame, and under- stood her repugnance to it. The Duchess of Lorraines marriage was an unhappy one. Many of her mothers letters echo her complaints of how she had to see her husbands rev- enues lavished upon his mistress, and upon the womans doubly base husband. She bore all this, however, with patience and dignity, receiving, no doubt, much wise counsel from her mother. She lived to see her son become joint proprietor of the great Austrian dominions, but died the year before he was crowned emperor of Germany. It may be noted here that her grand- daughter was the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, and that Louis XVI. was de- scended from Monsieurs first wife, so that the king and queen were equally in- heritors of the fated Stuart blood. When the dauphin married a Bavarian princess, Madame welcomed a compatriot into her circle, and appears to have been a staunch friend to that unhappy, con- sumptive woman. Her friendship indeed was in one instance shown in an almost savage manner. The dauphiness, always A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 39 ailing, spent the greater part of her time with a favorite German attendant in the small dark rooms opening from her splen- did state hedroom. She was indifferent to the ordinary events of court life, but one thing roused her almost to fury any slight to her own family. When Mademoiselle de L6wenstein, a lady de- scended from the morganatic marriage of a Bavarian prince, was married by the Marquis de Dangeau, she was ill-advised enough to sign the register as Sophie de Bavi~re. The dauphiness, hearing of this, sent for the book and energeti- cally tore out the leaf. On another occa- sion two young ladies, in the suite of Madame de Maintenon, gave themselves out to be Countesses Palatine, though their birth was even more equivocal than Madame de Dangeaus. The dauphin- ess, too much afraid of their protector to take any steps herself, complained to Madame, whose courage never failed. She at once attacked them, threatening to make public certain disagreeable pas- sages in their family history. One of the poor girls, according to Madames ac- count, took this so much to heart that she died shortly afterwards. Madame xva~ not sure of what Madame de Maintenon might persuade the king to do. He, however, contented himself by remarking jestingly that it was not safe to take liber- ties with her house. Madame replied curtly that she hated all 1)-ing. But her courage was shown in more legitimate ways in support of the dying dauphiness, for the poor woman declared that she owed her last two years of life to Madames support and protection. In bewailing her unhappiness she used to say that she herself was responsible for it, as she had done her best to come, but that Madame was much more to be pitied, as she had done so only in obedience to others. XVhat a comment to be made by one who left her home and country in the joyful expectation of becoming queen of France! One great interest of Madames letters is her account of the life and position of the woman ~vho exercised so sinister an influence on her life. We have seen the part that Madame de Maintenon played in the marriage of her son one scarcely to be forgiven. She came between the king and his sister-in-law, poisoning his mind against her, and destroying a friend- ship which had been her great support and refuge. It is possible that Madames intense German pride led her to despise the favorites obscure origin, even when a more than suspected marriage might have given a plausible excuse for prudent con- ciliation, but her hatred of hypocrisy and her high courage prevented her from submitting to an influence which the rest of the royal family bore, however galling it might be. When she became, after the death of the dauphiness, first lady of France, her great fear was that Madame de Maintenon might be declared queen, in which case it would have been part of Madames duty to hand her her gloves at her toilet. She hailed with delight the Duke of Burgundys marriage, as, though it lessened her rank, it saved her from degi-adation. This was, indeed, the only satisfaction she derived from that marriage, as the young bride always treated her with rude- ness and neglect. Daughter of the most politic prince in Europe, Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy, she had been carefully instructed by her father to conciliate the real source of influence, Madame de Maintenon, and carried out her instruc- tions with consummate skill. Th~ king, besides being her father-in-law, was her great-uncle; so with exquisite tact she always addressed his unacknowledged wife as ma tante. Those whom Ma- dame de Maintenon slighted she avoided, hence her treatment of Madame. Unfortunately Madame was most im- prudent in writing about the woman she detested so much. Though aware that most of her letters were opened and read by the ministers, she related in them every scandalous story she could collect about her enemy, giving her benerally names which will not bear translation, and enlarging upon every grievance she had against her. By doing so she placed herself in Madame de Maintenons power at a time when she herself was defence- less. One night at St. Cloud, in the midst of a gay supper, Monsieur suddenly fell into the arms of his son, struck down by a fit of apoplexy. In obedience to repeated messages, the king arrived from Marly, only to see the brother, from whom he had parted in anger, lying un- conscious. At the moment of starting from Marly, a crowd of excited courtiers threw themselves into the first carriage that came, regardless of ownership, and hurried on to press inquisitively into the presence of death. When all hope was gone, and the still gasping body was left to pant away its life, a duchess, who had basely married her daughter to one of Monsieurs minions, forced her way among the lower servants surrounding it. After 40 A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. gazing for some time she exclaimed, un- conscious of the presence of others, and as though the words were wrung from her by the bitterness of disappointment, Pardi, here is a daughter well married! When morning dawned Madame found herself a widow dependent upon the gen- erosity of the king and of those by whom he was guided. At first her one idea was that she might be forced to retire to a convent, and against this she protested with almost ludicrous vehemence. But she found that at any rate her son expe- rienced kindness beyond expectation and after the long funeral ceremonies, she received an intimation of the kings friend- ly intentions towards her. She had lived with her husband for thirty years, and says, touchingly, that her long patience had at last gained his respect, so that during the last year or two there had been a closer feeling between them. Though her grief could not be profound, still it helpen to deaden the mortification of a very bitter moment. The kings ambas- sador to her was Madame de Maintenon. The interview took place at Versailles, and in the presence of the Duchess of Ventadour, so that Saint Simon s account of it is probably not incorrect, though Madames own version does not entirely agree with his. It would not, however, be surprising that she should feel unwilling to repeat some of the details, even to her most intimate friends. Madame probably felt that a battle was impending, and, somewhat imprudently, began by com- plaining bitterly that in a recent and seri- ous illness, from which she had just recovered, the king had treated her with neglect too evident not to be intentional. Madame de Maintenon admitted that his Majesty had certainly taken this means of showing his deep resentment at cer- tain offences committed by Madame towards him. Madame here protested that she was perfectly ignorant of how she had offended. Whereupon her ad- versary drew from her pocket certain letters written by Madame to friends in Germany and intercepted at the post- office. These contained many not too delicately worded observations upon his relations with Madame de Maintenon, and then discussed the affairs of the king- dom, both foreign and domestic, describ- ing the general misery as beyond belief. Madame was speechless, and could only take refuge in tears, while she received a lecture upon the enormity of her conduct. There was nothing left to her but to ex- press her regret, and, promising discre tion for the future, implore the royal for- giveness. Then Madame de Maintenon, in her turn attacking, asked Madame why, after being at first on friendly terms with her, she had so entirely changed. Th ereply was that so far from having been the first to change, Madame had only done so when she found that a sudden coolness on the part of Madame de Maintenon was coiitinued, so as to render further friend- ship impossible. Madame de Maintenon admitted that she had been the first to withdraw publicly, but declared that she had done so for insuperable reasons. Madame begged to know what these rea- sons might be; upon which her pitiless antagonist repeated word for word some of the choicest abuse of her with which Madame had regaled the late dauphiness. We know from Madames letters that the terms she employed in describing her enemy were chosen rather for their strength than for their delicacy, so that, when she found that she had been be- trayed by the weak woman who depended on her for protection, she was again left without a word to say. Madame de Ven- tadour did her best to cover Madames discomfiture by pouring out small talk, and, after Madame de Maintenon had coldly enjoyed her triumph for a time, peace was agreed upon, with the assur- ance that the king would now consider all past unkindness forgotten. Madame was not however taken into full favor until many years afterwards, ~vhen the death of the young Duchess of Burgundy deprived the court of all its life and gaiety. The king had regarded that lively young princess with the doting fondness of an old man, and, when her death was followed closely by that of her husband and their little boy, he sank into settled gloom. Madame de Maintenon, too old and too feeble to make any effort to rouse him, was glad to turn to Madames original and still young mind, and to en- courage the renewal of a friendship which had years before been so close. Madame set herself loyally to the task, and was. rewarded by becoming almost indispensa- ble to the failing monarch. The royal family, including the kings legitimated children, was accustomed to assemble in the kings private apartments every evening after his state supper, and their relations were here on a more social footing than the strict court etiquette per- mitted at other times. For many years Madame had been ostentatiously exclud- ed, which was no doubt a source of some A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 4 heart.burning to her, particularly as her daughter-in-law and others greatly her inferiors in rank were admitted. After the Duchess of Burgundys death she was, however, only too gladly welcomed. The admission was valuable to her in another way. The death of four young members of the royal family in rapid succession was attributed by the unscrupulous court to her son. The fact that three of these persons stood between him and the suc- cession to the crown supplied a motive for their death and a ground for suspi- cion. But in this the king was far from joining, and showed his disbelief by in- creased favor to Madame. In that age it was customary to ascribe all illness which was ill-understood by the medical profes- sion, and nearly all sudden deaths, to the administration of poison. But the testi- mony of various writers as to the sanitary condition of Versailles and of Marly at that time shows that there was only too much natural cause for this mortality. In 1714 Madame lost the aunt for whom she bore such love and respect, and to whom so many of her letters are ad- dressed. She had derived constant sup- port from the electress Sophias noble mind and patient dignity; and, though she was herself more than sixty years old, must have missed her sage counsel, com- ing latterly with the sanctity of age. In the following year her life was entirely changed by the death of the king. She ~vitnessed her sons victory in his struggle for the regency with the Dfic du Maine, and then shared in the dispersion of the court. Death, in calling away the royal creator of that splendid abode, seemed to extend his influence to the palace itself. Versailles, with its gilded apartments, its marble staircases, its stately gardens, shady alleys, and sparkling waters, so lately cro~vded by all that was brilliant and gay, and ringing with the echoes of a thousand voices, was suddenly left silent and deserted. Henceforth Madames life was spent in Paris, at the Palais Ro)-al, a residence for which she had always ex- pressed dislike, on account of its unfavor- able influence on her health. In 1719 she lost her favorite grandchild, the widowed Duchess of Bern, of whose shocking depravity she had been quite ignorant. She thus again became the first lady of the French court, and had to take part in many tedious ceremonies. She did not, however, relax any vigilance in guarding what she considered due to her position, for we find her complaining to the regent that her receptions were not attended by certain duchesses whose duty it ~vas to be present. The last great ceremony in which she took part was the coronation of the young king at Rheims, although the state of her health made it doubtful whether she might not die on the road. She declared that, as she had to die, it mattered very little where her death took place, and, regard- ing it as a duty to be present, cheerfully undertook the journey. She, however, lived to return to Paris, but died soon afterwards, in the seventy-first year of her age. As she was dying, one of her ladies respectfully took fier hand to kiss it. Nay, said Madame, kiss my face, for where I am going all are equal. It is impossible in reading her letters not to feel with ~vhat skill her chai-acter has been drawn by that great court paint- er, Saint Simon. His one object has been to note down the truth without shrinking from apparent contradictions, as a weaker hand would have done. He says, in his forcible though in elegant style Madame had in her, in every iespect, much more of the man than of the woman. She was high-spirited and courageous a thorough German frank, upright, charitable, and good with grand and noble manners, but pe~~y to the last degree in all that was due to her. She ~vas unsociable, generally shut up in order to write, except during the short hours of her formal receptions. At other times, alone with her ladies. She was hard, brusque, easily conceived dislikes, and was to be feared for the plain speaking in which she occasionally indulged, no matter to whom. She was not deficient in wit, but her wit had no subtlety. She was unbending and wanting in complai- sance, with the figure and uncouthness of a Swiss guard. With all this she was cal)able of tender and inviolable friendship. The Duke of Orleans loved and resl)ected her greatly. He never left her during her illness and had always been exceedingly dutiful, though never submitting to her guidance. He was much grieved at her death. I spent several hours with him at Versailles the day after it, and saw him weeping bitterly. Saint Simon elsewhere describes her at St. Cloud as passing the whole day in a small room contemplating the pictures of Palatines and other German princes with which she had covered the walls, or writ- ing volumes of letters, of which she made and kept copies. Her industry in writing was indeed wonderful. Every day in the week was consecrated to particular correspondents. Her letters were no mere ceremonious notes, but were often complete histories 42 A PRINCESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. & the past week. They contain at times coarseness not to be translated, but bear ample witness that this was then universal. A biographer of Caroline of Anspach has considered that queens correspondence with Madame a serious reproach to her. This shows an entire misconception of the period. XVe find that jokes of the most indelicate nature were practised by the highest persons, that the lampoons current in society were most indecent, and that words were used in ordinary conversation which are now simply inad- missible. It would be impossible to find four women of higher character, or of more unblemished life, than Madame, her aunt Sophia of Hanover, her cousin Char- lotte of Prussia, and their kinswoman Caroline of Anspach; yet in their letters to each other they discuss subjects from the mere mention of which we instinc- tively shrink. Madame de S~vign~, in her elegant let- ters, bears high testimony to Madames character, praising her charming sincerity, her good sense, and resolute spirit. Her sense was shown by her careful avoidance of politics. Madame de Maintenon once taunted her with her want of ambition, urging her to take part in politics, and promisin ~, to assist her. But Madame was not to be moved from her resolution. About the time of the dauphins mar- riage, the ele ctress Sophia was anxious that her daughter, afterwards queen of Prussia, should be his wife, and entrusted Madame with the furtherance of this project. Madame gently sounded the king during a drive, but, finding his views adverse, at once gave up all interference. At one time indeed she must have regret- ted her want of influence, for she suffered greatly during the cruel war waged by the French against the Palatinate, passing many sleepless nights dun ngits progress, and regarding Louvois, under whose ad- vice it was carried on, with passionate hatred. But beyond an involuntary exhi- bition of joy at any advantage gained by her countrymen, she was obliged to be a silent spectator. Her sympathies were sadly divided between the English courts at London and at St. Germain. She was too proud of William of Grange to wish him any harm, and too fond of the exiled Stuart princes to abandon all idea of their restoration. In such a difficulty she con- demns somewhat unsparingly the wicked English nation which had expelled them. When George I. became king, she was driven to invent ingenious solutions, by which he was to become emperor of Ger many, leaving the English throne for its hereditary occupants. The greatest pleasure of her life was the chase, and, like her grandmother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, she was an in- trel)id huntress. The many serious acci- dents sustained by her in this pursuit never in the least damped her courage. It was the constant hunting which made Versailles her favorite residence, and we can imagine that it proved the greatest possible relief from the trammels and vexations of court life. Another pursuit in which she took great delight and showed much discrimination was collect- ing engraved gems and medals. It was she who laid the foundation of the mag- nificent Orleans collection. In other ways her tastes were extremely simple. She writes that she possessed only two dress- es, her rich court gown and one for ordi- nary wear. That she was not without humor is shown by her describing a tall and very mad German prince as a fool in folio. Anticipating for Paris, on account of its great wickedness, the same fate as the cities of the plain, she declared that she was afraid everytime there was a thunder- storm. Madames life is interesting as show- ing what a shield her great force of char- acter proved. A simple, truthful woman, suddenly placed in the midst of a highly artificial and thoroughly corrupt society, she showed herself superior to all its temptations. Wedded to a frivolous and worthless man, who despised the earnest simplicity of her nature, she succeeded in gaining his respect. Surrounding herself, as far as court jealousies permitted, with honorable women, she commanded their entire devotion. Among those of her household over whom she had no control were bitter and unscrupulous foes. They employed every malicious artifice to injure her, but, beyond causing her much unhap- piness, entirely failed in their design. Without personal attractions or influential resources, she compelled the respect of a self-interested court. Though her lot in life was one singularly unsuited to her disposition, she made it tolerable by un- failing good sense and dignity. Her description of the state of French society is of extreme value, thouTh it is nauseous and, we may hope, sometimes exaggerated. Her letters, in throwing light on some disputed points of history, have a substantial claim on our credence from her acknowledged truthfulness and exceptional means of knowledge. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. 43 From The Nineteenth Century. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. ON the first mildor, at least, the first bright day of March, in this year, I walked through what was once a coun- try lane, between the hostelry of the Half- moon at the bottom of Herne Hill, and the secluded College of Dulwich. In my young days Croxsted Lane was a green bye-road traversable for some distance by carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for the most part, little else than a narrow strip of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the better cared-for meadows on each side of it: growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose or two white archangel daisies plenty, and purple thistles in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morn- ing dew, here trickled there loitered through the long grass beneath the hedges, and expanded itself, where it might, into moderately clear and deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck- weed, a fresh-water shell or two, sundry curious little skipping shrimps, any quan- tity of tadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a tittlebat offered themselves to my boyhoods pleased, and not inaccurate, observation. There my mother and I used to gather the first buds of the ha~v- thorn; and there, in after years, I used to walk in the summer shadows, as in a place wider and sweeter than our garden, to think over any passage I wanted to make better than usual in Modern Paint- ers. So, as aforesaid, on the first kindly day of this year, being thoughtful more than usual of those old times, I went to look again at the place. Often, both in those days, and since, I have put myself hard to it, vainly, to find words ~vherewith to tell of beautiful things; but beauty has been in the world since the world was made, and human language can make a shift, somehow, to give account of it, whereas the peculiar forces of devastation induced by modern city life have only entered the world lately; and no existing terms of language known to me are enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that varied themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for building, or cut through into gaunt corners and nooks of blind ground by the wild cross- ings and concurrencies of three railroads. Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground: the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road diverging gatelessly into various brick- fields or pieces of waste; and bordered on each side by heaps ofHades only knows what! mixed dust of every un- clean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with. out- torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these, remnants broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime. The land ends now where its prettiest windings once began; being cut off by a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor railway station: and on the other side of this road, what was of old the daintiest intricacy of its solitude is changed into a straight, and evenly mac- adamized carviage drive, between new houses of extreme respectability, with good attached gardens and offices most of these tenements being larger all more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent than my fathers, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must here become of children resembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and thus brought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or better circumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in its present condition for their country walk. The trimly-kept road before their doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable sub. urbs of Cheltenham or Leamington, pre- sents nothing to their study but gravel, and gas-lamp posts; the modern addition of a vermilion letter-pillar contributing indeed to the splendor, but scarcely to the interest of the scene; and a child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive escape from such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to investiga- tion, such as might be feasible, of the nat- ural history of Croxsted Lane. 44 FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. But, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus can it find, in that foul cause- way of its youthful pilgrimage? What would have happened to myself, so di- rected, I cannot clearly imagine. Possi- bly I might have got interested in the old iron and wood-shavings, and become an engineer or a carpenter: hut for the children of to-day, accustomed from the instant they are out of their cradles to the sight of this infinite nastiness, pre- vailing as a fixed condition of the uni- verse, over the face of nature, and accom- panying all the operations of industrious man, what is to be the scholastic issue? unless, indeed, the thrill of scientific van- ity in the primary analysis of some un- heard-of process of corruption or the reward of microscopic research in the sight of worms with more legs, and acari of more curious generation than ever vivified the more simply-smelling plasma of antiquity. One result of such elementary educa- tion is, however, already certain; namely, that the pleasure which we may conceive taken by the children of the coming time, in the analysis of physical corruption, guides, into fields more dangerous and desolate, the expatiation of imaginative literature: and that the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and the conditions of languidly monstrous character developed in an atmosphere of loW vitality, have become the most valued material of mod- ern fiction, and the most eagerly discussed texts of modern philosophy. The many concurrent reasons for this mischief may, I believe, be massed under a few general heads. I. There is first the hot fermentation and unwholesome secrecy of the popula- tion crowded into large cities, each mote in the misery lighter, as an individual soul, than a dead leaf, but becoming op- pressive and infectious each to his neigh- bor, in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of mental ruin and dis- tress are continually new; and, in a cer- tain sense, worth study in their monstros- ity: they have accordingly developed a corresponding science of fiction, con- cerned mainly with the description of such forms of disease, like the botany of leaf- lichens. In De Balzacs story of Father Go- riot, a grocer makes a large fortune, of which he spends on himself as much as may keep him alive; and on his two daughters, aIlt hat can promote their pleas- ures or their pride. He marries them to men of rank, supplies their secret ex penses, and provides for his favorite a separate and clandestine establishment with her lover. On his deathbed, he sends for this favorite daughter, who wishes to come, and hesitates for a quar- ter of an hour between doing so, and go- ing to a ball at which it has been for the last month her chief ambition to be seen. She finally goes to the ball. This story is, of course, one of which the violent contrasts and spectral catas- trophe could only take place, or be con- ceived, in a large city. A village grocer cannot make a large fortune, cannot marry his daughters to titled squires, and cannot die ~vithout having his children brought to him, if in the neighborhood, by fear of village gossip, if for no better cause. II. But a much more profound feeling than this mere curiosity of science in morbid phenomena is concerned in the production of the carefullest forms of niodern fiction. The disgrace and urief resultino from the mere tranipling pres- sure and electric frictiom of town life, become to the sufferers peculiarly myste- rious in their undeservedness, and fright- ful in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over them for evil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the pollution, and of their own wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelligence and degrade the con- science into sullen incredulity of all sun- shine outside the dunghill, or breeze be- yond the wafting of its impurity ; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric, partly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigor of manure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic providence; showing how everybodys fault is somebody elses, how infection has no law, digestion no will, and profita- ble dirt no dishonor. And thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what may be called the divinity of decomposition, has established itself in connection with the more recent forms of romance, giving them at once a complacent tone of clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while the inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no labori- ous scholarship for its foundation, and. no painful self-denial for its practice. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. 45 III. The monotony of life in the cen- tral streets of any great modern city, but esliecially in those of London, where every emotion intended to be derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is forbidden forever, leaves the cravino- of the heart for a sincere, yet changeful, interest, to be fed from one source only. Under natural conditions the degree of mental excitement neces- sary to bodily health is provided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and fortune of agriculture. In the country every morning of the year brings with it a new aspect of springing or fad- ing nature; a new duty to be fulfilled upon earth, and a new promise or warning in heaven. No day is without its innocent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every effort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome passions, pride, and bodily power of the laborer are excited and exerted in happiest unison. The com- panionship of domestic, the care of ser- viceable, animals, soften and enlarge his life ~vith lowly charities, and discipline him in familiar wisdoms and unboastful fortitudes ; while the divine laws of seed- time which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, and winter in which no man can work, compel the impa- tiences and coveting of his heart into labor too submissive to be anxious, and rest too sweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the con- trast between such life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only alter- nations of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine clear; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the glass roof of an arcade; where the utmost power of a storm is to choke the gutters, and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust: where chief and most fatal differ- ence in state, there is no interest of occu- pation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk w-ithin doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision outside; so that from morning to evening the only possible variation of the monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary bodsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a pocket. I said that under these laws of inan- ition, the craving of the human heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied from one source only. It might have been thought by any other than a sternly tentative philosopher, that the denial of their natural food to human feelings would have provoked a reaction- ary desire for it; and that the dreariness of the street would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity. Experience has shown the fact to be otherwise; the thoroughly trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which lie has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually more ardent or more virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness the horrors, of death. In the single novel of Bleak House there are nine deaths (or left for deaths, in the drop-scene) carefully ~vrought out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the babys at the brickmakers, or fin- ished in their threatenings and sufferings, with as much enjoyment as can be con- trived in the anticipation, and as much pathology as can be concentrated in the description. Under the following varie- ties of method : One by assassination One hy starvation, with phthisis . . Joe. One by chagrin . . Richard. One by spontaneous comhustion One by sorrow One hy remorse One by insanity One by paralysis Mr. Tulkinghorn. Mr. Krook. Lady Dedlocks lover. Lady Dedlock. Miss Fhite. Sir Leicester. Besides the baby, by fever, and a lively young Frenchwoman left to be hanged. And all this, observe, not in a tragic, adventurous, or military story, but merely as the further enlivenment of a narrative intended to be amusing; and as a prop- erly representative average of the statis- tics of civilian mortality in the centre of London. Observe further, and chiefly. It is not the mere number of deaths (which, if we count the odd troopers in th~ last scene, is exceeded in Old Mortality, and reached, within one or two, both in Waverley and Guy Mannering ) that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the ~vorlds estimate respectable persons; and that they are all grotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern theology that the appointed destiny of a larre average of our popula- tion is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or poison. Not, indeed, that a 46 FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. lawyer in full practice can be usually sup- posed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the will of Prov- idence that he should be dropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning by his house- maid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women of fashion have been and will be but it ~vould not there- fore have been thought poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, that she should be found by her daughter lying dead, with her face in the mud of a St. Giless church- yard. In the ~vork of the great masters death is always either heroic, deserved, or quiet and natural (unless their purpose be to- tally and deeply tragic, when collateral meaner death is permitted, like that of Polonius or Roderigo). In Old Mortal- ity, four of the deaths, Bothwells, En- sign Graham es, Macbriars, and Evan- dales, are magnificently heroic; Burleys and Oliphants long deserved, and swift the troopers, met in the discharge of their military duty, and the old misers, as gen- tle as the passing of a cloud, and almost beautiful in its last words of now unself- ish care. Ailie (he aye cad me Ailie, we ~vere auld acquaintance), Ailie, take ye care and baud the gear ~eel thegither for the name of Mor. ton of Miluwoods gane out like the last sough of an autd sang. And sac he fell out o ae dwam into another, and nae spak a word mair, unless it were something we coudna mak out, about a dipped candle being gude eneugh to see to dee wi. lie coud neer bide to see a moulded ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on the table. In Guy Mannerino- the murder, though unpremeditated, of a single per- son (himself not entirely innocent, but at ieast by heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate), is avenged to the utter- most on all the men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertrams death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half a dozen lines; and that of the heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and happy. Nor is it ever to be forgotten, in the comparison of Scotts with inferior work, that his own splendid powers were, even in early life, tainted, and in his latter years destroyed, by modern conditions of commercial excitement, then first, but rapidly, developing themselves. There are parts even in his best novels colored to meet tastes which he despised; and many pages written in his later ones to lengthen his article for the indiscriminate market. But there was one weakness of which his healthy mind remained incapable to the last. In modern stories prel)ared for more refined or fastidious audiences than those of Dickens, the funereal excitement is obtained, for the most part, not by the infliction of violent or disgusting death; but in the suspense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and recognized, mortal phenomena of the sick-room. The temptation, to weak ~vriters, of this order of subject is especially great, because the study of it from the livingor dying model is so easy, and to many has been the most impressive part of their own personal experience; while, if the descrip- tion be given even with mediocre accu- racy, a very large section of readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melan- choly. Few authors of second or third rate oenius can either record or invent a probable conversation in vrdinary life; but few, on the other hand, are so desti- tute of observant faculty as to be unable to chronicle the broken syllables and languid movements of an invalid. The easily rendered, and too surely recog- nized, image of familiar suffering is felt at once to be real where all else had been false; and the historian of the gestures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who introduces on the stage of his flagging action a car- riage that can be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of strong im- agination disdain such work, and those of deep sensibility shrink from it.