LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, January 5 1889. From ~egimiing, Volume LXV ~ SIU~IUi Vol. CLXXX, CONTENT S. 1. II. LII. Iv. V. STYLE. By Walter Pater WHICH WINS? THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. By Arc hdeacon Farrar IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS IN THE LAST CENTURY THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND, VI. SOCIETY POETS, VII. MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN, VIII. THE CIRCUITS, IX. THE SUBMISSION OF GREAT QIJEENSLAND, X. THE TRAINING OF KINGS, To PHILLIS, TEN MONTHS OLD, THE WORK OF A LIFETIME, For/nightly Review, Murrays Magazine, Contemporary Review, Blackwoods Magazine, Nineteenth Century, Temple Bar, Blackwoods Magazine,. Spectator, .3 13 22 27 36 48 53 .6o 62 BRITAIN TO Economist, Spectator, POETRY. 2 ENGLISH SAPPHICS, 21 2 64 MISCELLANY, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LIT TELL & 00., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, resiitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually Lorwarded for a year,free of#ostage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, s8 cents. 2 TO PHILLIS, TEN MONTHS OLD, ETC. TO PHILLIS, TEN MONTHS OLD. BABY Phillis, lady fair, Fat and small of size, With the suns gold in your hair, And the seas blue in your eyes; How I wonder what your will is, Winsome Phillis! When you point with tiny hand At your tiny toe, How am I to understand What you mean by doing so? Prithee tel] me what your will is, Dainty Phillis! When you, wide-mouthed, on the floor Like a birdling sit, Twenty different notes try oer In a pretty talking fit, Guess it, can I, what your will is, Saucy Phillis? When you suddenly, untaught, Clap your hands amain, Is it that some new sweet thought Flashes through your baby-brain? Come, unriddle what your will is, Merry Phillis I When you gravely fingering scan Tiniest scatterings, Studying the atomic plan Are you, in those specks of things? Who can fathom what your will is, Quaintest Phillis? To the ceiling when you raise Finger and rapt face, Dear new-corner, do you gaze Back towards your heavenly place? Half I fancy what your will is, Happy Phillis I But when you come crawling after Me with eyes ashine, And with sudden burst of laughter Stretch your small, plump arms to mine,, AhI I know then what your will is, Darling Phillis! W. TREGO WEBB. Calcutta, Septeipber. Spectator. THE WORK OF A LIFETIME. IN the flush of youths beginning, When renown seems worth the winning By a score of schemes accomplished Ere the eve of life draws nigh, Then the mind surveys with pleasure All the length of life and leisure For researches carried forward To completion ere we die. But the march of time, incessant, Proves our hopes are evanescent, And the plans of finished labors Dwindle down to two or one; Strange delays, all unexpected, One by one appear, detected, And the more we do, the greater Seems the task that lies undone. Still, as year to year succeedeth, Each in turn more swiftly speedeth; Fifty years soon fly behind us, And are dwindled to a span; Still the final day draws nearer, And the truth grows ever clearer That a life is all too little To complete the cherishd plan. What remains? Shall we, defeated, From the project uncompleted Draw aloof, and seek for solace In an indolent repose? Rather be the strife redoubled, Though the light geow dim and troubled, As the swiftly falling twilight Hastens onward to its close. No! let never the suggestion Of thy weakness raise a question Of the duty that lies on thee Still to follow on the trace; Every stroke of true endeavor Often wins, and wins forever, Just a golden grain of knowledge Such as lifts the human race. Truth is one! To grasp it wholly Lies in One its author solely; And the mind of man can fathom But a fragment of the plan; Every scheme, howeer extensive, Though it seem all-comprehensive, Is a portion of a portion, Fitting lifes allotted span. Death is near; and then what matter Though a coming hand shall shatter All the fair but fragile fabric Thou laboriously didst raise; If a single brick abideth That thine honest toil provideth, Thou hast borne thy part right nobly, Thou shalt win the Masters praise! Academy. WALTER W. SKEAT. ENGLISH SAPPRICS. (Horace to hia cup-bearer; Odes, i 38.) Boy, we despise that revel of the Persian, Loathe the lime~wreath,* so delicately woven; Dream not of where some sunny rose may linger Later in autumn! Twine me thy chaplet, be it only myrtle! Myrtle would grace thee, filler of the winecup, Myrtle would grace me, quaffing here beneath this Vine-trellis arbor! HALLAM TENNYSON. Macmillans Magazine. * Made of lime-bark interwoven with flowers. BY WALTER PATER. SINCE all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the severance of an obscure complex into its parts or phases, it is surely the stupidest of losses to wear off the edge of achieved distinctions, and confuse things which right reason has put asunder poetry and prose, for instance; or, to speak more exactly, the characteristic laws and excel- lences of prose and verse composition. On the other hand, those who have dwelt most emphatically on the distinction be- tween prose and verse, prose and poetry, may sometimes have been tempted to limit the proper functions of prose too narrowly; which again is at least false economy, as beiog, in effect, the renuncia- tion of a certain means or faculty, in a world where after all we must needs make the most of things. Critical efforts to limit art a priori, by anticipations regard- ing the natural incapacity of the material ~vith which this or that artist works, as the sculptor with solid form, or the