LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, No. 2050. October 6, 1883. Volume XLIV. I From Beginning, Vol. CLIX. CONTENT S. I. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND II. ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. Part VII., III. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MA. - DAME MOHL IV. TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. Con clusion,. . . V. IVAN TOURGENIEF, . . VI. THE RABBIT PEST IN AUSTRALASIA, Quarterly Review, All The Year Round, Macmillans Magazine, Temple Bar,. Spectator, Carsell.r Magazine, P 0 E T R Y. DANDIES LAST JOURNEY, . . 21 OLD LETTERS 2 MISCELLANY . . a . . 64 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LIT TELL & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. iror EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,freeofA~siege. 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 shouldbe sent in a registered letter. Ailpostmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, s8 cents. .3 33 39 49 . . 59 6z 2 DANDIE S LAST JOURNEY, ETC. DANDIES LAST JOURNEY. Dandie speaks. OF my travels do you ask me? Do you sari- ously task me To rub up my geography, and tell where I have been? Would it really make you merrier, if a Dandie Dinmont terrier V~Tere to make your muzzles water with the wonders he has seen? I think, in spite of cavils, a well-bred dog who travels May prove a better traveller than some who hold him cheap; If he takes discomfort coolly, responds to kind- ness duly, And when theres nothing else to do goes quietly to sleep. By railway and by steamer was I thus a peace- ful dreamer, Only waking~ when they summoned me in places new and strange. No matter where they took me, my courage neer forsook me; I knew my loved ones guarded me, and love can never change! Oh, the memories that waken of the rambles we have taken Through cornfields, wood, and meadow, knee-deep in heath and fern! How we roamed about together, in the joyous summer weather Of those glad days I dream about that never can return! But you ask me, half in pity, how I liked that grand old city, So full of all the wonders that charm the good and wise; And a joy you never tasted you think was sadly wasted On a dog that has but instinct, his affection, and his eyes. Yet when you see me dreaming, Zsee the sun- light gleaming Where the springtide glows like summer and the winter smiles like spring; Where the moonbeams fall so whitely, where the fountains play so brightly, And everywhere, for praise or prayer, you hear the church-bells ring. But that which you call history is to us both a mystery: I do not know the things that were you know not what will be; And if to you be given more wondrous powers from Heaven, You do not know what earth can show, and oft has shown to me. You cannot hear the voices at which my heart rejoices The whispers of creation and of those who sang its birth; You little think how often, some creatures lot to soften, We see the white-robed messengers come down upon the earth! If to us no mystic pages may unroll the lore of ages, Yet natures gracious teaching is for us as well as you; And I saw Romes truest glory, beyond all song or story, When her sunset showed its crimson-.--her sky its deep, dark blue. I have trod the wide Campagna (the Piazza, too, di Spagna), In the fair Borghese Gardens I have scam- pered at my will; I have drunk of Trevis fountain, I have seen Soractes mountain, And watched St. Peters, throned in light, from the famed Pincian Hill. But when your ey~s ar~e closing, and your stiff limbs need reposing, What suits you best are home and rest; and those Ive found once more; And the tender touch of greeting and the joy of happy meeting Add brightness to the memory of all that went before. Yes,my travels now are ending and my sun is fast descending; But those I love are near me, and how can I repine? May all who read my verses be as rich in friends and nurses, And find their own last journey end as peacefully as mine! Good Words. ANNA H. DRURY. OLD LETTERS. Iv seems but yesterday she died, but years Have passed since then; the wondrous change of time Makes great things little, little things sublime, And sanctifies the dew of daily tears. She died, as all must die; no trace appears In historys page, nor save in my poor rhyme, Of her, whose life was love, whose lovely prime Passed sadly where no sorrows are, nor fears. It seems but yesterday; to-day I read A few short letters in her own dear hand, And doubted if twere true. Their tender grace Seems radiant with her life! Oh! can the dead Thus in their letters live? I tied the band, And kissed her name as though I kissed her face. LORD ROSSLYN. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 3 From The Quarterly Review. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND.* MORE than a year ago we commenced a sketch of the literary and political life of Swift.j- We were then obliged to break off when our task was only half accom- plished; we now propose to return to the subject, and to complete our study. But before resuming our own narrative we have a very pleasing duty to perform. Since the appearance of the first part of this article three contributions of singular interest and value have been added to the literature which has gathered round the great dean. First in importance stands the biography by Henry Craik. This work is in many respects greatly superior to any preceding biography. It is more accurate, more critical, and much fuller, than the memoir by Scott. It is written with more spirit, and it is executed with greater skill, than the memoir by Monck Mason. It is, moreover, enriched with material to which neither Scott nor Monck Mason had access, and which is altogether new; such, for example, would be the diary kept by Swift at Holyhead, printed by Mr. Craik in his appendix; such would be the correspondence between Swift and Archdeacon Walls, furnished by Mr. Murray; and such would be the Orrery papers, furnished by the Earl of Cork. Of Mr. Craiks industry and accuracy we cannot speak too highly. It is abun- dantly evident from every chapter in his work that he has left no source of infor- mation unexplored, from the local gossip of places where traditions of Stvift still linger, to the archives of private families and public institutions. Where 1\Ir. Craik seems to us to fail is in precision and grasp. His narrative too often de- generates into mere compilation. It lacks perspective and it lacks symmetry. We cannot but think toothough we are ex- tremely unwilling to find faults in a ~vork for which every student of Swift will as- suredly be most sincerely thankful that * r. The L~/e of ~aaa/kanS~ i/I. By Henry Craik, MA London, 1S82. 2. SwJ/. By Leslie Stephen. English Men of Letters. London, 1882. 3. Dean Swfis Disease. By Dr. Bucknill, F.R.S. Brain. London, January, 1882. I LIVING AGE, No. 1981, June IG~ 1882. its value would have been greatly en- hanced had Mr. Craik been a little less inattentive to the graces of style. That Mr. Craik has not succeeded in throwing any new light on the various problems which perplex Swifts biography is to be regretted, but cannot, in fairness, be im- puted as a fault to him. The portion of his work which will be perused with most interest by those who are familiar with former biographies, will probably be that in which. he discusses Swifts relations with Walpole, with Primate Boulter, and with the Irish Church. The pleasure with which we have read Mr. Leslie Stephens monograph has been not un mingled with disappointment. Like everything he writes, it is incisive, forci- ble, and eminently interesting. But it is plain that the dean is no favorite with him. He is too sensible and too well in- formed to be guilty either of misrepresen- tation or of errors in statement, and yet, without misrepresentation or misstate- ment, he contrives to do Swift signal in- justice. We will illustrate what ~ve mean. The period in Swifts career during which he appears to least advantage would cer- tainly be the period intervening between his ordination and the accession of George I., in other words, the period during which he was seeking preferment. On the other hand, the period which does him most honor would be that during which he was laboring in the cause of Ire- land. Of the first of these periods Mr. Stephen gives us a minute and elaborate history: of the second, his account is so meagre and so perfunctory, that a reader who knew nothing more of Swifts career in Ireland than what lie derived from Mr. Stephens narrative, would assuredly have very much to learn. It was said of Mal- let, that if lie undertook the life of Marl- borough, lie would probably forget that his hero was a general: it may be said of Mr. Stephen, that if lie has not exactly forgotten that Swift was a patriot and philanthropist, he has done his best to conceal it. This brings us to Dr. Bucknills re- markable paper on the nature of Swifts disease. We have read nothing that has been written on that perplexed and much- 4 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. discussed question which appears to us so satisfactory. In the first place, Dr. Bucknill comes forward with no mere hypothesis. The history of Swifts case is, he says, sufficiently full and explicit to enable him, even at this distance of time, to form with confidence a diagnosis; and that diagnosis, together with the grounds on which it is based, he has in the paper to which we have referred given to the world. As the subject is necessarily a somewhat painful one, and as it is more- over a subject likely to be of interest rather to sl)ecial students of S~vift than to the general reader, we have relegated its discussion to a note; and the note will be found at the end of this article. XVe left Swift on the point of settling down as Dean of St. Patricks. The cir- cumstances under which he entered on his new duties were sufficiently inauspi- cious. It was well known that he had been one of the chief supporters of the last ministry, and that his preferment had been the price of his services. In Dub. lin, where the Whigs were as three to one, the downfall of the Tories had been hailed with savage glee. Indeed, of all the sects into which Irish politicians were divided and subdivided, it may be ques- tioned whether there was one which re- garded with much favor the party to which Swift had attached himself. The victory gained by the Whigs was cele- brated as such victories always were cel- ebrated. On Swifts head broke in full force the storm of obloquy which was overwhelming his friends in England. Libels taunting him with Popery and Jaco- bitism freely circulated among the vul- gar. He was hustled and pelted in the street. One miscreant, an Irish noble- man, assaulted him with such ferocious violence, that he presented a petition, which is still extant, appealing for protec- tion to the House of Peers. For some months he went in fear of his life, and he never ventured to show himself even in the principal thoroughfares without an es- cort of armed servants. And these were not his only troubles. He was on bad terms with his chapter; he was on bad terms with the archbishop. He was in wretched health, and in still more wretch- ed spirits. His feelings found vent in a copy of verses, which are inexpressibly sad and touching. Meanwhile, evil tidings were arriving by every post from England. First came the news of the flight of Bolingbroke; then came ~he news of the impeachment and imprisonment of Oxford; and lastly, the still more incredible intelligence, that Ormond had declared for the Pretender, and was in France. Under these stun- ning blows Swift acted as none but men on whom nature has been lavish of heroic qualities are capable of acting. It was now plain that all who had been in the confidence of the late ministry were in great danger, and that, unless they were prepared to fare as their leaders had fared, it behoved them to walk warily. A vin- dictive faction in the flush of triumph is, as Swift well knew, in no mood for nice distinctions between guilt presumptive and guilt established. He was, moreover, well aware that rumor had already been busy with his name, and that his enemies were watching with malignant vigilance for anything which he might do or say to compromise himself. But all this was as nothing. Neither self-interest nor fear had any influence on his loyal and daunt- less spirit. He ~vrote off to Oxford, not merely expressing his sympathy, but im- ploring permission to attend him in the Tower. It is the first time, he said, that I ever solicited you in my own be- half, and if I am refused, it will be the first request you ever refused me. He braved the suspicions, nay more, the peril, to which a confidential correspon- dence with the families of Bolingbroke and Ormond, when the one had become the secretary and the other the chief general of the Pretender, exposed him. We are told that when the Ulster king-of arms attempted, on the attainder of the duke, to remove the escutcheons of the Or- monds, vhich hung in St. Patricks Cathe- dral, Swift sternly bade him begone, for as long as I am dean, he thundered out, I will never permit so gross an indignity to be offered to so noble a house. It was not likely that he could act thus with impunity, and it appears from a letter of Archbishop King, dated May, 1715, and DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. from one of his own letters to Atterbury, dated April, 1716, that he was twice in danger of arrest. His conduct at this crisis was the more honorable to him, as it sprang solely from the purest of motives, from a chivalrous sense of what is due to friends and ben- efactors, and especially to friends and benefactors in misfortune. Some writers have, it is true, imputed his conduct, as hostile contemporaries imputed it, to less worthy motives. But it would be mere waste of words to discuss their state- ments - Nothing we know of Swift is more absolutely certain than the fact, that so far from having any sympathy with the Pretender, he always regarded him with peculiar abhorrence. He denounced him in his correspondence, he denounced him in his conversation, he denounced him in his public writings. I always professed, he says in one of his familiar letters, to be against the Pretender, because I look upon his coming as a greater evil than we are likely to suffer under the worst Whig government that can be found. In the crisis of 1714, when it is not perhaps too much to say that his pen might have turned the scale in Jamess favor, he was among the most acriminious and vehe- ment of anti-Jacobites. Indeed, his feel- ngs on this subject were so well known, that both Oxford and Bolingbroke studi- ously concealed from him their necrotia. tions with St. Germains, and, as his Historical Memoirs show, he had never even a suspicion of the intrigues, the existence of which the Stuart Papers have in our time placed beyond doubt.* His pen meanwhile was not idle. In his letter to Oxford he had promised that, though the rage of faction had rendered contemporaries deaf and blind, future ages should at all events know the truth. * To the end of his life Swift contended that there was no design on the part of Annes last ministry to bring in the Pretender; how effectually Harley and Bolingbroke had concealed their intrigues from him is clear from the deans letter to the Archbishop of Dub- lin, Dec. [6, 1716. Had there been even the least overture or intent of bringing in the Pretender, I think I roost have been very stupid not to have picked out some discoveries or suspicions. And although I am not sore that I should have turned informer, yet I am certain I should have dropped some general cautions, and immedia/ely have rehred. S With this view, he drew up the Memoirs relating to that change which happened in the Queens Ministry in the Year 1710, a pamphlet in which, in a clear and tem- perate narrative, he explains the circum- stances under which he had himself first engaged in politics, as well as the revolu- tion which brought his party into power. On the completion of the Memoirs they are dated on the manuscript October, 1714he began the Enquiry into the Behavior of the Queens Last Ministry. This is a work of great interest and value. With a firm and impartial hand he traces the history of those fatal feuds which had cost himself and his friends so dear. He makes no attemptand it is greatly to his honor to palliate what was reprehen- sible in his own party, he makes no at- tempt to exaggerate what was reprehen- sible in their oppoments. The prejudice of friendship is discernible perhaps in the portraits of Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond, but it is a prejudice which ex- tends no further than their personal char- acters. As public men, no more is assigned to them than is their due. They are as freely censured as their neighbors. Indeed, the pamphlet is distinguished throughout by a spirit of candor not to be mistaken. But his most elaborate contribution to contemporary history was a work which had been all but completed before he left London the Memoirs of the Last Four Years of the Queen. It was commenced at Windsor probably in 1713, and was, in effect, a vindication of the Treaty of Utrecht. Nothing he ever wrote seems to have given him so much satisfaction. He always described it as the best thing he had done, and it is certain that he ex- pended more time and labor on it than he was in the habit of expending on any of his literary compositions. But the work, as it now appears, is so inferior to what might have been expected from Swifts account of it, that it has been sometimes doubted whether what we have is from the deans hand. It was first given to the world under circumstances certainly suspicious. It was not published until thirteen years after his death. It was not printed from the original manuscript. 6 DEAN SWIFT IN 1RELAN~. It was not edited by any member of his vert the vexation of former thoughts and family, or by any one having authority present objects. He gardened and saun- from his executors. It was printed by tered; he turned over the Greek and Ro- an anonymous editor from a copy sur- man classics; lie bandied nonsense with reptitiously taken by an anonymous Sheridan and Esther Johnson; he went friend. And yet we have no more doubt through a course of ecclesiastical history; of its genuineness than we have of the lie dabbled in mathematics. Thus much genuineness of Gulhivers Travels. the ~vorld saw: thus much he imparted One piece of evidence alone seenis to us with all the garruhity of Montaigne and conclusive. In 1738 the original manu- Walpole to the friends who exchanged script was read by Erasmus Lewis, Lord letters with him. But there were troub- Oxford, and others, in conclave, with a les troubles which must at this time view to discussing the propriety of its have been weighing heavily on his mind publication. Their opinion was that it which were little suspected by the contained several inaccuracies of state- world, and from which he never raised ment, and those inaccuracies Lewis, in a the veil even to those who knew him letter to Swift it may be found in Swifts best. correspondence categorically pointed Shortly after his arrival in London, in out. Now a reference to tVie printed the autumn of 1710, he had renewed his ac- memoirs will show that they contain the quaintance with a lady of the name of Van- identical errors detected by Lewis and his hiomrigh. Her husband, originall yamer~ friends jn Swifts manuscript. Again, chant of Amsterdam, but subsequently the those portions in the manuscript narra- holder of lucrative offices under the gov- tive, which Lewis describes as most en- eminent of William III., had died some tertaining and instructive, are precisely years before, leaving her in easy circum- those portions in the printed work which stances, with a family of two sons and two are undoubtedly best entitled to that dau~hiters. Her house was in Bury praise. Nor is there anything improba. Street, St. Jamess, within a few paces of ble in the assertion of the editorone Swifts lodgings. Mrs. Vanhommighi ~vas Lucasthat he printed the work from fondindeed, inordinately fond of a transcript of the original manuscript, society, and, as she was not only well- for the original manuscript, as we know connected and hospitable, but the mother from Dean Swift, circulated freely among of two charming ~irls in the bloom of Swifts friends in Dublin. It is certain youth, she had no difficulty in gratifying that Nugent, Dr. William King, and her whim. Among her male guests she Orrery, had perused that manuscript, and could number such distinguished men as that they were alive when the printed Sir Andrew Fountaine. Among her fe- work appeared; it is equally certain that male visitors were to be found some of none of them expressed any doubt of the most attractive and most accomplished the genuineness of the printed memoirs, young women in England. There ap- though those memoirs attracted so much pears, indeed, to have been no more attention that they were printed by instal- pleasant lounge in London than the little ments in the Gentlemans AJa~azine. drawing-roon~ in Bury Street. This Swift That Swift should himself have attached soon discovered. Within a few months so much importance to the work, is sin- lie had come to be regarded almost as a gular, for it is in truth little more than member of the family. He took hiis coffee what it was originally intended to bea there of an afternoon; hie dropped in, as party pamphlet, the humor took him, to breakfast or din- Swifts life during these years is me- ner; his best gown and his best wig were flected very faithfully in his correspon- deposited there; and when a friend sent dence. It was passed principally in the him a flask of choice Florence orahiaunch discharge of his clerical duties, which hie of venison, it was shared with his hospi- performed with scrupulous conscientious- table neighbors. Wi th the young ladies, ness; in improving the glebe of Laracor; Miss Esther, who had not yet completed in endeavoring to come to an understand- her twentieth year, and Miss Molly, who ing with the archbishop, on the one hand, was a year or two younger, he was a great and with his rebellious chapter on the favorite. No nian thought more highly of other; and in devising means for escaping the moral and intellectual capacities of from hiniself, and from the daily annoy- women than Swift, and nothing gave him ances to which his position exposed him, so much pleasure as superintending their I am, he writes to Bohingbroke, forced education. What lie had done for Esther into the most trifling amusements, to di- Johnson he now aspired to do for the Miss DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. Vanhomrighs, and, as he found his new pupils as eager to receive as he was to impart instruction, he devoted himself with assiduity to his pleasant task. So passed partly in the innocent frivolities of social gatherings, and partly in the graver intercourse of teacher and pupil two happy years. But towards the end of 1712, Swift suddenly perceived, to his great embarrassment, that the elder of the two sisters had conceived a violent pas- sion for him. The unhappy girl, whohad, as she well knew, received no encourage- ment, struggled for a while, with maiden modesty, to conceal her feelin~s. At this point it would have been well, perhaps, if Swift had found some means of withdraw og. But he probably judged all women from the standard of Esther Johnson. She, too, had at one time entertained feel- ings for him which it was not in his power to return; but had, as soon as she saw that reciprocity of passion was hopeless, cheerfully accepted friendship for love. There was surely no reason to suppose that Miss Vanhomrigh would not consent to make the same compromise, when she ~vas convinced that there was the same necessity. All that was needed was a clear understanding between them. That understanding would, as time went on, be silently arrived at. But lie little knew the character of the woman with whom he had to deal. The less her passion was encouraged, the more it grew. The more eloquently he dilated on friendship, the more rapturously she declaimed on love. As he pleaded for the mind, she pleaded for the heart. So for some months they continued to play at cross-purposes, each perceiving, and each disregarding, the in- nuendoes of the other. At last the poor girl could bear her tortures no longer, and, becoming lost to all sense of feminine delicacy, threw herself at Swifts feet. And now commenced the really culpa- ble part of Swifts conduct. He ought at once to have taken a decisive step. He ought to have seen that there were only two courses open to him ; the one was to make her his wife, the other was to take leave of her forever. Unhappily, he did neither. He merely proceeded to apply particularly what before he had stated generally. He continued to enlarge on the superiority of friendship to love, and he ~vent on to describe the depth and sin- cerity of the friendship which he had long felt for her as for her passion so ran his reasoningit was a passing whim an unwelcome intruder into the paradise of purer joys. He could not return it no true philosopher would; he could offer instead all that made human intercourse most precious devoted aff ction ,~ rati- tude, respect, esteem. All his he con- trived to convey in such a manner as could not have indicted a wound even on the most sensitive pride. It was con- veyed perhaps conveyed for the first time in that exquisitely ~raceful and original poem which has made the name of Esther Vanbomrigh deathless. She could there read how Venus, provoked by the complaints which were daily reaching her about the degeneracy of the female sex, resolved to retrieve the reputation of that sex ; how, with this object, she called into being a matchless maid, who, to every feminine virtue, united every feminine grace and charm; how, not content with endowing her paragon with all that is proper to woman, the goddess succeeded by a stratagem in inducing Pallas to be- stow on her the choicest of the virtues proper to man; how I~allas, angry at being; deceived, consoled herself with the reflec- tion, that a being so endowed would be. little likely to prove obedient to the god- dess who had created her; how Vanessa,. for such was the peerless creatures name, did not for a while belie the expectations. of Pallas, but how at last she was attacked by treacherous Cupid in Wisdoms very stronghold. The flattered girl could then. follow in a transparent allegory the whole history of her relation with her lover,. sketched so delicately, and, at the same time, so humorously, that it must have. been impossible for her either to take of- fence or to miss his meaning. How grievously Swift had erred inthus tem- ptrizing, became every day more apl)arent.. It was in vain that he now began to ab- sent himself from Bury Street. It was in vain that in his letters he showed, in a manner not to be mistaken, that he had no ear for the language of love. In the summerof t7l4occurredan event which introduced further complications in this unhappy business. Mrs. Vanhom- righ died, leavin~ her affairs in a very embarrassed state. The daughters, who appear to have been on bad terms with their brother, applied for assistance to Swift; and Swift, who had at this time left London, was thus again forced into intimate relations with Esther. Nor was this all. By the terms of her fathers will she had become possessed of some prop. erty near Dublin, and Swift learned, to his intense mortification and perplexity, that, as there was now nothing to detain her in England, it was her intention to 7 8 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. follow him to Ireland. I-fe at once wrote off, imploring her to be discreet, and pointing out how easily such a relation as theirs might be misinterpreted by censo- rious people. Dublin, he said, was not a place for any freedom; everything that happened there was known in a week, and everything that was kno~vn was exagger- ated a hundredfold. If, he added, you are in Ireland while I am there, I shall see you very seldom. But all was of no avail, and, a few weeks after his ar- rival in Dublin, Esther and her sister were in lodgings within a stones throw of the deanery. Swifts position was now perplexing in the extreme. By every tie but one which can bind man to woman, he was bound to Esther Johnson. For more than thirteen years she had been a portion of his life. She had been the partner of his most se- cret thoughts; she bad been his solace in gloom and sorrow; she had been his nurse in sickness. In return for all this she had claimed neither to bear his name nor to share his fortune: she had been satisfied with his undivided affection. As yet nothing had arisen to disturb their sweet and placid intercourse. Indeed, he had been so careful to abstain from anything which could cause her uneasiness, that in his letters from London he had never even alluded to his intimacy with Esther Vanhomrigh; and poor Stella, little sus- pecting the presence of a rival, was now in the first joy of having her idol again at her side. For a while he nursed the hope that Miss Vanhomrigh would, on seeing that he absented himself from her society, withdraw from Dublin. He was soon un- deceived. The more he left her to her- self, the more importunate she became. The letters addressed by her at this period to Swift have been preserved, and exhibit a state of mind which it is both terrible and pitiable to contemplate. How deeply Swift was affected by them, and with what tenderness and delicacy he acted under these most trying circum- stances, is evident from his replies. One of these replies we transcribe : I will see you in a day or two, and believe me it goes to my soul not to see you oftener. I will give you the best advice, countenance, and assistance I can. I would have been with you sooner if a thousand impediments had not prevented me. I did not imagine you had been under difficulties. I am sure my whole fortune should go to remove them. I cannot see you to-day, I fear, having affairs of my own place to do, but pray think it not want of friend- ship or tenderness, which I will always continue to the utmost. At last she left Dublin and removed to Celbridge. There, in seclusion, she con- tinued to cherish her hopeless passion; there Swift for some years regularly cor- responded with her and occasionally visited her; and there, in 1723, while still in the bloom of womanhood, she died. This is a melancholy story, but it is, as we need scarcely say, a story little likely to lose in the telling, and peculiarly sus- ceptible of prejudiced distortion. It be- hoves us, therefore, before passing judg- ment on Swifts conduct, to distinguish carefully between ~vhat has been asserted and what has been proved, between what rests on mere conjecture and what rests on authentic testimony. Now we may say at once, that all that is certainly known of his connection with Esther Van- homrigh, is what may be gathered from the letters that passed between them, and from his own poem of Cadenus and Va- nessa, and all that can be safely conjec- tured is that, when they finally parted, they parted abruptly and in anger. This ex- hausts the evidence on which we can fair- ly rely in judging Swift; but this is very far from exhausting theevidenceonwhich the world has judged him. First came the almost incredibly malignant perver- sions of Orrery. Then came the loose and random gossip of Mrs. Pilkington and Thomas Sheridan. Out of these, and similar materials, Scott wove his dramatic narrative; not, indeed, with any prejudice against Swift, but doing him gre at injus- tice by disseminating stories eminently calculuted to prejudice others against him. Thus he tells, and tells most impressively, a story which, if true, would justify us in believing the very worst of Swift. Esther Vanhomrigh so the story runs having discovered his intimacy with Stella, wrote to her, requesting to know the nature of her connection with Swift. Stella, indig- nant that such a question should be put to her, placed the letter in Swifts hands. Swift instantly rode off in a paroxysm of fury to Celbrid,,e, and, and abruptly enter- ing the room where Miss Vanhomrigh ~vas sitting, flung the letter angrily on the table, and then, without saying a word, remounted his horse and galloped back to Dublin. From that moment he was a stranger to her. In a few weeks Vanessa was in her grave. The authority cited for this anecdote is Sheridan, who wrote nearly sixty years after the event he nar- rates; who is confessedly among the most inaccurate and uncritical of Swifts biog- raphers; whose habit of grossly exagger- ating whatever he described is notorious, DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. and who has been more than once sus- pected of enlivening his pages with de- liberate fabrications. In the present case, however, he had contented himself with embellishment; for the story had been already told, first by Orrery, in whose hands it had assumed an entirely differ- ent form, and secondly by Hawkesworth, who merely copied what he found in Or- rery. What Orrery says is, that Vanessa wrote, not to Stella, but to Swift; and that the object of her letter was, not to as- certain the nature of Swifts connection with her rival, but to ascertain his inten- tions with regard to herself; in other words, to insist on knowing whether it was his intention to make her his wife. Why the letter, which he describes as a very tender one it would be interesting to know how he could have seen it should have had such an effect on Swift, he has not condescended to explain. But Orrerys whole story is not only in itself monstrously improbable, but it rests on his own unsupported testimony; and on the value of Orrerys unsupported testi- mony it is scarcely necessary to comment. Such is the evidence in support of one of the gravest of the charges which have been brought against Swift, with respect to Vanessa. Again, Scott asserts, still following Sheridan, that, on hearing of Miss Vanhomrighs death, Swift re- treated in an agony of self-reproach and remorse into the south of Ireland, where he spent two months, without the place of his abode being known to any one. Nothing can be more untrue. A refer- ence to his correspondence at this period will sho~v that he had long intended to take what he calls a southern journey; that many of his friends were acquainted with his movements; and that, so far from wishing to bury himself in solitude, he was extremely vexed that a clergyman, ~vho had promised to be his companion, disappointed him at the last moment. That Miss Vanhomrighs death deeply distressed him, is likely enough ; that it excited in him any such emotions as Scott and Sheridan describe, requires better proof than evidence which, on the only point on which it is capable of being tested, turns out to be false. To pass, however, from what is apocry- phal to what is authentic. A careful study of the letters which passed between Swift and Vanessa has satisfied us that his con- duct was, throughout, far less culpable than it would at first sight seem to have been. It resolves itself, in fact, into one great error. As soon as he discovered 9 that he had inspired a passion which he was unable to return, his intercourse with Miss Vanhomrigh should have immediate- ly ceased. All that followed, followed as the result of that error. And yet that error was, as his poem and correspon- dence clearly show, a mere error of judg- ment. Had he been aware that, by con- tinuing the intimacy, he ~vas pursuing a course which would be fatal to the girls happiness, he was either under the spell of a libertine passion, or he was a man of a nature inconceivably callous and brutal. That he was no libertine, is admitted even by those who have taken the least favora- ble view of his conduct; that he was nei- ther callous nor brutal, but, on the con- trary, a man pre-eminently distinguished by humanity and tenderness, is admitted by no one more emphatically than by Miss Vanhomrigh herself. The truth is, that he recognized no essential distinction be- tween the affection which exists between man and man, and the affection which ex- ists between man and woman. He knew, indeed, that in the latter case it frequent- ly becomes complicated with passion, but such a complication he regarded as purely accidental. It ~vas a mere excretion which, without the nutrition of sympathetic folly, would wither up and perish. It was a fault of the heart, which the head would and should correct. Hence he saw no necessity for breaking off a friendship which he valued. Hence the indifference, the easy jocularity, with which, after the first emotion of surprise was over, he per. sistently treated the poor girls rhapsodies. Time passed on, and before he could dis- cover his error it was too late to repair it. From the moment of Mrs. Vanhomrighs death he was, in truth, involved in a laby- rinth, out of which it was not merely diffi- cult, but simply impossible, to extricate himself. If he attempted, as he twice did attempt, to take the step to which duty pointed, entreaties which would have melted a heart far more obdurate than his, instantly recalled him. Could he leave a miserable girl such is the burden of the first appeal which was made to him to struggle alone with a wretch of a broth- er, cunning executors, and importunate creditors? Pray what, she asks, can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman?, All I beg is, that you will for once counterfeit, since you cant do otherwise, that indulgent friend you once were, till I get the better of these difficulties. He assists her; he visits her; he sees her safely through her difficulties, and he again withdraws. Upon 10 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. that, she breaks out into hysterical rav- ing, informs him that she had been on the point of destroying herself, and appeals to him in the most piteous terms to renew his visits. To this he replies in the letter which we have already quoted; and he grants the favor so importunately and in- delicately extorted. It is remarkable that throughout the whole correspondence she makes no attempt to conceal the fact that she is forcing herself upon him, frankly admitting over and over again that there had been nothing either in his actions or in his words to justify her conduct. We have searched carefully for any indica- tions of a belief, or even of a hint on her part, that she had been deceived or mis- led. Nothing of the kind is to be found. From beginning to end it is the same story; on the womans side, blind, uncon- trollable passion; on Swifts side, per- plexity, commiseration, undeviating kind- ness. Believe me, she says at the commencement of one of her letters, it is with the utmost regret that I now coin- plain to you, because I know your good nature that you cannot see any human creature miserable without being sensibly touched; yet what can I do? I must unload my heart. But she was not al- ways, it may be added, in the melting mood. Occasionally she expressed her- self in very different language. It is easy to conceive Swifts embarrassment on having the following missive handed in to him while entertaining a party of friends at the deanery: I believe you thought I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for your own quiet, to alter your behavior quickly, that is, to visit her more frequently, though he had already told her that scan- dal was beginning to be busy with their names, for I have too much spirit to sit down con- tented with this treatment. Pray think calmly of it Is it not better to come of yourself than to be brought by force, and that perhaps when you have the most agreeable engagement in the world [an allusion probably to Esther Johnson] for when I undertake anything, I dont love to do it by halves. In a letter ~vritten not long afterwards, he complains bitterly of the embarrass- ment which one of her communications had caused. I received your letter, he ~vrites, when some company was with me on Saturday, and it put me into such confusion, that I could not tell what to do. His patience was often, no doubt, severely tried, and his irritation appears occasionally to have found sharp expres- sion. But it is clear from his letters that until within a few months of Vanessas death he studied in every way to soothe and cheer her. What finally parted them we have now no means of knowing. That they parted in anger and were never af- terwards reconciled seems pretty certain. It is possible that the habits of intemper- ance, to which Miss Vanhomrigh latterly gave way, may have led to some action or some expression which Swift could neither pardon nor forget. Far be it from us to speak a harsh or disrespectful word of this unhappy wom- an. Never, perhaps, has the grave closed over a sadder or more truly tragical life. It is a story which no man of sensibility could possibly follow without deep emo- tion. But such emotion should not be permitted to blind us to justice and truth. We do most strongly protest against the course adopted by writers like Jeffrey and Thackeray, in treating of this portion of Swifts life. They assume that the meas- ure of Vanessas frenzy is the measure of Swifts culpability. They argue that, because she was infatuated, he was in- human. They print long extracts from her ravings, and then ask, with indigna- tion, whether there could be two opinions about the man whose conduct had wrought such wretchedness. Nor is it surprising that they should have carried their point. The world knows that, when women ad- dress men in such language as Vanessa addresses Swift, they are not as a rule taking the initiative; that if feminine passion is strong, feminine delicacy is stronger; and that nothing is more im- probable than that a young and eminently attractive woman should, for twelve years, continue, without the smallest en- courage ment, to force her love on a man ~vho, though double her age, was still in the prime of life. And yet this was most assuredly the case. We sincerely pity Vanessa, but we contend that there was nothing in Swifts conduct to justify the charges which hostile biographers have brought against him. Indeed, we feel strongly tempted to exclaim with honest Webster Condemn you him for that the maid did love him? So may you blame some fair and crystal river For that some melancholic distracted woman Hath drownd herself in t. But it is only right to say that those DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND~ ii who have judged him thus harshly have proceeded on an assumption which would, if correct, have greatly modified our own view of the question. If Swift was the husband of Esther Johnson, we admit, without the smallest hesitation, that his conduct was all that his enemies would represent it. It was at once cruel and mean; it was at once cowardly and treach- erous; it was at once lying and hypocriti- cal. In that case every visit he paid, every letter he wrote to Miss Vanhom- righ, subsequent to 1716, was derogatory to him. We will go further. In that case, we are prepared to believe the very worst of him, not only in his relations with Stella and Vanessa, but in his rela- tions with men and the world. In that case, there is no ambiguous action, either in his public or in his private career, which does not become pregnant with suspicion. For in that case, he stands convicted of having passed half his life in systemati- cally practising, and in compelling the woman he loved to practise systematically, the two vices, which of all vices he pro- fessed to hold in the deepest abhorrence. Those who know anything of Swift, know with what loathing he always shrank from anythin~ bearing the remotest resem- blance to duplicity and falsehood. As a political pamphleteer, he mi ~ht, like his brother penmen, allow himself license, but in the ordinary intercourse of life it was his habit to exact and assume abso- lute sincerity. It was the virtue, indeed, on which he ostentatiously prided himself; it was the virtue by which, in the opinion of those who were intimate with him, he was most distinguished. Dr. Swift may be described, observed Bolingbroke 5m one occasion, as a hypocrite reversed. In discussing, therefore, the question of his supposed marriage, the point at issue is not simply ~vhether he ~vas the husband of Esther Johnson, but whether ~ve are to believe him capable of acting in a manner wholly inconsistent with his principles and his reputation. In other words, whether we are to believe that a man whose scrupulous veracity and whose re- pugnance to untruth in any form were proverbial, would, with the object of con- cealing what there was surely no adequate motive for concealing, deliberately devise the subtlest and most elaborate system of hypocrisy ever yet exposed to the world. We will illustrate what we mean. It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that the documents bearing on Swifts re- lations with Esther Johnson are very voluminous, and, from a biographical point of view, of unusual value. We have the verses which he was accustomed to send to her on the anniversary of her birthday. XVe have the journal addressed to her during his residence in London. We have allusions to her in his most secret memoranda. XVe have the letters written in agony to Worral, Stopford, and Sheri- dan, when he expected that every post would bring him news of her death. We have the prayers ~vhich he offered up at her bedside during her last hours; and we have the whole history of his acquaint- ance with her, written with his own hand while she was still lying unburied, a history intended for no eye but his own. Now, from the beginning to the end of these documents, there is not one line which could by any possibility be tortured into an indication that she was his wife. Throughout, the language is the same. He addresses her as the kindest and wisest of his friends. He described her in his memoir as the truest, most virtu- ous and valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed with. In all his letters he alludes to her in simi- lar terms. In the diary at Holyhead she is his dearest friend. At her bedside, when the end was hourly expected, he prays for her as his dear and useful friend. There is not, he writes to Dr. Stopford on the occasion of Stellas fatal illness, a greater folly than that of en- tering into too strict and particular friend- ship, with the loss of which a man must be absolutely miserable, but especially at an age when it is too late to engage in a new friendship besides, this was a per- son of my own rearing and instructing from childhood; but, pardon me, I know not what I am saying, but, believe me, that violent friendship is much more last- ing and engaging than violent love. If Stella was his wife, could hypocrisy go further?* It is certain that he not only led all who were acquainted with him to believe that he was unmarried, but when. ever he spoke of wedlock, he spoke of it Is it credible that a man could have addressed a woman who had, if the theory of the marriage is true, been his wife for four years, in lines like these lines, we may add, intended for no eyes but her own? Thou Stella wert no longer young When first for thee my harp was strung, Without one word of Cupids darts, Of killing eyes or bleeding hearts. With friendship and esteem possessd I neer admitted love a guest. In all the habitudes of life, The friend, the mistress, and the wife, Variety we still pursue, In pleacure seek for something new; Bot his pursuits are at an end Whom Stella chooses for a friend. 12 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. as a thing utterly alien to his tastes and inclinations. I never yet, he once said to a gentleman who was speaking to him about marriage, saw the woman I would wish to make my wife. It would be easy to multiply instances, both in his corre- spondence and in his recorded conversa- tion, in which, if he vas even formally a married man, he went out of his way to indulge in unnecessary hyiocrisy. What, again, could be more improbable than that Esther Johnson, a woman of distinouished piety, nay a woman whose detestation of falsehood formed, as Swift has himself told us, one of her chief attractions, would, when on the point of death, preface her will with a wholly gratuitious lie ? For not only is that will signed with her maiden name, but in the first clause she describes herself as an unmarried woman. The external evidence against the mar- riage appears to us equally conclusive. If there was any person entitled to speak with authority on the subject, that person was assuredly Mrs. Dingley. For twenty- nine years, from the commencement, that is to say, of Swifts intimate connection with Miss Johnson till the day of Miss Johnsons death, she had been her insep- arable companion, her friend and confi- dante. She had shared the same lodg- ings with her; it was understood that Swift and Esther were to hav~ no secrets apart from her \Vhen they met, they met in her presence; what they wrote, passed, by Swifts special request, through her hands. Now it is well known that Mrs. Dingl ey was convinced that no mar- riage had ever taken place. The whole story was, she said, an idle tale. Two of Stellas executors, Dr. Corbet and Mr. Rochford, distinctly stated that no suspi- cion of a marriage had ever even crossed their minds, though they had seen the dean and Esther together a thousand times. Swifts housekeeper, Mrs Brent, a shrewd and observant woman, who resided at the deanery during the whole period of her masters intimacy with Miss Johnson, was satisfied that there had been no marriage. So said Mrs. Ridgeway, who succeeded her as housekeeper, and who watched over the dean in his declining years. But no testimony will, we think, be allowed to carry greater weight than that of I)r. John Lyon. He was one of Swifts most inti- mate friends, and when the state of the de~ens health was such that it had become necessary to place him under surveillance, Lyon was the person selected to under- take the duty. He lived with him at the deanery he had full control over his papers; he was consequently brought into contact with all who corresponded with him, and with all who visited him. He had thus at his command every contem- porary source of information. Not long after the story was first circulated, he set to work to ascertain, if possible, the truth. The result of his investigations was to convince him that there was abso- lutely no foundation for it but popular gossip, unsupported by a particle of evi- dence. Such is the evidence against the mar- riage. We will now briefly review the evidence in its favor. The first writer who mentions it is Orrery, and his words are these: Stella was the concealed but undoubted wife of Dr. Swift, and if my informations are right, she was married to him in the year 1716 by Dr. Ash, then Bishop of Clogher. On this we shall merely remark that he offers no proof whatever of what he asserts, thouTh he must have known well enough that what he asserted was contrary to current tradi- tion ; that in thus expressing himself he was guilty of gross inconsistency, as he had nine years before maintained the op- posite opinion ; * and that there is every reason to believe that he resorted to this fiction, as he resorted to other fictions, with the simple object of seasoning his narrative with the piquant scandal in which he notoriously delighted. The next deponent is Delany, whose independent testimony would, we admit, have carried great weight with it. But Delany simply follows Orrery, without explaining his reason for doing so, without bringing for- ward anything in proof of ~vhat Orrery had stated, and without contributing a single fact on his own authority. Such was the story in its first stage. In 1780 a new particular was added, and a new authority was cited. The new particular was, that the marriage took place in the garden; the new authority was Dr. Sam- uel Madden, and the narrator was Dr. Johnson. Of Madden it may suffice to say that there is no proof that he was acquainted either with Swift himself or with any member of Swifts circle; that in temper and blood he was half French, half Irish; and that as a writer he is chiefly known as the author of a work wilder and more absurd than the wildest and most absurd of Whistons prophecies, or As- gills paradoxes. On the value of the unsupported testimony of such a person * See his letter to Deane Swift, dated Dec. 4th, 1742; Scott, vol. xix., p. 336. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 3 there is surely no necessity for comment- ing. Next comes Sheridans account, which, as it adds an incident very much to Swifts discredit, it is necessary to ex- amine with some care. The substance of it is this. That, at the earnest solicita- tion of Stella, Swift consented to marry her: that the marriage ceremony was performed without witnesses, and on two conditions ; first, that they should con- tinue to live separately; and secondly, that their union should remain a secret: that for some years these conditions were observed, but that on her death-bed Stella implored Swift to acknowledge her as his wife; that to this request Swift made no reply, but, turning on his heel, left the room, and never afterwards saw her. The first part of this story he professes to have derived from Mrs. Sican, the sec- ond part from his father. We should be sorry to charge Sheridan with deliberate falsehood, but his whole account of Swifts relations with Miss Johnson teems with inconsistencies and improbabilities so glaring, that it is impossible to place the smallest confidence in what he says. He here tells us that the marriage had been kept a profound secret; in another place he tells us that Stella had herself com- municated it to Miss Vanhomrigh. He admits that the only unequivocal proof of the marriage is the evidence of Dr. Sheri- dan, and yet in his account of the mar- riage he cites as his authority, not Dr. Sheridan, but Mrs. Sican. But a single circumstance is, we think, quite sufficient to prove the utterly untrustworthy charac- ter of his assertions. He informs us, on the authority of his father, that Stella was so enraged by Swifts refusal to acknowl- edge her as his wife, that to sl)ite and annoy him she bequeathed her fortune to a public charity. A reference to Swifts correspondence * will show that it was in accordance with his wishes that she thus disposed of her property. A reference to the will itself will show that, so far from expressing ill-will towards him, she left him her strong box and all her papers. Nor is this all. His statement is flatly con- tradicted both by Delany and by Deane Swift. Delany tells us that he had been informed by a friend that Swift had ear- nestly desired to acknowledge the mar- riage, but that Stella had wished it to remain a secret. Deane Swift assured Orrery, on the authority of Mrs. White- way, that Stella had told Sheridan that Swift had offered to declare the marriage * See Swifts letter to Worral. dated July e5th, 1726. to the world, but that she had refused. Again, Sheridan asserts that his father, Dr. Sheridan, was present during the sup- posed conversation between Swift and Stella. Mrs. Whiteway, on the contrary, assured Deane Swift that Dr. Sheridan was not present on that occasion. This brings us to the last deponent whose evidence is worth consideration. In 1789 Mr. Monck Berkeley brought for. ward the authority of a Mrs. Hearne, who was, it seems, a niece of Esther Johnson, to prove that the dean had made Stella his wife. As nothing, however, is knowrl of the history of Mrs. Hearne, and as she cited nothing in corroboration of her statement, except vaguely that it was a tradition among her relatives a tradi- tion which was of course just as likely to have had its origin from the narratives of Orrery and Delany as in any authentic communication, no importance what- ever can be attached to it. But the evi- dence on which Monck Berkeley chiefly relied was not that of Mrs. Hearne. I was, he says, informed by the relict of Bishop Berkeley that her husband had as- sured her of the truth of Swifts marriage, as the Bishop of Clogher, who had per- formed the ceremony, had himself com- municated the circumstance to him. If this could be depended on, it would, of course, be of great importance. But, un- fortunately for Monck Berkeley, and for Monck Berkeleys adherents, it can be conclusively proved that no such commu- nication could have taken place. In 1715, a year before the supposed marriage was solemnized, Berkeley was in Italy, where he remained till 1721. Between 1716 and 1717 it is certain that the Bishop of Clogher never left Ireland, and at the end of 1717 he died. As for the testimony on which Scott lays so much stress, the story, we mean, about Mrs. Whiteway having heard Swift mutter to Stella that if she wished, it should be owned, and of hav- ing heard Stella sigh back to Swift that it was too late; we shall merely ob- serve, first, that it was communicated about ninety years after the supposed words had been spoken, not by the son of Mrs. Whiteway, who, had he known of it or had he attached the smallest impor- tance to it, would have inserted it in his Memoirs of Swift, but by her grand- son, Theophilus Swift, a person of no note and of no authority; secondly, it was ad- mitted that those words, and that those words only, had been heard, and that con- sequently there was nothing to indicate either that the words themselves, or that 4 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. the conversation of which they formed a portion, had any reference to the mar- riage. How then stands the case? Even thus. Against the marriage we have the fact that there is no documentary evidence of its having been solemnized; that, so far from there being any evidence of it deducible from the conduct of Swift and Stella, Orrery himself admits that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that they had ever been alone to- gether durin~, their whole lives. We have the fact, that Esther Johnson, at a time when there could have been no possible motive for falsehood, emphatically as- serted that she was unmarried: the fact, that Swift led every one to believe that he was unmarried: the fact, that Esther Johnsons bosom friend and inseparable companion was satisfied that there had been no marriage: the fact, that two of Swifts housekeepers, two of Stellas ex- ecutors, and Dr. Lyon, were satisfied that there had been no marriage. It is easy to say that all that has been advanced merely proves that the marriage was a secret, and that the secret was well kept. But that is no answer. The question must be argued on evidence; and it is in- cumbent on those who insist, in the teeth of such evidence as we have adduced, that a marriage was solemnized, to produce evidence as satisfactory. This they have failed to do.