* Only under conditions of personal weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the death of Front- de-Becuf. But he never once withdrew the sacred curtain of the sick-chamber, nor permitted the disgrace of wanton tears round the humiliation of strength, or the ~vreck of beauty. IV. No exception to this law of rever- ence will be found in the scenes in C~ur de Lions illness introductory to the prin- cipal incident in The Talisman. An inferior writer would have made the kino- - charge in imagination at the head of hi~ * Nell, in The Old Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for she market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forsters Life), and Paul was written under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott a part of she ominous palsies, grasping alike author and sub-, lect, both in Dombey and Little Dorrit. FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. chivalry, or wander in dreams by the brooks of Aquitaine; but Scott allows us to learn no more startling symptoms of the kings malady than that he ~vas rest- less and impatient, and could not wear his armor. Nor is any bodily weakness, or crisis of danger, permitted to disturb for an instant the royalty of intelligence and heart in which he examines, trusts, and obeys the physician whom his attend- ants fear. Yet the choice of the main subject in this story and its companion the trial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly faith, and several passages in the conduct of both, more especially the exaggerated scenes in the House of Baldringham, and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the gradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best have done him the worst injustice in their endeavors to disguise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and mercilessly demanded brain - toil, which killed him, show their sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final victory; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and polluted imag- ination which culminate in Castle Dan- gerous, cast a Stygian hue over St. Ronans Well, The Fair Maid of Perth, and Anne of Geierstein, which lowers them, the first altogether, the other two at frequent intervals, into fel- lowship with the normal disease which festers throughout the whole body of our lower fictitious literature. Fictitious! I use the ambiguous word deliberately; for it is impossible to dis- tinguish in these tales of the prison-house how far their vice and gloom are thrown into their manufacture only to meet a vile demand, and how far they are an integral condition of thought in tIe minds of men trained from their youth up in the knowl- edge of Londonian and Parisian misery. The speciality of the plague is a delight in the exposition of the relations between guilt and decrepitude; and I call the re- sults of it literature of the prisonhouse, because the thwarted habits of body and mind, which are the punishment of reck- less crowding in cities, become, in the issue of that punishment, frightful sub- jects of exclusive interest to themselves; and the art of fiction in which they finally delight is only the more studied arrange- ment and illustration, by colored firelights, of the daily bulletins of their own wretch- edness, in the prison calendar, the police news, and the hospital report. The reader will perhaps be surprised at my separating the greatest work of Dick- ens, Oliver Twist, with honor, from the loathsome mass to which it typically belongs. That book is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even the Mysteries of Paris and Gaboriaus Crime dAzgivai are raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and forewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible civilization, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis of such figures as the Vicomte dAugival, the stabber,* the skeleton, and the she- wolf. But ~he effectual head of the whole cretinous school is the renowned novel in which the hunchbacked lover watches the execution of his mistress from the tower of Notre Dame; and its strength passes gradually away into the anatomical prep- arations, for the general market, of novels like Poor Miss Finch, in which the heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious brother is found dead with his hands dropped off, in the Arctic re- gions.* * Chourineur, not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife-edge. Yet 1 do him and La Louve, injustice in classing them with the two others; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the LouvAcienne (Lucienne) of Gaborian she, province horn and bred; and opposed to Parisian civ- ilization in the character of her sempotress friend. De ce Paris, nfl elle ttait nte, she savait tout elle connaissait tout. Rienne 1/tonnait, nul nelintimidait. Sa science des d/tails mat/riels de lexistence ttait inconcevable. Impossible de la duper! Rh bien t cette flue si laborleuse et si Iconome navait mIme pat Ia plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont ihonneur de Ia femme. Je navais pat id/s dune si compl~te absence de sens moral ; dune si inconsciente dIprava lion, dune impudence si sifront/ment naive. LA r- gent des Autres, vol. i., p. 358? * The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing especially images of trun- cated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated with grossness. Horace, in the Epod5s,~~ scoffs at it, but not without horror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply struck by it: Durer, defy- ing and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lords Prayer; it takes entire possession of Baizac in the Con/es Droistiques; is struck Scott in the earliest days of his childish visions in- tensified by the axe-stroke murder of his graisd-aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. It chose for him the subject of The Heart of Midlothian, and pro- duced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting Nigel, almost spoiling Quentin Durward, utterly The Fair Maid of Perth: and culminating in Bizarro, L. x. x~. It suggested all the deaths by fall- ing or sinking, as in delirious sleep Kennedy, Eve- line Neville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Aiay Robsart, the Master of Ravenswood in the quicksand, Morris and Corporal Grace-be-here compare the dream of Gride in Nicholas Nickleby, and Dick~ 47 48 FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. This literature of the prison-house, un- with the dripping slabs of the Morgue, derstanding by the word not only the cell having its central root thus in the Ile de of Newgate, but also and even more dell- Paris or historically and pre-eminently nitely the cell of the Hlltel-Dieu, the the Gild de Parisis, when understood Hllpital des Fous, and the grated corridor deeply, the precise counter-corruption of the religion of the Sainte Chapelle, just enss own last words, on tkc ground, (so also, in m~ as the worst forms of bodily and mental owts inflammation of the brain, two years ago, I dreamed are the of love. I have that I fell through the earths and came out on the other ruin corruption side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it pro- therefore called it/ic/ion mdcroyante, with deced all this figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacohet, literal accuracy and precision; accordino- Flibbertigibbes, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey Hudson, Fe- nella, and Nectabanus; in Dicketis it in like manner to the explanation of the word which the gtves Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smaliweed, Miss Mow- reader may find in any good French dic- cher, atid the dwarfs and wax-work of Nells caravan; ~* and round its Arctic in the and runs entirely wild in Barsaby Rudge, where, LlOnar)~, pole with a corps do dons e composed of one idiot, two mad- Morgue, be may gather into one Caina of men, a gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy o-elid pu trescence th fool who is aiso a blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled ~ e entire product of vtrago, and a doll in ribandscarrying this company modern infidel imagination, amusing itself through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of with destruction of th the ntadmen, his mother, and the idiot, ruiss the g itself with aberration e body, and busying theman fool through to a bloody duel, and burns and of the mind. crushes the shop-boy fool into shapelessness, he can- Aberration, palsy, or plague, observe, not yet be content without shooting this spare lovers as distinnuished from normal evil, just as leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a woodets one; 6 the shapeless sbop-boy being finally also married in the venom of rabies or cholera differs two woodets ones. lt is this mutilation, observe, from that of a wasp or a viper. The life which is the very sign manual of this plague; joined, ~ of the in sect andl ser this artistic forms of it, with a hove of thorniness (in pent dleserves, or at their mystic root, this trtitscation of this limbless ser least permits, our thouo-hts~ not so the pent and the spines of this dragons wing. Cotopare stao-es of Modern Painters, vol. iv., Chapter on this Moon- 6 agony in the fury-driven hound. lain Glootn, i. 19); and in all forms of it, with petri- There is some excuse, indeed, for the faction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence patholoni c labor of the modern novelist the last Darwinian process of the witches charm cool it ivith a baboons blood, then this charm is firm in the fact that he cannot easily, in a city and good. This two frescoes its the colossal hand- population, find a healthy mind to vivi- bills svhichs have lately decorated this streets of London sect but the greater part of such ama- (the baboon with this mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooks decapitation) are the final English forms of teur surgery is the struggle, in an epoch Raphiasis arabesque nuder this influence; and it is of wild literary competition, to obtain ivell worth while to get this miumber for this week ending April 3, tSSo, of Young Folks a magazine of in- novelty of material. The varieties of structive and entertaining literature for boys and girls aspect and color in fruit, be it of all ages, coniainiiig A Sequel to Deodichado healthy (this modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quits sweet or sour, may be within certain monumental exatople of the kind of art to question will limits described exhaustively. Not so be found as a leading illustratiomi of this characteristic the blotches of its conceivable blio-ht sentence: See, good Cerberus, said Sir Etupert, and while the of inteoral hu- my kand baa been struck oft. You must make me symmetries 6 a band of Iron, one wIth s~ArIugs In It, so that I can man character can only be traced by har- make It grasp a dagger. rise text is also, as ti monious and tender skill, like the branches professes to be, instructive; being the ultimate degen- eration of what I have above called the fohlf of of a living tree, the faults and gaps of one Ivanhoe; for folly begets folly down, and down; and gnawed away by corroding accident can whatever Scott atid miner did wrong has thousands of imitatorstheir wisdom none will so much as hsa be shuffled into senseless change like the bow touch less follow l wards of a Chubb lock. In both of this masters, it is always tobe remembered V It is needless to insist on the vast that this evil and good are alike conditions of literal vIsIon: atid therefore also, inseparably connected with field for this dice-cast or card-dealt calam- the state of this health. I believe the first elemetits of ity which opens itself in the iceno all Scotts errors ssere in the milk of isis consumptive . 6 rance, nurse, which all bitt killed him as an infant, L. ~. t9, money-interest, and mean passion, of city atid ivas ivitliotut doubt the cause of the teethitig fever marriage. Peasants know each other as that etided its his lameness (L. 1. 20). Then came (if children meet, as they grow up in test~ this reader cares to knosv what I mean by Fors, let him read this page carefully) this fearful accidents to Isis ing labor; and if a stout farmers son only sister, atid her death, L. 1. t~ then the madness marries a handless girl, it is his own fault. of his tiurse, who planned isis own murder (it), then Also in the f the stortes continually told him of the executions at patrician amilies of the field, Carlisle (54), his aunts husband having seen them; the young people know what they are issuing, lie himself scarcely knows how, in the u 0 doing, and 6 6 ate, or accountable terror that came upon him at the sight marry a neio-hborino-est of statuary (3t), especially Jacobs ladder; then the a covetable title, with some conception of tourder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal the responsibilities they undertake. But burstitig of this bloodvessel at Kehso, with the succeed- ing nervous illness (6567), solaced, while he was helm even among these, their season in the bled and blistered till tie had scarcely a pulse left, confused metropolis creates licentious and by that history of the Knights of Malta fondly dwelt oms and realized by actual modelling of their fortress, * Se dit par d~nigremsnt, dun chrbtien qui no which returned tohiis mind for this theme of its last croit pas lea dogmnes de sa religion. Fleming, vol. effort in passing away. - ii., p. 650. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. 49 fortuitous temptation before unknown; and in the lower middle orders, an en- tirely new kingdom of discomfort and disgrace has been preached to them in the doctrines of unbridled pleasure ~vhich are merely an apology for their peculiar forms of ill-breeding. It is quite curious how often the catastrophe, or the leading in- terest, of a modern novel, turns upon the want, both in maid and bachelor, of the common self-command which ~vas taught to their grandmothers and grandfathers as the first element of ordinarily decent behavior. Rashly inquiring the other day the plot of a modern story from a female friend,, I elicited, after some hesitation, that it hinged mainly on the young peo- ples forgetting themselves in a boat; and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly an axiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength of amiable sen- timent is proved by our incapacity on proper occasions to express, and on im- proper ones to control it. The pride of a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought (not to speak of the higher nobleness ~vhich bestowed love where it was honorable, and rever- ence where it was due); but the automatic amours and involuntary proposals of re- cent romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the instinct of an insect, or the effervescence of a chemical mixture. There is a pretty little story of Alfred de Mussets, La Mouclie, which, if the reader cares to glance at it, will save me further trouble in explaining the dis- ciplinarian authority of mere old-fash- ioned politeness, as in some sort protec- tive of higher things. It describes, with much grace and precision, a state of so- ciety by no means pre-eminently virtuous, or enthusiastically heroic ; in which many people do extremely wrong, and none sul4imely right. But as there are heights of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses to which fall is barred; neither accident nor temptation will make any of the principal personages swerve from an adopted resolution, or violate an accepted principle of honor; people are expected as a matter of course to speak with propriety on occasion, and to wait with patience when they are bid: those who do wrong, admit it; those who do right dont boast of it; everybody knows. his own mind, and everybody has good manners. Nor must it be forgotten that in the worst days of the self-indulgence which LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI~ 1564 destroyed the aristocracies of Europe, their vices, however licentious, were never, in the fatal modern sense, un- principled. The vainest believed in vir- tue; the vilest respected it. Gkaque c/lose avail son norn, * and the severest of English moralists recognizes the accu- rate wit, the lofty intellect, and the Un- fretted benevolence, which redeemed from vitiated surroundings the circle of DAlembert and Marmontelt I have said, with too slight praise, that the vainest, in those days, believed in virtue. Beautiful and heroic examples of it were always before them; nor was it without the secret significance attaching to what may seem the least accidents in the work of a master, that Scott gave to both his heroines of the age of revolution in England the name of the queen of the highest order of English chivalry.t It is to say little for the types of youth and maid which alone Scott felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honorable to portray, that they act and feel in a sphere where they are never for an instant liable to any of the weaknesses which disturb the calm, or shake the resolution, of chastity and courage in a modern novel. Scott lived in a country and time, when, from highest to lowest, butchiefly in that dignified and nobly severe middle class to which he himself belonged, a habit of serene and stainless thought was as nat- ural to the people as their mountain air. Women like Rose Bradwardine and Ailie Dinmont were the grace and guard of almost every household (God be praised that the race of them is not yet extinct, for all that mall or boulevard can do), and it has perhaps escaped the notice of even attentive readers that the comparatively uninteresting character of Sir Walters heroes had always been studied among a class of youths who were simply inca- * A son norn, properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliecs in Prosper Randoce. which is full of other valuable ones. See the old nurses Ici has les choses vont de travers, comme on chien c1ui vS ~ v~pres, p 93; antI compare Prospers treasures, la petite V~nus, et le petit Christ divoire, p. 121; also Ma- dame Brehannes request for the divertissement of quelque belie batterie ~ coups de cooteau with Didiers answer. H~las! madame, vous jouez de maiheur, ici dans Ia Dr5me, lon se massacre aussi peu que possible, p. 33. Edgeworths Tales (Hunter, 1827), Marring- ton and Ormood, vol. iii., p. a6o. ~ Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth. Scotts father was habitually ascetic. J isave heard his son tell that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say, Yes, it is too good, bairns, and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate. Lockharts Life (Black, Edinburgh, i869), vol i., p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the simple form of 50 FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. pable of doing anything seriously wrong; and could only be embarrassed by the consequences of their levity or impru- dence. But there is another difference in the woof of a Waverley novel from the cob- web of a modern one, which depends on Scotts larger view of human life. Mar- riage is by no means, in his conception of man and ~voman, the most important busi- ness of their existence; * nor love the only reward to be proposed to their virtue or exertion. It is not in his reading of the laws of Providence a necessity that virtue should, either by love or any other external blessing, be rewarded at all; and marriage is in all cases thought of as a constituent of the happiness of life, but not as its only interest, still less its only aim. And upon analyzing with some care the motives of his principal stories, we shall often find that the love in them is merely a light by which the sterner fea- tures of character are to be irradiated, and that the marriage of the hero is as subordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the Fifths courtship of Kath- erine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the fortunes of the person who is nomi- nally the subject of the tale are often little more than a background on which grander figures are to be drawn, and deeper fates forthshadowed. The judgments between the faith and chivalry of Scotland at Drumclog and Bothwell bridge owe little of their interest in the mind of a sensible reader to the fact that the captain of the Popinjay is carried a prisoner to one battle, and returns a prisoner from the oth- er: and ScotPhimself, while he watches the white sail that bears Queen Mary for the last time from her native land, very nearly forgets to finish his novel, or to tell us and with small sense of any consolation to be had out of that minor circumstance, that Roland and Catherine were unit- ed, spite of their differing faiths. Neither let it be thought for an instant that the slight, and sometimes scornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes which a novelist of otir own day would have analyzed with the airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curios- ity of a gossip, indicate any absence in his heart of synipathy with the great and sacred elements of personal happiness. * A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out lois page for press, a Miss Somebodys great song, Live, and Love, and Die. Had it been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have added Spin. t See passage of introduction to Ivanhoe, wisely quoted in L. iv. so6. An era like ours, which has with diligence and ostentation swept its heart clear of all the passions once known as loyalty, patriotism, and piety, necessarily magni- fies the apparent force of the one remain- ing sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers, or clings inextricably round the chasms of ruin; nor can it but regard with awe the unconquerable spirit which still tempts or betrays the sagaci- ties of selfishness into error or frenzy which is believed to be love. That Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as employed by lovers of the Parisian school, hIre damour, may be admitted without prejudice to his sensibility,* and that he never knew lczrnor che 7iiO~~ 1 so? e laltre stelle, was the chief, though unrecognized, calam- ity of his deeply chequered life. But the reader of honor and feeling will not there- fore suppose that the love which Miss Vernon sacrifices, stooping for an instant from her horse, is of less noble stamp, or less enduring faith, than that ~vhich trou- bles and degrades the whole existence of Consuelo; or that the affection of Jeanie Deans for the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field of soft blue heaven be- yond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, is less fully in possession of her soul than the hesitating and self-reproachful im- pulses under which a modern heroine for- gets l~erself in a boat, or compromises herself in the cool of the evening. I do not wish to return over the waste ground we have traversed, comparin~, point by point, Scotts manner with those of Bermondsey and the Faubourgs; but it may be, perhaps, interesting at this moment to examine, with illustration from those Waverley novels which have so lately retracted the attention of a fair and gentle public, the universal conditions of style, rightly so called, which are in all ages, and above all local currents or wa- vering tides of temporary manners, pillars of what is forever strong, and models of what is forever fair. But I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the works of Scott, in which his perfect mind may be known, and his chosen ways understood. His great works of prose fiction, except- ing only the first half-volume of Waver- - ley, were all written in twelve years, 181426 (of his own age forty-three to fifty-five), the actual time employed in their composition being not more than a * See below, note, p. ~a, on the conclusion of Wood- stock. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. couple of months out of each year; and during that time only the morning hours and spare minutes during the professional day. Though the first volume of Wa- verley was begun long ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and finished between the 4th of June and the 1st of July, during all which I attended my duty in court, and pro- ceeded without loss of time or hindrance of business.* Few of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in Modern Painters, long ago, I got the general character of a lover of paradox, are more singular, or more sure, than the statement, apparently so encour- aging to the idle, that if a reat thi ngcan be done at all, it can be done easily. But it is in that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after long years of gathered strength, and all Scotts great writings were the recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labor, and rich with organic gathering of boundless resource. Omitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished sketches of The Black Dwarf and Legend of Montrose, and, for a reason presently to be noticed, the unhappy St. Ronans, the memorable romances of Scott are eighteen, falling into three distinct groups, containing six each. The first group is distinguished from the other two by characters of strength and felicity which never more appeared after Scott was struck down by his terrific illness in 1819. It includes Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, and The Heart of Midlothian. The composition of these occupied the mornings of his happiest days, between the ages of forty-three and forty-eight. On the 8th of April, 1819 (he was forty- eight on the precedi.ng 15th of August)he began for the first time to dictate being unable forthe exertion of writing The Bride of Lammermuir, the affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his audible suffering filled every pause. Nay, Willie, he answered, only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as for giving over ~vork, that can only be when I am in woollen. t From this time forward the brightness of joy and sincerity of inevitable humor, which perfected the imagery of the earlier novels, are wholly absent, except in the * L. iv. 577. t L. Vl. 67. two short intervals of health unaccount- ably restored, in which he wrote Red- gauntlet and Nigel. It is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of Scotts genius, that these revivals of earlier power were un- conscious, and that the time of extreme weakness in which he wrote St. Ronans Well, was that in which he first asserted his own restoration. It is also a deeply interesting charac- teristic of his noble nature that he never gains anything by sickness; the whole man breathes or faints as one creature: the ache that stiffens a limb chills his heart, and every pang of the stomach paralyzes the brain. It is not so with in- ferior minds, in the workings of which it is often impossible to distinguish native from narcotic fancy, and the throbs of conscience from those of indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colors of mind are always morbid,which gleam on the sea for the Ancient Mari- ner, and through the casements on St. Agnes Eve; but Scott is at once blinded and stultified by sickness; never has a fit of the cramp without spoiling a chapter, and is perhaps the only author of vivid imagination who never wrote a foolish word but when he was ill. It remains only to be noticed on this point that any strong natural excitement, affecting the deeper sprin~s of his heart, would at once restore his intellectual powers in all their fulness, and that, far towards their sunset: but that the stron~ will on which he prided himself, though it could trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel industry, never could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his darker hours. I believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is common to all great men: but what the special character of emotion was, that alone could lift Scott above the power of death, I am about to ask the reader, in a little while, to observe with joyful care. The first series of romances then, above named, are all that exhibit the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in the three years sub- sequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of it. They consist of The Bride of Lan-i- mermuir, Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth, and The Pirate. * The marks of broken health * One other such novel, and theres an end; but 5 52 FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. on all these are essentially twofold prevailing melancholy, and fantastic im- probability. Three of the tales are ago- nizingly tragic, The Abbot scarcely less so in its main event, and Ivanhoe deeply wounded through all its bright panoply; while even in that most power- ful of the series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly opportune appearances of Locksiey, the death of Ulrica, and the resuscitation of Athel- stane, are partly boyish, partly feverish. Caleb in The Bride, Triptolemus and Halcro in The Pirate, are all laborious, and the first incongruous; half a volume of The Abbot is spent in extremely dull detail of Rolands relations with his fellow-servants and his mistress, which have nothing whatever to do with the future story; and the lady of Avenel her- self disappears after the first volume, like a snaw-wreath when its thaw, Jeanie. The public has for itself pro- nounced on The Monastery, though as much too harshly as it has foolishly praised the horrors of Ravenswood and the nonsense of Ivanhoe; because the modern public finds in the torture and adventure of these, the kind of ex- citement which it seeks at an opera, while it has no sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of Glendearg, or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady. But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scotts heart in them. The first was begun to refresh himself in the intervals of artificial labor on Ivanhoe. It ~vas a relief, he said, to interlay the scenery most familiar to me * with the strange ~vorld for ~vhich I had to draw so much on imagination. t Through all the closing scenes of the second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the queen. And within the code of Scotts work to which I am about to ap- peal for illustration of his essential pow- ers, I accept The Monastery and Abbot, and reject from it the remaining four of this group. The last series contains two quite no- ble ones, Redgauntlet and Nigel; two of very high value, Durward and Woodstock; the slovenly and diffuse Peveril, written for the trade; the sickly Tales of the Crusaders, and the entirely broken and diseased St. Ro- nans Well. This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in which I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces itself to these toilow- ing twelve (named in order of production): Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Rob Roy, Old Mortal- ity, The Heart of Midlothian, The Monastery, The Abbot, The For- tunes of Nigel, Qu entin Durward, and Woodstock. * It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal characteristics of his style, illustra- tive in little ways of the questions we have been examining, and chiefi yofthe one which may be most embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, be- tween character and disease. One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a lan- guage, and its corruption. A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and force, but under the par. ticular conditions of life, climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms ~f sentence peculiar to the race, and pronun- ciations indicative of their character and disposition. Thus burn (of a streamlet) is a word - possible only in a country where there are brightly running waters, lassie ,a word who can last forever? who ever lasted so long? Syd- ney Smith (of The Pirate) to Jeffrey, December 30, 1821 ( Letters, vol. ii., p. 223). * L. vi., p. xIS. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192. Alt, alas! were now in a great measure so written. Ivanhoe, the Monassery,The Ahbot, and Kenilworth were all published between December 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand before the bargain was completed; and before The Fortunes of Nigel issued from the press Scott had exchaeged instruments and received his booksellers hills for no less than four works of fiction, not one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in tmobruken succession, ends of them to fill nA at least three vol- umes, bat with proper saving clanses as to increase of copy money in case any of them sho id ran to * ~ was finished 26 March, 1826. He oar; and within two years all this anticipation had knew titen of his ruin ; and wrote in bitterness, but not been wipe doff by Peveril of the Peak, Quentin in weakness. The closing pages are the most beauti Durward, St. Ronans Well, and Red Gaunt- ful ctf tlse book. But a month afterwards Lady Sc3tt let. I died; and he never wrote glad word more. FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. possible only where girls are as free as the rivulets, and auld, a form of the soutbern old, adopted by a race of liner musical ear than tbe English. On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in tbe ordinary sense of the phrase, broad forms of utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence but the moment the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and monotonous labor, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech. Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are how- ever not necessarily corrupted dialects. Corrupt language is that oathered byig- norance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood, or half the sound heard. iVIrs. Gamps aperiently so, and the underminded with primal sense of undermine, of I foroet which gossip, in The Mill on the Floss, are master and mistress pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprops allegories on the banks of the Nile are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Mrs. Tabitha Brambles ignorance is vulgarized by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkinss by her conceit. The wot of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can purify even these); the trewth of Mr. Chadband, and natur of Mr. Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the use of the word bloody in modern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it. Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a frag- ment of Scotts Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go it is perhaps the only un- fair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villanous 53 slang, he gives it in English or Dutch not Scotch. I had intended in the close of this paper to analyze and compare the charac- ters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moniplies, for examples, the former of innate evil, unaffected by external influ- ences, and undiseased, but distinct from natural goodness as a nettle is distinct from balm or lavender; and the latter of innate goodness, contracted and pinched by circumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by frost, not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must put off; but the careful study of one sentence of Andrews will give us a good deal to think of. I take his account of the rescue of Glasgow Cathedral at the time of the Reformation. Ab! its a brave kirknane o yere whig. maleeries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about ita solid, wed-jointed mason- wark, that will stand as lang as the wand, keep hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a douncome lang sync at the Refbrma- tion, when they pud doun the kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thercawa, to cleanse them o Papery, and idolatry, and image- worship, and surplices, and sic-like rags o the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae the commons o Renfrew, and o the Barony, and the Gorhals, and a about, they behoved to come into Glasgow ae fair morn- ing, to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o Popish nicknackets. But the towns- men o Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sac they rang the com- mon bell, and assembled the train-bands wi took o drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o Guild that year (and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades assembled, and offered downright battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the crans, as others had done else~vhere. It wasna for luve o Paperie na, na! nane could ever say that o the trades o Glasgow. Sac they sune came to an agree- ment to take a the idolatrous statues of sants (sorrow be on them!) out o their neuks. And sac the hits o stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flacs are kaimed aff her, and abody was alike pleased. And I hac heard wise folk say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scotland, the Reform wad just hac been as pure as it is een now, and we wad hac mair Christian-like kirks; for I hac been sac lang in England, that nacthing will drived out o my head, that the dog-kennel at Oshaldistone Hall is better than mony a house o God in Scotland. 54 FICTION FAIR AND FOUL. Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish history of quite in- estimable and concentrated value. An- drews temperament is the type of a vast class of Scottish shall we call it sow- thistlian mind, which necessarily takes the view of either pope or saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the cedar or lilies in Lebanon; and the entire force of the passions which, in the Scottish revolution, foretold and forearmed the French one, is told in this one paragraph; the coarseness of it, observe, being ad- mitted, not for the sake of the laugh, any more than an onion in broth merely for its flavor, but for the meat of it; the inherent constancy of that coarseness being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of the history to be told. Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious passion of it, such as there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a thief, a liar, a coward, and, in the fair service from which he takes his name, a hypocrite; but in the form of prejudice, which is all that his mind is capable of in the place of religion, he is entirely sincere. He does not in the least pretend detesta- tion of image worship to please his mas- ter, or any one else; he honestly scorns the carnal morality * as dowd and fusion- less as rue-leaves at Yule of the sermon in the upper cathedral; and when wrapt in critical attention to the real savor o ~octrinein the crypt, so completely for- gets the hypocrisy of his fair service as to return his masters attempt to disturb him with hard punches of the elbow. Thirdly, he is a man of no mean sagac- ity, quite up to the average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty thought or passion, is a shrewd measurer of ~veaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his sketch of his masters charac- terto Mr. Hammorgaw, beginning; Hes no athegither sae void o sense, neither; and then the close of the dialogue But the lads no a bad lad efter a, and he needs some carefu body to look after him. Fourthly, he is a good workman knows his own business well, and can judge of other craft if sound, or other- wise. All these four qualities of him must be known before we can understand this single speech. Keeping them in mind, I take it up, word by word. * Compare Mr. Spurgeons not unfrequent orations on the same subject. You observe, in the outset, Scott makes no attempt whatever to indicate accents or modes of pronunciation by changed spelling, unless the word becomes a quite definitely new, and scarcely writable one. The Scottish way of pronouncing James, for instance, is entirely pecul- iar, and extremely pleasant to the ear. But it is so, just because it does not change the word into Jeerns, nor into Jims, nor into Jawms. A modern writer of dialects would think it amusing to use one or other of these ugly spellings. But Scott writes the name in pure English, knowing that a Scots reader will speak it rightly, and an English one be wise in letting it alone. On the other hand he writes weel for well, because that word is complete in its change, a ndmay be very closely expressed by the double e. The ambiguous us in gude and sune are admitted, because far liker the sound than the double a would be, and that in hure for graces sake, to soften the word; so also flaes for fleas. Monyfor many is again positively right in sound, and neuk differs from our nook in sense, and is not the same word at all, as ~ve shall presently see. Secondly, observe not a word is cor- rupted in any indecent haste, slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronuncia tion. There is no lisping, drawling, slob. bering, or snuffling: the speech is as clear as a bell and as keen as an arrow: and its elisions and contractions are either melo- dious, ( na, for not, pud, for pulled,) or as normal as in a Latin verse. The long words are delivered without the slightest bungling; and big- ging finished to its last g. I take the important words now in their places. Brave. The old English sense of the word in to go brave retained, express- ing Andrews sincere and respectful admi- ration. Had he meant to insinuate a hint of the churchs beino have said braw. b too fine, he would Kirk. This is of course just as pure and unprovincial a word as Kirche or ~gZise. LV/izgmaieerie. I cannot get at the root of this word, but it is one showing that the speaker is not bound by classic rules, - but will use any syllables that enrich his meaning. Nipperty-tipperty (of his masters poetry nonsense ~ is another word of the same class. Curliewurlie is of course just as pure as Shakespeares burly-burly. But see first suggestion of the idea to Scott at Blair-Adam (L. vi. 264). FICTIONFAIR AND FOUL. 55 Opeusteek keins. More description, or better, of the later Gothic cannot be put into four syllables. Steek, melodious for stitch, has a combined sense of clo~- ing or fastening. And note that the later Gothic, being precisely what Scott knew best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, quite as much himself * as Frank, that he is laughing at, when he laughs wit/i Andrew, whose opensteek hems are only a ruder metaphor for his own willow-wreaths changed to stone. Gunpowlizer. -Ther is a lingering vestige of the French -dre. .Syne. One of the melodious and mys- terious Scottish words which have partly the sound of wind and stream in them, and partly the range of softened idea which is like a distance of blue hills over border land ( far in the distant Cheviots blue ). Perhaps even the least sympa- thetic Englisher might recognize this, if he heard Old Long Since vocally substituted for the Scottish words to the air. I do not know the root; but the words proper meaning is not since but before or after an interval of some duration, as xveel sune as syne. But first on Sawnie gies a ca, syne, bauldly in she enters.