prose- writer with the ordinary language of men, are always liable to be annulled by the facts of artistic production; and while prose is actually found to be a colored thing with Bacon, picturesque with Livy and Carlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman, mystical and intimate with Plato and Michelet and Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or florid it may be with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless to protest that it can be nothing at all, except something very tamely and narrowly con- fined to mainly practical ends a kind of good roundhand; as useless as the protest that poetry might not touch pro- saic subjects as with Wordsworth, or an abstruse matter as with Browning, or treat contemporary life nobly as with Tennyson. In subordination to one essential beauty in all good literary style, in all literature as a fine art, as there are many beauties of poetry so the beauties of prose are many, and it is the business of criticism to esti- mate them as such; as it is good in the criticism of verse to look for those hard, logical, and quasi - prosaic excellences which that too has or needs. To find in STYLE. 3 From The Fortnightly Review, the poem, amid the flowers, the allusions, STYLE. the mixed perspectives, of Lycidas for instance, the thought, the logical struc- ture, how wholesome! how delightful ! as to identify in prose what we call the poetry, the imaginative power, not treat- ing it as out of place and a kind of gipsy intruder, but by way of an estimate of its rights, that is, of its achieved powers, there. Dryden, with the characteristic instinct of his age, loved to emphasize the distinc- tion between poetry and prose, the protest against their confusion with each other, coming with somewhat diminished effect from one whose poetry was so prosaic. In truth, his sense of prosaic excellence limited his verse rather than his prose, which is not only fervid, richly figured, poetic, as we say, but vitiated, all uncon- sciously, by many a scanning line. Set. ting up correctness, that humble merit of prose, as the central literary excellence, he is really a less correct writer than he may seeni, still with an imperfect mastery of the relative pronoun. It might have been foreseen that, in the rotation of minds, the province of poetry in prose would find its assertor; and, a century after Dryden, amid very different intellec- tual needs, and with the need therefore of great modifications in literary form, the range of the poetic force in literature was effectively enlarged by Wordsworth. The true distinction between prose and poetry he regarded as the almost technical or accidental one of the absence or presence of metrical beauty, or say metrical re- straint; and for him the opposition came to be between verse and prose of course (you cant scan Wordsworths prose), but, as the essential dichotomy in this matter, between imaginative and unimaginative writing, parallel to De Quinceys distinc- tion between the literature of power and the literature of knowledge, in the former of which the composer gives us not fact, but his peculiar sense of fact, whether past or present, or prospective, it may be, as often in oratory. Dismissing then, under sanction of Wordsworth, that harsher opposition of poetry to prose as savoring in fact of the arbitrary psychology of the last century, 4 STYLE. and with it the prejudice that there can be but one only beauty of prose style, I pro. pose in this paper to point out certain qualities of all literature as a fine art, which, if they apply to the literature of fact, apply still more to the literature of the imaginative sense of fact, while they apply indifferently to verse and prose, so far as either is really imaginative cer- tain conditions of true art in both alike, which conditions may also contain in them the secret of the proper discrimination and guardianship of the peculiar excel- lences of either. The line between fact and something quite different from external fact, is, in- deed, hard to draw. In Pascal, for in- stance, in the persuasive writers generally, how difficult to define the point where, from time to time, argument which, if it is to be worth anything at all, must consist of facts or groups of facts, becomes a pleading a theorem no longer, but es- sentially an appeal to the reader to catch the writers spirit, to think with him, if one can or will an expression no longer of fact but of his sense of it, his peculiar intuition of a world, prospective, or dis- cerned below the faulty conditions of the present, in either case changed somewhat from the actual one. In science, on the other hand, in history so far as it conforms to scientific rule, we have a literary domain in which imagination may be thought to be always an intruder. And as in all sci- ence the functions of literature reduce themselves eventually to the transcript of fact, so the literary excellences of its form are reducible to various kinds of pains- taking; this good quality being involved in all skilled works ~vhatever, in the drafting of an act of Parliament, as in sewing. Yet here again, the writers sense of fact, in history especially, and all those complex subjects which do but lie on the borders of science, will still take the place of fact, in various degrees. Your historian, for instance, with abso- lutely truthful intention, amid the multi- tude of facts presented to him must needs select, and in selecting assert something of his own humor, something that comes not of the world without but of a vision within. So Gibbon moulds his unwieldy material to a preconceived view. Livy, Tacitus, Michelet, moving amid the rec- ords of the past full of poignant sensibility, each after his own sense modifies, who can tell how and where? and becomes something else than a transcriber; each, as he thus modifies, passing into the do- main of art proper. For just in propor- tion as the writers aim, consciously or unconsciously, comes to be a transcript, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his sense of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art; and good art (as I hope ultimately to show) in proportion to the truth of his presentment of that sense; as in those humbler or plainer functions of literature also, truth truth to bare fact there is the essence of such artistic quality as they may have. Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all without that. And further, all beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth expres- sion the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within. The transcript of his sense of fact rather than the fact, as being preferable, pleas- anter, more beautiful to him. In litera- ture, as in every other product of human skill, in the moulding of a bell or a platter, for instance, wherever this sense asserts itself, wherever the producer so modifies his work as, over and above its primary use or intention, to make it pleasing (to himself, of course, in the first instance) there, fine as opposed to merely ser- viceable art, exists. Literary art, that is, like all art which is in any way imitative or reproductive of fact form, or color, or incident is the representation of such fact as connected with soul, of a specific personality, its preferences, its volition and power. Such is the matter of imaginative or artistic literature this transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinite variety, as modified by human preference, in all its infinitely varied forms. It will be good literary art not because it is brilliant or sober, or rich, or impulsive, or severe; but just in proportion as its representation of that sense that soul-fact is true, verse being only one department of such literature, and imaginative prose, it may be thought, being the special art of the STYLE. 5 modern world. That imaginative prose should be the special and opportune art of the modern world results from two im- portant facts about the latter: first, the chaotic variety and complexity of its in- terests, making the intellectual issue, the really master currents of the present time incalculable a condition of mind little susceptible of the restraint proper to verse form, so that the most characteristic verse of the nineteenth century has been lawless verse; and secondly, an all-pervading nat- uralism, a curiosity about everything what- ever as it really isinvolving a certain humility of attitude cognate to what must, after all, be the less ambitious form of literature. And prose thus asserting it- self as the special and privileged artistic faculty of the present day, will be, how- ever critics may try to narrow its scope, as varied in its excellence as humanity itself reflecting on the facts of its latest experi- ence an instrument of many stops, med- tative, observant, descriptive, eloquent, analytic, severe, fervid; Its beauties will be not exclusively pedestrian ; it will exert, in due measure, all the varied charms of poetry, down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero, or Michelet, or New- man, at their best, gives its musical value to every syllable. The literary artist is of necessity a scholar, and in what he proposes to do will have in mind, first of all, the scholar and the scholarly conscience the male conscience in this matter, as we must think it under a system of education which still to so large an extent limits real scholarship to men. In his self-criticism, he sup- poses always that sort of reader who will go (all over eyes) warily, considerately, though without consideration for him, over the ground which the female con- science traverses so lightly, so amiably. For the material in which he works is no more a creation of his own than the sculpt- or~s marble. Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a lan- guage has its own abundant and often re- condite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists. A writer, full of a matter he is before all things anxious to express, may think of those laws, the limitations of vocabulary, structure, and the like, as a restriction, but if a real artist will find in them an op- portunity. His punctilious observance of the proprieties of his medium will diffuse through all he writes a general air of sensi- bility, of refined usage. Erchvsiones debitc~ naturc~ the exclusions, or rejections, which nature demands we know how a large part these play, according to Bacon, in the science of nature. In a somewhat changed sense, we might say that the art of the scholar is summed up in the observance of those rejections demanded by the nature of his medium, the material he must use. Alive to the value of an atmosphere in which every term finds its utmost degree of expression, and with all the jealousy of a lover of words, he will resist a constant tendency on the part of the majority of those who use them to efface the distinc- tions of language, the faculty of writers often reinforcing in this respect the work of the vulgar. He will feel the obligation not of the laws only but of those affinities, avoidances, those mere preferences of his language, which through the associations of literary history have become a part of its nature, prescribing the rejection of many a neology, many a license, many a gipsy phrase which might present itself as actually expressive. His