* Till they have done so, we decline to charge Swift with mendacity and hypocrisy, and to convict him of hav- ing acted both meanly and treacherously in his dealings with the two women whose names will, for all time, be bound up with his. In itself it matters not, as we need scarcely say, two straws to any one whether Swift was or was not the husband of Stella. But it matters, we submit, a great deal whether the world is to be jus- tified in casting a slur on the memory of an illustrious man. But to return from our long digression. In the summer of 1720 appeared the first of those famous pamphlets, which have made the name of Swift imperishable in Irish annals. It was entitled A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufac- tures, and its ostensible object was to induce the people of Ireland to rely en- tirely, so far at least as house furniture and wearing apparel were concerned, on their own industry and on their own prod- uce; and to close their markets against everything wearable which should be im- ported from England. In the first part of this proposal there was nothing new. It was merely the embodiment of a resolu- tion which had been repeatedly passed by the Irish House of Commons, and passed without opposition from the crown. We greatly doubt whether even the second part of the proposal, audacious thouceb it undoubtedly was, would in itself have pro- voked the English government to retali- ate. But the ostensible object of the pamphlet, as it requires very little pene- tration to see, was by no means its only or indeed its chief object. In effect it was a bitter protest against the inhuman- ity and injustice which had since i66~ characterized the Irish policy of England; and it was an appeal to Ireland to assert her independence in the only way in which fortune had as yet enabled her. Both as a protest and as an appeal, the pamphlet was equally justified. Even now, on recalling those cruel statutes, which completed between 1665 and 1699 the annihilation of Jrish trade, it is impos- sible not to feel something of the indigna- tion which burned in Swift. In i66o there was every prospect that in a few years Ireland might become a happy and prosperous country. Her natural advan- tages were great. In no regions within the compass of the British Isles was the soil more fertile. As pasture-land she was to the modern world, what Argos was to the ancient. She was not without nav- igable rivers; the ports and harbors with which nature had bountifully provided her were the envy of every maritime nation in Europe; and her geographical position was eminently propitious to commercial enterprise. For the first time in her his- tory she was at peace. The aborigines had at last succumbed to the Englishry. A race of sturdy and industrious colonists were rapidly changing the face of the country. Agriculture was thriving. A remunerative trade in live cattle and in miscellaneous farm produce had been opened with England; a still more re- munerative trade in manufactured wool was holding out prospects still more promising. There were even hopes of an extensive mercantile connection with the colonies. But the dawn of this fair day was soon overcast. Impelled partly by * We have read with care Mr. Craiks elaborate dis- jealousy, and partly by that short-sighted cussion in favor of the marriage. We can only say that selfishness which ~vas, in former days, so we are greatly surprised that Mr. Craik should, on such evidence as he there adduces, think himself justified in unhappily conspicuous in her commercial asserting confidently that the marriage took place. relations with subject States, England DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. is proceeded to the systematic destruction begun to do its revolting work, were de- of Irish commerce and of Irish industrial voured voraciously. Burdy tells us that art. First came the two statutes forbid- these famishing savages would surrepti- ding the importation of live cattle and tiously bleed the cattle which they had farm produce into England, and Ireland not the courage to steal, and, boiling the was at once deprived of her chief source of blood with sorrel, convert the sickening revenue. Then came the statutes which mixture into food. Epidemic diseases, annihilated her colonial trade. Crushing and all the loathsome maladies which and terrible though these blows were, she were the natural inheritance of men whose still, however, continued to struggle on, food was the food of hogs and jackals, crippled and dispirited indeed, but not en- whose dwellings were scarcelydistinguish- tirely without heart. But in 1699 was able from dunghills, and whose personal enacted the statute which completed her habits were filthy even to beastliness, ruin. By this she was prohibited from raged with a fury rarely witnessed in seeking any vent for her raw and manu- Western latitudes. Not less deplorable factured wool, except in England and vas the spectacle presented by the coun- Wales, where the duties imposed on both try itself. Whoever took a journey these commodities were so heavy as virtu- through Ireland, says Swift, would be ally to exclude them from the market. apt to imagine himself travelling in Lap- The immediate result of this atrocious land or Iceland. In the south, in the measure was to turn flourishing villages east, and in the west, stretched vast tracts into deserts, and to throw between twenty of land untilled and unpeopled, mere and thirty thousand able-bodied and in- waste and solitude. Even where Nature dustrious artisans on public charity. The had been most bounteous, the traveller ultimate result of all these measures was might wander for miles without finding a the complete paralysis of operative ener- single habitation, ~vithout meeting a sin- gy, the emigration of the only class who gle human being, without beholding a sin- were of benefit to the community, and gle trace of human culture. Many of the the commencement of a period of un- churches vere roofless, the walls still gap- precedented wretchedness and degrada- ing with the breaches which the cannon tion. of Cromwell had made in them. Almost The condition of Ireland between 1700 all the old seats of the nobility were in and 1750 was in truth such as no histo- ruins: In the villages and country towns, nan, who was not prepared to have his every object on which the eye rested told narrative laid aside with disgust and in- the same lamentable story. credulity, would venture to depict. If Much of this misery was undoubtedly analogy is to be sought for it, it must be to be attributed to the inhabitants them- ~sough tin the scenes through which, in the selves. Never had co-operation and con- frightful fiction of Monti, the disembod- cord been more necessary, but never had ied spirit of Bassville was condemned to civil and religious dissension raged with roam. In a time of peace the unhappy greater fury than it was raging now. island suffered all the most terrible ca- Feuds in religion, feuds in politics, feuds lamities which follow in the train of war. which had their origin in private differ- Famine succeeding famine decimated the ences, and feuds which had descended as provincial villages, and depopulated whole a cursed heirloom from father to child, regions. Travellers have described how rankled in their hearts and inflamed their their way has lain through districts strewn blood. There was the old enmity between like a battle-field with unburied corpses, the aborigines and the English. There ~vhich lay some in ditches, some on the was a deadly feud between the Catholics roadside, and some on heaps of offal, the and the Protestants; there was a feud not prey of dogs and carrion birds. Even less deadly between the Episcopalians and when there was no actual famine, the food the . Nonconformists, while the ~var be- of the rustic vulgar was often such as our tween Whig and Tory was prosecuted domestic animals would reject with dis- with a ferocity and malignity scarcely gust. Their ordinary fare was buttermilk human. There is hardly a Whig in Ire- and potatoes, and when these failed, they land, wrote Swift to Sheridan, who were at the mercy of fortune. Frequently j would allow a potato and buttermilk to a the pot of the wretched cottier contained reputed Tory. But this was not all. nothing but the product of the marsh and The principal landowners resided in En- the waste-ground. The flesh of a horse gland, leaving as their lieutenants a class which had died in harness, the flesh of of men known in Irish history as middle- sylvan vermin, even when corruption had men. I~ may be doubted whether since DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. the days of the Roman ~ub/icani oppres- sion and rapacity had ever assumed a shape so odious as they assumed in these men. The middleman was, as a rule, en- tirely destitute of education; his tastes were low, his habits debauched and reck. lessly extravagant. Long familiarity with such scenes as we have described had rendered him not merely indifferent to human suffering, but ruthless and brutal. All the tenancies held under him were at rack-rent, and with the extraction of that rent, or what was, in kind, equivalent to that rent, began and ended his relations with his tenants. As many of those ten- ants were little better than impecunious serfs, often insolvent and always in ar- rears, it was only by keeping a: wary eye on their movements, and by pouncing with seasonable avidity on anything of which they might happen to become l)os- sessed, either by the labor of their hands, or by some accident of fortune, that he could turn them to account. Sometimes the produce of the potato-plot became his prey, sometimes their agricultural tools; not unfrequently he would seize every- thing which belonged to them, and driving them with their wives and children, often under circumstances of revolting cruelty, out of their cabins, send them to perish of cold and hunger in the open country. Nor were the Irish provincial gentry in any way superior to the middlemen. Swift, indeed, regarded them with still greater detestation. As public men, they were chiefly remarkable for their savage op- pression of the clergy, for the merciless- ness with which they exacted their rack- rents from the tenantry, and for the mean ingenuity with which they contrived to make capital out of the miseries of their country. In private life they were disso- lute, litigious, and arrogant, and their vices would comprehend some of the worst vices incident to maninhuman cruelty, tyranny in its most repulsive as- pects, brutal appetites forcibly gratified, or gratified under circumstances scarcely less atrocious, and an ostentatious law- lessness which revelled unchecked either by civil authority or by religion. But whatever degree of culpability may attach itself to the inhabitants of Ireland, there can be no question that the English government were in the main responsible for the existence of this pandemonium. It requires very little sagacity to see that the miseries of Ireland flowed naturally and inevitably from the paralysis of na- tional industry, from the alienation of the national revenue, from the complete dis location of the machinery of government, and from the almost total absence, so far at least as the masses were concerned, of the ameliorating influences of culture and religion. We have already alluded to the statutes which annihilated the trade and prostrated the industrial energy of the country. Equally iniquitous and oppres- sive was the alienation of the revenue. On that revenue had been quartered the parasites and mistresses of succeeding generations of English kings. Almost all the most remunerative public posts were sinecures in the possession of men who resided in England. Indeed, some of these sinecurists had never set foot on Irish earth But nothing was more de- rogato ry to England than the scandalous condition of the Protestant hierarchy. On that body depended not only the spiritual welfare, but the education of the multi- tude; and their responsibility was the greater in consequence of the inhibitions which had been laid by the legislature on the Catholic priesthood. But the Protes- tant clergy were, as a class, a scandal to Christendom. Many of the bishops would have disgraced the hierarchy of Henry III. Their ignorance, their apathy, their nepotism, their sensuality, passed into proverbs. It was not uncommon for them to abandon even the semblance of their sacred character, and to live the life of jo- vial country squires, their palaces ringing with revelry, their dioceses mere anarchy. If their sees were not to their taste, they resided elsewhere. The Bishop of Down, for example, settled. at Hammersmith, where he lived for twenty years without having once during the whole of that time set foot in his diocese. That there were a few noble exceptions must in justice be admitted. No Churchman could pro- nounce the names of Berkeley, King, and Synge, without reverence. But the vir- tues of these illustrious prelates had little influence either on their degenerate peers or on the inferior clergy. Of this body it would not be too much to say that no sec- tion of the demoralized society, of which they formed a part, was more demoralized or so completely despicable. Here and there indeed might be found a priest who resided among his parishioners, and who performed conscientiously the duties of his profession. Such a priest was Skel- ton, and such a priest was Jackson, but Skelton and Jackson were to the general body of the minor clergy what Dr. Prim- rose was to Trulliber, or what the parson in the Canterbury Tales is to the par- son in Peregrine Pickle. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 7 Few men could have contemplated un- pronounced to be seditious, factious, moved the spectacle of a country in such and virulent, and the attention of Whit- a condition as this. Its effect on Swift shed, then chief justice of Ireland, was was to excite emotions which in ordinary directed to it. Whitshed, who had little men are seldom excited save by personal sympathy with Irish agitation, and who injuries. It fevered his blood, it broke may possibly have been acting on instruc- his rest, it drove him at times half-frantic tions from England, proceeded at once to with furious indignation, it sunk him at extreme measures. The pamphlet was times in abysses of sullen despondency. laid before the grand jury of the county He brooded over it in solitude; it is his and the city. The printer was arrested. constant theme in his correspondence; it The trial came on, and a disgraceful scene was his constant topic in conversation, ensued. The jury acquitted the prisoner. He spoke of it as eating his flesh and ex- The chief justice refused to accept the hausting his spirits. For a while he cher- verdict, and the jury were sent back to ished the hope that these evils, vast and reconsider their decision. Again they complicated though they were, were not found the man not guilty, and again Whit- beyond remedy. And this remedy, he shed declined to record the verdict. Nine thought, lay not in appealing to the jus. times was this odious farce repeated, until tice and humanity of the English govern. the wretched men, worn out by physical ment, but in appealing to the Irish them- fatigue, left the case by special verdict in selves, to the landed gentry, to the mid- the hands of the judge. But Whitsheds dlemen, to the manufacturers, to the iniquitous triumph was merely nominal, clergy. Throughout, his object was two- for his conduct had excited such disgust, foldthe internal reformation of the that it was deemed advisable to put off kingdom, and the establishment of the the trial of the verdict. Successive post- principle, that Ireland ought either to be ponements terminated at last in the lord autonomous, or on a footing of exact po- lieutenant granting a nolleprosequl. Such litical equality with the mother country. a concession to popular feeling the En- His first pamphlet, the Proposal for glish government had never before made. the Universal Use of Irish Manufac- It was a victory on which the Irish justly tures, is a masterpiece. Addressed, in congratulated themselves. It was a vic- what it insinuates, to the passions, and in tory destined, indeed, to form a new era what it directly asserts, to the reason, it in their history. is at once an inflammatory harangue and Nothing we know of Swift illustrates a manual of sober counsel. In a fe~v more strikingly his tact and sagacity as a plain paragraphs the secret of Irelands political leader than his conduct at this wretchedness is laid bare; how far it is in juncture. A less skilful strategist ~vould, her power to alleviate that wretchedness in the elation of triumph, have been im- is demonstrated, and the step which ought patient for new triumphs, would have lost immediately to be taken is pointed out. no tune in pressing eagerly forward, and In the proposal that she should close her would thus have forced on a crisis when a markets against English goods, and draw crisis was premature. But Swift saw that entirely on her own manufactures, there affairs were at that stage when the wisest was nothing treasonable, or even disre- course is to leave them to ourselves. The spectful, to England. It was no more fire had been kindled it night be safely than she had a l)erfect right to do; it was trusted to spread; the leaven of dissatis- no more than the English government faction and resistance ~vas seething it would probably have permitted her to was best to leave it to ferment. Up to a do. But the pamphlet had another side. certain point the course of revolution is Though there is not perhaps a sentence determined by human agency, but in all in it which could, so far as the mere revolutions there is a point at which hu- words are concerned, have been chal- man agency is l)owerless, and the reins lenbed as either inflammatory or insult- are in the hands of fortune. At such ing, the whole piece is in effect a fierce crises occur those apparently insignificant and bitter commentary on the tyranny of accidents, the effects of which are so the mother country, and an appeal to Ire- strangely disproportionate to the charac- land to strike, if not for independence, at ter of the accidents themselves, and which least for indemnity. The pamphlet, thou~h are to political communities what the it appeared, as almost all Swifts pain- spark is to combustible explosives. Such phlets did appear, anonymously, instantly a crisis had not as yet arrived in the attracted attention. The English govern- strug~le between England and Ireland, inent became alarmed. The work was but for such a crisis and he saw it was LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2238 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. maturing Swift deemed it expedient to wait. Meanwhile his pen was not idle. In 1720 there was a project for establishino- a National Bank in Dublin. The scheme ~vas regarded with favor by some of the leading citizens and by many of the petty tradesmen; and subscription-lists were opened. But Swift was too sound a finan- cier not to see that an institution emi- nently useful, and indeed necessary, in a prosperous community, can only end in fraud and mischief in a community where stock is incommensurate with credit. Ac- cordingly he ridiculed the scheme in three ludicrous pamphlets we doubt greatly the authenticity of the other two attrib- uted to him by Scottand his satire was so efficacious, that when in the ensuing session the proposal was discussed in Parliament, it was almost unanimously rejected. These pamphlets were succeeded a few months afterwards by a little piece, in which the extraordinary versatility of Swifts genius is very strikingly and very amusingly illustrated. The streets of Dublin had for several years been infested with gangs of marauders, whose depreda- tions and violence made them the terror of the citizens. A man who ventured out unarmed at night, carried, it was said, his life in his hands. Scarce a week passed without some gross outrage. At such a pitch, indeed, had their lawlessness and audacity arrived, that it had become per- ilous even in broad daylight to walk in any but the most frequented thorough- fares. Pre-eminent among these miscre- ants was one Ebenezer Elliston. The fellow had long succeeded in eluding the police, but had recently been captured and publicly executed. In itself, how- ever, the execution would probably have had very little effect, for the class to which Elliston belonged is, as a rule, either too sanguine or too obtuse to take warning from example. But on the very day of the execution appeared, in the form of a broadsheet, an announcement, which carried apprehension and dismay into the heart of the boldest malefactors in Dublin. This was The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezer Elliston, published, as ~vas stated on the title-page, by his own desire, and for the public good. In it he not only solemnly ex- horted his brother bandits to amend their lives, and to avoid the fate which had most righteously overtaken himself and would in the end inevitably overtake them, but he informed them that, having resolved to atone in some measure for his own crimes against God and society, he had thought it his duty to do what in him lay to assist the government in suppress- ing the crimes of others. For that pur- pose, I have, he said, left ~vith an honest man the names of all my wicked brethren, the present places of their abode, with a short account of tile chief crimes they have committed. I have likewise set down the names of those we call our set- ters, of the wicked houses we frequent, and of those who receive and buy our stolen goods. He then goes o ntosay that the person with whom the paper had been deposited would, on hearing of tile arrest of any rogue whose name was men- tioned in it, place the document in the hands of the government. And of this, he adds, I hereby give my companions fair and public warning, and hope they will take it. As Elliston was known to be a man of education, and as the informa- tion displayed in the piece was such as it seemed scarcely possible that any one ~vho was not in the secrets of Ellistons fraternity could possess, the genuineness of the confession was never for a moment doubted. Its effect was, we are told, immediately apparent. Brigandism lost heart; many of the leading bandits quit- ted the city; and the dean ~vas enabled to boast that Dublin enjoyed, for a time at least, almost complete immunity from the most formidable of social pests. And now arrived, suddenly and unex- pectedly, that crisis in the struggle with England, which Swift had with judicious patience been so long awaiting. For some years there had been a great scar- city of copper money, and the deficiency had, as a natural consequence, led to the circulation of debased and counterfeit coins on a very large scale Accordingly, in the spring of 1722, a memorial was pre- sented to the lords of the treasury, stating the grievance and petitioning for a rem- edy. The petition was considered, and the memorialists were informed that measures would be immediately taken for remedying the evil. Such courteous alac- rity had not been usual with the English government in dealing with Irish griev- ances, and excited, not unnaturally, some surprise. But it was soon explained. In a few weeks intelligence reached Dublin that a patent had been granted to a per- son of the name of Wood, empowerin~ him to coin as his exclusive right ioSoool. worth of farthings and halfpence for cii- culation in Ireland. As less than a third- of that sum in halfpence and farthings DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 9 would have sufficed, and more than suf- revenue, and destructive to the commerce ficed, for what was needed, the announce- of Ireland. Walpole had the good sense ment was received with astonishment. to see that these addresses could not with And astonishment soon passed into indig- safety be treated as the previous appeals nation. For it appeared on enquiry, that had been treated, and the two Houses the patent had been granted without con- were informed, in courteous and concilia- suiting the Irish Privy Council or any tory terms, that the matter would receive Irish official, nay, even without consulting his Majestys most careful consideration. the lord lieutenant, though he was then And the promise was kept. A committee residing in London. It appeared, on fur- of the Privy Council was specially con- ther inquiry, that the whole transaction vened. Their sittings extended over had been a disgraceful job, and that the many weeks, and it is, we think, abun- person to whom the patent had been con- dantly clear that they performed their ceded was a mere adventurer, whose sole duties with scrupulous conscientiousness. care was to make the grant sufficiently Walpole now hoped, and hoped not with- remunerative to indemnify himself for a out reason, that Ireland would be paci- heavy bribe which he had paid for ob- fled; or that, at the very worst, a compro- taming it, and to fill his own pockets. mise, which ~vould save the ministry from The inference was obvious. As the the humiliation of having to withdraw the profits of the man would be in proportion patent, could be arranged. But before the to the quality of copper coin turned out committee could arrive at any conclusion, by him, and in proportion to the inferiority an event had occurred which dashed all of the metal employed in the manufacture, these hopes to the ground. his first object would be the indefinite Up to this point Swift appears to have multiplication of his coinage, and his remained passive, though it is, we think, second object would be its debasement, highly probable that he had contributed In August, the commissioners of the rev- largely to the pasquinade and broadsheet enue addressed a letter to the secretary literature which had never ceased since of the lord lieutenant, respectfully appeal- the announcement of Woods patent to ing against the patent. This was suc- pour ~forth each week from the public ceeded by a second letter, directed to the press. He ~vas well aware that of all the lords commissioners of the treasury, in- expedi~nts ~vhich can be devised for keep- forming them that the money was not ing up popular irritation, and for impress- needed. But to these letters no attention ing on the will of many the will of one, was paid. Meanwhile the mint of Wood these trifles are the most efficacious. was hard at work. Several cargoes of the They had served his turn before, and coin had already been imported and were nothing is less likely than that lie neg- in circulation at the ports. Each week lected them now, It is certain that after brought with it a fresh influx. The the publication of the first Drapier Let- tradespeople, well aware of the prejudice ter he was a voluminous contributor to against the coins, were in the greatest what he has himself designated as Grub perplexity. If they accepted them, they Street literature. However that may be, accepted what might very possibly turn he commenced in the summer of 1724 that to dross in their hands; if they refused famous series of letters which, if they are them, they must either lose custom, or re- to be estimated by the effect they l)ro- ceive payment in a coinage no longer cur- duced, must be allowed the first place in rent. political literature. The opening letter In August, 1723, the lord lieutenant is a model of the art which lies in the con- arrived, and a few weeks afterwards Par- cealment of art. We have not the small- liament met. The greatest excitement est doubt that Swift designed from the prevailed in both Houses. Opinions very beginning to proceed from the dis- were divided; but it was resolved at last comfiture of XVood to the resuscitation of to appeal against the patent. On the Ireland, and on in regular progression to 23rd of September, an address to the king the vindication of Irish independence. was voted by the Commons. The lords But of this there is no indication in the followed with a similar address on the first letter. It is simply an appeal pur- 28th. It was asserted that Wood had porting to emanate from one M. B., a been guilty of fraud and deceit; that he draper, or, as Swift chooses to spell it, had infringed the terms of the patent, drapier, of Dublin, to the lower and mid- both in the quantity and in the quality of die classes, calling on them to have noth- the coin, and that the circulation of his ing to do with the farthings and halfpence coinage would be highly prejudicial to the of Wood. In a style pitched studiously 20 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. in the lowest key, and with the reasoning that comes home to the dullest and most illiterate of the vulgar, the Drapier points out to his countrymen that the value of money is determined by its intrinsic value; that the intrinsic value of Woods coins was at least six parts in seven be. low sterling; and that the man who was fool enough to accept payment in them, must to a certainty lose more than ten- pence in every shilling. If, he said, you accept the money, the kingdom is undone, and every poor man in it is un- done. On the monstrous exaggerations and palpable sophistry by which these as- sertions were supported, it would be mere waste of words to comment. The object which Swift sought to attain, was an ob- ject the legitimacy of which admits of no question, and if he sought its attainment by the only means which fortune had placed at his disposal, who can blame him? It will not be disputed that the concession of the patent had been a scan- dalous job; that in conferring it without consulting the Irish government, England had been guilty of grossly insulting the subjects of that government; that the profits which Wood anticipated were such as could be scarcely compatible with a strict adherence to the terms of his con- tract; and that, as a matter of fact, some of his coins were, in spite of the risk in- curred by detection, found on examina- tion to be below the stipulated value. The publication of the letter was as well-timed as the skill with which it was written was consummate. It appeared at a moment when the social and political atmosphere was in the highest possible state of inflammability, and ready at any moment to burst into flame. It was the spark which i~nited it, and the explosion was terrific. From Cork to Londonderry, from Galway to Dublin, Ireland was in a blaze. The feuds, which had for years been raging between party and party, be- tween sect and sect, between caste and caste, were suspended, and the ~vhole country responded as one man to the ap- peal of the Drapier. For the first time in Irish history the Cdt and the Saxon had a common bond. For once the Whig joined hand with the Tory. For once the same sentiment animated the Episcopa- lian and the Papist, the Presbyterian and the New Lighter, the Hanoverian and the Jacobite. On the 4th of August appeared a second letter from the Drapier. In substance it is like the first, partly a phil- ippic and partly an appeal, but it is a philippic infinitely more savage and scath ing, it is an appeal in a higher and more passionate strain. This letter was ad- dressed to Harding, the printer, in conse- quence of a paragraph which had three days before appeared in his newspaper. The paragraph was to the effect that the I~rivy Council, whose decision had not as yet been officially announced, had in their rel)ort recommended a compromise. The report of Sir Isaac Newton, who as mas- ter of the mint had been instructed to test the coin, had, it was stated, been favor- able to Wood. Wood, therefore, was to retain the right of mintage, but, in defer- ence to public feeling in Ireland, the amount of the sum to be coined by him was to be reduced from a hundred and eight thousand pounds to forty thousand. The justice and reasonableness of this proposal, a proposal which had emanated from Wood himself, must have been as obvious then as it is obvious now. But Swift saw at once that if the compromise were accepted, the victory, though nomi- nally on the side of Ireland, would in real- ity be on the side of England. In essence England had conceded nothing. Wood still retained his obnoxious prerogative England still assumed the right of confer- ring that prerogative. A particular evil had been lightened, but the greater evil, the evil principle, remained. But this was not all. We have already expressed our conviction that it was Swifts design from the very beginning to make the con- troversy with XVood the basis of far more extensive operations. It had furnished him with the means of ~vaking Ireland from long lethargy into fiery life. He looked to it to furnish him with the means of elevating her from servitude to inde- pendence, from ignominy to honor. His only fear was lest the spirit which he had kindled should burn itself out, or be pre- maturely quenched. And of this he must have felt that there ~vas some danger, ~vhen it was announced that England had given way much more than it was ex- pected she would give way, and much more than she had ever given way before. In his second letter, therefore, written to prepare his readers for the official an- nouncement of the report, he treats the proffered compromise with indignant dis- dain, and, with a skill which would have done honor to Demosthenes, tears the whole case of his opponents into shreds before they had had the opportunity of unfolding it. A few days afterwards the report ar- rived, and a third letter, with the now famous signature attached to it, followed DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 2r almost immediately. It was addressed to the nobility and gentry, as its predeces- sors had been addressed to the lower and middle classes. In effect it repeats, but repeats more emphatically and at greater length, what he had commented on in the second letter; the mendacity and impu- dence of Wood, and of the witnesses who had in the inquiry before the Privy Coun- cil borne testimony in Woods favor; the cruelty and illegality of the patent; the scandalous circumstances under which the patent had been obtained; the still more scandalous circumstances under which it had been executed; the intrinsic worth- lessness of the coins; the tyranny and injustice of the mother country. But the matter which forms the staple of the let- ter is not the matter which gives the letter its distinctive character. It is here that we catch for the first time unmistak- able blimpses of Swifts ultimate design. The words of the fourteenth paragraph could have left the English government in little doubt of the turn which the con- troversy was about to take. Were not the people of Ireland, asks the Drapier born as free as those of England? How have they perfected their freedom? Are not they subjects of the same king? Am I a freeman in England, and do I become a slave in six hours by crossing the Chan- nel? In another passage he adverts to some of the l)rincipal political grievances of the kingdom, sarcastically remarking that a people whose loyalty had been proof against so many attempts to shake it was surely entitled to as much consid- eration on the part of the crown, as a people whose loyalty had not always been above suspicion. The remark was as pointed as it was just. The events of 1715 and 1722 had left a deep stain on the loyalty of England, but Ireland had never wavered in her fidelity to the house of Hanover. But it was not simply in the character of the Drapier that Swift ~vas scattering his firebrands. In every form which po- litical literature can assume, from ribald songs roared out to thieves and harridans over their satires and disquisitions which infected with the popular madness the common room of Trinity and the drawing- rooms of College Green and Grafton Street, he sought to fan tumult into rebellion. He even brought the mat- ter into the pulpit. In a sermon, which Burke afterwards described as contain- ing the best motives to patriotism which were ever delivered in so small a com- pass, the dean called on his brethren to remember that next to their duty to their Creator caine their duty to them- selves and to their fellow-citizens, and that, as duty and religion bound them to resist what ~vas evil and mischievous, so duty and religion bound them to be as one man a Wood and Woods up- holders. Meanwhile meetings were held; clubs were formed, petitions and addresses came pouring in. The grand jury and the in- habitants of the Liberty of St. Patricks drew up a resolution formally announcing that they would neither receive nor tender payment in Woods coins. The butchers passed a resolution to the same effect; the brewers followed; and at last the very newsboys, or, as they were then called, the flying stationers, issued a manifesto against the coins. Nor was it in the cap- ital only that these bold proceedings were taking place. In many of the provincial towns similar resolutions were passed, and the excitement in Cork and Water- ford was such as seriously to menace the existence of the government. It was now apparent even to Walpole that some decisive step must be taken. The Duke of Grafton, whose fretful and choleric temper, and whose haughty and unconciliating manners, rendered him peculiarly ill-fitted for his position, was recalled, and the minister appointed to succeed him was Carteret. The appoint. ment justly excited great surprise. Wal- pole and Carteret had long been at open enmity. During several sessions it had been Carterets chief object to perplex and annoy his rival; and he was sus- pected, and suspected with reason, of having fomented the disturbances which he was now being sent out to quell. With the lord chancellor Midleton, and with the lord chancellors relatives the Brod- ricks, he had certainly been in friendly communication; and of all the opponents of the patent, Midleton and the Brodricks had, next to Swift, been the most pertina- cious. Coxe tells us that it was Carteret who informed Alan Brodrick of the se- cret arrangement between Wood and the Duchess of Kendal with regard to the profits of the patent, a scandal which the malcontents had turned to great account. Thus in a private capacity he had been in league with those whom in his official capacity he was bound to regard as oppo- nents. In this singular position Carteret landed in Ireland at the latter end of October, w-ith general instructions and with ample powers. He was to soothe or coerce, to DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 2Z yield or resist, as the exigencies of the eminent. He then burst out into a tor- crisis demanded. If on inquiry it should rent of invectives against the proclama- seem expedient to suspend the patent, tion, the arrest of Harding, and the pro- the patent was to be suspended; if he tection given to the patent. To a man in thought it desirable to go further and Carterets position such a scene must withdraw it altogether, it was to be with- have been sufficiently embarrassing. But drawn. But he had scarcely time to take he was too accomplished a diplomatist to betray either surprise or anger. He lis- tened with great composure and urbanity to all Swift had to say, and then with a bow and a smile gave him his answer in an exquisitely felicitous quotation from Virgil, Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri. the oaths before new and alarming com- plications arose. On the 23rd of October appeared the fourth D rapier Letter. In this discourse Swift threw off all disguise. The question of the patent is here subor- dinated to the far more important ques- tion of the nature of the relations between Ireland and England. Contemptuously dismissing a recent protest of Wood as the last howl of a dog who had been dis- sected alive, he goes on to assert that the royal prero~ ative, the power on which, during the whole struggle ~vith Wood, so much stress had been laid, was as limited in Ireland as it was in the mother country. He comments bitterly on the so-called dependency of Ireland; on the injustice of legislating for her in a Parliament in which she had no representatives; and on the fact that all places of trust and emolu- ment were filled by Englishmen, instead of being filled, as they ought to have been filled, by natives. But the remedy, he said, was in their own hands; and in two sentences, which vibrated through the whole kingdom, he suggested it: By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in En- gland. Again: All governmentwithout the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery, though, he added, with bitter sarcasm, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one sin- gle man in his shirt. It was impossible for the lord lieutenant to allow this to pass. A proclamation was issued describ- ing the letter as wicked and malicious, and offering a reward of three hundred pounds to any one who would discover the author. I-larding, the printer of it, was arrested and thrown into prison. Up to this point Swift had, as an indi- vidual, kept studiously in the background. He now came prominently forward. On the day succeeding the proclamation he presented himself at the levee of the lord lieutenant, and, forcing his way into the presence of Carteret, sternly upbraided him with what he had done. Your Ex- cellency has, he thundered out with a voice and manner which struck the whole assembly dumb with amazement, given us a noble specimen of what this devoted nation has to hope for from your gov So terminated this strange interview. And now the struggle with England reached its climax; the bill against Hard- ing was about to be presented to the grand jury. On its rejection hung the hopes of the patriots; on its acceptation hung the hopes of the government. In an admirable address, Swift calmly and solemnly explained to his fellow-citizens the momentous issues which some of them would shortly be called upon to try. The important day arrived. What followed was what every one anticipated would fol- low: the bill was thrown out. But the chief justice Whitshed, acting as he had acted on a former occasion, concluded a scene which would have disgraced Scroggs, by dissolving the jury. This insane measure served only to swell the triumph of the patriots. Another jury was immediately summoned. The bill against Harding was again ignored, and, to complete the discomfiture of the gov- ernment, the rejection of the bill was coupled with a formal vindication of the Drapier. From this moment the battle was virtually, won ; the Drapier had tri- umphed, and Swift ruled Ireland. But nine troubled months had yet to pass be- fore victory definitely declared itself. The struggle between pride and expediency was a severe one. At last England yield- ed. I have his Majestys commands to acquaint you that an entire end is put to the patent formerly granted to Mr. Wood, were the words in which, at the commence- ment of the autumn session of 1725, the viceroy announced to Ireland that the greatest victory she had ever won had been gained. The public joy knew no bounds. In a few hours Dublin presented the appear- ance of a vast jubilee. In a few days there ~vas scarcelya town or avillage in Ireland which was not beside itself with exulta- tion. The whole island rang with the DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 23 praises of the Drapier. It was the Dra- pier, they cried, who had saved them, it was the Drapier who had taught them to be patriots. Had Swift rescued the coun- try from some overwhelming calamity, had he done all and more than all that the ~IEdipus of story is fabled to have done for the city of Erechtheus, popular grati- tude could not have gone further. Med- als were struck in his honor. A club, the professed object of which ~vas to perpetu- ate his fame, was formed. His portrait stamped on medallions, or woven on hand- kerchiefs, was the ornament most cher- ished by both sexes. When he appeared in the streets all heads were uncovered. If for the first time he visited a town, it was usual for the corporation to receive him with public honors. Each year as his birthday came round it was celebrated with tumultuous festivity. He became, says Orrery, the idol of the people of Ireland to a degree of devotion that in the most superstitious country scarcely any idol ever attained. Even now no true Irishman ever pronounces his name with- out reverence. But it was not as a political agitator only that Swift sought to attain his object. Nothing, he believed, contributed more to the degradation and wretchedness of the country than the state of the Church. As a Churchman his own convictions and principles had never wavered. From the very first he had attached himself to the High Church party; from the very first he had regarded the Low Church party, not merely with suspicion, but with in- tense dislike. Their latitudinarian opin- ions, the indulgence with which they were inclined to treat the Nonconformists, their close alliance with the Whigs, their readi- ness on every occasion to play into the hands of the Whigs, and to sacrifice the interests of the Church to the interests of a faction largely composed of men at open enmity with the Church all this he had long beheld with indignation and alarm. On arrivin in Ireland he found himself in the midst of this obnoxious party. For a while, however, he contented himself with standing aloof and remaining pas- sive. But between 1714 and 1720 it be- came clearly apparent that it was the intention of the Whig ministry in En- gland to make the Church of Ireland subservient to the English government. This was to be accomplished by the grad- ual elimination of all High Churchmen and of all natives from offices of trust and emolument. Regularly as each see or as each deanery fell vacant, it was conferred on some member of the Low Church party in England, selected not so much because he possessed any moral or intellectual qualification for the post, as because his patrons could depend on his obsequious compliance with their designs. Against this system of preferment, and against the whole body of those who thus obtained preferment, Swift waged incessant war. If they endeavored to aggrandize them- selves, if they essayed in any way to op- press the inferior clergy, or to extend the bounds of episcopal authority, he was in the arena in a mOment. Thus in 1723 he opposed an attempt to enlarge the power of the bishops in letting leases. Thus in 1733 hesucceeded in inducing the Lower House to throw out the Resi- dence Bill and the Division Bill. The hatred which Swift bore to the Whig hierarchy of Ireland is perfectly explica- ble on political and ecclesiastical grounds, but we may perhaps suspect that feelings less creditable to him entered into its composition. The truth is, he could not forget that men, immeasurably his infe- riors in parts and character, had out- stripped him in the race of ambition. While he was thus defending the Church from enemies from within for such he considered these prelates he was equally indefatigable in defending her from enemies from without. It was owing to his efforts that the Modus Bill a bill which would, by commuting the tithe upon hemp and flax for a fixed sum, have bene- fited the laity at the expense of the clergy was defeated. It was an attempt on the partof the Commons and the landlords to rob the Church of the tithe of agistment that inspired the last and most furious of his Satires. But nothing excited his in- dignation more than the indulgence ex- tended to the Nonconformists. Of all the enemies of the Established Church they were, in his eyes, the most odious and the most formidable. It was no secret that the largest and most influential sect among them aimed at nothing less than the subversion of Episcopacy In num- bers these sectaries already equalled the Episcopalian Protestants; in activity and zeal they ~vere far superior to them. In- deed, Swift firmly believed that it was the Test Act, and the Test Act only, which stood between the Church and its de- strovers. But the Whigs argued that the danger came not from the Nonconformists but from the Papists. The struggle, they said, lay not between Protestantism and Protestantism, but bet~veen Protestantism and Roman Catholicism; and the exten 24 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. sion of indulgences to the sectaries would, any gratification, either from his recent they thought, have the effect of uniting triumph or from the discharge of duty, he the Protestants, without distinction of continued to be, what in truth he had long sect, against the common enemy. To heen, the most wretched, the most dis- this Swift replied that there was little to contented, the most solitary of men. The fear from the Papists. The Papists had very name of the country for which he been reduced to unimportance and impo- had done so much was odious to him. He tence by the penal la~vs; they were as scarcely ever alluded either to the En- inconsiderable in point of power as the glish or to the native Irish, but with some women and children. Popery was no epithet indicative of loathing and con- doubt a more portentous monster than tempt. In the English rule he saw the Presbyterianism, as a lion is stronger and embodiment of all that is most detestable larger than a cat; but, he adds in one of in power; in the condition of his compa- those happy and witty illustrations with triots, the embodiment of all that is most which his pamphlets abound, if a man despicable in submission. I am sit- were to have his choice, either a lion at ting, he writes in one of his letters, like his foot bound fast with three or four a toad in the corner of my great house, chains, his teeth drawn and his claws with a perfect hatred of all public actions pared to the quick, or an angry cat in and persons. Though his active benevo- full liberty at his throat, he vould take lence never slumbered, and though he no long time to determine. For this still felt, he says, affection for particular reason he not only opposed all attempts individuals, his feelings towards humanity to repeal the Test Act, but all attempts to in general were those of a man in whom relax its stringency. And the pamphlets misanthropy was beQnning to border on and verses produced by him in the course monomania. He also complains of his of this long controversy are among the broken health, of his sleepless nights, of ablest andmost entertaining of his minor his solitude in the midst of acquaintances, writings, of his enforced residence in a country Not less strenuous were his attempts which he abhorred, of his banishment to awaken in the Church itself the spirit from those in whose society he had found of resistance and reform. Among the the burden of existence less intolerable. bishops there was a small minority by no For some time his old friends had been means favorably disposed towards the importuning him to pay a visit to En- policy of England. The Toleration Bill gland. Though Atterbury was in exile, of 1719 had alarmed them. The obvious and death had removed Oxford, Parnell, intention of the English government to and Prior, the Scriblerus Club could still degrade the Irish Church into a mere in- muster a goodly company. Bolingbroke, strument of political dominion had dis- after many vicissitudes, was again on En- gusted them. With this section, at the glish soil. Pope, who had achieved a head of which was King, Archbishop of reputation second to no poet in Europe, Dublin, Swift coalesced, and out of this had settled at Twickenham, and was grad- section he labored to construct a party ually gathering round him that splenWd which should combat the Nonconformists society on which his genius has shed ad- on the one hand, and the Hanoverian ditional lustre. Arbuthnot, hierarchy on the other; which should social, cheerful, and serene, protest against the systematic exclusion And just as rich as when he served a queen, of the Irish clergy from remunerative preferment, which should inaugurate a had lost nothing of the wit, the humor, the national Church. Meanwhile he ~vas wisdom, the humanity, which had sixteen doing all in his power to raise the charac- years before won the hearts of all who ter and improve the condition of the in- knew him. And not less importunate were ferior clergy. He was a friend, an those many other friends in whose man- adviser, an advocate, on whom they could sions he had been a welcome guest when always depend. He defended them he sat each week among the brethren. But against the bishops; he fought for them it was long before he could make up his against the landlords. Many of them mind to cross the Channel, and it ~vas not owed what preferment they possessed to till the spring of 1726 that he found him- his generous importunity. self once more in London. It is melancholy to turn from Swifts During this visit occurred two memo- public to his private life. XVe open his rable events: the interview ~vith Walpole, correspondence and we find abundant and the publication of Gullivers Tray- proof that, so far from having derived els. No incident in Swifts biography DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. has been so grossly misrepresented as his connection with Walpole. It was whispered at the time that he had sold himself to the court, and that the price of his apostasy was to be high ecclesiastical preferment. It ~vas subsequently re- ported that he had merely offered to turn renegade; for that Walpole, having dis- covered from an intercepted letter that he was playing a double part, declined to have any dealings with him.* Chester- field confidently asserted that Swift had offered his services to the ministry. Now the facts of the case are simply these. Shortly after the deans arrival in London, Walpole, who was probably acquainted with him, and who was certainly ac- quaintecl with many of his friends, invited him with other guests to a dinner party at Chelsea. It chanced that not long before a libel had appeared, in which the charac- ter of the first minister had been very severely handled. And that libel Walpole had attributed, but attributed erroneously, to Gay. Poor Gay had in consequence not only made an enemy of Walpole, but what was still more serious, had lost caste at Leicester House. It was therefore with an allusion to Gays misadventure that Swift took occasion to observe at Walpoles table, that ~vhen great minis- ters heard an ill thing of a private person who expected some favor, although they were afterwards convinced that the per- son ~vas innocent, yet they would never be reconciled. The words were ambigu- ous, though Wal pole ~vas probably ~vell aware that when Swift uttered them, he was referring not to himself but to Gay. He affected, however, to believe that Swift was referring to himself, and was mean enough to circulate a report that th~ dean had been apologizin,,; in other words, had been currying favor with him. It is just possible, of course, that Wal- pole may for the moment have misinter- preted Swifts meaning. If he did so, he was soon undeceived. At the end of April, Swift had a second interview. It had been granted at the request of Peter- 1)Orough, and it was granted that Swift might have an opportunity of discussing the affairs of Ireland. What passed on this occasion is partly a matter of cer- tainty, and partly a matter of conjecture, almost as conclusive as certainty. That Walpole frankly communicated his views with regard to the relations between En- gland and Ireland that these views were * A very circumstantial version of this story is given by Cotton in Isis Lacon, p. 222. 25 diametrically opposed to Swifts; that Swift, seeing that debate was useless, said very much less than he designed to say; and that the two men parted, if not exactly in enmity, at least with no friendly feelings, we know definitely from Swifts correspondence. What seems to us to place it beyond doubt that Walpole sought in the course of the interview to deal with Swift as he was in the habit of dealing with men whom it was his policy to con- ciliate, are two passages in Swifts corre- spondence. I have had, he writes to Sheridan, the fairest offer made me of a settlement here that one can imagine, within twelve miles of London, and in the midst of my friends; but I am too old for new schemes, and especially such as would bridle me in my freedom. Again, he says in a letter to Stopford, referring to the see of Cloyne, that it ~vas not offered him, and would not have been ac- cel)ted by him except under conditions which ~vould never have been granted. The inference is obvious. Walpole, well aware of Swifts wish to settle in En- gland, was disposed to turn that wish to account. In all probability he offered vhat Swift mentions to Sheridan without imposing conditions other than those im- plied conditions which men who accept favors from others spontaneously hold to be binding. It was no doubt hinted at the same time, vaguely but intelligibly, that higher preferment was in reserve, if higher preferment should be earned, and to this Swift probably refers when he speaks of conditions which would never have been granted. But whatever inter- pretation may be placed on Swifts words, whatever obscurity may still cloud this much-discussed passage in his life, one thing is clear, he never for a moment allowed self-interest to weigh against duty and principle. Meanwhile he was putting the finishing touches to that immortal satire, the fame of which has thrown all his other ~vritings into the shade. At what precise time he commenced the composition of Gulli- ver is not known. It was originally de- signed to form a portion of the work projected by the Scriblerus Club in i~r~ and we are inclined to think that, if it was not commenced then, it was com- menced shortly afterwards. He had cer- tainly made some progress in it as early as the winter of 1721, for we find allusion to it in a letter of Bolingbrokes, dated January 1st, 1721; and in a letter of Miss Vanhomrighs, undated, but written prob- ably about the same time. There can be DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 27 gent student of curious and recondite literature; and that, like Sterne, he was in the habit of turning that knowledge to account. Of this we have a remarkable illustration in the Voyage to Brobding- nag. Few readers who know anything of nautical science have not been sur- prised at the minuteuiess and accuracy of the technical knowledge displayed by Swift in his account of the man~uvres of Gullivers crew in the storm off the Mo- luccas. Now the whole of this passage was taken nearly verbatim from a work then probably circulating only among naval students, and inour time almost unique. This was Samuel Sturmys Mariners Magazine, published at Lon- don in 1679, a copy of which may be found in the British Museum.