~~ Be/zoved (to come). A rich word, with peculiar idiom, always used more or less ironically of anything done under a partly mistaken and partly pretended notion of duty. Siccan. Far prettier, and fuller in meaning than such. It contains an added sense of wonder; and means prop- erly so great or so unusual. Took (o drum). Classical tuck from Italian toccata, the preluding touch or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under word tucket, quoting Othello ). The deeper Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in more solemn warning. Bigging. The only xvord in all the sen- tence of which the Scottish form is less melodious than the English, and what for no, seeing that Scottish architecture is mostly little beyond Bessie Bells and Mary Grays? They biggit a bowre by yon burnside, and theekit it ow~ re xvi rashes. But it is pure Anglo-Saxon in roots; see glossary to Fairbairns edition of the Douglas Virgil, 1710. Coup. Another of the much-embrac * There are three definite and intentional portraits nf himself, in the novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank Osbaldistone, and Alan Fairford. ing words; short for upset, but with a sense of awkwardness as the inherent cause of fall; compare Richie Moniplies (also for sense of behoved): Ae auld hirplin deevil of a potter behoved just to step in my way, and offer me a pig (earth- en potetym. dub.), as he said just to put my Scotch ointment in; and I gave him a push, as but natural, and the totter- ing deevil coupit owre amang his own pigs, and damaged a score of them. So also Dandie Dinmont in the postchaise: Od! I hope theyll no coup us. - Tue Crans. Idiomatic; root unknown to me, but it means in this use, full, total, and without recovery. Molendinar. From molendinum, the grinding-place. I do not know if actually the local name,* or Scotts invention. Compare Sir Piercies Molinaras. But at all events used here with bye-sense of degradation of the formerly idle saints to grind at the mill. Grouse. Courageous, softened with a sense of comfort. Ilka. Again a word with azure dis- tance, including the whole sense of each and every. The reader must carefully and reverently distinguish these comprehensive words, which gather two or more perfectly understood meanings into one chord of meaning, and are har- monies more than words, from the above- noted blunders between two half-hit meanings, struck as a bad piano-player strikes the edge of another note. In En- glish we have fewer of these combined thoughts; so that Shakespeare rather plays with the distinct lights of his words, than melts them into one. So again Bishop Douglas spells, and doubtless spoke, the word rose, differently, ac- cording to his purpose; if as the chief or governing ruler of flowers, rois, but if only in her own beauty, rose. (Vi ristian-like. The sense of the de- cency and order proper to Christianity is stronger in Scotland than in any other country, and the word Christian more * Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his conceit; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was called Molyndona even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 1446. See also account of the locality in Mr. Georges ad- mirable volume, Old Glasgow, pp. 129, 49, etc. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since throwing chat powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it with other pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook, once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching) has for nearly a hundred years been a crawling.stream of loathsomeness. It is now bricked over, and a carriage-way made on the top of it ; underneath the foul coess still passes through the heart of the city, till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbor. 56 THE CIVIL CODE OF THE JEWS. distinctly opposed to beast. Hence placing such animals in charge of shep- the back-handed cut at the English for herds was generally prevalent. It was their over-pious care of dogs. also customary to leave produce of differ- I am a little surprised myself at the ent kinds for a time in the hands of the length to which this examination of one growers wine, for example until it small piece of Sir Waiters first-rate work matured. It will therefore be seen that has carried us, but here I must end for the laws defining the nature and extent this time, trusting, if the editor of the of the responsibility incurred by guar- Nineteenth Gentury permit me, yet to dians were of considerable practical im- trespass, perhaps more than once, on his portance. readers patience; but, at all events, to The law took cognizance of four kinds examine in a following paper the techni- of guardians: the shame;- kizinain, one cal characteristics of Scotts own style, who took charge of anothers property, both in prose and verse, together with receiving, however, no payment for so Byrons, as opposed to our fashionably doing; the nossdsakhar,or l)aid guardian, recent dialects and rhythms; the essen- who received a fixed sum to look after the tial virtues of language, in both the mas- goods entrusted to him; the sok/zer, one ters of the old school, hinging ultimately, who hired an animal or thing for his own little as it might be thought, on certain use; and the shoe?, who simuly borrowed unalterable views of theirs concerning an article from his neighbor, paying noth- the code called of the Ten Command- ing for the accommodation. The respon- ments, wholly at variance with the dog- sibility in each case differed considerably. mas of automatic morality which, summed The shomer khinam was expected to take a gain by the witches line, Fair is foul, reasonable care of the property entrusted and foul is fair, hover through the fog to him. He had voluntarily undertaken and filthy air of our prosperous England. the charge, and ~vith it an implied obliga- JOHN RUSKIN. tion to see that it was neither stolen nor lost nor spoiled. Ordinary forethought and vigilance were required of him. Hence the law provided that he should be liable for loss or damage, if there had From The Pall Mall Gazette. been what the Talmudists termtesckiak THE CIVIL CODE OF THE JEWS. culpable carelessness, or neglect of rea- OF the remaining ordinances of the sonable and necessary precautions. Not Jewish civil code which regulate ordinary so if the damage was owing to an unusual transactions of man and man, those pro- or unforeseen accident. For instance, if viding for the responsibility of guardians an ox was entrusted to an unpaid guar- are the principal. The extended signifi- dian who placed it in a stable, leaving, cance legally attached to the term guar- however, the door open during the night, dian among the Jews renders these laws and the beast was lost or stolen in conse- somewhat peculiar in their application. quence, it was regarded as a peschiah. Any person temporarily in possession of He was responsible for the loss. If the or temporarily in charge of property or animal was securely locked up and thieves movables belonging to another was in law broke in and made off with it, or a storm its guardian. ln this category the He- blew open the door and the ox strayed, it brew jurists included the tenant who was regarded as an unavoidable accident, rented a house, the agriculturist who and the guardian was not liable. In such leased a field, the laborer who hired an a case he had simply to take the Biblical ox, and the dealer who borrowed an ass. oath that he had not been guilty of a The merchant who took charge of goods peschiah (an act of negligence), and he in his warehouse, the carrier who agreed was acquitted of an further res p onsi- to convey property from place to place, bility. y the creditor who retained in his hands a The paid guardian, noss~ sakhar and pledge as security for money lent, the the sokher, one who hired an animal or workman who was employed to make up thing, incurred liability known as genebak or manufacture or dye any stuff or raw wabedak literally, theft and loss. That material entrusted to him for such a is, the owner of the property temporarily purpose all these were regarded as in their hands was guaranteed against guardians in respect of the property tein- theft and loss, even if this occurred in an porarily in their possession. The rearing unusual or unlooked-for manner. The of sheep was forbidden in certain districts guardian was expected to exercise addi- of Palestine, and hence the practice of I tional vigilance, in consideration of the THE CIVIL CODE OF THE JEWS. 57 payment he received in the one case, and the use or enjoyment received in the other. If, however, the theft or loss oc- curred in an extraordinary way, not sim- ply unusual, but so as to constitute an ones an accident under no circumstances to be anticipated and avoided by precau- tions the guardian was free from re- sponsibility. The ruling of the Hebrew judges as to accidents pure and simple, re(tarded as ones, will be understood from a case which came before the rabbin Papa. A grazier entrusted with the care of several head of cattle was driving them along, when he came to a narrow stream. Over this was a bridge. The guardian drove them across it. As they were scurrying over one pushed the other and some were drowned. The owner of the cattle sued the herdsman for the value of the animals he had lost. The matter was brought before Rabbi Papa. He pronounced the guardian liable; and or- dered him to pay on the ground that the accident was not an ones one that could not have been anticipated. What would you, then, have done, asked the defend- ant when judgment was given, in order to prevent such an occurrence? The reply was conclusive: I should have driven the animals across one by one in single file. The accident could not then have happened. If the herdsman had taken this l)recaution and an ox had fallen into the stream or the bridge itself had given way, it would have been regarded as an onesacalamity resembling a flood or fire. In such circumstances no respon- sibility could attach to the paid guardian. So likewise, where an animal was hired for labor and diednot from overwork and ill-treatment or neglect, but from nat- ural causes the hirer could not be coin- pelled to indemnify the owner. Apropos of this, a very curious case was on one occasion brought before the oft-mentioned Rab Asche. It is noteworthy on account of the very remarkable proverb respect- ing women which was cited to nonsuit the plaintiff. A person had lent a neighbor his cat for the purpose of killing rats. The rats, it appeared, had assembled in force and killed the cat. Whereupon the owner of the cat claimed the value of the animal. Rab Asche not unnaturally was perplexed. The defendant urged that he had engaged the cat to do specific work, to kill rats. It died while engaged in this occupation. Therefore, he pleaded, the case resembled that wherein an ox was hired for field-work and died in the hirers hands. In such a case no liability at- tached. Hence, he further argued, he also was entitled to an acquittal. On the other hand, the rats had killed the cat there might well be a difference; and the analogy ~vas not good. The plaintiff was in the end nonsuited, Rab Mordkhai giv- ino the extraordinary reason that AbYm~ o? Hagromya asserted in the name of Rabba that in the case of a man slain by women there was neither trial nor judge. That is, the women could not be charged or convicted. There was but one exception to the ordinances affirming the liability of those ~vhom the law regarded as paid guardians. We have before mentioned that carriers who undertook the transport of goods and merchandise were included in this cate- gory. They were responsible as paid guardians for the property temporarily in their charge. Porters who plied in the towns for daily hire were, by custom and equity, exempt from the liability insisted upon in ordinary eases. The son of Bar Hanah entrusted two porters with a hogshead of wine to carry to his resi- dence. They carried it carelessly; it was broken on the way and the wine spilled. The rabbin who employed them seized their mantles in order to indemnify him- self for the damage. They appealed to Rab. He ordered Rabbah, the son of Hanah, to restore the garments. Do you judge according to law? asked the rabbin. Are they not bound to pay me for the loss their negligence has occa- sioned me? Rab answered, Yes, I de- cide in accordance with the law of justice and humanity : for it is written, that thou mayest walk in the way of good men. (Proverbs ii. 20.) Rabbah there- upon returned the mantles. The defend- dants then addressed Rab, saying: We are but poor men; we have worked all the day; we are hungry and have nothing to eat. The judge turned to Rabbah and ordered him to pay the amount due to the porters for their labor. Again the son of Hanah inquired, Is your decision based upon law? And again Rab answered him, Yes, I judge according to the law of humanity and justice; for we find it further written (Proverbs ii. 20), And that thou mayest observe the paths of the righteous. This exemption, it will be seen, is clearly based upon rabbinical practice and precedent. In the case of the sokher who had hired an animal or thing for use, an exception based upon the injunction of the Pentateuch (Exodus xxii 14) was recognized. If an ox or an ass was hired and the owner of the ani 58 MILK FOR REPUBLICAN BABES. rnal was likewise engaged to perform work with the one or conduct the other, the hirer was no longer responsible as guardian. Nor was the sokher at any time liable if the beast died or was lost or stolen in circumstances purely accidental and regarded as ones. If he undertook to guarantee the owner against such an accident the animal was looked upon as tzon barrel the proprietor being, as we have before explained, secure from loss of any kind. The payment of hire would under such conditions have constituted usury according to Jewish law. For the same reason the sokher was not liable for any deterioration in.the value of the ani- mal entrusted to him, nor for any damage resulting from fair wear and tear. So far was this principle carried that if any person broke an implementan axe or a saw which he had hired of another, he was not bound to furnish the owner with a new one. He ~vas required to take oath that he had not negligently used or wantonly broken the tool in question. Thereupon he was ordered to pay the amount of the damage and return to the owner the remaining pieces of the broken implement. The guardian of the fourth class, the shoel, who merely borrowed of a neigh- bor any article which he temporarily required, was responsible under all cir- cumstances for the safe keeping and re- turn of the thing lent. Whether by reason of peschiah in the shape of wilful and wanton carelessness or by reason of an ones or unforeseen accident the thing or animal borrowed was lost or injured or died or was stolen, the shoel was liable. The loan was considered as a money debt. The lender received no considera- ation for his kindness, no benefit from the favor he conferred. Hence the strin- gency of the law in this instance. The object borro~ved could in fact be recov- ered just as an ordinary debt. If, be it observed, the shoel borrowed anything, promising as an equivalent or inducement to lend either then or at a future time something in his possession, he was no longer regarded as a shoel, but as a guar- dian paying hire, a sokher. His liability was immediately placed on a different footing. The shoel pure and simple could rid himself of his responsibility only in one way. By an agreement between himself and the lender (kinyan), signed, sealed, and witnessed in accordance with law, he might specify under what conch- tions and in ~vhat circumstances he was to be considered answerable for the safe keeping of the property in his custody. Provided there was no contravention of the law, no asinakklka (conditional pen- alty), no arrangement for the payment of anything in the shape of usury, such a contract would free him from the uncon- ditional liability which the law otherwise assumed to exist in the case of the shoel, or simple borrower. From The Saturday Review. MILK FOR REPUBLICAN BABES. THE fashion of instruction by dialogue and conversation has rather gone out in England since the days when the immor- tal i\Ir. Barlow dispensed information in this manner to Tommy Merton and Har- ry Sandford. In the early days of the present century, both before and during the useful knowledge mania, hundreds and thousands of such works were com- posed in England, ~vhile ihe excellent Peter Parley familiarized the youth of America with the same plan. But of late years the advance of science and the habit of examinations have somewhat cut into the chances of the educational conversa- tion. It must be admitted that it was always rather a loose form of instruction, and that the doctors who adopted it mingled a good deal of the honey of in- cident and anecdote with the absinthia tetra of positive information. The age of marks is naturally disinclined to such easy-going pedagogy, and Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Markham and Miss Martineau ladies upon whose existence a hasty generalizer might found a proposition that the names of all authors of conversations and tales ought to begin with in and have the a sound predominate have given place to shilling handbooks of a stern simplicity. The shilling handbook is perhaps better adapted to the exact sciences, and particularly to the purpose of exact or inexact cramming; but it yields to its predecessor in the function of diffusing a moral atmosphere. Ac- cordingly the most recent example of the kind that has fallen under our notice in English contents itself entirely with this latter vague, but estimable, object. This work, which is entitled The Three M.s (Mind, Morals, and Manners), has for heroes a certain Fred, who possesses a happy home and a father capable of being turned on like a tap at any moment for the purposes of conversational instruc- tion, and a certain Harry, whose father MILK FOR REPUBLICAN BABES. 59 altogether declines to be so manipulated, brutally orders his inquiring son to go and play, and hurts his feelings by re- marking, XVell, Harry, where have you been? up to some mischief, I suppose, when the amiable youth had been away by himself, studying his Sabbath school lesson. The amount of instruction con- tained in this work is not great, and when one compares it with Sandford and Mer- ton, the nineteenth century seems but a so-called nineteenth century after all. Indeed the chief interest which the book presents is the odd problem of the nation- ality and social condition of its author. As the Achilles statue is mentioned, the locality may be stipposed to be London. But the educated inhabitants of this me- tropolis are not wont to say, I heard mother say that she never saw Sallie any scarcely. When we hear that the driver and the footman were in the stable polishing and washing the carriage, the imagination wavers between the impossi- ble conception of a London coachman who allowed himself to be called the driver, and that of a London footman who allowed himself to be set to polish a car- riage. Philologically these indications point across the Atlantic. But the sen- tence I fear you are robbing yourself of the fine ~varbler is not even trans-ocean ic. It can only belong to that tongue which never was a living one on any land or sea, the Lin~ua Ol/endorffica. While conversation - instruction has sunk to this low ebb in England, or at least in English, it seems to have re- ceived a surprising impetus in France an impetus which is the mysterious con- sequence of recent political changes. Students of French history are of course aware that, while the Fi ench have never taken at all seriously any of their natural governments, those under which they have flourished and grown great, they have al~vays been dreadfully in earnest about the paroxysms of republicanism which have come over them from time to time, such as the League movement, the great Revolution, the short-lived Repub- lic of 48, and the present longer-lived settlement of 187178. Since the defeat of the last ministry of Marshal iviac! Mahon, a wild desire seems to have come upon them to copy the habits of clerical- ism, and to instil the sincere milk of the republican word into French children at the earliest ages. Shoals of little manu- als have recently been printed, in which to tender youth is shown the beautiful fitness of civil marriage, the admirable and eternal verity of the division of prop- erty, the deputed majesty of mayors, and all the rest of it. No less a person than M. Jules Simon has led the way in this direction with his Livre dutetit ci/oyeu, which is intended to guide the little citi- zen by broad and flowery paths into the regions of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or what was the fourth alternative? M. Jules Simon hides it with his flowers, and we shall not be so cruel as to remind him or the little citizen of it. Indeed the Livre dii re/it ciioyen is, as might be expected from its author, a very well-writ- ten book. The writer is supposed to revisit after half a century the scenes of his youth in a remote Breton commune. Here we may note a little bit of malice on the part of M. Simon in selecting as the scene of his republican comedy the Morbihan, the very heart and centre of Chouan and Royalist feeling. The petit citoyeu who is to receive the instruction turns up in the shape of a certain youthful Breton named Jeannic. M. Simon takes him about, and instructs him in the best and most improved fashion of Socrates and Mr. Barlow. They demolish the Socialistsfor it must be remembered that M. Jules Simon is a Conservative Republican after all they define the chef de /7/at, they battle with a wicked clerical v/ca/re who wishes to introduce congr ga;ziste instruction. It is fair to remark, however, that M. Simon does not bear too hardly even on the v/ca/re, who is represented as a well-intentioned but mistaken person. They allot a chapter apiece to marriage, schools, the army, and half a dozen other things. The lit- tle citizen rattles off the division of the whole duty of French man into Ze devoir scola/re, le devoir rn/i/ta/re, le devoir fiscal, in the most surprising way. Not- withstanding this, he is not too much of an impossible little citizen, and occasion- ally makes jests upon his instructor. Not the less do they work their way through savings banks, law courts, and other such like institutions, up to the Chamber and its elections, and the president of the Re- public itself. Here they stop, blinded perhaps with excess of light, and the little citizen is left with the comfort- able certainty that he has the presidents nightcap in his pocket. Even this queer catechism, or rather conversational exposition, yields in elabo- rateness to a series which Messrs. I-Ietzel have still more recently issued. Here 6o MILK FOR REPUBLICAN BABES. the little citizen is transformed into a Jeune fran~ais, and has a bib/iozk?que all to himself of which the volumes are headed La France, Le de,5arternent, La commune, etc. These also have the form of a story and a conversation. The preliminary canter of the series illus- trates well enough the portentous serious- ness which seems to have taken possession of the es~ri/ gaulois. A little citizen, hearing his father talking politics with some guests, remarks, naturally enough, 7e veu~- ~tre de~j5uh; and the father, naturally enough also, pulls the boy out of his corner, and with mock solemnity presents him to the company as a nouveau candidat. This pleasantry shocks the righteous soul of one of the visitors. This poor boy, he says, desires noth- ing but instruction, and he receives vain and light jesting. So he sets to work and converses on lofty themes, such as Le contentieuz- adininistratif Les con- flits d attric5utzon, Le dey5artement con- sidereco;nmepropri6taire, and so forth. Of such things it would seem is the bib/iot/i?que of the young Frenchman of the future to be composed. There was a time when such a bib/iot/i?que would have comprised the histories of Roland and Renaud and Jean de Paris, and when the little citizen would have read how the prince of Paladins sounded his horn for the last time; or how Maugis, the sor- cerer, brought his cousins, the sons of Aymon, out of impossible difficulties; or how the young king of France puzzled everybody and outwitted his rivals under the simple title of John of Paris. Now, when he returns from his devoir sco/aire, it is to be supposed that he eagerly peruses such stuff as this: Habitue/le- ;;zent on en/end ~ar cheinin vicinal une j5etite route al/ant dune commune ci nize au/re, or Les ministres sont so/idaire- ment res~z5onsab/es devant les clza;nbres de la ~o/itique gindrale du gouvernement, et individue//e;nent de leurs actes ~erson- ne/s. Unfortunate little citizen! It is not probable that he will have time or inclination to read the works or lives of frivolous persons like George Sand; but if he did, he might possibly perceive some appropriateness in the famous phrase Laissez la verdure. It is difficult to read these funny little hooks without feeling some curiosity about the actual effect of them, or rather about the effects of the mood of mind of which their appearance is a symptom. The profane may indeed suggest that, as the average duration of a Fiench constitu- tion is about ten years, the little citizert will find his hardly acquired accomplish- ments useless just at the time when they ought to be coming into practical use. There is, however, not quite so much in this as there may seem to be. Most ad- ministrative arrangements have gone on in a tolerably unbroken fashion in France for nearly a century now, and are likely to go on in the same fashion for the most part, whatever may happen to the higher executive and the legislature. The real problem is, in the first place, whether this sort of elaborate coaching-up of the Con- stitution is likely to do any good; and, in the second place, whether it is suited to the people for whom it is intended. Noth- ing certainly can be further from our own practice than any such thing. Until an Englishman is actually called upon to perform some public function or duty, he rarely troubles himself in the very least about it. The simplest of such things the filling up of a tax-paper,-the voting for a member of Parliament or a member of a school board, much more the discharge of any kind of official duties are things which he (probably wisely) takes not the slightest interest in till the occasion ar- rives, and then performs as he best may with his own mother wit and the assist- ance of professional or volunteer advisers. Nor does it appear, on the whole, that we have done ourselves much harm by this happy-go-luckiness. On the other hand, the little-citizen system, especially in a somewhat bureaucratized country like France, seems not unlikely to result in the creation of a set of loafing politicians, a kind of modern version of the dikasts at Athens, who should consider the end of life to be the performance of some kind of infinitesimal constitutional function. The maxim that the constitution is made for life, and not life for the constitution, appears to be decidedly overlooked in these catechisms. Perhaps, however, the most immediate result of them, supposing that they are actually brought into use and do not fall stillborn from the press, may be exactly the reverse of what their compilers desire. It does not appear that the Frenchman, much as he has changed of late years, has yet lost the distinction of being the most easily bored of men. It will surely strike a little citi- zen, after he has devoted his days to Latin and algebra and his nights to the theory of cheinins vicinauz- and the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, that ci ~resen/ 6i THE DECAY OF REVENGE. cest bienfini de nrc. Then, it is to be themselves. Nothing could have pre- feared, he will throw his cap over the vented the scores of rival families and nearest mill and the Bibliotli?que des tribes from exterminating people who did }eunesfran~ais after it, and, in the ~vords not resent an injury. Now it is impru- of a modern bard, dent to make a duty which is universal too difficult of accomplishment. It would His rigs hell undoubtedly run have been difficult always to hit upon and In the manner of primitive man. slay the man who was guilty of each par- ticular offence to person or property. Early custom, therefore, permitted re- venge to be taken on any blood relations From The Pall Mall Gazette. of the culprit within seven degiees. A THE DE~AV OF REVENGE. man speared your grandmother because MAN is a spiteful animal, says Mo- your uncle had devoured his nephew. li~re; but there are signs that mans spite- Your duty was done if you tortured his fulness is gradually wearying away. It second cousin to death over a slow fire. may become a rudimentary thing, like his Honor and custom were satisfied for the tail, or (in the shape of playful banter) a moment. This does not seem a promis- decorative survival, like his whiskers. ing state of things, and yet it was full of Tails were useful, if Mr. Darwin is right, the seeds of milder manners. Families when our fathers lived up trees, and a became interested in preventing even hairy covering was serviceable when the their poor relations from using axe or ancestors of the race went as bare as bow too hastily. There was no satisfac- Tam o the Linn in the old song. Spite- tion in being speared because some long- fulness, in the same way, was necessary lost uncle or cousin with whom one was for self-preservation when every mans not on speaking terms had induPed him- hand was.against his neighbor. Centu- self in a manslaughter. Thus the mem- ries of more peaceful years have modified bers of all families found it convenient to this early ferocity, and we may trace the keep an eye on each others movements, decay of spite in the decline of the pas- and to give up their culprits to be dealt sion for revenge. Revenge was once with by a central authority. Gradually mans highest duty; revenge became his law came into existence, and revenge choicest pleasure. Now it has sunk in ceased to be the chief end of man. the scale of enjoyments to the rank of Duty is generally unpleasant, as be- wife-beating and skittles. No one (in comes the stern daughter of the voice civilized society) cares much 1~r revenge, of Mrs. Grundy. Still, there are exam- except the burglar, who throws his boot pIes of duties which have gradually been from the dock at a policeman, or the lit- transmuted into pleasures. The duty of erary stabber, who libels his rivals or his supporting a family, for instance, is one reviewers in some journal of the town. of which natural man, the empirical The novelist, it is true, still keeps vindic- self as philosophers say, is impatient. tive baronets and revengeful earls among Probably the best modern type of the his characters; but the earls and the bar- natural man is the British tramp. In onets of the novelist are the noble say- him we all see the result of the free play ages of fictitious society. They have of impulse. Now the British tramp is learned nothing, and forgotten nothing; the modern Ahasuerus, a life-long fugitive they are still capable of designs on rural from the duty of maintaining a family. virtue, and of getting their nephews let- This duty was no more to the mind of tres de cadiet in private lunatic asylums. undeveloped than of civilized man. Yet, It is not quite impossible to trace the constrained by circumstances, he did his moral history of revenge a study which duty; he was industrious, and his indus- proves that human nature may be modi- try took the shape of hunting. As time fled on its ethical side. xvent on, as cities were built and fields In savage society that is, in any so- ploughed, hunting ceased to be a duty, ciety where law has no force, from Texas and became the pleasure of the upper to Queensland revenge takes the place classes and the affluent of kings, dukes,. of faith, hope, charity, and justice. It is brewers, publishers. In exactly the same the virtue without which the social organ- way, revenge became the pleasure of the ization would cease to exist. Tribes and nobility. In the Italian states of the families could scarcely have survived if Middle Ages, among the most refined the members of either association had people, amid the gentlest superficial man- good-naturedly abstained from revenging ners, revenge ranked with painting, poetry, 62 THE DECAY OF REVENGE. the fine arts. Tyrants and reigning dukes were amateurs. When Ezzelin captured Friola, lie caused the populations, of all ages, sexes, occupations, to be deprived of their eyes, noses, and legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the elements. Out of eleven thousand soldiers whom he captured, only two hundred escaped the slow cruelty of his vengeance. Galeazzo Maria used to bury alive the people aoainst whom he had a grudge, like that dilettante in revenge, the hero of Poes Cask of Amontillado. In cases where our court of probate and divorce exercises a genial sway, an Italian noble would have made his wife dine off her lovers heart, or would have bricked her up in a wall, with her mirror for company and consolation. The tastes for these violent delights have gone by, and we could as soon eat a peacock at luncheon, in the Roman fashion, as hand over our rivals or reviewers to the pincers, the rack, the boiling lead, the thumbscrew, and the boot. Modern revenge, except among the lower classes, has almost declined into a state of momentary morbid feeling. Some one injures our vanity, and we feel that we could say very disagreeable things about his pictures, poems, or personal appearance. We do not say them, and there is an end of the matter. It is diffi- cult even to wish that misfortunes should befall our critics or successful competi- tors. \Vhat good would it do us if the investments of Jones, who has maligned us, proved unsound, or if his house were burned down? Obviously none at all. The mere idea of revenge, in modern society, is what logicians call an zgworalia ele;zc/ii a wandering from the question at issue. There is something actually illogical as well as something mean ana personal in the theory of revenge. Our wrongs are not redressed by the suffer- ings of the wrong-doer. Even political rivals feel this; and even a Christian statesman would not be happier if the rooks were to build their nests in Lin- colns-inn-fields with tresses torn from the mouldering skull of his adversary. What circumstances have produced this great change in human character? Has Chris- tianity subdued vindictiveness? have men become poor of spirit? or do the arrange- ments of modern life permit a certain noble disdain of self, and a kind of inborn good temper to have their way? Prob- ably the latter course has been the most effective. The law is powerful enough to redress most of the important injuries, and men do not need (except in the case of gambling debts), to take the law into their own hands. People have also ceased to do each other much harm. A mans enemies are content to call him a puppy or an ass behind his back, or to honor him by underhand attacks in society jour- nals. If these things once seemed to deserve the stab, they now appear scarcely worth the notice of a momentary spleen. In other ways people are too busy to plot each others injury, or to contrive schemes of revenge. The pace is too good to inquire ; modern life is so rapid that we dont even ask why Baggs is our enemy; still less cast about for means of injuring Baggs. Indeed, the bare idea of an enemy is ridiculous, and breathes of the decadent melodrama. Only the returned convict in the novel says, Oh, you ene- my! and gnashes his teeth. People are aware, too, that if they injured a man in earnest, merely because he had wronged them, they would suffer from a reaction of pity. And old as the passion of re- venge is, the meaction of pity must be nearly as ancient. There is a well-au- thenticated story of an Australian black fellow, who was allowed by native prac- tice to beat another man who had robbed him. The savage gave one blow on the head of the thief, and then, when the blood flowed, he burst into tears, em- braced, and rubbed noses with his enemy. Revenge is based upon a sense of the im- portance of ourselves and otir rights, and it naturally declines when the infrequency of wrong and the unifoi-m action of law give free scope to a wider view of the world and a lower estimate of self. Per- haps the believers in progress a sect whose faith is sorely tried can find no better evidence for their creed than the decline of revenge. That vengeance is sweet was once a truism, and it is scarcely any longer true. Curiously enough it is novelists, who live among exploded pas- sions, that now are most eager for re- venge. The novelists revenge is to introduce his foeman, described xvith some minuteness, as a character in a tale, and then to make him the villain of the story. It is not libellous thus to accuse a peace- ful citizen of bigamy, forgery, and at- tempted murder, and it greatly rejoices - the heart of the weaver of romance. His peaceful study is almost all we have to show for the vindictive barons torture- cell and the deepest dungeon under the lake. Revenge ~vill soon be as extinct as witchcraft. DAVID GARRICK. 63 From Chambers Journal. DAVID GARRICK. ON a cold March morning, in the year 1737, two young men started from Lich- field to try their fortunes in London. The younger of the two is hut nineteen, not tall, but well made, a very sensible fellow and a good scholar, of good dispo- sitions, and very promising. His com- panion is seven 3-ears older, somewhat ponderous in person, rolling in gait, and rather near-sighted. The former is Da- vid Garrick; the latter is his preceptor, Samuel Johnson. Garrick was designed for law; but fol- lowing a very early and a very strong impulse, he gave himself to the stage, and made his d~fbut on the hoards of Goodmans Fields, Ipswich, under the name of Lyddal. 