appeal, again, is to the scholar, who has great experience in literature, and will show no favor for short cuts, or hackneyed illustration, or an affectation of learning designed for the unlearned. Hence a contention, a sense of self-restraint and renunciation, having for the susceptible reader the effect of a challenge for minute consideration; the attention of the writer, in every minutest detail, being a pledge that it is worth the readers while to be attentive too, that the writer is dealing scrupulously with his in- strument, and therefore, indirectly, with the reader himself, that he has the science of the instrument he plays on, perhaps, after all, with a freedom which in such case will be the freedom of a master. For meanwhile, braced only by those restraints, he is really vindicating his lib- erty in the making of a vocabulary, an en- tire system of composition, for himself, his own true manner; and when we speak 6 STYLE. of the manner of a true master we mean what is essential in his art. Pedantry being only the scholarship of Ze cuistre (we have no English equivalent) he is no, pedant, and does but show his intelligence of the rules of language in his freedoms with it, addition or expansion, which like the spontaneities of manner in a well- bred person will still further illustrate good taste. The right vocabulary! Translators have not invariably seen how all-important that is in the work of trans- lation, driving for the most part at idiom or construction; whereas, if the original be first-rate, ones first care should be with its elementary particles; Plato, for instance, being often reproducible by an exact following, with no variation in struc- ture, of word after word, as the pencil fol- lows a drawing under tracing-paper, so only each word or syllable be not of false color, to change my figure a little. Well! that is because any writer worth translating at all has winnowed and searched through his vocabulary, is con- scious of the words he would select if he read a dictionary, and still more of the words he would reject were the dictionary other than Johnsons; and doing this with his peculiar sense of the world ever in view, in search of an instrument for the adequate expression of that, begets a vocabulary faithful to the coloring of his own spirit, and in the strictest sense original. That living authority which language needs lies, in truth, in its schol- ars, who recognizing always that every language possesses a genius, a very fas- tidious genius, of its own, expand at once and purify its very elements, which must needs change along with the changing thoughts of living people. Ninety years ago, for instance, great mental force, cer- tainly, was needed by Wordsworth, to break through the consecrated poetic associations of a century, and speak the language that was his, and was to become in a measure the language of the next generation. But he did it with the tact of a scholar also. English, for a quarter of a century past, has been assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art; for half a century, the phraseology of the great German metaphysical movement of eighty years ago; in part also the language of mystical theology; and none but pedants will regret a great consequent increase of its resources. For many years to come its enterprise may well lie in the natural- ization of the vocabulary of science, so only it be under the eye of a sensitive scholarship; in a liberal naturalization of the ideas of science too, for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full, rich, complex matter to grapple with. The literary artist therefore will be well aware of physical science; science too attaining, in its turn, its true literary ideal. And then, as the scholar is nothing without the historic sense, he will be apt to restore not really obsolete or really worn-out ~vords, but the finer edge of words still in use; ascertain, communi- cate, discover words like these it has been part of our business~ to misuse. And still as language was made for man, he will be no authority for correctnesses which, limiting freedom of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed not to say its, which ought to have been in Shakespeare; his and hers, for inanimate things, being but a barbarous and really inexpressive sur- vival. Yet we have known many things like that. Racy Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will in- termix readily with those long, savorsome Latin words, rich in second intention. In this late day certainly, no critical proc- ess can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of such eclecticism we have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How illustrative of monosyl- labic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the writings of Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious scholarship throughout! A scholar writing for the scholarly, he will of course leave something to the will- ing intelligence of his reader. To go preach to the first passer-by, says Mon- taigne, to become tutor to the ignorance of the first I meet, is a thing I abhor; a thing, in fact, naturally distressing to the scholar, who will therefore ever be shy of offering uncomplimentary assistance to the readers wit. To really strenuous minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous effort on their part, to be re~varded by securer and more intimate grasp of the authors sense. Self-restraint, a skilful economy of means asc~sis that too has a beauty of its own; and for the reader supposed there ~vill be an ~sthetic satisfaction in that frugal closeness of style which makes the most of a word, in the exaction from every sentence of a precise relief, in the just spacing out of word to thought the log- ically filled space connected always with the delightful sense of difficulty overcome. Different classes of persons, at differ- ent times, make, of course, very various STYLE. 