* * As this most curious appropriation, to which our attention was directed by a slip in a scrap-hook in the British Museum, has wholly escaped Swifts biog- raphers and critics, and has not, so far as we know, travelled heyond the scrap-book, we will transcribe the original and the copy, giving them both in parallel columns: SWiFT. Gulliver, pp. inS, cog. Finding it was likely to overblow we took in our sprit sail, and stood by to hand the fore sail, but, makise foul weather, we looked she guns were all fast and handed the mizen. Tho ship lay very binad 0cf, so we ilsought it better spooning before the se than trying or hulling. XV e reeled tlse I ore sa~l and set him and hauled alt the fore sheet; the helm ssa hard aweatlaer. We belayed the fore down haul, hot the sail was spit and ~e hauled dowis toe sard and got the sail into the ship and cii bound all the thin~s clear of it. It was a very fierce storm: the sea broke strange and dangernus. We hauled off upon the lanyard of the whip staff ai{d helped the man at the helm. We would not get down our top ntast, hut let all stand, because site scudded before the sea very well, and we kttesv that tie t(pmast netog aloft she so p was the wholescruer and nidde he~ ter way shiough the sea, seeing we tact seai 05)IO We got tt~e sta- hoard Get she starboard tacks tacks abna d we ca~t off aboard, cast off our weath- the weatner bob er braces and lifts; set in weather braces atsd its use lee br5cas and Itawi we see its tise it. biaces them taught and belaye asd castle ena t at and theni and bawl over the belayed elteta, and huled mizen tacks to windward over the noassi, and oucted and kees her full and STORMY. Mariners Magazin~,~~ pp. i5, i6, c684. It is like to overblow, take in your spris sail, stand by to hand the fore sail . . . We make foul weather, look the guns be all fast, come hand the mtzen. The ship lies very broad off ; it is better spooning before she sea than trying or hulling. Go reef the foresail atid set ltiiu ; itauvi aft the foresheet. TIas helm is hard aweather. Belay sIte fore down haul. The sail is split go bawl down sIte yard aiad get the sail into she slaip and unbind all things clear of ii. A very fierce storm. The sea breaks strange attd datagerous. Stand by to haul off above tite lanyard of she whip staff and lacip the man at the helm. Shall see get down our topmasts? No let all stand: she scuds before the sea very well: the top- mast being aloft the ship is the wholesomess atid makeils better way through the sea, seeing wa have sea mona. But to suppose that these appropria- tions and reminiscences detract in any way from the essential originality of the work, would be as absurd as to tax Shakespeare with stealing Antony and Cleopatra from Plutarch, or Macbeth from Holinshed. What Swift borrowed was what Shakespeare borrowed, and what the creative artists of all ages have never scrupled to borrowincidents and hints. The description from Sturmy is to the Voyage to Brobdingnag precisely what the progress of Cleopatra, in Norths Plutarch, is to the drama of Antony and Cleopatra. Indeed, the sum of Swifts obligations to the writers whom we have mentioned would, though con- siderable, be found on examination to be infinitely less than the obliurations of the most original of poets to the novelists of Italy and to the works of contemporaries. Much has been said about Swifts object in writing Gulliver. That object he has himself explained. It was to vex the world. It was to embody in allegory the hatred and disdain with which he person- ally regarded all nations, all professions, all communities, and especially man, as mtm in essence is. It had no moral, no social, no philosophical purpose. It was the mere ebullition of cynicism and mis- anthropy. It was a savage jeu desprit: and as such wise men will regard it. But there have never been wantingthere probably never will be wanting critics to place it on a much higher footing. In their eyes it is as a satire, as an estimate of humanity, and, as a criticism of life, as reasonable as it is just. Guiliver is, says Hazlitt, an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world, to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which external circumstances throw around them. And nothing, he adds, but imposture has a right to complain of it. The answer to this is obvious. Where satire has a mor. 1 purpose, it is discriminating. It is levelled, not at de- fects and infirmities which are essential ansI in nature unremovable, but at defects and infirmities which are unessential, and therefore corrigibie. if its immedi, te object is to punish, its ultimate object is to amend. But this is not the spirit of Gulliver Take the Yahoos. Nothing can be plainer than that these odious and repulsive creatures were designed to be SWIFT. STORMY. forward by tack to md- by as near as she would ward and kept her full atad tie. by as near as she would lie. 28 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. types, not of man, as man when brutalized and degenerate may become, but of man, as man is naturally constituted. Take the Struldbrugs. What end could possibly be attained by so shocking an exposure of human infirmities? juvenal has, it is true, left us a similar delineation; but Juvenals object was, by teaching men to distinguish between what is desirable and what is not desirable, to guide them to a cheerful and elevated philosophy. Swifts design be- gan and ended in cynical mockery. Again, in the Voyage to Laputa, though the local satirethe satire, for example, on the projectorsis pointed and just, the general satire is in the highest degree ex- travagant and absurd. No one would dis- pute that intellectual energy may, like the passions, be abused and perverted, and no one would dispute that its abuse and perversion are fair game for the satirist. But the inutility of such energy, when misapplied, is no criterion of its utility when properly directed. By Swift the misapl)lication, and the misapplication only, is recognized. He thus contrives and contrives most dishonestlyto rep- resent the mathematical and mechanical sciences as despicable and ridiculous, medicine as mere charlatanry, and exper~- mental philosophy as an idle and silly de- lusionin a word, to pour contempt on those pursuits and faculties on which the intellectual supremacy of man is based. Not less sophistical and disingenuous is the device employed by him in the Voy- a~e to the Houyhnhnms for dethroning his kind from their moral supremacy. We here find him assigning to brutes the qualities characteristic of men, and as- signing to men the qualities characteristic of brutes, that men may by comparison with brutes be degraded, and that brutes may by comparison with men be exalted. If the work be regarded merely as a sat- ire, it is not perhaps too much to say that in condensed and sustained power it has neither equal nor second among human productions. But it is a satire the phil- osophy and morality of which will not for a moment bear serious examination. The work appeared anonymously early in November, 1726. It became instantly popular. Within a week the first edition was exhausted. A second edition speedily followed, but before the second edition was ready, pirated copies of the first were in circulation in Ireland, and the ~vork was traversing Great Britain in all direc- tions in the columns of a weekly journal. No one, so far as our knowledge goes, has noticed that Gulliver was reprinted in successive instalments in a contempo- rary newspaper, called Parkers Penny Post, between November 28th, 1726, and the following spring a suflicient indica- tion of theopinion formed of it by those who are best acquainted with the popular taste, and probably the first occasion on which the weekly press was applied to such a purpose. But though the work appealed to all, it appealed in different ~vays. By the multitude it was read, as it is read in the nurseries and playrooms of our more enlightened age, with wonder- ing credulity. But the avidity with which it was devoured by readers to whom the allegory was nothing and the story every- thing, was equalled by the avidity with which it was devoured by readers to whom the allegory was supreme and the story purely subordinate. At court, and in l)olitical circles, it was read and quoted as no satire since Hudibras had been. There Flim nap and Sieve, Skyresk Bolgo- lam, and Redresal, the Tranecksan and Slamecksan, the Big-endians and Small- endians, tbe Sardrals and the Nardacks, the two Frelocks and Mully Ully Gue, were what the caricatures of Gilray were, fifty years later, to the court of George III. The circumstances which led to the flight of Gulliver from Lilliput, and the account given of the natives of Tribnia, must have come home ~vith peculiar force and pungency to readers who could re- member the proceedings ~vhich led to the incarceration of Harley and the flight of Bolingbroke and Ormond, and in whose memories the trial of Atterbury was still fresh. To us the schemes propounded in the Academy of Lagado have no more point than the schemes ~vh~ch occupied the courtiers of Queen Entelechy; but how pregnant, how pertinent, how ex- quisite, must the satire have appeared to readers who were still smarting from the Bubblemania, who had been shareholders in the Society for Transmuting Quicksil- ver into Malleable Metal, or in the So- ciety for Extracting Silver from Lead! Nor was the satire in its broader aspect less keenly relished. Aristotle has ob- served that the measure of a mans moral degradation may be held to be complete when he sees nothing derogatory in join- ing in the gibe against himself. And ~vhat is true of an individual is assuredly true of an age. At no period distin- gu is h ed by generosity of sentiment, by magnanimity, by humanity, by any of the nobler and finer qualities of mankind, could such satire as the satire of which the greater part of Gulliveris the em- 28 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. types, not of man, as man when brutalized and degenerate may become, but of man, as man is naturally constituted. Take the Struldbrugs. XVhat end could possibly be attained by so shocking an exposure of human infirmities? Juvenal has, it is true, left us a similar delineation; but Juvenals object was, by teaching men to distinguish between what is desirable and what is not desirable, to guide them to a cheerful and elevated philosophy. Swifts design be- gan and ended in cynical mockery. Again, in the Voyage to Laputa, though the local satirethe satire, for example, on the projectorsis pointed and just, the general satire is in the highest degree ex- travagant and absurd. No one would dis- pute that intellectual energy may, like the passions, be abused and perverted, and no one would dispute that its abuse and perversion are fair game for the satirist. But the inutility of such energy, when misapplied, is no criterion of its utility when properly directed. By Swift the misapplication, and the misapplication only, is recognized. He thus contrives and contrives most dishonestlyto rep- resent the mathematical and mechanical sciences as despicable and ridiculous, medicine as mere charlatanry, and exper~- mental philosophy as an idle and silly de- lusionin a word, to pour contempt on those pursuits and faculties on which the intellectual supremacy of man is based. Not less sophistical and disingenuous is the device employed by him in the Voy- a~e to the Houyhnhnms for dethroning his kind from their moral supremacy. We here find him assigning to brutes the qualities characteristic of men, and as- signing to men the qualities characteristic of brutes, that men may by comparison with brutes be degraded, and that brutes may by comparison with men be exalted. If the work be re~arded merely as a sat- ire, it is not perhaps too much to say that in condensed and sustained po~ver it has neither equal nor second among human productions. But it is a satire the phil- osophy and morality of which will not for a moment bear serious examination. The work appeared anonymously early in November, 1726. It became instantly popular. Within a week the first edition was exhausted. A second edition speedily followed, but before the second edition was ready, pirated copies of the first were in circulation in Ireland, and the work was traversing Great Britain in all direc- tions in the columns of a weekly journal. No one, so far as our knowledge goes, has noticed that Gulliver was reprinted in successive instalments in a contempo- rary newspaper, called Parkers Penny Post, between November 28th, 1726, and the following spring a sufficient indica- tion of theopinion formed of it by those who are best acquainted with the popular taste, and probably the first occasion on which the weekly press was applied to such a purpose. But though the work appealed to all, it appealed in different ways. By the multitude it ~vas read, as it is read in the nurseries and playrooms of our more enlightened age, with wonder- ing credulity. But the avidity with which it was devoured by readers to whom the allegory was nothing and the story every- thing, was equalled by the avidity with which it was devoured by readers to whom the allegory was supreme and the story purely subordinate. At court, and in l)olitical circles, it ~vas read and quoted as no satire since Hudibras had been. There Flimnap and. Sieve, Skyresk Bolgo- lain, and Redresal, the Tranecksan and Slamecksan, the Big-endians and Small- endians, the Sardrals and the Nardacks, the two Frelocks and Mully Ully Gue, were what the caricatures of Gilray were, fifty years later, to the court of George III. The circumstances which led to the flight of Gulliver from Lilliput, and the account given of the natives of Tribnia, must have come home with l)eculiar force and pungency to readers who could re- member the proceedings which led to the incarceration of Harley and the flight of Bolingbroke and Ormond, and in whose memories the trial of Atterbury was still fresh. To us the schemes propounded in the Academy of Lagado have no more point than the schemes ~vh~ch occupied the courtiers of Queen Entelechy; but how pregnant, how pertinent, how ex- quisite, must the satire have appeared to readers who were still smarting from the Bubblemania, who had been shareholders in the Society for Transmuting Quicksil- ver into Malleable Metal, or in the So- ciety for Extracting Silver from Lead! Nor was the satire in its broader aspect less keenly relished. Aristotle has ob- served that the measure of a mans moral degradation may be held to be complete when he sees nothing derogatory in join- ing in the gibe against himself. And what is true of an individual is assuredly true of an age. At no period distin- gui shed by generosity of sentiment, by magnanimity, by humanity, by any of the nobler and finer qualities of mankind, could such satire as the satire of ~vhich the greater part of Gulliver is the em- DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. bodiment, have been universally ap- plauded. Yet, so it was. The men and women of those times appear to have seen nothing objectionable in an apologue which would scarcely have passed without a protest in the Rome of Petronius or in the Paris of Dubois. One noble lady facetiously identified herself with the Yahoos; another declared that her whole life had been lost in caressing the worst part of mankind, and in treating the best as her foes. Here and there, indeed, a reader might be found. who was of opinion that the satire was too strongly flavored with misanthropy, but such readers were altogether in the minority. It is remark- able that even Arbuthnot, though he objected to Laputa, expressed no dis- satisfaction with the Voyage to the H ou yh n h n ins Nearly three months before the publi- cation of Gulliver, Swift had quitted London for Dublin. His departure had been hastened by the terrible news that the calamity, which of all calamitie she dreaded most, was imminent. The health of Miss Johnson had long been failing, and had latterly afforded matter for grave anxiety. Shortly after Swifts arrival in England, alarming symptoms had begun to develop themselves. For a while, how- ever, his friends in Dublin had mercifully concealed the worst, and for a while his fears were not unmingled with hope. At last he knew the worst. His grief ~vas such as absolutely to unnerve and unman him. The letters written at this time to Stopford and Sheridan exhibit a state of mind pitiable to contemplate. But the blow was not to fall yet. Esther John- son rallied, and Swift again visited En- gland - He arrived in London with impaired health, and with a mind ill at ease. Nor was the life on which he now entered at all calculated to remedy the mischief. His popularity and fame were at their height, and he soon found that he had to pay the full price for his position. Neither friends nor strangers allowed him any peace. At Twickenham, Pope teased him to death about the corrected edition of Gulliver, and about the third volume of the Miscellanies. Gay, busy with the Beggars Opera, sought anxiously to profit from his criticism ; and, if tradi- tion is to be trusted, the drama which owed its existence to Swifts suggestion, owes to his pen two of its most famous songs. In London, and at Dawley, he was submitted to persecutions of another kind. Peterborough and Harcourt were 29 eager to negotiate an understanding with Walpole. Bolingbroke and Pulteney sought to engage him in active co-opera- tion with the opposition. The opposition were now high in hope. The death of the king could be no remote event; and it was confidently believed that, with the ac- cession of the Prince of XVales, the su- premacy of Walpole would be at an end, and that the ministry would be recon- structed. The person who was popularly supposed to direct the counsels of the prince was Mrs. Howard, the declared enemy of Walpole, the staunch ally of the faction opposed to him. That Swift shared in some measure the hopes of his friends, is very likely. XVith Mrs. How- ard he was on terms of close intimacy. Before his arrival in England he had reg- ularly corresponded with her. During his residence in England he regularly visited her. At Leicester House lie had been received with marked favor. In- deed, the princess had gone out of her way to pay him attention. He had thus ample reason for supposing that, if affairs took the turn which his friends antici- pated, the prize which had twice before eluded him would again be within his grasp. Suddenly, far more suddenly than was expected, occurred the event on which so much depended. On July 9th died George I. Swift remained in London during that period of intense excitement which intervened between the preferment of Sir Spencer Compton and the re-estab- lishment of Walpole. He kissed the hands of the new king and the new queen saw in a few days that all was over, and then hurried off, sick and weary, to bury himself, first in Popes study at T~vicken- ham, and4hen at Lord Oxfords country seat at Wimpole. At the end of Sep- tember lie abruptly quitted England for- ever. Of his last days on this side of the Channel a singularly interesting record has recently come to light. On arriving at Holyhead lie found himself too late for the Dublin packet. Unfavorable weather set in, and he was detained for upwards of a week in what was then the most coni- fortless of British seaports. During that week he amused himself with scribbling verses and with keeping a journal. This journal Mr. Craik has now given to the world, and we have no hesitation in call. ing it the most remarkable contribution to the personal history of Swift which has appeared since the publication of the Letters to Stella. In reading the jour- nal it is impossible not to be struck with 3c~ DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. its resemblance to the diary kept by By- ron at Ravenna. In both there is the same contrast between what appears on the surface and what is beneath. In both cases the same listless wretchedness takes refuge in the same laborious trifling. Both are the soliloquies of men who are as weary of themselves as they are weary of the world, and who clutch desperately at every expedient for escaping reflection and for killing time, sometimes by invest- ing trifles with adventitious importance, sometimes by indulging half-ironically in a sort of humorous self-analysis, some- times by dallying lazily with their own idle fancies. The death of Esther Johnson, in Janu- ary, 1728, dissolved the only tie which bound Swift to life. It had been long expected, but when the end came it must have come suddenly, for, though in Dub- lin, he was not with her. With pathetic particularity he has himself recorded the circumstances under which he heard of his irreparable loss. It was late in the evening of Sunday, the 28th of January. The guests who were in the habit of as- sembling weekly at the deanery on that evening were round him, and it was nearly midnight before he could be alone with his sorrow. How that sad night was passed was known to none, until he had himself been laid in the grave. Then was found among his papers that most touching memorial of his grief and love the Memoir and Character of Esther Johnson. Firmly and calmly had the desolate old man met the calamity which a few months before he had described himself as not daring to contemplate. That ni~ht he commenced the narrative which tells the story of her in whose coffin was buried all that made existence tolerable to him. And regularly as each night came round he appears to have re- sumed his task. There is something almost ghastly in the contrast between the smooth and icy flow of the chronicle itself and the terribly pathetic signifi- cance of the parentheses which mark the stages in its composition. This, he writes, on the night of the 30th, is the night of the funeral, which my sickness will not suffer me to attend. It is now nine oclock, and I am removed into an- other compartment that I may not see the light in the church, which is just over the window of my bedchamber. Sorrow and despair have many voices, but seldom have they found expression so affectincr as in those calm and simple words. b Se non piangi, di che pianger suoli? It is said that her name was never after- wards known to pass his lips. The biography of Swift from the death of Esther Johnson to the hour in which his own eyes closed on the world, is the catastrophe of a tragedy sadder and more awful than any of those pathetic fictions which appal and melt us on the stage of Sophocles and Shakespeare. The dis- tressing malady under which he labored never for long relaxed its grasp, and when the paroxysms were not actually on him, the daily and hourly dread of their re- turn was scarcely less agonizing. In that malady he discerned the gradual but in- evitable approach of a calamity, which is of all the calamities incident to man the most fearful to contemplate. Over his spirits hung the cloud of l)rofound and settled melancholy. His wretchedness was without respite and without alloy. When he was not under the spell of dull, dumb misery, he was on the rack of furi- ous passions. Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom he scorned, those only strong; Thirst of revenge, the powerless will Still baffled and yet burning still, For aye entempesting anew, The unfathomable hell within. His writings and correspondence exhibit a mind perpetually oscillating between unutterable despair and demoniac rage, between a misanthropy bitterer and more savage than that which tore the heart of Timon, and a sympathy with suffer- ing humanity as acute and sensitive as that which vibrated in Rousseau and Shel- ley. It was not until the accession of George II. that Swift fully realized the hopelessness of effecting any reform in Ireland. His second interview with Wal- pole had convinced him that so long as that minister was at the head of affairs the policy of England would remain un- changed, that a deaf ear would be turned to all appeals, all protests, all sugges- tions. The new reign would, he had hoped, have placed the reins of govern- ment in new hands. It had, on the con- trary, confirmed the supremacy of Wal- pole, and the fate of Ireland was sealed. But what enraged him most was the con- sciousness that his efforts to awaken in the Irish themselves the spirit of resis- tance and reform had wholly failed. None of his proposals had been carried out, none of his warnings had been heeded. All was as all had been before. An igno- ble rabble of sycophants and slaves still grovelled at the feet of power. Corrup. DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. 3 tion and iniquity still sat unabashed on the tribunal the two Houses still swarmed with the tools of oppression; and the country, which his genius and energy had for a moment galvanized into life, had again sunk torpid and inert into the deg- radation in which he had found her. In the provinces was raging one of the most frightful famines ever known in the annals of the peasantry. Never, perhaps, in the whole course of her melancholy history was the condition of Ireland more deplor- able than at the beginning of 1729. All this worked liked poison in Swifts blood, and, like the cleaving mischief of the fable, tortured him without intermission till torture ceased to be possible. But the savage indignation, which the spectacle of English misgovernment excited in him, was now fully equalled by the disdain and loathing with which he regarded the suf- ferers themselves. Towards the aborigi- nes his feelings had never been other than those of repulsion and contempt, mingled with the sort of pity which the humane feel for the sufferings of the inferior ani- mals. As a politician, he looked upon them pretty much as Prospero looked upon Caliban, or as a Spartan legislator. looked upon the Helots. On the regener- ation of the Englishry depended in his opinion the regeneration of the whole island. It was in their interests that he had labored, it was on their co-operation that he had relied. It was to them that he had appealed. And he had found them as frivolous, as impracticable, as despi- cable, as their compatriots. The hatred, with which Swift in his later years re- garded Ireland and its inhabitants, recalls in its intensity and bitterness the hatred with which Juvenal appears to have re- garde d the people of Egypt, and Dante the people of Pisa. It resembled a con- suming passion. It overflowed, we are told, in his conversation, it glows at white heat in his writings, it flames out in his correspondence. It is time for me, he says, in one place, to have done with the ~vorld, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole. He is sur- rounded by slaves, and knaves, and fools, in a country which is a wretched dirty dog-hole; a prison, but good enough to die in. He is worn out with years and sickness and rage against all public procecdings. My flesh and bones, he furiously exclaims in another letter, are to be carried to Holyhead, for I will not lie in a country of slaves. Meanwhile, his literary activity was in- cessant. The mere enumeration of the pieces produced by Swift between 1727 and 1737 would occupy several pages. In that list would be found some of the best of his poems, and some of the best of his minor prose satires. Foremost among the first would stand the Rhap- sody on Poetry, the Poem to a Lady who had asked him to write on her in the heroic style, The Grand Ques- tion Debated, The Beasts Confes- sion, The Day of Judgment, The Verses on his own Death; foremost among the second would be the Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the Poqr from becoming a Burden, the Treatise on Polite Conversation, and the Directions to Servants. But the number of these works bears no propor- tion to the number of those in which he dealt with the questions of the hour, and which have with the hour ceased to be generally interesting; the pamphlets, for example, on the grievances of Ireland; the pamphlets evoked by the l)roposal to repeal the Test Act; by the bills for im- posing restrictions on the liberty of the clergy, and for subdividin~ laroe bene- fices, and by the Modus Bill of 1733. But the writings most truly characteristic of Swifts state of mind during these years are his poems. In them his misan- thropy, his hatred of individuals, his rage, his pessimism, found full vent. Of some of these poems it would be no exaggera- tion to say, that nothing so purely diabol- ical had ever before, or has ever since, emanated from man. There are passages in the satirists of antiquity which are in mere indecency, perhaps as shame- less and brutal. A misanthropy almost as bitter flavors the satire in which Ju- venal depicts the feud between the Orn- bites and the Tentvrites. The invectives of Junius, and the libels of Pope, not unfrequently exhibit a malignity scarcely human; and if the Mephistopheles of fa- ble could be clothed in flesh, his mockery would probably be the mockery of Vol- taire and Heine. But the later satire of Swift stands alone. It is the very alcohol of hatred and contempt. Its intensity is the intensity of monomania, whether its object be an individual, a sect, or man- kind. To find any parallel to such pieces as the Ladies Dressing Room, the Place of the Damned, and the Le- gion Club, we must go to the speeches in which the depraved and diseased mind of Lear runs riot in obscenity and rage. But it was when his satire was directed against particular individuals, that it be- came most inhuman, and most noisome. 32 DEAN SWIFT IN IRELAND. Such, for example, would be the attack violence; but the mere rumor that the on Walpole in the Epistle to Gay, the dean was in danger was sufficient to rally attack on Allen in Traulus, and such round him a body-guard so formidable, pre-eminently would be the libels on that he had little to fear either from the Tighe. To provoke the hostility of Swift law or from private malice. was, in truth, like rousing the energies of But to Swift all this was nothing. Sick a skunk and a polecat. It was to engage of himself, sick of the world, fully aware in a contest, the issue of which was cer- of the awful fate which was impending tam, to be compelled to beat an ignomini. over him he saw it, says Lyon, as plainly ous retreat, cruelly lacerated, and half as men foresee a coming shower he suffocated with filth. longed only, he prayed only for death. It But there ~vas another side to his life vas his constant habit to take leave of during these years, and we gladly turn to one of the few friends whom he admitted it. No city ever owed more to a private to his intimacy, and who was accustomed man than Dublin owed to Swift. In 1720 to visit him two or three times a week, he defeated, or at least contributed to with the ~vords, Well, God bless you, defeat, a scheme which would in all prob. good.night to you, but I hope I shall ability have involved hundreds of her never see you again. citizens in ruin. With the two most for- At the end of 1737 it became apparent midable pests which infest civilized com- to his friends, and it becomes painfully munities, mendicancy and bandittism, he apparent in his correspondence, that his grappled with eminent success. The first mind ~vas rapidly failing. The deafness nuisance was greatly abated by his plan and giddiness, which had before visited for providing beggars with badges, and him intermittently, now rarely left him. thus confining them to the parishes to His memory was so impaired that he was which they severally belonged; and it scarcely able to converse. It was only was, as we have seen, owing to his vigi- with the greatest difficulty that he could lance and ingenuity that Dublin enjoyed, express himself on paper. As his intel. for a time at least, almost complete immu- lect decayed, his irritability and ferocity nity from street marauders. His care increased. On the slightest provocation indeed extended to every department of he would break out into paroxysms of municipal economy, from the direction of frantic rage. At last his reason gave Parliamentary elections to the regulation way, and he ceased to be responsible for of the coal traffic. It may be said of Dr. his actions. In March, 1742, it became Swift, writes one who knew him well, that necessary to place his estate in the hands he literally followed the example of his of trustees. Master, and went about doing good. His Into a particular narrative of Swifts private charity, though judicious, was last days we really cannot enter. Noth. boundless. He never, we are told, went ing in the recorded history of humanity, abroad without a pocket full of coins nothing that the imagination of man has which he distributed among the indigent conceived, can transcend in horror and and sick, whom he regularly visited, pathos the accounts which have come Nothing is more certain than that his down to us of the closing scenes of his severe frugality in domestic life, which life. His memory was gone, his reason fools mistook for avarice, arose solely was gone; he recognized no friend: he from his determination to devote his was below his own Struldbrugs. Day money to the noblest uses to which money after day he paced his chamber, as a wild can be applied. If he denied h~riself and beast paces its cage, taking his food as his guests superfluities, it was that he he walked, and occasionally muttering ex- might provide the needy with necessaries, pressions which plainly showed that he and posterity with St. Patricks Hospital. was fully conscious of the degradation He was the idol of the multitude, he was into which he had fallen. At times it was the terror of the government. I know dangerous to approach him, for the mere by experience, ~vrote Carteret, just after sight of his kind would, when in his he resi~ned the lord lieutenantcy, how wilder moods, throw him into convulsions much the city of Dublin thinks itself un- of impotent fury. During the autumn of der your protection, and how strictly they 1742 his state was horrible and pitiable used to obey all orders fulminated from beyond expression. At last, after suffer. the sovereignty of St. Patricks. In his ing unspeakable tortures from one of the war with England, and with that party in most a~ onizing maladies known to sur- Dublin which was in the English interest, gery, he sank into the torpor of imbecility., he was not unfrequently threatened with In this deplorable condition he continued, ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. with short intervals of a sort of semi- consciousness, till death released him from calamity. He expired at three oclock on the afternoon of Saturday, the I9th of October, 1745. Three days afterwards, his coffin was laid at midnight beside the coffin of Esther Johnson, in the south nave of St. Patricks Cathedral. NOTE ON SWIFTS DISEASE. The history of Swifts case is briefly this. In his twenty-third year he became subject to fits of giddiness; in his twenty-eighth year, or, according to another account, before he had completed his twentieth year, he was, attacked by fits of deafness. The first disorder he attributed primarily to a surfeit of green fruit the origin of the second he ascribedtoa com- mon cold. The giddiness was occasionally attended with sickness, the deafness with ring- ing in the ears, and both with extreme depres- slon. The attacks were periodic and paroxys- mal, increasing in frequency and severity as life advanced. As old age drew on, his giddi- ness and deafness became more constant and intense; he grew morbidly irritable ; be lost all control over his temper, his intellect be- came abnormally enfeebled, his memory at times almost totally failed him. But it was not until he had completed his seventy-fourth year that he became unequivocally insane. In 1742 what appeared to be an attack of acute maniathough it was mania without delu- sion, and may perhaps have been merely the frenzied expression of excruciating physical pain, occasioned by a tumor in the eye was succeeded by absolute fatuity, In this state, broken, however, by occasional gleams of sen- sibility and reason, he remained till death. The autopsy revealed water on the brain, the common result of cerebral atrophy. That a disease presenting~such symptoms as these should have originated from a surfeit of fruit and a common cold, was a theory that may have passed unchallenged in the infancy of medical science, but was not likely to find much favor in more enlightened times. Ac- cordingly, at the beginning of this century, an eminent l)hysiciall, Dr. Beddoes, came forward with another hypothesis. He entertained no doubt that the disease was homogeneous and progressive; and, connecting its primary symp- toms with other peculiarities of Swifts con- duct and writings, he ascribed their origin4to a cause very derogatory to the moral character of the sufferer. Scott, justly indignant that such an aspersion should have been cast on the deans memory, took occasion in his Life~ of Swift to comment very severely on Bed- does remarks. But Scott, unfortunately, had no means of refuting them. Medical science was silent; and Swift, ludicrous to relate, has been held up in more than one publication as an appalling illustration of the effects of profligate indulgence. At last, in 1846, Sir William Wilde came to the rescue. In an LiVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2239 essay in the Dublin Quarterly 7ournal of Med- ical Science, afterwards published in a volume entitled The Closing Years of Dean Swifts Life, he reinvestigated with the Ininutest care the whole case. In the first place, he made. the important discovery that the dean had un- doubtedly had a stroke of paralysis. -f his was a circumstance which had not been recorded by any of the biographers, but which a plaster cast, taken from the mask applied to the face after death, placed beyond doubt. Wilde boldly contended that there was no proof at all that Swift was ever insane in the sense in which the word is usually understood, nay, that l)revious to 1742 he showed no symptoms whatever of mental disease beyond the or. dinary decay of nature. The deplorable con- dition into which he subsequently sank, Wilde attributed not to insanity, or to imbecility, but to paralysis of the muscles by which the mechanism of speech is produced, and to loss of memory, the result in all probability of sub- arachnoid effusion. But what Wilde failed to understand was the nature of the original disease, in other words, the cause of the gid- diness and deafness which, whatever may have been their connection with the graver symp- toms of the case, undoubtedly ushered them in. And it is here that Dr. Bucknill comes to our assistance. In his opinion, the lifelong Iflalacly of Swift is to be identified with a malady which medical science has only re- cently recognized, labyrinthine vertigo or, as it is sometimes called in honor of the emi- iient pathologist who discovered it, la malcedie de M6ni?re. To this are to be attributed all the symptoms which were supposed by Swift himself to have orlainated from a surfeit of fruit or a chill, which Beddoes attributed to profligate habits, and which Sir William Wilde was unable satisfactorily to account for. It was a purely physical and local disorder, which in no way either impaired or perverted his mental po~vers, and which, had it run its course uncomplicated, would probably have ended merely in complete deafness. But on this disorder sul)ervened, between 1738 and 1742, dementia, with hemiplegia and aphasia; the dementia arising from general decay of the brain occasioned by age and disease, the aphasia and paralysis resulting from disease of one particular part of the brain, probably the third left frontal convolution. Thus the in. sanity, or, to speak more accurately, the fatuity of Swift, was not, as he himself anti his biog. raphers after him have supposed, the gradual development of years, but was partly the effect. of senile decay, and partly the effect of a local lesion. From All The Year Round. ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. ALL Arromanches turned out to witness our departure all the resident popula. 33 34 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. tion that is; the shopkeepers, who deal mostly in sand-shoes, in spades and buck- ets for children and why young England should always use a spade with a grip for the hand, while infant France prefers the long, straight-handled variety, is one of those minute differences the root of which perhaps lies deep in national character but anyhow, the deaJers in spades and buckets, and work-baskets with Arro- manches embroidered in red worsted on their sides, were all deeply interested in our departure. And with these there were the fisher wives and daughters, and the female population generally, with the bon- nie brown-eyed girls, and the mothers ex- uberant in form, at the head of whom is the stout and jolly dame who supplies. the hotel and the town generally- with fish, and who, in virtue of this official connection with our party, became, as it were, the her- aId and guide general of the affair, ex- plaining to the rest of the townspeople the affinities and relationships of the vhole party. Last ni ht a thunderstorm broke over the place, with grand masses of black clouds, bringing out the little town in its nook, the dark cliffs, the gleaming sands, and the foaming sea in lurid light and por- tentous shade; but this morning all is crisp and calm, with light, fleecy clouds in the deep blue sky, and a sun that smiles and dimples in pure light-heartedness. A morning this in which it is enjoined upon all the world to feel light-hearted, under penalty of complete disaccord with all surroundings. For all aboutin cottage and hamlet, in the fields where the corn is ripening for the harvest, and on the roads where sometimes we meet a team of great strong horses with melodiously tinkling bells upon their arched necks every- thing seems full of the joy and pleasure of existence, of the delight of breathing and living in this sunny perfumed air, yes, and even of working where sun and sky are fellow-laborers, and where people can sing at their work as they do in the vil- lages, where the young people are already beginning to sing the pleasures of the approaching harvest. Voilh Ia Saint Jean pass~e, Le mois dAo~t est approchant, Oh les gar9ons des villages Sen vont Ia gerbe battant. Ho! batteux, battons la gerbe, Compagnons joyeusement l Our road takes us through a pleasant land of pasture and cornfield, with some- times a stream crossing the road, and every now and then a village and an old church among the trees. And after a while we come to the little river Seulles, and follow its course down the rich valley; and presently, through an opening in the low sl)readin~ hills we come in sight, of Courseulles and the sea again. At Courseulles we must breakfast in sight of the oyster parcs from which we derived the most delicious part of the meal. Our old squire grows quite young again over his oysters and chablis, and begins to tell his stories of the palmy days of the second empire, and of the merry days he had in Paris, with his old comrade, the Count de St. Pol, and that reminds him: Where is the young Count de St. Pol, and how is it we have not seen him lately? a question which comes upon Hilda and myself with a rather chilly feeling. We had almost forgotten the count, and now there comes another reminder of the un- pleasant episode with which he is con- nected. This in the form of a huge pair of curling horns and the coal-black nose of a Pyrenean sheep which appears over the edge of the table as we sit at break- fast in the open air, and presently ye hear the bang of a tambourine and the shrill piping note of a tin whistle, as two brown and dusty.men with ragged garments and big leather wallets make their apl)earance, with the gipsy girl and the second sheep close behind. The men are rather clam- orous in their demand for backsheesh, and direct their attentions especially to Hilda; making signs of intelligence, and as it were of secret understanding with her, to her great annoyance and indigna- tion. I jumped up to send the men off, but madame Ia directrice interfered in their behalf. Let us have one little performance, she cried. They are so amusin ~, those beasts, when they stand upon their hind legs; and she threw the men a small silver coin, which they picked up and ex- amined with some contempt. But they had been promised, said one of the men, speaking in his nasal patois, fifty francs by the young English lady there, pointing to Hilda, when they saw her last by the old abbey of C& isy. How dare you say so? cried Hilda indignantly. Why, this is a case of blackmail, said the director; it demands the interference of the authorities. We will tell our host to fetch the gendarmes. No, cried Tom, I object to the gen. ALONG TIlE SILVER STREAK. darmes, who put everything down in those confounded note-books; perhaps they have got my name down as it is. Let us deal with these rascals ourselves. At the sight of Tom and myself advanc- ing with warlike intentions, the men sheered off sullenly, muttering many threats, while the more valiant sheep pro- tected their retreat by menacing us with their horns. The girl remainedbehind~ and when her companions shouted to her to come on, she threw herself on her knees before Hilda. Mademoiselle, she cried, sobbing, you look kind and good ; will you save me from these men, who do nothing but beat and ~ll-treat me? They have been worse than ever since the day I showed your friend where to find you, and I am sure they will kill me now. Dont be afraid, little one, said Hilda, taking her hand kindly; no one shall take you away against your will. Unless indeed, interposed the direc- tor, unless one of these men is her fa- ther. We cant dispute parental authority, you know. Oh no, monsieur, cried the girl, I am not of their country at all. They bought me for a few sous of my father, promising to teach me a trade, but they have taught me nothino That might be a bindin~, contract, how- ever, said the director, but still, if there has been ill-treatment snapping his finoers that for the contract. The child looks docile and intelli ent. St& phanie, my angel, wilt thou take her for thy little maid? St6phanie shrugged her shoulders ex- pressi vely. I have not the time, mon cher, to superintend her education. The girl brightened up at this, for she had evidently fixed upon Ililda as her pro- tectress, and looked askance at madame Ia directrice. Mademoiselle, she faltered, I do not think I am fit to be a femme de c/bzmb;-e. I would be an artiste, like my mother. I can dance ; I can sing a little. Let me follow in your train, mademoiselle, and perhaps I can amuse you a little sometimes. Since the days of his youth, Tom de- clares, when he projected a private Punch and Judy show for nis own amusement, he had conceived of nothing so refresh- ingly naif as the plan of this brown gipsy child. In her eyes, Hilda was a great lady, with her yacht and her troops of follow- 35 ems, among whom the poor sal/imbanque might find a place for the amusement of a spare moment. But Hilda was touched and yet embarrassed by the girls appeal. How can I make your future, my child, she said, when my own is so un- certain ? Speak for me, monsieur, said the girl, appealing to me. Mademoiselle will refuse you nothing. What do you say? I asked of Hilda in a whisper. Shall we adopt the child ? Oh, if I could! I should dearly like to, replied Hilda. But what would he sax- ? he, no doubt, being the re- doubtable Mr. Chancellor. \Vell, leave it to me, I said. Tom and I will arrange matters, only Justine must take care of her. Toms skill in a bargain stood us in good stead on this occasion, for we thought it best to come to an arrange- ment with the Pyrenean shepherds, who, when they found that the little girl was in question, demanded extravagant sums for her release. Finally, however, ~ve beat them down to fifty francs, the very sum they had demanded as hush-money. The tambourine was thrown into the bargain, and Torn, emboldened by success, ~vas going on to make a bid for the sheep, but this I put a stop to ; for apart from the inconvenience of travelling about with a couple of curly horned sheep of fighting pro~)ensities, it would certainly be wrong to deprive the men of their means of livelihood. For our Pyreneans would certainly soon drink out the l)urchase- money of their flock, and then would be left as a scourge upon the country, for certainly there was the making of bandits in these truculent fellows. You have paid money for me. Oh, you were wrong to give anything to those wicked fellows ! cried our little ward her name was Zamora, by the way, a name I remembered once to have heard called by gipsies across a river with a sound wonderfully pathetic and tender, and the name had dwelt in my memory ever since. And here xvas the real Zamora at last a regular little gipsy, to w-hom both Tom and myself at once took a wonderful lik- ing. We took her to see Contango in his stable, when the gipsy nature of the child burst forth in her delight in the horse, his satin coat, and powerful fmame. The dream of her life, she acknowledged with glittering eyes, xvas to ride a horse like that, bare-backed, round some arena 36 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. she, all in spangles and diaphanous mus- lin, to dash through hoop after hoop amid the maddening plaudits of the crowd. The girl acted the scene with such fire and life that Tom involuntarily cried ITJO?115e l~! as she ~athered herself to gether for each daring spring. 1lang it, Frank ! cried Tom at last, put your money in a circus, and bring out our little Zamora as the flying won- der. The child looked at us eagerly, full of enthusiasm, and then she saw, or fancied she saw, that we were laughing at her, and her eyes filled with tears and her lip quivered. Zamora, I cried, you shall follow the bent of your talent. Come, we will find some kind master for you who will teach you all the mysteries of the rnan~ge. You shall ride three horses at oncesix if you like. Zamora seized my hand and kissed it gratefully. But I should have liked you for a master, she sighed. Those other mas- ters, indeed, from whom we had delivered the child, had been so cruel! Zamora could show the marks of the stripes they had given her upon her shoulders. Ah, they were wicked men, and they bore no good-~vill to monsieur! Zamora knew that the pair had been employed by M. de St. Pol, after he had received that blow, to follow me and trace all my movements. And they had fol- lowed the trail as far as Arromanches, but there they.had been deceived by the talk of the fishermen, who had reported that the yacht had sailed for Suthanton~~ with her whole party. And the count, in- formed of the sailing of the yacht, had concluded that I was running away from him, and had started for England at once to pursue his revenge, and he was prob- ably running after the Sew-Mew at this present moment. We laughed heartily, Tom and I, over this happy con/rete;nps. There was the possibility, indeed, of De St. Pol meeting with Mr. Chancellor and somehow bring- ing him into the quarrel; but this was a bare possibility hardly worth considera- tion. For it would certainly be against the code of honor to bring a ladys name into the dispute. The count would no doubt seek some other mode of revenge probably by passing upon me some public insult that would almost compel me to fight him. However, we had nothing to do in the matter but to wait events. And in the mean time Wyvern was in search of us, anxious to get the party together for a start. Wyvern was rather excited by the immediate prospect of meeting his chief, and he had prepared a kind of muster- roll of the whole party ready to lay before him. Chancellor will be sure to want to know who everybody is, Wyvern ex- plained apologetically. You see I have got a column here for the purpose. Ive got you down, Tom, here as Miss Chud~- leixhs cousin; and your friend Im afraid Ive made rather a muddle of his name Lam somethino Put down my real name, please, if you must put it down, I interposed. The other was just a pursers name. Put down, Mr. Frank Lyme, of Lyme. Hallo! cried Wyvern, that makes rather more of a muddle of it, doesnt it? You see, I send the chief a weekly return of his guests, and Im sure 1 put Lam something down, and hell have it to show against me if theres any mistake. But never mind, here goes; let him find it out Mr. Lyme, of Lyme, friend of Miss Chudleighs cousin eh ? In one way or another Mr. Wyvern got his list completed, and had the satisfac- tion of finding his muster complete at the railway station. Tom had undertaken to drive Contango by the direct road some ten miles to Caen, taking Justine and Zamora as companions. But the rest of us preferred the railway, quite a toy-line recently opened, with stations at all the little ~vatering-places on the coast. Ber- ni~res comes first, with its fine church- tower and tall, graceful spire; then St. Aubin a favorite saint this with the Normans. We can reckon up seven St. Aubins in their country. St. Germain, however, heads the poll with thirteen vil- lages owning his sway, while St. Georges is a good third, and the rest are nowhere. As to what Albinus had done, or what Germanus, to make them thus respected, no one seems to be informed. Our direc- tor discards the saints altogether with a contemptuous wave of the hand. But St. Aubin-by-the-Sea is nice because the houses are ranged close to the sands, and people can pop out of their own doors and into the sea without further ceremony. Then comes Lagrune, with another tall spire a good deal battered and disfigured, and after this Luc-sur-Mer, the most pop- ular and lively of all these little bathing. places. But these places are all just now in full enjoyment of the benefits of the season, the sands dotted with bathers, ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. 37 with chairs, with tents, with gay umbrel- icent progress. And the visit of the dis- las and everything to be seen to the tinguished Mr. Chancellor and his party best advantage from the railway, espe- is another proof of the friendship that daily from the tops of the cars, which are binds the two countries. utilized for outside passengers. A pleas- Has Mr. Chancellor then arrived? ng novelty this last, and yet not a novelty is asked with some anxiety. so much as a revival, for on our English Well, no, not yet; but his yacht has railroads we had outside passengers to been signalled at the mouth of the river. start with, after the model of the stage- It will take two hours, perhaps, to make coach, till some of these were decapitated the intermediate transit. in passing under bridges. I3ut here there We have just two hours, I said, turn- are no bridges to fearnothing to give ing to Hilda; two hours in which our alarm overhead; but a pleasant smiling fate must be decided. Let us get away plain all about, and a level crossing here from this crowd, and spend the last two and there, where a woman signals our hours to~et approach upon a horn. - her was n~ot difficult to get away from the The railway turns inland by Douvres, rest, and we wandered away from the sta- and passes close by the locally famous tion, at haphazard, towards the town. All chapel of La D~liverande, vhence every the streets presented a gay and holiday year pilgrims flock in crowds, whole par- aspectthe houses festooned with flags, ishes sometimes marching thither in pro- and the shop-windows dressed out with cession, with the cur6at the head, to visit the most attractive wares. All this had a famous image of the Virgin. But the been going on for weeks and weeks, and church is almost new, and is surrounded yet nobody seemed tired of it; the flags by various buildings of a conventual char- fluttered just as gaily, the people made acter, all new and in excellent repair, and holiday just as freely with a severe eye therefore not exciting much interest to business all the timeas if this were among us. flu t the veneration of the the first day of rejoicing. But altogether people for the site is not an affair of to- there was so much noise and hubbub, day, but dates from ages far remote, from that we could hardly hear ourselves the days of Saint Regnobert, one of the speak; and so, following the slope of the earliest Christian missionaries in these ground, we made our way out of the town parts, at a time when Rome was still and towards the meadows by the river. mistress of the world; and even then, no Turning one way we found the meadows doubt, the worthy Regnobert only hal- occupied by a horse-show, a circus, and lowed to Christian use a site already dear the outbuildings of the exposition, but in to popular superstition. the other direction there was comparative The railway winds quietly into Caen quiet, with solemn reaches of the river without affording us any ~eneral view of passing out into the country, among the city, and at the station we find our- avenues of stately trees, while cheerful selves the centre of quite a crowd of country houses, with gay gardens, bright- well-dressed people drawn up to receive ened up the scene. Behind us stretched us. It is our director, however, who is the city of Caen with its long line of the object of this ovation, our director spires set against the evening sky, the quite transformed by the occasion dis- Conquerors church mounting guard at tributing bows, salutes, pressures of the one end, and his consort Matildas at the hand, in every directicn, while his wife other. The soft tinkle of bells came is equally the centre of all kinds of flatter- pleasantly over the meadows, with the ing attentions. Of all people our direc- murmur of voices and the neigh ing and tor is most welcome at Caen at this whinnying of horses from the shows close moment, for the whole I)lace is in high by, and the shrill cries and laughter of fete with its Concours R6gional; its ex- children at play. position, its public banquets, and private We sat down upon a bench under the entertainments; and in all of these, as trees, Hilda seating herself at the end of the representative of his bureau, will the bench, so as to leave a space between our director be in the greatest request. us just as the whole length of Caen Our whole party, too, is illumined by divides William the Conqueror from his the radiance that shines upon our direc- faithful Matilda. It is true that I did not tor. It is a happy occasion for cement- feel like the conqueror at all, but rather ing t he cordiality which should unite two as one defeated. Hilda looked nervously great and friendly nations, whose only at her watch; already half an hour had rivalry should be in the path of a benef- passed. The Sea-Mew was now steam- 3S~ ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. i~.g up the river, I could see her in the minds eye dashing along between the long avenues of trees, setting all the fish- ino~boats dancing and twirling with the swell she raised in passing, while her owner paced the deck impatiently and urged full speed. The thought was maddening. H Ida, I cried, I am not going to stop here to see that fellow claim you as his property. If you dont make up your mind in ten minutes to take me, and throw Chancellor over, 1 shall go right away some where. Listen, Frank, said Hilda, giving me an appealing glance. 1-lave a little pa- tience and wait. I own that I dread this meeting. I have tried hard to do my duty, and drive you out of my heart, but I am not strong enough. It is a humil- iating confession, and Hilda knit her hrows, but there it is. Only he must decide. My darling Hilda, I cried, and the space between us had now come to a van- ishing point, if you are of a mind to have me, there is nothing in the world that can come between us. Oh yes, indeed there is, Frank, cried Hilda, putting back my arm that had be- gun to encircle her waist ; plenty of things may come between us. A whole peck of family troubles come between us. But listen, Frank, I have ~vritten to Mr. Chancellor. I know you are always writing to him, I replied savagely. But this time, Frank, continued Hilda gently, it was a letter that I am afraid must have hurt him very much. I told him about youhe knew a little about you beforejust that there had been such a person. But this time I told him all. That you had been my first and my only love, and that I could never, never forget you. No, Frank, you mustnt take advantage of this confession, which has been wrung from me by circum- stances, for I still belong to somebody else, till he releases me from my prom- ise. Hilda was resolute upon this l)oint, she would not forfeit her word to Mr. Chan- cellor, or allow me any of a lovers priv- ileges till he had absolved her. And Hilda confessed that she feared his influ- ence would be too strong upon her, and that he would talk her over and carry everything his own way after all. As we were talking we heard the shrill whistle of a steamer, that was no doubt just en- tering the basin. It must be the Sea Mew by that long, dolorous shriek, that the French boats could not come near in the ~vay of sound and shrillness. Hilda turned pale as she made me hurry towards the town, but half-way across the prairies we met Wyvern hurrying to meet us. The Sea.~le~vhas arrived, he cried, but no Chancellor. However, her master has brought a despatch for you that will no doubt account for Chancellors absence. But I assure you that our French friends are very much excited about it. They will have it that Chancellor, bein a member of the administration, is prevented from coming over by national jealousy. Per- haps there is something to be said for that view, hut it must not be countenanced, you understand. And with that Wyvern hurried off to talk to the Arefct, ~vhom he recognized in the distance. Meantime Hilcia had devoured her let- ter, and at the end of it gave me a gentle pressure on the arm. He has forgiven me, Frank, she said, but not quite freely. You may read the second sheet of the letter, for it is about business matters. I read as follows, the writing being very neat and firm I have spared no pains, no expense, as you are aware, to make you happy. The Sea-Mew I bought principally for your amusement, although, as you know, I dont personally care for the sea. I did not grudge all this, but still I think I have cause to complain. The yacht is still at your disposal, however, for the present, but as I shall try to sell her at once, before the season is over, you must not complain if she is suddenly recalled. Of course I cant do anything more in your brothers business, the probable odium to be encountered in providing in the public service for such a worthless person i~ too serious to be encountered, except for the sake of one very near and dear. But the purchase of the Combe Chudleigh property is so nearly completed that I cannot now recede, although the possession of the estate will be, in some respects, painful. However, it affords me the satisfaction of assuring you that you and your father are welcome to re- main there till you fin~I a suitable abode elsewhere. There was a mixture of assumed be- nevolence and genuine rancor about this letter, that ~vas rather amusing. But Hilda looked very grave over it, after the first feeling of thankfulness had passed over. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. 39 You will repent, Frank, she cried, when you have heard all I have to tell you. Hilda began with the death of her aunt, Miss Chudleigh, our clear old friend of Weymouth. A few days before, the old lady had sent for her and told her how she had disposed of her property. And you and Frank can marry and be happy upon my money. I had much rather that, than that it should run down the gutters after Redmond. And thus the property was tied up so that she could not touch the principal. And Hilda had intended that, somehow, I should be informed of her aunts benev- olent intentions, when she heard the re- port of my having married the Indian princess. At that time, too, had occurred her fathers collapse, when he was obliged to leave Combe Chudleigh, and to take to economical living in London. And then Redmond, whose extravagance had ruined the old squire, in his straits for money had resorted to some questionable prac- tices in raising loans, and had been threat- ened with a criminal prosecution. Mr. Chancellor, however, had arranged mat- ters with the creditors, who had agreed to take an assignment of Hildas income, exceptin~ some two hundred a year she retained for pocket moneyan assign. ment for ten years, Mr. Chancellor having generously acceded to this disposal of the fortune of his future wife. It was over these papers that Hilda had been so en- grossed with Mr. Wyvern, when we re~ joined the yacht at Port. It was all set- tled now, and Redmond was personally safe, but his prospects of public employ- ment were at an end, very much to the advantage of the public, as I thought. And this poor little two hundred a year of mine, said Hilda, is all we shall have to depend upon, for I dont suppose you have made your fortune abroad, have you, Frank? I could truthfully reply that I had not made my fortune, indeed I had lost half the little capital I started with, in tea- planting out in India. But then the other half ~vas still intact, and I told Hilda that would be something to start with, and we had youth and health on our side, and working together surely we could make some kind of mark in the world. Well, I am willing to try, Frank, said Hilda cheerfully, if you are. Only it strikes me that our holiday ought to end here, and that we ought to begin this work, whatever it is to be, as soon as pos- sible. Of course it ~vas out of the question to accept Mr. Chancellors offer of the loan of the Sea-Me~v till he could sell her. But I had a plan of my own about that, which I only wanted Toms help to carry out. And as we walked up the Rue St. Jean towards the hotel, we met Tom driving Contango, and a good deal embarrassed, for he had not been able to find us out, and Zamora attracted a good deal of at- tention, from her outlandish appearance and vivid gestures. But having depos- ited his feminine charge at the hotel, and attended to Contang& s comfort at the stables, Tom was all ready to execute my commission, which was no other than to purchase the Sea-Mew as she stood, or floated rather, with all her fittings and belongings. And Tom soon found out from the master what price he thought the yacht was fairly worth, and then he telegraphed an offer to Mr. Chancellor, somewhat below this amount. The reply came in a few hours. It was an accept- ance of the offer, provided the money was deposited at Rothschilds within twenty- four hours. There was no difficulty about this, so that the yacht was now mine to all intents and l)url)oses. But as Tom came back from his last journey to the port about the yacht, he took me aside, with a grave look upon his face. Frank, who came across in the Sea- Mew, with Mr. Chancellors permission, can you guess? Why, the Count de St. Pol. I met the man just now. From Macmillans Magazine. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTJONS OF MADAME MOJIL. IN the year i8~o, my father and mother and I were at Turin, where we saw a great deal of the Marchesa Costanza Ar. conati, an old friend of our family. One day she said to us that she must make us acquainted with Madame Mohl. We had no particular desire to know her; we had heard of her, probably from some very stupid person, as a sort of blue-stockino. I can still hear the tone in which Madame Arconati rejoined, Elle nest pas du tout p~dante! On our return through Paris in i8~r, we accordingly made M. and Madame MohIs acquaintance. Your father did not care about me at all at first, she has often said to me laughingly it took him 40 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. some time to discover my merits. They soon, however, became firm friends, ann she came to see us in London for the first time during the Great Exhibition. In Paris, which we visited every year, she was our mainstay. When we first arrived she wouid ask us whom ~ve par- ticularly desired to see, and vhether we knew them already or not she was sure to get them to meet us. She was a very early riser, and would often tap at the door of our apartment between nine and ten oclock, and sit down and talk to us while we were at breakfast. Hers was real conversation, not preaching. It was spontaneous, full of fun and trace of ex- pression. She spoke French and English with the fluency and accent of a native, yet with the care and originality of a for- eigner. (My authority for saying this of her French was Alexis de Tocqueville.) When there was no word in either lan- guage exactly to fit her thoughts she would coin one for the occasion. She had much of the phraseology of the last cen- tury, but none of its coarseness, for she had an essentially delicate and refined na- ture. Although a great reader she had, as Madame Arconati said, not an atom of dogmatism or pedantry. She had no airs of superiority of any kind. The next year she came to stay with us; as an inmate she gave no trouble, she never put out the household in any way, and her punctuality was unfailing. She would take pains to be agreeable to the stupid- est and most insignificant person who happened to look in. She never snubbed or neglected any one in our house, not even very young ladies, although she would sometimes say, if she chanced to sit near one, My dear, I felt so ashamed of not being a young man. Although she was so fond of society, and talked so much and so easily, a cer- tain amount of solitude ~vas absolutely necessary to her. She would come home from a round of visits looking fagged, with her hair all out of curl, and throw herself into an armchair exclaiming, I am as tired as fifty dogs, and then take up what she called a nourishing book (an epithet of high praise which she also ap- plied to persons), and retire to her room for a couple of hours, whence she would emerge at dinner time, fresh, brilliant, ~vith her curls and her mind quite crisp; the life and soul of the company. When in society she disliked /~te-ci. /t~tes, and thought them very ill-bred. She liked a little circle in which the ball of conversation is tossed from one to the other. She thought it more exciting and less fatiguing than if the company split up in the English fashion into duets. She never could understand the pleasure that English people find in standing and say- ing three words to each other at evening parties. She would try to get two or three to sit by her and talk quietly, but she said they seemed in a sort of feverish fidget as if expecting some wonderful sight, and incapable of paying attention. She greatly enjoyed a real ate-a -tate with a friend when there was no distract- ing company present, and would readily unlock the stores of her memory, and pour out the results of her long and varied exl)erience. Although her opinions on people and thino~s were extraordinarily tolerant and unconventional, she yet had a fine sense of moral rectitude and high principle which made her a l)erfectly safe friend for young people. I never heard her say a word or utter a sentiment which I should shrink from recording here could I only recollect it. Conversation is unfortunately as ephemeral as acting or singing. My father recorded a great deal of hers in his journals, but as she herself says of Ma- dame R6camier, Such recollections have much the same effect on those who knew her that a liortus siccus of tropical Bowers would have on a traveller just returned from seeing them in their native country. Still such as they are they are valuable, for although so light and full of fancy there was solid matter in her conversa- tion; it was not mere froth; she had thought much and read much, besides having always lived in the intimacy of the most brilliant and remarkable men and women of her time. Her early youth was spent in the last palmy days of Parisian society, before luxury and crowds took the place of the quiet socieM lidirne in which rank and wealth were almost imma- terial. Her maiden name was Mary Clarke. I believe her fathers family to have been of Irish extraction. Her grandfather, An- drew Clarke, forsook his wife and family to follow the fortunes of the Stuarts. On the other hand, an ancestor of her moth- ers, a Hay of Hope in Scotland, fought for XVilliain III. at the battle of the Boyne, and the s~vord that he used on that occasion was carefully preserved by Madame MohI. Her maternal grandfa- ther, Captain David Hay, died compara- tively early; his widow attained a very advanced age, and always lived with their only child, who married Mr. Clarke. Mrs. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. Hay was a remarkable ~voman; she had lived in the best Edinburgh society, and was intimate with Hume and his contem- poraries. Mary was the youngest of three children: one, a boy, died in infancy; the other Eleanor, was seven years older than her sister. She represented the Scotch element, and was quiet, beautiful, digni- fied, and very Low Church. She remem- bered to have seen Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette at mass in the chapel of the Tuileries after their flight to Varennes. One of Marys earliest recollections was seeing the Allies enter Paris in 1815, which she did from the back of a troop- ers horse. Eleanor was married to Mr. Frewen Turner, of Cold Overton, Leices- tershire, in i8o8. Mrs. Clarkes constitu- tion could not stand the English climate. She lived almost constantly in France; and although a Protestant, she put her daughter for a short time to school in a convent. Mary was a spoilt child and a great pet. She has often told me that she owed her unfailing spirits to her having never been snubbed by her mother. After Mrs. Frewen Turners marriage Mrs. Clarke thought it advisable for Mary to pay her sister long visits to England; but al- though she was very fond of Eleanor, Madame Mohl has often told me that she always hailed with delight her return to her mother, to whom she was passionately attached, and who allowed her the most entire freedom. She was long enough, however, in England to catch a glimpse of the old society, and stayed often with Miss Benger, who received on the old- fashioned easy terms most of the distin- guished people of her day. She also knew Miss Lydia White. She had always longed to see Mine. de Sta~l, and on one of these visits she heard that the great authoress was staying at a hotel in Lon- don. So she resolved to see her, but she had no introduction, and Madame de Sta~l ~vas not easily approached. It was thus that she told us how she accomplished her object : My dear, I happened to have a little money in my pocket, so slipped out of the house, called a coach, and ordered the man to drive me to the hotel (she was not clear as to where it was). I had heard that Madame de StaU was looking out for a governess, and I resolved to offer myself. I was shown in; Madame de Sta~l was there and the bra 111km (a little boy). She was tr?s grande dame, very courteous, asked me to sit down, said I looked very young, and proceeded to ask me my capabilities. I agreed to everything, for I wanted to have a little talk with her. Of course I couldnt have taught him at all, I could never have been bothered with him. So at last she repeated that I was too young, and bowed me out. This was the only time I saw Madame de Sta~l, and I never told any- body when I got home. Mrs. Clarkes headquarters were in Paris. She and her mother had excellent introductions from Edinburgh friends. Mrs. Clarke was known as a person of very advanced opinions, and her acquain- tance was sought by the members of La J eune France. One of their greatest friends was M. Fauriel, who played an important part in Miss Clarkes life. His name is little known in England, but on the Continent he ~vas considered a very rereat savcznt.* He was very intimate with Madame R6camier, and he was al- ways praising his English friends to her. So she asked to be introduced to them. They lived at that time in the Rue Bona- parte, but they had a squabble with their landlord, and Madame R6camier urged them in consequence to take part of her apartments in the Abbaye-au-Bois, where they remained for seven years. The Abbaye was a large, old building, with a courtyard, closed on the street by a hb~h iron grate surmounted by a cross. Through this grate you see the square court, and opposite to it the entrance door of the chapel and another small door, which is the entrance to the parloir. Various staircases ascend from this yard conducting to apartments inhabited by re- tired ladies. t It was in this convent that Madame R~camier held her court from the year 1819 to the day of her death in 1849. She was captivated by Miss Clarkes extraordinary cleverness, kindli- ness, and vivacity, and they also charmed * Claude Fauriel was born at St. Etienne in 1772. He served in the army for a few years, then became secretary to General Dugommier, and was afterwards attached to the staff of Fouchd. But he soon embraced a literary career. He settled in Paris, where he be- came acquainted with the most distinguished members of the Socidtd dAuteuil. He knew a great many lan- guages and translated several foreign works. In 1824 he published Lee Chants populaires de Ia Griice moderne. In 1834 he was appointed lecturer on foreign literature in the University of Paris. His lectures were admirable. In 1833 he Published Les Origines des Epopdes chevaleresques~ He also wrote a History of Provengal Poetry. His Dante et lea Origines de Ia Langue et Ia Littdrature italiennes brought him into contact with Maneoni, whose letters to him, re- cently published in Italy, show the utmost esteem and reverence f or the French philosopher. t This description is taken from Madame Mohls book on Madame Rdcamier, which also contains a full and interesting account of this society (see Madame R~camier, Chapman and Hall, i86a). 4 42 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. M. de Chateaubriand, for whose amuse- ment Madame R6camier cared above all things, and she persuaded her young friend to come to her every afternoon at four oclock, when she received the 6/lie of Paris. Hither came the members of the old aristocracy, the Duc de Laval, Matthieu de Montmorency, etc., as well as all t-he intellectual celebrities of the day. Politics were very exciting at that time; several of the /uzbituis ~vere members of the Chamber, and came in every day to relate what had taken place. Nothing remarkable in private or public ever passed that was not known there sooner than elsewhere. Whoever had first read a new book came to give an account of it. La Jeune France was represented by Benjamin Constant, Cousin, Villemain, Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, R6musat, Thierry, Tocqueville. One of its most agreeable members was the younger Amp~re.* He came every day. His conversation, says Madame Mohl (and the present writer can testify to the truth of her description), his conversation was like a stream of sparkling water, always fresh, never fatiguing. His wit was so natural that you never thought of any- thing hut the amusement he gave you. To a chosen few out of this circle M. de Chateaubriand read his Memoirs, bit by bit as he wrote them. The effect was prodigious. In some of the scenes Ma- dame Mohl said tears would unconsciously steal down her face, to the great satisfac- tion of the author. Here, too, Rachel recited the part of Esther for a charitable subscription, and from that time never ufidertook a new part without having given the first recital at the Abbaye-au- Bois. To us who are unable to command such stimulating intellectual food, it may be some consolation to find that those who enjoyed it were not exempt from ennui. The most courted, the idol of that society, M. de Chateaubriand him- self, suffered most severely from this malady. He often said he wished that enuizii would settle in his leg, for then he would cut it off! Madame MohI, how- ever, never, either then or afterwards, seemed to know what it meant. She en- * The following is M. Amp~res sketch of Madame Mohi at the Abbave-an-Bois: A little later in the evening the great reaource was Madame Mohl, then Miss Clarke. She is a charming mixture of French vivacity and English originality; hut I think the French element predominates. She was the delight of the graed cocoA; her expressions were entirely her own, end he more than once made use of them in his writings. Her French avas as original as the turn of her mind; exquisite in quality, hut savoring more of the last ceo- lury than of our own time. joyed life thorouwhly, and I have often heard her say she would like to begin again and go through every bit of the past. There were three distinguished men who spent every evening with Mrs. Clarke and her daughter M. Fauriel, M. Mohl,* and M. Roulin. For some time no one else was admitted. One year the three friends went to the East. My mother and I, she told me, spent every evening of that winter alone. I read such a number of books. We would not admit any one, lest it should con/rary them when they came back. M. Fauriel was much older than the other two. He was devotedly attached to Mary, and there was a sort of engage- ment between them; but she did not care enough about him to marry him, although she ~vould never marry any one else as long as he lived. He died of cholera, in M. Mohls arms, in the year 1844, leaving his library to his ftznc6e. To M. MohI he bequeathed a much more valuable legacy. In the year 1846 Mrs. Clarke died. Some years previously they had removed into the apartment in the Rue du Bac, which Madame MohI occupied for the rest of her life; but this did not prevent her daily intercourse with Madame R6ca- mier. M. and Madame de Chateaubriand lived on the ground-floor, and in i847, after Madame de Chauteaubriands death, and during a short absence of Madame R6camiers, Madame Mohl spent some time of every day with the great poet then in his declinetrying to interest and amuse him. She wrote daily bulle- tins of his state to Madame R6camier, who in his last days occupied the spare room in Madame Mohls apartment in * This is Ste. Beuves portrait of M. MohI: Un homme qui eat l~rudition et Ia curiosit6 mime: M. Mohi, le savant Orientaliste, et plus quun savant, on sa~e esprit clair loyal, ~tendu esprit allemand, pass6 an filtre anglais, sans un trouhie, sans on nuage, osiroir ouvert et limpide, moralit~ francise et are, de honne heure reveno de tout; avec un grain d ironie sans amertome, front chauve et rire denfant, intelligence ~ la Goethe, sinon queile eat exempte de toote couleur et queile eat soigneusement depouill~e do sens esthi- tique, comme dun mensonge. it is really impossible to translate this delicate and forcible description, but the following may give some idea of it: M. Molsi, the learned Orientalist, is erudi- tion and investigation itself. He is more than a philos- opher, he is wisdom personified l His intellect is clear, sincere, and liberal, thoroughly German, yet passed through an English filter; an untroubled, cloudless spirit, a mirror without speck or flaw ; a spotless char- acter, having early cast aside the illusions of youth ; a spice of irony without bitterness, tise hald brow of a sage with the laugh of a child. His mind in some re- spects resemhies that of Goethe, except that it is free of all bias, avoiding carefully, in his devotion to truth, the snare of watheticism. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. 43 order to be near the friend to whom she had devoted nearly thirty years of her life. After her mothers death Miss Clarke consented to reward M. MohI for his seventeen years of devotion. The en- gagement was kept a profound secret. The story of their marriage used always to amuse me extremely, and Madame Mohl was so good-natured as to tell it to me more than once. It was to this ef- fect: I gave my two servants warning, my dear, and told them I was going to travel in Switzerland. You know it is necessary to put up a placard the day before on the church you are going to ~be married in, announcing the event. So I gave a little boy ten francs to paste a playbill over it at once, and waited at the corner of the street to see it done. XVhen the morning came I told my maid I was going to a christenin~, as an excuse for putting on my best clothes. I didnt know whether I was standing on my head or my heels. After the ceremony I left M. MohI and my witnesses at the church door, got into a coach, and told the man to drive to lao, Rue du Bac (she lived at 120). 1 got out as soon as we arrived, paid the driver, went into the porters lodge, and asked if Madame Bertrand ~vas at home this was to give time for the coach to drive off. The porter thoucrht me very stupid. He assured me that no Madame Bertrand had ever lived there, which I knew perfectly well. When I got home I took off my fine clothes and my ~vedding ring, and packed up for my journey. My servants had no idea that 1 was married. I did not see M. MohI again for two days, when I met him and our witnesses at the rail- way station. We all dined together, and M. Mohl and I set off for Switzerland and then, luckily for me, the Duc de Pras- lin murdered his wife, and everybody talked about that, and forgot me and my marriage. She wrote to her sister, without any previous warning, that as an aunt was like a fifth wheel to ~i coach, she had been married that morning to M. MohI. M. and Madame MohI remained in the apartment of the Rue du Bac. It was a very convenient one. They had the fourth story for their kitchen, servants and spare room that comfortable, hos- pitable room to which her English friends were so kindly welcomed. The servants rooms were as well furnished as her own; she consulted their comfort in every wa)-, and they were devoted to her. They themselves lived on the third floor, which consisted of two drawing-rooms divided from each other by a glass door, a large library, a dining-room, and bedroom. The drawing-room had two large windows looking into the garden of the foreign missionaries, which was full of trees and flowering shrubs and gave a feeling of country although it was in the midst of Paris, which formed a background to the picture, with the dome of the Invalides and spire of St. Clotilde rising in the dis- tance. The drawing-room was not smart in any ~vay, hut it was full of comfortable seats, not stiffly arranged, as is often the case in French houses. On Sunday and Wednesday afternoons and on Friday evenings it ~~as frequented by the most interesting people in Paris. All who survived of the men who in 183o were called La Jeune France were there, and besides those already mentioned, the Duc de Broglie, M. and Madame dHaus- sonville, Prosl)er M6rim6e, I)uvergier de Hauranne, Odillon Barrot, a~ ~vell as many eminent Orientalists and profes- sors brought by M. MohI; and, as years went on, the men of a succeedinb genera- tion Lanfrey, Lom6nie, Laboulaye, Pr6vost Paradol, Renan, etc., were con- stant visitors. Almost all foreigners of any intellectual distinction made their way to the Rue du Bac. The queen of Holland always came when she was in Paris (M. Mohl was a great favorite of hers), and the Arconatis, Collegnos, Prin- cess Belgiojoso, Daniel Manin, Tourg6- nieff, the Duchess Colonna, Mr. Dana, Charles Sumner, etc. She was particu. larly fond of English people, especially of those who ~vere kind to her in Enoland. There was no trouble she would not take to make Paris agreeable to them. Thiers was a frequent visitor. When he first arrived in Paris from Marseilles to push his fortunes he was introduced to Mrs. and Miss Clarke as to people who would help him on. What can you do? asked Mrs. Clarke. Je sais manier la plume, was the reply. She introduced. him to the editor of the Go;zsfi/ii/ionuel, and the first articie he wrote was in praise of a piece of sculpture executed by a friend of Mrs. Clarkes. He fell in love with Mary, and at one time he took to coming every evening and staying so late that the porter was exasperated. One day the porter called out to Miss Clarke, Mademoiselle, jai quelque chose a vous dire. Si ce petit 6tudiant qui vient ici tous les soirs ne sen va pas avant minuit, je fermerai Ia porte et jirai me coucher. 44 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. 11 pourra dormir sous Ia porte coch~re; le gu6rira. She never knew how deep was the impression she produced until a fortnight before his death when she met him in the Isle Adam, at the house of her friend Madame Chevreux. The younger people were all amusing themselves, she was resting in a summer-house ~vhen M. Thiers found her out, and there, for the first time, he told her of his early and romantic attachment. She was greatly pleased and much touched, and in the fol- lowing year, in spite of her friends remon- strances, she would go to the anniversary ceremony of his death bearino- the fa- tigue of standing for hours in a broiling sun. On Friday evenings the lamps in the little salon were carefully shaded, for M. MohI was intolerant of a blaze of light, as indeed he was of glare and display of any kind. He used to be very sarcastic if any lady arrived smartly dressed, which was often the case, as Madame Duch~tel re- ceived on the same evening all the rank and fashion of the Orleanist party. One evening Sanson, the great actor, who had exchanged the stage for th epost of teacher at the Conservatoire, told us all sorts of amusing stories about his pupils, especially of Rachel, whom he discovered and trained. Guizot, Cousin, and Mignet were present, and it ~vas pleasant to see them retire gracefully into the background and leave the arena to the old actor, whom they encouraged by their attention and sympathy. The young lady who used to make tea was a niece of M. MohIs, now Madame Von Schmidt Zabierow, the wife of the governor of Carinthia. Her aunt was very fond of her, she almost lived in the Rue du Bac, and many little dances were got up in her honor. Prosper M6rimde was a great admirer of MIle. Idas clever- ness and simplicity, and used often to invite the Mohls and ourselves to drink yellow Russian tea in his apartment in the Rue de S~vres. He was charming on these occasions: he laid aside his cold, cynical manner, and amused us by sho~v- ing us his drawings and discoursing on the places and people he had seen. There were never any other guests. Madame MohI owed to M. Fauriel the Italian element in her society. He ac- coml)anied her mother and herself to Italy in the old days. Everywhere he had ac- cess to the best society, and no one could know Mrs. and Miss Clarke without lik- ing them. They were two years in Italy: the winters they spent at Milan, where they lived in the house next to Man- zoni s, with whom they passed every even- ing. Among their most intimate friends were the Arconatis, of whom I have already spoken. Madame Arconati was one of the most remarkable and attractive wom- en of her day. She and her husband emigrated in 1821 and lived in the grand old Chateau of Gaesbeck, near Brussels, where they collected round them many eminent countrymen of their own, also exiled for political reasons. Arrivabene, Collegno, Berche t, Gioberti were among them. As soon as the amnesty was de- clared they returned to Italy. The Mar- quis Arconati was elected a member of the Italian Parliament, and they lived for some years at Turin. They had a villa on the Lake of Como, where M. and Mine. Mohi visited them several times. On one occasion there was a fearful thunder storm, and the Arconatis were asked to shelter an English family out in an open boat on the lake. These English people ~vere Arthur Stanley not yet Dean of Westminster his mother, and his sis- ter. They were hospitably received, and were all delighted with each other, espe- cially Madame Mohi and Arthur Stanley, who straightway conceived for each other the ardent friendship which added so much pleasure and interest to both their lives. The Stanleys visited her in Paris, and it ~vas in the Rue du Bac that the dean first met Lady Augusta Bruce: he sat by her at dinner, and afterwards said to his mother that if lie ever married, Lady Augusta should be his wife. Ma- dame Mohi always considered that the marriage was made by her, and was very proud of her handiwork. She was not equally pleased when her men friends married women whom she did not know, or failed to marry those whom she intend- ed for them. In such cases the unfortu- nate wife scarcely ever found favor in her eyes. Every year Madame Mohi visited her sister, Mrs. Frewen Turner, in Leicester- shire, and on her way she used to spend some time with her London friends. She came when the season was l)retty far ad- vanced to enliven us all, and give the signal for all sorts of pleasant meetings and entertainments: it was a great de- light when it came to our turn to receive her. In Leicestershire, Aunt Clarky, as they called her, gave new life to the family circle. Her young great-nieces and nephews especially rejoiced in her SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOUL. 45 arrival. She used to read with them, talk to them, and scamper with them on pony- back all over the country. As soon as M. Mohls duties at the Coll~ge de France, the Imprimerie Na- tionale, and the Institut were over, he followed her to England. Very few of the members of the gay world were by that time left in London, hut he did not care about that. He spent his time chiedy in the British Museum and the Athe- nmum, where he delihhted in dining with three or four old Oriental and learned friends, whom he used to call the boys. He was particularly fond of the society of clever old ladies, and almost every even- ing found him at Lady William Russells. Such of his friends as were still in Lon- don were charmed to welcome him. He was a most interesting converser. No one told a story so well all sorts of am us- ing adventures always seemed to be hap- pemng to him; he could not go in an omnibus without somethino- absurd and diverting taking place his acute sense of fun made everything appear to him in a ludicrous light. With all this he had a sort of childish simplicity and total ab- sence of pretension, in spite, or rather in consequence, of his great talent and learn. ing. He spoke perfect English, but as it was a foreign language he did not use the current expressions the counters which often stand in the place of ideas. XVith him, as with his wife, the word exactly fitted the idea. Her conversation was not so full of anecdote, but she had more magi nation and higher spirits. She never concealed a thouo-htout it all came in an instant while he was not at all defi- cient in reticence. They married so late that their union never became an old story to either of them. When M. Mohl came into their salon, his first impulse was to talk to his wife, to tell her all that had amused and interested him since they last met; she had often to direct his attention to the guests that were present. The so. ciety in their own house exactly suited them both, and like the bees, they wan- dered, often singly, far and wide to bring back honey to the hive. When they were parted they wrote each other long and amusing letters, half in French and half in English. Their English friends did not quite understand their visiting Englanx.l sepa- rately, but Paris becomes very hot towards the end of June, and it was better for Madame MohIs health to leave it, while M. MohI was tied there on account of his occupations, nor would he have enjoyed the season with its large parties and dis- sipation, whereas his wife enjoyed every- thing intensely in its turn. She delighted in the theatre, which he abhorred. Isnt it convenient? she used to say. I put all the money we can spare for the play into this box, and as Mr. MohI cant bear going I spend it all on myself. She was a very bad walker by day, but she always felt stronger at night, and we often trudged through the streets of Paris on our return from the theatre, ~valking rap- idly (for she never did anything slowly), and in the highest spirits, her nose not assailed as mine ~vas by the abominable odors of the Rue du Bac. She had no sense of smell, although all her other senses were extraordinarily acute. She never lost her hearing, and her sight ~vas very little iml)aired to the last. Her taste for art was as much cultivated as her taste for literature. She drew and l)ainted in her youth ~vith considerable successAry Scheffer was her master; but although she was very fond of music she neither played nor sang. Above all others she loved Italian music, especially singing. One evening I took her to a private concert ~vhere there was no other kind of music. Oh, my dear, she said, I thought I ~vas in heaven she did not care for difficult instrumental music. - Everything loud and big, coarse and unfinished, was disagreeable to her, her taste was for things small and delicate like herself. She had even a prejudice against tall women. She was very fond of beauty, and always said that she could not bear ugly people; but I noticed that when she liked people she never thought them ugly, she said there was a grace about them, one of her favorite expres- sions. She was as capricious as a spoilt child, yet until advanced age impaired her self-control, she never allowed her whims to interfere with the comfort of others. She was blessed ~vith a good though hasty temper, and an unusual amount of com- mon sense which made her see the ab- surdity of extravagant pretentions of any kind. She liked intensely, as she did everything else. One of her droll l)hrases (I r~meinber her saying it of Mr. Erasmus Darwin among others) was, My dear, I am so fond of him that it makes me quite uncomfortable. There never was a cloud between her and me, but although she was not touchy she was vehement, and she sometimes had little misunderstandings with others whom she loved. This she called being 46 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. en de~1Icztesse ~vith so-and-so. She was a pany and spend hours in reading it. She thoroughly good hater, and occasionally found it so very nourish ~~6 took violent and unreasonable prejudices, In the year 1870, Madame MohI came and said very unkind things of theobjects to England, followed as usual by her hus- of them. The person she detested above band; but they were not destined to re- all others was Louis Napoleon. His turn home for a very long while. The character, and the tyranny and luxury of Jranco-German ~var broke out, and Ma- the second empire, were intolerable to dame Mold remained to be the delight of her. When, in 1854, Montalembert was London society during the whole winter, imprisoned for writing a letter against the four months of which she spent with us. emperor which found its ~vay into print, She invariably spoke of this as of the Madame MohI, who had no previous ac- time she was on the parish. M. MohI quaintance with him, visited Montalem- was stayin~ with other friends. He came bert in prison, sympathized with him, to see her every day. Oh, Mr. MohI, wept with him, and ever afterwards they she used to say to him (I never heard her were firm friends. She equally detested call him by any other name), shall we the great Napoleon. Henri IV. she ever see our home arain? Yes, Ma. adored, and she read everything, however damchen, was invariably the reply. But dull and archaic, that related to him, although she was anxious, she always One afternoon, three or four years ago, said that she enjoy-ed herself uncommonly. Mignet (aged 84) obeyed a summons from She went out a great deal, the dean and his old friend to meet Mrs. Wyn~e Finch Lady Augusta and many other friends at her house. Mignet was astonished to came constantly to see her; everybody find that Madame Mohl was studying did their best to amuse her. She dearly some old chronicle on the laws enacted liked what she called being made a fuss by the great king. He went on to give of; she was as she said a very- grateful them a most interesting lecture on the person, and every act of kindness was reign and virtues of Henri IV. Madame appreciated and remembered by her. MohI got tired, and touching Mignets One of the things she disliked in En- shoulder with all the petulance of a spoilt gland was our love of open windows. My child, she cried, Assez, mon cher; vous dear, she would say, its quite a mal- prdchez une convertie. ady, an expression she used of any habit She was extremely fond-of scenery and or taste which she did not share. travelling, and her visits to Germany ~vith One of her French habits, which was her husband were very agreeable to her. rather annoying to her host, was that she She was proud of the high position which insisted on keeping large sums of money he and his brothers occupied in their own in her bedroom. Nothing would persuade country-, and which brought her into con- her to have a banker. She never remem- tact with interesting people. The Mohls bered where she put it away-, and con- were a very remarkable family. In the stantly thought she had lost it, when there next generation one of M. MohIs nieces was a grand hunt and disturbance, and married the celebrated Professor Helm. every one was upset till it ~vas found holtz, while, as I have said before, the again, which it always was in some bag or other became the wife of the governor of drawer. Althou~h her habits were French, Carinthia. her heart was English, and she was very It was delightful to stay with Madame proud of being a British subject. The MohI in a country house. She visited us best picture she possessed, a lovely in 1859 at Malvern, and we went after- Greuze, s.he told me she should leave to wards on the top of a stagecoach (when the National Gallery-. she was divided between terror, and en- As soon as the siege was raised, M. joyment of the scenery), over the hills to Mohi returned to Paris, but he would not the Chives at Whitfield, Hereford. Mrs. allow her to accompany him. Her anxiety Archer Chive, the authoress of Paul then became very great;- for the first time Ferroll, was a special favorite of hers, it struck her as possible that she might In i86o she went with us to stay with survive her husband. Oh, my dear, Dr. Jeune (hate Bishop of Peterborough, she would exclaim, what would my life at that time vice-chancellor), at Pembroke be worth if I lost Mr. Mohl ! College, Oxford. We were given fellows Then came the Commune. She obsti rooms in the college. She was charmed nately refused to read the newspapers; to see such a number of books, and she nor could she bear to talk of the horrors pounced upon Niebuhrs History of which were going on. Her husband wrote Rome. She used to escape from the coin- long and frequent letters to her, which SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. 47 were most interesting. They arrived very irregularly, sometimes two or three to- gethe r, sometimes none at all for several days. Her delight was intense when the dean and Lady Augusta, at the earliest possible moment, offered to take her to Paris. The dean told me that her joy on arriving was almost childish. She skipped about, and ~vas quite happy at being obliged to walk all the way to the Rue du Bac. But the happiest years of her life were over; many of the old set were dead, and M. Mohis position as a German was no longer what it had been. Their salon never regained its brilliancy. In London, on the other hand, she had become, by her long stay amongst us, better and more widely known. Her arrival towards the close of the season was the signal for all sorts of festivities. All who knew her wanted to see her, and all who did not, wanted to make her acquaintance. XVe often begged her to come ~vith M. MohI and live in England. No, no, my dear, she would say, it is only because I am a rarity that you make such a fuss about me. lip to the last she had, unlike most people who live to be very old, a curious fancy for concealing her age. In 1870 it was impossible to get her to say how old she was when the census paper had to be filled up, and there is a tradition that when asked to declare it at the Maine on her marriage, she said, Monsieur, si vous insistez, je me jeterai par Ia fen6tre, mais je ne vous dirai pas mon age. I do not vouch for the truth of this story, as of course I did not hear it from her own lips. She was seven years older than her husband, and it never occurred to her, except for a moment during the Coin- mune, that he might precede her to the grave. He never got over the impression of that dreadful time, or ceased to lament the enmity between his nation and his adopted country. In 1875 he began to fail. The first symptom was an affection of the knee which prevented his taking exercise. Towards the end of the year he was no longer able to leave his house. Then came the ill news of his brother Roberts death, and he failed more and more rapid. ly. Her grief was mingled with astonish- ment, even with indignation. The doctors did not venture to dispel her hopes. She tried to shut her eyes to his danger, and she was actually taken by surprise when he died on January 4th, 1876. Only her most intimate friends know how terrible was the shock. He was absolutely nec- essary to her existence. She never got over his loss, and from that moment de- sired most earnestly to follow him. At the time sh~ went almost out of her mind.* She came to us in September at Bourne- mouth; it was easy to see that she had re- ceived a blow from which she would never recover. Still she was incapable of dis- mal despondency, and her elastic spirit re- 1)ounded at intervals. She loved the sea and the woods, and all the sights and sounds of the country. The house contained an excellent library of many interesting old books, and into these she plunged eagerly. We had a house full of children and young people (with whom she was a great favorite), and a basket pony-chaise which carried her about and saved her much fatigue, although her love for animals was so great that she insisted upon walking up all the hills. She could not bear to see a horse beaten. It was almost painful to drive with her, for she would keep looking out to see if the coachman was flogging his horses, and insist on my calling out to him every two minutes that we were not in a hurry. In Paris it was worse. She said that nothing in En gland struck her so much as our superior humanity to ani- mals, it was quite a pleasure to her to look out of the window when a great party was going on, and see the coachmen pat- ting their horses. She would not have a dog of her own because she said she should grow too fond of it, but she always had a Persian cat, generally from a breed cherished by her dear friend, Miss Flop ence Nightingale. In the following spring (1877) she went to visit her niece, Madame Helmholtz, at Berlin, where she saw all the most inter- esting people, among others the crown prince and princess showed her great attention. She told me that the crown prince did her the honor of talking to her during a whole evening about his wife, who, he said, was the cleverest and most * The following extract from one of Madame Mohis letters to Mrs. Wynne Finch is touching in its sim- plicity It was on the night of the 3rd, or rather the morn- jog of the 4th, that he passed away. He had been struggling for hreath for four or five sours, xvorse and worse, he stroked my face all the time hut could not speak; that stroking has heen an ineffable comfort to me; it was an endearment when he could nut speak, the only sign lie could give me of his affection, and that he knew it was I that was with Isim. You, dear friend, have children, and wlsat a difference that makes l This was written on the anniversary of his death. Mrs. Wynne Finch was at that time in Rome, and Madame Mohi must have heen sitting alone, pondering over the terrihie time of her hereavement which Mrs. Wynne Finch had lived through with her. 48 SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MADAME MOHL. remarkable woman in Europe. But Ger- and we spent many pleasant evenings to. man habits and German hours did not gether. suit her. She suffered extremely from She came to us for the last time last the stoves, and she came suddenly back June twelvemonth. She had now entered to Paris, where I found her a few days her ninetieth year, and her loss of mem- afterwards. I had not been in Paris since ory and increased restlessness had be- the autumn of !87T, when all was in con- come very painful. She would start up fusion but M. Mohl was alive at that several times a day saying she must write time, we went perpetually to the theatre, to Mr. MohI, forgetting that he was dead. and were all merry enough in spite of the She was longing to die herself. She desolation around us. But now in 1877, could not even understand what she read. the salon in the Rue du Bac was painfully From the touching account in the little silent. book already so often referred to (the Life is a series of dissolving views, only one unfortunately that she ever Almost all the friends of her earlier years, wrote) on Chateaubriands last years, we even those who were much younger than may judge how much she suffered from herself, were gone, she had been too much the consciousness of her state. There out of heart to care for acquaintances, M. ~vas no want of ordinary sense, but the Mohl was no longer there to bringg rist power of thinking was completely gone. to the mill, and no one came on the Fri- He could not read a line, nor follow up an day even in~s which used to be so bril- idea in conversation. From us she went liant. Still she herself was as charming into the country, where she became still as ever. One evening she showed me a more unhappy and restless, and returned little sketch she had made of herself, and home for the last time in September. The given to M. MohI sixty years previously, brilliant circle met no longer in the Rue when he was going to the East. She had du Bac, still there were a few faithful found it in his desk after his death, and friends ~vho never forsook that sad and was much touched and pleased at its hay- desolate fireside. One of them has told ing been cherished for so long. It was me that on first going in she found the still like her, the same innocent, childlike, once gay little hostess curled up in a cor- yet piquant expression, the same bright- ner of the sofa crying like a child. A ness. There was no regular beauty in the kind welcome always awaited those who features the upper lip was long, and it visited her, although she could not always was a muzois c/yffo;z~ze, but it was a very remember who they were. By never con- interesting face. The little ringlets were tradicting her fancies, but by linking on there, which had now turned from brown the present to the l)ast, she would grad- to grey, and from grey to white. She de- ually become clearer, and talk for a short spised women who spent much time and time with her old vivacity. money on their dress, yet she was not Of those who never neglected to cheer indifferent to her own, but she kept as her, were M. and Madame Renan, Ma- much as possible to the fashions of her dame and Mademoiselle de Tourg6nieff, youth. Before her husbands death she M. St. Hilaire, and others less known to would array herself very carefully on fame. M.* and Madame dAbbadie lived grand occasions. She had one dress in in the floor below. Madame clAbbadie particular of a golden hue which she was not only a kind friend, hut a delight- called les cheveux de Ia reine that was ful companion, coming in every evening quite beautiful. She never would wear at 9.30, when Madame Mohl had had her heavy materials, only satins and silks. tea and her nap and was most disposed XVhen she was in London, in 1870, Mrs. for conversation; and during her frequent Grote oave her a violet velvet dress, but absences, she wrote long and charming she only wore it to please the donor, and letters, full of grace, as Madame Mohl turned it into chair-covers as soon as she used to say. She was unfortunately away got back to Paris. almost all the winter before her old friends My last visit to Paris was in 1879. It death. was more sad to see her in her own home Of all the friends of her later years than in ours. The remembrance of what there was none with whom she was so that home had been, its gaiety and happi- truly intimate, to ~vhom she opened her ness, contrasted with its present gloom ~vhole heart so freely, as Mrs. Wynne and solitariness, was everpresenttoones Finch, who when she was in Paris nevet thoughts. I found her always poring allowed many days to pass without spend over her husbands letters and papers. She would brighten up when I came in, * The celebrated Egyptian traveller. TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. 49 ing with her some hours, and these were the hours when Madame Mohi was the brightest at the end of the day. She would keep this dear friend with her until past midnight, callin ~ But to the cook, Phillis, Amusez bien le domes- tique, so that his mistress might not be in a hurry to go away. When a letter came telling her that Mrs. Wynne Finch was going to remain longer away, she would read no further, but crumpled it in her hands, flung it down, and stamped on it. She was passionately fond of acting, and used to say that she longed to be an actress, and to perform the part taken by Madame Alain in La ~oie fail Peur. She would have acted well she had all the gesture of a southerner, and it was delightful to hear her recite La Fontaines Fables. It was very long since she had been at the theatre when Mrs. Wynne Finch took her there for the last time about three years ago. Phey chose the Fran~ais. As soon as they were seated in their box, Madame Mohl looked round with childish glee. My dear, I could kiss the house, she said. Her English nieces would have been only too glad to have taken it in turns to look after her, but although she liked to have them for a few weeks on a visit, she could not bear the idea of being looked after. As soon as she suspected that they were with~ her for her comfort, and not for their own pleasure, she wearied of them, and they had to leave her to the care of the kind servants, who did their best, but who could not watch over her in the way that her age and increasing in- firmities seemed to render necessary. On Friday, May the iith, she was as well as usual, and M. Barth6lemy St. Hilaire dined with her. Early on the fol- lowing day she had a fainting fit, to which she had for years been subject, and Ma- dame dAbbadie sent for Mademoiselle de Tourg6nieff.* She was very weak, and breathing with difficulty. Mademoiselle de Tourg~nieff and Madame dAbbadie were the only persons with her. On the Sunday she was quiet, often asleep, but quite conscious, and on the following day appeared to be so much bet- ter, that the doctor almost gave hopes of her recovery. Her favorite cat jumped on her bed, and she said, in Iter old funny way, to Mademoiselle de Tourg6nieff, 11 est si distingu~, sa femme ne lest pas du tout, * Madame and Mademoiselle Tourg~nieff are only distantly related to the great writer. They are both Protestant LiViNG AGE. VOL. XLIV, 2240 mais il ne se naperoit pas, il est comme beaucoup dhommes en cela. At nine on Tuesday morning, Made- moiselle de Tourg6nieff (who has given me most of these particulars) was sent for. Madame MohI was dyin~. Madame dAbbadie and Mademoiselle Tourg~nieff remained watching and pray- ing, and the last came without a pang. There was no more breathing; that was all. Her life had become labor and sorrow to her, we could not wish it to be pro- longed, yet it was with a pang of deep re- ret that we heard that she was gone for- ever from this world which she had helped to make so bright to all around her, and that we should see her face no more. M. C. M. SIMPSON. From Temple Bar. TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. A FEW STRAY LETTERS, EDITED BY LADY LINDSAY (OF BALcARRES). PART II. LETTER VIII. (From Miss Beatrice Maxwell to tke Lady A ugusta Dacre.) Greenleaf Manor. May, iS8~. Mv DARLING GUSSIE, It is some time since I wrote to you. Forgive me; my silence has arisen, not from forgetfulness of my promise, but from sheer inanition of ideas; now only, at last, I have something to write about. I have been to a lawn-tennis party, dear- est; this is the ~um of my dissipation. I went; I saw; I did not absolutely con- quer, however, because, never having held a racquet in my hand until yesterday, I was no more dexterous with it than a child of six who handles a revolver. I let it go off, so to speak. I hit the ball at random, and at random the ball struck off the hat of an unoffending curate. I do not think he actually suffered from the blow, but he blushed and smiled ner- vously, whilst several of the bystanders laughed outright, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy the accident. I apolo~,ized as nicely as I could, and played no more. But anyhow, dear Gus- sie, it is some comfort to make the ac- quaintance of one man in the neighbor- hood who does not hunt, or who (now that the hunting season is over) does not spend TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. 50 his leisure dreaming and conversing of hunting past and hunting future. I wonder much in what terms our favor- ite Madame de S6vign~ would have de- scribed a lawn-tennis party, when writ- ing, as usual, to her extremely tiresome daughter. Perchance like this Dearest too good and too amiable, I think of you, alas, and ofyour trials,your complaisance to that ruffian your spouse. How can / divert you? f/ave you heard oft/ic novel game played at Madame de 1gtaintenons 2 Monsieur de Ghaulnes invented it; the king is lii~hly. pleased therewith; the emperor of Morocco (who, to speak truth, has an adorable/igure) is a marvellous proficient. The duke runs; the duchess flies away with admiration; a stroke here, a service there! Ak, my quite beautfel, I have not the wit to bore my- se/fin the midst of these delights. In plain English, my dear, it is still too cold for outdoor pastimes, to my thinking. But, as the ancient chronicler hath it, Les anglais samusent moult triste- ment, and Tony, to whom indoor life is as unintelligible as a page of Sanskrit, positively insisted on driving me in his dog-cart ten long miles to see our neigh- bors, or, as he called it, to enjoy the fun. Long before the drive was half over, my nose was the color and shape of a fine ripe tomato; the east wind, mean- ~vhile, had taken entire charge of my com- plexion. Our hostess, a kindly buxom lady, met us on the lawn. She ~vas dressed in a gossamer costume that was apparently made last year, and had now been hastily taken out of a box and shaken out for wear, for it was still flattened and creased in odd places. By way of contrast, how- ever, she had tied around her neck a com- fortable fur boa. So nice for our young people to get back to their wholesome sports, she said, addressing me; then, turning to my brother, she added with a fine enthusiasm, Ah, Mr. Tony, I see you have brought your favorite bat with you! Quite right, quite right; my son John tells me there is such a difference in bats, and he ought to knov, surely, as he is the champion player of the whole county! I was almost afraid he had ~ot his match to-day. Young Lumpkin from Derbyshire is quite a hero, I assure you, Miss Maxwell, and so hand- some to look at; Im only surprised hes been allowed to remain a bachelor, though he is only five and twenty! But come along, come along; its wasting your time, Mr. Tony, talking to me, and my girls wont for~ive me, I know, for theyve been looking out for you for this last hour to make up a first-rate four! There was tea on the lawn, dearest Gussie; would you believe it? Coagu- lated tea in cold cups, with frozen cake and petrified bread and butter, and jugs full of luke-warm water to weaken the tea; and all the girls and boys who had been vigorously playing now crowded round the tea-table, rubbing their blue hands, and saying, Isnt it jolly? Isnt it awfully jolly ? Why, this is real summer weather at last !, After my one attempt at play, I sat me down on an elaborately knobbly rustic seat under a bush, wrapped in a warm cloak, and talked inanities, tryin~ occa- sionally to gather from my neighbors conversation something of the game, though it was difficult to arrive at any distinct knowledge by means of scraps of information such as these : Did you see that? What a splendid service, eh? Au, bravo, bravo XVeIl done, Tommy! Now, have at him, have at him ! Fifteen love, thirty love. Deuce. Is it game and game? Yes; now for the conqueror. Theres Miss Smith; now for a little pretty play. Thats a good one! Why, shes set- tled poor George! Yes! hes dead and buried. And so on, dear Gussie, so on, ad libitum. Then came my curate, shyly: You dont play, Miss Maxwell ? You have suffered enough a~ready, through my ignorance, I think. Al] yes no but I mean nev- er? I shook my head. Do you care for hunting? he con- tinued. No, indeed. Then you must be sadly dull in these parts. But, perhaps, you love the coun- try ? Not much, I am afraid. Possibly you think of serious things? was the next question, in a somewhat lower tone. I am afraid not. Then I laughed, for I could say yes to nothing that my father confessor had asked. Thereupon he blushed. TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. 5 Have I offended you, Miss Max- well? Oh, no; on the contrary, I must have offended you. Is not your hat irretriev- ably injured? It has a very soft crown, replied the curate smiling; only my head is hard, and I felt so grateful to him for viewing the matter in this light that I invited him to sit down on the rustic bench, and we had quite a pleasant conversation on va- ried subjects. His society was an abso- lute relief to me, and formed an agree. able contrast to the sport-loving circle in which I have lately been plunged. He is a simple-minded fellow, earnest and en- thusiastic. 1-I is greatest hope is a parish in the east end of London, his ideal of luxury is college life at Oxford. Judging from his general appearance and conver- sation, I should imagine his stipend to be something between twenty-five and thirty pounds a year. My conscience pricks me a little, dear Gussie, in that I allowed my new friend to read my character in the li~ht that pleased his honest, simple eyes the best. Towards the close of our conversation, he was fully impressed with the notion that he had met a truly serious-minded girl for whom the world could offer no attraction so great as a black alpaca gown and a straw bonnet, with a visiting district of her own amongst the savages of eastern London. But our talk came at last to an abrupt end, for Tony, whose face was shining like the faces of the kings of Israel Tony in a white duffie suit, with a great- coat buttoned tightly across his broad chest, and a large white woollen comforter coiled about his massive throat Tony bustled me off without further ado, hoisted me up into the dog-cart, flung the racquets and rugs and himself in after me, cracked his whip, shouted his joyous farewells, and off we went, spinning along at almost a ~allop, leaving the towers of our neigh- bors mansion behind us amongst the trees, where the startled crows circled and eddied noisily over their nests, and where a silvery, misty, chilly twilight was already gathering. And abruptly also must my letter end, dear Gussie, for Jane tells me that our village postman is growing impatient, and I dare not anger so important an official. I cannot conclude, however, without one word of warning, which, as your faithful monitor, I feel myself compelled to give. I dont altogether like your Mr. Tre- velyan. I mistrust him somewhat; for- give me, dearest, but assuredly, he is not the prince. And now farewell, and benison. Your BEATRICE. LETTER IX. (From the Lady A ugiista Dacre to Miss Beatrice Marwe/L) Bruton Street. June, i88. DEAR BEATTIE, I must hasten to assure you that you misunderstood what I said about Mr. Trevelyan. There is no need to warn me against him. Of course I cannot help being proud of the friendship of one who is immeasurably superior to all the people I have ever known. But indeed, he is so cold, so great, so far away (if I may use the term) from silly-, girlish thouThts and trivialities, that I could not think of him in the light of what is vulgarly called an admirer. He has outlived the pas- sions which sway hearts of a meaner mould, and this is, no doubt, what gives him a peculiar charm. He seems to be one of those men to whom the syml)athy of women is absolutely essential, and that is not uncommon, I fancy, amongst fine, grave natures such as his; nevertheless, his powerful intellect makes me often pos- itively afraid of him. I have met Mr. Trevelyan often of late, but it is a source of unceasing regret to me, dear Beattie, that mamma, though she does not actually disapprove of my seeing him, certainly fails to appreciate him as I should wish. However, mamma, good and kind as she always is, shows at times a curious preference for the most com- monplace people. I have made several new acquaintances since I last wrote to you, but they are none of them ~vorth mentionince. We seem to see Lord Warner more often than any one else; perhaps the reason of this is that mamma likes him so much. He is certainly very obliging, and has a delicate tact in bestowing little attentions and kind- nesses that leaves no uncomfortable sense of obligation on the recipient, and is very surprising in a man of his ordinary appear- ance. The worst of it is that I constantly find myself forgetting him altogether! It is only when he has fairly taken his leave that I recollect how amiable he was! Then I feel ashamed of my ingratitude, and make fresh resolutions without any better result. Nor is the poor little man wanting in courage. Phe other evenin~, as mamma and I were coming away from a party, a 52 TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. stranger pushed rudely against us. He nearly knocked me down, and he also tore the edge of mammas gown. Lord Warner, who was standing beside us, spoke up, and showed fight (as boys sax) in so bold a manner that the aggressor, who was a giant, ended by answering his small opponent with apologetic meekness. When we found ourselves safely in the carriage, mamma clapped her hands and said, That, my dear, is a thorough gentle- man You neednt tell me he is ugly, Gussie he knows it himself, poor fellow, l)etter than any one can teach it him, but he has a grander spirit than all your fine grenadiers. But I dont think I know any grena- diers, said I, remonstrating. Well, if not grenadiers, big tall men, replied mamma somewhat evasively. Yesterday afternoon, dear Beattie, we ivent to a musical tea-party. We heard a specially gifted family from Italy, who played solemnly and sadly on various in- struments, as they sat in the centre of the tiny drawing-room, whilst a patient but unappreciative audience was glued in rows a~ ainst the wall. Towards the middle of the performance, in walked Lord Warner. I was at that moment deep in an interesting conversa- tion with Mr. Johnson, the celebrated amateur tenor, who was explaining to me the slight but evident superiority of his method of vocalization over that of Mr. Sims Reeves, and many other singers. Dear, dear! exclaimed Mr. Johnson suddenly. Wonders will never cease. Why, heres Warner, in the name of all thats marvellous! And why not, Mr. Johnson? Why not, my dear young lady why not? Why, because he doesnt know a liurdy-gurdy from a trombone, nor recog- nize a difference between Wagner and Offenbach! This is indeed a sign of the times ! I tried to turn the conversation into another direction, being uncomfortably conscious that I blushed; but, a moment later, Lord Warner approached us, and Mr. Johnson jumped up from his seat and took his leave with an absurd affectation of alacrity that annoyed me greatly. Lord Warner made himself very pleas- ant, however, and (in spite of the tenors disparaging remarks), whilst he owned to an ignorant though ardent love of music, proved to be really far less ignorant than be chose to appear. I fancy that, during this conversation, I sometimes caught an amused glance from Mr. Johnsons eves. He was sitting at a little distance, discoursing to two elderly ladies. We all talked, dear Ileattie, as it is the right thing to talk at musical par- ties, I do assure you! and when I ~o to a concert 1 try as hard to avoid listening as I endeavor to disguise my knowledge of dancing at a ball! Mr. Trevelyan does not like music; he told me so the other day. He says there is no harmony like an intellectual conversation between two kindred spirits, and I fancy somehow that, as I grow older, I shall feel more and more that he is right in this, as in many theories that sound, perhaps, a little startling at first. Certainly his own voice, when he speaks, is melody itself. But I hear mamma calling me. For- give so hasty an ending to my letter, dearest Beattie. Your loving AUGUSTA DACRE. LETTER X. (From Miss Beatrice Ala ~-zeell to (lie Lady A ugusta Dacre.) Greenleaf Manor. June, i88. DEAREST GUSSIE, Who is to be the winner? By dint of questioning papa, as well as arduous re- search amongst the most useful books in his library, I find that Lord Warner is the owner of two or three country houses and a family residence in Belgrave Square. His gre at-grandfather was in the iron trade; however, the fire of London society applied for three generations may have sufficiently purified the iron. Anyhow, there seems to be plenty of gold mixed with the baser metal. On the other hand, Mr. Trevelyan has a lodging in the Albany, is a member of fifteen clubs, cherishes a family pedigree of ancient gro~vth, and is the owner of a charming estate in Cornwall. By Tre, Pol and Pen, You may know the Cornish men. Summer is coming on apace; the bushes are glowing with Wild roses the garden is full of lovely flowers. I lon gto pin them on ball dresses! Shall I ever go to a ball, I wonder? Tony says there are lots of balls about here in the autumn, and they are no end of fun; but his ideas and mine are lamen- tably different! I have made friends with some Miss Tomlinsons. They are very nice girls; sc TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. 