1-us part was Aboan in Oroonoko, and from that night his success was assured. His first appear- ance in London was.in Richard III., and for the display of his own powers lie could not have chosen a fitter part. His success was triumphant, and as lasting as triumphant. Garri cks was that success which ever rewards not so much continual and conscientious toil as red-hot enthusi- asm. His rendering of Richard was a reformation as much as a revolution in the histrionic art. Garricks popularity on and off the stage was the result of a happy combina- tion of unusual qualities. Some of these we may endeavor to enumerate. By de- scent a Frenchman, he had all the volatility and indeed volubility of the French peo- ple. His stature was slightly under the middle size; his limbs beautifully propor- tioned; his arm charmingly tapering off into a hand very neat and very small. Manliness, elasticity, ease, and grace characterized his deportment. His movements were refreshing to witness. What a contrast to the burly and bull- dogged Sam! With his dark-blue coat and small cocked-hat laced with gold, Garricks figure was unique. His coun- tenance, never at rest, revealed the radi- ant mind in the expressive play of fea- tures. The eyebrows finely arched over a pair of dark, brilliant eyes, the fire of which he had the art of quenching, and making his intelligent orbs as dull as two gooseberries; in the personation of ter- ror or tenderness his eye held the audi- ence like a spell. His voice at once natural, cultivated, and easy in its modu- lations, wide in its compass, had that undefinable penetratingness peculiar to the great actor and true orator. Impres- sionableness or intense sensibility was a leading trait in Garricks mental make-up. This is that quality by which an actor, ~vhile setting due store by the words, realizes and becomes out and out the character he portrays. The mere repeti- tion of the language of Hamlet, how- ever graceful and correct the elocution may be, without that intensiveness by which Hamlet as a harmonious whole lives in and shines distinctly through the actor, is perhaps a correct enough por- trait, but it lacks the living soul. Garrick too had a true workman-like delight in excellence. And with all his natural en- dowments and genius, perhaps few pro- fessional men have worked so constantly and with such a continued enthusiasm to the very end of a public career. His whole soul was in his work, and his work was his joy. He saw no one on the days lie performed; lie was full of the part for the evening. And even be- tween the acts he separated himself from the other actors and would speak to no one. He brought genius and put con- science into his work. Another element, if not of his success at least of his happiness, ~vas his niar- riage to that charming singer, the fair Eva M. Veigel or Violette. This lady was said to be the most agreeable woman in England. Sterne, who saw her among the beauties of Paris in the Tuileries Gardens, declared she could annihilate them all in a single turn. Even Horace Walpole could forsake his cynicism, and say of her that her be- havior is all sense and all sweetness. During the twe nty-eighit years of their married life, David was not so much the husband as the lover; and his affection was rewarded with a love as true and as constant as his own. Mrs. Garrick sur- vived her husband more than forty years, and for at least thirty of these she would not allow the room in which David died to be opened. Buried, at her own request, in her wedding sheets, she occupies the same grave with her husband at the base of Shakespeares statue, until the day dawn and the shadows flee away. Doubt- less a helpmate so attractive and so con- genial and pure greatly aided the actor in striving to attain his ideal. Does any one, or all of the qualities mentioned as constituting the equipnient of Garrick, account for the fact that un- like Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, and Macready, Garrick at once and by a bound placed himself in the front rank of the priest- 64 DAVID GARRICK. hood of the stage? The sun sometimes foretells his rising hy scattering the clouds that cap the hilltops, while as yet we see him not; hut inch by inch he rises like a golden wheel; slowly inch by inch he scatters the mist and kindles the heights, until at length he risesa full orb pouring his brilliant splendors on all below. So rose gradually Mrs. Sid- dons, Kemble, Edmund Kean, and Mac- ready. On a dark and cloudy day, the sun is obscured; he has risen, is well up the horizon, but is draped in cloud and shadow and is invisible; the wing of the storm sweeps away shadow and cloud, and in the twinkling of an eye the burn- ing, blazing sun has burst on view. So burst David Garrick on the British stage. Garricks character was by no means perfect. Many faults were laid to his charge; and amongst others was his fond. ness of flattery. Murphy, to whom Gar- rick had given loan upon loan of money, accuses him of meanness. This charge, however, has been proved to be as unjust as it was ungrateful. On one occasion, Murphy was asked his opinion of Gar- rick. He replied: Off the stage, sir, he was a mean, sneaking fellow; but on the stage throwing up his hands and eyes impossible to describe ! Mrs. Clive was one night standing at the wing, alternately weeping and scolding at Gar- ricks acting; and turning away in anger, she exclaimed: I believe he could act a gridiron! Once, at a splendid dinner- party at Lord s, they suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what had become of him, until they were drawn to the window by the convulsive shrieks of laughter of a young negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey- cock in the courtyard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of feathered rage and pride. In Lear, Garricks very stick acted. The scene with Cordelia and the physician, as Gar- rick played it, was ineffably pathetic. The anathema in this play exceeded all i~a~ination; it electrified the audience with horror. The words Kill kill kill! echoed the revenge and impotent rage of a frantic king. When it was announced that Garrick was soon to take leave of the stage, there came a rush of people from all parts of Europe to witness his last performances. Many foreigners who came specially to England to see Garrick play were unable to get admission. A week or so after his last appearance, he thus writes: When it came to taking the last farewell, I not only lost the use of my voice, but of my limbs too. It was indeed, as I said, a most awful moment. You would not have thouTht an English audience void of feeling if you had seen and heard them. After I had left the stage, and was dead to them, they would not suffer the ~etife~it~cc to go on, nor would the actors perform, they were so affected. Thus retired from the stage perhaps the greatest actor of modern times. Garrick departed this life in Jan- uary 1779. His death was a national event. The funeral was the largest ever seen in London up to that time, among the mourning thousands at Shakespeares monument being old Samuel Johnson af- fected to tears. Perhaps he was thinking of that cold March morning when he and his friend left Lichfleld for London. SPEED UPON SKATES. It may be interest- ing to compare the more recent performances with those accomplished at the first meeting held under the rules of the National Skating Association, in order to see the improvement which has been made. At the earlier meeting jhe fastest time accomplished was at the rate of 3 mm. 47 sec. for a mile. At Wisbeach, however, a considerable improvement was manifest. The length of the race was two thousand yards, there being three turns in the course, and the ice in good condition; and in his final heat with Carter Fish Smart did the entire distance in 3 mm. 30 sec., equiva. lent to 3 mm. 4 sec. for the mile. At the meeting for amateurs which was held at the Welsh Harp on the last Saturday of the old year, the winner, Mr. W. A. Smith, beat Mr. Goodliffe by five yards over a mile course with one turn, in 3 mm. 46 3-8 sec.; whilst in the amateur championship race at the same place on January 26, Mr. Norman, the winner, skated a mile and a half in his final heat at the rate of 3 mm. 35 sec. for a mile. In the one- mile professional championship last week at Grantchester where a special prize was offered but not won, for skating a mile in 3 mm. Fish Smart, in his final heat with Dewsbury, did a mile in 3 mm. 20 sec.; but the latter of these two well-known skaters had - already a better record to his name. In the professional mile and a half race at the Welsh Harp on January 26, he did three-quarters of a mile in 2 mm i6 sec., and the full distance in 4 mm. 53 sec., these times being at the rate respectively of 3 mm. I sec. and 3 mm. x~ sec. for a mile. Field.

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. No. 1882. July 10, 1880. From Beginning, Vol. CXLVI. CONTENTS. I. SUICIDE II. THE CRooKIT MEG: A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. Conclusion III. WHAT SLIAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL Part III. IV. THE GUINEA Box By James Payn, V. A LEARNED LADY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY VI. THE SCULPTURES ON THE FACADE OF ST. MARKS, VENICE, VII. COLLEGE LIFE, VIII. THE JOURNEY GENIE, OF THE EX-EMPRESS EU- BZackwoods Magazine, Frasers Magazine, Frasers Magazine, Cornkill Magazine, Macmillans Magazine, Macmillans Magazine, Pall Mall Gazette, Boston Traveller,. By THE SEA. I. Morning, II. Evening, P 0 T R Y. BALLADE OF HIS CHOiCE OF A SEPUL 66 CHRE 66 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY CO., BOSTON. LITTELL & TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remslted directly to tlse Pubttskerz, the LIVINo Ana will be punctually forwarded mr a year,f~we of~ostage. An extra copy of THE LsvsNG AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft nr check, or by post-office muney-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the mnney should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letlers when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and muney-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LsvsHu AGE, s8 cents. Fifth Series, Volume XXXI . 67 . 79 . 101 107 114 126 . 125 66 BY THE SEA, ETC. ~V TIlE SEA. I. MORNING. A WEST wind, whispering to the tide, Wakened the morning from its pillow; Now days full glory, shining wide, Shows where Junes fairest witcheries glide Abroad oer rock and billow. Above us, hurrying through the blue, White cloudlets from our vision hasten; Snow-white, with sunshine gleaming through, To-day no thought of storms in view Our joyousness shall chasten. Behind the headlands lofty brows, I)eep scarred by storms of countless ages, There are sweet nooks the sea-gull knows, Where natures sunny volume shows Its most enchanting pages. Here foxgloves dainty heads arise, XVith careless grace the breeze evading; And little speedwells steadfast eyes Look up into the azure skies, Until they match their shading. The rugged boulders near the shore Through filmy veils of spray are shining; The long green breakers, curling oer, Leave drifted snow-wreaths evermore Among the seaweed twining. On every wave that dances by Stray points of sunny light have rested; And gay sea-horses rear on high Their frosted manes, till far and nigh The waves are silver-crested. We revel in this peerless morn, No present cares our joy impeding; For all the shades our hearts have worn Melt in the inspirations born Of loveliness exceeding. O summer morning by the sea, Would that your brightness faded never! Yet, in our souls the memory Of these fair hours shall garnered be, A happy dream forever. II. EVENING. The grey old rocks look young to-night, Transfigured in the glow reflected; The quiet town below the height Is flushed with gleams of golden light By ruby intersected. Far south, neath pillared storm-clouds high, Soft mists of dove-like grey are trailing; So thinly shrouding sea and sky, The ghostly ships all silently Seem into cloud-land sailing! But westward, where the dying sun Lingers, by his own beauty holden, A bridge of glory just begun Dyes all the ripples, one by one, With crimson hues and golden. And straight toward the sunset world, Far in the clouds above the ocean, A purple barge with pennons furled, And prow in ancient fashion curled, Glides with majestic motion. No evening breezes shoreward blow, To find their rest in meadows vernal; Yet far-off waters ebb and flow, And mystic currents come and go In harmony eternal! The harbor lights gleam out, the moon Above the headland has ascended; Into the chastened hush of June The western radiance fades, and soon The gleam and glow have ended. But calm through all those dove-like skies, Of ruby hue and tint forsaken; There is a peace like that which lies Serene in gently folded eyes Which sleep, in heaven to waken. 0 fair beyond ! where none have wept That oer the service love would render, The drooping wings of night have swept Surely in thee our God hatl4 kept A place for sunset splendor. And we may hope, nor deem it strange, When suns have passed from earthly story, Beside the sea of glass to range, And watch immortal sunsets change From glory into glory l Sunday Magazine. MARY ROWLEs. BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE. HERE Id come when weariest. here the breast Of the Windburgs tufted over Deep with bracken; here his crest Takes the west, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. Silent here are lark and plover; In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her Oer their nest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. Bring me here, lifes tired-out guest, To the blest Bed that waits the weary rover: Here should failure be confessed. Ends my quest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. ENVOY. Friend, or stranger kind, or lover, Ah, fulfil a last behest; Let me rest Where the wide-winged hawk doth hoVer. A. LANG. 66 SUICIDE. 67 From Blackwoods Magazine. SUICIDE. MOST of us regard suicide in its impi- ous aspects only. We see in it a relig- ious crime; and its criminality against Heaven seems to us so thorough that it blinds us to the other features of the sub- ject. Habit produces its usual effect in the matter; we have grown accustomed to one single view of self-murder, and we shrink instinctively from any other. Yet it is an act which, by its nature and his- tory, most certainly deserves wider and more philosophical consideration. How- ever inexcusable it may appear to us, religiously, it merits less prejudiced treat- ment than we commonly accord to it. It is not simply a sin ; it is something else besides. It has always played, and is still playing, a part amongst us which en- titles it, incontestably, to be classed amongst moral phenomena. The causes which produce it are unceasingly at work a number of suffering minds are always tending towards it; it is, in civilized countries, an inevitable malady; it is, within certain limits, a matter of auto- matic average like rain or inflammation of the lungs ; it has to happen; it is a social resultant rather than an individual act. Buckle says that suicide is merely a product of the general condition of society, and that in a given state of society a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life. Quetelet goes further still. He proves his belief in the natural inherence of suicide amongst us, by asserting that it is so- ciety which prepares the crime the guilty man is only an instrument of execution. And many other writers express the. same ideas in similar language. If, then, sui- cide is as inevitable as forgery, or whoop- ing cough, or hunger; if it is immanent in our natures, we should be wise to imitate the example which some other nations set us to count it as a form of disease rather than as a shape of guilt, to regard it with pity rather than with horror, and to cease to seek the remedy for it (if any remedy there be) in either punishment or public scorn. It is idle to turn away from it with dread, and to call it shocking. That sort of way of dealing with it does not stop it; on the contrary, in the face of our British feelings of repulsion, it has been increasing all over Europe, during the last hundred years, with strangely aug- menting speed. But let it be at once added that antip- athy to self-killing, on religious grounds, constitutes, all the same, the only effec- tive har to it which has thus far been discovered; and that, as we shall see presently, it is precisely the diminution of religious antipathy which explains the recent large extension of suicide. In suggesting that a larger and more general popular view might usefully be taken of the subject as a whole, we strongly insist, at the same time, on the practical useful- ness and healthy effects of the purely religious objections to self-murder. They alone have controlled it in the past; they alone seem capable, so far as we can at present judge, of holdino it in the suture. No other regulatin~, force appears to be available. Human advice is powerless. All the piles of books which have been written about suicide; all the moral, phil- osophical, legal, medicinal, statistical, and devotional treatises which have been composed in all languages with re- spect to it, h~tve failed to exercise the faintest effect upon it: even laws of bar- barous severity have been insufficient to stop it. And why? Not only because it is asocial resultant~~ not only because it is a chronic need but also, and still more, because it is one of the forms of the pursuit of happiness; because it is an outburst of the universal appetite for calm; because every man who wilfully terminates his life does so, necessarily, with the idea of improving his condition. Therein lies the natural explanation of suicide. For the man without religion it is the most active fashion of bettering himself which the world has yet invented. Happiness, as Pascal says, is the object of all the actions of all men even of those who kill themselves ; but the happiness sought for in the voluntary suppression of existence is of an alto- getl~er special kind, apart from and be- yond all else. It stands by itself, alone; it is the most exclusively personal of all the forms of gratification. No other deed 63 SUICIDE. is so intensely individual or so proFoundly I opments of the new faith; but they were selfish; no other act is so restively inde- never heard of as general propositions pendent or so inquisitively experimental, until the new faith had become solidly For these reasons we ought to contem- established, and they are scarcely recog- plate it as something else and more than nized, even now, outside Christianity. a purely religious iniquity. We ought to Mohammedanism alone has copied them remember that our particular views about from us. Consequently, let us remember it are not held in other lands with the that these objections are not human but same rigor as amongst ourselves. In Christian; and furthermore, that they are many neighboring countries suicide has not Christian by the teaching of the almost lost the character of a sin. In Bible, but solely by the teaching of the several of them it has ceased to be a civil Church. The Church filled up that chasm crime. And we should also remind our- in the Bible, as it made good a quantity selves that, wrong as we consider it to be of other gaps in the sacred book. It now, it has not always been wrong. The trained minds into a new groove on the impression that it is wicked is relatively subject: under its guidance suicide grad- modern. There is not one single word ually assumed, for the first time in his- about it in the Bible; the ancient legisla- tory, a mixed character of mutiny, stu- tions made no clear sign against it; our pidity, and horror. We English people actual ideas upon it had no place either of to-day have learned to see in it not in the Old Testament, or in the gospel, or only a monstrous self-indulgence, but in the Oriental theologies, or in the pagan also an atrocious crime and an idiotic codes; they are, comparatively, young cowardice. We deny its pretension to notions. Nobody objected seriously to be a grasp at peace and a declaration of suicide in the old days. Even Plato and liberty; we proclaim it to be a grasp at Socrates, whom we take to have been th.e unknown and a declaration of revolt. ~vise men, contented themselves with ex- Our present theory is that a sufferer is pressing a few vague reservations on the bound to live out his life, like Job, and matter, the sole effect of which was to has no right to put an end to it because reduce it to a question of opportunism. it is not worth having, like Cato of Utica. And as to Moses, it is an altogether gra- Now, the fact that there has been so tuitous assumption to pretend that the utter a change of feeling about suicide commandment Thou shalt not kill supplies it with an additional claim to our applies necessarily to ones self as well as attention. Until a few hundred years ago to other people. The truth is, that self- the whole earth regarded voluntary death murder is no more forbidden in the Bible as a natural resource in moments of diffi- than polygamy is; and a good many nota- culty: no l)roceeding was more worthy of ble Jews profited by the absence of inter- a gentleman. A due sufficiency of cause diction to act for themselves in the was insisted on only by a small minority matter, apparently on the principle that of philosophers, who liked to see a good what is not prohibited is permitted. reason for all things that happen, and The Non occides may or may not have who delicately thought, with Cicero, that meant, Thou shalt not commit suicide; the deity which exercises a sovereign but it did not say so, and therefore it left power over us does not allow us to quit the matter open. Josephus, it is true, life without his permission; but when he does imply that self-killing was contrary awakens in us a just desire of death, then to the law; but that is only second-hand the true wise man ought to pass with testimony: the Bible, the one source of pleasure from these shades to celestial Protestant conviction, is dumb. Objec. brightness. Seneca, on the contrary, tions to suicide did not take public form did not think it worth while to wait for until Christianity had acquired strength, the divine inspiration of a just desire.~~ and was becoming the master of opinions In his eyes death was a pirely human as well as the guide of consciences, solution, to be adopted as soon as it be- These objections were amongst the devel- came stupid to live. He said, If I SUICIDE. 69 suffer from. disease, I should not kill my- self to escape from pain, for that would be an act of cowardice; but if I perceive that my disease is incurable, I should end my life, because the disease would de- prive me of all which can render life worth having. It is cowardly to die to escape suffering; it is stupid to live in order to suffer. But notwithstanding this difference of view as to justifying causes, both Cicero and Seneca regarded suicide as the natural remedy for the annoyances of existence; and they would probably have pitied posterity if they could have foreseen that what seemed to them to be a self evident corrective for the ills of life, would afterwards become converted into one of the blackest iniqui- ties that men can commit. Their sole consolation would have been to notice that the change came very slowly. The recognition of the merits of voluntary death was so universal that time was needed to stamp it out. It was felt so keenly in the Roman empire, that the maxim Mon Zicet cul vivere non flacet was invented to express it. The Ger- manic and the Celtic races were all full of it; and in Asia it was perhaps still more deeply rooted. Even now it is not eradicated there ; for Brahminism has imposed it, in many forms, as a religious act, while Buddhism has not forbidden it. Mohammed alone, of the founders of the great Eastern faiths, has spoken out against it. China still respects and prac- tises suicide; and Japan has given it up, as an officially organized institution, within the last few years only, on the ground that it is in contradiction with the spirit of progress which now animates her. In the face of such a world-wide usage the Church was obliged to move with prudent tardiness. Suicide was not can- onically pronounced to be a mortal sin until the Council of Arles in 452; and a hundred years more went by before it was declared, at the councils of Bragues and Auxerre, that Christian sepulture should be refused to the bodies of persons who killed themselves. But even then, after this example had been given by the eccle- siastical authority, civil legislation was in no hurry to follow. Down to the time of Charlemagne, reluctances still showed themselves; it was not until the great emperor was buried that the codes began (under pressure from the Church) to con- firm the refusal of prayers in cases of suicide. This helped to conquer hesita- tions: the feeling on the matter began to gro xv in every Christian land; it became, by degrees, intensely bitter; and at last self-killing got to be regarded as a hide- ously criminal offence, and became pun- ishable with all the ferocities that the inventive cruelty of the Middle Ages could devise. Before i27Q, St. Louis prescribed the confiscation of the prop- erty of all persons who made away with themselves, and in this way associated their families in the disgrace and the punishment of their act. And then, at the commencement of the fourteenth century, a tide of still intenser fierceness began to mount, and nations set to work to compete with each other in the con- triv;ng of new barbarities and of fresh contumelies. In some countries the bodies of self-murderers were dragged through the streets face downwards, on a hurdle, and thrown on to the public dirt- heap, or else hung up to rot;. in others they were buried in a highway with a stake driven through them; in others, again they were not allowed to be brought out at the door of the house, but were pulled through a hole dug under it on purpose. Mich6let tells us, in his On- glues dii Droit Frczn~ais, that if a man stabbed himself, a piece of wood, with the dagger in it, was stuck into the ground at his head; if he drowned himself in the sea, he was buried on the shore five feet from the water; if he drowned himself in a well, he was interred on a hill, with three stones on him one on the head, one on the chest, and one on the feet. The practice of trying corpses for self- murder grew largely into use which was but natural; for what more convenient fashion of obtaining money could a seigo- eur employ than to seize the inheritance of a dead man? Why, Dangeau declares that the ladies of the court of Versailles used to augment their pin-money by wheedling the king into giving them 70 SUICIDE. grants of these strange legacies! The treatment of the dead grew so outrageous that Montesquieu exclaimed, The laws are furious against those who kill them- selves; they are forced, as it ~vere, to die a second time. It seems to me that these laws are very unjust. Other people thought so too. The philosophers of the eighteenth century began to attack this cruel le~islation. Beccaria followed them: he said, with infinite force and truth, in his admirable treatise on crime and punishment, Sui- cide is an offence which is not susceptible of any punishment, properly so called, for punishment can fall only on a lifeless body or on innocent heirs. But punish- ment enforced on the lifeless remains of a convict is much like whipping a statue; while its application to an innocent family is odious and tyrannical, for there is an end of liberty if punishment ceases to be purely personal. All these arguments were, however, useless. It was not until the Revolution that this monstrous juris- prudence was suppressed in France, and, by her example, throughout almost all the rest of Europe successively. As has been already said, suicide is no longer a civil crime in several Continental coun- tries. The Code Napoleon takes no notice of it. In Germany some of the local laws still forbid religious burial for sui- cidal persons, while others are silent on the subject; no fixed rule exists there unless indeed the new empire has recently introduced uniformity of action. In En- gland legislation contradicts itself on this subject, as on so many others: suicide is murder, but the attempt to commit it is only a misdemeanor; so that, in our hands, the legal gravity of the act lies, not in the intention, but in success. With such a fluctuating history as this before us, we ought in fairness to regard with patience the opinions contrary to our own which so many of our predecessors have held on the question, and which so many of our contemporaries still entertain. Ilowever certain we may be that our view is the only right one, we ought, on the undeniable principle that every feeling really felt is true in the person who feels it, to contemplate without too angry blame the unlucky people who are im- pelled to kill themselves. And we ought to do this all the more because of the gencralized character and universal action of suicide because of its application in all classes as well as in all time. Histori- call), of course it presents the aspects of a luxury; for history talks only of the ex amples of it which have been supplied by the rich, the learned, and the high-placed. But in reality it has always been, and still is, essentially a poor mans remedy; it has prompted the vulgar more than the delicate, the rough more than the pol- ished, It admits no exclusions from the ranks of its victims. Furthermore, it is not always easy to determine what is sui- cide and what is not. There are scrupu- lous persons who might imagine that Samson put himself within it when he pulled down the columns of Gaza upon his head; or that Regulus ran too closely to the wind when he went back to Car- thage on purpose to be murdered. Peo- ple, indeed, might not i mpossiblybe found who would go further still, who, cap- tiously and censoriously, would ask wheth- er a sailor has a right to blow up his ship rather than haul down his flag, or a soldier to refuse quarter than be taken l)risoner, and who would deny that the particular emotion called patriotism can take away the stain from these forms of voluntary death. It has been already remarked that a signal revival of suicide has occurred during the last hundred years. Its rate, calculated as an average on the entire population of Europe, ~vithout distinction of nationality or of local variations, seems to have more than quintupled since the middle of last century. Exact returns are not obtainable from every country, but the information is sufficiently complete to enable us to perceive that Europeans are now killing themselves at an average annual rate of one in five thousand; and that, consequently, a total of somewhere abont sixty thousand persons are dying by their own hand each year on the Con- tinent and in the British Isles. One fourth of them, in round figures, are mad; the rest act knowingly, with a view to some presumed advantage. And it must not be forgotten that the numbers are constantly and regularly increasing, and also that they include only the sui- cides which are officially known and those which succeed; neither those which are concealed by families nor the unsuccess- ful attempts are counted anywhere. Con- sequently, if we wish to correctly value the force of the present distinctly marked reawakening of the suicidal tendency, we must add a good deal for undetected cases and for failures. Ineffectual ven- tures especially would seem, from private information, to be considerably more abundant than is commonly imagined. It would probably be quite safe to suppose SUICIDE. 7 that these two unappended elements in- crease the European annual total by one half, so carrying it to about ninety thou- sand. The rates vary, however, very largely in different countries, ~vith local conditions, with race, with latitude, with education. The figures are immensely higher, as a general rule, in the north (excepting only Russia) than in the south, and in towns than in the country. It is not easy to collect absolutely reliable returns for each separate land; but if we may trust M. Maurice Block, who is about the safest statistician of our time, the Danes kill themselves the most, and the Portuguese the least, the difference hetween these two extremes reaching the scarcely credible proportion of thirty-five to one. Saxony, Prussia, France, and Norway follow next to Denmark, and after these come successively Bavaria, England, Belgium, Austria, Russia, Italy, and Spain. Throughout the Continent, with few exceptions, the rate of suicide diminishes with latitude. The causes of this unconformity have been keenly dis- cussed, and, as we shall see presently, their main outlines have been approximately traced; but the subject is so full of com- plications, of details, and of intermixing and counteracting agencies, that we are still far from a complete general view of the laws which guide it. We do know positively that climate has nothing what- ever to do with it, but that is only a negative discovery. No author has yet collected data as to the comparative in- fluence on the suicidal disposition of the special conditions of life, of health, of character in each district of Europe, so as to enable him to point with certainty to the precise reasons why a good many of the inhabitants of one province should elect to kill themselves, while almost all those of another province should prefer natural deaths. There is a curious and interesting investigation to be made here: it is possible that the information exists already, locally, and that it only needs to he agglomerated; but, thus far, no one has undertaken the task of drawing it together, and we must continue for the present in ignorance of the principles which regulate the geographical distribu- tion of suicide in Europe. But if we cannot see our way yet with precision on this part of the question, we are better informed as to the causes of the prevalence of suicide in towns as com- pared with the country. We know, for instance, very exactly, why one inhabitant in eighteen hundred kills himself each year in Paris; and we can judge approxi- mately, from that example, of the state of things in other cities. No insight into the sufferings and the desperations which may exist unseen in dense populations can be more instructive or more impres. sive than that which is offered to us by the detailed list of the motives of the eleven hundred yearly suicides of Paris. All the habitual forms of desolation and hopelessness are enumerated there; and if their stranger and more unwonted shapes are not included too, we may be sure that the sole reason is, that no official denomination exists for them in the tech- nical language of police offices; they oper- ate but they operate unnamed. The catalogue is, l~o~-ever, long enough and sad enough as it is; it amply sets forth the miseries which are generated by life in crowds, and the crimes which those miseries entail. And as these miseries act mainly on the laboring classes, it is natural that the great majority of the sui- cides should be found amongst the poor: five-sixths of them, in round figures, are shown by the registers to be committed by working people. But it should be at once added that this proportion is in no way special to Paris, or indeed to any town or any land; it is approximately the same everywhere. In no case do the upper classes or the liberal professions constitute more than a fifth or a sixth of the published totals; and that is why allusion was made just now to the gen- eralized character of suicide, and to its dissemination amongst all the strata which compose societies. But the quantities of poverty, of misery, and of crime which show themselves in cities do not alone explain the numerical preponderance of the suicides which oc- cur there. Other causes are at work as well. Mere suffering, mere degradation, do not alone suffice to lead surely to sui- cide, for there is a depth of ignominy which seems to go below the desire of death. Neither convicts nor prostitutes kill themselves in any appreciable pro- portions; they seem to grow indifferent to either shame, or fear, or exasperation, and to have acquired the faculty of living on in callous calm under any infamy whatever. But in great towns the con- ditions are of a different kind. The pre- ponderance of suicides in them is not exclusively a product of the greater suf- fering which they contain in comparison with the country, but also, and quite as much, of the lesser disposition to support th~ suffering. It must be remembered 72 SUICIDE. that the inclination to rebellion is almost always greater in thick condensations of people than in sparse communities; that bad examples are more abundant and that good counsels are more rare; that the action of public opinion on each individ- ual is less direct; and that the strange form of solitude which is obtainable no- where but in crowds is able to exert its peculiarly saddening and enfeebling influ- ence. There is more misery and more despondency, with less encouragement and less restraint. It is from the associa- tion of these positive and negative causes, from an increase of the conditions which habitually lead to self-killing, and from a simultaneous diminution of the surround- ings which usually deter from it, that the rate of suicide in the richest and most virtuous of large towns is never less than five times higher than in villages, and that in the denser and more immoral cap- itals it reaches thirty times the average of rural districts. And the working of these leverages is not limited to the towns themselves; it stretches far a~vay across the grass around them, with such marked effect that, in every land, the rate of pro- vincial suicide (which is generally low) increases in almost regular degrees as the capital is approached. The tendency to put an end to life stains out beyond the walls and infects the purer air a hun- dred miles away. In addition to these great essential causes, certain other relatively smaller pressures are unceasingly at work aug- menting or decreasing the inclination to die. Both age and sex have a good deal to do with it; the spread of education unmistakably develops it; imitation and hereditary propensities are sometimes traceable in it; and though climate does not seem to exercise any effect upon it, the seasons, on the contrary, do most man- ifestly influence it considerably. Each of these agencies does its own particular xvork; each of them is worth looking at. That age does really exert a percepti- ble action in the matter has been occa- sionally denied; but all the more recent publications seem to agree that the evi- dence is conclusive, and that the number of suicides, in proportion to the popu- lation, grows steadily, through all the periods of life, from childhood to old age. People go on killing themselves, between nine and ninety, in a constantly increas- ing progression. The popular theory that we hold more and more to life as we approach its natural conclusion, is ~n- tirely contradicted by the present statis tics of suicide, which show that white hair brings with it, in many cases, a dis- gust of existence which renders those affected by it too impatient to wait till death comes to them of its own accord. It appears to be considered now that, ratably to the total of individuals of each age, suicides are about twice as frequent above seventy as they are between twenty and forty; so that all the talk about the age of the passions and its damaging influences would seem to be based on nothing, so far as suicide is concerned. The middle of life, with its excitements, its emotions, and its exhaustions, is not, proportionately, the great suicidal period: we do not reach that epoch until we are really old; there are fewer of us left, at that time, to kill ourselves, but such of us as remain do so with particular abun- dance. And if we go on suppressing our existence with