7 demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not only scholars but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it, as in all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem like Lycidas, a perfect fiction like Transformation,~ the perfect handling of a theory like Newmans Idea of a University, has for them something of the uses of a religious retreat. Here, then, with a view to the central need of a select few, those men of a finer thread, who have formed and maintain the literary ideal everything, every com- ponent element, will have undergone exact trial, and, above all, there will be no un- characteristic or tarnished or vulgar deco- ration, permissible ornament being for the most part structural or necessary. As the painter in his picture, so the artist in his book, aims at the production by honorable artifice of a peculiar atmosphere. The artist, says Schiller, may be known rather by what he omits; and in litera- ture, too, the true artist may be best rec- ognized by his tact of omission. For to the grave reader words too are grave; and the ornamental word, the figure, the acces- sory form or color or reference, is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment, but will inevitably linger awhile, stirring a long brain-wave~~ be- hind it of perhaps quite alien associa- tions. Just there, it may be, is the detrimental tendency of the sort of scholarly attentive- ness I am recommending. But the true artist allows for it. He will remember that as the very word ornament indicates what is in itself non-essential, so the one beauty of all literary style is of its very essence, and independent, in prose and verse alike, of all removable decoration; that it may exist in its fullest lustre, as in Flauberts Madame Bovary, for in- stance, or in Stendhals Rouge et Noir, in a composition utterly unadorned, with hardly a single suggestion of visibly beau- tiful things. Parallel, allusion, the allusive way generally, the flowers in the garden, he knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which any diversion (literally) is welcome, any vagrant intruder, because one can go wan- dering away with him from the immediate subject. Jealous, if he have a really quick- ening motive within, of all that does not hold directly to that, of the facile, the otiose, he will never depart from the strictly pedestrian process, unless he gains a ponderable something thereby. Even assured of its congruity, he will still ques- tion its serviceableness: is it worth while, can we afford, to attend to just that, to just that figure, or literary reference, just then? Surplusage! he will dread that, as the runner on his muscles. For in truth all art does but consist in the re- moval of surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michel- angelos fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone. And what applies to figure or flower must be understood of all other accidental or removable ornaments of writing what- ever; and not of specific ornament only, but of all that latent color and imagery which language as such carries in it. A lover of words for their own sake, to whom nothing about them is unimportant, a minute and constant observer of their physiognomy, he will be on the alert not only for obviously mixed metaphors, as we know, but of the metaphor that is mixed in all our speech, though a rapid use may involve no cognition of it. Cur- rently recognizing the incident, the color, the physical elements or particles in words like absorb, consider, extract, to take the first that occur, he will avail himself of them, as further adding to the resources of expression. The elementary particles of language will be turned into color and light and shade by his scholarly living in the sense of them. Still opposing the con- stant degradation of language by those who use it carelessly, he will not treat colored glass as if it were clear, and while half the world is using figure uncon- sciously, will be fully aware not only of all that latent figurative texture in speech, but of the vague, lazy, half-formed person- ification a rhetoric, depressing, and worse than nothing, because it has no really rhetorical motive which plays so large a part there, and, as with more ostentatious ornament, scrupulously exact of it, from syllable to syllable, its precise value. So far I have been speaking of cer- tain conditions of the literary art aris- ing out of the medium or material in or upon which it works, the essential qual- ities of language and its aptitudes for contingent ornamentation, matters which define scholarship as science and good taste respectively. They are both sub- servient to a more intimate quality of good style; more intimate, as coming nearer to the artist himself. The otiose, 8 STYLE. the facile, surplusage: why are these ab- can see much contrivance, much adjust- horrent to the true literary artist, except ment, to bring a highly qualified matter because, in literary as in all other art, into compass at one view. For the liter- structure is all-important, felt or painfully ary architecture, if it is to be rich and missed everywhere ? that architectural expressive, involves not only foresight of conception of work, which foresees the the end in the beginning, but also devel- end in the beginning and never loses opment or growth of design, in the proc- sight of it, and in every part is conscious ess of