53 enthusiastic. They do the most dreadful art-needlework you can possibly conceive; they dress dishearteningly; but they do not ride or play lawn-tennis quite so much as the rest of our neighbors. The young- est, Flossie, is a favorite with my brother Tony, who in her eyes appears to be a demigod. To please him she has learnt carpentering, and has just succeeded in making a preternaturally heavy wooden work-box for her sister. The work-box will neither open nor shut, and stands higher on one foot than on the other; but these are details. Furthermore, poor Flossie last week nearly cut off her thumb with a saw in the making of that very box; but Tony, who was fortunately pres- ent, bound up the wound, and dressed it carefully, and has ridden over to the Tomlir~sons everyday since the accident to ascertain the progress of his patient. I have nothing more to tell you. Sometimes I see my curate, and try to practise the art of mild flirtation on him, in case I shculd ever have an admirer worthy of the name. But I weary of him a little; besides, my heart smites me. He is so simple-minded ; he takes every- thing that I say for gospel, and ruminates or frets over it (as the case may he,) for a week at least. Afterwards, he comes to call, and expostulate or explain; and I, as I listen to him, became aware that I have cast my joke upon the waters to find it after many days he has a tenacious memory. This morning papa pinched my cheek and laughed because he met me on my way to church, a weekday. But you ~vill easily understand that the mornings here are very long and dull. As for papa, he reads his ne~vspaper or walks about the grounds with a thing called a spud, a sort of small hoe at the end of a long stick, with which he pokes out the weeds on the estate. It is not very amusing to walk with him, for at every dandelion he stops and exclaims, Ha, mine enemy! off with his head, Trixy ! There, there, Ill teach the fellow to choke up the nice soft grass ! Meanwhile, I stand and wait, like a duti- ful daughter, and stare up at the clouds, or else follow meekly whilst papa talks to the bailiff about the turnips which the cows should or should not eat in the by-and-by of next winter. Cows! I dread them! They are always peering aggressively over low ~vooden fences, making hideous mooing noises, or else galloping full tilt down narrow lanes, driving me into igno- minious places of refuge, from whence I see the cowboy gazing at me and grin- ning contemptuously. I am constantly reminded of the delightfully grammatical nursery rhyme of our childhood: A very young lady, With Susan the maid, Who carried the baby, Was one day afraid. Good-bye, dear. I have promised to take the Tomlinsons a pattern of some lace, and Tony, who is to drive me over in the cart, is shouting lustily for me. Merciful heavens! how that boy can shout! Your BEATRICE. LETTER XI. (From the Lady A ?Ig7tSta D~cre to Miss Beatrice Maxwell.) l3ruton Street. Juty, 188. I have not written to you for a long time, dear Beattie, for my Aunt Julia, mammas sister, has been ill, and both mamma and I have been constantly with her. She is better now, I am thankful to say, and will, the doctors assure us, speedily recover. Ah, dear Beattie, in a sick-room the pleasures of life appear small and insig- nificant, and what is good and true does really seem the beautiful, and that which lies beyond this world becomes the only goal worth trying for. And yet I return almost joyfully to mundane gaieties; I blame myself for my frivolity. Why are we so organized that, even whilst we rec- ognize and appreciate what is noble and lofty, we cannot live altogether in the highest mental altitudes ? 1 found myself yesterday positively dancing on my way down-stairs. Really, absolutely pirouetting, through mere joy of existence; happy because Aunt Julia is better; happy because I am my own happy self; happy because of an unaccountable conviction that something delightful must quickly come. Youth is a good thing, and sometimes, dear Beattie, it seems as though life were opening out round about me like a beautiful, tenderly scented rose, full of loveliness and delight, and my heart throbs and my pulses beat ~vith a sense of unutterable gladness. Dancing on I made my way to the li- brary, ~vhere I wanted to fetch a book, and meantime (I am ashamed to tell you) I was singing, Little Lord Warner, Sat in a corner 54 TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. Really! exclaimed a voice at my elbow, and, turning quickly, I was amazed to see Mr. Trevelyan. Let his lordship remain in his corner, pieless, said Mr. Trevelyan, smili n~. But to speak truth, Lady Augusta, my literary ear does not altogether approve of your rhyme. It is like the dawn and morn that inferior poetasters are so prone to combine. I could not answer; I could only blush, and feel ashamed of my childishness. Do you remember the Scotch mans objection to our English pronunciation, continued Mr. Trevelyan, founded on the fact that we make backdoor rhyme with fzckdaw? But it needs a tongue from the north countrie properly to ex- press that subtle difference, and I am a southerner. Besides, I ought rather to use my best efforts to gain your forgive- ness, Lady Augusta, for my intrusion here. The butler told me that your mother is out, but I persuaded him to go in search of you, to ask if I might see you for a few minutes. I dont know I am not sure, I stammered foolishly. Give me one moment or two, pleaded Mr. Trevelyan, with a smile; I have not seen you for so Ion o- I have been very busy nursing Aunt Julia. Flappy Aunt Julia! However, nurs- ing seems to agree with you, Lady Au. gusta. You look wonderfully well. I I am very well, Mr. Trevelyan. Yes; you are at that heartless age (forgive my saying so) when you can wound others without receiving a wound you rself. I wound others, Mr. Trevelyan? Do you not understand? Ah, well, your kind little hand binds up the wounds immediately. Will you lay your hand (metaphorically) on my troubles? I have been ill and unhappy myself lately. I am so sorry. Are you? Well, that is something; nay, a great deal. You women lose in so far, Lady Augusta, that you cannot, like a man, appreciate the soothing influence of wome n. Of all women? I asked with, I really think, a touch of sarcasm. No, no, Lady Augusta. I was allud- ing to one woman; but I scarcely liked to express myself so positively. You spoil me, you see, for your mind always goes az~ devant de mes pensdes, and when I am with you I do not talk, I only think our mutual thoughts aloud. Will you try to miss me a very little, Lady Augusta? I am going into the country. Going away! Oh, Beattie, a pain shot through my heart; it was all 1 could do not to burst into tears. I have seen you very seldom lately, continued Mr. Trevelyan, rather sadly. You know I have often called, but you have not been at home. I am so sorry. You will soon forget me, Lady Au. gusta. Ah, you will forget me more easily than I can forget you! He sighed, and a mist seemed to pass over his eyes. Then he resumed incoherently, 1 remember the first time I saw you at a ball; you were dressed in ~white, your neck was bare. You should never wear a necklace, believe me; leave pearls and diamonds to those who are older and less fair. But you are still standino I detain you, I must go. Forgive my per- tinacity in forcing myself upon you; for- give my idle talk. May I see you once again before I leave London? Oh, Beattie, I could not say otherwise than that he might come. I stammered my affirmative reply; I longed to detain him, but I knew not how. He bowed his noble head in silent farewell ; he went, and I remained standing where he left me,listening to his firm, slow step as he crossed the vestibule. Then I heard the front door bang, and knew that he ~vas really gone. I hurried to the ~vindow to catch a last glimpse of him, and there, hidden in the muslin curtains, I watched him, tall, grand, and beautiful, king of men, passing slowly down the street. Dearest Beattie, I have confided to your affectionate ear every word he has ut- tered; I have repeated to you even his flattering speeches, and tried to convey to you his very looks and manner; I have done all this because I am anxious, so anxious, that you should answer me some- thing. I have seen Mr. Trevelyan sel- dom lately, it is true, but I have thought of him much, oh, very, very much. He has grown to be the dearest friend I have in the world. Will you, who are also my friend, forgive me for saying this? I think you will. And will you tell me if you think it is at all possible that he can care for me? I never dreamed till to-day that I should want him to care, but now it has all come upon me suddenly. I went up-stairs to the drawing-room with heavy, lagging steps. It had grown strangely clear to me why the sunshine TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. of life had seemed so singularly bright before, when I had no thought of parting. I knew now why my heart had danced within me of late, even whilst I stood be- side Aunt Julias bed, holding her thin hand, and gazing into her sad face. The whole world has been glorified, signed with the name of Trevelyan; I have thought of him, dreamed of him, smiled for him, night and day. I cannot get the th ought of him out of my head now; itis a sweet, overwhelming thought, and yet I am half-afraid, of what ? of him, per- chance; and yet far more, surely, of my- self. Do you think he likes me, Beattie? I have told you more than I have told mam- ma, confessed to you more truly than to her, for, down in the depths of my mind, there lurks an uncomfortable suspicion that mamma can never appreciate Mr. Trevelyan as I would she could. She is prejudiced against him, certainly, and she has never allowed him the opportunity he has often sought of making himself better acquainted with her. Beattie, dear, I shall await your an- swer with the greatest anxiety. Of course it is not right for a girl to think of a nan until she has positive knowl- edge that he likes her, but surely, though Mr. Trevelyan has not as yet actually proposed, he has said so much, so very much, that he cannot delay for long, it were impossible for him to speak or look as he does unless his heart were given to me. Oh, write, do ~vrite, dear Beattie! Write by return of post. I shall count the hours till I can receive your letter. Your loving friend, AUGUSTA DACRE. LETTER XII. (From Miss Beatrice Mazweli to the Lady A ugu s/a Dacre.) Greenleaf Manor. July, e88. DEAREST GUSSIE, What would you have me say? I scarcely know; I hold my idle pen be- twixt irresolute fingers, being anxious to please you, yet desirous as ever to speak the truth. Could I but see Mr. Trevelyan, read his face, watch his manner with the im- partial and keen observation of a friendly feminine outsider, I should answer your questionings without a moments hesita- tion. Reflect, dear Gussie, I have seen this hero through your eyes only, and yet you require me to analyze him ~losely within my own mind. For your 55 comfort, dear, nevertheless, I will say that he seems to be decidedly in ear- nest. No man, as serious by nature as you describe Mr. Trevelyan to be, could speak to any girl as he has spoken to you tinless he were led on by an unusual and deep interest. Moreover (and this is for your very greatest comfort), take patience during one short week. I shall see your Tre- velyan with my own eyes; I will watch him closely, converse with him, try his paces in various ways, and let you kno~v the result. Do not fear, dear Gussie; you shall have news of him speedily, and speedily learn whether, as you say, and as I truly believe, his somewhat chill and sedate heart is in your fond keeping. The world is very narrow, my child. The Tomlinsons are related to Mr Tre- velyan, and he is coining immediately to spend two or three weeks with these dear cousins of his. So, you perceive, I shall have ample opportunities of studying him, and thus obeying your behest. Your affectionate BEATRICE MAXWELL. LETTER XIII. (From the Lady A ug~sta Deere to Miss Beatrice Maxzeeii.) Bruton Street. July, i88. M~ DARLING BEATTIE, Thank you, oh, thank you, a thousand times for your promise! Mr. Trevelyan called to-day, and bid us good-bye. We were in the drawing- room, mamma and I; Lord Warner was sitting with us. He is very tiresome sometimes, this Lord Warner! I had been thinking so long and so much of what I should say to Mr. Tre- velyan that, ~vhen the time came at last for me to speak to him, I could scarcely utter; I found myself discoursing inco- herently of temperance societies, a subject I do not understand, and concerning which he is utterly indifferent. My hands trem- bled so terribly that I with difficulty gave him the cup of tea mamma had poured out for him. Mr. Trevelyan himself spoke but little. His eyes were unutterably sad as he looked into mine with a depth of meaning that was at once painful and delightful, I know not why. As for me, I became al- most hysterical, getting up from my chair and reseating myself continually, fetch- ing things I did not want, growing restless and silly with an overwhelming conscious- 56 TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. ness that our time together was miserably short, and that, nevertheless, I was wast- ing it and shortening it by my very silence and foolishness. In the midst of this constraint, Lord Warner fortunately took his leave. He had an important business engagement, he said, as he looked at his watch. I was grateful to him for his uninten- tional kindness in leaving us, but my gratitude was scarcely needed, for after his departure things went from bad to ~vorse. Mamma drew her chair towards me, as though purposely, and immediately entered into a long conversation with Mr. Trevelyan on taxes and taxation in gen- eral. This lasted nearly a quarter of an hour; I sat on thorns, wretched and l)owerless. At last Mr. Trevelyan rose to say good- bye. He shook hands with mamma, then, coming up to me, he held my hand in his for a long, long minute; he pressed it so tightly in his own that my little turquoise ring deeply indented my fingers. Farewell, Lady Augusta, he said impressively, gazing into my eyes with a look I can never cease to remember. You will not forget me altogether, will you? And I, as soon as I return to town I will come and pay my respects. I hope you will enjoy the end of this your first season. Meanwhile I go, to babble of green fields. But our English land- scape is like a fresh young girl itself, and ~vhen I leave you for it, I can almost say to myself: Azif Wiederseke4 I Good-bye, I murmured stupidly, scarcely following or comprehending his speech; good-bye, Mr. Trevelyan. The tears rose to my eyes, and I felt suffo- cated, not by what I tried to say, but by all I might not say. He paused a mo- ment longer, I think, but I was silent, and then, suddenly, I seemed to know that in y hand had dropped out of his, and he was gone, and the room grew quite dark and chilly. Then mamma, as she got up from her chair, and shook out the folds of her gown, turned to me, and said somewhat coldly, That remark of Mr. Trevelyans about a landscape ~vas in rather doubtful taste, I think. I cannot say that I altogether approve of his tone when he talks to you, Gussie; it is really a good thing he has taken himself off at last Oh, Beattie, never mind his tone! I long already for the sound of his voice, for the echo of his tread upon the stair. I miss him somehow from everything, though I have been with him so little from the house, though he has been in it so seldom. Yesterday I passed through the hall, and saw a great-coat lying on one of the chairs; my heart gave a sudden throb, as though it were possible he had returned. But the coat was not Mr. Tre- velyans; it was Lord Warners. I grudge it to you, dearest Beattie, that you will see him, and yet (I am so incon- sistent) I am glad that he is to see you rather than any one else, for you will hold him for me, you will keep my memory green, as poets say, within his mind, will you not? I am certain now that he loves me, for that last look of his has betrayed more than a dozen passionate sentences could have told. And yet I want to hear from you, I want you to endorse all I have said; yes, more, a great deal more. I feel dull and dreary. Ah, how ten times more desolate than before the ball must Cinderella have felt ~vhen she re- turned to her rags and her lonely hearth Good-bye, you enviable Beattie. I envy you; I envy the Tomlinsons; I envy the woods that will hear his dear voice, and the grass that will learn to know his step, and the birds who come to sing around him, and the flo~vers which put on their gayest summer array to welcome him. Your foolish GussIE. LETTER xiv. (Fro;n Miss Beatrice Al t-weil to the Lady A ugusta Dacre.) Greenleaf Manor. July, i88. DEAREST GussIE, I like him, yes, a little, scarcely more; no, really not more as yet. He is hand- some, certainly; massive and tall (a cu- bit or two, I should think, taller than my curate); pleasant, though supercilious, in conversation. I can see at once what your mother dislikes in him. Tony is actuated by the same dislike. And your mother and Tony (forgive my coupling them thus together), possess a few mutual peculiarities. They are both equally straightforward and clear-seeing. Now you, dear Gussie, are straightforward, but not clear-seeing. I know that you will hereupon cry out, and bid me worship with you, unconditionally, at the shrine of your hero. Well, I cannot, a/tog-ct/icr; I bend one knee willingly, but the other remains somewhat stiff and recalcitrant. Nevertheless, time may work marvels. Mr. Trevelyan arrived here at an auspi- cious moment. We had one of our many lawn-tennis parties this afternoon, and he TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. 57 drove over with the Tomlinsons. He does not play himself; nay, nothing so commonplace. He came and sat beside me, and we talked, of the ~veather first, (like good English people,) afterwards of you. He told me a great deal about you; filled in, so to speak, many little gaps in your narrative, explained (often unconsciously) many things I needed to know. I told him at once that we were friends, and had been friends for years. He smiled, and asked if our friendship commenced in our cradles. Papa has taken a great liking to Mr. Trevelyan; indeed, the latter, though I strongly suspect him of an amiable hy- pocrisy, evinces so deep an interest in agricultural questions that papa, as Tony says, cottoned to him directly. Mr. Tre- velyan can be very amiable on occasion. He is selfish by nature, and for this rea- son he cultivates an aspect of mental strength, which is a convenient loophole. Like most men, however, he is really very tveak, and wants ruling. I am quite sure that, contrary to all you have told me of him, contrary also to.his splendid exterior, he is nothing more nor less than one of the many excellent and useful creatures whom Providence has benevolently cre- ated for us women to turn round our little fin,.ers! You spoil him, Gussie; you have adored in him the ideal of your own mind; surely there exists no Trevelyan such as you describe? Well, he is coming to-morrow to lunch. eon, and afterwards lie is to take a long walk with papa, ann converse with the bailiff ahout manure. I am sure to have some opportunity of seeing him ; anyhow, you may be certain that I shall before long extract from him the real state of his manly mind. Yours ever, BEATRICE MAXWELL. LETTER XV. (From Godfrey Trevelyan, Esq., to Pkilz~ Graham, Esq., Pump Court, Temple.) Bramble Dell. August, s88. DEAR OLD MAN, I came down to these country wilds a couple of weeks ago, with the intention of recruiting. I was hipped and seedy, and found myself forced to send for old Pi- lulus at last. He insisted on thorouoh change and quiet, so I accepted Aunt So- phias invitation, and came here. I needed rest in every way, partly because I had been overdoing my brain, writing stinging articles at high pressure for the Thursday Gazette, partly because I need- ed to pull myself together, to go through the difficult and trying process of making up my mind. As 1 think you know, I had lately been much taken with a little girl, Lady Augus- ta Dacre, a dear child, all sentiment and enthusiasm, and she certainly became des- perately devoted to me. But there are drawbacks, Phil. Above ill, the Ascalons, or rather the Dacres, are an unbearably proud set, and, though we Trevelyans have a pretty good idea of our own merits, I am not sure that the alliance I have sometimes contemplated would be looked upon with favor by the fair ones family, her mother most espe- cially ; furthermore, the fair one herself is accustomed to a good deal of admiration, and she is on the highroad to be spoiled. Rich, well-born, and more than l)retly, she is surrounded by innumerable suitors, that insufferable cad Warner (whose grandfather was an ironmonger) being foremost in the throng. 1 could never stand that sort of thing, as you know, and I prefer to seek out some lonely wild blossom in a shady nook, some flower that, but for me, were born to blush un- seen. Certainly, Lady Augusta is very charming, so charming that she ~vooed me from my cynical solitude, and, for a short time, I found myself plunged in the very midst of London halls and other unaccus- tomed gaieties for her sake. But ah, my dear fellow, it is not in the vortex of society that a poetical and single-hearted affec- tion can flourish, or that the absolute and perfect freshness of girlhood can remain in its first bloom. It is only in the country, the stveet, l)ure, though somewhat dull country. Dulness is, without doubt, wholesome, even neces- sary, for women, and the monotonous and unexciting life of the midland counties that would goad most men into madness, if not into crime, appears to foster and encourage the tenderest virtues of the gentler sex. The day after I came down here I drove with the Tomlinsons to a pretty gabled house belonging to some country neigh- bors, the Maxwells. Maxwell pare is a mild old fool, devoted to agriculture, and absolutely under the thumb of his bailiff; the sons are cubs, but there is a daughter a daughter who is the most delightful country maiden I have ever seen. Her nameit should be Betty or Prue is Beatrice; her face and figure are perfect; her mind (though 58 TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE. still somewhat unformed) is elevated, and she has, together with a most poetical organization, a sincere desire for intellec- tual improvement. I cannot easily forget my first introduc- tion to this pretty damsel. The whole scene was one of Arcadian simplicity; in the foreground, roses and stra~vberries and syllabub, presided over by Miss Bea- trice; in the background, lawn-tennis, and the usual elements of rural festivity. My little hostess, arrayed in simple white cotton, needed but one thinga pet lamb, garlanded with blue ribbon, to gambol at her feet. She is quite young, only eighteen, and very childish in man- ner, though she sometimes tries to put on the l)retty gracious airs of womanhood. Her large blue eyes thrill me with their innocent appeal, her hair curls in natural rings (I would lay my life, Phil, they are natural). I found to my surprise that Miss Max- well and Lady Augusta have long been friends; they are like, and yet very un- like. They are both young and pretty, but, whilst Lady Augustas high position and worldly surroundings bid fair to de- stroy the simplicity of her first impres- sions, her rustic friend, in her complete guilelessness, has preserved a candor that is infantine and yet divine, and charms me with a potent charm. Lady Augusta and I would not easily have suited each other; I am glad now to think that, whilst with her, I did not allow my feelings of admira- tion to lead me into a foolish proposal. Beatrice is not fond of country sports, she tells me; yet she makes herself happy here. She is delicate and cannot take long walks or rides, but she lives con- tentedly amidst her birds and flowers, whilst her father and brothers, despite a certain roughness of manner, worship the very ground she treads on, as I can easily see. But indeed, who could do otherwise tnan so worship? I can scarcely think that even women would be jealous of Beatrice Maxwell. I imagine that she is the sort of girl whose sole ambition in life is to fill one mans heart, and, having filled it, to remain there forever, regard- less of the world and its glories, regard- less of all but him, except perhaps her children and their training. She would be a good wife for a poor man, for she has no regard for money; in fact, it seems to me that she scarcely knows the value of it. In some things she is as ignorant as a child, but hers is a blessed ignorance. If I can win her, she will not be a poor mans wife, as you know well, but she does not know. Who shall say? Perchance if she knew she would not marry me. Between us, no worldly questions are dis- cussed; this is an idyll, Phil, a thing not of this earth,, earthy. Little Beatties mind is more eager to watch the flight of the swallows or inquire into the growth of her roses than to learn the distinction of pounds, shillings, and pence, and I would not have her different. I am a changed man already, Phil; under this sweet influence I have altered. You will perhaps scarcely recognize through these lovesick tvanderings Your cynical friend, GODFREY TREVELYAN. LETTER XVI. (From the same to the same.) Bramble Dell. August, s88. DEAR PHIL, You say I have changed for the worse; you say I maunder; you imply that I drivel. You add that I have been and gone and done for myself; lastly, you pity me. You are certain that Lady Augusta is worth ten of Miss Maxwell; you assert that I have made love in haste and shall repent at leisure. Well, I accept all you say, and take it as kindly meant; I am too happy to resent, or even to argue. You do not know my Beatrice; I, Phil, pity you, because of your ignorance. Above all, 1 would have you know that she has one of those essentially gentle, pliant natures which, as you know, I most admire in women; it will be my happy task to mould her young mind, to be her guide in the future. She is an angel, and yet, even more, a child. But I will cease to drivel. When the time comes for you to make Miss Maxwells acquain- tance, you will hastily change your tune. Meanwhile, dear Phil, make ready to officiate as best man, for Beattie and I are to be married this day month. Yours always, GODFREY TREVELYAN. LETTER XVII. (From the Countess of Asca?on to the Lady 7ulia cliftonville.) DEAREST JULIA, 1 am glad, truly glad, to learn that you are gaining strength and health, and that Hastings seems to agree with you. I think it is quite possible that we shall join you there almost immediately. My little Gussie wants change; she needs to hide her poor little sore heart somewhere out IVAN TOURGENIEF. 59 of sight, whilst she leans her head on her mothers shoulder, and fights a brave fight with grief. For it is a sad grief, poor dear; a double grief, very hard to bear. Her lover is false and her friend deceitful. Bad luck to them both, say I. But I never liked that fellow Trevelvan. He was always hanging about my darling, and she admired him for the sake of his broad chest and his six feet of falsity, for his grand sentimental speeches, and insinu- ating manners. The poor child believed in him ; my warnings were useless, and merely added fuel to the flame, as, indeed, such warnings usually do. I saw that she grew to care for this man, and it made my heart ache for her, though she tried to hide her feelings from me, as if mothers did not see, even when they are supposed to be as blind as moles, and about as interestino! Well, the gay Trevelyan one fine morn- ing rode away, and Gussie expected to hear news of him from that nasty little Beattie Maxwell, near whose home in the country he had gone to stay; and she waited, and waited, pining and fretting for a letter, poor love, making all sorts of little subterfuges for my edification when she heard the postmans knock, and gro~v- ing more anxious and feverishly unhappy every clay. Weeks passed, yet she bore up pretty well, poor child, and I honored her for her courage, and kept silence on my part also. At last, in an evil hour, she opened the Morning Post, and read the announcement of Mr. Trevelyans engage- ment to Miss Maxwell. She gave me a look that was piteous to see, and then she tried to smile, and then in one minute, I dont kno~v how it ~vas, she and I were sobbing together, locked in each others arms, and I felt just as foolish and wretch- ed, I think, as she did. But she sobbed as if her heart would break. When she grew a little quieter, I held her on my knee, just as when she was a little child, and she hid her face against mine, and whispered, Mamma, can you forgive me? Once, just once, I thought you were not quite kind when he went away, you know. But now I see that nothing could have made it different. Nothino darling, nothino I mur- mured, as I shook my head; and inwardly I thanked God that nothing Izad made it different, for it is far better for a tender womans heart to suffer before than after marriage. Had my darling married Tre- velyan, and he had forsaken her, I could never have forgiven him, not to my dying day, nor & ivself either. It is hard enough notv to forgive him for her grief; even though the child is free, my own dear, in- nocent, loving child! and is only hurt in so far that for a time, for a time only, I trust, her young heart must ache and moan. I would that I could bear the pain for her, and shield her from it; I cannot endure that she should so soon learn the sadness of life. I think we must certainly go to you at Hastings for a little while, dear Julia. kVe shall hope to start to-morrow, or next day. Yours affectionately, JANE AScALON. P.S. I reopen my letter to tell you that a note has this moment been brdught to me from Lord Warner. This is what he writes DEAR LADY ASCALON, I have heard of Trevelyans engagement. For- give me if I oughtnt to allude to it. I only do so just to tell you quite privately thats the reason for my leaving town to-day. I leave for a week. I dont fancy Lady Augusta would care to see me just now, somehow, and I couldnt be in Lon- don, you know, and stay away from her, really. Do you think a week is about the right sort of time? It will be awfully hard to stop away so long, but I mean to, because that seems best. Afterwards I may come again, maynt I? Yours sincerely, WARNER. P.S. No. 2. By-the-bye, dear Julia, dont expect us at Hastings any ~arlicz~- lar day It is possible we may find our- selves obliged to defer our visit to you for a little while, perhaps for a week, or even two. From The Spectator. IVAN TOURGENIEF. ON September 2nd, Ivan TourgThief, after a long and painful illness, died in the sixty-fifth year of his age, at Bougival, near Paris. The Thackeray of Russian literature deserves more than slight no- tice. Ivan Tourg~nief was born at Orel, in i8i8, and belonged by birth to the class of landed gentry. For generations, men of his name and blood have, as ear- nest reformers, played a part in Russian politics. According to the custom of the Russian gentry, the boy Ivan received his 6o first instruction from foreign tutors After studying from 1834 to 1838 at Moscow and St. Petersburg, he passed two years as a student in Berlin, where he had for at least one winter Michael Bakounine, the notorious Nihilist, as room-mate. Here the young Tourg~nief studied chiefly history and philosophy, which latter sub- ject he often laughed at in his later works as unprofitable and unpractical. Tourg6- nief then returned to St. Petersburg, and accepted a place in the Home Office, which he soon relinquished, to devote himself to literature. His first attempts were scarcely more than imitations of Poushkin and Lermon. toff, and passed unnoticed. In 1846, however, he wrote a short story, which was accepted by Belinski and appeared in the Contemporary, and this was sufficient to direct public attention to his talent. A little later, Tourg6nief went to Paris, where in the following years he wrote his Recollections of a Sportsman, which at once made him famous. Although every one of these sketches was written with a social tendency, although they vere all published in the contemporary, under the editorship of the suspected Belinsk.i, they passed the censor without difficulty. Official wisdom evidently saw in them nothing but landscape-painting and good descriptions of a sportsmans life. In 1852, the sketches appeared in book form. In the same year, Gogol, the Russian Dickens, died, and the cemetery of the Donskoi Monastery, near Moscow, could not hold the concourse of the people of all ranks which streamed thither to do honor to the first Russian novelist of real power. The outburst of mingled admiration and sorrow alarmed officialdom, and when Tourg6nief shortly afterwards published an article praising Gogol , he was banished to his own property. It was only the en- treaties of the liberal-minded Alexander which, two years later, restored him to freedom. Tourg6nief spent the next years in Germany, France, and Russia; in 1863 he settled and built himself a house at Baden-Baden, in order to live near his friends, the Viardots. After the events of 1870, the Viardots removed to France, and Tourg6nief followed them. His later life and sad end are familiar to all. Tourg6niefs first large work, Recol- lections of a Sportsman, is perhaps his best. The Recollections are thrown into the form of short sketches, of which the ablest are Khor and Kalinitsh, The Devils Dale, The Singers, Kasjan, Two Days in the Forest, and IVAN TOURGENIEF. Forest and Steppe. As a landed gen- tleman, Tourg6nief naturally took much pleasure in hunting; he has, besides, all the passionate love of nature of the Slav, and shows warm sympathy with the peo. pIe. In spite, however, of the patriotism which colors these sketches, their writer is evidently a man who has lived among foreign nations, and freed himself of all local prejudices. We shall first consider his power of interpreting nature, for this is a faculty inherent in his blood, and many of these sketches, such as Forest and Steppe, are nothing but landscape paintings in words. The Slav, impres- sionable and sympathetic, has a more in- timate connection with nature than other races ; he stiA believes in spirits of field, and fell, and stream, still hears the wail of suffering in the wind, or the roll of anger in the thunder. These feelings have been wonderfully depicted by Tour- g6nief. He is of his day a realist, a hater of empty phrases, and he has not only observed long and closely the different moods of nature, but is sympathetic enough to be able to represent them with touches of natural magic, which give life even to scenes sometimes lacking in human interest. In The Devils Dale, some shepherd boys are sitting round a watchfire, telling each other ghost-stories or fairy-tales. One is about a sheep which talks, another about a landowner who cannot find peace even in the grave, etc. Now and then the dogs shiver with fear, and then with a ho~vl rush forth into the darkness. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, rose up a long, piercing, sobbing sound, one of those incompre- hensible sounds peculiar to the night, which often come in the deepest silence, and wax nearer till they seem to stand still in the air above, and then at once die away, as if in flight. Some of these pic- tures, too, are of rare and ideal beauty: The dry warmth of midnight spread over the sleeping fields its soft coverlet; the moon had not yet risen, and the num- berless files of golden stars seemed to move in slow order towards the Milky Way. As my eye followed their move- ment, I realized the slow and rhythmic progress of the world. But generally he is impressed rather with the untamable power than with the beauty of nature. Out of the forest the deep voice of na- ture speaks to man, I have nothing to do with thee; I am, and rule, but thou must struggle, even in order to live. His numerous sketches of animals are almost perfect. We like best the ugly IVAN TOURGENIEF. dog, Valetka, who always carried his stump of a tail between his legs, and who was always chased from kitchen and from yard. in hunting he ~vas tireless, and had a keen sense of smell. His master never thought offeeding Aim. But when- ever Valetka caught a hare, he devoured it to the last shred with the keenest pleas- tire, lying somewhere in the cool shade of a green bush, or at a polite distance from his master, who then cursed him in all known and unknown languages. This book, too, contains almost a nat- ural history of the Russian people. Nearly all the sketches are taken from among the dwellers in the country; TourgThief pictures the houseless serf, shows peas- ant after peasant, gives type after type of landowner and aristocrat. The peasant is, in his pages, an extremely good-na- tured, easily satisfied man, clever, ready, and of robust health. By nature endowed with cunning, with wit and humor, the Slav resembles the English idea of the Irish Celt. Tourg~nief looks upon the peasant as the stay and prop of his coun- try; he dwells with preference upon the peasants rooted love of home, shows his reverence of tsar and Church, and his ready self-sacrifice to either, describes again and again his love of family and the sacred strength of the old-fashioned tie of kinship, as seen in the commune. The people is a religious one, with love of peace and depth of pity. Take the free peasant, Ovssianikof. Childless, he looks upon himself as a l)atriarch, and although he is held in honor by the highest and by the lowest, he yet knows his place. In his clothing and manners he follows the old customs, and although conscious of his tvorth, he seems as devoid of vanity as of self-assertion; he does not praise the past, for although not entirely satis- fied with the present, he yet acknowledges progress, but can see no new order. The old is dying out, and the young has not yet been born. But in sketching character Tourg6nief seldom gives us ideals, he I)refers to paint nature as it is. The prosaic peasant, Khor, who has never been to school ,grumbles that the dreamer Kalinitsh succeeds with bees because the idler has learned to write. Another serf, Stiopushka, was related to no one, no one knew him ; they saw him, it is true, kicked him now and again, but never spoke to him, and his mouth seemed never to have been opened since his birth. In the sketch Death Tourg6nief shows how strangely the Russian dies, without fear or complaint he awaits the stroke as if it were about to fall upon another. There is a miller who, while carting some mill- stones, is mortally hurt; but not till much later does he go to the doctor, who pre- scribes absolute rest and quiet, for the worst is to be feared. But the miller will not stay and be treated by the surgeon. No. I must go home ; a man must die, its better to die at home ; if I died here, who would see that affairs at home were set straight ? Sutschock, who, when his boat disappears under his feet, and the hunter, whom he has been rowing, is im- patient, keeps winking with his eyes, and seems about to go to sleep, although up to his neck in the.stream. He has to be ordered to keep his head above water. But if Tourg6nief, when painting the peasant, colors his portrait too darkly, he may be said to leave out all the lights in his pictures of landowners and aristocrats. One landlord is good-humored, but hard- hearted; he looks upon his serfs as upon his cows, and kills one animal, when un- profitable, as readily as the other. An- other gentleman cares for them but as instruments of pleasure, etc. The aristo- crats employed at court or in the public service live in his pages as Tartars, with a slight exterior polish of manner. They are all either spendthrifts, who ruin others as well as themselves, or fools honored with servile reverence. Debauchees, ty- rants, wild beasts of all sorts have sat to him for their picture Of their extrava- gance, debauchery, and cruelty, he gives fearful instances. The book is one long protest against serfdom, and the evil ef- fects of the system upon enslavers and enslaved are portrayed with a master- hand. It is said that this book decided Alexander to abolish slavery. But Tour- g6nief does not hope that this measure or that any measure ~vill be effectual; for the Russian peasant is capable of steal- ing from himself. This book, however, shows less pessimism, less fatalism, than any of his later writings; it is not only as a book well worth the reading, it was a deed well worth the doing. As he grows older and takes his models from the drawing-room, the gloom deep- ens. His novels which deal with prob- lems of love and marriage may now be referred to. Here, he shows himself a man of his time ; either the sensuality is somewhat more pronounced than is nat- ural, as in his First Love, or it is feverish and unhealthy, as in H6l~ne, or mad, as in The Three Portraits. His women often declare themselves first, as in his FauSt. To what have you 62 THE RABBIT PEST IN AUSTRALASIA. brought me? cried Vera; dont you How he describes the art enthusiasts of know that I love you? And most of to-day, the men who never speak of these women have something of the cat, Raphael or Correggio, but of the divine or snake, or elf. Tourg~nief loves ab- Sanzio and the inimitable Allegri ! normal characters; he does not see life They adore, he writes, every doubtful, fairly, he is a pessimist. Love is never obscure, or mediocre talent as a genius, the free union of free souls of which Ger- and phrases such as the blue Italian man professors dream; no, in love, the heaven, the lemon-trees of the sunny one person is slave, the other lord south, the scented mist of the sea- Up to the close of this period, that is, shore, are the stock in trade. Ah, up to i86r, Tourg6niefs works, whatever Ivan! Ivan! cries Michael, enraptured, may be their faults, had reflected the best let us go to the south I let us go to the spirit of his race. In Fathers and south I for in soul we are indeed Greeks, Sons, however, published in i86i, Tour- ancient Greeks 1 g6nief loses touch of the people. As we With all his faults, Tourg~n ief has en- have seen, he hoped but little from the larged our estimate of the talent of the abolition of serfdom, and the bitter disap- Slav. Unfortunately, the best faculty of pointment of the youth of Russia at the his race was somewhat lacking in him: results of the measure seemed to him in- he was deficient in sympathy. The en- sane. This is the more unfortunate, in- thusiastic love of the Slav for the ideal, asmuch as this novel in regard to form is had he possessed it, would have softened perhaps the best of all his works, as it is the harshness of his l)essimistic realism, certainly the most widely known. He would have given him mental and moral who aforetime protested against serfdom balance, and made him healthy. This now protests against the materialism and was not to be. The Slav genius, feminine Nihilism of the Russian youth. Tour- in its sympathy, idealism, and faith, most g~nief treats Socialism as mere ignorance. of all in its passionate self-abnegation, in order to understand this movement, still awaits the coming of an adequate in- therefore, it will be necessary for the En- terpreter. glishman to read not only TourgThief, but also that book on Underground Russia,~ which shows the passionate self-abnega- tion and heroism of the dreamers whom Tourg6nief depicts as mostly fools. From cassells Ma~azine. Take his treatment of the principal char- THE RABBIT PEST IN AUSTRALASIA. acter, the student I3azarof, who is the BY c. F. GORDON-cUMMING. apostle of the new creed. Bazarof does BEHOLD how great a matter a little not die upon the scaffold, but of blood- fire kindleth! poisoning, contracted while dissecting a Who could have foreseen, when about corpse. His death is entirely accidental, a quarter of a century ago the first rabbits and entirely useless. For Bazarof has were imported to South Australia, as deli- given up his wild dreams and conquered cacies for the table, that to-day their ex- his strong passions; he has returned termination would form one of the most home, and is resolved to practise medi- serious problems for the legislature? cine and play the part of a useful citizen, New Zealand did not receive this gift and just when we can hope all from so till some years later, when it unfortunately strong a character, he dies, a prey to occurred to a colonist in the southern blind chance. No wonder the book was isle to turn adrift some rabbits on the badly received in Russia, and its author bleak sand-hills along the coast at Inver- censured. cargill. Accordingly he imported a little But Tourg~nief heeded neither warning family of seven from the old country-, and nor blame. In 1867 he published Dym. very soon he and his friends were able to Nihilism seemed to him nothing but indulge in some pleasant shooting, and smoke; the desperate hope of the found a change from constant mutton very youth of Russia was incomprehensible to satisfactory. the pessimist, to the man of the world, But they soon found that their sport who had long ceased to believe that any- could not keep pace witb the increase of thing unselfish could come from human the rabbits. Soon every blade of grass nature. In his latest works, how-ever, was consumed, and then the hungry crea- Tourcr6nief has not lost his humor; al- tures nibbled the roots which bound the though his pictures have become carica- light sand-hills and prevented them from totes, his hand has not lost its cunning. blowing over the arable land. TIlE RABBIT PEST IN AUSTRALASIA. 63 The farmers began shooting and trap- ping with all their might, hut the rabbits had now been introduced to Otago, whence they spread in every direction, defyin~ all efforts of the widely scattered settlers, who for the most part live eight or ten miles apart, haIfa-dozen men suf- ficing to herd flocks which range over per- haps fifty thousand acres. As it was obvious that these could in no wise check the ever-increasing evil, it became necessary to hire men to trap, shoot, and ferret professionally. These trappers required the aid of large packs of dogs, and it was soon found that the disturbance thus caused among the flocks resulted in greater mischief than even the ravages of the rabbits. Moreover, the trappers were paid at the rate of t~vopence a skin, but the market became so over- stocked that skins sold for less than they cost. When you consider that the rabbit be- gins to breed at the early age of six months, and thenceforth has about six litters a year, of from six to eight young, it is evident that the increase of the spe- cies must necessarily be excessive. It has been reckoned that one ancestral couple, having attained to the age of four and a half years, may very well see around them a prosperous clan of descendants, numbering upwards of one million two hundred and seventy thousand. Among the many efforts made to sub- due the rabbit pest, none has more sig- nally failed than the introduction of cats, which, from the days of the Marquis of Carrabas down to the present time, have proved such succcessful rabbiters when working on their own account. In New Zealand, however (where so many things go by contraries), they seem to object to sport, and to prefer a purely domestic life. In Victoria it was at first ho.ped that the native cat, which is a kind of weasel, would have proved a useful ally; but, strange to say, it at once fraternized with the rabbits, and now these singular friends are said to share the same burrows. All manner of remedies have been tried, and successively given up as useless in the face of so wide-spread an evil. The extent of the ravages could scarcely be credited were it not for the clear statistics of the Rabbit Nuisance Committee. Thus, in South Canterbury, New Zea- land, Messrs. Cargill and Anderson state that in the previous year they had killed five hundred thousand rabbits by poison, and in the following spring their sheep- run was just as densely peopled by them as ever. Mr. Kitchen says that he kept nearly a hundred men working as rabbit-killers for four months, and actually cleared his land. Very soon, however, new comers arrived, and entered into possession of this vacant tract, and now they are worse than ever. Still the plague spreads, and the whole land is more or less infested with the pest, and many districts are reduced to mere warrens, on which it i~ impossible to feed sheep at all. Many sheep-farmers have been forced to ab~ndon runs of from fifteen to sixteen thousand acres. Mr. R. Campbell has been compelled to abandon two hundred and fifty t/lOuSa?ld acres / In one year he expended /3,000 in the endeavors to clear about half this land. Mr. Rees reports having killed one hun- dred and eighty thousand rabbits within t~velve months. In 1878 the total number of sheep in New Zealand was upwards of thirteen million, but so terrible have been the rav- ages of this feeble l)eople, that the offi- cial returns for m88o and iSSi show a diminution of two million in the number of sheep, and the last quarter of i88i show-s a falling off of ten per cent. in the export of wool as compared with the pre- vious year. As a slight compensation, but one not approaching to the loss, it is found that the value of rabbit-skins exported in the same period shows an increase of /36,000, the number of skins exported averaging ten million a year, while one hundred thousand rabbits were exported to En- gland by the New Zealand Meat Preserv- ing Company, which has found the experi- mnent so popular that it now announces its readiness to receive ten thousand rabbits a day to be preserved for the foreign mar- ket. Whether this last expedient for utilizing the foe is altogether safe, it were hard to tell. I confess that, for my own part, I should seriously object to eating New Zealand rabbits, considering that the cure now in vogue is wholesale poisoning by means of grain saturated with phospho- rus. (Perhaps phosphorus in this form may prove beneficial to human beings, but one would like some certain information on this point.) How the sheep can be prevented front eating the poisoned grain is to me a mys- tery. It seems, however, to be practicable, and the sheep-owners are now beginning to take heart again. 64 THE RABBIT PEST IN AUSTRALASIA. How one mans poison may be another mans meat has been abundantly shown in Australia, where several enterprising col- onists have established rabbit-preserving factories on so large a scale that they may well be described as rabbit-exterminators. In western Vidtoria there are two such factoriesone at Colac, and another at Camperdown. The returns of the former for one week were eighteen thousand pairs of rabbits, while in the same time the - latter received ten thousand. Thus nearly sixty thousand rabbits were dis- posed of in one week by these two estab- lishments, and one carter alone received from the Colac factory a cheque for 128 i6s. 8d. for six days work. This estab- lishment employs about three hundred hands in out-door work and about ninety in-doors. Camperdown gives work to as many more. The trappers employed by these two firms range over an area of ground about seventy miles in length by twenty in width. Yet this only covers one little spot of the vast region where the irrepressible rabbits mock at the combined wisdom of all the legislative powers. A very important ally has, however, now been secured, and great hopes are entertained that it may prove a more suc- cessful rabbit-destroyer than any hitherto thought of. This is the Indian mongoose (Herpestes griseus), which in the last ten years has done such good service in Ja- maica as a wholesale rat-killer. The rats, attracted by the sugar-fields, had increased in such multitudes as to threaten the desolation of that fertile isle. It occurred to one of the planters to introduce this notorious ratter, and the results have sur- passed his highest hopes. These active little creatures, resemblino- laroe ferrets, multi plied with extraordinary velocity, and waged a deadly war of extermination against the rats. It is hoped that they may prove equally efficacious in the destruction of rabbits, so the New Zealand and Australian gov- ernments have applied to the government of India for a supply of mongooses. These are accordingly being collected in Bengal and sent to the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta, whence, when a hundred couples have been secured, they will be despatched to their new homes, where we may well wish them success. ANTMAL INTELLIGENCE. One who knew nature and animals well and loved them dearly, the Lion. Grantley F. Berkeley, of Alderney Manor, has told us that a little dog had been cured of a painful malady by having dropped into his eve from a quill, daily, some irritating liquid. No one but his master could persuade him to submit; but in him, Jack had perfect confidence. When the cure was complete, Mr. Berkeley saw the dog steal out of the house, and, after looking cautiously round, bury in the flower border the quill which had been an instrument of wholesome discipline ; but the animal waited till the case was complete. On another occasion, when his kind master, then an invalid, missed his slippers, it was found that the same favorite dog had carried them and placed them in front of the fire, exactly where the servant was in the habit of arranging them. After that time this office was always faithfully performed by Jack. .A Skye terrier of our own, though not a lover of cats, became so much attached to a breed kept at our lodge, that one evening when he was taking a walk with our female servants, Rough could not be persuaded to pass the root of a fir-tree beside a cross-road at some distance. On examina- tion it proved that one of the domestic kittens, which had been given away in the neighboring village, had tried to find its way home, but had probably got into difficulties, and was literally up a tree mewing pitifullythe dog and cat marched home together lovingly. A squir- rel which had escaped came hack to the win- dow where its cage had stood, and pleaded so eloquently, by jumping on a bird-cage, and trying to run round as if in its accustomed swing, that its own house of captivity was re- placed. For several days it returned, daily gave itself a swing, ate its nuts, and no attempt being made to detain it, seemed to enjoy the society of the family. It constantly returned, and brought with it various friends to be fed at our windows. I once took care of a little spaniel pup, which could not feed itself. Its mother used to come at the same time daily, to fetch me from the house to the stables, where she watched jealously over the delicate creature, ~suffering no one but myself to ap- proach it. For months afterwards, long after my poor fragile nursling was dead, I used to fancy, at the same hour, that I heard the low, appealing cry with which its mother used to call me to the yard, and afterwards her glad bark, which I had not heard again, when the puppy had received nourishment. It is only the voices of nature which are never out of harmony. Colbur~s New Monthly Magazine