regularly progressive zeal until the end of our time, we also begin doing so very early at the commencement of it. The number of children under six- teen in the list is, as yet, comparatively small, but it is swellinb rapidly, and is already large enough to indicate that the disposition to suicide may lay hold of us almost in babyhood. Nearly two thou- sand boys and girls are now yielding to it every year in Europe. Thus far they do not seem to begin before they are nine; that is the moment, apparently, at which the pains of life become unbearable to them, as happened to the little boy who drowned himself for grief at the loss of his canary. From thirteen, however, mo- tives grow to be more stupendous, as was shown in the case of the young gentleman (he was French) who hanged himself at that age, after making a will in which he was good enough to declare that he be. queathed his soul to Rousseau, and his body to the earth. Chatterton who was, however, a very precocious person waited until he was eighteen before he took arsenic, because he had exhausted existence. These three examples indi- cate how inducements change with years: and they go on changing; for young men and women kill themselves a good deal for love, middle-aged persons for money and ambition, and old people from disap- pointment and weariness. But real as the influence of age maybe, that of sex is infinitely more evident and more extensive; for where three men kill themselves, only one woman follows their example. The returns from all Europe prove this as a prevailing rule. There is but one apparent exception to it, in the SUICIDE. case of domestic servants, amongst whom suicides are about equally distributed be- tween the sexes. This exception how- ever is of no value; for as there must be at least three times more women servants than men, the true proportion comes out about the same. And it is but natural that women should kill themselves less than their husbands and brothers, for they are habitually better behaved and quieter; they have more religion, more obedience, more resignation, and a stroncr- er directing sentiment of duty. In other terms, they possess precisely the disposi- tions of both temperament and teaching which best withhold from voluntary death. So, as a consequence, only one-quarter of the suicides of Europe are committed by them. Now this is a fact of interest and importance, not only in itself, but still more in its bearing on the question as a whole, and on the means employable for struggling against the contemporaneous reawakening of self-murder. Professions do not predispose to sui- cide, but instruction does. No man kills himself because of his trade; but a good many men kill themselves because of their knowledge. Not only has the revival of suicide almost exactly coincided, in time, with the modern extension of schooling, hut suicide is now most abundant, in place, in the very regions in which school- ing is most expanded. The records es- tablish this beyond all doubt. The inhab- itants of countries in which every one can read are precisely those who kill them- selves the most. Now this supplies an- other indication that people do not always make a good use of reading. We knew that fact, already, it is true, but we scarce- ly expected that additional proof of it would be supplied in this strange form. That reading conduces to suicide is a new view of reading, but it is incontestably an exact one within limits. We could per- haps have imagined, if we had thought about the matter at all, that certain occu- pations might possibly pave the way. under unfavorable circumstances of health, to thoughts of suicide; we could have wildly guessed, for instance, that newly enlisted recruits, or lighthouse-keepers, or exiles, or public executioners, lead lives in which the self-killing tendency might receive a morbid development; but never, in our senses, should we have supposed that village schooling is, indirectly, the most fertile of all the actual origins of suicide. And yet it seems to be so. And if it is not, what is? We have all of us heard so much of the suppression of crime by 73 education that we have insensibly ac- quired the unreasoned belief that educa- tion is the one natural cure for moral evils. So, perhaps, it ought to be. And to repeat the questionif it is not, what can be? But evidently, as regards this particular evil, education appears to be a provocative rather than a remedy at least in the form in which we have hitherto applied it. The books which are now being published about suicide on the Continent are all deploring, with conster- nation, the simultaneity of the spread of the alphabet and of voluntary death, and are asking, anxiously, what can be the connexity between them. They seem in- deed to be almost expecting that, if we go on as we have begun, we shall soon see suicide officially recognized by govern- ments as an inevitable result of study (like headaches and spectacles), and placed naturally, all over Europe, under the supervision of the inspectors of schools. Imitation has, in all time, acted fitfully as a disposing cause; but, in our dey, its power appears to have almost disappeared. XVe still see that if a man jumps off a column, somebody else will probably do the same a few days afterwards; hut we no longer observe any epidemics of sui- cide, any paroxysms of imitative commu- nicative killing on a large scale. The girls of Miletus who strangled themselves by hundreds, the Egyptians who drowned themselves in processions, even the re- ligious enthusiasts who have so often sought de~ h in groups, are not adopted as models now. Hereditary influences, on the contrary, are still continuing in certain cases to reveal their curious force. Whole fam- ilies have died out recently from suicide, Two cases are on record (one in Saxony, the other in the Tyrol), in each of which seven brothers have hanged themselves one after the other. The examples of repeated suicides amongst relations are almost frequent in the medical books on the subject, especially in France. It is true that the proportion of such cases to the general total is infinitely small; but still their number is sufficient to remove all doubt as to the occasional transmis- sion of the suicidal tendency from par- ents to children. And after all, it is nat- ural enough that such a donation should be possible; for as religion, courage, par- simony, and all sorts of other character- istics are distinctly heritable, there is no reason whatever why suicide should not be a patrimony too. Next we come to climate. It is only 74 SUICIDE. recently, since careful observations have In Algeria, for instance, where a good been established everywhere, that the many French soldiers kill themselves old prejudice about the relationship be- from homesickness, it has been remarked tween suicide and fog has at last been that the moment ordinarily chosen by dissipated. What Sauvages called the them for the purpose is when the south melancholia Anglica may or may not wind blows, and brings up from the des- be a property of our race; but every one ert its scorching, irritating dryness. proclaims to-day that it is totally inde- Where, then, is the supposed fertilizing l)endent of our clouds or our smoke. In action of damp on suicide? What a mis- the comparative catalogue of national take Montesquieu unconsciously made suicide which has been already given, when lie started the theory that we En- England stands below the middle of the glish kill ourselves from fog! He had list; her average is therefore a very good an excuse, however; there were no sta- one. But Norway is high up in the table, tistics in his time: and furthermore, he while Russia is low down in it; and yet was ignorant of an odd but somewhat the climates of these two countries pre- incomprehensible little fact which has sent such analoQes that, so far as regards been noticed everywhere of late that their action on the character of the peo- most of the people who put an end to p~e, they may be taken to be identical, their lives prefer to do so by daylight, The Esquimaux do not kill themselves at that suicides at night are relatively rare, all, neither do the Falkland Islanders; and that, consequently, the long days of yet the climate in which they live may summer afford the most temptation for not unjustly be described as worse than them. Montesquieu was unaware (as a ours. It is not, therefore, in climate that good many other people are even now) an explanation is to be found of the pres- that neither darkness nor rain conduce to ent localization of abundant suicide in suicide, and that, on the contrary, in certain countries rather than in others. northern and central Europe, its best We have already put our hand on its pri- friends and stimulators are sunlight and mary cause the misuse of spreading warmth. So let us cordially forgive him education. The question is, of course, for having blundered about us, especially full of entanglements and complications; as he was singularly right in most of the but the main answer to its riddles is to other things he said. be found in the emancipated character of In addition to this knowledge of the popular aspirations, as modern schooling causes which lead to suicide, the registers is shaping them. of to-day place also at our disposal very If, however, climate has nothing to do complete information as to the means with suicide, the seasons, on ti contrary, employed to provoke death. They have do really exercise a great effev upon it. carried their analytical investigation into Here we get once more to precise figures; all the corners of the subject, and show for as the statistics are now usually set its inmost details to us with much accu- out in monthly divisions, we see in them, racy of description. at a glance, that instead of cold and wet It was observed, a long time ago, that being encouragements to suicide, it is, in though there is only one way of being reality, in fine weather that Europeans born, there are a good many ways of dy- kill themselves the most. The returns ingthe latter, indeed, are, as a French indicate, with glaring distinctness, that writer superbly puts it, as numerous as spring and summer are everywhere the the diverse physical and chemical agents gre at suicidal periods; that November is which are capable of destroying the vital about the most innocent month in the principle. Yet, true as this is, the means year; and that May, June, and July are habitually employed to produce voluntary the worst so much the worst, indeed, death are not only singularly few in num- that twice as many suicides habitually ber, but are utilized and re-utilized each happen in each of them as in any winter year with a recurrent regularity of pro- month. The average rises, almost regu- portion which would be astonishing if we larly, from November to May, and goes did not recognize that suicide is guided down again, in equivalent degrees, trom by laws just as much as other moral July to November. Why? Because, events are. In every country we find an though people slaughter themselves very approximate repetition, in each successive little in the hotter countries of Europe, annual table, of the same applications heat does really seem, by a curious contra- of the same shapes of self-destruction. diction, to be an incentive to self-murder There are variations between different amongst natives of the cooler climates, countries as to the choice of agencies, SUICIDE. 75 just as there are international distinctions n the local quantities of spontaneous riortality. But each land preserves its awn routine of averages; the totals pro- ~ress unflinchingly, but their proportion- ate composit1on remains almost identical, from year to year, in all its details. Age, sex, the state of health, the nature of the Aaily occupations of the victim, exercise ;ome influence in the selection of means; many persons employ, unconsciously per- haps, the instruments which their trade i-nay place at their disposal. But a great mark of the present revival is, that we :vidently want to kill ourselves without pain, and that we consequently avoid, as a rule, such death-processes as entail suf- fering. In the old days, people generally were less particular about torment; but as we have grown more careful of our- selves in all our ways, it is but natural that we should be less rough in this mat- ter of suicide. Such of us as happen to be vigorous, are still somewhat inclined to employ violent expedients; but the mass of the self-killers go the other way. Women especially, as might perhaps have been expected, shrink steadily from blood ar mutilation, and seek, almost unani- mously, for a gentle agony. It has in- leed been remarked, with an appearance af truth, after a study. of the forms of ~illin,~ employed by women, that while men choose suicide, women merely con- ;ent to it. Poisoning is an example of this change f views. There used to be a good deal af it once; a large proportion of the an lent suiciders seem to have utilized it. But we have given it up now. Notwith- standing the discoveries of the committee n poisons which sat, after Actium, under the chairmanship of Cleopatra and which appears, if Plutarch tells the truth, to have established, by a long series of varied experiments, that a vipers bite produces the most agree able lethargic and sweetly comatose of all possible deaths - we have abandoned serpents altogether, and have almost excluded other poisons rom our service. We fancy that their action is not quite certain, and we know that they are usually painful. So they have gone out of fashion; scarcely any one but doctors, chemists, or washer- women use them now, and they, according to their calling, swallow opium, arsenic, Prussian blue, or salts of copper. XVhat a falling off from the days of hemlock! Neither is stabbing, nor indeed any form of perforation, as frequent as in times past. There are the same objec tions to it as to poison. It hurts, and it may not kill. Even throat-cutting, which is a modern innovation resulting from the invention of razors, is relatively rare. Swords are not used a hundred times a year in all Europe. Doctors still kill themselves occasionally by a scientifically placed prick, but they are the only people who do so, the reason being that a knowl- edge of anatomy is necessary in order to succeed in that form of action. The old piercing operations which, in spite of their frequent use, were certainly most clumsyhave been advantageously re- placed by shooting with firearms; about one-seventh of our present suicides are performed by the latter process: but it must be at once added that it is almost exclusively employed by men, and that women scarcely utilize it at all. Men use guns and pistols in about equal propor- tions; but women, when they do shoot themselves, seem to prefer pistols. Fire- arms have the double merit of being almost certain in their effects and (as they usually kill at once) of suppressing pain. Most people aim at their heads; very few fire at their hearts. This evidence shows that, in suicide as well as in war, gunpow- der has driven out steel; indeed, if it were not for the razor, which continues to be utilized in about two per cent. of the cases, sharp edges would scarcely be perceived at all in the modern lists. But the great, main solution asphyxia remains in use as actively as ever. Hanging and drowning are still, as they alwa)-s were, the chief keys to voluntary death. Each of them counts for about one-third of the general total. The French have added suffocation by char- coal; but that is a local process, scarcely ever imitated in other countries, and which, even in France, is principally lim- ited to Paris. Hanging has the reputa- tion of being almost an agreeable pro- ceedin~ it does not repel like poisoning or cutting. One enthusiastic author says of it that, at the moment when the pres- sure of the cord begins, a sentiment of pleasure is felt; then the eyes cease to see blue flames dance before them; and suddenly consciousness disappears.~~ The detail of the blue flames has a necromantic aspect which gives a special character to hanging. Drowning also has a particular merit of its own, which ac- counts, in l)art, for the largeness of its selection. Not only is it said to suffo- cate without much suffering, but often it puts the body out of sight forever, and in that way conceals the death. lt is, there- 76 SUICIDE. fore, the natural resource of such persons existence, must have been very low in as shrink from publicity, or who, from deed. That proportion may be taken t any motive, are desirous of hiding the fact indicate the feeblest expression of th~ that they have killed themselves. Drown- automatic necessity which, according tc ers, however, have their caprices. They the social scientists, obliges a certair do not all put themselves into the water number of the members of every commu in the same way. In country districts, nity to kill themselves each year; for wc for instance, the men jump into rivers may safely believe that the persons whc and ponds, while the women appear to committed suicide in those days, with the have a predilection for throwing them- consequences which then attached to thei~ selves down wells. But whatever be the act, must have been animated by an altc procedure applied, nearly all the actors gether irresistible need. So far, then, thu keep their clothes on. suicides of our great-grandfathers may be Leaping from cliffs, or out of windows, regarded as unavoidable and unexagger- or off a monument, is a rare form of sui- ated social phenomena, as predestined cide. It is not employed in more than elements of the fate of the period, and as two per cent. of the cases. Smashing skull against a wall is a coarse ~ the involving but little responsibility to the process, actors in them. There were no more 01 utilized only by prisoners who have no them than there must have been and other means at their disposal. Throwing ought to have been. All that could be ones self under a railway engine is a to- justly said of them was, It is written. tally new but decidedly growing fashion. But now we have chanoed all that. And there ends the catalogue. It is a Now we are killing ourselves beyond all singularly short and simple one. Hang- pretence of necessity. Now suicide has ing and drowning account, by themselves ceased to be exclusively a result of social alone, for nearly seventy per cent. of the laws; it has become also an unforced cases ; fifteen belong to shooting; while personal manifestation. And this brings the remainder are composed of a mixture us at last to the essence of the whole sub- of cutting, stabbing, poisoning, springing ject; here we touch upon the springs from heights, and various unspecified kill- which have thrust our nineteenth century ings. The contrasts with the ways of the into a fever of self-murder, which looks ancients, the suppression of the heroic to be as virulent as any of the previous sword and of the baneful cup, the substi- attacks of it from which the world has tution for them of the cartridge, the s hay- suffered; here we reach the moral of our ing-blade, and the express train, are, after story. Why do we people of to-day kill all, only natural consequences of the ourselves with such unjustifiable and such changes which have occurred in life and wasteful extravagance? The leading character and habits. If we had done no components of the answer can, as has more than that in our recent dealings been already said, be indicated without with suicide, there would have been noth- hesitation. ing particular to complain of; we should Suicide has always divided itself into only have shown that, even in killing our- two clearly-defined categories; it has selves, we have become softer than our either been provoked by an enthusiasm of fathers were. But we have done more religious duty, or facilitated by the ab- than. that a good deal more. The sence of all religious sentiment whatever. Western ~vorld had arrived, under the The Celts who burned themselves in an combined constraints of an irresistible osier idol, the Hindus who cast them- religious domination and of a monstrous selves under the wheels of the car of civil legislation, at a diminution of suicide Juggernaut, were types of the first of to what we may reasonably call a mini- these two divisions; the Romans who fell mum; for there is reason to suppose that, on to their swords from tcediu;;z vilce, the a hundred years ago, the annual self- Greek islanders who took poison as soon murders in all Europe did not probably as they were sixty in order to leave exceed five or six thousand, which would enough food for their juniors, were mem- give about one in thirty thousand in the hers of the second section. Whatever be population of the time. Of course there the divergences of accidental personal is no clear evidence on the point; but the motives, we cannot get away from the rapid rate of progression of suicide dur- cardinal principle that people kill them- ing the present century, since statistical selves, necessarily, either because they returns have been established, may not imagine that they please their God by unjustly be taken to indicate that the pro- doing so or because recognizing, for portion, before these returns were in the moment at all events, no God at all, SUICIDE. 77 Lhey think only of their own satisfaction. No intermediate state is logically con- ceivable. This being the law of the case - and that it is so can scarcely be de- iiiied it follows, obligatorily, that so long as confidence in a God who is supposed to forbid suicide remains in general force, very few people will take the risk of vol- untarily disobeying the injunctions of that God. But it also follows, quite as obliga- torily, that when the trust in any God at all is becoming every day more rare, when the number of persons who respect any religious behests whatever is perpetually diminishing, the disposition to act on personal inclinations acquires new power, and the temptation to leave the passions unchecked becomes more difficult to resist. And this is especially true as regards the poorer and less disciplined layers of society, which constitute every- ~vhere the vast majority. Such is the constant theory. XVhat is the present practice? Europeans, as a whole, have a good deal less faith now than they possessed a century ago. Having less faith, they have less observance that is to say, less obedience, and consequently less pa- tience. They have acquired, in relig- ious matters, an independence of both thought and action at which their fathers would have gazed with astonished fear. A large and increasing number of them not only resist all authority in religion, not only repudiate all guidance in matters of doctrine, but go further still and reject all religion whatever. We do not ask whether they are right or wrong we are here considering suicide, not tenets; we are concerned exclusively with the fact itself in its bearing on suicideand from that limited point of view, the result of their loss of faith is, that the God who was said to prohibit suicide has ceased to be a God for them, and that suicide being no longer interdicted by any power they respect, has become once more, in their eyes, a permissible solution for the diffi- culties of life. XVe need not encumber the question with any specific applications of this gen- eral truth. It lies outside nationalities and creeds; it is not English and Protes- tant, any more than it is Spanish and Catholic, or German and free-thinking. It is human and universal. Suicide is increasing because religion is diminish- ing; and it is for this reason that our special English form of objection to self- killing, on the ground that it is an impiety, is so useful and so practical. It is not altogether impossible that the simultaneous growth of the political idea of liberty may have aided to push on, in certain minds, the notion that suicide is one of the rights of man. But as there are, thus far, no statistics of the political opinions of persons who kill themselves, we can offer no evidence on the point, and are content to hope that the list would not contain more Liberals than Conser- vatives, and that Radicals do not hang themselves with the sole purpose of prov- ing that they are free. The change which has taken place in the religious aspects of thought suffices, by itself, to explain the modern growth of suicide; the re- moval of religious hindrances in both highly educated and lowly educated con- sciences (especially in the latter) is in- contestably emancipating Europe from restraint in this matter of suicide, as in a good many others, and is leading a per- petually augmenting quantity of us to pitch away our lives as if we were throw- ing halfpence to a beggar. But this removal of religious hindrances has not grown up by itself. It is in no way a product of spontaneous generation. It has been, in part, a consequence of the resolute reaction towards liberty, and of the fierce revolt against all the forms of oppression of thought, which have so nobly distinguished the last hundred years ; but it has also been, in a still larger degree, a result of the development amongst the lower classes of a hatred of moral control in any shape; and that hatred of control has sprung from a polit- ical education, which again, in its turn, has been rendered possible by the spread of the power of reading. Turn it as we will, the whole actual movement of Europe (with the single exception of Russia, where other and purely local causes are at work) comes back obstinately, in all its lower forms, to its one real source, the extension of schooling. The reading of the people of the Continent means, in most cases, not useful knowledge, but unhealthy knowledge; not the knowledge which aids a man to rise, but the knowl- edge which provokes him to hate the man who has risen; not the knowledge which elevates and serves, but the knowledge which embitters and discontents. Yet even that knowledge is better than no knowledge at all for, at all events, it is strengthening men by making them think, though it be falsely and furthermore, we have the resource of hoping, while we look at it with regret, that it will some day change its shape that it will become 78 SUICIDE. transformed hereafter into an accepted guide to wholesomer convictions and to higher uses. Meanwhile, however, it is what it is; and we have to accept it as it is; for it is incontestably better, in the interests of the world and of our age, to possess the knowledge, sophistical as it is, at the price of the suicide, than to suppress the suicide, insensate as it is, at the price of the knowledge. After all, more than a hundred and fifty millions of the inhabi- tants of Europe can read and write while, thus far, only sixty thousand of them are proved to kill themselves each year; the numerical advantage remains, therefore, in favor of reading. But still, though we may, philosophically and practically, take this large view of the case as a whole, it cannot be denied, all the same, that it would be a good thing if we could in any way persuade Europe to kill itself a little less. The example of the Russians, who do not practise suicide because they cannot read, is of no service in the matter, firstly, because we wish to maintain reading at any cost; second- ly, because, if they have not ordinary suicide, they have a special form of it which is proper to themselves they have Nihilism, which is suicide without death. Slavery, not schooling, has led them to that, so they lie outside the sub- ject. It is not from their example that we shall learn anything useful. XVe must look elsewhere for hope. If suicide can be lessened at all (which for the present seems a good deal more than doubtful), it will be by directing reading rather than by attacking it; and it is too soon to try that yet. Meanwhile we must persuade oarselves that we are passing through a phase which, possibly, will cure itself. The real point for the moment is, what can be done in the interval? Religion will in no way help, as it used to do, for, in its great European sense, its power is gone. Catholicism is no longer able to be an oppressor, and it has not yet con- sented to become a friend. So, as we are in reality powerless, we must either fold our hands and look on, or we must appeal to quacks. Now it does so happen that the biggest quacks of our epoch are just now hunting about for a patient; the self- made doctors who profess to cure all social difficulties by morals without re- ligion, cannot assuredly, desire a better chance than this one. If, by preaching pure lay morality, they can stop the growing propensity to suicide, they will have made a first step towards proving that there is something in their physb They have a fair field for the attempt, fc they are turning religion out of the schoc in so many countries that they have fe~ competitors to contend with. Let them. try their hand and show us what they ca. effect, in this useful and practical direc tion, to secularize virtue, as M. Jule: Ferry brags he is doing. It is in no way because suicide is wron~ that we want to see it curtailed a little its wrongness is the personal affair of th individual who commits it: and further more, it would be most unjust and illogi cal to pretend that it is always necessaril- wrong; for not only is it estimated by th~ professors as a compulsory outcome, with in certain limits, of all society, whethe civilized or uncivilized, but it Aimerits als to be regarded by all of us, in many o its realizations, with the compassionate lenient half-indulgence which we usually accord to well-intentioned follies. An even if it were a hundred times mor wrong than it is, our objections to it~ present luxuriance would have nothino- t do with either the reli~ious or the merely virtuous aspects of the case: they arc based exclusively on governmental an( educational grounds, for the reason tha; the present conformation of suicide is ar altogether new one a product of the ac tion of education; it is proper to our day it is induced by the particular condi tions of training which are now, for thz first time, being applied in Europe. Thai training has served, thus far, to brino about not only independence, but also a certain destructiveness and subversive ness, in which suicide finds a natura place. It seems ridiculous for govern ments to have to confess that they canno~ persuade their people not to kill them~ selves with wasteful abundance; but therc is the fact they cannot. And yet it is evident that deterring causes are still available, for they are con tinuing to act upon women with marked effect. Hope and fear are still operating on our wives and daughters, and are hold ing them back from too much suicide: and however improbable it may appear al this moment that working men can bc led to give much of their reading or much of their thoughts to the study of self-re straint, it would still be folly to supposc that hope and fear have ceased to be per manent institutions, affecting men as well as women or that the populations Oi Denmark, Saxony, and Prussia are irre trievably delivered up to steadfast self killing on the largest scale in Europe. THE C ROOKIT MEG. And we are all the more justified in imagining this, for the reason that, not- withstanding the largeness of their pres- ent practice of suicide, nations do seem to be a little ashamed of it. If they were not so, they ~vould all assuredly have con- stituted a name of their own for it. But they have done nothing of the sort; they have contented themselves with describ- ing it by composite words. No national, home-grown appellation for it exists any- where. The term by which it is desig- nated, whether it be self-murder or suicide, or any other, is never a pure national substahtive; it is always a man- ufactured mixture. The word suicide itself, which is now so largely adopted, is not only of foreign origin, but is a Iso of quite recent fabrication; it was invented by the Abb6 Desfontaines. Does not this universal absence of a proper name for suicide indicate a sort of unconscious disavowal of it? If vocabularies are bash- ful about it, if no tongue has cared to hatch a local designation for it, may we not infer that, with all its prosperity, there has always l)een an unbidden shrinkino- from it? Silence is an argument, and here we have the most vigorous of all silences the silence of languages. Such is the treatment which this strange proc- ess has received. It is an outcast from speech. And yet this unnamed exploit stands in between the two great joint principles which dominate humanity attachment to life and the desire to be happy; it puts an end to life in order to be happy; it contradicts the natural rule that life should be spent in struo-o-lino- against death; it dares to apply to men a procedure so contrary to instinct that no dumb animal can be led to it. In the days when people killed themselves so grandly that, in their vanity, they exclaimed, Let us make death proud to take us, there was no local name for what they did. Even in the rare great cases, in which it may be said with truth, La vie est un opprobre a hi ;;iort est un devoir, there is still no national title for self-killing. Of all the stigmas which have attached to it, there is not one more real. From ~ Magazine. THE CROOKIT MEG: A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. xxviii. AND you will go with me, Eppie? Harry asked ardently, yet with the watch- 79 ful ness of the hunted animal in his eyes. Ay, Harry, I will go with you, Eppie answered listlessly. Hacket had ventured to return home after his escape. He put the mare into the stable himself, fed and groomed her, then led her to an outlying byre at some distance from the house, where he left her saddled. Then he went up to his own sitting-room, the room that had been his fathers, and opening an old-fashioned writing-table, began to examine the letters and papers which it contained, throwing them, after a brief glance at each, into the fire which still smouldered on the hearth. He was thus occupied the whole morn- ing. At intervals he rose and scanned uneasily the distant high-road leading to Peelboro. Later he had something to eat; a little later he stole cautiously by an unfrequented footpath to the smithy on the Saddlehill, and despatched the imp with the message to Eppie. Then he re- turned to his room and resumed his work. If he was preparing for flight, it was clear that he had resolved to leave no written evidence behind him. One bundle of papers obviously startled him; he read them again and again; then he tied them up carefully as if he meant to keep them; then, with a sudden impulse, he threw the packet into the fire with the others. Cairnbannow is a heap of whinstone high tip among the moors. Some remote Hacket, riding blindly among the peat hags, had broken his neck at this spot, and they had buried him where he fell and put the stones over him. The com- mon people said that he had broken his neck on purpose; but that is a feat dif- ficult to accomplish: accident is more potent than design in such cases. This, however, was the spot which Harry had selected for his meeting with Eppie. It was a mile or two beyond Yokieshill on the road to Ardallie not the high-road, but a rough track through the moors used by the farm carts that went in autumn to bring down the peats from the moss, and as a short cut by packmen and tinkers. The grouse sunned themselves upon the cairn in September; a little later on in the year a watchful black - cock looked round him from the summit. Eppie had once or twice ridden here lately; the cov- eted domain of the Hackets lay stretched below; so she knexv the place. The lovers met: Eppie listless and jaded; Harry restless, watchful, eager. Theydid not dismount; the horses moved on as they talked. Harry told her only 8o THE CROOKIT MEG:~~ that something had occurred which re- quired him to leave the country without delay for a time: would she, oh! would she go with him? He pleaded for him- self ~vith a vehemence that almost woke her out of her lethargy. She looked at him with wondering inquiry in her eyes. Was he really going to leave? She had broken one lovers heart: was she to break another? Any love that had ever found a place in her own heart had been frozen in the bud; and even the old am- bition appeared to be dead. She was utterly passive: either way it was the same to her. Then she had said mechanically for in truth she did not attach any definite meaning to the words, did not in the least realize that the moment for instant action had come Yes, Harry, I will go with you.