execution, with many irregularities, of all the rest, till the last sentence does surprises, and afterthoughts; the contin- but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and gent as well as the necessary being sub- justify the first a condition of literary sumed under the unity of the whole. As art, which, in contradistinction to another truly, to the lack of such architectural quality of the artist himself, to be spoken design, of a single, almost visual, image, of later, I shall call the necessity of mind vigorously informing an entire, perhaps in style. complex composition, which shall be aus An acute philosophical writer, the late tere, ornate, argumentative, fanciful, yet Dean Mansel a writer whose works true from first to last to that vision within, illustrate the literary beauty there may be may be attributed those weaknesses of in closeness, and with obvious repression conscious or unconscious repetition of or economy of a fine rhetorical gift word, phrase, word, motive, or member of wrote a book of fascinating precision on the whole matter, indicating, as Flaubert a very obscure subject, to show that all was aware, an original structure in thought the technical laws of logic are but means not organically complete. With such of securing, in each and all of its appre- foresight the actual conclusion will most hensions, the unity, the strict identity with often get itself written, out of hand, before, itself, of the apprehending mind. All the in the more obvious sense, the work is laws, of good writing aim at a similar unity finished. With some strong and leading or identity of the mind in all the processes sense of the world, the tight hold of which b which the word is associated to its secures composition and not mere loose y import. The term is right, and has its accretion, the literary artist, I suppose, essential beauty, when it becomes, in a goes on considerately, setting joint to manner, what it signifies, as with the joint, sustained by yet restraining the pro- names of simple sensations. To give the ductive ardor, retracing the negligences of phrase, the sentence, the structural mem- his first sketch, repeating his steps only ber, the entire composition, a song, or an that he may give the reader a sense of essay, a similar unity with its subject secure and restful progress, readjusting and with itself: style is in the right way mere assonances even that they may when it tends towards that. All depends soothe the reader, or at least not interrupt upon the original unity, the vital whole- him on his way; and then, somewhere ness and identity, of the initiatory appre- before the end comes, is burdened, in- hension or view. So much is true of all spired, with his conclusion, and betimes art, which therefore requires always its delivered of it, leaving off, not in wean- logic, its corn prehensive reason insight, ness and because he finds himself at an foresight, retrospect, its simultaneous ac- end, but in all the freshness of volition. tion true, most of all, of the literary art, His work, now structurally complete, with as being of all the arts most closely cog- all the accumulating effect of secondary nate to the abstract intelligence. Such shades of meaning, he finishes the whole logical coherency may be evidenced not up to the just proportion of that ante- merely in the lines of composition as a penultimate conclusion, and all becomes whole, but in the choice of a single word, expressive. The house he has built is while it by no means interferes with, but rather a body he has informed. And so may even prescribe, much variety, in the it happens to its greater credit, that the building of the sentence for instance, or better interest even of a narrative to be in the manner, argumentative, descriptive, recounted will often be in its second read- discursive, of this or that part or member ing. And though there are instances of of the entire design. The blithe, crisp great ~vniters who have been no artists, an sentence, decisive as a childs expression unconscious tact sometimes directing of its needs, may alternate with the long, work in which we may detect, very pleas- contending, victoriously intricate sen- urably, many of the effects of conscious tence; the sentence, born with the integ- art, yet one of the greatest pleasures of rity of a single word, relieving the sort of really good prose literature is in the crit- sentence in which, if you look closely, you ical tracing out of that conscious artistic STYLE. structure, and the pervading sense of it as we read. Yet of poetic literature too; for, in truth, the kind of constructive intelli- gence here supposed is one of the forms of the imagination. That is the special function of mind, in style. Mind and soul: hard to ascertain philosophically, the distinction is real enough practically, for they often inter- fere, are sometimes in conflict with each other. Blake, in the last century, is an instance of preponderating soul, embar- rassed, at a loss, in an era of preponderat- ing mind. As a quality of style, at all events, soul is a fact, in certain writers the way they have of absorbing language, of attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of, with a subtlety which makes the actual result seem like some inexplicable inspiration. By mind, the literary artist reaches people, through static and ob- jective indications of design in his work, legible to all. By soul he reaches them somewhat capriciously perhaps, one and not another, through vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact. Mind we cannot choose but approve where we recognize it; soul may repel us, not be- cause we misunderstand it. The way