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, No. 2051. October 13, 1883. 5 From Bezinning, Volume XLIV. Vol. CLIX I. POLITICS IN THE LEBANON II. ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. Part VIII., III. COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, IV. SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA, V. A POLISH LOVE-STORY, VI. FIELDINGS BUST, VII. SOME ECONOMIC PLANTS, VIII. DRIVING TOURS, IX. THE RELIEF OF VIENNA, X. FACULTIES OF BIRDS, A CITY PASTORAL, THE RUIN, CONTENTS. Fortnzgrlzdy Review, All The Year Round, Contemporary Review,. Blackwoods Magazine, Blackwoods Magazine, Saturday Review, Leeds Mercury, aturday Review, Month, P 0 E T R Y. 661 AT THE PIT-MOUTH, 66 I AN HELLESPONT OF CREAM, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. I~or EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to tile Publishers, tho LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year,freeoJz5ostage. Remittances sisolIld be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of IlIese can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register Jetters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE Lsvsuo AGE, s8 cents. 67 73 83 91 lOt 118 121 123 126 127 66 66 A CITY PASTORAL, ETC. A CITY PASTORAL. BT JAM ES HENDRY. LooK down, white summer moon, look down From out thy l)laCe of starry quiet; See ! where the red lights of the town Throb through the midnight riot. There, on the still slope of the night, Thy stars about thee touched with pallor, How seems it from that deep, calm height, This coil of human squalor? Thy soft clear radiance slants the street, Sifts down these dark, unhappy places; Shines, through the gas-glare and the heat, On haggard, sin-grimed faces. Say, since thy climbing slackens where Orion may not follow after, Say, dost thou hear strike on the air Shrieks, ravelled up with laughter? 0 summer moon, how looks it then, Seen from these dusk-soft, dreamy levels? Doth it not cross thy calm that men Reel, maddened into devils? Nay: though a womans shriek yet shrills, In stifled echoes down this alley, Thy white flame tops the twilight hills High in a northern valley. Sure it is peace to look upon Thy slow light sloping down the passes; Gleams of thy going on grey stone, With shimmer on wet grasses. Thy presence keeps the quiet sky; Thy glimmered light goes on the meadows, XVhere drowsy sheep together lie Silent beside their shadows. So, while the valley seems to swim Spacious beneath thy loosened splendor, There spreads a sound of evening hymn, Treble, and clear, and tender, With childrens voices; and the song Is that old Galilean story Which Bethlehems shepherds heard the throng Chant, in the sudden glory. Peace and good-will oer all the earth~ Along the moon-lit slope is drifted, By voices at a cotters hearth, On northern hills, uplifted. And thou art here, white summer moon, Radiant above this citys riot; Thou who hast heard the childrens tune Drift on that valleys quiet. Good Words. THE RUIN. BEFORE my mind an old-world vision grows, Dim aisles, bright altars, priests, a revrent throng, Where now oer crumbling walls clouds sail along. Through yonder time-touched arch no splendor glows, Its stone-spun frame the sheltring hills en- close. Those mournful shafts, enclaspd by ivies strong, When echoed they the final strong-voiced song, Or mutely witnessd sacrilegious blows? Twixt earth and sky I see the d~vinclled men Working for God; beneath, the master-mind, Whose boundless artist-soul no creed can bind, Planning undying fame with rule and pen. His tomb lies shadowd by you buttress gray: Go, muse how men, and all mens words, de- cay. Spectator. XV. H. HARPER. AT THE PIT-MOUTH. NEATH yon bleak hills that spread across the shire, Like earth-waves heaved by some convulsion strong, Where shrubs refrain from flower and birds from song, And daily riseth smoke, and nightly fire, And burrowers in the blackness never tire, In the mines jagged pathways sleeps a throng Oer whose prone bodies Death bath swept along, While at the pit-mouth roars their funeral pyre. Grind with thine heel you ant-hill; crush their town, And, stooping, mark swift journeyings to and fro. Why doth the Unseen deal so fierce a blow, Strives he in doubts dark sea our faith to drown? O preacher! quoting texts with soothing zest, Whispered you emmets: Allis for the best? Spectator. W. H. HAEPER. AN HELLESPONT OF CREAM. IF there were, 0! an [lellespont of cream Between us, milk-white Mistress, I would swim To you, to show to both my loves extreme, Leander-like,yea, dive from brim to brim. But met I with a butterd pippin-pie Floating upont, that would I make my boat, To waft me to you without jeopardy: Though sea-sick I might be while it did float. Yet if a storm should rise, by night or day, Of sugar snows or hail of care-aways, Then if I found a pancake in my way, It like a plank should bear me to your quays, Which having found, if they tobacco kept, The smoke should dry me well before I slept~ An Old Sonnet. John Davies of Hereford. 66 POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. 67 From The Fortnightly Review. POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. THE attitude assumed by France, in regard to the recent appointment of a successor to Rustem Pasha as governor- general of the Lebanon, has differed so widely from that of the other five Euro- pean powers who are co-signatory with her to the R~glemen die Liban, that she can scarcely be surprised if the nature of her pretensions in that province are exam- ined, or the methods to which she has resorted in order to sustain them are criti- cised. Indeed, the blatant character of her diplomacy would almost lead one to suppose that it was designed to court in- quiry, and to challenge criticism, were it not that another more obvious, though scarcely more reasonable, motive is easy to find. After the Egyptian fiasco, the amour ~ro~re of the nation required sat- isfaction, not merely in the remote and inaccessible parts of the world in which it is now being sought, but especially in that Turkish l)rovince, contiguous to Egypt, to which some of the most cher- ished traditions of French policy have at- tached ever since the days of the Crusades and King Louis of saintly memory. Pa; /ant tour la Syrie, though Napoleonic, is an air which never fails to find a re- sponse in the breasts of the most rabid republicans, just as the most ardent per- secutors of the faith in France become its most devout champions in the Lebanon, and the identical monks whom they have violently expelled from their monasteries at home are fdted and honored by the officials of the government which ejected them, so soon as they have transferred their obnoxious personalities to those religious retreats which contribute their picturesque interest to the wild valleys of the Mountairn Questions of religion and dynastic prejudices fade alike from the Gallic mind before the absorbing fas- cination of the predominant influence of France in Syria; but in order to arouse the national enthusiasm, a noisyfaufare of political and diplomatic trumpets is necessary. Hence it was that, in April last, the Marquis de Noailles was in- structed to inform the Porte that, unless on the 24th of that month, which was the day on which Rustem Pashas term of office expired, that functionary did not leave the country the government of the province being put in commission until his successor was appointed the French government would seriously consider the expediency of a rupture of diplomatic rela- tions. The fact that this was a pure piece of bounce, which the Porte treated with con- temptuous indifference by continuing Rustem Pasha in his governorship until the 6th of the followin~ June, naturally did not strike the French imagination so much as the threat itself. It was a public announcement on behalf of the republic to all Europe that it exercised rights and enjoyed privileges in Syria which the other co-signatory powers did not, and it called attention to the fact that circum- stances might arise when France would be l)rel)ared to go to war in defence of those rights and privileges. Coming after the virtual extinction of her influence in Egypt, it was a decided relief to have let off this political firework, and it ~vas suffi- ciently applauded by the nation to inspire a certain amount of confidence in the gov- ernment. There was another public, however, upon ~vhom this announcement was calculated to produce a powerful effect, and this was none other than that of Syria itself. For years past the French diplomatic representatives in the Lebanon had been exciting the popular minds through clerical agents under their con- trol, to look forward to the expiry of Rus- tern Pashas term of office as to the in- auguration of a new era, when Maronite predominance would be secured, and when the governor-general, who would be a French nominee, would be their willino- instrument; and with a singular lack of adroitness they contrived so to narrow the issue between Rustem Pasha and his traducers, that the justification of the former, or the triumph of the latter, hinged entirely upon the man who should finally be forced by France upon the Porte for the appointment. In other words, Rustem Pasha had represented the prin- ciple of impartial and just administration, and had steadily resisted the Maronite pretensions backed by France, where they 68 POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. were contrary to the R?glemen/. The appointment of a nominee of France meant the defeat of the sultan himself in the person of his governor-general; it meant the dismissal of every one of the officials who had served under him; it meant the complete reversal of his policy, and the transference of the supreme au- thority of the Lebanon into the hands of the French consul-general and two or three Maronite bishops. When the bold announcement was made that France would insist upon Rus- tem Pashas retirement on the day his term of office expired, the clerical party considered the victory won, and were only prevented from celebrating it ~vith insult- ing manifestations by the determined attitude of the pasha, who gave them to understand that so long as he remained in power he would not shrink from the most uncompromising exercise of his au- th on ty. As time went on and the emptiness of the French threat became apparent, a se- cret uneasiness took possession of the minds of those who had pinned their faith to its fulfilment, and when Nasri T3ey, the French candidate, was unceremoniously thrust aside by the Porte, with the con- sent of the powers, as one utterly disqual- ified by inherent incapacity for so impor- tant a position, no less than by his well- known ultra-clerical tendencies, French influence received a blow vhich might have been avoided, had a less ostenta- tious attitude at the outset been assumed at Constantinople, had a more reasonable candidate been proposed, and had the expectations of the Maronite clergy not been unduly worked up by a long course of intrigue which it was evident., might now recoil upon themselves. For it is not to be supposed that the Turkish gov- ernment was ignorant of the nature of the clerical campaign which had been entered upon by certain Maronite bishops at French instigation against Rustem Pasha, or of the activity which had recently been exhibited by accredited agents in Syria. It was perfectly well known that the ob- ject of Major de Torcys mission to that country three years ago had been to ob- tain from the Metanalis and Ansaryiis, numbering together about four hundred thousand souls, a petition to come under French protection; that this officer, through a major in the French army, trav- elled in the uniform of a Turkish mushir, or full general, thus imposing upon the country people, and claiming for himself honors corresponding to his supposed rank from caimakanys and small ignorant local officials. This mission was fol- lowed, eighteen months ago, by the French consul-general, who entertained the Metanali chiefs, and openly prom- ised them the support of France under certain contingencies. Since then, in order to discredit Rustem Pashas gov- ernment, both Maronites and Metanalis in different l)arts of the country-, sure of French protection, organized themselves into brigand bands, and the French news- papers contained telegrams from Syria, dwelling upon the disturbed state of the country, and containing the most exag- gerated and utterly false accounts of the terror ~vhich reigned among the Chris- tians. Fortunately neither Rustem Pasha nor Hamdi Pasha, the vali at Damascus, were men to be trifled with, and so far, the policy which suceeded so well with Russia in Bulgaria, and with the Krou- mirs in Tunis, and which is again being attempted by the Russians in Armenia, has failed signally. In the face of these undisguised in- tri gues, and of the pronounced and dimly veiled efforts which are being made at the present time by France in Syria to impress upon the population of all reli- gions that the manifest destiny of the country is its ultimate annexation to the republic, it was not unnatural that the personality of the successor to Rusteni Pasha should be a matter of the utmost importance to the sultan. There was one man in the Turkish government service who, while he was eligible as being a Christian, had earned a character for loy- alty and for a stern and uncompromising impartiality in former important adminis- trative posts which eminently qualified him for the position now vacant; a man, moreover, of tried courage, and of a liter- ary and intellectual capacity rare among Turkish officials. This man was Wassa POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. 69 Pasha, a Catholic Albanian, who was se- lected for the post from the first, though he was not put forward until the patience of the powers was exhausted by a series of impossible candidates, and the nomina- tion of Strecker Pasha, a German, alarmed the French into a hurried acquiescence. Moreover, the delay which had already been protracted over six weeks, during which time Rustem Pasha had continued to rule in spite of the threat of the French ambassador at Constantinople, was daily weakening the French l)OsitiOn in the Lebanon, and an attempt to induce the Porte to reduce the term of office from ten years to three proved fruitless, and the only alternative now was to appear satis- fied with the new appointment and to make the best of it. It was still l)OSSible that the new governor-general might be open to blandishments, and mi~,ht be cap- tured by official compliments and soft sawder. The consequence was that, at five oclock on the morning of the 6th of June, the inhabitants of Beyrout were awakened out of their slumbers by a sa- lute of twenty-one guns, an hour when, according to all naval regulations, salutes are never fired, and they were still more surprised to find that the one in question proceeded from a French frigate, in honor of the steamer which ~vas then entering the harbor with Wassa Pasha on board. As if still more to accentuate this effusive welcome to a Turkish official in Turkish waters, coming to assume a local official position to which he had been named by his sovereign, the captain of the frigate placed his launch at the disposal of the governor-general and endeavored to per- suade him to make his state landing in it. This offer was politely refused, and Was- sa Pasha landed in a proper manner two hours afterwards, under a salute of nine- teen guns from the Turkish battery. In the evening, the French frigate illumi- nated in honor of the joyful occasion. Meantime the clerical party had been privately warned to be moderate in their attitude, and not to make any of the de- mands with which it was intended to as- sail the new-coiner, had he been, as was fondly hoped, a more pliable person. These consisted in, first, the dismissal of all the persons who had formed Rusteni Pashas administration; a clean sweep of officials who had rendered themselves obnoxious during the term of Rustern Pashas able and impartial government, was the prime essential to the inaugura- tion of the new regime which had been l)rovisional for so many months. But this demand, together with others which should advance the policy of France, was to be postl)oned until the new-coiner should declare himself. This he promptly proceeded to do, in terms which were calculated utterly to extinguish whatever sparks of hope were still slumberin in the clerical breast. To the deputations of all sects and classes, to Druse chiefs, to Metanali sheikhs, to orthodox priests and Maronite bishops, Wassa Pasha held only one lan~uage, and boldly pronounced his intention first, of respecting the sovereign rights of the sultan, and caus- ing them to be respected; secondly, of adhering strictly to the letter of the R~- glement, which he was bound to follow; thirdly, of applying to the administration of justice and the government of the peo- ple generally the principles of an absolute equality of rights, and of perfect and uncompromising impartiality to all nation- alities and religious sects; and, fourthly but this was a hint delicately conveyed he announced his intention of govern- ing himself, and of not allowing himself to be governed by anybody else. It will be seen from the foregoing sum- mary of the record of the last four months that France makes no secret of her politi- cal designs on Syria; that, in fact, partly to satisfy the national amour y5ro~re at home, and partly to increase her influence in the Lebanon, she has ostentatiously called public attention to them by claim- ing a l)OsitiOn in regard to that country which differs from that of the other co- signatory European powers, and by insist- ing that the Porte should recognize her right to assume this distinctive attitude. Indeed, so little have her pretensions been disputed that many people are under the impression that special privileges were secured to her in the A~glenient die Liban, or some other international docu- ment, and that she has some legal basis 70 POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. to stand upon in her late determined the more especially as in all matters of efforts to extend her protecting ~gis over dispute between the Maronite bishops the various sects and races in Syria. and the papal delegate, the former have of But no mention is made of France in this late invariably been supported by France document, and the only protection which in their insubordination to l)apal authority. it is admitted by Europe that she has a Among the higher Maronite clergy, two right to exercise in the country is of a bishops have made themselves especially purely religious character, and has refer- conspicuous by their opposition to the ence to the Roman Catholic faith and to late governor-general, and by their in- the Latin monasteries and holy places in trigues against his authority. Both of Syria and Palestine. If Roman Catholic these have at different times refused to l)riests of any nationality have cause of acknowledge the authority of Rome in re- complaint against the Turkish officials, it ligious questions, generally arising out of is not to the consular agents of their mixed marriages, and which were re- country, but to those of France that they ferred by the governor-general to the appeal, and it is the French consul who papal delegate for decision. And their comes to the rescue when Turkish sub- grievance and that of the clerical party jects, if they happen to be Roman Catho- who adhere to them against Rustem lics, are hindered in the exercise of their Pasha, was that he supported the deci- religion. But the fact that an Arab or a sion of the deleoate against the bishops. Syrian happens to be a Roman Catholic XVhen France ~~as under the Catholic does not give him a right to French pro- r6gime of McMahon, this conduct on the tection, except where matters of his reli- part of the ~overnor-~eneral gave no of- b gion are concerned; indeed, strictly fence; but since it has been succeeded speaking, the French authorities would by a free-thinking Cabinet the tendency have no right to interfere unless such of French policy has been to encourage interference was either sanctioned or ap- the Maronites in their attitude of insubor- plied for by the papal delegate. The f unc- dination to Rome, with a view to chang- tions of the papal delegate are to watch ing the purely religious character of the over the interests of all Christian sects protectorate, ~vhich is limited in its scope owning spiritual allegiance to the pope. and embarrassing from its inconsistency, And outside of those sects, and of the into a political one; and now that Mos- J)urely religious matters ~vhich concern lem heretical sects share the honors of them, France has no rights of l)rotection this protectorate with Maronites and whatever. It is, therefore, to the papal Melchites, it is evident that the pope and delegate that the governor-general natu- his delegate regard the attitude recently rally appeals in all cases of religious assumed by France in this country with dispute between Christian sects owning almost as much disfavor as the sultan allegiance to the pope; and where that himself. The Latin Church has become functionary does not consider the interests aware that its interests are protected by a of his religioi in peril, there can be no power treacherous and fundamentally hos- excuse for any action on the part of tile to it, and which only seeks to e~a-p loiter France. This is a position which is not ecclesiastical insubordination to its own only extremely embarrassing to a repub- political ends. As, in a population of two lican government which vmolently repudi- hundred thousand Maronites, there are no ates at home the religion it so exclusively fewer than eighty-two convents containing champions abroad, but it has the effect over two thousand monks and nuns, a politically of limiting the scope of its in- mutiny has a large field to work in, and fluence. The effort, therefore, of late the result has been that among the Marc- years on the part of French officials has nite clergy and people there are two, if not been to transform this religious protecto- three parties; there are, first, the active rate into a political one, and extend it leaders who rely upon the French and over as many of the communities and rebel against the authority both of the sects which compose the population of pope and the sultan, who aim at complete the country as possible. political control of the Lebanon, and who It is not to be wondered at that so com- are at the head of the ecclesiastical hie- plete a transformation of the character of rarchy. Secondly, the clerical party, who the French protectorate in Syria should desire to retain an attitude of entire sub- be viewed with dislike at Rome, and that mission to Rome, who were perfectly sat- unanimity of sentiment becomes impossi- isfied with the rule of Rustem Pasha; and ble between the papal delegate in the thirdly, the Marooite l)easantry, who only Lebanon and the French consul-general ; desire peace and prosperity, and whc POLITICS IN THE LEBANON. 7 were also entirely satisfied with the ad- ministration of the late governor-general because he protected them against exac- tion, not to say robbery, by their own clergy. The system of sending a sick man s relations out of the room when he was in ea-tremis, and then forging a will by which he left all his property to the Church, was one which Rustem Pasha set his face against. Again, the payment of bribes to bishops in cases of lawsuits in order that the judges might be influenced by spiritual authority to give the decision in favor of the briber, and many other abuses of a like nature, which had the effect of seriously diminishing episcopal incomes, were put a stop to by Rustem Pasha, who thereby gained the good-will of the Maronite peasantry, whose silence during the more recent period has been the result of fear lest their ecclesiastical rulers backed by France should triumph, and their last state should be worse than their first, if they did not make to them- selves friends of the mammon of episco- pacy. That the papal delegate, in his effort to bring order into such a Church, should find his ally rather in the Turkish governor-general, when the latter is an honest man, than in the Maronite bishops and their French backers, is only natural. That a government which believes in noth- ing should lend the weight of its political influence and national prestige to encour- age insubordination against the Church which it is bound to protect, is more looi- cal than to protect the Church in ~vhich it disbelieves, and the l)olitical four tie force in which France is no~v engaged in Syria is to effect her escape from a posi- tion which is alike false morally and un- profitable materially, and exchange it for one which, if it is internationally illegal, is less hypocritical, and may be turned to most profitable account materially. It cannot be too often pointed out that the interests of the Maronite episcopal clique, supported by France, are diametri- cally opposed to the interests of the Church of Rome, as well as to those of the entire pol)ulation of Lebanon. It is sim- ply an attempt on the part of an ambitious clerical oligarchy to govern a country con- taining seven different sects autocratically for their own political arid pecuniary ben- efit, without any regard to justice, or to the rights of either of those other sects, or of their own priest-ridden population, from which at the present day they squeeze an admitted annual revenue of /~o,ooo ster- ling, to say nothing of clerical perquisites, the amount of which no man can tell. Not long since France increased her sub. sidy to the Maronite Church by fifty thousand francs annually merely as a mark of sympathy and good-will, for infi- del republics cannot afford laro-e donations for clerical purposes. It is evident that if the rule of the Maronite bishops became supreme in other words, if a governor- general like Nasri Bey, ~vho was their nom- inee, had been appointedan outbreak among the other sects would have been inevitable. Neither the Druses, the Mos- lems, nor the Orthodox Greek could have tolerated the persecution to which they would in that case have been subjected; nor will they tolerate it, should the apathy of Europe ever allow the present policy of France to succeed in the Lebanon. The day that a governor-general rules that province at the behest of the Maro- nite bishops under the instigation and aegis of France, another massacre will occur like that of iS6o, when fourteen thousand Christians perished, and ~vhich originated in the aggression of the Maro- nites upon the Druses. At present the peasant population of the Lebanon live in peace and harmony; there is no ill-feeling among them ; there is no reason why law and order should be disturbed, or why the country should not go on ~)rospering during the ten years to come as it has during the ten that have gone by. That all classes of the popula- tion, except the small but influential clique of clerical ambi/icuex already alluded to, vere thorougMy satisfied with Rustem Pashas administration is evident from the series of ovations which have been showered upon him during the last weeks of his stay in the country, and especially now that they dare express their real feel- ings, on the part of that very Maronite population amongst whom he w-as sup- posed to be most unpopular. Never before has a governor-general left the country with such overpowering evidences of a widespread and well-deserved popu- larity. All classes and all religions have combined to do him honor, and to bear testimony to the success of an adminis- tratiun which had for its most salient feature the exile from the country of th~ episcopal rincrleacler of the clerical fac- tion the man who, since his return to the country, has been more honored and saluted by the French than any other bishop in the country. It was impossible not to perceive in these cordial demon- strations in favor of Rustem Pasha a protest against Maronite supremacy un- der French auspices, and a hint to his 72 POLITICS IN TUE LEBANON. successor that the policy ~vhich would find most support in the country would be the continuation of that which the French government have so loudly, so bitterly, and so vainly complained against. If Europe, and more especially England, clearly understood that the triumph of French policy in Syria meant Maronite supremacy in the Lebanon, and that Maro- nite supremacy in the Lebanon meant a massacre of Christians which should af- ford the desired excuse for French military intervention, and the subsequent occupa- tion and final annexation of the country from Carmel to Aleppo, they would watch more narrowly the political progress of events in that country than they have been in the habit of doing. It is significant that the one European power which has shown some sign of life on the subject is Russia. A diplomatic note has just been handed to the Porte by the Russian gov- ernment upon the affairs of the Lebanon, calling attention to four points, in regard to which it alleged that the R?glernent has been infringed by the Ottoman au- thorities. Although these are of minor importance, and can be explained as de- viations from the strict letter of the law whichhave been forced upon successive governors as matters of convenience, while they in no way affect the principle of the Rt~glement, or work injustice or injury to any one, it is significant that, after having tolerated them in silence for so long, Russia should have chosen this critical moment for bringing them for- ward. It will be a subject for British diplo- macy to decide under what inspiration this action has been suggested; whet her it is the result of an agreement with France, which includes both the Arme- nian and Syrian questions, under which Russia is to allow France perfect freedom in the prosecution of her designs in Syria, on condition that Russia meets with no opposition in the annexation of Armenia, and the advance of her eastern frontier almost to the confines of Syria. In that case it must be as an evidence of her will- ingness to assist France in the Lebanon, that she has handed in a note of her com- plaints in regard to the present mode of administering the province which should break the unanimity which has hitherto existed betwen all the powers, excepting France, on the subject, and strengthen the position of the latter power by reliev- ing her from that attitude of isolation which constituted her weakness; or this note may have been conceived in a sense altogether hostile to France, as a re- minder on the part of Russia that she also has an important Christian Church the Greek orthodoxof which she is the recognized protector, which counts a large number of adherents in the Leb- anon, but the members of which find themselves in a state of perpetual antago- nism to the Maronites, and who would undoubtedly be subjected to persecution and injustice should the l)Olicy of France triumph. Indeed, one of the points of complaint in the note is the partiality shown to the Maronites in certain ad- ministrative appointments, which, consid- ering that the French complain of the injustices heaped upon them by the late governor-general, forms a singular com- mentary on the general situation. As a matter of fact, the members of the Greek orthodox community were amongst the most enthusiastic of Rustem Pashas sup- porters. Whatever may have been the exciting causes of this note, whether it is meant as a reminder to France that Rus- sia has interests in Syria, and a policy in that country, and ulterior designs upon it, or whether it is the result of an under- standing with France, and intended as a support to her in her complaints of Leb- anon mal-ad ministration, its appearance at this juncture is in the highest degree significant. It means something, and the manner of the development of the whole Eastern question turns upon what it means. It is of vital interest, not only to En- gland but to allEurope, to know whether this appropriation of territory is to take place under an amicable arrangement which is being entered into between the two powers, or whether they are going to fight over their spoils. In the former case it is l)ossible that, with Russia at her back, France may seek to recover the prestige which she has lOSt during the last two months, and escape from the humili- ating position in which she has been placed by the egregious failure of her pol- icy, by forcing on a crisis with as little delay as possible. If Wassa Pasha car- ries out his declared intention of govern- in~ independently, and upon l)rinciples of justice and equality to all races and reli- gions, the position of the Maronite epis- copacy, who have swaggered so much in anticipation, will soon become unbearable, while that of France, by ~vhom they have been compromised, will be no less intoler- able. Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at if the exigencies of the situation should force her to seek an ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. 73 alliance with Russia, and that the two questions of Armenia and Syria may arise simultaneously. Whatever apathy in re- gard to the fate of Armenia may reign in England, it is not likely that the country ~vill be indifferent to the destiny of Syria and Palestine, for the pretensions of France embrace the whole of Galilee to Carmel and the mountains of Samaria, and, indeed, she has never repudiated designs on Jerusalem itself, though no power would dare openly to avow such an ambition. To judge by recent events in England, the l3ritish public seems to one who is not of it to be governed by senti- ment, and what it believes to be religious feeling, rather than by any considerations of practical policy. It is possible, there. fore, that they may be induced, by the sacred associations which attach to this country, to adopt a determined and even bellicose attitude, from which they wotLId shrink on grounds of economy and hu- manity, if the question at issue merely involved the safety of our Indian posses- sions or our position as a great Asiatic pow-er. From All The Year Round. ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. THE Count de St. Pol has revealed him- self in a new light. He presents himself as a formal suitor, and demands the hand of Hilda from her father. The count has seen Mr. Chancellor, who, he under- stands, has abandoned his pretensions. The old squire, although a little puzzled, for Hilda has not yet spoken to him about new arrangementsthe old squire pro- fesses himself to be quite prepared to accept the count as a son-in-law, if Hilda really has a preference for him. Person- ally Mr. Chudleigh would prefer the count indeed, for he has no great liking for John Chancellor; but there are business matters to be considered, settlements and so on, as to which he does not see his way. The count explains that this action of his is only a preliminary. He is not yet five-and-twenty years of age, and al- though his father and mother are dead, yet he has an aged grandmother in Brit- tany whose consent must be obtained before he can marry. As the old lady is almost blind, very deaf, and obstinate be- yond exl)ression, and as she is, moreover, extremely devout, it is quite possible that be may have some difficulty in persuading her to consent to his marriage with a for- eigner and a Protestant; but lie is pre- pared to face these difficulties if lie has the assurance that Miss Cliudleigh will receive him favorably. And so Flilda is sent for by her father, who insists that she shall grant the count an interview. And this interview resulted in some embarrassment for Hilda. The count did his best to make his peace with her; lie assured her that he had conceived a sud- den and violent passion for her, and that he meant to win her at any price. If his conduct had ever been rash and blame- worthy, the ~varmth of his passion iiust excuse it. It was vain for Hilda to tell him that her heart was entir~hy given to another; the count received her state- ments with polite incredulity. It was the custom of English young ladies, lie be- lieved, to raise difficulties. And as for this affection Miss Chudleigh spoke of, had it the sanction of her father? Hilda could not truthfully say that it had. Where- upon the count triumphantly rejoined that lie was satisfied that it rested with him to kindle the great passion of her life only let him have the opportunity of trying to please her. Hilda niiglit tell him that lie was only wasting his tim e,buttliatwas his affair; lie was quite content to waste his time in such a quest. On one point the count won Hildas good opinion lie declared that lie was quite ready to shake hands, after the English fashion, with the man ~vhio had struck him, and to dismiss the matter from his iiiind. It was but a faithful bouldowg, said tli e count, who had bitten hard in defence of his mistress. Without feeling much cordial approval of the counts estimate of my character, still I felt bound at Hildas request to accept the proffered olive-branch. The opportunity soon occurred, for Tom and I, who had settled ourselves in a comfort- able old-fashioned hotel, where we were completely at our ease, were presently pounced upon by our director, who had all kinds of plans for our entertainment. First of all there ~vas a charming dinner arranged for this evening, aiid at the very house in which we were staying, the Hotel St. Pierre, the host of which was a brave gar~on after the directors own heart, with an enthusiasm for the history and antiquity of his town which it is quite rare to meet with. And the dinner to- night would inaugurate a grand salle Louis freize, which the director had just seen and pronounced exquisite. The sehectest notabihities of Caen would be there, the chiefs of the garrison, some distinguished artists from Paris, the edi 74 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. tors of one or two of the leading journals, and last, not least, cried the director with enthusiasm, our charmino friend the Count de St. Pol. The promises of our director were abundantly realized. The dinner was charming, the guests in their best vein, and full of the liveliness that is the native growth of their country. Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleased with thyself whom all the world can please. Of course we must give the others their revenge, and then follows a comparing of dates and engagements. The count and his friend are going on to Trouville pres- ently, and there we have engaged to meet Redmond on the third day from this. And soon the third day from now. It is a bargain ! say our adversaries, as they make an exact note of the date. There are fexv pleasanter place~ than Caen, that within easy reach from England is at once gay and bright in itself, full of interest to archaeologist, historian, archi- tect, rich in charming works for the artist, and shows fresh pleasant glimpses of un- sophisticated country life, and what is even more often sought than foundthe picturesque costume, the tall Norman caps, and short jaunty skirts of other days. Lumbering diligences roll into the town, loaded on market-days with red- fa~ed jolly country folk, and the markets, crammed with vegetables and fruit from the fertil.e country round about, echo with the din of Babel, a confusion of tongues not without the kindly northern burr, as the steward of some Scotch boat cheap- ens vegetables for the captains mess. Or it is the corn-market in a quaint old church, with the fresh earthy perfume of oats and beans, and the loud shouts of sellers and buyers, instead of the faint perfume of incense and the roll of the organs notes. But if it comes to church- es, there are plenty still left, and you may roam about all day long from one cool, solemn vault to another, till you get so used to the atmosphere that the world outside feels like a hot-house, and the summer breeze seems to scorch your cheeks. This morning we went Hilda and I to a round of churches, beginning with the Conquerors church, the Church of St. Stephen, belonging to the Abbaye aux Hommes, which he founded. The secular buildings of the abbey, cloisters, refec- tory, dormitories, are now occupied by troops of schoolboys in their smart mili- tary uniforms and k6pis. These buildings are mostly of the seventeenth century, and although of merit architecturally, do not much interest us English. But the church is another matter, with its grand simplicity of rounded arch and massive column, its solemn stillness, now broken And the salle was a marvel of unique antiquity; carved oak panels and dado, ~vith buffets and presses elaborately wrought, and the faience of Nevers and Rouen all of the same period. Cinq-Mars would have felt himself at home among us, except for the swallow-tai!s and shirt- fronts, ~vhich he ~vould have considered, and perhaps justly, as dowdy garments for gentlemen, and Richelieu might have come and emptied a bottle with us, with- out causing much surprise. It was Toms notion to introduce Za- mora with her tambourine, to dance a gipsy dance and sing a song. The child pleased the critics, who were, perhaps, in a complacent mood. But when our direc- tor told her little story, there was a gen- eral outcry that the Englishmen must not be allowed to provide for her. A general levy was made, and the amount placed in the hands of the director; and then and there the l)roprietor of the circus ~vas summoned, who, when he appeared, de- clared himself willing to take charge of a child so powerfully recommended, and teach her all the mysteries of the ring. And so Zamora is in a fair ~vay of realiz- ing her ambition; but she is a grateful little thing, and seems sorry to part with us. When the party breaks up, some are for the prefecture, where there is an evening reception, while others adjourn to a neigh- boring caf6, and among these last Tom and myself, the Count de St. Pol, and a certain Colonel Peltier, who is a great ally, it seems, of the count. Cards are brought, and Tom and I are matched with the count and his friend at whist. We should not be rated as third-class players at home, but we manage to hold our own with the Frenchmen, who are very indif- ferent performers. Still our adversaries by the still more solemn chant of the seem to fancy themselves, and they go on priest who intones the service for the till Tom and I have won four or five na- dead. A funeral is being performed in poleons. the choir, lights are burning, censers You will give us our revenge? says swinging. We can realize the scene of the count rather significantly. eight hundred years ago. The same glim. ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. mer of wax-lights in the noontide gloom, the same solemn cadence of priests and acolytes. The perfume of incense has lingered here all these years, all is much the same in outward aspect as when they laid the mighty victor in the narrow tomb where still his dust reposes. But to-day there is grief and heartfelt sorrow in the pale, tear stained faces vhich are clustered about the coffin, while for the mighty Conqueror there was not one sad, faithful heart to grieve, and instead of the sobs of mourners, the shrill cry of Haro, over his grave. The very ground in which the body is to be laid, is claimed by a peasant who raises that strange, all-potent cry of Haro, that all must listen to the barons with their long sw orcls, the bishops with their pastoral staffs, none of them daring to lay a hand upon the man who raises this cry for justice. And they say there is only a single bone left of this uncon- quered William, under the marble slab that bears his name, but that is enough to moralize over, if one were in the mood. But the funeral is over, the mourners file a~vay, and are lost in the cheerful living world outside. The incident of the funeral makes Hilda rather grave. It is not right to be so happy, Frank, when other people are suffering. And then we go to another church, Matildas this time, where a wedding is going on in a little side-chapel; a working peoples wedding, the bride in a bright Paisley shawl, and kneeling a long way apart from the bridegroom, who looks sheepish enough in his glossy black suit. The ceremony finishes as we are waiting, the white-robed priest vanishes into the sacristy, and the acolyte, in his red sou- tane, comes and puts out the candles. One of the candles smokes a long while after it has been extinguished, the smoke rising in a long twisted column, that winds at last into a ray of sunlight shining through a painted window, and become~ glorified. We both of us have been watch. in the smoke intently, and the little gleam of radiance pleases us. It seems to be recognized by Hilda as a good omen; and then the wedding has counteracted the de- pressing effect of the funeral. As well as churches there are plenty of fine old houses in Caen, in little courts, and squares, and out-of-the-way places; and among these the morning flies pleas- antly enough, till we meet Master Tom, who, it seems, is wandering about discon- tentedly. and wants to know when we are goin~ to do something. 75 I vote for a cruise, cried Tom; say to the Isle of Wight and back, just to freshen us up. Hilda looked at Tom in some surprise. Have you got your yacht here, Tom? she asked; and added: I dont think I shall es-er sail in the Sea-Mew again. It was Toms turn to look surprised and mysti fled. Have you quarrelled already, you two? he asked. Oh, I see, he con- tinued in a low tone, it is a surprise eh ? The fact was that the Sea-Mew was beginning to weigh upon my mind a good deal. I did not know how to break the matter to Hilda. It had been so delight- ful to find that Hilda was ready to take me, thinking me still poor Frank Lyme, and so I had ventured a little way in the path of deceit, and found it hard to retrace my steps. Hilda might possibly take um- brage, and consider that I had treated her like a child. At that moment I would gladly have given the Sea-Mew to any- body who would have taken her out into the Channel and away out of sight. And Tom was frowning and nodding at me in the most significant way, meaning, as I understood his signals, I know Hilda better than you, and it wont do. Let us go and have a look at her, I cried in desperation, and we took afizcre and drove now to the l)ort. But Hilda took the matter better than I expected. In fact, she looked at me rather tenderly than otherwise when I had made my explanation in a very awkward, bungling fashion. You will soon be poor again, Frank, she said, unless you have somebody to look after you. And then Hilda began to rummage about the yacht, proposing that this thing and the other should be done, feeling, as she said, more at home in it than she had ever done before. And now, Frank, began Hilda, when she had tired herself a little and thor- oughly stupefied the skipper and his crew with her questions and suggestions for Hilda prided herself on her seamanship, or its feminine equivalent, and meant to have things shipshape now that she felt herself in command and now, Frank, she said with determination, you must take me to Dives, where the Conqueror sailed from, you know, and we must land there; so let us call up the skipper. The skipper came and overhauled his charts, and rubbed his chin meditatively, as he said, 76 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. Im doubting, miss, well no have ~vat- ter enough to land ye at Dives. If there was water enough for \Vil- ham the Conqueror, replied Hilda tartly, surely there is for me. Captain Macrubbits he hails from the north, and is not quite a Scotch man, per- haps, but something very near itgrins contemptuously as lie replies, Im thinking the Conqueror never navigated a three hundred - ton yacht. They were just bits o galleys like smacks, we should ca~ them now that were navigated in those days. Hilda made a face expressive of impa- tience. Then, Captain Mac, if there isnt water enough at Dives, how are we to get there ? Yed just better go by rail, miss, re- plied the skipper with alacrity. Aye, ye shall go by rail, and Ill pick ye up at Trouville; theres a decent kind of port there. And then ye might like to run up the Seine. Id take ye up to Roan now with the flood like that cried the skipper, snapping his fingers with em- phasis. Well, then, said Hilda, shrugging her shoulders in token of resignation, that is how it must be then. As we returned to the city, Tom had a boon to beg of Hilda would she try to keep the party together? XVyvern was already recalled, and was going back to London with his sister, from Havre. But Miss Chancellor now and Mrs. Bacon, as inseparable from Miss Chancellor, why should they not go on with us? You know, continued Tom malicious- ly, it will be precious dull for me now that you and Frank are so thick togeth- er. Hilda replied, with a slightly sarcastic inflection of the voice, that she was sure Miss Chancellor would be quite ready to go on with us if she knew that Tom was so anxious about the matter. Whatever inducements Hilda may have offered to induce Miss Chancellor and her aunt to continue their journey with us, they must have proved sufficient, for we all assembled at the station a party re- duced in numbers, but, if anything, in better spirits than before. Even Con- tango kicked up his heels in a still more lively fashion than usual, and he called forth showers of sacris from the railway officials as they tried to haul him by main force into his box. Our destination in the first instance, it seemed, was Dozul6- Putot, and Tom made merry at the ex pense of people who could give such ridiculous names to their places. Where is our director, cried Tom, to read us these riddles? As it happened, our director was close at hand. Yes, lie had come to the station with his Stephanie to bid us bo;z voyage. The directors wife did not care to go to Dives, which was frisk oh, and so stupid. But we should meet at Trouville, no doubt. And so, with waving of hands and cries of A bient6t ~ve pass out of the station into the pleasant green coun- try. There is nothing on the way to tempt us to stop, unless it be at Troarn, pleas- antly placed on the slope of the lull, with sonie small remains of a famous old ab- bey, founded in the eleventh century by one Montgomery, who was heard of after. wards on the other side of the Channel. Old Talbot pillaged and ruined the abbey, we read, under our Harry the Fifth, be- cause the men of the abbey had broken down the bridge over the Dives to hinder the march of the English upon Caen, and the Revolution finally extinguished it, while the buildings are now utilized for a kind of stud-farm belonging to the gov- ernment. A little farther on, we cross the Dives just above the bridge about which Talbot made himself so unpleas- ant. And we cross the river again to make a halt at Cabourg a watering- place that is comm,, into note and yet again we cross the river in full view of the wide-spreading niarshes, all now re- claimed and made into fertile meadows, ~vith Dives lying pleasantly in a crook of the river. But, after all, now that we have seen the place, there is nothing in the quiet little village, with its pictures que, half- ruinous church, to tempt us to stop. In fact, we had rather not, for, taking a turn round the churchyard, we find abundant evidence that the rude forefathers of the hamlet are not allowed to sleep beyond a certain time, but are after a while turned out to make room for new-comers. A general disturbance of this kind must have taken place not long before, and we have no fancy to witness possibly an in- dignation meeting of perturbed spirits, whose remains have thus been evicted from what it would be a figure of speech to call their last homes. And so we leave our baggage to come on by the next train, and walk over the hill towards the coast. Looking back we see Dives snugly lying in the valley with a great plain stretching beyond, dotted ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. with cattle and homesteads, the river wind- ing through, with a bridge here and there, and hamlets showing among the trees. But the road proposes to take us a good many miles inland, and then we try a footpath, which brngs us out on the very lawn of a modern chateau, where the gar- dener is mowing the grass, and where the people of the house are takino- the air upon the terrace. But the gardener throws down his scythe and volunteers to take us across the grounds, and we come out at a little gate close by a broken column, ~vhich some enthusiastic Norman has erected as a memorial of the great invasion. XVe happen to know the date of this event, so that there is no use in repeating that part of the inscription, but the column goes more into detail than such objects gener- ally do, and tells us that during a month the fleet of Duke William moored in the port of Dives, and his army, composed of fifty thousand men, encamped in the neighborhood. Then we throw ourselves down on the grass at the foot of the column, a little out of breath with the pull up the hill, and watch the evening glow as it spreads over sea and sky and wide green plain, and discuss the Norman Conquest. Here is the scene where the affair be- gan; the sea dimpling and sparkling, a long line of coast running eut, with a tower or spire here and there, marking the site of one of the little towns we have recently passed. Just below, the river makes a sharp elbow caused by a great bank of sand half overgrown with herb- age; a crescent-shaped bank, with its farther horn connected with the general coast-line; and on this horn stands Ca- bourg, with its big hotels and fine villas. Once upon a time, no doubt, the river made its way straight to the sea, near where Cabourg now stands, as it might do again in some conjunction of storm and flood; just as the river at Newhaven straightened itself and left Seaford hiTh and dry, a port only in name. Rivers are continually playing such pranks when left to their own sweet will. But to return to our Dives. Probably, th~n, this great sandbank, and a good deal of the ground between the village of Dives and the present little port which lies in the bend of the river just below usprobably all this has been formed by the action of stream and tide in the centuries that have elapsed since the Conquest. But the gen~ral features of the scene are the same; the wide green plain affording for- age for countless horses and cattle, the 77 winding river and the long coast-line stretching into the sea. The tide is out now, and we can en- dorse Captain Macs opinion as to the quantity of water here. Ribs of yellow sand divide the slender currentyou might easily wade over the Conquerors river just now; boats are lying high and dry, their masts at any angle you please. Still, at high-water, a good big ship might find her way into the river; though when she could get out again ~vould be prob- lematical. And now a train rumbles along at leisurely speed below us, along the river bank, and then cutting off the great bend, and speeding along towards Caen. Altogether a vast farm is this of lower Normandy, right away from Carentan to Dives, well watered and wooded, and with abundance written in every part of it. No wonder that the Conqueror did great things with such a heritage to start with. It takes us only a few minutes from the tops of the cliffs to reach the long-drawn town of Beuzeval 1-loulgate, with its one street that follows the winding of the shorea mixture of grand villas, and big ch~lets, and humble booths. The eastern end, or Beuzeval, is the more fashionable, but Houlgate is the pleas- anter, with the river winding in to the haven under the hill a happy, friendly- looking haven, backed by green trees, against which the white sails look charm- ingly fresh and pure. The tide is begin- ning to make now, and all the boats are afloat, and the fisher-craft are running for home. It is pleasant, too, to find a good dinner awaiting us in a room open on three sides to the sea breezes. When dinner is over we follow the example of all the world, and pitch our seats on the margin of the rising tide, to be driven, like King Canute, from one position to another. The children are making big embankments to resist the tide, which ever and again tumbles in amid great laughter and shouting from the beholders. Our end of the beach has the reputation of being almost exclu- sively French Protestant, and ~he Temple certainly occupies a very prominent posi- tion in the street. But there is little difference to be noticed between the two populations, and where Beuzeval ends and Houlgate begins nobody seems to know. But both are charming l)laces and ~vould be still more charming if it were not that the drains have their outfalls un- der peoples noses. As night comes on the stenches begin. it is not dangerous, cried a French 78 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. friend; it is all quite fresh smell, that do graph to Rothschilds to send the money. no harm. But all the same a smell is a But it was evident that Redmond, once smell. loose again upon the world, would prove The something bitter that is said to a fearful sieve, through ~vhich a fortune rise to the surface of the cup of life, even would soon percolate. when it seems filled to the brim with en- Perhaps he will ~vin next time, poor joymentthis flavor of bitterness was fellow! suggested Hilda hopefully. supplied by Hildas brother. Hilda her On the other hand, Redmond might lose self looked forward to meeting him with a great deal more; and if the Count de some dread, for she felt sure that he St. Pol should thus happen to get him in would bitterly resent the change that had his power,~ he might use his power in a occurred in her l)rospects. Mr. Chancel- very awkward manner. However, we br no doubt had sundry good things at should be all at Trouville on the following his command, which he might have be- day, and we could only trust to the chance stow-ed on Redmond without being the that he would not meantime get into any poorer himself. But such was not the very serious scrape. case with me, and although Hilda had sug- If it had not been that overmastering gested that ~ve should do something for destiny urged us on to Trouville, ~ve poor Redmond it w-as difficult to see should probably have remained where we what form that something could assume were, notwithstanding the smells, which, my own notion w-as that sufficient had after all, vanished for a time after each already been done for him by Hilda, and, flood-tide, to return, perhaps, in the still indeed, a great deal too much. Not only small hours of the night, when the wind had Redmond eaten his own cake, but a was hushed, while the sea could hardly be good portion of his sisters, and still he heard to murmur in the distance. To us wanted more. the great charm was in the cool and pleas. Already we had received a telegram ant-looking haven, with the indications it from Redmond announcing his arrival at gives of groves and fields behind, and in Trouville, and that he was stopping at the the broad, smooth strand that is made up Roches Noires, and advised his father entirely of pounded sea-shells, while myr. and Hilda to join him there. iads of shells more or less in progress Well, said Tom w-hen he heard the towards a pounded state line the margin news, I am glad we have come upon of the waves. these Roches Noires at last, for we have And our hotel is pleasant and brisk been chasino- them all along the coast with its shaded terrace overlooking the without coming upon them. sea, where we sit after breakfast and And this indeed had been the case. At smoke and talk to the parrot, and try to all the sea-bathing places we had heard gain the attention of the big dog, ~vho is of these terrible Roches Noires as the generally too sleepy to notice anybody. dread of mariners and regular ship-break- He is a democratic dog this, for we have ing rocks, but always just out of sight seen him early in the morning dashing along the coast. about and joyously barking among the And is your poor brother living on fishermen and old women with their bas- those dreadful rocks ? cried Mrs. Bacon, kets. If there is a truck to be wheeled in full sympathy for the hardship of his or a load to be carried, Bayard is sure to lot, imagining that he supported himself be in the front, encouraging the honest on the crabs and periwinkles he found in porters with his most approving accents. the crevices. But as the day wears on and the breakfast But her mind was relieved when she hour of the visitors at the hotel ap. found that the Roches Noires was a fash proaches, Bayard assumes an aspect of ionable hotel, where the only hardship to lazy indifference; stretched at full length be teared was in the evil quarter of an under a bench he is proof against blan- hour when the reckonin~ w-as settied. dishments that the strongest men would But our next news of Redmond wasnot succumb to; pretty lingers caress him, nearly so satisfactory. It was in the form sweet voices appeal to him in the most of a telegram to say that he had been play- endearog accents, but little he recks, if ing baccarat with the Prince de B and i Lheylk let him sleep on, while cakes do not the Count cle St. Pol the night before, and I excite his interest in the least, and he is had lost two thousand trancs. Hilda must not to be tempted by the choicest morsel telegraph the money to him his honor from the breakfast table. was involved. And then it is pleasant to watch the There was nothing for it but to tele. gradually rising tide of visitors. As the ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. 