~~ I suppose most of us have experienced at timesin our sleeping if not in our waking moments such temporary col- lapse of the will. The nightmare sense of a frantic and futile struggle against the impending doom the obscure but in- evitable calamity is followed by the paralysis of utter languor. The sky may fall; but we cannot lift a hand to save us. Does the abysmal treachery of human nature (to use De Quinceys words) be- tray itself in this fashion? \Vhat is the fact in our constitution that corresponds with and accounts for this spontaneous admission of incurable and fatal inca- pacity? But these are questions for the metaphysician; it is enough for me to say that one of the moments in life when the languishing prostration of hope and vital energy discloses itself in hands that are powerless to do our bidding, and feet that fail us in our flight, had come to Eppie. The keen eye was clouded, the imperious will was blunted, the intense and manifold wilfulnesses of a masterful but rudely developed character had been petrified into stony immobility. Her companion could not but notice her unnatural listlessness and abstrac- tion. The sun was already setting, and yet she rode on without making any move- ment or showing any desire to return. The shadows of night came down upon the moors; but this pale, impassive bride rode on silently beside him. Neither of them had observed that the unseasonably oppressive weather of the past few days was about to culminate in a thunder-storm. The crisis was upon them. The huge white clouds which had been mounting out of the west all day had latterly grown ominously blue and slate- colored, casting a lurid reflection of the stormy sunset upon the moor. The whaups passed by overhead with wailing cries. A gorcock which they started on the track flew a few yards, and then went down plump into the heather. A great convulsion of nature was at hand. Between Yokieshill and Ardallie there was not in the year one a single dwelling house; the barren moorland was un- broken by spade or plough; but at Pit- lurg the high-lying table land dips into the valley of the Ythan, and at the junc- tion of the high-road ~vitli the hill road where the toll-bar now stands the Cot- tage Inn (what in Switzerland they would call the Chalet Inn) of Ardallie was placed. It was then kept by Jean Catto, and was mainly used by pedlars and smugglers. Many an illicit bargain ~acturn illici- turn, as Corbie said with a wink was concluded in the widows snug little par- lor. It was a sort of half-way house be- tween Peelboro and Aberhaddy. The first heavy drops fell as they ar- rived at the door, and the fire-flacht was blazing across the dark before they had dismounted. Peal after peal rattled out of the heaven. And then the rain came down in perfect sheets of water. [Yet in spite of the flood, the lightning continued to flash, and the thunder to growl and mutter like a caged beast, who ever and again breaks into a roar in the impotent violence of passion. No human creature could have stirred out of doors that night without danger of being washed bodily away. The storm which cleared the air cleared Eppies soul. She awoke and found her- self seated in the cosy parlor of the inn. Jean Catto was bustling about her in a helpful way. I maun sort the blue bed- room for you and your man, said Jean, assuming that they were married folks; and then she left her to get supper ready. Eppies eyes opened wide; her lips parted; but she did not speak a word. She stared after her hostess in dumb dismay. At this moment I-Jacket, who had been seeing to the horses, entered the room. Eppie rushed up to him with a great cry. What does it mean, Harry? Where - have you brought me? I am ready to go. Please saddle Bess. Its not possible, Eppie, to move to- night, H acket replied, the uneasy, furtive look coming into his eyes. Nature had treated I-larry badly. Had it not been for those uneasy, furtive eyes, he would A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. have been,though in a coarse, halfbred beauty, which ministered to her pride; style, really handsome. You must let and Eppie, as we know, was proud as Jean Catto they call her Jean, I think Lucifer. Other girls might give them- make you as comfortable as she can. selves away if they chose; other girls had We will get away to-morrow by daylight. soft hearts and weak heads. But she! A great dread took possession of Ep- And yet this sulky booby of a lad had pies soul. What did he mean? Now somehow contrived to compromise her that he had got her into his power would as she fancied. There might be some- he deal fairly by her? Now that her thing of exaggeration in the fancy; she good name was in peril, could she trust was for the moment weak, morbid, and him as she could have trusted the other? unhinged. The excitement of the fever, She could have gone with Alister over which replaces the lethargy of despair, the world secure in the innate integrity of burnt in her blood. But at all hazards, this the mans nature: but Harry Hacket? miserable sickness of shame which over- That was the wretchedness of it. She came her when she realized her position did not believe in the loyalty of her must be put an end to put an end by some lover, instant, decisive antidote. A terrible \Vhat, indeed, did Harry intend by this fatality had driven her back upon her old girl after all, only a farmers daughter self hard, unloving, and unlovable; but whom he had, wittingly or unwittingly, that was no good reason why she should induced to accompany him thus far? She drift helplessly to utter shipwreck. The had certainly compromised herself, whis- words utter shipwreck, if applied to pered the mocking Mephistopheles who other girls of that place and time, would is always at our elbow ready to take ad- have been, I admit, a mere rhetorical ex- vantage of any slip we may make. Why pression, but to Eppie they meant tAcit, not win her now more cheaplyfar more and nothing less. There was no ideal cheaplythan he had fancied possible element, as I have often said, in this when they started that afternoon? girl; she had little or none of the shy rev- I cannot for my own part be certain erence for the right, for what is pure and that the temptation was seriously enter- modest and of good report, which is the tamed by him. It was undoubtedly a crown of womanhood. And yet her yes- temptation that would appeal very directly tal hardness and coldness had truly ex- to the sensual instincts of an evil and pressed a natural attitude of her mind; cowardly nature. But I do not love Har- she shrank from what was morally un- ry Hacket, and I may be doing him in- comely with critical annoyance and disap- justice. proval. And now there seemed to her But as she looked at him, Eppie recov- only one method by which she could save ered herself. Her immense superiority herself from the ugly gulf that opened of mind made itself felt. Whenever they before her feet Harry must marry her had hitherto come into the direct stress to-night. It must be done now, at once, of conflict, her moral and physical cour- without an hours delay; thereafter, though age had made her his master. She was her heart broke (if further breakage were to win again to-night, always assuming, possible), she could hold her head up that is, that he had not meant fairly by again, and look the world straight in the her. face with her clear, unshrinking eyes, Harry, she said in a clear voice, com- and in the arrogant simplicity of her rustic ing up to where he stood shivering pride, as she had done before. Yes, she before the fire, Harry, look here. I must be married to-night. winna say which of us is to blame it He stood before the fire silent, look- may be me, it may be you but you hae ing down. He had never seen her so brocht me whar I sud na hae come. A moved before; there was a thrill in her lass maunna lippen to a man if she wud voice he had never heard before. But keep her giide name. Mine is gone. I he did not reply Mephistopheles was canna gang back to Fontainbleau, except still at his elbo~v. It was a pity that he you mak me your wife. 0 Harry, it wud did not reply; it forced her to shoot her hae been better for us baith, if we had last shaft. never met; but what maun be maun be. Look at me, Harry Hacket, she ex- Harry, you must marry me to-night. claimed after a long pause, her face light- She spoke with perfect distinctness in ing up brilliantly with angeror was it extremest simplicity. Her good name scorn? I saw Liar Corbie after he had had been inestimably dear to Eppie : it been wi you at Yokieshill, and he telit was the one possession, besides her me something aboot your feyther. Hack- LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI. 1566 82 THE CROOKIT MEG: et started, and moved uneasily. You can tell me whether it be true ____ Its a lie, he said, in a hoarse, broken voice. And he gaed me some papers. Here he started again. Leastwise Ive got themby fair means or by foul Ive got them. I felt that you were ill-used amang them, and my heart was softened to you. I thocht to do you a gude turn. Noo, Harry, I may be forced to bide here this nicht the rain was lashing against the panes. but Mrs. Catto will let me sit in her room, I dinna doobt; and though I may be missed at hame (Alas, Ep- pie, there is no one to miss you now!) yet when I get to Corbies to-morrow xvi the papers Reader, you must remember that this girls moral nature had been utterly unde- veloped, and that she xvas now at bay a wild creature at bay. It seems to be assumed by many wise men among us that the conscience in each soul, like the Greek daughter of Zeus, is armed at every point from birth a crown~d truth. It is not so: it needs to blossom, to ex- pand, to mature: the sunshine and storm, the tears and laughter, the sorrow and sacrifice, of many a spring and summer, of many an autumn and winter, are needed to ripen it to perfect life. Eppies moral education had only begun the other day; she had grown into a woman: but her conscience was still in its childhood, and love had been nipped in the bud. Do not let us hate her, because in her mortal terror she seized the nearest available weapon. She knew not what she did. It is possible indeed that she was un- necessarily terrified, and that her lover had not designed to harm her. So at least he declared, and I ant willing to be- lieve himfor once. You need not fear me, Eppie, he said, raising his eyes at last, 1 always meant you to be my wife. Marriage in Scotland is not attended with any unnecessary preliminaries. Go into the next room, and declare before your landlady and her guests that you are man and wife, and the thing is done. You are married past redemption; the Archbishop. of Canterbury with all his deans and archdeacons could not tie the knot tighter. In some such primitive fashion, Harry Hacket and Euphame Holdfast were made man and wife.* * A suspicion of the validity of the ceremony was sometimes expressed: but Corbie knew better. Con- sensus non concubitus facit matrimonium, said Cor- bit; and though its undeniable, Mr. Druinly, that It was a wild and stormy night for a wedding; but it would have been even darker to Eppie had she known all. But it was not until the ceremony, such as it was, had been completed, that an officer of the law, buffeted by the storm, but bringing a warrant for the apprehension of Harry Hacket of Yokieshill, on the charge of wounding Adam Meldrum to the danger of life, entered the inn. Poor Eppie! XXIX. IT was too true dear old Uncle Ned had been wounded to the death. He was stupefied by the blow, and quite uncon- scious while they bore him to Achnagatt, the nearest farmhouse. He was carried into the best bedroom, where, in addition to prints of the storming of Seringapatam and of the lord lieutenant of the county, Mrs. Marks pre-Raphaelite sampler, a chef dwuvre of the MacWhistler school of the period, was suspended over the fireplace. They put the old man to bed, and before the surge on arrived conscious- ness had returned. His wound was bound up; but the surgeon shook his head. Adam had lost a deal of blood; the shock to the system had been tremendous; he was over seventy. No: he might linger for a week; he would suffer no pain; but his days were numbered. His friends gathered about him as he lay there serene and composed. Kate was a deft nurse, Alister got leave of absence from the commodore, Dr. Cald- cail was a constant visitor. The old boat-builder was wonderfully happy with his friends, young and old. His bed was placed beside the xvindow, whence he could see down to the river, where the sandsnipe were piping to each other as they swept swiftly, like the shadow of a cloud, across the sand. One wild, windy day a broken rainbow touched the clouds all morning, now melting into mist, anon growing vivid and consistent again. To the dying man it seemed in its perfect comliness of color, in its perfect shapeli- ness of outline, an earnest, a foretaste of the good things that were in store. It only the ostler and the kitchen-wench, forbye Mrs. Catto, were hen, yet nae plea against the credibility o - the witnesses has been proponed. And as has been judiciously observed by Mr. Erskine in his Institute o nor law, whilk like that o a civiieesed nations is im- ported from the Roman (tim the English to be sure hae sonie cankered notions o their am), Mr. Erskine, I say, has weet remarked that it is not essential to mar- riage that it be celebrated by a clergyman, or even by the shirra the consent o parties being plainly ex- pressed before credible witnesses; for it is the consent o the parties which alone constitutes marriage. A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. 83 compasseth the heaven about with a glo- rious circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. He never wearied of repeating these words; which are in- deed very great words simply realistic, yet vitally idealas some great painter who puts a band of light round the head of the Redeemer. Tue Iuzndsoft/zeMost Hii~1z have bended it. Indeed, my bairns, he said (it was Alister and Kate now, not Alister and another), if Shakespeare hadna been born, I could have been weel content with the natural history o the Auld Tes- tament. But then, you see, the poets and prophets of the Hebrew people lived in a different warld; whereas S hake- speare is, as it were, ane o oorsels. But they had undoobtedly a great enjoyment of nature. Beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings. Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? Hekepthim as the apple of his eye. But unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteous- ness arise with healing in his wings. Ay, bairns, the men who wrote thae words were wayfarers who had abided xvi na- ture in her secret places, until the sleepy magic of her music suffused their souls. With healin in his wings ! Dear me it minds me somehow ofthe saft fa o the cusheys wings as she settles on her nest. At another time he would discuss with the doctor the conditions of that mysteri- ous existence on which he was about to enter. Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come, said the apostle. And anither saw the holy city, New Jeru- salem, coming down from God oot o heaven. Weel, doctor, you and me may not have any sic veevid eemage of the New Jerusalem; for the warld is greatly changed since John lived in Patmos. Poor John! he must have got verra weary o his bit rock, with the constant thud-thud o the sea in his ears, and I canna wonner that he could na thole it in the New Jerusalem. And there ~vas no more sea! Indeed, doctor, I canna say that I fear death; it is rayther that I am ashamed o it, it being, as our freen o Norwich observes, the verra disgrace and ignominy of our nature. Yet death, as he says in anither place, is the cure o all diseases nectar and a pleasant potion of immortality. But the lang habit of livin indisposeth us for dying. Thats it, doctor; we are the verra creatures of habit. I wonner what Elisha thocht when he saw Elijah fleein into heaven like a laverock? He must have been simply dumfoonded. But if the haill business was a cunnin deceit, as your freen Mr. Hume contens, it was maist extra-ordinar clever o the auld writer to mak him bus his mantle. And Elisha took up also the mantle of Elijah which fell from him. For wha can help believin it after that? So he rambled on gently and sweetly to his friends beside him; until, as his strength failed, delirium came and took him back into the past. Sit doun beside me, Rachel, and sing me a bit sang. Im uncommon weary this nicht. Its a rale bonny bird, the grey plover. What Rachel gone? Ay, the bells are rin~incr the folk are at the kirk door shes in the bairds seat. See how the sunshine o heaven touches her brown hair. She sits abune the lave like a saint in glory! But sic a woman-like smile, sic a bird-like twitter 0 a laugh, when she meets me in the yard. Surely, Adam, surely, she says sqftly. How caller the air, how the birds sing, this Sabbath mornin! And, Adam, mind ye bring me a sprig o heather from Ben- achie! I was on my way to the hielans for a week for a week only. Ay, dar- lin, a hatfu o heather, and a heartfu o love! And so we partedforever. He paused and looked about him, and then the old story was resumed. A week thereafter I stood again in the doorway. I had tellt the corries o the joy that ~vas in store for me the heather had taen a rarer bloom, sic gowd in the sunset, sic purple glooms in the gloamin, I had never beheld before. I waited a moment in the trance, for an unaccount- able dread cam. suddenly upon me. Even as I waited a woman clad in black passed oot her eyes red wi weepin, her cheeks soiled wi tears. I kent my doom before a word was spoken. She looked at me I had the bit sprig o white heather in my hanwi sad, pitiful eyes. It is all over, she said, Rachel is in heaven.~~~ He fell back upon the pillow, the eyes bright with fever gazing blankly into the sky, until, after a strained pause of in- quiry, they cleared, and he added softly, A great crood that nae man can num- beran endless thrang o warldsbut love will bring the beloved. So it went on, in broken snatches, until the end came the gentle and peaceful end of a gentle and peaceful life. The delirium had left him, and he had bidden farewell to the doctornot without a touch of the old humorous twinkle in his 84 THE CROOKIT MEG: eyes. Gude-bye, my auld freen, gude- bye, If we do meet again, why we shall smile; If not, why then this parting was ~vell made. And Alister my dear, dear boyyou will keep the birds, but gie Eppie the buiks. Puir Eppie! Then the voice sank to a whisper, Rachel Rachel nineteen and seventy-three dootless, a lang reckonin but this maks these odds a~ even.~~ So, with the unforgotten name, and a scrap from the beloved book on his lips, Uncle Ned passed away. xxx. THE High Court of Justiciary was crowded by ten oclock on the morning of the last day of the year one. Harry Hacket was to be tried on that day for the killing of Adam Meldrum, and the prospect of the trial had excited consid- erable interest in the northern metropo- lis. The social position of the accused, the audacity of the outrage, the growing feeling against the severity of the excise laws, rumors about the romantic circum- stances in which the irregular marriage with Eppie Holdfast had been contracted had contributed to draw a crowd of idlers to the dingy court-room. Corbie, propi- tiated by payment of his account (with legal interest), had insisted on coming all the way from Peelboro to instruct coun- sel, and was now seated within the bar in consultation with one of the clerks of Messrs. Tod and Trotter, writers to the Signet the agents employed for Hacket. In a dim corner of the court, with a thick veil drawn across her face, sat the crim- inals young wife Euphame Holdfast or Hacket, as she was called in the indict- ment. Corbie employed the interval before the judges entered in obtaining opinions on certain questions of legal procedure in which his clients were interested, from the clerk at his side. It was a tempting opportunity, moreover, to air his own eru- dition, which had been growing somewhat musty of late. Noo, you maun understan, Mr. Drum- ly, that by the sett o the burgh, the sea- greens belang to the feuars. But the deeficulty arises whats a sea-green? A variety o sea-kail, says the doctor jocosely; but hes a daft body. Indeed, Mr. Drumly, Ive heard him declare that the Decretum et Decretalia o the canon- ists are superior in maist respecs to the Corpus Juris Civilis! But the truth is that the study o deeveenity obscures and stultifles the faculties o the understand- in, whilk on the contrar are recreated, refreshed, and whetted by the law. Noo, the sea and the seashore are onquestion- ably inter regaliathat I wunna dispute but it disna appear to me, and it cer- tainly to the best o my judgment has not been sattled by the coortat laste by the Hoose o Lordsthat the seashore, being inter regalia, extends beyond the ordinary leemits o the tide. Whereas it is the land covered by the spring tides whereof a sea-green consists, accordin to oor institutional writers, and mair partic- ularly Lords Stair and Bankton. Says I to the provost Dootless, provost, the value o the property is sma for you see the Broch is entirely bigget on rocks which rise perpendicular from the deep sea but the question o law being of general importance, a declaratory action at the instance o the provost and bailies o the burgh against his Majestys advo- cate as representing the crown At this moment a macer entering an- nounced The court. The audience rose. Why was the dress of a judge of the supreme court in the year one cut pre- cisely like an old ladys? Why, indeed, should really eminent lawyers (and there are sometimes eminent lawyers on the bench) be condemned to trot into a court of justice, from which every ludicrous association should be excluded, holding up their petticoats? Their lordships sat down, and the audi- ence resumed their seats. Its Pitblethers, Kilreekie, and Fozie, said Mr. Drumly. The Lord hae mercy on Harry Hack- et, Corbie rejoined piously. If its within the leemits o possibeelity, Foziell hang him. Lord Fozie had an evil name among the criminal classes. The reader who lives on the other side of the Tweed may perhaps fancy that Mr. Drumly ~vas taking malicious liberties ~vith their lordships titles. But this would be a mistake. The fact was that when a Scotch la~vyer of the year one was elevated to the bench he became what John Gibson Lockhart in his epitaph on Patrick Robertson called a paper peer, and assuming the title of lord, prefixed it to the name of his family acres if he had any. Now the names of most of the estates in the Scotch lowlands, from whence the judges were then mainly drawn, being by no means euphonious or musical to sotithern ears, the consequence A STORY OF THE YEAR ONE. of this singular custom was that, on burn,orb the bench, a decorous Wedder- Gordon, or Ogilvy was inconti- nently translated into a Lord Pitbiethers, a Lord Kilreekie, or a Lord Fozie. The prisoner was then brought up. His sullen and insolent air (partly as- sumed, no doubt, to conceal intense ner- vousness) did not create a favorable im- pression; still he ~vas a well-browned, well-built, presentable fellow, and the young ladies in the gallery (who had been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho ) felt, with a thrill of delicious horror, that he was precisely the sort of man that they ~vould not like to meet in a ghostly gallery of a dark night. Any objections to the relevancy, Mr. Pittendreich? asked the justice-clerk, when he had arranged his petticoats, and opened the scroll-book in which he took his notes. Certainly, my Lord. And then Mr. Pittendreich rose, and, taking up the in- dictment, tore it (figuratively speaking) to tatters. Thereafter my lord advocate in reply proved that no prisoner had ever had the satisfaction of being hanged on a more logical, coherent, and strictly rel- evant document. I dont mean to go into the legal argument; you will find it re- ported at length by Mr. Cowpen (after- wards Lord Drumsaddle) in the first vol- ume of his justiciary reports. It is enough to say that the main assault was directed against the description of the place where the crime was alleged to have been committed near Mains of Ach- nagatt, in the parish of Slams, in the county of Aberhaddy; whereas it was contended, firstly, that Achnagatt was and ought to have been spelt with one t; and, secondly, that though situated locally in the parish of Slams and county of Aberhaddy, it was situated legally in the parish of Fordyce and county of Banif. It is unnecessary to attempt to explain the sort of dual existence attrib- uted to Achnagatt the capacity for be- ing in two places at once, which it seemed to enjoy in common with the Irishmans bird the general effect produced by the ingenious debate on the minds of the audience being, that no such place did in point of law or of fact exist anywhere. Achnagatt had, in short, become a mere no;nen}uris before the argument was ex- hausted. It was exactly one of those nice points which the court may settle by a toss-up with perfect safety. I had for- gotten, to be sure, that a mans life in this case depended upon the solution, but so had the lawyers on either side; for indeed they hanged right and left in the year one, and thought no more of a mans life than of a rats. Then my lords, modestly arranging their petticoats, retired to the robing. room to consider their judgment. The lord justice-clerk, Pitblethers, was one of Pitts politicians a pleasant speaker, a strong partisan, an agreeable and wellinformed man of the world, but not much of a lawyer. XVell, Kilreekie, what do you say? asked the justice-clerk. Faith, Pitblethers, ye may mak a kirk and a mill ot. There is gude rea- son and nae reason on boith sides o the bar. Im rather for lettin the youngster aft: if ~ve pit him to the jury theyre like to hang him. And did you notice the lass in the black veil under the gallery? thats Mistress Euphame Holdfast or Hacket, Ill be boundand an uncom- mon handsome lass she is. Well sus- teen the objections, Pitblethers, if -you please, said Kilreekie, who was a judi- cious admirer of the fair sex, though a cynical critic of his own. VvTell, my lords, said the justice- clerk, I recollect his father, old Hacket, on the Inverness circuit after Culloden, and he married a very nice girlJane Kilgourof Logieby the way,a sort of cousin of my own. What say you, Fo- zie? My impression is that the major wont hold water. And as you say, Kil- reekie, the jury are safe to hang him. And it wudna be the first o the clan, Pitblethers, that has undergone a process o suspension, if the auld border thieves havena been miscaed. The justice- clerk, who belonged to an old border fam- ily, rather prided himself on his descent. J presume you agree, Fozie, the justice-clerk continued, disregarding the interruption, that we cant sustain the relevancy? The definition of the locus delicti is quite too defective. Well ca it the locus ~wnitentier, if you like, Fozie, Lord Kilreekie inter- posed again. Fozie shut his eyes, wagged his head, and addressed a few inaudible observa- tions to his cravat. Im for hangin were the only articulate words. Lord Fozie, however, was in the minor- ity; and it was agreed that the justice- clerk should deliver the unanimou& judg- ment of the court. There was an eager intensity of interest in the prisoner~ s gaze when the judges returned. Hacket had divined truly 86 THE CROOKIT enough that his fate depended on the de- cision of the preliminary pleas. Lord Pitbiethers made his points neatly, and sustained the interest to the end. As it appears, he said, that the spelling has varied according to the tastes of the successive tenants, I agree with your lordshio.s that the objection to the double t in Achnagatt must be repelled. The arch~ologicai argument which we have heard from the bar has shown mer- itorious research; but it has not sufficed to alter the opinion of the court. Nor do we consider that the words in the parish of Slams, can be held to vitiate the indictment. Neither my brethren nor myself see our way to hold that the parish of Fordyce, situated as we know in the county of l3anff, can also be situated in the county of Aberhaddy. On the con- trary, if Achnagatt is in any parish in Scotland (and on that point, which has not been argued, we reserve our opinion), Slams appears Prirndfacic to be the par- ish; and therefore this branch of Mr. Pittendreichs ingenious argument does not commend itself to the deliberate judg- ment of your lordships. Here the speaker paused; the prisoner felt that it was all over with him; but Pittendreich rubbed his hands and chuckled. He knew what was coming. But, contin- ued his lordship, we are unanimously of opinion that the words in the county of Aberhaddy is a fatal misdescription. It appears to us that the flaw Deed, my lord, thats gude law, exclaimed Corbie, unable any longer to restrain himself. He had that morning, as well as the night before, been revisiting with some old cronies a certain xvell- known tavern in the Advocates Close. The interruption caused a general burst of laughter, and the noise made by the macers in their efforts to restore silence prevented the audience from becoming acquainted with what remained of his lordships opinion which came indeed to a speedy conclusion. The jury were discharged; the witnesses were liberated; and Harry Hacket had saved his neck. XXXI. So Uncle Ned died: and sooner or later it is but a question of sooner or later with us all the other members of the secluded society on that weather- beaten coast, who were so bright and cheery in the year one, were laid out of the way of the east wind. Captain Knock, Liar Corbie, Doctor Caldcail, Miss Sherry, my friend Alister and his pretty wife Mistress Kate (for men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love; and the blow to Alister, though stunning at the moment, was not fatal) have finished each of them his or her bit of work in a world where there are always plenty of fresh hands. Pitblethers, and Kilreekie, and Fozie, have ceased to be a terror to evil doers, and a praise and protection to those that do well; and their places are occupied by the men of a new world, who have forgot- ten the tongue of their grandfathers, and speak that astonishing English of the Scotch bar which has so often perplexed an amazed legislature. Eppie came of a long-lived house; and I can still recall the bright-eyed old lady, in her black silk gown and wonderful white hair, who occupied the many-gabled house among the moors when I was a boy. In my time she was lady of Yokies- hill; and only a confused tradition of Harry Hackets misdoings survived. For the popular feeling againsf the man who had dealt that savage blow at Uncle Ned was too bitter to permit him to return, and he went abroad. Eppie did not accom- pany him. She had fought his battle obstinately so long as his life was in peril; but after the trial she came back to Peelboro, and lived in close retirement under Miss Sherrys hospitable roof. She sent Cousin Kate on her marriage morning a lovely little gold knicknack, ~vhich had been an heirloom in the Hold- fast family since Marie Touchets time (the initials M. S. and the Scottish lion being faintly engraved on the inner shield), but she was not at the wedding. She and Alister never met. Then some arrangements had to be made about the property, which continued to he managed, or mismanaged, by our friend Corbie; and then Harry died, and it was found that Eppie Holdfast had, under her husbands settlements, the sole interest in Yokies- hill. Inquiries were instituted on her behalf by the Maryland authorities; but if Elspeth Cheyne left any issue, no trace of them was recovered. So she reached the goal of her ambition; Eppie Holdfast was mistress of Yokieshill.* * The rumors as to a defect in the title to Yokieshill were not easily silenced, and long continued current about the country-side being discussed for half a century at kirk and market, at farmers ordinaries and presbytery dinners. I remember being told when a lad, by the last Dr. Caldcail of my acquaintance, that, if lusece were done and every one bad his own, a lively old lady, who lived in the neighborhood and was very intimate with Mrs. Hacket, would be owner of vokies, hilt. But by the middle of the century these rumors had pretty well died out, being moreover, strange to WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. I do not know that she was unhappy. his early plays have, as a rule, more nu- She looked keen and bright, and active merous learned allusions than the later. and healthy to the end. She was very This is not, however, as is sometimes good to her poor cottars, very kind to assumed, an invariable mark or test of children and beggars and wayfarers. Her early work. The Comedy of Errors, hair, it was said, had turned grey in a though constructed on the well-known single night; but it had needed more, I lines of Plautus and Terence, contains, dare say, than the mad misery of an hour perhaps for this very reason, far fewer to humble the pride of her heart, and classical allusions than many, indeed soften the hardness of her ambition. No than most, of the later plays. But in she was not unhappy. She had con- Titus Andronicus, Loves Labors trived to live down (and it is done some- Lost, the Taming of the Shrew, and how) the exquisite bliss and the exquisite the parts of Henry VI., the bookish torture she had tasted in the Year One. element, though much less than in many And Dick? contemporary plays, is still a distinctive Mr. Richard Holdfast, tacksman of feature. Even in these earliest efforts, Fontainbleau, was in the 43 (Scotsmen in however, Shakespeare yields only a pass- this century talk of going out in the 43 as ing and temporary homage to the custom in the last century they talked of being out of copious allusion and quotation so com- in the 45) a staid and steady old gentle- mon in his day. His intellectual power man. He was a ruling elder of the kirk; was too exuberant, his creative imagina- a J. P. for the county of Aberhaddy; and tion too fertile, his dramatic feeling too the scourge of all the poachers, paupers, vivid and intense, to allow of scholastic tramps, somers, tinkers, and gipsies who display, or merely external decoration of harbored in the neighborhood of Hells any kind. Classical and learned allu- Lum. SHIRLEY. sions, if employed at all, are ttsually wrought by the dominant feeling into the very substance of the work. But, as I have said, in his more mature and char- Magazine. acteristic writings such allusions are From Frasers rare. It is the more significant, there- WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT fore, that direct references to Ovid, and SCHOOL. quotations from his poems, are compara tively numerous, although, as might be IN tracing more in detail the proofs of expected, they occur for the most part in Shakespeares familiarity with Ovid, his early plays. Apart from direct evidence, general literary method must be kept in indeed, it might be safely assumed that view. While there is the clearest evi- the influence of Ovid over Shakespeare dence that his mind was richly stored would be stronger in the earlier stages of with knowledge of all kinds, he is far too his career, before his own dramatic style great, an artist to make any section of it was fully formed, than in the later, when prominent in his writings. This applies his powers were developed, and he had with special force to the kind of knowl- acquired complete command over the con- edge which academic poets and scholarly ditions and resources of his art. wits are apt to display the knowledge In dealing with the direct references to of books. Many of the writers for the Ovid, Titus Andronicus may be taken stage, who were Shakespeares immediate first in order of time. At least I may predecessors or early contemporaries, had say in passing that, after a careful exam- spent some years at the universities, and ination of the question, I feel convinced their dramas not only abound with liter- that the play is Shakespeares, and if so, ary references and allusions, but contain it is obvious it must be early work, his at intervals long quotations from forei ~ n very first tragedy, if not his first drama. sources, and especia~iy from the Roman The marks of youthful effort are every- poets and prose ~vriters. The unspent where apparent, not only in the accept- force of the powerful Renaissance wave ance of the coarse type of tragedy that swayed secondary and imitative minds in occupied the London stage when Shake- the same direction. And at the outset of speare first became acquainted with it, his career, Shakespeare was so far af- but in the crude handling of character fected by the prevailing tendencies, that and motive, and the want of harmony in openly working out the details of the conception. say, discouraged and resented by the old lady All through the ardent love of beauty and herself who in the year one must have been a mere A~1;~ht girl, not much over twelve years of age, I should fancy. keen ~. in nature struo~oie with the 88 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. physical horrors and moral gloom of the The third scene of the same act con- tragedy. In relation to the point in hand, tains a quotation from Ovid, a hemistich the immaturity is seen in the extent to from then fine passage in the first book of which the smell of the lamp mingles with the Metamorphoses, in which he de- the freshness and vigor of poetic feeling, scribes the flight of justice from the pal- The wide circle of references to Greek luted earth. The venerable Titus, in his fable and Roman story suggests that the ecstasy of grief and loss, despairing of writer had come recently from his books, justice on the earth, commands those and was not unwilling to display his ac- about him to scour the seas and search quaintance with them. Some of the the under-world to find her. books and authors from whose pages in- TerrasAstr~a reliquit: cidents and allusions had been derived Be you rememberd, Marcus, shes gone, shes are, as in the case of Ovid, mentioned by fled. name. Sirs, take you to your tools. You, The earliest direct reference to Ovid shall cousins, occurs in the first scene of the fourth act, Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets; where, in the garden of Tituss house, Happily you may catch her in the sea; the terribly mutilated Lavinia is seen Yet theres as little justice as at land. eagerly turning over the books her nephew Lucius had let fall on her hasty approach. Titus and Marcus, to whom the boy had appealed, after watching her for a time, observe that she has fixed on one of the books and is rapidly turning over the leaves as though in search of some refer- ence or passage that might tell what she cannot utter, Tit. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so? Young Luc. Grandsire, tis Ovids Afetamor- phoses; My mother gave it me. A/arc. For love of her thats gone, Perhaps she culld it from among the rest. Th. Soft! see how busily she turns the leaves! [He/ping her. What ~vould she find ? Lavinia, shall I read? This is the tragic tale of Philomel, And treats of Tereuss treason. The tale of Tereus having hinted at her woe, the plan devised by her uncle for revealing the names of the murderous ruffians who had so cruelly wronged her that of writing in the sand with the staff seems also to have been suggested by Ovid. At least it naturally recalls the vivid dramatic sketch in which he de- scribes the lingered-out parting on the shore between Calypso and Ulysses. Urged to tell once more the tale of Troy, the wide-wandering hero draws with his stick on the sand a map of the city, with the friendly and hostile encampments around it. Ille levi virga (virgam nam forte tenebat), Quod rogat, in spisso litore pingit opus, H~ec, inquit, Troja est (muros in litore fecit) Hic tibi sit Simois: h~ec mea castra puta. Campus erat (campumque facit) quem c~ede Dolonis Sparsimus, H~monios dum vigil optat equos. The numerous indirect allusions to Ovids writings in the play will be noticed further on. But before leaving it here another line from the scene already referred to may perhaps be fairly interpreted as a direct allusion to the favorite author. When Lucius runs to his grandfather, perplexed and alarmed at his aunts hur- ried approach and excited manner, Titus replies Fear her not, Lucius; something doth she mean; See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee: Somewbither would she have thee go with her. Ab, boy, Cornelia never with more care Read to her sons than she hath read to thee Sweet poetry and Tuilys Orator. Now, as the Metamorphoses had been given to the boy by his mother, and his Aunt Lavinia shows immediately after her intimate knowledge of the book, it seems reasonable to conclude that Ovids delightful stories were the sweet poetry she had read to the boy. In support of this it will be remembered that in the grammar schools of Shakespeares youth, the pupils usually read Ovid and Cicero for a year or two before they advanced to Horace and Juvenal, and that the epithet sweet is not only peculiarly suitable, but specially applied to Ovid in the literature of the time. From his smooth versifica- tion, felicitous turns of speech, and ful- ness of tender sentiment, he was appro- priately designated by an epithet that would hardly apply to the poets read in the more advanced stages of the school course. We may therefore, I think, fairly interpret the line, Sweet poetry and Tullys Orator as referring to the school association of Ovid and Cicero. The next play in which Shakespeare refers to Ovid by name is Loves Labors WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. Lost. The pedantic Holofernes, though destitute of true taste or cultured judg- ment, knows well enough the technical merits of the chief school authors. In criticising Birons verses he takes the opportunity of displaying his familiarity with Ovid, and, although, under the im- pulse of the foolish extravagant spirit that possesses him, he cannot help playing with the name, the substance of his gen- eral statement is not very wide of the mark: He#e are only numbers ratified: but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso, but for smelling out the odoriferous flow- ers of fancy, the jerks of invention?~ Here the main characteristics of Ovids muse, his ease, elegance, fertility of in- vention and musical sweetness, are clearly indicated, though in a characteristically fantastic way. The Taming of the Shrew is an- other early play, comparatively rich in di- rect references to Ovid. Indeed, though not amongst the very earliest of Shake- speares works, it abounds with classical allusions in common with the older drama on which it is founded. The references to Ovid are, however, from Shakespeares own pen, as they do not appear in the Pleasant conceited Historie called the Taming of a Shrew. The earliest ref- erence is in the first scene of the first act, in the dialogue between Lucentio and Tranio on their arrival at Padua, the nursery of arts, in order to enter on a course of learning and ingenious stud- ies. After having been brought upat Florence, Lucentio, the son of a wealthy merchant, returns to Padua, the place of his birth, to complete his education by the study of philosophy. This determi- nation he explains in his opening speech. And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study Virtue, and that part of philosophy \Vill I apply, that treats of happiness By virtue especially to be achievd. Tea. Mi Jerdoneite, gentle master mine, I am in all affected as yourself; Only, good master, while we do admire This virtue and this moral discipline, Lets be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray; Or so devote to Aristotles checks, As Ovid be an outcast quite abjurd. This line not improbably reflects a per- sonal experience. It suggests that Shake- speare had found Ovids refreshing tales a welcome relief from his professional labors, a stimulating relaxation for leisure hours. The next reference to Ovid in 89 the Taming of the Shrew shows that Lucentio had not only taken Tranios advice, but promptly turned it to practical account. Having fallen in love with Bi- anca, the beautiful and gentle sister of the shrewish Kate, Lucentio gains access to her in the disguise of a tutor, and pleads his passion under the mask of a lesson in Latin construing, Ovid being the instrument employed in this lovers stratagem. Bian. Where left we last? Luc. Here, madam : f/ac ibat Simois; hic est Sigeia telius; IF/ic steterat Priarni regia ceisa senis. Bian. Construe them. Luc. f/ac ibat, as I told you before, Sbnois, I am Lucentio, Izic est, son unto Vincentio of Pisa, Szg-eia teilus, disguised thus to get your love; f/ic steterat, and that Lucentio that comes a-wooing, Priami, is my man Triano, regia, bearing my port, ceisa senis, that ive might beguile the old pantaloon. These lines are from the first of the Heroic Epistles, that from Penelope to Ulysses. After recalling how often her loving heart had been wrung with anxiety during his absence at the Trojan xvar, Penelope reminds her wandering lord that the war was now happily over; that the Argive heroes had returned, and were offering in the local temples thanks- givings for their success; that many long-betrothed maidens were at length married; and that, at their festive gath- erings, the ~varrior bridegrooms, in fight- ing their battles over again, often sketched with a little wine on the table an outline of the city walls and of the chief positions connected with the conflict. They were thus doing at ho me for their wedding guests what Ulysses himself was doing for Calypso on the shores of her wonder- ful island. The graphic touch in either case illustrates the devices which Ovids dramatic instinct prompted him to adopt, in order to give vividness and interest to his narrative. This particular device seems indeed to have struck Shake- speares fancy, as he not unfrequently employs it for descriptive effect in his own work. The following from Lu- crece is one amongst other instances of its use that might be given. While with a joyless smile she turns away The face, the map which deep impression bears Of hard misfortune, carvd in it with tears. Another quotation from the Heroic Epistles occurs in the last part of Hen. ry VI. among the closing lines of the 90 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. third scene of the first act. It is a line put into the mouth of the ill-fated prince, the Earl of Rutland, a mere boy and utterly defenceless, at the moment when he is cruelly stabbed to the heart by Clif- ford, the deadly blood-supper, as he is appropriately termed in the prose chroni- cles of the time. After pleading for his life in vain, Rutland with his last breath prays that he alone may suffer at Cliffords hands, that his ruthless lust of blood and vengeance may find no other victims. Rut. 0, let me pray before I take my death! To thee I pray: sweet Clifford, pity me! ~7zf Such pity as my rapiers point affords. Rut. I never did thee harm: why wilt thou slay me? CY~/ Thy father hath. Rut. But twas ere I was born. Thou hast one son, for his sake pity me; Lest in revenge thereof, sith God is just, He be as miserably slain as I. Ah, let me live in prison all my days; And when I give occasion of offence, Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause. C/if No cause! Thy father slew my father; therefore, die. [Stabs him. Rut. Diifaciant, laudis summa sit ista tucel [Dies. Ci~/ Plantagenet! I come, Plantagenet! And this thy sons blood, cleaving to my blade, Shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood, Congeald with this, do make me wipe off both. [Exit. It is worth noting that this line from Ovid was added by Shakespeare himself to a scene in which his alterations of the original are few and slight. In The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke Rutlands longer speech appealing for pity is his last, and the six lines of Clif- fords undivided reply close the scene. The line is thus given to Rutland by Shakespeare, and there is perhaps a cer- tain propriety in this, as the poor boy had appeared on the field not as a combatant, but as a spectator; and when intercepted by Clifford, ~vas hastening to a place of safety with his tutor, a priest named Sir Robert Aspall. The line is taken from the second of the Heroic Epistles, that from Phyllis to Demophoon, and as Shakespeare was probably working at the Taming of the Shrew and the parts of Henry VI. about the same time, the two quotations from the first and second of the Heroic Epistles would seem to show that he had recently been studying these celebrated dramatic lyrics. The last direct reference to Ovid occurs in As You Like It, and it is in many respects the most curious of all. The reference is not only a minutely learned one, but it comes from the lips of a stage clown or professional fool, the humorous jester Touchstone, and it is addressed to the simple-souled Audrey, whose dense rustical ignorance barely comprehends the ordinary dialect even of borrel men. The third scene of the third act opens as follows : Touch. Come apace, good Audrey: I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? doth my simple feature content you? A ud. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features? Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most cafricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths. Well may the melancholy Jacques, on overhearing this speech, exclaim : 0 knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house! Touchstone him- self seems to feel that his knowledge is equally ill-bestowed. Touch. When a mans verses cannot be un- derstood, nor a mans good wit seconded with the forward child, Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. Aud. I do not know what poetical is: is it honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? Touch. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign. In explanation of Touchstones good wit, as exemplified in his learned com- parison, it must be remembered that he was a courtly jester who could rail at Lady Fortune in good set terms, and hold his own in wit combats with his social superiors, whose brain had strange places crammed with odds and ends of bookish knowledge, as well as with observation, the which he vents in mangled forms. But that such a reference should with any semblance of dramatic propriety be put into the mouth, even of a dukes jester, illustrates the familiarity with Ovid and his writings which must have prevailed in urban and courtly circles. The epithet capricious in Touchstones speech is a good example of the subtle playingwith words, the skilful suggestion of double meanings, of which Shakespeare in com- mon with Ovid is so fond. In passing to the indirect proofs of Shakespeares acquaintance ~vith Ovid I will take first the minor poems, leaving the points of evidence scattered through the dramas to be collected into groups WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. 9 rather than dealt with in the order of their actual occurrence in the several plays. Though now little read, these minor poems, and especially the Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece, were once famous, and in the early part of his career probably did more even than his dramas to make Shakespeare well and widely known. At that time indeed, plays being produced for the stage, not for the press, and usually published only through the actors mouths, were hardly ranked as literature at all. For what is simply spoken cannot outrun the range of the speakers voice, and perishes in the utter- ing. In the same way, though usually written in verse, plays ~vere not, as a rule, classified as poetry, this title being re- served for the various forms of the lyric, songs and ballads, for elegies and son- nets, for epics and allegories, for pastoral, descriptive and historical pieces. And writers for the stage who also aspired to the character of poets usually attempted one of these more permanent and recog- nized varieties. Shakespeare himself is no exception. On becoming firmly estab- lished in his new career as playwright and dramatic proprietor, he seems to have felt that, like others around him, he could now select a patron, and indulge in the luxury of more orthodox or literary verse. He accordingly recalled and prepared for the press his early poetical studies, Ve- nus and Adonis, the first heir of his invention, and the companion picture of Lucrece, which followed immediately after. They are wonderful poems to have been produced by an English youth writ- ing in the country between the years 1580 and 15867. The Lucrece was indeed written somewhat later than the Venus and Adonis, but they are so connected in subject and treatment, so obviously early studies having common characteris- tics, that for the purpose in hand they may be considered together. The marvel is that poems so unlike anything in con- temporary literature, yet with so marked an individuality of form, coloring, and poetical treatment, should have been pro- duced by a prentice hand in a small provincial town. So far as the finer es- sence, the vital substance of his work, is concerned, the poet is, we know, born not made, and Shakespeare is the su- preme example of this truth. But like every other artist the poet must study the elements of his craft, must learn to mas- ter the materials he has to use so as to handle them with freedom and power in attempting new combinations. In the fundamental points of poetic form and treatment, this can only be effected by the careful study of the best available models. What models, it may be asked, were there for classical poems of this peculiar type at the time when Shake- speare was engaged in embodying his earlier poetical conceptions? In reply to this question, Mr. Collier says of Venus and Adonis :It was quite new in its class, being founded upon no model, either ancient or modern; nothing like it had been attempted before, and nothing coin- parable to it was produced afterwards. On the other hand, Mr. Minto suggests that the tale of Glaucus and Sylla, by Lodge, is the probable model of Shake- speares earlier poem, and, but for the chronological difficulty, I should certainly be disposed to attach great weight to this suggestion. All the facts and probabili- ties of the case seem however to indicate that the Venus and Adonis, as Shake- speares earliest considerable effort, must have been produced at Stratford~some years before the appearance of Lodges poem. With regard to the internal evi- dence in support of this view, Mr. Collier says: A young man so gifted would not, and could not, wait until he was five or six and twenty before he made considera- ble and most successful attempts at poet- ical composition; and we feel morally certain that Venus and Adonis was in being anterior to Shakespeares quitting Stratford. It bears all the marks of youthful vigor, of strong passion, of lux- uriant imagination, together with a force and originality of expression which be- token the first efforts of a great mind, not always well regulated in its taste. It seems to have been written in the open air of a fine country like Warwickshire, possessing all the freshness of the recent impression of natural objects; and we will go so far as to say that we do not think even Shakespeare himself could have produced it, in the form it bears, after he had reached the age of forty. In relation to the last point I should be disposed to uo further still, and say that it is very unlikely that Shakespeare either could or would have produced such a poem after he had found in the drama the free use of both his handsthe means of dealing effectively with action as well as passion. We must, therefOre, look for Shakespeares early models as to style and treatment amongst his youth- ful studies at Stratford, and especially amongst the poets read during his school course. 92 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. Adopting this view, many critics have traced in Shakespeares two descriptive poems the influence of Ovid and Virgil respectively, of which from natural affin- ity that of Ovid would be the stronger. Virgil, for tolerably obvious reasons, seems to have had but little influence. He Jacks the unstudied descriptive charm, the elegiac sweetness, the emotional and picturesque variety, as well as the vivid dramatic touches which in his early days so powerfully attracted Shakespeare to- wards Ovid. Apart from a few striking episodes and the unfailing literary beauty and finish of the work, it may be ques- tioned, indeed, whether the Georgics or even the ~neid would appeal with any special power to Shakespeares more intimate sympathies. Alike in motive, substance, and treatment, these poems are somewhat alien to the natural move- ment of Shakespeares mind. Virgils absorption of feeling in a limited, though impressive range of objects and associa- tions, has little in common with Shake- speares vivid and intense interest in all the varieties of individual character, and all the vicissitudes of actual life. The glorification of a person or an institution, a city or even an empire, would have been a comparatively narrow theme to one whose attention was already fixed on the boundless moral interests and infinite vital complexities belonging to the wide circle of human experience. And the didactic and rhetorical expedients re- quired for the elaboration of the narrower theme are foreign to the firm and flexible, yet delicate and subtle, handling of char- acter and motive belonging to the larger world. The genius of the two poets is thus essentially different, the one illus- trating the combination of qualities which go to the making of a great epic and di- dactic, the other those of a peerless ele- giac and dramatic artist. Virgil is indeed far nearer to Milton than to Shakespeare. Like Milton, he could brood over a great subject which touched his intellect and imagination through his affections, could slowly accu- mulate materials for its illustration, mould them into form with all the skill of a tune- ful, artistic, and richly cultivated nature, and give the work a massive unity of feel- ing and purpose. On the other hand, Shakespeares imagination was from the first stimulated and swayed by purely poetical rather than by personal influ- ences, by the beauty, interest, and vital unity of the object contemplated, rather than by a ruling individual sentiment de termining alike the choice of subject and method of treatment. His poetical gen- ius is thus more of the Greek than of the Roman type, and in its earlier exercises he would naturally be drawn towards those of the Roman poets who in their central characteristics come nearest to the Greeks. It need hardly be said that the Greek imagination had a strongly ob- jective bent, a pervading love of form which gives firmness of outline, harmony of proportion, and unity of structure and effect to their poetry as well as to their decorative and plastic art. The severer taste of the more eminent Greek artists would, it is true, have hardly tol- erated the luxuriance of imagination, variety of elements, and laxity of struc- ture found at times in the work of their rep- resentatives both in Roman and English literature. But they agree in the central characteristic of dealing directly with the object, and so grouping the accessories as to present the picture as a whole to the mental view. Now there are two, and only two, Latin poets ~vho display in a marked de~ree the objective imagination of their Ionic pred- ecessors. Catullus and Ovid have the distinctive Greek power of vividly con- ceiving an impressive or pathetic scene and presenting it pictorially to the read- ers mind in its concrete fulness as a liv- ing whole. It is in relation to this power that Niebuhr speaks of Catullus and Ovid as the most poetical of the Roman poets. And Professor Sellar in his admirable study of Virgil, while differing widely from the German historian in many points of criticism, agrees with him in recogniz- ing the peculiar type of genius belonging to the earliest and latest elegiac poets of the great period of Roman literature. Referring to Ovid and Catullus, he says that they above all other Latin poets can bring a picture from human life or from outward nature before the inward eye, and this power is much more than Virgils power of suggesting deep and delicate shades of inward feeling appropriate to the more limited compass of the idyl. And of Catullus in particular he says, He had in his genius more than any Roman writer the disinterested delight in art irre- spective of any personal associations characteristic of the Greek imaginatiOn. The supreme example of this power in Roman literature is of course the Epi- thalamium of Peleus and Thetis. But the Attys perhaps even more strikingly illustrates the distinctively Greek power of developing with dramatic intensity and WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. 93 truth some passion foreign to the writers latter half of the sixteenth century, would own experience, naturally lead Shakespeare to select clas- Ovid, however, no less than Catullus, is sical subjects for his first efforts. And endowed with a creative pictorial imagi- in Ovid he ~vould find a perfect storehouse nation. Some of his finished studies, and of such subjects treated in a manner con- several of his separate sketches, approach genial to his vivid fancy and ardent feel- the masterpieces of Catullus in descrip- ing. To that storehouse h~ accordingly tive vividness and pathetic interest, if not betook himself. At least it is, I think, in passionate intensity and concentrated clear from internal evidence that the germ maolnative power. In splendor of glow- of both the descriptive poems was derived ing imagery the story of Phaeton is unri- from Ovid, that of Venus and Adonis valled, while the tragical tales of Pyramus from the brief account of the same story and Thisbe, of Ceyx and Halcyone, the at the end of the tenth book of the Met- touching pictures of Baucis and Phile- amorphoses, and that of Lucrece mon, of Ceres in the house of Celeus and from the vivid dramatic sketch of the Metanira, are equally noteworthy for tragedy which closes the second book of truth of natural coloring, delicacy of fin- the Fasti. In each case the exuberant ish, and picturesque effect. growth into which the original seed rap- Shakespeare was pre-eminently en- idly expanded sufficiently shows the ex- dowed with this power of bodying picto- traordinary richness and fertility of the rially forth the form of things unknown, soil. For brilliancy of imaginative detail, and the supreme examples of its exercise depth of coloring, and exquisite pictorial are found in his earliest published poems. finish, the Venus and Adonis sur- They are the most brilliant verbal pic- passes every descriptive poem of antiquity tures in the language. We have no evi- except, perhaps, the Proserpine of dence to show whether Shakespeare was Claudian. And even here the vernal fresh- well acquainted with Catullus or not. ness and vigorous beauty of Shakespeares But we know that he was a diligent stu- picture are in striking contrast to the dent of Ovid. And as his earliest work borrowed tints and mellowed autumnal has so much in common with the distinc- tone of Claudians canvas, while the light tive features of the Metamorphoses, it that falls upon the pictures respectively may be safely inferred that he was largely is that of the opening dawn and the fad- influenced by Ovids method of dealing ing sunset glow, in other words, the with mythological fable and heroic story. revival of classical subjects in the six- The full, sensuous, pictorial treatment of teenth century, the new birth of what his theme in the Venus and Adonis was beautiful, heroic, and picturesque in and the Lucrece is thoroughly Ovidian. pagan art, had characteristics of its own Indeed, the l)arallel with Ovid might be ~vhich reveal the important intellectual traced through most of the points which and moral changes the intervening period Coleridbe, in his criticism of these poems, had produced. has signalized as strong proofs of original Shakespeares obligations to Ovid in poetic genius. There is the same sweet- the Venus and Adonis, while fewer, ness of versification, the evident enjoy- less direct and more scattered, perhaps, ment of melodious sounds, the sense of than in the Lucrece, are still consider- musical delight and the power of produc- able and note~vorthy. In his narrative ing it which is so distinctively a gift of he has borrowed not only from Ovids nature. There is the same choice of sub- account of the same story, but from other jects remote from the private interests fables, especially from those of Salmacis and circumstances of the writer, the same in the fourth book, and from the graphic latent dramatic instinct working by a picture of the hunting in Calydon, con- series of vivid images, which gives the tamed in the eighth book of the Meta- highest effect of the picturesque in words, morphoses. The opening situation of and constitutes a kind of substitute for the poem is given in the following lines the visual language of the stage. And from Ovids Venus and Adonis. finally there is the same modification of the tloughts, images, and incidents by the Sed labor insolitus jam me lassavit; et ecce pervading influence of a dominant passion Opportuna stia blanditur populus umbra; or sentiment helping to connect the de- Datque torum cespes. Libet hac requiescere tecum tails and give unity of effect to the picture. (Et requievit) humo: pressitque et gramen, et Not only his early studies, but the ipsum. Renaissance enthusiasm which reached Inque sinu juvenis, posita cervice, reclinis its highest point in England during the Sic ait : ac med us interserit oscula verbis. 94 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. WIjie thus resting in the shade with Adonis, Venus tells him the celebrated story of Hippomanes and Atalanta, illus- trating lover-like the beauty of Atalanta by a reference to that of Adonis and her- self. There is a clear recollection of this passage in the two genuine sonnets of the Passionate Pilgrim, which seem to have been written originally as trial sketches or tentative lines for the open- ing of the contemplated poem prelusive notes, as it were, before striking into the sustained music of the story. Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook With youn~ Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green, Did court the lad with many a lovely look, Such looks as none could look but beautys queen. She told him stories to delight his ear; etc. And in the opening of the poem itself Venus, like a bold-faced suitor, says to Adonis: Here, come and sit, where never serpent hisses, And being set, Ill smother thee with kisses. Still she entreats, and prettily entreats, And to a l)retty ear she tunes her tale; Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale; Look how lie can, she cannot choose but love; And by her fair immortal hand she swears, From his soft bosom never to remove, Till he take truce with her contending tears. The central conflict of the story, that of ardent desire and passionate entreaty on the one hand, with indignant surprise and cold disdain on the other, is reflected in the lines given below,* variations of which are found in many stanzas of the Venus and Adonis. What follows in Ovids narrative is transferred by Shakespeare to Cytherea~ and described in the second sonnet of the Passionate Pilgrim. Again, the powerful description of the boar in the * Tuoc sic orsa loqui: Puer o dignissime credi Esse dens: sen to dens es, potes esse Cunido: Sive es mortalis, qni te gennere, beau; Et frater felix, et fortunata prufecto, Si qua tibi soror est, et qnae dedit ubera notrix. Sed lunge conctis, longeque potentior illis, Si qua sibi sponsa est, si qusin dignabere taeda. Haec tibi sive aliqua est, nsea sit furtiva voluptas; Seu nulla est, ego sim; tbalamomque ineamus eum- cleni. Nais ab his tacuit. Poeri rubor ora notavit, Nescia quid sit anior; sed et eruboisse decebat. Hic color aprica pendentibus arbore pomis, Ant ebori tincto est, ant tub candore rubenti, Quom frostra resonant aera auxiliaria, Louse. Poscenti nymphas sine fine sororia saltem Oscola, jamque n,anns ad ebornea colla ferenti, Desine, vel login, tecomqoe, alt, ista relinquo.~~ Metam., bk. iv. Venus and Adonis is derived from Ovids account of the hunting in Calydon, and the best way, perhaps, to bring this fully out is to give the passages together. Ovids lines quoted below * may be com- pared with Shakespeares stanzas which follow parts of the description With almost literal fidelity. On hearing that Adonis intends to hunt the boar, Venus gives the following account of the ruthless mon- ster: On his bow-back he lea/k a ba/tie set Qfbristlypikes, that ever threat his foes; Ills eyes, like glow-worms, shine zohen lie do/li fret; His snout digs sepulchres whereer he goes Being moved, he strikes whateer is in his way, And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay. His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armd, Are better proof than thy spears point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harmd: Being ireful, on the lion he will venture: The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part; through xv homhe rushes. Alas, he nai4gh/ es/eems /hat face of/hive, To whom Loves eyes Jay /ributar* gazes: Nor thy soft hands, swee/ lift, and crystal eyne, Whose full perfection all the world amazes; But having thee at vantage, wondrous dread! Would root these beauties as he roots the mead. 0, let him keep his loathsome cabin still; Beauty bath nought to do with such foul fiends: Come not within his danger by thy will; They that thrive well take counsel of their friends. But if thou needs wilt hunt, be mId by me; Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, Or at the fox which lives by subtlety, Or at the roe which no encounter dare: Pursue these fearful creatures oer the downs, And on thy well-breathd horse keep with thy hounds. The warning contained in the last stan- zas, the earnest appeal to Adonis to avoid * Sanguine et igne iniccini ocuui, riget ardoa cervix; E/ settee densis sirnites has/il/bus Izorrent; fStantqne velut valium, velut alta hastilia setae]. Fervida cain rauco, sIns stridore per armos Spurns dolt; denees aeqoantur dentibus Indis Folmen ab ore venit; frondes adilatibus ardent. Js modo crescenti segetes proculcat in herba; Sternitor incurso nemus, et propulsa fragorem Silva dat. Ille roit, spargitqoe canes, ot qoisqos menu Obstat, et obliqon latrantes dissipac icco. Metam., bk. viii. the furious boar, and other savage beasts, but echoes the equally earnest entreaty of Venus in Ovids version of the story.* The lines in italics, which many may have thought a peculiarly Shakespearian touch, are, it will be seen, but a poetical version of the lines in Ovid. Again, when after daybreak she listens eagerly for the hounds and horn that may bring tidings of her love, and hearing the former coasteth to the cry, she soon discovers by their deep braying that Adonis in his passionate love for exciting sport has disregarded her injunctions. For now she knows it is no gentle chase, But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, Because the cry remaineth in one place, Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: Finding their enemy to be so curst, They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first. In the Lucrece Shakespeare follows faithfully the main lines of Ovids story. Indeed, he may be said to have incor- porated the whole of it with his own work. But he has developed the original sketch into a completed picture, suggested by his vivid realization of the scene in all the fulness of its tragic and pathetic detail. The development is carried much further than in the Venus and Adonis, and the Lucreceis thus proportionately a con- siderably longer poem. But through the whole of the marvellous development it is still possible to trace the outline sup- plied by Ovids comparatively brief but striking narrative. And the contrast at various points in the fuller evolution of the story brings into prominent relief the exuberance and vital force of Shake- speares youthful imagination. A single example of this power will suffice. When at midnight, after striding noiselessly through the dark and silent corridors, Tarquin reaches the sacred chamber of Lucrece, and rouses her with his rude assault, Ovid says : Instat amans hostis precibus, pretioque, mm- isque: Nec prece, nec pretior, nec movet ille minis. * A fortibus abstinet apris: Raptoresque lupos, armatosque unguibus ursos vitae, et armenti saturatos caede leones. Te quoque, Ut hos timeas (si quid prodesse monendo Possit), Adoni, monet: Fortisque fugacibus esto, Inquit; in audaces non est audacia tuta. Parce meo, juvenis, temerarius esse periclo: Neve feras, quibus arms dedit Natura, lacesse, Stet mihi ne magno tua gloria; non movet ne/us, Nec/acies, nec qune Venerem movere, leunes, Setigerosque sues, oculosque, animosquejerarum. Fulmen haben~ acres in aduncis dentibus apri; Impetus est fulvis et vasta leonibus ira; Invisumque mihi genus est. Metam., bk. x. 95 Shakespeare expands these lines into ten stanzas, unfolding in order each class of villanous motives, the entreaties, the prom. ises, and the threats, as they are urged with cruel force on the aifrighted Lu- creces ear. Not only, however, in the full expansion of what is only suggested in the original is Shakespeares imagina- tive and dramatic power displayed. It comes out in the rapid appropriation and skilful use of the slighter realistic touches which help to bring the picture vividly before the inward eye. No prose chron- icler, for instance, would be likely to specify in his narrative the color of Lu- creces hair. Ovid does this, however, in his description of her beauty, and Shake- speare repeats it in his exquisite picture of the sleeping Lucrece, when Tarquins ruthless hand had drawn the cloud that hides the silver moon.~~ Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathd their light, And canopied in darkness sweetly lay, Till they might open to adorn the day. Her hair, like golden tkreads, playd with her breath; O modest wantons! wanton modesty! Showing lifes triumph in the map of death, And deaths dim look in lifes mortality Each in her sleep themselves so beautify, As if between them twain there were no strife, But that life lived in death, and death in life. But without going further into such minute points, I proceed to give the broader parallels between the Lucrece of Ovid and of Shakespeare. And first of the causes at work in rousing the hellish passion in Tarquins breast, Ovid spe- cially refers to the beauty and chastity of Lucrece.* And Shakespeare, beginning with the last line of the extract quoted below, goes back over Ovids description, embracing as he goes its central points: From the besieged Ardea all in post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host And to Collatium bears the lightless fire Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire And girdle with embracing flames the waist Of Collatines fair love, Lucrece the chaste. * Interes juvenis furiatos regius ignes Concipit, et caeco raptus amore font. Forms placet, niveusque color, flavique capilli, Q nique aderat nulls factus ab arte decor. Verbs placent, et vox, ez! quad corrumi5ere non est; Q uoque minor spes est, hoc magis ille cupit. Ardet; et injusti stimulis agitatus amoris, Comparat indigno vimque dolumqtie torn. Exitus in dubio est; andebimus ultima, dixit. Viderit, audenees forsne deusne juvet. Cepimus audendo Gabios quoque. Talia fatus, Ense latus cingit. tergaque pressit equi. WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. 96 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. Ha/li that name of dzaste unhappily set This bateless edge on his keen appetite; When Collatine unwisely did not let To praise the clear unmatched red and white Which triumphd in that sky of his delight. But some untimely thought did instigate His all too timeless speed, if none of those His honor, his affairs, his friends, his state, Neglected all, ~vith swift intent he goes ro quench the coal which in his liver glows. 0 rash false heat, wrappd in repentant cold, Thy hasty spring still blasts, and neer grows old! Next with regard to the gracious recep- tion he met with under Collatines hos- pitable roof and at the hands of his unsuspecting wife we have in Ovid as follows: Accipit aerata juvenem Collatia porta, Condere jam vultus sole parante suos. Hostis, ut hospes, mit penetralia Collatina; Comiter excipitur: sanguine junctus erat. Quantum animis erroris inest ! parat inscia rerum Infelix epulas hostibus illa suis. Functus erat dapibus: poscunt sua tempora somni. Shakespeare expands these lines into the following somewhat more detailed ac- count : When at Collatium this false lord arrivd, \Vell was he welcomed by the Roman dame, Within whose face beauty and virtue strivd Which of them both should underprop her fame: When virtue braggd, beauty would blush for shame. This heraldry in Lucrece face was seen, Argued by beautys red and virtues white: Of eithers color was the other queen, Proving from worlds minority their right. This earthly saint, adored by this devil, Little suspecteth the false worshipper: For unstaind thoughts do seldom dream on evil; Birds never limd no secret bushes fear: So guiltless she securely gives good cheer And reverent welcome to her princely guest, Whose inward ill no outward harm expressd: For that he colord with his high estate, Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty: That nothing in him seemd inordinate, Save sometime too much wonder of his eye. For then is Tarquin brought into his bed, Intending weariness with heavy spright; For after supper long he questioned With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night: Now leaden slumber with lifes strength doth fight. Then with regard to the fatal mid- night scene, Shakespeare, while following Ovids outline point by 1)Oint, realizes so fully every thought and movement of the guilty Tarquin, in the execution of his ghastly purpose, that he not only ex- pands the description, but repeats more than once some of its central features. Thus Tarquins most terrible threat is given at the outset of the awful colloquy with Lucrece, repeated as the colloquy draws to a close, and again towards the end of the poem in the account of the out- rage which Lucrece gives to her husband, her father, and her assembled friends. The last, as the more condensed sum- mary, may be compared with Ovids de- scription.* While, as I have said, all the points of the description are embraced and ex- panded in the earlier part of the narra- tive, they are briefly summed up in the following account from Lucreces own lips: For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight, With shining falchion in my chamber came A creeping creature, with a flaming light, And softly cried, Awake thou, Roman dame, And entertain my love; else lasting shame On thee and thine this night I will inflict, If thou my loves desire do contradict. For some hard-favord groom of thine, quoth he, Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will, Ill murder straight, and then Ill slaughter thee, And swear I found you where you did fulfil The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill The lechers in their deed : this act will be My fame, and thy perpetual infamy. With this, I did begin to start and cry; And then against my heart he set his sword, Swearing, unless I took all patiently, I should not live to speak another word; So should my shame still rest upon record, * Nox erat, et tota lumina nulla domo. Surgit, et auratum vagina liberat ensem, Et venit in thalamos, nupta pudica, tuna. Utque torum pressit Ferrum, Lucretia, mecum eat; Natus, ait, regis, Tarquiniusque vocor. lIla nihil: neque enim vocem viresque loquendi Aut aliquid toto pectore mentis habet. Sed tremit, Ut quondam stabulis deprensa relictis Parva sub infesto quom lacet agna lupo. Quid faciat? pugnet? vincetur femina pugna. Clamet? at in dextra, qul necet, ensis adest. Effugiat? positis urgetur pectora palmis; Nunc primum externa pectora tacta mano. Instat amans hostis precibus, pretioque, minisque; Nec prece. nec pretin, nec movet ille minis. Nil agis; eripiam, dixit, pro crimine vitam; Falsus adulterii testis adulter erit. Interimam famulum, corn quo deprensa fereris. Succubuit famae victa puella meto. Quid, victor, gaudes? huec te victoria perdet. Heu quanto regnis flux stetit una tuis! And never be forgot in mighty Rome, Th adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom. Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak, And far the weaker with so strong a fear: My bloody judge forbade my tougue to speak; No rightful plea might plead for justice there. In the earlier details of the description Shakespeare appropriates Ovids simile of the wolf and the iamb, and adds others of a like kind which the situation natu- rally suggests, such as those of the grim lion fawning over his prey, the foul night- waking cat, dallying with the weak and panting mouse in his hold-fast foot, the white hind under the gripes sharp claws. He repeats, too, in various forms, Ovids statement that the victory was a defeat, and would inevitably issue in Tarquin s destruction. Another parallel with mi- nute verbal coincidences is the affecting scene with Lucrece, when, in the early morning, her husband and father arrive in answer to her hasty and uroent sum- mons.