79 penny-trumpet-like squeak from the level- crossing announces the approach of a train, the old lady at the crossing having rolled to the gates, draws herself up in front of them with her flag, as if she in her own person guaranteed alike the safety of the public and the railway ser- vice, the train glides quietly by, and spec. ulation is rife as to the number of heads to be observed in the carriage windows. Then the omnibus rumbles down from the station, more luggage than omnibus, the driver clinging to some coin of van- tage on the baggage. These are the peo- ple for the Chalet Millefleurs, with its overhangin gables, its verandahs of pitch-pine, and its rustic porches, and presently the house wakes up from its ten months sleep, there are gay dresses on the balconies, and children and little dogs scamper about the terrace. The men of the l)arty appear, transformed from smart Parisians to equally smart- looking fishermen, their shri mping-nets over their shoulders, eager for the excit- ing sport of la cizasse aux ecr6zisses. Travelling-vans come in loaded with dra- peries, shoes everythin~ you want. The place is a kind of summer encampment. And while the long rows of elaborate and fanciful houses on the sands are filling up with visitors, all the cottages on the roads leading into the country the pleasant cottages almost hidden in shrubs and creepers are occul)ied by colonies of Parisians, who enter into primitive modes of life with great relish. Monsieur draws the water from the well, and madame arranges the table with flowers from the garden. Then there follows a great pop- ping of corks and an odor of ragout and fricandeazi, and soon through the open door you may see monsieur taking his caf6 in great content, framed in vine- leaves, and metaphorically crowned with roses. The evening is charmino the sun going down, round and red, into the sea; an infinite softness about the haven mouth, a white sail stealing gently in. As darkness comes on the light in darkness of a summer night, the brilliant gleam from the lighthouse of Cape la Have throws a pencil of lambent light across the placid sea. Havre lies below, invisible except that we fancy we catch a faint glow on the horizon from its gas- lamps and streets of brilliant shops nearer at hand, olitters over the waters the long sea-front of Trouville, set in dia- mond sparkles, while its casino, brilliantly illuminated, flashes and gleams an invita tion to the carnival. Can we hear the band? No, it is too far off, ten miles or so as the crow flies, and yet there is a feeling of music in the air. Is Redmond, we wonder, sitting in that fairy-like pal- ace, watching with inward fever the turn of a card, with all that he has left of money and reputation hanging upon the result ? We have a little mild gambling going on here, at the & abiisse; ciii at 1-loulgate: whist and 6cartd, at which a few five-franc pieces change hands, and there are invet- erate bezique players, who will play on well into the night. But all this in the most respectable way, the chief gainers being the prol)rietors of the ~tablissement, who levy a heavy tax on the cards and other paraphernalia of l)lay. And peopre go to bed early, being generally rather sleepy from their exploits in shrimping and fishing, and from their open-air life on the sands, and everything is quiet long before midnight. But when all our lights are turned out we can still see Trouville flaring at us over the bay. To-night as the glare of lights died away the sea took up the illumination, breaking in waves of lambent flame over the sand; and the fisher-boats came home, leaving a trail of mystic light behind them. All was glamor, nought was truth, for the sky seemed to share in the phosphores- cent flare, the stars twinklino doubtfully through thin flakes of luminous clouds. We sat out till late watching the fairy scene, and Hilda and I fell into serious talk about the future. I want to go home, Frank, said Hil da; I want to see the old place while I can still call it home. I want to talk to the old people and tell them all about you, and to say good-bye to the children, who will have to acknowledge another lady of the manor with smiles and greetings. But just to see them all once and say good-bye to the old life I must go, Frank. And then it struck me for the first time, forcibly and strongly, how much Hilda resigned when she gave up the Chancellor alliance. What could ever make up to her for the loss of the old home, that was now passing into the hands of strangers? And then it did not seem possible to l)revent this loss. It was not likely that Mr. Chan- cellor would part ~vith his bargain, and give up the Combe Chudleigh property to his successful rival. Human nature could not be expected to remain so entirely free from resentful feelings. But it would be easy enough to fulfil Hildas present de- sire. So ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. We could run over to Dartmouth, Hilda said that you should pay for it with and I, and the old squire, while the others your life. And I could not see it all till amused themselves at Trouville. now. Then we will start to-morrow night, Altogether it would have been better if cried Hilda eagerly, and we shall see the Hilda had remained in the dark as to my old place by mornin~~ lio~ht. appointment with the count, for the knowl- And then I had to explain how it was edge made her anxious and restless, al- impossible we could sail that next night, though she put a brave face upon the as I was pledged to meet the Count de St. matter, and tried to appear easy and Pol, to give him his~revenge at whist. unconcerned. We were to go on to Trou- It seemed a trivial thing; but the meet- ville in the morning, and Hilda and I had ing had been arranged before witnesses determined to walk over to the station at with something like solemnity, and if I Villers-sur-Mer, while Tom had under. failed to appear it would be said that I taken to drive Contango, by easy stages, was afraid to meet him. all the way to Trouville, taking Miss And you will not run this little risk Chancellor with him, with Justine as a for my sake then? urged Hilda. makeweight on the back seat. The oth. To which I replied, with the trite quo- ers were to come on by omnibus with the tation, baggage. Very so on by next season I could not love thee, dear, so well, probablythe coast-line will be finished loved I not honor more. all along, and people will be able to get to Hilda suddenly turned pale. Trouville from any point along the coast Frank, she said, laying a hand upon without making a long & tour. But for my arm, do you mean to say that if this the present, there is an awkward little Count St. Pol thrusts a quarrel upon you break in the line of communication. and I have a presentiment that he will The walk to Villers proved rather hot you will fight him? and tiring, first along the coast, where the The question was not easy to answer. cliffs, of no great height, are of a clayey, A few years ago, when I was poor and crumbly nature, and then, as the sun beat rather hopeless, with nothing to make life down upon us hot and fiery, we took to particularly desirable, I would have gone the inland road, cooler and more shaded, out and been run through by the count a dusty, arable country all about us till we without scruple. But now, with wealth descended into the Vale of Villers, well. and my hearts desire, and the prospect wooded and luxuriant. Villers itself is of of a life heightened by a womans faith- the quaint, fantastic order, showing a ful love, the matter assumed a very differ- studied quaintness, a regulated fantasy. ent aspect. I should gladly have enter- Thatched roofs are fashionable, with lilies tamed a conscientious scruple against and flags growing on the ridges, as in fighting. But then I felt no such scruple. some of the old farmhouses. Here are I could certainly plead that in my own cottages as costly as palaces, and a stud- country such affairs were condemned by ied simplicity which is the very refinement public opinion, and practically obsolete. of luxury. A place, too, evidently on the But being in France, and engaged in al- rapid increase, where life is more reserved tercation with a Frenchman, ~vas I not and exclusive than at Trouville, but a gay, rather bound by the customs of his coun- pleasant place all the same, and of a clean- try? liness quite remarkable among French Hilda saw by my hesitation that her coast towns. The road from the town to presentiment was not altogether unrea- the station is quite chariTiing, with trees, sonable. But she was too staunch to ex- and stream, and gracious curves that raise act any promise from me to decline any an expectation of pleasanter scenes round challenge. the corner. It is quite a disappointment Only remember, Frank, she said, if to come at last upon a commonplace little anything happens to you I shall die of wooden station; but, however, the works grief and re morse. So you will do your are progressing rapidly, and soon we shall best to keep out of danger. have stations as smart and coquettish as And I promised this readily enough, the towns they are to serve. reminding her, too, how these affairs were Indeed, this brightness and coquetry generally harmless enough, and rarely re- are the main charms of these watering. sulted in a serious casualty. places. As far as scenery is concerned, But this is different, Frank, said the English coast, it must be said, is far Hilda mournfully. I saw his face when superior, but then the life and gaiety of you struck him, and he meant what he the scene, the absence of noise and vul ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. garity, of pretence and assumption these latter attributes, indeed, not alto- gether absent, but more skilfully veiled all these things in ake the sojourn by the sea in France very enjoyable. And then there is the almost certainty of getting something fit to eat wherever you may go, and of not being fleeced beyond reason. The hotel bills no longer, indeed, cause amazement at their smallness, as we read in the volumes of earlier days, but on the other hand, they do not aifright by their extravagan ce. Trouville is different again. We feel the change in a moment, as we alight in the brisk, noisy station, amid the shouts of the drivers of voitures, the commis- sionaires of hotels, and a generally ex- cited public. Tom meets us at the sta- tion he was the first to arrive, after all. He reports the Sea-Mew as lying in port, and awaiting orders. But as yet he has not been able to hear anything of Redmond. He was not at the Roches Noires, but had been there, and was thought to have gone to the chateau of his friend, the Prince de B, some twenty miles away, near Pont lEv~que. But our brigandish friends with the Pyre- nean sheep had arrived. Tom had met them, but alas! in charge of the police of Trouville, who had condemned their pro- posed entertainment, as not being suffi- ciently polite or refined. But the police, embarrassed with the charge of two head- strong sheep, which refused to be driven except by their masters, and not much at thatthe police were very much inclined to let them go, on their giving a promise to perform only on the outskirts of the town. Tom had still more news for us. He had passed on the road a select troupe from the circus at Caen, who were to per- form to-night in a temporary erection on the beach, and among the troupe was Za- mora, looking very bright and happy, who had been chosen on account of her good looks for some subordinate part in the entertainment. As for the Count de St. Pol, he was thought to have left the town, and had probably forgotten all about his engagement to meet us at whist. As we leave the station our first impres- sion of Trouville is rather as a bustling little port than a fashionable watering- place. We were not prepared to see so much life and animation apart from the flocks of summer visitors. Behind us is Deauville, with its sea-front of monu- mental houses, heavy and rather desolate- looking; and then there is a vista of a LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2242 long harbor, crowded with fisher-boats and other small craft, with here and there a foreign steamer, and, conspicuous among them all, our own smart-looking Sea- Mew. As we cross the bridge into the town it is dead low water, and a big mud- bank is left exposed in the middle of the stream. And upon this bank are gathered quite.a little crowd of people, police, dou- aniers, and other officials. Another crowd is clustered about the parapets of the quay, and some people tvho have been fishing from the shore with rod and line, have suspended operations, and are watch- ing the scene with interest. Something is lying stark and stiff in the midst of the peol)le upon the mnu~ank, and that some- thing is the corpse of a drowned man, whose legs, stiff and sodden, are pain- fully conspicuous. Only Tom and I have caught sight of this, and we hurry the ladies on to spare them the painful scene. Hilda and the rest have come to the con- clusion that they will be more comfortable on board the Sea-Mew than in a crowded hotel, and we soon reach the yachts berth in the outer harbor, and go on board. Tom comes up presently, look- ing rather anxious. He has just heard that the body found in the river was that of a young stranger, who was supposed to have committed suicide. If it should be Redmond, murmured Tom, who has lost a big pile, and ended the matter thus Hildas first care when she got on board the Sea-Mew was to summon Captain Mac and interrogate him as to his being prepared to cross the Channel. The captain was reluctantly brought to acknowledge that everything was in readi- ness to sail that night, if necessary. The tide would serve from midnight up to three or four in the morning; the sea was calm outside, with every prospect of fine weather, and, if need were, ~ve could make the Isle of Wight before breakfast, and then run along the coast to Dartmouth in another eight hours or so. Then you will get steam up, Captain Mac, cried Hilda joyfully, and be ready to start at any time after midnight. Aye, aye, miss, said the captain, who seemed to recognize her as the ruling spirit. And now, Frank, said Hilda, turning to me, if you must go ashore and play cards to-night, I shall send a boats crew at midnight to bring you away, whether you will or no. But Hilda confessed that she hoped very much the Count de St. Pol would break his engagement. I also be- 82 ALONG THE SILVER STREAK. gan to think that we should hear no more Noires; the roches themselves, which are of the count, when, as I crossed the gang- only a black-looking cliff, are visible a way to go ashore with Tom, I saw, rising little farther along the coast, although head and shoulders over the crowd, the some will have it that the originals, still well-set-up torso of Colonel Peltier. The more black, are to be found elsewhere. colonel was delighted to come on board There was rather a brilliant gathering at and pay his compliments to the ladies, the table dh6te, fresh toilettes, and nice- 1-lilda, however, did not appear to be very looking women of all nationalities, and well pleased at his appearance, though among the rest we saw our count and the she tried her best to be gracious in man~ colonel, looking out for their prey. And n er. then we adjourned to the casino and XVe sail to-night, colonel, and shall be found the grand salon brilliantly lighted glad to take you across with us. up, and a concert going on. Outside it The colonel would have been delighted, was pleasant to sit on the terraces, while but the exigences of military duties, and the music, mellowed by distance, mingled so on with the plash of waves. In the west Then I shall hav@ to break up your showed a bright sunset glow, and against whist-party, I am afraid, said Hilda. I that the dark sails of fishing-boats racing cant spare my cousin and Mr. Lyme. for the harbor. All the beach ~vas lighted The colonel looked grave at this. up, that grand sweep of sands which But that would be a little a little makes Trouville unapproachable as a Our colonel cannot find the exact epi- watering, place. Caf6s shone out in lines thet to add to his little, when I relieve of light, booths, and shops, and places of him from his embarrassment by assuring entertainment, all brilliantly illuminated him I shall certainly appear at the tryst- while beyond faintly shone the phospho- ing-place, which is to be the salon de frze rescent sea, and the pale stars which at the casino. And so he takes his leave looked quite dim in contrast with all the very politely, brightness close at hand. When the colonel was gone, Hildas Tom, I think, was in a sentimental face assumed an expression of despair. mood that night. He was walking up and Frank, she said, I am sure these down with Miss Chancellor, talking very people mean to assassinate you not earnestly. The girl, perhaps, was a little openly to assassinate you, perhaps, but to puritanic. She had probably been re- draw you into a duel, ~vhen the count, proaching Tom with his gambling pro- woo is, they say, a magnificent swords- clivities; for she had been told of the man, will kill you. contest that was impending. I could only comfort her by saying that I cant sneak out of this, Tom was I did not intend to be killed quietly, and saying, but Ill promise you for the that if the count insulted me publicly, as futurelook here, I never play beyond might possibly be his intention, I should, half-cro~vns and five shillings on the rub, as the aggrieved party in the contest, and laying the long or short odds. Come, have the choice of weapons, and certainly you wont mind that, will you? would not choose swords. But Hilda felt But why should you promise me? sure there was some trap laid for me asked Miss Chancellor demurely. If which would deprive me even of this ad- its wrong you know you shouldnt do it. vantage. And then the poor girl said she The rest of their conversation was lost, would bo with me, and not lose sight of but Tom seemed prouder of being scolded me till she had got me on board again, than in an ordinary way he would feel at They cant fix a quarrel upon you, the most lavish praise. And he had no Frank, if I am there. All the same, I misgivings that the match we were booked could not take refuge behind a petticoat, for was anything more than a trial of skill and Hilda saw this, and was still in de- in trumping and finessing. spair. Between Hilda and me few words were Meantime, Tom had undertaken the spoken, but our silence was more expres- disagreeable duty of going to th~ Morgue sive than words. The touch of danger in to see if he could recognize the features the future brought us closer together than of the drowned man. He returned very any number of fair-weather days could soon, and with a brighter face. He did have done. As yet neither the count nor not think that Redmond ~vas the drowned his friend had appeared in the casino, and man, although the features were too much I had promised Hilda that if they did not swollen to be easily recognized. show themselves by midnight we would That night we dined at the Roches come away. But just as the town-clock COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 83 struck ten, Hilda shivered as if a chill had come over her, and, looking up, I saw the bullet-head, closely cropped, of Colo- nel Peltier. Oh, mademoiselle, I am looking for you on behalf of your father, who is anx- ious to leave, cried the colonel, and sure enough just behind him was the old squire, who looked quite brisk and de7wnair in his evening costume. Hilda took leave of me with an expressive pressure of the fingers that sent a responsive thrill through my veins, and then I followed the bullet-headed colonel to the salon de}eu, a quiet, solemn apartment where the sun- lights shone upon many bald heads bend- ing over their cards, with a calm silence occasionally broken by a gentle clatter of counters, or the shuffling of a pack of cards. Up to midnight nothing hadoccurred to mar the harmony of the evening, but Tom and I had been carrying all before us, and our opponents were perhaps a little net- tled. Midnight ~vas striking, and 1 had promised Hilda that we would leave and go on board at that hour if practicable. A hoarse whistle sounded from the port. It was a gentle hint, no doubt, from the Sea-Mew. But Tom and I were win- ners each of a couple of thousand francs, and we could not possibly give up if our adversaries wanted to go on. From The Contemporary Review. COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. THE extreme difficulty of identifying medi~val colors, and even those of the Renascence time, has perplexed many historical painters, and even antiquaries from the same cause are apt to miss the point of many graphic verses in the old writers. Chaucer and his contemporaries are as careful as Van Eyck in realizing an exact and brilliant picture, and in try- ing to put it before our eyes as definitely as they saw it themselves. They at- tached more importance to the outer man, perhaps, as an index to the inner man, than we do: hence every color is named and placed, every pattern and motto on border and pendant noted. By-the-by, the fashion of embroidering mottoes on borders would never have come in but for this habit of scrutinizing dress, for a motto would have had no sense if never read. The difficulties of future antiquaries will be as great as ours if they try to dis- cover what shades of color were known by such names asfrze denfer, ean de lvii, Magenta, Alexandra blue, azuline, and a hundred others. When we say blue, do we mean light, dark, or middling blue? turquoise, indigo, or peacock blue? that is, blue with a shade of red in it, a shade of yellow in it, or a shade of deep green in it? When we say green, who is to distinguish between dark sage green, pale grey green, harsh arsenic green, yellow mossy green, seagreen, pea-green, emer- ald green, etc., unless such words as sage, pea, sea, arsenic, help us out? The name of a princess or of a town gives no idea of a shade of color. Nothing could do it but a natural object which is likely to remain al~vays with us, like the poor. But such are the elegancies of trade in this commercial country, that I suppose a thing could scarcely sell by its own En- glish name, or by some simple epithet xvhich described it. If a beautiful thirg with a sensible name occurs by chance, it never lasts long. Peacock, terra-cotta, and cream-color, have been spoilt, and are much ill-used. R6s~da, for instance, a pretty l)ale green which came in some seven years ago, was soon degraded into dark greens and slates, and ultimately into an ugly reddish-brown all called r6s~da, newest shades and the soft tint of mignonette was not recalled any longer. Why, it is thought i;~,fra dzg. to use such expressions as black as thunder, red as fire, and the rising generation are checked for such vul~arisms! I do not know what we should make of our historical colors, even the commonest of them, if dear old Chaucer, who mostly calls a spade a spade, had not helped us with continual happy vulgarisms, show- ing us the franklins beard white as a daisy, white as morning milk; the monks horse as brown as a berry Alisons eyebrows as black as any sloe; the miserable face of Avarice green as a leek. How clearly and speedily we frame a mental image from such pictorial terms! and how they add to our pleasure! Chaucer uses numerous other expres- sions in describing his people, which are meant to be as graphic as the others: but the names are obsolete, and we no longer catch his drift. The pretty woman with eyes grey as glass, the dainty Sir Thopas, with his face as white as pande- maine, the summoner with his evil coun- tenance like the fiery cherubin these 84 COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.~ we do not understand without a little consideration, which interrupts the train of thought, and seems to blur the picture. Does he mean a woman with whitish, glassy boggle-eyes? how frightful Or why had the cherubin the reputation of evil and vicious faces? and how can we realize a doughty knight with the chalky face of a coward? We shall see pres. en tly. Something is gained by an examination of color in connection with fabric; the one often throws light upon the other. Certain brilliant colors often gave in time their names to particular fabrics in which they were oftenest employed; this hap- pened with ciclatoun, burnet, rus- set, and other webs, once merely names of colors, as our Turkey-red means a cer- tain twilled cotton material, not only the color of its dye. Baize (orig. bays, bay color, red brown?) is another instance. Sometimes certain fabrics christened the colors , e~., sable, which became an equiv- alent for black; plunket (blue), now blan- ket, and many more. But it has unfortunately been so long the custom to christen col6rs after some obscure but once celebrated person who vas in the habit of wearing them, or after the town or country ~vhere the color was first sold, that it is in some cases next to impossible to identify the hue; and so it always will be. Yet it would certainly be wiser, usefuller, more poetic, to call a robe or mantle after the flo~ver which suggested its shape, or the gorgeous mineral which gave it its color, or the variegated moss, or dancing butterfly, or drifting cloud, that originated some idea connected with its texture, etc., for the flower, and the mineral, and the race of insects would re- main forever as an explanation. Colors and forms ought always to be named after some common effect, so that the idea may not be lost. There is a great deal in a name, though Juliet did not think so. A name may carry the prettiest or the ugliest associations with it, may recall happy or horrible images; and popular names, like all fashions, are to some extent a chroni- cle of their time and an index to the man- ners of the age. Naming colors, however, is difficult, as the words themselves, al- though expressive once, change and cease to represent the same ideas. The slight- est liberty with the word opens the door to oblivion. The classics used the term J urpie, for the sea, for a maidens blush, for a cucumber, for something bright and shining, and for something dark and gloomy. How? Crimson is allied to blue, and a rich tint of either ~vas pro. duced from the same fish, Murex /runcu- lus. This was the famous Tyrian dye, and it is easy to trace how a dark, em- purpled (we must say it) cucumber, and the other contradictory objects were de. scribable by the one word used in various senses. Do we not take the like liberties, we moderns, with our words? Do not our colors still get confused with each other, the last meaning being as far from the first as in the old game of scandal? No word has more exercised antiqua- ries than the above-named old word cicla- toun spelt siglaton, checklatoun, etc., etc. This is not a bad instance of the difficulties besetting such studies. Some say the word was first cycias, a certain round gown. Skeat derives it from the, Persian saqaldt, scarlet stuff, and saqia- td,~, scarlet cloth. Guillaume le i3reton says it was a rich silk made in the Cy- clad es. At any rate, the East produced a rich stuff suitable for certain garments called cyclas, as we might say,co~t-cl~th. Judith of Bohemia ~vore a cyclas worked with gold, in 1083. The knights surco ats ~vere called by tile same word in the thirteenth century: Armez dun haubergeon Couvert dun singlaton. Some ancient writers seem to use sygla- ton as an equivalent for any kind of man- tle. Chaucer says Sir Thopass robe was made of ciclatoun, or checklatoun, in some MSS.; and checklatoun was early confounded with a certain chequered cloth, properly called checkaratus, knotted in diaper design. Strutt considers them identical. Which came first, the place, the garment, or the color? Here is a mesh which no consideration for the after. borns could perhaps have evaded. It is one instance among many. Of course one of the obstacles in dis- covering the old colors by name is the oddness and variability of the old spelling not to say, tile obstructive blinkers we have put upon ourselves with our new ordinance of a fixed orthographical stan- dard. We never spell ~)honetically, ac- cording to the proper pronunciation, or individual accent. But that is just what our forefathers did do; and so when in old English and French we see the same word spelt in all sorts of ways, even in a single page, we are very much impeded in our progress towards light. It is, however, very interesting to dig COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 85 out the halfburied bit of antiquity, and charming little finds often occur by the way, which we do not expect. Whilst we are scratching for a proper name, some flowers scent is ~vaf ted to us, some strong and pithy term delights us, or a gem from a maidens crown slips under our hands. And whilst we beat the great coverts for so small a thing as the meaning of a color or a fold, from this side and that seeds quick for future wealth fall silently into our empty basketa witty old proverb, or a little geographical hint, or some curi- osity of lingering word or lost token. It is pretty play, on Tom Tiddlers around like mining. Chaucer is of course the main reference for all medi~val questions. He goes over so much ground, and his tales are so crowded with allusions and similes, that he is a well of information. From him we might almost compute the extent of the scientific and art knowledge of his day. From him we get exact and telling pictures of fourteenth-century people in- side and out, and implied pictures of England during the century or so before, as well as not a few promises for time comingjust as we find, in some of Giottos pictures, foreshadowin b5 of Fra- Angelico and Signorelli. There were a great many colors used in Chaucers day, and there were a great many materials. Velvet, satin, samite, silk plain and fimred and painted crape and gauze, with ribbons and fringes, and purdings of all sorts, with various linen and woollen webs, were all in use and all mentioned by Chaucer. Leather and cuir bonilli were already employed. Bright colors were in vogue for the dresses of both sexes and for the decoration of houses of worship. Chaucer describes the fat dyer and tapiser in his prologue. They could well afford to take their pri- vate cook about with them not that he was any better than other cooks, it was all ostentation. We do not hear much of white materials, probably the old white, even of linen, was less perfectly bleached than our own. The white skin of a very fair person was quaintly called by Chau- cer ( Sir Thopas) after gain de Maine. Maine bread, as the cleanest white he could think ofperhaps the most tempt- ing morsel, for all his similes have a raison d~tre. Chaucer names many dyes, among them Brazil-wood and grain of Portingale ( Nuns Priests Epilogue), madder, weld, and woad (Isa/is ~rinza). \Veld was a plant producin~ a yellow dye (Reseda luteola) madder would yield reds, such as Turkey-red, purples, lilac, and pink, and woad a red-blue. With these, numberless shades could be produced. Among the most popular were royal grene, which from ancient minatures we should judge to have been a fine grass- green with a distinct dash of yellow in it, like the color of a sunlit leaf. The chief reds were scarlet, named by the wife of Bath, etc.; sanguine, or crimson, and grain, iml)ortecl from Portuo-al ~ i.e., vermus or vermilion in fact cochi- neal, a red so fast and permanent that the word ingrained had become in the fourteenth century, and still remains, a general term for a fast color of any kind. And here I may say a word for the fiery cherubin as likened to the red-faced sum- moner by Chaucer. In many old pictures the childish art of the time depicted these spirits wholly in red, the color of love; rows of them surmounted rows of blue seraphim, the spirits of knowledge and truth, of which the color was held blue. It had doubtless become a proverb already in Chaucers time, as red as the fiery cherubin, as blue as the seraphim, from the pictures in the churches; and no in- sult was meant to the cherubin, nothing even blasphemous, by the quaint simile. So much for the reds. Russet, mur- rey, musterdevelers, watch et, vair, may be quoted among the commonest medi~val colors, which I must treat separately. RUSSET. That the leather employed for jerkins was reddish, ~ve can infer from russet apples having been called leather-coats. Russet and grey seem almost convertible terms, though russet was a very warm color (Fr. roussette), whilst grey is decid- edly cold. Russet was fox-color; Chau- cer speaks of the fox as Dan Russel, from his red coat. Probably the red was often very dull in russet, and the grey imper- fect, with a drab or brown tendency, like undyed woolthat is, when woven in coarse, friezes, or lynsb-wolsb, such as were worn by working people, children, etc. None of the old colors were quite as pure as our own, I ima~ine, and were therefore more beautiful; for when a color is too pure, it is usually unpicturesque. Modern distillation had made most colors painful till art-Protestants insisted on re- introducing softer shades. A color may be brzgiit without being pure, that is, it may partake of some other hue just enough to take off the edge of its sharpness, like crimson, peacock, grass -green and some of the new (old) yellows These are all 86 COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. imperfect colors. We may judge from the It is an odd color to place next blue; pictures by Van Eyck, Quentin Mats ys,J but in the Paston arms they stood to. etc., how rich were the pinks and scarlets; gether, and they were also the livery-col- and yet there seemed to be a certain soft- ors of the house of York. We should ness present, owing to the scarlet having; think murrey and blue would go better a hint of yellow, the pink being touched together if the murrey were decidedly with blue or salmon, the yellow either red. But the mixture was popular. In reddish like orange, or greenish like mus- Quentin Matsys pictures blue and true tard, or earthy like clay. murrey are often combined, not disagree. But it is probable that russet and ably. I remember in the Amsterdam grey had become the regular names of Gallery a Madonna in a blue dress cut homespun woolirrespective of their square, a high white smock and mur- precise colorwhen Margaret Paston rey sleeves. She wears a green girdle, was ordering it both for the children and and the child rests on a deep murrey the servants liveries. The useful linsey cushion. In the great Matsys triptych that was fashionable fifteen years ago, at An twerp, Herod has a murrey veil from never took any strong dye; and russet his head, and a pale blue mantle shot with was probably similar. We read in old pink. But a great colorist can harmonize stories of grey russet. We are country- the strangest combinations, and Quentin folks, grey russet and good hempe-spun Matsys is the master of the rainbow. cloth doth best become us. (Deloneys There is a flo-ure in the MS. Hist. of Pleasant History of Thomas of Read- Alexandria, le;uz~. Rich. II. (fourteenth ing.) Peasants wore the cloth called century), wearing a syde [wide] sown russet, till they themselves were called particolored, of blue and murrey; here russetings, and their garments in gen. the murrey is decidedly lilac. His cap is eral their russets in the sixteenth cen- blue, and his hose respectively scarlet tury. In this case the color certainly and whitethe scarlet legon the murrev named the sluJf,. and the stuff named the side. Scarlet and crimson were often wearers. ~vorn together also, strange to say. Burne Jones is the only modern painter who can reconcile them. I will now give three extracts from the interesting Paston letters. Margaret P. writes MURREY. The above hypothesis of the dulness of colors in coarse woollens may account for russet or grey representing ar- gent in the Pastpn liveries (a metal usu- ally si~,nified by white in heraldry), just as drab liveries are carried now. But it is less clear how murrey (Fr. murier, mul- berry), which was a dull lilac color, much like claret spilt on a white tablecloth, could have stood for or in the same arms, as we gather from one letter that it did; unless there were as many shades of murrey as the berry passes through on the tree. We can only account for red gold being represented in liveries by murrey, if the murrey was distinctly red (not lilac) a very unripe mulberry. Murrey is repeatedly spoken of in the Paston letters (143485), and painted in ancient pictures, from Giotto up to Mat- sys and his school. It was sometimes dark, sometimes pale, unmistakably mul- berry-color. I do not find that the mul- berry-tree was growing in England before 1434; thus the color is likely to have been imported from Italy or south France, where the fingers of the fruit.gatherers were stained by the purplejuice, for some time before we had mulberries of our own. As touching for your liveries, there can none be gotten here of that color that ye would have of, neither murrey, nor blue, nor good russet, underneath 3s. the yard at the lowest price, and yet is there not enough of one cloth - nd color to serve you: and as for to be purveyed in Suffolk, it will not be purveyed not noiv against the time, without they had had warning at Michaclmas, as I am informed. Norwich, November 25, 1455 (?). Before 1459: I pray you . . . that ye will do buy me some frieze to make of your childrens gowns. Ye shall have best cheap and best choice of Hayss wife, as it is told me. And that ye will buy a yard of broad cloth of black for one hood for me, of 44d. or four shillings a yard, for there is neither good cloth nor good frieze in this town (Norwich). Agnes Paston writes, January 28, 1457 : Item, to see how many gowns Clement hath, and that they be bare, let them be raised. He hath a short green gown. And a short musterdevelers gown, were never raised. And a short blue gown, that was raised, and made of a side [wide] gown, when I was last at London. COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 87 And a side russet gown furred with beaver was made this time two years. And a side murray gown was made this time twelve mouth. MUSTERDEVELERS. In this letter we have a musterdevel- ers gown spoken of perhaps as a mate- rial, not a color, inasmuch as it was never raised, says the thrifty house- ~vife. The word is very variously spelt. In a later letter the bride, Margery Pas- ton, writes, fVIy mother sent to my father to London for a gown cloth of mustyrd- devyllers? In Rymers F~dera, in a list of articles shipped from England for the use of the king of Portugal and the countess of Holland, in 1428, two pieces of mustrevilers and two pieces of russet mustrevilers occur. Some suppose the word to be a corruption of viol/id de ye- lozirs, a kind of mixed grey woollen cloth, says Halliwell, evidently with a nap of some sortmestis de velours, a bas- tard velvet, say others. There ~vas a town however, spoken of in the reign of Henry V., called Moustier de Villiers, near Hon- fleur, and this may have given its name to a cloth there made. Whichever was the original word, Stow uses the name in his Survey of Lon- don distinctly as a color, not a material. In the nineteenth year of King Henry VI. there was bought for an officers gown two yards of cloth coloured mustard vil- lars, a color now out of use, and two yards of cloth coloured blue, price two shillings the yard. Here it is pretty clear that the place named the stz.ff; and the stuff named the color. And what was the color? Mus- tard-colored cloth was much used for offi- cial dresses and liveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The stockings of the blue-coat scholars may be an in- stance of it. It is by no means clear that the manufacture of Moustier de Villiers was not as probably mustard-color as grey. The glossarists are fond of calling most woollen fabrics that they know little about, grey mixtures. But dull grey colors are the rarest seen in the old pic- tures and miniatures; every one, poor and rich, loved bright tints. And I am much inclined to attribute Stows evidently cor- rupted term to the tradition of its yellow color. This is precisely the way in which a ~vord so often becomes corrupted, espe- cially among ignorant people. They at- tach no meaning to the original word, and it slides into one that has some sort of meaning to them e.g, Lete-rede (Wise Council), now Leatherhead; the ship Bellerophon, called Billy Ruffian. I have known countless instances of proper names being lost in terms that seem to better describe the object edr., bouffetier beef-eater, the dress being red as beef; icrevisse, cray-fish, for it is a fish lzuy- zeublas, (sturgeon-bladder) isi nglass, for it is glassy and transparent. Let us suppose, then, that musterdevel- ers was a handsomely napped cloth, gen- erally yellow, sometimes foxy yellow (cf. russet mustrevilers), in which we so often see ladies of l)osition, such as Margery Paston was, arrayed in fourteenth and fifteenth century pictures by Fra Angelico and earlier masters, and worn also by officials who are commonly required to be conspicuous. METALLIC COLORS. The exact color of the common metal latoun, often spoken of in medi~eval liter- ature, does not seem clear yet. All the glossaries describe it as a mixed metal, not unlike brass. But brass is yellow, as yello~v as gold, and one allusion alone in Chaucer seems to mark it as a very differ. ent metal. Pho~bus was old, and hewed like latoun, That in his hot~ declination Shone as the burned gold, with stremes bright; But now in Capricorne adoun he light Whereas he shone ful pale. Does pale here mean dull? Here is a pointed contrast drawn between gold and latoun. In another place Chaucer uses the simile, yellow, as any bason scoured newe, perhaps brass and in Piers Plowman we read of a cloister with con- duits of clene tyn and lavoures of laton, which, being not tin, might have been yellow metal. The use of laton by common people as the mounting for false relics (Prologue to the Pardoners Tale ) points to its cheapness; the purse of co- quettish Alison, the millers pretty wife, being pearled with laton, points to its brightness, as a copy of silver or gold, like the brazen armlets found in Etruscan tombs, sogoldlike beneath the rust. Let us remember, too, the beautiful delicate hammered copper and pewter work of the Middle Ages. There are hammered ves- sels of a pale kind of brass, and latoun may have been used in s~veral colors, according to the amount of alloy used. Latten stands in French dictionaries as laiton, cuivre lamind wrought or hard- ened copper, distinct from ldtain. tin; and latten is a name which before the re 88 COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. form in the customs tariff was applied here to sheet-brass. But the mines of latten mentioned in the time of Flenry VII 1. remain an arch~ological crux. If latoun was copper, it is curious that Chaucer names coper as well as tin in The House of Famethough the sunken sun above quoted might be cop- pery. If it was brass, as we understand it, how could Chaucer, the accurate, call it pale? and where shall we find mines of brass, save in the half mythical Corinthian conflagration? Chaucer uses the word brass, too, in the Squires Tale, the horse of brass. I have been shown a vessel dated very early in the sixteenth century of a very pale kind of brass; and I am told by a good antiquary that there are mines in Enbland of a sort of bastard copper, poor in coloreither of which may be Chaucers latoun. The word lat- ten, indeed, is derived by Skeat from la/te, a thin plate; and copper and brass, and even tin (cf. Port. lata, tin l)late) may all have been called latoun when ham- mered and perforated in a thin form. At any rate, it was markedly less deep in color than red gold. By-the-by, conventional terms, such as red gold teeres ble~v (an expression used by Chaucer in his Complaint of Mars and Venus), are still more confus- ing. Gold was called red because it had decidedly warm shadows: it was ap- parently deeper in color than ours, and it was represented in tapestries by a red color. The rich gilding of letters in the old missals looks quite red a,,ainst mod- ern gilding. Not only is the gold thicker, but really it seems to me deeper in color; and that it must always have been so, the term red gold, especially when applied to red hair, etc., seems to assure us. The two were always linked. Blood betok- eneth gold, as me was taught, babbles the wife of Bath. Often purposely, gold was laid over red, as we see upon ancient picture-frames. Blue, on the other hand, is a cold color, and seemed to the ancients (not heralds) the nearest thing to describe sii- ver, which is certainly neither whit& nor black. The old tapestries represent sil- ver vessels always by blue threads. And the teeres blew of the lovers in Chau- cers poem were silverywith the cold glittering color of white metal and ~vater. VAIR. Eyes of vair, praised so often in medi~eval poetry, have exercised many minds. For my part, I was years before I realized that there was any point in the expression. But at last I saw it. Vair was the name of the fur of the grey squirrel, from varid, because the belly of the squirrel, which was white, was mixed with the grey hack in oval-shaped compartments variegated. Probably the same confusion occurred between this word vair and verre, glass, as that in the old tale of Cinderella, whose glass slipper was indubitably the shoe of vair fur worn by nobles, according to Mr. Rals- ton. This confusion of two similar words in a French-speaking country such as En- gland was, is the less curious, as grey was commonly considered the nearest color to glass not then the clear white crystal which now rivals the diamond. Glass was then just white enough to show grey when thick enough to have any tint of its own, with white and variegated reflec- tions. Chaucer plainly says the prioress s eyes were grey as glass, grey as a goose, he says of Absolons. Eyes of vair were the soft light-grey eyes-common in England, with or without blue in them, and the lashes giving a sort of furry soft- ness to the glance. When we see how the medi~val artist represented vair fur, in escallop-shaped compartments on a white ground, and how it is still diversi- fied with argent and azure in heraldry (in fact, the white and grey squirrel fur commonly used now) we may see at once that there was a good deal of l)oint in the expression, and a very pretty com- pliment, seeing that vair was the next costliest fur to the white ermine, and sacred to the cr~rne dc la crime. The iris of the eye showed a grey escallop on a white ground, and heralds represented grey by azure, as the ta~issier used his dark-blue threads for silver, for conven- ience sake. WATcHET. Watchet is regarded by Tyrwhitt as a kind of cloth, on account of some MSS. reading whit instead of light in the portrait of Absolon in the Millers Tale; and probably the name emanates from the town of Watchet in Somerset- shire. But it is usually held to be a color, pale blue, which is precisely the sort of color the dandified church clerk would have worn with red hose. It is common to see light-blue coats and gowns with red hose in the missal pictures. But in Barnfields Affectionate Shepherd, (1594), we hear, The saphyre stone is of a watchet blue. COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 89 Now, sapphires are dark blue: not un- like the cassocks which Roman Catholic Church officials wear, and Absolons kir- tIe was probably a cassock, not a coat, for he wore his surplice over it. Still Chaucer distinctly says Absolon went All in a kirtle of a Zz~kt waget, whereas I do not remember to have seen any old picture of acolytes robed in really pale blue, though plenty of pale blue ex- isted (cf Giottos pictures). I suggest, then, that Absolons light waget was the lightest shade of a blue which is mor- ally certain to have been sold in more than one shade: not turquoise, though described by Cotgrave as plunket or skie-blue, but a red blue liker ultrama- rine or cobalt, which in the darkest shade would be sapphire, or that almost violet shade still used for cassocks in great fes- tal services in foreign cathedrals. The sky is not seldom of a deep, ultramarine color a red blue as opposed to a yellow blue in fact ficincties, one of the names for plunket-blue. And plunket is said to have been taken from the name of one Thomas Blanket, who in 1340 set up a loom in Bristol, Somerset. Our blanket is said to come from plunket, blue; whether from a bluey-grey quality of the wool does not seem clear: probably yes, the color naming the cloth. Meantime, Blanket may have worked at Watchet, or the neighbor towns may have produced a very similar azure; and a blue many shades deeper than what we should call pale, might have been reasonably spoken of as lyght blewe or skie-color when compared with the common dark Prus. sian or navy blue appropriated by sailors from very early times. We cannot do better than consult the old missals them- selves, or an institution happily (for anti- quaries) so conservative as the Roman Catholic Church in some of its great fes- tal shows, for the explanation of many shapes and colors in garb, and manner of use. I have now shown that both fabrics and tints were multifarious in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as is natural in every hi~hly civilized age. Weavers from abroad were greatly encouraged under Edward III., and all native manufactures received a new stimulus from the royal interest. work, and the daintiest imagery produced by the needle scenes, portraits, inscrip- tions, etc., were seen on the Church robes, on the coat-hardy of the youn0 noble, and the royal mantle. Nay, sumptuary laws in vain tried to prevent their use by any- body else who could get hold of them, or make them. Moreover, these were painted dresses, not unlike those that came in a season or two ago. In The Romaunt of the Rose, the robe of the god of Love is described as not silk i.e., I suppose, a plain, palpable silk, But all in floures and flourettes, Ipainted all with amorettes, And with lozenges and scoch6ns (escutcheons), With bird~s, libardes (leopards), and libns, And other beast~s wrought ful wel. His garment was every del Ipurtraied, and ywrought with floures, By divers medeling of coloures ce., paint and needlework were blended. As this ~vas the period of elaborately painted tapestries, in which the subordi- nate parts were woven, the heads and hands, etc., of the figures being left to the artists brush, it was natural that so easy a mode of decoration should have become popular for dress. How much less time it would take to paint a pretty border or motto, or to renew by such means a worn part, than to embroider or weave it! Both fashions then ~vere in at onceembroidery, as of the squires coat (Chaucers Prol.), and painted fab- rics, as above. SAMITE AND SATIN. One word upon a much-discussed .and still mysterious material samite. The Germans say that it was satin, and that the two words are the same. It is impos- sible, however, to believe this, when Chaucer actually uses both words more than once. In The Romaunt of the Rose, mirth is described as clad In a samette with birdes wroughte; and he later speaks of an overgilt samy In the Death of Blanch he promises Ivlorpheus a feather bed in fine black satin rayed with gold. The medi~val Latin words differed, exarnitum, sami te, seti- mus, satin; and the chief ~lossaries enter the words apart, though each simply as a rich silk stuff. That satin of old was precisely like satin of to-day many old The embroideries: England had been pictures assure us; but if samite is what long so famed for them that they were I believe it, painting could not make the known as the unrivalled opus Anglica- web clear, it would only look like silk. nurn, and the ancient painters show us The surface of satin is absolutely smooth, how perfect they ~vere. Heavy bullion slippery, with long threads, from the 90 COLORS AND CLOTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Latin se/a, a hair; that identifies satin, as the Latin vi//osus, shaggy, identifies vel- vet. Now, I remember, when a child, wear- ing a cloak of rich antique Oriental silk, Persian, I think, of a web I have never since seen, either in museum or Oriental warehouse. It had a silk, not satin, sur- face, simple, not twilled, with right side and wrong, and was damasked in a minute pattern on stripes of gold color and vio- let I think other colors as well and, I think, with little birds and beasts mm gled. Its peculiarity which delighted me was, that in whatever direction you cut it you found a double web, as of two rich silks made together. Cut it any way, the two were quite distinct, and yet insepara- ble, like the Siamese twins. I loved to clip odd bits of this silk for my dolls, alas which I would gladly see again now, for it was an excessively rich, soft fabric, rather loosely woven, and easy to ravel, but as firm and strong and immovable as many a silken, yielding nature, taken edgewise. The low-Latin word e2-ami/um means a stuff woven with six kinds of thread, and if we give samite credit for some more mysterious quality than the vane- gations of six mere colors, at a time when all fabrics were frequently figured and variegated, I think the subtly woven an- cient silk I have described is more than likely to be samite. The thickness, and the curiosity of de- sign, possible in a material so woven en jitme/le, may be imagined at an epoch whose days might be called, from one point of view at least, des~oursf/6s dor elde sole. And the samites with birdes wroughte, and rayed(striped); and over- gilt, ~vhich is likely to have meant trimmed with jewellery in parts the black samite, the white samite, and the vermeil samit, of which was made the sacred or~,da;nme, may all have been a similar web to that I have in mind, of everlasting wear, strong as fate. Satin, on the other hand, is likely to have been identical with the Chinese zatayn, of Zaitun, which, like many Celes- tial manufactures, may carry us back to the remotest antiquity; thus se/inns would be a comparatively modern name for it. It is remarkable how elaborate the medi~eval love of dress rendered the trade- products; also how like the present day were the commercial shifts and tricks. In the Vision of Piers Plowman, Cov- etousness says: My wyf was a webber - and woollen cloth made; She spake to spynnesters - to spynnet it oute; But the pound that she payed by - poised a quarteroun more Than myne owne auncere (scales) - whoso weighed treuthe (fair). Again, he says he learned another trick: To draw the lyser (selvage) along - the longer it seemed: Among the riche rays (striped cloths) - I ren- dered a lessoun, To broche them with a packneedle - and plaited them together, And put them in a press and pinned them therein, Till ten yards or twelve - had tolled out thir- teen. There was probably no dodge of modern commerce unknown to the ingen- ious inventors of the Middle Ages, as there was hardly any one of the rich and dainty fabrics and colors known to the classics unknown to them, from the cost- liest cloth of gold to the filmiest veils, such as the little kerchief of Valence (some infant lace of Valenciennes?) that did not hide the charms of Venus ( Par- liament of Birds ). Persia, India, the whole East supplied silks; Flanders sup- plied fine linen, cloth of Lake, cloth of Rennes, etc. The avera~e worth of good common cloths, when the respective values of money are computed, did not vary greatly with our own, as political economists will easily understand, be- cause the prices of necessaries are regu- lated by unalterable social laws. But the qualities may have been coarser, like the fitting and the making of clothes. Rich materials, however, fetched an enormous price. People probably spent more to be- gin with on their clothes ; but they lasted longer. Indeed, dress has never been so cheap as now, never so undurable; and that is commonly the result of a highly civilized state. In the ancient times the best materials ~vere demanded, and were hand-wrought; and though cheatery and deceit were busy, there were not so much adulteration and waste as now, when me- chanical and chemical means combine to assist the ever-freer circulation of money, by producing rapidly and often helping to destroy. Space forbids any digression here; but, in conclusion, I must express surprise that more use is not made by persons en- gaged in compiling glossaries of cos- tume, or verifying facts in medi~val man- ners, of the beautiful medi~val pictures in foreign and English galleries. The old painters, like the old poets, were more exact in knowledge and expression than SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. 9! their critics sometimes give them credit for. Van Eycks Worship of the Lamb is a whole glossary in itself: the same might be said of the Memlings at Burges, and the Matsys at Louvain and Antwerp. And putting aside our own rich collec- tions, the above painters alone, with the help of Chaucer, carefully examined, would almost suffice to answer many of the questions which I have been dealing with. M. E. HAWEIS. From Blackwoods Magazine. SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. IN this over-populated kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with its still ever-increasing millions of human beings who must somewhere find shelter from the fickle elements, we see new settle- ments kraduaHv springing up in formerly uninhabited places as the growing rail- road system throws its iron web over the face of the land, whilst old villages near the lines rapidly assume the dimensions of towns, and towns develop themselves into cities. The widening circles of brick and mortar constantly encroach on the surrounding country, till the latter is no longer able to sul)ply the towns with the necessaries of life in sufficient quantity; the result being that ~ve are driven to pro- cure from abroad that which we cannot produce for ourselves. As in the case of the necessaries of life, so is it also with its luxuries, more especially, perhaps, with that which, once a necessity, has at lenoth become one of the luxuries most sought after and hard- est to obtain that, namely, of wild sport. Tradition and history alike tell us that the ancient inhabitants of these islands were obliged to wage constant war against the denizens of the forests which then overspread the country, not only with the object of providing themselves with food and clothing, but also in self-defence. In this from a sportsmans point of view happy state of things, our forefathers were able to gratify the long-inherited in- stincts of man the hunter, ~vhilst provid- ing for their other wants. \Ve, their descendants, inheriting all the old ~vants and a host of others which have sprung up with the advance of civilization, have in no degree lost the old huntinginstinct; but by increasing and multiplying at such a prodigious rate, we have lost the means of satisfying it in our native land. Even where game still runs wild, its pursuit is necessarily hedged in by endless formal- ities of law and etiquette; and the result is, that there is an annual and ever-in- creasing exodus of restless spirits, bent upon gratifying their hunting instincts in other lands after their own fashion. Those who have become accustomed to wild sport abroad find it irksome to con- form to the restrictions of modern British sport, and get into what are called loose habits. A case within my own knowledge occurs to me, in which an American, tak- ing part in a grouse-drive on a Yorkshire moor, wounded one of the beaters, and was looked upon as no sportsman in con- sequence. He certainly was careless, but as a sportsman he was probably the equal of any man present, for he was well ac- customed to track and shoot game, with perhaps only one companion, in regions where there was no other human being within many miles; and so, forgetting that he was now surrounded by a host of guns and beaters, he made a mistake which might rather have been expected of a novice. Those, then, who have once tasted the sweets of pursuing and killing game after their own fashion, are apt to prefer that kind of sport rather than what they can obtain in these islands, and consequently spread themselves over the world in search of it. Almost every known coun- try on this planet annually resounds to the crack of the rifle of the British sportsman, or to the bang of his fowling- piece; and his twin brother the explorer still finds new hunting-grounds as the better-known ones become used up. Amongst the least known and least fre- quented of all there is Nova Zemla, which has lately been mentioned a good deal in connection with the rescue of Mr. Leigh Smith and his merry men, and is likely to be mentioned a good deal more in con- nection with future attempts to reach the north pole. Being far out of the way of all our mer- chant routes, and only approachable dur- ing the summer over the even then ice- encumbered sea, Nova Zemla will prob- ably long remain one of the last refuges of the reindeer; whilst its ice-choked fords and frozen seas will still be haunted by the white whale, the seal, the walrus, and the polar bear. Frequented, until of late, only by some dozen Russian schooners, who visit its shores every year chiefly for white whale and salmon, and by a few roaming families of Samoyedes from the mainland, these 92 SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. arctic shores have hitherto afforded an undisturbed asylum during the winter to the game of all kinds, marine or terres- trial, which there abounds. Recently, however, the Russian government has seen fit to plant a colony consisting of a few families of Samoyedes it is sup- posed with the view of occupying the country in the Russian name and these skilful hunters, of ~vhom I shall have oc- casion to speak further on, harry the game throughout the year with great vigor. Beyond visits from European sportsmen or explorers, so rare that they might al- most be counted on the fingers, no other human intruders ever invade these wild regions. Having not long ago returned from this happy hunting-ground in the Hope, with the crew of the ilIfatecl Eira, I have obtained a glimpse of the country, which I hope will enable me to give an intelligi- ble and not uninteresting account of what is to be seen and done there in the way of sport and adventure. Till the present century ~he contour of the two large islands which form what is now known as Nova Zemla was very dif- ferently represented upon the various manuscript charts in existence, there having been compiled from the observa- tions of Dutch, Norwegian, and Russian navigators. Barents led off in 1598 with a chart representing the west coast and that part of the north-east coast which he had visited; this, though terribly out in longitude, was very good as to latitude and since the days of this old explorer, his maps, with many additions and a few corrections, have been generally adhered to, some representing the north coast as taking an abrupt turn to the east, and thus continuing ad i;~finitum, the authors of these interesting documents veiling their perplexity by drawing a meridian line down the chart and thereby cutting it short, leaving the rest to the imagination of the beholder. For our present knowledge of the shape and dimensions of the islands we are chiefly indebted to the Russian gov- ernment coast-survey, made during the early part of the present century, and continued by subsequent explorers, which is generally considered to be pretty accu- rate as far north as Admiralty Peninsula, the most prominent headland on the ~vest coast of the north island. There is one remarkable exception, however: an error of nine miles has somehow crept into the latitude assigned to the centre of M~der Bay. To the northward of Ad- miralty Peninsula this survey also be- comes rather wild, and is not to be trust- ed. This of course means that the sur- veyors were here deterred from complet- ing their work by ice and weather; and the remark applies equally to the east coast, which may be said to be ice-bound throughout the year, subject to occasional open states in favorable seasons. Cape Nassau, the point between Admiralty Peninsula and Cape Mauritius the north point, has traditionally acquired an evil reputation amon(~st the walrus-hunters, as bein~ a sort of bewitched headland, to round which means to say farewell to the world; for it was believed that vessels were mysteriously drifted thence into the Arctic Ocean, beset by the ice, and never heard of again. That there is some foun- dation for this tradition, is proved by the fate of the Austrian polar expedition of Weyprecht and Pa)-er in the steamer Tegethoff, which was beset near this cape in the autumn of 1872 and never got free again, being drifted about the Arctic Ocean for two years, during which the ex- l)edition involuntarily discovered Franz- Josef Land, and only at last got free by abandoning their ship, and undertaking a most perilous and laborious journey over the ice with their boats, which lasted three mooths, when they had the good fortune to reach the shores of Nova Zemla, and to encounter a Russian schooner which was just leaving for home. The Russian survey, then, gives us a very fair idea of the size and shape of the country. Lying between the parallels of 770 ~ N. and 700 40 N., it will be seen that the curved direction of the two main islands covers a space of about four hun- dred and fifty English miles, whilst their average breadth may be taken as sixty miles. The two islands are divided by a strait called Matotchkin Sharr, which also well marks a central position in the physical configuration of the country; for it is in this locality that the highest moun- tains and wildest and most magnificent scenery are to be found, the land thence sinking to lower levels both to the north- ward and southward. Matotchkin Sharr may likewise be said to be a central posi- tion as to the distribution of the various objects of sport; for it is on the slopes of the snow and glacier clad mountains of this part of the country that reindeer are most plentiful, whilst wild fowl of all kinds prefer the south island. Bears, walrus, and seals, on the other hand, may be looked for with greater confidence on the shores of the north island, and more SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. particularly on the eastern and northern parts of it. I will not presume to narrate any adventures of my own in pursuit of polar bears; but if I could only remem- ber half the yarns the old whalers of the Hope told me on this head, I could fill a book with wondrous tales not to be sur- passed even by the feats of the valiant Munchausen; of how they frequently fired into these ferocious quadrupeds vol- leys of marlingspikes, knives, and leaden slugs, not to speak of bullets, but that often the only effect of this rouah treat- ment was that the monster rubbed him- self with snawyes, that he didand went away geroulin, an lookin back. All the same, other travellers speak of this habit of polar bears rubbing themselves with snow ~vhen hurt. Another funny and perhaps equally useful habit of the bear, is that of swallowing large stones, for these may assist his digestion but we cannot see what nourishment the bear which robbed a depot erected by one of the Franklin search exl)editions could have derived from the whole stock of sticking-plaster~ which was found in his stomach. Modern sporting narratives always seem to me to lack the vigor and freshness of the productions of the ear- lier writers; and as we are on the sub- ject of Nova Zemla bears, I cannot resist quoting, for the benefit of those of Magas readers who have not had the felicity of perusin Purchas his Pil- grimes, an account of a thrilling bear adventure which occurred on the north island of NovaZemla three hundred years ago, during the second voyage of William Bare n ts. The 6th of Septembersome of our men went on shore upon the firme land to seek for stones, which are a kind of diamond, whereof there are many also in the States Island; and while they were seeking the stones, two of our men lyin~ together in one place, a great leane white beare came suddenly stealing out, and caught one of them fast by the necke; who, not know- ing what it was that tooke him by the necke, cryed out and sayed, Who is it that pulls me so by the necke? Wherewith the other that lay not farre from him lifted up his head to see who it was; and perceiving it to be a mon- strous hear, cryed out and sayed, Oh mate I it is a lacare; and there~vith l)resently rose up and ran away. The beare at the first falling upon the man bit his head in sunder, and suckt out his hlood ; wherewith the rest of the men that wcre on the land, being about twenty in numlaer, ranne presently thither, either to save the man, or else to drive the beare from the body; and having charged their pieces, and bent their pikes, set upon her, that still was devouring the man; but perceiving them to 93 come towards her, fiercely and cruelly ranne at them and got another of them out from the company, which she tore in pieces, wherewith all the rest ran away. ~,Ve, perceiving out of our ship and pinnasse that our men ranne to the seaside to save themselves, with all speed entered into their bQats and rowed as fast as we could to relieve our men. Where, heing on land, we beheld the cruell spectacle of our two dead men that had been so cruelly killed and tome in pieces by the laeare. \Ve, seeing that, encouraged our men to goe laack again with us, and with pieces, curtel-axes, and halfe- pikes, to set upon the beare; hut they would not all agree thereunto, some of them saying, Our men are already dead, and we shall get the beare well enough though we oppose our- selves into so open danger. If we might save our fellowes lives, then we would make haste; hut now we need not make such speed, hut~ take her at an advantage, for we have to doe with a cruell, fierce, and ravenous beast. Whereupon three of our men went forward, the heare still devouring her prey, not once fearing the number of our men, and yet they were thirtie at the least. The three that went forward in that sort were Cornelius Jacobson, William Geysen, and Hans Van Milien, Wil- liam Barentz purser; and after that the sayd master and pylat had shot three times, and mist, the purser, stepping somewhat further forward, and seeing the beare to be within the length of a shot, l)resently levelled his piece, and dis5narging it at the heare, shot her into the head, between the eyes, and yet she held the man still fast lay the necke, and lifted up her head with the man in her mouth ; hut she began somewhat to stagger, wherewith the pur- ser and a Scottish man drew nut their curtel- axes a d strooke at her so hard that their curtel-axes burst, and yet she would not leave the man. At last William Geysen went to them, and with all his might strook the beare upon the snout with his l)iece, at which the beare fell to the ground, making a great noise, and William Geysen, leaping upon her, cut her throat. This graphically described tragedy is unique of its kind, so far as I know; for though a man here and there may have been killed at long intervals of time, yet this sometimes fierce, but always eccen- tric animal is not, as a rule, looked upon with much fear. He is so easily duped into approaching quite close to the hunter, who, if he only remains calm and is able to hit a haystack at a hundred yards, may then slay him with a single bullet. Bears not only feed upon seals, walrus, large stones, and sticking-plaster, but also have a weakness for any vegetable sub- stance which they may come across, such as seaweed, grass, lichens, etc.; they are in fact, like pigs and men, omnivorous, and are of such an inquisitive nature moreover, that in search of food, or out 94 SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. of mere cussedness, they will examine ing the northern horizon, and with rifle on and scatter depots so that in laying shoulder to cautiously ascend some coin- down such a store, upon the existence of manding eminence whence a telescope which the lives of the members of an may be brought to bear on the most likely expedition may afterwards depend, this pastures on the slopes of the mountains. contingency must be foreseen and guarded The keen morning air, the blue sky, the against. Their sense of smell is, how- crisp snow crunching under ones feet as ever, so acute, that it is found difficult to ever and anon great drifts have to be hide anythin~fromthecreatures. Gener- crossed, with the sweet scent from the ally a cairn of stones is erected, in which arctic flowers nestling in the sheltered a record is placed, enclosed in a tin casing spots, and the twittering warble of snow- or glass bottle, directing the finder to buntings, all add to the delights of the some spot not far off, on a certain bear-! hunters heart as he gradually ascends to ing; then when Bruin appears on the his chosen position. When at length scene, snuffing and shuffling about the there, I, for my part, have often been cairn, he will probably pull most of it more inclined to rest for an hour and en- down, carefully examining each stone, as joy the splendid scgne, and even to smoke, a modern savant might an Egyptian tab- than to go straight on. Look there lies let. He will most likely return often to the winding strait Matotchkin Sharr the cairn, to see if it moves perhaps or its sinuosities gradually fadin,~ in the dis- who knows for what ill-defined reason tance till the sharp shoulder of yonder flitting and glimmering through his half- black mountain ~vith the little glacier shin- awakened brain ? and most likely his V b ing a ove it cuts off the view along the friends will come with him; but probably ~lassy surface. Mark how the bay ice is they ~vill be so absorbed by the cairn, that streaming out from that great gulf on the if only they will not carry off the record opposite side; that is Silver Bay, whose no great h~trm will be done. The finder sloping shores afford the finest pastures of the record then goes to the spot mdi- to our quarry. But we need not look cated, and deep beneath the snow we there for them, for the strait separates it hope finds the depot intact. from us, and we have sent our boat back The chase of the reindeer is not at- to the ship. And there, further to the tended with precisely the same kind of left, lies Mitucheff Island basking in the excitement which arises from that of the sun, with the dark-colored cairns erected polar bear, but is in its way quite as en- by the Russian surveyors sixty years ago joyable, leading the hunter, as it does, to standing out clear against a background penetr~ te into the more remote valleys of snow on the mainland beyond. Two towards the interior of the islands, and miles out to sea from that island lies a that in their most picturesque part. The treacherous shoal, on which now no ocean mountains about Matotchkin Sharr attain swell nor even a grounded floe-berg marks a height of bet een three and four thou- the danger which lurks below. That is sand feet, the upper portions being clad the shoal which knocked off the Hopes ~vith eternal snow, which descends in false keel and sprang her sternpost; and small glaciers into the heads of the val- who knows what other mischief it might leys. There is a tradition that an active not have done had not the friction of volcano exists somewhere in these parts; countless floe-bergs ground its surface but thouTh I several times ascended the smooth as a board ? Further still to the highest mountains in the neighborhood left lies the broad expanse of the Arctic on purpose to look for it, I could never Ocean, looking as if it never could become see either the volcano or any traces of it. the solid block of ice which it will be in a I remember that a similar tradition exists few short weeks. AndI there, below, lies amongst the sea-elephant hunters of Ker- the river through whose icy cold waters guelen Island, in the Antarctic Ocean, as we have so lately waded, and from which to the existence of a like phenomenon in this evening we hope to see some salmon the south-west or most inaccessible corner pulled forth. But looking at that river of that great island, and imagine that reminds us that we are wet, and that these stories are but remnants of the old our feet are getting cold; so knock out fancies of long ago, when any unknown the pipes, and on after the reindeer. region used to be peopled with dragons, The chase of the reindeer is as the stalk- goblins, giants, and what not. ing of the Highland stag, with the addi- On a fine, warm, sunshiny day, nothing tional charms of an absolute freedom is more enjoyable than to start off in the of action. Go where you will do as early mornin ~, when the sun is still skirt- you please. There is no law here but SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. 