* The~re is a final and striking parallel between the closing lines of Ovids Lu- crece and the concluding stanzas of Shakespeares poem. Both describe the spirited conduct of Brutus in throwing off his long disguise, and coming forward to avenge the death of Lucrece. In this closing scene the agreement between the two poems, even in minute points, is almost as close as the genius of the dif- ferent languages will admit of, but I must leave those who are specially interested in the subject to make this comparison for themselves.t These parallels show, I think, that Shakespeare had Ovid before him in his earlier work, that he studied him carefully, and derived from his pages many hints and suggestions for each of his descrip- tive poems, and especially for the second. Of course in any account of so striking a story as that of Lucrece the facts would be substantially the same. But it is in the poetical treatment of these facfs that Shakespeares obligations to Ovid are most apparent. Havino dealt ~vith the story in his vivid, dram~tic manner, Ovid would naturally be a kind of model for Shakespeare when he selected it for his awn poetical use. Warton, indeed (fol- owed by other critics), having discovered Ihat an English ballad on Lucrece existed * Fasti ll. 81332. Lucrece, 15831610 (Globe edi- 00). Fasil ii. 83552. Lucrece, 180720, and 184955 Globe edition). LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI, 1567 97 in Shakespeares time, suggested that this was the source whence Shakespeare de- rived his knowledge of the subject. The ballad, which I have not seen, may have been versified from the well-known prose version of the story in Painters Palace of Pleasure. This version has also been assumed by many commentators as the immediate source of Shakespeares Lucrece. But a comparison of the two poems with the prose story will show that Ovid and Shakespeare have a number of significant points in common not to be found in Painters version, which is in- deed little more than a paraphrase of Livys brief account of the tragedy. The suggestions as to the purely English sources of Shakespeares knowledge of the subject belong to an earlier era of criticism, when, under the influence of Farmers essay, it was assumed that Shakespeares literary materials were absolutely restricted to his own language, his knowledge of Latin extending n& fur- ther than the earliest pages of the acci- dence. Hence, if any English account of a subject taken up by Shakespeare could be discovered, however meagre in sub- stance or wretched in form, whether in chap-book, prose, or doggrel verse, it ~vas at once brought forward as a sufficient ex- planation of his work. But after the proofs I have given it will hardly, I think, be denied that Shakespeare was quite capa- ble of studying the celebrated Roman story in the original sources, and that he certainly did so in relation to Ovids ver- sion of it. The Lucrece also contains, as the critics have pointed out, evident marks of indebtedness to Virgil. The elaborate details in the pictured fall of Troy, which helps to beguile the sad interval before the arrival of Collatine and his friends, seem clearly derived from the second book of the Aeneid. There is an obvious connection between the general cause or ground motive of the more famous tragedy and Lucreces own dark fate. But by a skilful stroke the immedi- ate agent in the ruin of cloud-kissing Ihion is associated as a kind of prototype with the destroyer of Lucreces peace. The most prominent figure in the pictured tragedy as described by Lucrece is Sinon, and Sinon represents the same union of out~vard truth and inward guile, of saintly seeming and diabolical purpose which had secured for Tarquin his fatal triumph. As Lucrece moralizes on the figure, this tragic resemblance suddenly breaks upon her, arresting the soliloquy: WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. 98 WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. This picture she advisedly perusd, And chid the painter for his wondrous skill; Saying, some shape in Sinons was abusd, So fair a form lodgd not a mind so ill; And still on him she gazd, and gazing still, Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied, That she concludes the picture was belied. It cannot be, quoth she, that so mnch guile (She would have said) can lurk in such a look; But Tarquins shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue can lurk from can- nottook; It cannot be she in that sense forsook, And turnd it thus : It cannot he, I find, But such a face should bear a wicked mind: For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, (As if with grief or travail he had fainted,) To me came Tarquin arm~d; so heguild With outward honesty, but yet defild With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish, So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish. This ominous resemblance acquires all the greater significance from the fact that Tarquin himself had recently acted the p~t of Sinon in relation to the besieged inhabitants of Gabii. By his crafty fraud and spotted treachery (unusual among the Romans, as Livy carefully notes) he had, in fact, brought about the ruin of their city after it had been assaulted in vain. Like Sinon, having gone to the citizens of Gabii as a suppliant outcast, with a forged tale of woe, and displaying in his person the marks of cruel usage, Tarquin had roused their sympathy, and secured a wel- come ~vhich he turned to account by conspiring against his friends and bene- factors, and compassing their speedy destruction. Lucrece must have been ~vell acquainted with the sinister exploit, and it would almost inevitably recur to her mind while gazing on the innocent- looking figure of perjured Sinon. In thus weaving Virgils narrative of the fall of Troy into Ovids story of Lucrece, Shakespeare utilized his early studies, and produced in his own modest words a pamphlet of untutored lines, which remains a unique example of pictured sorrow. It need hardly be said that this free use of the materials gathered from his early reading in the Roman poets does not in the least detract from the perfect origi- nality, to say nothing of the beauty and power, of Shakespeares work. In a mind of such vital force the best rnateri als are, as I have said, little more than seeds hardly to be recognized in the de- veloped fulness of the plant and beauty of the flower. The secret of poetical life cannot, indeed, be discovered by any ex- amination of the soil in which it grew, or of the elements by which it was nurtured. In other ~vords, no analysis of influences and conditions, however complete, can pierce the great mystery of creative gen- ius. By a subtle alchemy it transmutes all inferior elements into its own pure and lustrous gold. None the less is it a prob- lem of criticism to trace as far as possible the nature and uses of these elements. This is what I have endeavored to do with reoard to one section of the manifold materials that contributed to the growth and development of Shakespeare~ s unri- valled genius. And though I must defer for the present the wider evidence of his Roman studies, and especially of his fa- miliarity with Ovid, which I have collected from a careful examination of the dramas, enouuh perhaps has been already adduced to illustrate the main position of these papers, that Shakespeare was a fair Latin scholar, and in his earlier life a diligent student of Ovid. Before leaving the poems, it seems almost a duty to glance for a moment at their profounder ethical and reflective aspects. Mr. Swinburne has described them as nariative, or rather semi-narra- tive, and semi-reflective poems, and this expresses their true character. And it may justly be said that if Shakespeare follows Ovid in the narrative and descrip- tive part of his work, in the vivid pictur- ing of sensuous passion, he is as decis- ively separated from him in the reflective part, the higher purpose and ethical sig- nificance of the poems. The underlying subject in both is the same, the debasing nature and destructive results of the vio- lent sensuous impulses, which in antiquity so often usurped the name of love, al- though in truth they have little in common with the nobler passion. The influence of fierce inordinate desire is dealt with by Shakespeare in these poems in all its breadth as affecting both sexes, and in all its intensity as blasting the most sacred interests and relationships of life. In~ working out the subject Shakespeare shows his thorough knowledge of its se- ductive outward charm, of the arts and artifices, the persuasions and assaults, the raptures and languors of stimulated sensual passion. In this he is quite a match for the erotic and elegiac poets of classic times, and especially of Roman WhAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. literature. He is not likely therefore in any way to undervalue the attraction or the power of what they celebrate in strains so fervid and rapturous. But, while con- templating the lower passion steadily in all its force and charm, he has at the same time the higher vision which enables him to see through and beyond it, the reflec- tive insight to measure its results, and to estimate with remorseless accuracy its true worth. It is in this higher power of reflective insight, in depth and vigor of thought as well as feeling, that Shake- speares earliest efforts are marked off even from the hetter works of those whom he took, if not as his masters, at least as his models and guides. He was himself full of rich and vigorous life, deepened by sensibilities of the rarest strencrth and delicacy; and in early youth had realized, in his own experience, the impetuous force of passionate impulses. But his intellectual power no less than the essen- tial depth and purity of his nobler emo- tional nature would effectually prevent his ever becoming soft fancys slave. A temporary ac~ss of passion would but rouse to fresh activity the large discourse looking before and after with which he was pre-eminently endowed. As such passionate moods subsided, he would meditate profoundly on the working and ultimate issues of these fierce explosive elements, if unrestrained by the higher influences of intellectual and moral life. A spirit so richly gifted, capable of soar- ing with unwearied wing into the highest heaven of thought and emotion, must have early felt not only that violent de- lights have violent ends, but that volun- tary self-abandonment to the blind and imperious calls of appetite and passion is the most awful form of moral and social suicide. These searching youthful experiences seem to have determined, almost uncon- sciously perhaps, Shakespeares earliest choice of subjects. In any case, the bril- liant deification of lawless passion in the Venus and Adonis but emphasizes the social ruin produced by the destruction of female purity and truth it exemplifies. In the Lucrece, the wider effects of unbridled lust are shown in the sacrifice of a noble life, the desolation of a faith- ful and united household, and the de- thronement of a kingly dynasty. In working out the latter subject, Shake. speare has, as we have seen, skilfully interwoven, with the ruin of Tarquins house, the destruction of Priam and his realm from similar causes. This theme 99 he recurred to again at a later period, in the wonderful and perplexing drama of Troilus and Cressida, one main pur- pose of which appears to he that of criti- cising, under skilfully dismised forms, the early Greek conception of heroic mo- tive, if not of heroic character. Shake- speare appears to have regarded the tale of Troy divine as at bottom little better than an idealized version of the savage custom of marriage by capture, a kind of poetical gloss on the barbarous tribal wars waged in early times about women. He seems at once to have exhibited and condemned with dramatic force and in- tensity, the motive of the whole conflict in the character of Cressida. But it must be remembered that in the very ear- liest poem we have from Shakespeares pen this highernote of the modern world is clearly sounded the note that Love is Lord of all, and that love is something infinitely higher and more divine than the lawless vagrant passion which in pa~an times passed under that name. To the modern mind, while the latter is blind, selfish, and often brutal in proportion to its strength, the former is full of sympa- thy and self-abnegation, of an almost sa- cred ardor and gentleness, humility and devotion, the very heart and crown of life. XVhile the lo~ver passion cares only for the gratification of an intensely ego- istic appetite, the nobler is ever supremely concerned for the highest good of its object. This contrast is expressed with reflective emphasis in the following stan- zas towards the close of the Venus and Adonis. Call it not Love, for Love to heaven is fled Since sweating Lust on earth usurpd his name; Under whose simple semhlance he hath fed Upon fresh heauty, hiotting it with blame; Which the hot tyrant stains and soon be. reaves, As caterpillars do the tender leaves. Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lusts effect is tempest after sun; Loves gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lusts winter comes ere summer half he done; Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forg~d lies. In this reproof of the pagan goddess of love, the higher note of the modern world is, as I have said, struck fully and clearly. It is repeated with tragic emphasis in the Lucrece, deepened in the sonnets, and developed through all the gracious range of higher female character in the dramas. Nowhere indeed is the vital difference in the social axes of the ancient and mod- 100 THE GUINEA BOX. em world more vividly seen, than in the contrast between the Lesbias, Delias, and Corinnas of Roman poetry, and the Mi- randas, Portias, and Imogens of Shake- speares dramas. In the one we have the monotonous ardors and disdains, the gusts and glooms, the tricks and artifices belonging to the stunted life of lower im- pulse; in the other, the fadeless beauty and grace, the vivacity and intelligence, the gentleness and truth of perfect wom- anhood. I hope, hereafter, to say some- thing more on this temptin~ theme, Meanwhile, as I have had to emphasize Shakespeares relation to the poet laure- ate of wandering love, it seemed right in passing to point out the hither features by which he is separated from Ovid,even in the early poems which owe most to his influence. THOS. S. BAYNES. From The Cornhill Magazine: THE GUINEA BOX. IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I. NOTHING is more common in these days than to see advertisements at the libraries of a guinea box to be hired at this or that theatre for the evening. They probably belong to shareholders who have agreed to take a portion of their dividends in that shape, or to families who have got tired of going to the play sooner than they thought they should, and are glad to get back some portion of their luxurious investment. But in the days when I was young such things were less Common, and there was a certain guinea box at Covent Garden for which three or four guineas were some- times given by reason of the would-be hirers bidding for it Contemporaneously on some popular night; for the box, though only holding six, was an excellent box in the grand tier, with a little with- drawing room attached to it, where you could have refreshments in private, and those who were acquainted with such matters knew that Box i6 at a guinea was a great bargain. Yet it was always ad- vertised to be let at that price, and never by any chance occupied by its legitimate owners. The matter was openly dis- cussed in play-going society at that time, but it had never reached my ears when I was at school at I3lackheath at never mind what date, but during a certain De- cember in which my fathers lawyer, Mr. Tredgold, sent me an invitation to spend Saturday and Sunday with him in town, and accompany his family to the theatre. My uncle and guardian, Mr. Ralph Tressilian. lived in the far north of En- gland, and I had no connections, nor any friends in London, so that the proposition was even a greater treat than it would have been to most schoolboys. More- over, it was enhanced by the fact that Lucy Tredgold was a very pretty girl, whom I thought most charming, and whom I believed to be expressly created to be my bride though in that case she had been created a little early, for I was but sixteen at the time of which I speak, and she was twenty-one. That, however, was the only difference (though of course it had always existed) that had ever hap- pened between us; moreover, I was tall and tolerably mature-looking for my years, with quite a distinct line of fluff on my upper lip, and in my new tail-coat, which I was to wear that evening for the first time, might have been taken, I flattered myself, for an undergraduate of the Uni- versity, or a gentleman cadet at Woolwich, at the very least. I remember the foot- man at Mr. Tredgolds announced me as Mr. Frank (;arrard, without that fatal indecision between Mr. and Master that had hitherto marked my introductions into society. I took my wine at dinner like a man, but (though this afterwards became a moot point) not too much of it, and com- ported myself in every way ~s belonging to that section of the human race entitled the gro wn-up& , and one who had no connection whatever with that other and antagonistic section denominated the young people. Sometimes, it is true, I looked for my handkerchief in a side pocket (where no side pocket was any more to be found), and occasionally expe- rienced a sentiment of surprise at sitting suddenly upon a couple of tails (one of which had a six-bladed knife in it); but my presence of mind was always sufficient to conceal the embarrassment that fol- lowed upon those little contretemps. My uncle Ralph was somewhat Puritan- ical in his ideas, and I had been brought up in his old Lancashire home with a strange mixture of strictness and laxity. I had been suffered to take my own way, that is, so far as country sports and amusements were concerned, but had been forbidden those of the town. My guardian, as it happened, had an especial objection to theatrical exhibitions of all sorts; so that, though I would not have THE GUINEA BOX. 101 had it known to Lucy for millions, this I ested me immensely on.his first appear- was the first occasion of my introduction ance, but so soon as this change of to a theatre. To hear me talk, however, position was effected my interest in the I flatter myself you would have thought I dra ma began to fail. The touch of Lucys had had a seat in the omnibus box for hand for I ventured to place my own years and, after all, it is far more rea- upon it occasionally to emphasize my ex- sonable that a young fellow should wish planations sent a thrill through me such to represent himself a little older than he as the spectre could not compass; and as is than that an old man should ape being to Ophelia, I felt that I had an Ophelia of young. In the former case it is a sort of my own worth two of her, and that there natural defence, since inexperience and would certainly he no necessity, so far as simplicity are always looked down upon. I was concerned, for her to go out of her The play which we were about to wit- mind or~rown herself. ness Hamlet I was perhaps better The play had not proceeded far when, acquainted with than any of the party. to my great surprise, the door between They consisted wholly of Mr. Tredgolds our box and the retiring-room was sud- family namely, his wife, three daughters denly opened without noise, and in walked (of whom my charmer was the youngest), a lady of great beauty. She was tall and and a son, Gilbert Tredgold, of about very dark ; her dress was much more splen- twenty years of age. They were not did than that of any of the Tredgold young given to reading, and (with one exception, ladies, and I particularly noticed that which I need not indicate) struck me as on her jet black hair, which was arranged somewhat commonplace; but they were in a manner I had never before seen, there very kind, as was the host himself, and I was a circlet of diamonds, on which the enjoyed their hospitality very much. Mr. rays from the chandelier sparkled like Tredgold did not go to the play, having fire. She looked neither to left nor right, certain papers, he said, to look over. but moved straight on with a majestic These were reported, however, by his sweep of her white satin train to the chair offspring to be only newspapers. Papa on which I sat. I rose at once (for po- could never by any chance, they said, be liteness was not among the extras at our induced to move after dinner, and he only Blackheath seminary) and made room for made business an excuse for stopping at her. She took the proffered seat rather home. Goodness knows I didnt ~vant coolly as I thought (but I was totally Un- him to go, and should have been very acquainted with the manners of fine well content to have escorted Lucy alone, ladies), and without even the acknowledg- Yet, for all my te;zdresse for her, I looked ment of a bow. What was still stranger, forward to the play itself, I remember, she took no notice of the Tredgolds, nor with quite as much pleasure as to her they of her. They retained their seats companionship, which showed what a and gazed on the stage just as though mere simple hobbledehoy.I was after all. there had been no increase in the number We dined early and arrived at the of the occupants of the box. With regard theatre in good time, which gave us an to those in the front row, I thought it opportunity of admiring the box and its quite possible that they were unaware of withdrawing room. So far as I knew her presence, though the trail of her every box had this addition to it, but I satin dress upon the carpet had been quite learnt, from what was said, that this was distinct to my ear but the wonder was not so, and also that No. i6 was a great that Lucy herself seemed unconscious of bargain. It was next but one to the stage having a new companion beside her. on the grand tier, and held four chairs in She knew, however, I had risen, for she front and two behind very comfortably. inquired softly, so as not to interfere with At first the ladies occupied the former, but the tones of the actors, Gilbert Tredgold ~vas very near-sighted, Whats the matter, Frank? Cant you and presently, to my delight, Lucy see changed places with him, so that I had She seemed to imagine that I was her all to myself. The dear creature was standing up merely to obtain a better view sublimely ignorant of the plot of the piece of the stage. (a rare thing in those days, when Shake- It is the lady, whispered I, pointing speare was much more acted, if not read, to the new comer, who of course had her than he is at l)resent), so that I had plenty back to me. to tell her, and it was told (so as not to The lady? replied Lucy, staring at disturb the audience) in i very low tone. her neighbor, as it appeared to me, very The ghost of Hamlets f.~ther had inter- rudely; I see no lady. 102 THE GUINEA BOX. This I thought ruder still. Perhaps the individual in the white satin had had a quarrel with the female members of the Tredgold family, and this was their mode of showing it. But, if so, why should she have thus thrust her company upon them? Probably my astonishment, and even dis- gust, showed themselves on my counte- nance, for Lucy added severely, Do not glare at the wall like that, Mr. Garrard. You will arouse attention. I do wish you would sit down. Sit down? replied I, in my turn a little annoyed; I cant sit down on the ladys lap, and there is no other chair. Then Lucy reached out her fan and touched her brother on the shoulder, and he left his chair and bent his head down while she whispered in his ear. I knew that she was talking about me, and not very pleasantly, but my whole attention was absorbed by the lady in white satin. She did not take the least notice of the movement in the box, nor of the perform- ers on the stage, but gazed straight be- fore her into vacancy with a most sad and, as it seemed to me, most self-reproachful face. I had heard of the impassive frigidity of the aristocracy, but if that was their manner I preferred that of the mid- dle classes ; her mute indifference seemed to freeze my very blood. Then some one took me by the arm, and whispered roughly, What the deuce is the matter with you, Frank? You have quite frightened my sister. It was Gilbert Tredgold, who had been civil enough up to this time, though I fancied he had once or twice given him- self airs over me on the strength of his four years seniority. He spoke to me now as a man would speak to a foolish boy who had been playing some prank, and I felt very indignant. I have frightened nobody, I replied, but I think it strange and rather rude that n& one has introduced me to this lady; though indeed she has much more to complain of, if it comes to that, than I have. What lady? You are dreaming, Frank. Theres no one here except our- selves. Hush, said I; she must hear every word we say, though she appears so ab- stracted. Just step with me into the back room, said Gilbert. I followed him mechanically, my eyes still lingering on the silent lady in white satin. Lie shut the door behind him. Look here, Frank: you must not go into that box again, nor into the society of my sis- ters. You are not in a fit state. Do you mean to say Im drunk? Yes, I do. Lucy thinks that it is the excitement of the play, and it is well she does ; I dont wish to undeceive her. He had his back against the door, and was very angry: so was I ; but I was not drunk, as he imagined. I should have been very willing to try conclusions with him in a rough and tumble, but I called to mind that I was his fathers guest, and that any disturbance in the theatre would be very distressing to his family. You are very rude, I said, and I am not surprised at it, since you can treat a lady as you have done. But I dont want to make a row. I will go home to your father and state exactly what has happened. You couldnt do a wiser thing, he re- plied gravely; the fresh air will revive you. You can find your way out, I sup- pose? I did not reply to that sarcasm, but stalked haughtily from the room, like Hamlets fathers ghost when he was offended. I went straight back to Mr. Tredgold, and found the old gentleman still over his papersthe evening ones. Good gracious! are you all come back already? he exclaimed peevisl4y. It was perhaps excusable, since the old gen- tleman had hoped to have a quiet evening to himself; but I began to think that the family rudeness was hereditary. No, sir, I answered; no one has come back except me. I have been grossly insulted by your son Gilbert. Stuff and nonsense! he said; Gil- bert never insults any one. Whatever his faults he is a most good-natured young fellow, though a little hasty in his temper. Now tell me what has happened. You look excited. I am afraid you took a glass of wine or so at dinner more than you have been accustomed to. That was very, true, for at my Black- heath school wine was an extra, though politeness was not; but I certainly had not taken too much wine. My mind, in- deed, was sufficiently clear to make me understand how important it was to prove that I was sober. No,~~ said I; I was particularly ab- stemious, Mr. Tredgold. Observe the long words I am using without making the least mistake. Give me anything out of the newspaper to read the city article THE GUINEA BOX. 103 or the share listand try ~vhether I am drunk or not. I never said you were drunk, my good lad, said the lawyer, half amused~ half touched, by my earnest pleading. No, sir; but your son said it. I am not used to misbehave myself in the pres- ence of ladies, nor to be accused of doing so. Come, sit down and tell me quietly what happened, Frank. So I sat down, and told him all, not omitting my own view of the cut direct ~vhich had been administered to the strange lady by the members of his fam- ily. It is very curious, said he, when I had done; but I acquit you, Frank, of all imputation of having been intoxicated; I also excuse Gilbert for having made it; it was a very natural mistake for him to have fallen into. My opinion is that you were in a state of great mental excite- ment, produced partly by the fact of being at the theatre and partly by the play itself, which gave your ideas a certain supernat- ural bias. You were just in the frame of mind to suffer from an optical delusion.~~ But do you mean to say I did not see that lady in white satin? On the stage you may have done so. I dont know whether they dress Ophelia on the stage (like Tilburina) in white satin nowadays, but in that box you certainly did not see her. Now just go to bed, Frank, like a good fellow. I dont offer you supper because youll be better with- out it. Theres your flat candle; good night and pleasant dreams. I felt the old lawyer was treating me very tenderly, since he had nothing but my word to go upon against (for I had ad- mitted as much) that of his whole family; but I was by no means amicably disposed towards (kern. In the morning, when I came down to breakfast, every one was studiously polite to me, and evidently determined to make no allusion to what had happened on the previous evening; at times I caught Gil- bert Tredgold glancing at me with an amused expression, and then turning away with a sort of bloated look and his eyes half out of his head like a lobsters. If I had attempted an explanation I think it would have been the death of him, but I was not at all restrained from it on that account. I was too proud to enter anew upon any justification of my conduct; and as to any apology, it was clear that it ought to have come from them and not from me. Before I concluded roy visit, however, I did address a few words of remonstrance to Lucy concerning the practical joke, as I termed it, which had been played upon me in the theatre, and to which she had been an accessory. I didnt care about it my- self, I told her, so much, though I thought it unkind; but that they should have all agreed to ignore the presence of their lady visitor showed, I thought, bad feel- ing. My dear Mr. Garrard, she said, with quite unwonted severity, I had hoped you had made up your mind to say noth- ing about that unpleasant subject let bygones be bygones, I do beo I had no idea (at that time) that a young woman could speak so sharply. Well, I never! cried I, in a tone which betrayed, perhaps, my astonish- ment at her impudence, for she replied still more tartly, Nor I either; tl~ougl~, indeed, I have read in David Copperfield of a young gentleman misbehaving himself in a4hea- tre in a similar fashion. I remembered, of course, that on that occasion David had been intoxicated, and the injustice of the allusion hurt me very much. I did not answer, but looked so distressed that her heart melted. Agnes was very much shocked at him, she continued, with a smile; but afterwards, you know, upon expressing his sorrow, she forgave him. I think she even gave him a kiss, said I boldly, but in a very tender voice. I dont remember that, she answered, looking at her toes,~~Agnes was rather prudish in that way. Which of course was an invitation; and so ended very pleasantly my experi- ence of the guinea box for that time. CHAPTER II. IF it is true that there is no such thing ~s forgetting, it is certain that we so often mislay the remembrance of things that it is almost as bad (or good) as though we did forget. My adventure with the lady in white satin was certainly note- worthy enough, yet week by week, and month by month, it faded as her satin itself would have done, till in a few years there was little of the original material left in my mind. I knew tbat the thin had happened, but I could not have sworn to the details as when they were fresh in my memory. I met the Tredgolds from time to time, and when a sly allusion, as sometimes happened, was made to the circumstance, I found myself replying to 104 THE GUINEA BOX. their aspersions with less and less of vigor. I knew I had not been drunk, I kne~v I had not been unreasonably excited by the play, and yet that much-wronged lady in white became in a certain degree unreal even to myself. It was still one of those experiences that one cannot ex- plain (and which happen to more of us than care to confess to them), but I no lonrer cudcrelled my brains for an expla- nation of it. The circumstance was still very strange, but (which had not struck me so forcibly in my boyhood) it was almost as much so that a respectable family like the Tredgolds should have treated a lady visitor with such rudeness; and if they had done so, it was still stranger that they should make a jest of it. Seven years afterwards, and when I had just taken my degree at the Univer- sity, I was dining with some friends at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, one of whom happened to propose a visit to Cov- ent Garden Theatre. As the office was closed he sent out to the librarians for a box, and when it came he observed, By Jove, this is a cheap business; we have got the guinea box. He was a man about town, and knew No. i6; but upon the rest of us it made no impression. After dinner we went up-stairs to smoke, and consequently arrived at the theatre at a late and fashionable hour. I chanced to be the first of the party, and on step- ping out of the little room into the box I turned and stopped the others. We have made a mistake, I said; there is some one in possession already. Oh, pooh! said my friend, the man about town; were all right enough. Do you suppose I dont know No. i6? But theres a lady in it, said I, sit- ting there alone. Then let me look at her, was the characteristic rejoinder. He pushed his way in and exclaimed, XVhat lady? Why, there, said I, pointing to where she sat the lady in xvhite satin. As I spoke the words the whole scene of seven years before recurred to me with vivid distinctness. I saw the Tredgolds unconsciouswilfully, as I had thought of the intruders presence. I saw Lucy touch her brother, and heard him whisper in that quick, remonstrant tone, What the deuce is the matter with you? Only this time it was somebody else that said it. One of my companions had taken hold of my arm, and the rest were staring at me while I stared at the lady. I have seen her before, I muttered: its the same person; I could swear to her among a thousand. My dear Garrard, youre not well, said some oneit was Grantham, my college chum just come with me,and he led me into the anteroom. But the lady? I said; they have sat down by her as though she was not there. Theres no lady there; youre dream- ing. Tb at champagne at the club is not a sufficiently dry ~vine. What, do you mean to say, as the other people did, that I am drunk? I dont know what the other people said, but if I did not know your habits I should say you had dcli;-izim 1,-ernens. It must be the box, said I in amaze- ment the box must be haunted! Very likely,~ was Granthams grave rejoinder. Let us get out of the box and into the open air. He led me unresistingly into the street, and we ~valked round Covent Garden to- gether discussing the matter. I told my friend what had happened on the previous occasion, and he pretended to explain my present hallucination, as he termed it, by the association of ideas. You recog- nized the box, and then the scene recurred to you. There was something in that (for the scene had recurred to me), but not enough to shake the evidence of my own senses a second time. I will not go back to the theatre, said I, because I dont want to make a row, but I will sift this mystery to the very bottom. Do, said Grantham, and let me know what remain~, if its anything be- yond a headache. Whereupon I went to my lodgings, and sat up half the night with a cigar in my mouth and my considering cap on. In my friends eyes I had made a fool of myself twice in box No. i6; and I was resolved that it should not happen again. Nor should this be effected by absenting myself from the theatre. I meant to ex- amine into that box very carefully, and somehow or other to knock the bottom out of it. After breakfast next morning I called at the library, where, as I saw in the pa- per, the guinea box at Covent Garden was advertised as usual, and requested to see the proprietor of the establishment. That great man, it seemed, did not gener- ally put in an appearance in connection with any matter under a stall for the sea- son, but nevertheless I gained admission to his august presence. Pray, sir, said I, have you ever THE GUINEA BOX. 105 beard any complaints of your guinea box? Complaints ? he said. Far from it; it is one of the best and by far the cheapest I have to let. Though his voice was firm, it struck me that his manner ~vas a little embarrassed. When good things are cheap, said I, there is generally a reason for it. I have twice had reason to be very much dissatisfied with that box. A lady in white satin is in the habit of intruding herself there. I saw a sudden change in his face, which convinced me he was not hearing the information for the first time, but he answered coolly enough, If that is so, the boxkeeper is the proper person to apply to; and if she annoys you, the police. I have not the honor of knowing your name, by-the-bye, he added. I gave him my card, and he looked at it attentively. In a matter of this kind I cannot ad- vise you, he continued; it is not roy affair at all. You must complain to the people at the theatre. I have reason to believe, replied I, that that would be useless. I intend to write to the papers to warn folks against the guinea box. Then youll have an action for libel brought against you, young gentleman, as sure as you live. The box belongs to a gentleman of the highest respectability and position, and has been placed in my hands for these twenty years. And I am to understand from you definitely that no such complaint has ever been made to you as I make to-day? I decline to answer any such qu~s- tion, sir, replied the librarian. Very good. Do you also decline to give me the name of the proprietor of the box? Well, you could find that out for your- self by application at Covent Garden; but I have no objection to save you that trouble: the box belongs to Mr. Ralph Tressilian. What, of Wiodharrow Hall ? ex- claimed I in astonishment. Why, thats my uncle! The librarians face exhibited incre- dulity, not unmixed, as it seemed to me, with positive alarm. I had a letter from him this very morning, said I, producing the envelope. You recognize, I suppose, that hand- writino? Now, since you know who I am, perhaps you will be a little more com- municative. No, Mr. Garrard, he returned after a pause; I must consider my duty to my employer. I decline to admit anything that may tend to depreciate his property. If you have anything to say against Box i6, say it to lzi;;z. As my uncles letter had contained an invitation to Windbarrow for that very week, I was not much discontented with this reply. The librarian was evidently only doing his duty, so we parted on good terms. I noticed that he looked at me with great curiosity, and even came to the door of his establishment and watched me down the street. Hitherto a visit to my uncles~residence had not been very attractive to me, but I looked forward to it now with great inter- est and excitement. It was a huge man- sion on the skirts of a Yorkshire moor, with a moat round it without fish, and was half a dozen miles from everywhere. The place wanted at least a dozen guests in residence to make it cheery, and my uncle seldom saw any company except at dinner. I found him on this occasion quite alone, and after we had dined, and a bottle of port of fabulous antiquity had been placed between us, he began talking of the family property. You are of age now, Frank, and should know something about it, for what is mine will be yours, and then he gave me some hereditary information, ~vhich ought to have been more attractive to me than it was. The amount of rental was interest- ing enough, but I always hated what a philosopher of my acquaintance calls the disgusting details of business matters. When he had quite done I said in my off- hand way, And then theres that box at Covent Garden. My uncle pushed his glass half off the table as he replied, How on earth came you to know I possessed such a thing? What box? Box i6the guinea box, as they call it. Ive been in it more than once, to my sorrow ; and I told him in the simplest manner what I had seen there. Your experience is very curious, said my uncle drily, but of course not inex- plicable. It is evident that theatrical performances affect your nerves. I never approved of them myself for other rea- sons. I am quite certain, uncle, that I ac- tually saw in Box i6 what I have just described to you. Nothing will ever shake my conviction on that point. Then we wont discuss it, Frank, was the quiet reply. Have you had I o6 THE GUINEA BOX. enough ~vine? Very good. I have some Well, I dont know, returned my letters to write, so I will leave you to your uncle doubtfully. It is certainly very cigar, which I remark with regret has be- curious, and, since you