95 your own pleasure, and you may kill as many deer as your skill and perseverance ~vill allow of. It is rather hard, though, to have to practise abstention so rigor- ously when a flock of some fifty geese gets up suddenly as we make for a slope on which we have observed a small herd of five deer quietly browsing. How well a roast goose would look on our mess- table to-night, and how much better he would taste than stewed looms and salt horse! It is not always entertaining to read the chronicle of the death of defenceless ani- mals. I will instead narrate the adven- tures of a Scottish harpooner, Andrew by name, who one day went a-hunting. He did not profess to be going a-hunting, but asked leave to go ashore to the river~ s mouth, and there ~vash his clothes. This is a privilege which is dear to the heart of the hardy tar; he delights in washing his clothes and messing about with soap- suds. Our harpooner, however, was a very Ulysses, a man of many devices a cunning man, with an eye to possi- bilities, so he privily took with him a rifle and some cartridges, and with some kindred spirits repaired to the river s bank. The party had not been long en- gaged in their pursuit when Andrew was ware of a fine stag looking curiously at him over the brow of the bank. Cau- tiously he puts down his pipe, cautiously he takes up his rifle, and levels it at the inquisitive beast. He pulls the trigger bang! the deer falls, and the echoes ring out a volley against the hills, as the washing-party, taking in the situation, spring forward with a yell, like the High- landers at Tel-el-Kebir, to breast the slope and be at the enemy. Andrew drops his rifle, and seizes a stick for is it not more like his harpoon than a rifle? and advances steadily to finish off his prey. Soon he reaches the prostrate deer, and straightway delivers a blow calculated to quicken the deada calculation, alas! but too well founded, for the deer forth- with rises up and makes off like the wind, the party standing aghast at the phenome- non. Ohthat I had been writ down an ass! Andrew might have exclaimed with Dogberry; reloaded his rifle, and secured his deer. But now the abuse he levelled at that departing animal far surpassed the terms in which Shakespeares beadle re- proaches Borachio and Conrade. The Russian ~valrus-hunters whom we found at Matotchkin Sharr had done very well with the reindeer; and we, seeing that they had plenty of venison hanging in their rigging, asked where they got it, when they directed us to the other end of the strait, about fifty miles away. Next day it transpired that the strait was still choked by ice up to within six miles of where we lay. Such are the wiles by which sportsmen strive to deceive even one another. Amongst the most exciting of the sports in which a summer visitor to Nova Zemla may take part is the capture of the beluga, or white whale (Deip/ilnapterus leucas), whose skin supplies us with the so-called porpoise-hide, of which shooting-boots are now so generally made. The white whale fishery~is carried on in Nova Zemla by the Russian schooners, the gain which may be expected from this pursuit being the attraction vhich chiefly draws them to these seas. This being the case, it be- hoves the amateur whaler not to interfere with the fishery, unless at the invitation of the men whose livelihood depends upon their success, or endless difficulties will ensue. There is even a story that the whole crew of a Norwegian smack were, not long ago, treacherously murdered by Russian whale-hunters, who had found them trespassing upon what they consid- ered their preserves. Such deeds are not uncommon in remote regions like this, where there is no fear of detection, save through the promptings to confess of some guilty conscience. The schooners make the white whale the main object of their voyage, taking, as occasion may offer, bears, seals, walrus, and reindeer; and finally, in September, just at the close of the season, they repair to the mouth of some river, and there net the ascending salmon, leaving for home as soon as the ice begins to show signs of closing in. Often parties are sent away from the schooners in boats to some distant spot, where they can be getting the salmon and reindeer, etc., ready to embark as soon as their ship comes round. In this manner a party of Russian seamen were left be- hind a year or two ago, and we found them living with the Samoyedes at Karmakula. The ice having closed in earlier than was expected, their ship had to leave; and they were thus left to their own devices. After great hardships and privations had been endured, they set off to walk some sixty miles to the Samoyede settlement, over the freshly fallen snow on the land, and the hmimmocky ice of the fords and met with adventures which it would need an article to themselves to describe ade- quatelyat last reaching the summer- tents at Karmakula, under the warm rein- 96 SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. deer-skin folds of which, and in their wooden huts, they were hospitably enter- tained during the long winter by their kind-hearted little hosts. The crew of another Russian schooner was left to ~vin- ter on the south part of Nova Zemla by their vessel being beset during the gale, and carried bodily away to sea, whilst they were all on shore; and these men were also well looked after by the Samoyedes. Some few of the schooners devote them- selves almost entirely to walrus, seals, and bears; and these either go very far north, following the retreating pack till driven south again, or else keep round on the east coast altogether, which being gen- erally in great measure frozen up all the year round, is the best place to find the game they are in search of. If one really wishes to take part in a white whale hunt, it is necessary to have either a properly fitted ~vhale-boat, or a walrus-boat, so that when the whale has been struck, his runs, plunges, and sharp doublings may not either capsize or swamp it The Russian schooners at anchor in some sheltered bay always keep a party of men on the look-out on some elevated place near, where they constantly remain till relieved by others from their ships. They generally build a hut of drift-wood and stones, or pitch a tent near their look- out-place, or else they would have a bad time of it when the keen wind blows strong, and during the cold nights when the sun sets low down towards the hori- zon. My first acquaintance with the white whale in the flesh was made on the snow-foot at the base of the cliffs be- low the Samoyede settlement at the head of Karmakula harbor, having previously encountered by the hundred their moul- dering skeletons scattered along the beach in various parts of the island, picked re- markably clean by the burgomaster or glaucus gull, that greedy scavenger of the arctic regions. On the stretch of snow- ice in question there were ranged the bod- ies of half-a dozen white whales, varying from six to sixteen feet in length ; the young ones being of a brown color, and the adults white, which was seen to be tinged with yellow by contrast with the snow on which they lay. Their very fine dolphin- like lines are well depicted in many works on natural history, the great peculiarity of their appearance being given by the odd profile of the concave forehead, which ends in a projecting upper lip or jaw; thence the mouth takes an upward direc- tion, whilst the chin slopes quickly off to the under surface of the body. The diminutive eye adds the finishing touch to a countenance expressive of that silli- ness and indecision of character which is amply exemplified by the behavior of the creature when beset by the hunters. Hear- ing a snarling sound behind one of the carcasses, I went up to discover the cause, and was surprised to see a young polar bear making off with a large piece of offal in his mouth, and smeared from head to foot with gore, grumbling loudly to him- self as he shambled off at havin~ been disturbed at his meal. We afterwards cameupon this bear having his dessert in the Samoyede cooking tent, surrounded by a group of admiring and envious Esquimaux dogs, with whom he appeared to be a great favorite on the whole. Hav- ing finished his food, and then licked one of the doo-s from head to footper- haps by way of cleaning his tonguehe adjourned to the Samoyede living-tent, where he speedily settled down amongst the children and furs, and went peacefully to sleep. XVe had long wanted to see some white whale captured, and ~vere often startled by great excitement amongst the schoon- ers whenever the I)reconcerted signal was made from the look-out station indicating that the fish were approaching but as yet the whales had never actually come within the limits of the bax-. At length our chance came. A day or two before the Hope left Karmakula the signal was made from the look-out station, and soon it was seen from the schooners that the whales had actually passed the outer headlands. Instantly all was excitement and bustle on board the schooners to get the boats away with the least possible delay, the men working at their hasty preparations with a suppressed excite- ment which was highly infectious. Some of us happened at the time to be returning to the ship from a duck-shooting expedi- tion, so we followed the Russian boats as hard as ~ve could, finding it difficult in our little dingy to keep anywhere near the large walrus-boats propelled by the strong arms of their excited crews. Following them towards the entrance of the harbor, we arrived some time after they had got to work, and found that they had, by care- ful driving, succeeded in forcing the whales into a bight on the north side of the anchorage, and were now hastily spreading a large strongnet across the entrance to it. The net ~vas only ten feet deep, floatiiig by means of wooden chocks, so that its upper edge came within SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. a few feet of the surface. The depth of the water being many fathoms more than that of the net, we now made sure that the whales would easily escape under- neath them, and watched the proceedings with keen interest, joining in the sport as occasion offered, by pulling towards any point ~vhere we perceived that assistance ~vas needed. No sooner was the net stretched across than we sa~v occasional jets of feathery spray, and then white- looking objects turning leisurely over in the water. I had seen these white objects vaguely for some time; but so slowly did they turn, and so similar were they in color to the many blocks of floating ice, that it was some time before I realized the fact that these were the whales. The boats now again began driving the whales towards an indentation in the coast of the small bight which they had already guard- ed by the net, beating on the gunwales with stretchers or oars, and pulling lustily towards any point which seemed to be threatened with a sortie from the enclosed prey, ~vhich were so easily turned by these means that in a very short space of time they were nearly all got together in the desired place, and a second net promptly run out from shore to shore. The whales between the two nets were now almost disregarded, a single boat only, assisted by us in our dingy, being left to see that they did not get through any possibly unguarded spots, and the attention of the rest of the boats was turned exclusively towards those within the last net laid out. This net, like the first, ~vas a very long way indeed from beino- on the bot- tom, and why the whales did not sound and pass out beneath them both, is not apparent. It can only be supposed that their custom is to keep always near the surface, and perhaps they are not blessed with the keenest of vision, as their small eyes seem to indicate; at any rate, un- less they are very stupid, very blind, or very frightened, or perhaps all three com- bined, one would naturally suppose that they would escape as a matter of course. Not so, however; for presently a whale gets entangled in the net, straining and struggling till one would think the whole fabric would burstbeating the sea into foam, as ever and anon he throws his great tail and shiny white back out of the water. A boat swiftly approaches, the bowman stand-ing with weapon poised in both hands, ready for a throw; and watch- ing his opportunity, as the snowy back again emerges from the waves, the skilful harpooneer buries the barbed point deep LIViNG AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2243 97 in the victims flesh A mighty plunge, a billow of foam, and a crimson stain upon the water, show that the weapon has struck home. The harpooneer pulls out the wooden shaft as the oarsmen back astern, and the barb is left embedded. By means of the attached line the poor beast is slowly but surely pulled to the surface; his struggles become gradually fainter as~ drowning and bleeding, he re- ceives the fatal lunges with the lance which the harpooneer is now administer- ing, striking through the back of his head into the brain. Spouts of blood have now taken the place of the feathery clouds he was so sportively throwing up but a short time ago; and as he lies wallowing in his gore, he is disentangled from the net, lashed underneath the stern of the boat, and towed on shore, where he is secured by a rope and grapnel, and left for the present. Not all the whales are killed thus, however. Many keel) quite clear of the net, and have to be harpooned in the ordinary way, ~vhen the finest sport is affordedthe sharp doublings of the stricken animal testing to the utmost the strength and stability of the best-built boat. Sir Henry Gore-Booth who will, I hope, forgive me for record in~ his l)row- ess himself harpooned and killed three at least in the open, having pulled up, directly he saw what ~~-as going on, in his walrusboat, which he had brought with him in his little ketch, the Kava. This keen sportsman was ever to the front when large game were to be got at, and seldom missed a kill when a chance offered. On that day no less than twenty. five white whale succumbed to the har- poons of the Russians, who were hugely delighted at their good fortune, and cele- brated the occasion with uproarious mirth that night on board their schooners. No article professing to treat of sport in Nova Zemla would be complete ~vith- out some mention of the walrus or, as it is often called, the sea-horse though this animal has now become so rare in the more easily accessible parts of the coast that we only saw two the whole time we were in Nova Zemla. As the ~valrus yields a by no means insignificant trophy in its pair of tusks of splendid ivory, and is, moreover, not particularly easy to kill, of course it must always be one of the ob- jects of the chase to the adventurous visitor. I am sorry not to be able to give any precise account, from actual experi- ence, of the method in which the walrus is captured; but those who take an inter- est in the subject cannot do better than 98 SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. refer for instructions (!) to the works of ents carry them down to the water~f Albertus Magnus, who died in 1280 A.D., report is to be believed and teach them and who has left some account of the to swim; and when they can do that, they matter. Not having the work at hand, I are taught to fly, and then the whole am not able to quote what cannot but be colony migrates south. As we had to a spicy narrative in the original; but the prepare for a possible winter in Franz- account is alluded to in Nordenskidlds Josef Land, loom-shooting was coin- Voyage of the Vega, in ~vhich a wood- menced even before we had sighted cut, reproduced from Olaus Magnus Nova Zemla, and when ~ve got to Karma- (1555), illustrates the text. From this it kula, we went at it with a will. Conven- appears that the walrus is only to be taken ient slabs of floating bay ice were being by the exercise of much circumspection carried slowly along the base of the cliff on the part of the hunter; for he must not which we decided to attack, and on one approach the animal till lie encounters it of these we took our stand, shooting the hanging asleep, suspended by its tusks birds as they flew over our heads, our from a cleft in the rocks Cutting two boat picking. them up as they fell into the parallel slits in the animals back, and water. One of my birds fell close to the raising the intervening strip of hide, the edge of the l)iece of ice on which we were hunter passes underneath it a stout rope, standing, and, jumping forward to secure which he secures to its own part with two it before it could wriggle itself under the half hitches the other end being then ice, I cracked off a great lump and floun- made fast to trees, posts, or large iron dered into the just freezing ~vater. I rings in the rocks (these conveniences thought I had kept my gun out of the being, of course, common in the arctic water; but about a ~veek afterwards ~ve regions). The sketch, however, repre- were out duck-shooting, and a fine bird sents the hunters seated in their boat and getting up, I levelled my gun and pulled pulling vigorously at the rope, which is one of the triggers, but found that the fastened to the walrus in the manner de- hammer would not fall, then discovering scribed. The writer then goes on to de- that the gun must have gone under water scribe the next step which is to awaken as well as myself. My friend su~Tested the animal by throwing large stones at his that nothing short of a specially imported head, which being done, he is so startled floe from the Palacocrystic Sea, or Sea of into desperate efforts t~ escape, that lie Ancient Ice, ~vouhd be found solid enough jumps clean out of his skin, leaving it to support me; but as he hiniself is quite behind him hanging to the rocks! He, as heavy and twice as clumsy, I hoped however, cannot live ~vitliout his skin, and soon to see him go in too, and so have soon after perishes or is thrown up half the laugh turned against him. However, dead on the beach. I have not myself every one was very cautious after this, so had an opportunity of trying this iiiethod there were no more duckings that day. of capturing the sea-horse, or rather his Looms eggs should also be collected in skin; but should it ever be put in practice large numbers and placed in brine-casks, by modern hunters, it would be highly in- in case they may be wanted. The men teresting to read of it. that is, the sailors before the mast will The kind of sport of which the visitor not, as a rule, touch either the eggs or the may always Iiiake most sure, is wild-fo~vl birds unless they are served out in addi- shooting. In the first place, if he intends tion to their allowance of salt meat, seem- afterwards to take his vessel into regions ing to think they are being done out ~vhere walrus, seals, and bears abound, he of their money in some way; and it is must, of course, be prepared for any eiiier- often quite difficult to get the men to gency in the way of being beset or crushed forego their rights in the matter of by the ice, and having to winter. He will salt horse, and to take fresh meat, which therefore at once commence laying in a has cost nothing, instead, though so ob- stock of hooiiis (Briinnichs guillem ot), vioushy beneficial in every way, and espe- which are excellent eating, very abundant cially as a preventive against scurvy. in summer, and afford, at any rate, as Looms eggs are excellent fried with ba- good sport as pigeon-liuntin ~. They con, and the birds theniselves make a build, or rather lay their eggs, on ledges capital stew. The Eiras men lived along the steep face of any cliff ~vliichi during their winter in Franz-Josef Land they may select for their hoomery, where on bear and walrus flesh, drinking the they congregate in incredible numbers and blood warm, and also putting it in their hatch their young in company. When soup. They also had some preserved the young birds are old enough, the par- vegetables and a little biscuit which they SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. had saved from their ship, and on this diet they thrived exceedingly, looking when we found them well and hearty the only exceptions being men who were ill before they left Scotlar~d. This shows how important it is to lay in an ample stock of fresh food for a possible winter for a continuous supply of bear and wal- rus flesh cannot in all cases be depended upon. Wild-fowl are plentiful about Mdder Bay, and still more numerous farther south in the part of the island called on that account Goose Land. At Karma- kula, eider-duck of two kinds abound the common eider and the king-duck. The common eider-duck has a brownish plumage in July, the male being a much more showy bird than the female. The king-duck may be known by the great yellow protuberance at the base of the bill. Eider-duck in this locality are not easy to approach ; but when they have risen far out of range, they have a habit of flyin~ off and then returning to recon- noitre the intruder. Even after a good number of the flock have thus been knocked over, they will return again per- haps two or three times, and I have in this way sometimes bagged nearly the whole flock, with the help of the other guns. A teal, which I take to be the pin- tail, or winter teal, is also common on the pools of Beacon Island in Mdder Bay, and appears to breed there ; as after the main flock had risen from the pool and flown away, a number still remained be- hind, and instead of flying, dived and re- mained a long time under water. They are very quick in diving, often disappear- ing the instant they see the flash from the gun, and thus avoiding the charge of shot. Those that I got were not of full plumage; they had neither the wing feathers nor those of the tail fully groxvn; hence I conclude that they were young birds bred on the l)ond. These teal when full-grown are distinguished by long, slen- der tail-feathers, which are conspicuous as they fly. I lost one of those I shot, thanks to my clumsy friend before al- luded to, who insisted upon leaving it in the middle of the pool where it fell, and going on to another place, saying that the bird ~vould have drifted ashore by the time we returned. Knowing that no well-ay ued proof is so convincing as practical demon- stration, I determined to convince my im- petuous friend that he was wrong, and vent on with him, calling his attention at the same time to the burgomaster gulls perched on distant points, and taking the 99 precaution to bury the birds which I had already secured deep in the snow. On returning an hour afterwards ~ve exhumed our birds, and my friend commenced to look for the teal, vhich he expected to find upon the shore; but it was not there, and finally was discovered on the rocks above, half devoured by the voracious burgomasters, who had made off directly we came in sight. There are plenty of geese and swans in the region about Goose Land, but they do not seem to frequent the neighborhood of Karmakula much; perhaps, being shyer birds than the eider-ducks, they have been frightened away by the Samoyedes from the settlement. Eider-duck are very fond of basking in the sun on the surface of a piece of floating ice; and frequently, when returning to the ship after a days shoot- ing, we materially added to our bag by just running the boat past such a floe, and firing a volley into the flock as it rose. It is always well to have a cartridge ready in the arctic regions, for one never knows what may turn up at any moment. Concerning the Samoyedes, much in- formation was collected by Professor Nor- denskidld during his voya~e along the north coasts of Europe and Asia, from the North Sea to the Pacific. As these little people may prove to be of great use to the sportsman or the explorer, it may perhaps not be out of place here to re- peat some particulars as to their mode of life. We encountered some half-dozen fami- lies at Karmakula, where, as I have ~~e- viously mentioned, they have been settled under the auspices of the Russian gov- ernment, in wooden houses which they inhabit during the winter many of them moving in the spring, by means of dog- sledges and boats, to other parts of the country where they may more successfully pursue their occupations of fishing and hunting. Occasional parties of Samoy- edes also visit Nova Zemla from th~ mainland for summer hunting, returning as they came when the winter closes in. Stray families may sometimes ~vinter in Nova Zemla in other places besides Kar- makulaand indeed I know that a fain- ily has lived for several years past on the west coast of Goose Land; but these cannot be called permanent settlements, and a castaway crew could not depend upon finding them. The Samoyedes do not as yet appear to have been to any extent converted to Christianity, their religion being a wor- ship of rudely executed idols. The I00 SUMMER SPORT IN NOVA ZEMLA. worst and the most unartificiall worke that ever I saw, says Stephen Borrough, in 1556; and goes on to say, Some of their idols were an old sticke with t~vo or three notches made with a knife in it Most of them are better than that, however, in the shape of men, vomen, and children very grossly ~vrought; and to these they offer sacrifice of various animals, smear- ino~ the notches, which represent the mouths of their gods, with the blood of the victims. The Olympus of the Sa- moyede deities appears to be Vaygats Island, between Nova Zemla and the main- land, where large plantations of those divinities are stuck in the ground. As to the sacrifices, Stephen Borrough remarks: There was one of their sleds broken and lay by the heape of idols, and there I saw a deeres skinne, which the foules had spoyled: and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as high as their mouthes, being all bloody; I thought that to be the table whereon they offered their sacrifices, etc. From Nordenskidlds observations we learn that this all holds good at the present day; and that they also carry small idols about with them in their sledges, which are drawn either by dogs or reindeer. Those whom we encountered in Nova Zemla had no rein- deer but only sledge-dogs, with which they were well suppliedso well, that they sold us six for our use in Franz-Josef Land, if we had wintered there. It is difficult to say whether they worship the idols as actual gods in themselves, or only do them homage as representing something beyond. Professor Norden- skidld remarks that the Russians whom be found living with the Samoyedes south of Vaygats Island were of opinion that there ~vas no material difference between the Samoyede bolzan or idol, and their own holy pictures and charms. The Samoyedes, except in rare in- stances, are always represented as being friendly to Europeans. Those we encoun- tered at Karmakula were uniformly civil and obliging, anxious to barter their furs and skins at moderate prices, and always ready to let us have rides in their dog- sledges along the snow-foot at the base of the cliffs. When ~ve arrived, many of them came on board at once, dressed in their finest skins and colored cotton cloths,the headman coining in a sepa- rate boat, in the middle of which he sat cross-legged, whilst the l)ad dles were plied by two of the tribe. They thought we had on board the Russian officer, who pays them an annual visit, and were anx- ious to pay their respects to him without delay. One old man was very much struck with the huge Newfoundland dog belonging to the ship; a beast so fat and unwieldy that he had a difficulty in walk- ing, especially at this time, as he had just before swallowed two loom-skins feath- ers, beak, and all. The old man wished to buy the dog, and pulled out a heap of silver as a first bid, adding to it gradually till he had spread out all h~s money, which amounted to about an English pound, and finally throwing a couple of his own dogs in ; nor would he desist till with great difficulty he was made to understand that the dog did not belong to any individual but to the ship, and that lie might just as well try to buy the mainmast. In concluding this notice of the sport- ing aspects of a visit to Nova Zemla, undertaken with far different objects, I can only hope that this country, much of whose coast, and nearly the whole of whose interior, is still unexplored, may be fore often visited by our countrymen; for the better it is known the greater will be its value as a base for an arctic ex- pedition by way of Franz-Josef Land, which, when undertaken, promises to yield a success which has not as yet re- warded the efforts to attain a very high latitude by other routes. By familiarity with this land and its surrounding seas, we should gain a knowledge of the move- ments of the ice from year to year, which would be the more complete in proportion to the number of vessels employed, and the more valuable in proportion to its completeness and continuity. At present it appears that from July till the end of September are, as a rule, the ordinary limits of the navigable season, which may be extended or contracted according as the season is favorable or otherwise. The establishment this year of fixed winter meteorological stations in various parts of the arctic lands on the recommenda- tion, I believe, of a German government committee is a distinct step in advance in polar exploration, and will perhaps yield more valuable scientific results than even the attainment of the pole itself. Apart, however, from scientific considera- tions, as long as that portion of the earths surtace remains unvisited, human nature is such that human beings will always be found eager to be the first to plant a flag there; and that that flag should be any other than the Union-jack, heavez~ forbid! A POLISH LOVE-STORY. I0I From Blackwoods Magazine. men ; * and yesterday her former sweet A POLISH LOVE-STORY. heart has come home. What will she do ITHE following narrative, written down from now? the lips of a Polish peasant woman, lays And a chorus repeated, What will claim to nothing hut veracity, and may serve Nascia do? to enlighten some English reader on the I closed my book; I had found in it suhject of a class of fellow-creatures about nothing so interesting as this question of whom he prohably knows less than of the what Nascia was to do. Why look for African, the Patagonian, or the Greenland dramas in paper and print when they were Esquimaux. The Polish peasant, who hy being acted close to me in flesh and his own countrymen is commonly classed as blood ? a brute, and is by the rest of civilized Marysia, I said to the sorter of plants Europe dimly understood to he a savage, beside me for I knew her name well, can do no better than 51)eak for himself, and Marysia, did Nascia love XVasyl? be judged accordingly. I am far from asserting that loftiness of She raised her eyes to mine; they were soul and innate refinement are the common large black eyes, deep both in color and attrihutes of the Polish peasantry, hut i in expression. Marysia was not a girl, maintain that striking examples of these she was a woman on the verge of fifty, qualities are to he found in this class as fre- toil-worn, haggard,. and meanly clad, but quently as in any other class of any other there could be no doubt that she had once nation. Every care has heen taken to ren- been beautiful. Her eyes were beautiful cler into English the exact words in which still. the story was originally told: if, therefore, Love? she said after a pause, and any one should ohject to its somewhat ultra- with a certain unexpected irony in her romantic vein, I can do no more than refer him to the particular savage who is vir- voice. Do the girls nowadays know tually the author of these lines.] what love is? Which is the man they love? The man who will treat them to a w6dki or a glass of beer, or who buys IT was on an early day of the month of them a ribbon at the Itzrmark (fair). That May that, with a book in my hand, I made one they understand how to love. But my way to the kitchen garden. More than when he is gone, any other is as good a dozen women, for the most part young as he. That was not the sort of love girls, were noisily at work among the which the great God put into my heart bushes and the vegetable-beds; but their long ago. laughing and cli attering paused at my en- Marysia said this in a lower tone, speak- trance, and did not recommence until, ing half to herself; and as she said it, having seated myself at the foot of an her eyes seemed doubly beautiful for in apple-tree, I appeared to be engrossed in a moment they seemed to take fire, and my book. shone with a mixture of tenderness and My book did not engross me for long: passion. with a carpet of daisies at my feet, a roof Till now I had held my book in my of apple-blossom over my head, and the hand, but at this moment I laid it aside laughter of the girls ringing in my ears, it on the grass. There were echoes of a was difficult to keep my attention to the drama, it seemed, not only over there page before me. I looked around me: among the bushesthere was a heroine most of the workers were at some way off, of one at my very feet. dispersed in larger or lesser groups. Marysia, I said again, almost timid- There was but one excel)tion, a woman ly, who was it you loved when you were who, but a few paces from me, sat crouch- a girl?~ in~ on the erou nd so ~ the sort- Gracious you ~ not remember busy wiLd lady, vm~ ing of young plants that she seemed not the time, answered Marysia, for our to have noticed my neighborhood. master was then a young cavalier, atid it The stray voices among the bushes is a long while ago. F or eighteen years reached me in distinct sentences now and I was married to another. then, and presently a phrase attracted my And tell me, Marysia, why did you attention, not marry the man you loved? Wasyl has come home from the Why did I not marry him? Because army. he was taken to be a soldier. But why, Yes, \Vasyl has come home; and what will Nascia do, now that lie is back ? * The bridesmen, or friends of the bridegroom iz Onl- Saturday last she accepted the s~e, present themselves at the girls hot, and offer the wddki to her and her parents. if she drinks, this signi wddki (brandy) from Stefans brides- flea acceptance of the suitor. 102 A POLISH LOVE-STORY. during so many years, I could not forget him; why, being the wife of a good and honest man who loved mewhy, having six children whom I loved, and four of whom died in my arms~vhy, though I toiled every day from daybreak to sunset, I yet could not take from my memory the picture of one man, this God alone does know. That love which I found in my heart, none but he could have put there. Marysia was silent for a little, and vent on sorting the plants. But her whole face ~vas changed: the words, which she had said with vehemence, had awakened old memories, and presently they began to throng from her lips We were children ~vhen we began to love each other, Fedio and 1. The hut of my parents and the hut of his parents stood close together: there was nothing but a hedge between our little fruit-garden and their yard. When in the morning 1 came into the _arden to look for the fruit that had fallen during the night, Fedio ~vould be waiting for me at the hedge, ready to jump over and help me to pick up tl]e fruit. Then ~ve sat down to sort what we had found, and it was always the reddest of the apples and the softest of the pears which he chose out for my breakfast. He never used to go with the other boys of the village, but played only with me in our garden or in the yard be- hind the hut. When he was gone to herd the cows on the pastures, how sad did I feel till he was back again I How many hours have I stood at our gate gazing and ~azin~ alono- the road that he was to come! And he never came without brino-- ing something that he had found for me in the fields or in the forest. Each time it was some other toy, a birds nest or a red toadstool, a branch of blackberries, a bunch of ripe strawberries or if the berries were not ripe, he would bring me flowers. The other boys jeered at him, but he let them speak, and was not angry; and indeed he was so quiet and so silent, that one might have thought he could not get angry. But once I saw Fedio angry. He had lost a cow, and stayed in the for- est to look for it. I was watching for him, and saw the others come back avithout him, and I was frightened. Where is Fedio? I asked of a second cowherd who had gone out with him in the morn- ing. Oho! the boy answered, laughing, you will not see that one again. He climbed to the top of a tree to gather cherries for your supper; but crack went the branch, and down came Fedio and cherries together. XVho knows if he ever gets up from the ground I grew as cold as ice as he spoke. I could not move a step, I could not utter a scream, I could not wring my hands even; but I remained as I had been, standing at the gate, looking at the road, and the other children made a laughing circle around me, and pointed at me with their fingers. At last Fedio came home with his cow. I do not know why I had not been able to cry before; but when I saw him. unhurt, I threw myself with a scream on his neck and sobbed as though my father had beaten me. Fedio said not a word when he heard the trick they had played me; but some- thing terrible came into his eyes, and be- fore any one could stop him, he had seized the second cowherd and thrown him with such strength to the ground, and held him there so tight, with his hands upon the others throat, that the boy would have been strangled had we not quickly parted them. From that day none of the village chil- dren ever did me any harm, for they began to be afraid of Fedio. As ave greav older, and I became a young maiden and he a man, we passed all our time together. He helped my par- ents in the farm-work, for my brother was still a child; and they loved him, and called him son. On Sundays, when the music came to the village, it was always with Fedio that I danced; and not one of the other young men would have dared to choose me for a partner, for each one knew that Fedio would have killed him. Oh, gracious lady, if you could only have seen how beautiful Fedio avas, and how well he danced! Sometimes the others would stand still and make a circle to watch us two dance, for every one liked us in the village. There was only one man who watched us with a gloomy face. This was Ivan, the only son of a rich peasant; and an evil spirit had given that he also was to love me. His bridesmen had been already to my l)arents hut; but I would not even look at his av6dki, and so they had gone away again. Since then Ivan would always clench his fist when he saw Fedio and me together. Everyone knew that he would not need to be a sol- dier, for he was an only son, and he was also older than Fedio. Fedio ~vas just then nineteen, and the time was near avhen lie must be taken away. We could not think of marrying yet; we loved each other and waited. A POLISH LOVE-STORY. 103 One day, I remember, we were working on the masters corn-fields. Fedio, as usual, was working by my side; and every now and then, when no one was looking, he would lay some of his corn on my heap, so as to make it look larger. For this was the last day of the wheat harvest; that evening we were to go in procession to the masters house, and the girl who had cut the most corn was the one who should wear the corn-wreath on her head, and place it then in the masters hands.* The sun was burning very hot upon the open field, and I was thirsty. Fedio went away to the wood to fetch me water from the stream; and as soon as he was gone, Ivan approached and took his place. At first he did not speak to me, nor Ito him, but at last he said, Marysia, why do you turn your head with that Fedio? Which Fedio? I asked, and looked at him so straight in the eyes that he dropped his own to the ground. Fedjo Stecki. I am not turning my head with him; I love him. And what good is to come of this love? Very soon he will be taken to the soldiers, and what will you do then ? I shall wait. Marysia! do you know what you are saying? That waiting will not be one year or two, but eight: you will be old when he returns think of that. I have thought of it, I answered, growing angry; and what is it to you how long I may wait, or how old I shall be? What makes you talk to me of this ? But if you should wait for nothing, Marysia? If Fedio is taken to the war, and does not come back? As he said it, I felt a pain in my heart like the pain of a knife stabbing me; and it seemed to me that Fedio would not even come back to me now with the water. I answered nothing more to Ivan, and all was dark before my eyes till Fedio returned at last from the forest. I took the water from his hand, and drank it to the last drop. My face must have been strange, for he asked if I were ill: the heat had made me faint, I said. Very near to us there was working the old Zosia, whom you must know, gracious ladyonly then she was not so old as she is now; but she was not a young woman, and no one liked her in the vil * At the conclusion of the harvest of each grain, a monster wreath of wheat, rye, or harley is made, and placed on she head of a village girl. The master, on receiving it from her, givea her money in return. lage, for she was seen much with the Jews. This Zosia repeated to Fedio everything of what Ivan had said to me. Happily Ivan had left the field already, for if Fedio had been able to reach him at this moment, he would assuredly have thrown him down and trampled him, as he had done to the cowherd when we were children. But after that he got quiet; and later in the day I saw that his anger was gone he was thinking very much, and his face was sad. Perhaps he was think- ing that what Ivan had said might come true. It made my heart sink to see his face; and that evening, when we walked alono the road towards the masters house, I could not laugh and talk with the other girls. I could not feel gay, though I knew that the corn-wreath had been kept for me. Already we were near to the biggates, when Fedio came up to Ivan and spoke to him. He was not angry, but his voice sounded so strange that the tears came into my eyes as I listened. Why did you say to my Marysia that I shall not come back from the sol- diers? And why, answered Ivan, do you call her your Marysia? She will belong to the man to whom God gives her. Whether they said more I could not hear, for already we were near to the house. The girls put the wreath on my head, and began to sing the harvest- songs. You know the old songs, gracious lady : Our mistress is proud; She appears on the threshold; She makes her keys ring, And thanks God the harvest is over. The master is not at home; He is gone to Lw6w To sell the grain, And buy wSdkif or us. Make use of thy riches, master; Sell thy grey cow, The hen with the chickens, And buy us a barrel of beer. Our cock has white feathers; Our master has blacld eyebrows; He goes to the fields In a happy moment. O moon, who art growing, Throw light on our road, That we should not go astray, And lose our wreath! 104 A POLISH LOVE-STORY. At our masters house The door is of gold; The bench is also of gold; He has three hundred laborers in the field. Harness the oxen; We shall go to the forest To cut supports On which to lean the kgg5y* Little quail, Where willst thou hide? We have cut the wheat, And have arranged it in ko/y. The meadow has told us That the master has got widki, And in his cellar on a shelf Painted glasses to drink from. We bring you the harvest Of all your fields; We ~vish that the master should sow again, That we should reap again in the future.t The girls sang this song; but I did not sing. The wreath felt so heavy, that I thought it ~vas weighing me to the earth. I could scarcely bear it; it was impossi- ble for for me to raise my head from my breast. I began to think of things of which I had never thought before: for the first time it seemed to me possible that, though our love ~vas as old as our lives, though my parents called him their son, yet it might be that Fedio and I should not pass our lives together. I began to think also of how once, when Fedio had wanted to kiss me, I had re- sisted him. It would have been no wrong, but at that moment I had felt frightened of myself: if I had loved him less, I might more easily have allowed him to kiss me. This had happened~one evening not long ago. We had been standing together at our gate, and on the road there waited a cart laden with wood which Fedio was to take to the town. The moment for part. ing came. Fedios father called to us over the hedge, saying that the wood was all packed, and the cart ready. We looked at each other, and then Fedio caught me in his arms, held me on his breast one moment, and would have kissed me; but I turned my head aside, and put my two hands over my face. He still held me in his arms, and a minute passed in silence then we heard his fa- thers voice again calling out louder than the first time that the wood was ready. Fedio loosened his arms, and walked slowly away towards his cart. * A certain number of sheaves form a kolek. t in certain districts of Poland this harvest-song. with innumerable additions, is always sung, whether appiicable or not to existing circumstances. Although I was the strongest an~ healthiest girl in all the village, I was forced at this moment to take hold of the wooden post, or else I should have fallen. I looked after Fedio: he was walking slowly beside his cart; his head was bent he was crying. All the time that the girls were singing the harvest-songs a round me, and all the time that the corn-wreath pressed down my head, I could think of nothing but those tears of Fedio, and of how he would be taken to the war and might n otcome back again, and I had not wanted to kiss him. Even when the music began to play and we to dance, I still thought of this; and all the time we danced I looked at his face, although I knew very ~vell that a modest girl when she is dancing should not look at her partner, but only at the boards. But it seemed to me that even if I were to die for it in the very next minute, I could not have taken my eyes from his. The music gave me no pleasure, nor yet the supper which was laid for us. When no one was watching me ,Istole out of the room and went home. There I stood at the gate and waited, for I knew that Fedio would come. He came very soon sooner than I ex- pected. We were quite alone, for every one who was not at the great house had gone to bed. All around me the village was asleep. As Feclio came up to me he took off his cap and shook back his hair, for the night ~vas warm. Oh, gracious lady, ~vhat:beautiful hair Fedio had then l the most beautiful hair in all the vil- lage, and quite different from Ivans; for Ivans ~vas light yellow, and cut in a straight fringe round his head, while Fe- dios hair fell in black curls upon his fore- head and his neck. This time I did not wait for him to say any word to me, nor to ask why I had come away from the great house; but I stretched out my arms and put them round his neck. Perhaps he was thinking of how I had not wanted to kiss him that other evening, for he made no movement. But 1 put my face close to his, and my lips upon his lips, and I kissed him of my own free will. And at that moment it seemed to me that not even the (esarz (emperor) could have had the power to part us! We must have stood a long time that way, I dont know how long. I only know that one of his arms was round my waist, and that ~vith his other hand he stroked my hair as a mother does sometimes to A POLISH LOVE-STORY. 105 soothe her crying child for I was cry- ing. XVe did not speak much, and in my ears there were not ringing any words of Fedios, but only those of Ivan, He will be taken to the ~var. We stood at the gate till we heard the voices of those who were returning from the great house. From that evening I had no peace just as though some one were whispering in my ears, I heard all day long, He will be taken to the war. Not many days later my mother was sent for to the ~reat house. I do not know, gracious lady, whether you yet re- member the time of the Aznszczyzne (serf- dom). At that time no peasant was asked whether or not he would take service, as we are asked today; but all at once the ekonollz (overseer) would appear in the hut, and lead away those whom the mas- ter had chosen. And we had to go with- out saying the smallest word. But in our village the master was good when a girl ~vas wanted for the service, it was the parents who were sent for first. We were paid in money and in linen, and the mother herself led the girl to the great house. This was much better; for though we knew very ~vell that we were force{to go, vet it was not so hard to go with ones mother as to be taken by the ekonom. So also it was with me. When my mother returned home, she told me that the ladies had noticed me at the harvest feast, and that I was to go for a year to serve at the great house cooking for the outdoor servants. I wrung my hands, for my first thought was of Fedio. When must 1 go? I asked. It never even came into my mind to think that I might escape the service. I have begged to keep you till to- morrow, said my mother. I went out into the front garden, and stood by the gate waiting for Fedio. I could hear that lie was working in the barn, thrashing corn for the sowing. Fed io! 1 called at last, just above my breath. Immediately he came out of the barn and looked around him; then, in less time than it takes to sign the cross, he had jumped ever the hedge and stood beside me. Marysia! You are crying again! Oh, how am I not to cry, when to- morrow I shall be taken to serve in the great house! He answered nothing at first. Fedio never spoke much; only he clasped one hand inside the other with violence, and stood for several minutes thus, with his eyebrows drawn together. Then he said quickly, You cannot be there alone. He turned round, jumped back over the hedge, and went into the hut. XVhen he came out again, lie had on his new Cz(Z~k(z (cap) and his broadest belt; and without looking round, he walked away along the road. He had not told me what lie meant to do; but the cap and the belt made me feel sure that he was ~o house. ne to the great It was impossible for me to ~vork. My mother called to me to come and help her with threading the hemp; but I did not go, and waited only at the gate for Fedios return. Half an hour, perhaps, I waited; then he came to the hedge and said, I have bound myself to serve in the stable of the oxen. And then lie went into the barn, and be an axain to thrash the corn. My heart grew light within me, and all at once the service in the great house seemed to me less terrilile. And thus, on one and the same day, Fedio and I entered on service. My work was hard. There were eigh- teen servants to cook for, water to carry, wood to cut, dishes to wash, so much, that often I did not know where to begin. But the thought of the evening helped me on. Just outside the kitchen stood a broad stone; and in the evening, when the work was done, we would sit upon that stone together, and my hand rested in Fedios. In the great house they began to talk evil of us ; but that did not trouble us, for we could look all the world straight in the eyes without fearing. Fedjo, when any one taunted him with serving only for my sake, always answered that it was so. Once even he said it to the ekonom him- self. It happened thus Tulka, the old /cIUCZnICa (keeper of the keys housekeeper), was hot-tempered and strict, and her tongue always ready to scold. One day my patience failed, and I answered sharply. Her anger became greater-, she rushed upon me as if she would beat me. I did not move, but I said to her, If you beat me I shall tell the master. While I spoke the ekonom came in, holding a riding-whipfor he had just left his horse outside. Behind him stood Fedio. The angry klucznica began to accuse me; and the ekonom, as lie heard, came towards me with the whip raised in io6 A POLTSH LOVE-STORY. his hand. It would have fallen on me had not Fedio sprung between, and cov- ered me ~vi th his body. The ekonom shouted, What is this in- solence I It is not insolence, answered Fedio, quite quietly but I will not let her be beaten. If she has done wrong, beat me. It will not harm me; but as long as I am alive, no one shall touch her! The ekonom lowered his whip. Then it is true, Fedio, what the people say, that you are serving in the house only for her sake? It is true, master; and if you want to hurt her, you must kill me first. The ekonom began to laugh. Well,~ to be sure, what a mighty love! But, he added, as he looked at me, and yet it is worth his while. And that is how the matter ended; and from that day Fedio and I were left in peace. It was a happy time, and almost did I forget the words which Ivan had said; but soon, very soon, was I to be reminded of them. In spring the recruits were called in. There came a long register of those who had to present themselves at Brzezany, the nearest to~vn, and on that list there was written the name of my Fedio! The terror of that day makes me tremble even now. Tulka herself the same Tulka who had wanted to beat me could not bear to see my face. She begged of the master to let me go home to my mother. It was three days before I learned Fedlos fate. Those three days I spent standing at the gate, ~vhere I had so often waited tor Fedio when we ~vere children. All clay long I stood there, staring at the road. My father and mother wanted me to come into the hut. First they begged, and then they scolded: they said that the people would make me their laughing- stock. But to me it seemed that there were no people in the world. They brought me some milk in a jug; I could not swallow it. On the morning of the fourth day the carts came back. They passed me, one after the other; Fedio was not in any of them. 1 called his name aloud. They have kept him, some one an- swered. They have dressed him in the green cloth already, and they have cut his hair. Something within me seemed to break. I turned, and took two steps towards the hut; but all the time I saw nothing but that hair, that beautiful hair that I had kissed so often, and now falling beneath the scissors. I would have caught those black curls as they floated downwards; I would have snatched away those cold scissors, that flashed so cruelly before my eyes. I stretched out my hand, but he who held the scissors turned and struck me a blow on the forehead. The air grew dark before my eyes; I fell to the ground. It ~vas the first time that I had been insensible, and the doctor said to my mother, A great illness may come of it. But I was young and strong, and the great illness did not yet come for a little time. The recruits used to be called in the month of March. The day that I fell down on the road was the Monday before Easter. Outside in the village it was be- ginning to grow warm again. The roads got dry; the people came out of their huts, and were busy raking, digging, and plant- ing in the gar