in ~vhi ch theological interests sometimes avail themselves of language is perhaps the best illustration of the force I mean generally in literature. Ardent religious persuasion may exist, may make its way, without finding any equivalent heat in language; or, again, it may enkindle words to various degrees, and when it really takes hold on them doubles its force. Religious history presents many remark- able instances in which, through no mere phrase-worship, an unconscious literary tact has, for the sensitive, laid open a privileged pathway from soul to soul. The altar-fire, people say, has touched those lips!,, The Vulgate, the English Bible, the English Prayer-book, the writ- ings of Sweden borg, the Tracts for the Times, there, we have instances of widely different and largely diffused phases of religious feeling in operation as soul in style. But something of the same kind acts with similar power in some writ- ers of quite other than theological litera- ture, on behalf of some wholly personal and peculiar sense of theirs. Most easily illus- trated by theological literature, this quality lends to profane writers a kind of religious influence. At their best, these writers become, as people say, prophets; such character depending on the effect not merely of their matter, but of their matter as allied to, in electric affinity with, 9 peculiar form, and working in all cases by an immediate sympathetic contact, on which account it is that it may be called soul, as opposed to mind, in style. And this too is a faculty of choosing and reject- ing what is congruous or otherwise, with a drift towards unity unity of atmo- sphere here, as there of design soul securing color (or perfume, might w esay?) as mind secures form, the latter being essentially finite, the former vague or infi nite, as the influence of a living person is practically infinite. There are some to whom nothing has any real interest, or real meaning, except as operative in a given person; and it is they who best appreciate the quality of soul in literary art. They seem to know a person, in a book, and make way by intuition; yet, al- though they thus enjoy the completeness of a personal information, it is still a char- acteristic of soul, in this sense of the word, that it does but suggest what can never be uttered, not as being different from, or more obscure than, ~vhat actually gets said, but as containing that plenary sub- stance of which there is only one phase or facet in what is there expressed. If all high things have their martyrs, Gustave Flaubert might perhaps rank as the martyr of literary style. In his printed correspondence, a curious series of letters, written in his twenty-fifth year, records what seems to have been his one other passion a series of letters which with its fine casuistries, its firmly repressed anguish, its tone of harmonious gray, and the sense of disillusion in which the whole matter ends, might have been, a few slight changes supposed, one of his own fictions. Writing to Madame X. certainly he does display, by taking thought mainly, by constant and delicate pondering, as in his love for literature, a heart really moved, but still more, and as the pledge of that emotion, a loyalty to his work. Madame X, too, is a literary artist, and the best gfts he can send her are precepts of per- fection in art, counsels for the effectual pursuit of that better love. In his love- letters it is the pains and pleasures of art he insists on, its solaces; he communi- cates secrets, reproves, encourages, with a view to that. Whether the lady ~vas dissatisfied with such divided or indirect ~ervice, the reader is not enabled to see; but sees that on Flauberts part, at least, a living person could be no rival of what was, from first to last, his leading passion, a somewhat solitary and exclusive one. I must scold you [he writes] for one thing, which shocks, scandalizes me, the small con- I0 STYLE. cern, namely, you show for art just.now, As regards glory be it so: there, I approve. But for art! the one thing in life that is good and real, can you compare with it an earthly love ? prefer the adoration of a relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty? Well! I tell you the truth. That is the one thing good in me; the one thing I have, to me estimable. For yourself, you blend with the beautiful a heap of alien things, the useful, the agreeable, what not? The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in art, and count everything else as nothing. Pride takes the place of all be- side when it is established on a large basis. Work! God wills it. That, it seems to me, is clear. I am reading over again the A~neid, certain verses of which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in ones head, by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are forever returning, and cause you pain, you love them so much. I observe that I no longer laugh much, and am no longer depressed. I am ripe. You talk of my serenity, and envy me. It may well surprise you. Sick, irritated, the prey a thousand times a day of cruel pain, I continue my labor like a good working-man, who, with sleeves turned up, in the sweat of his brow beats away at his anvil, never troubling him- self whether it rains or blows, for hail or thunder. I was not like that formerly. The change has taken place naturally, though my will has counted for something in the matter. Those who write in good style are some- times accused of a neglect of ideas, and of the moral end, as if the end of the physician were something else than healing, of the painter than painting as if the end of art were not, before all else, the beautiful. What, then, did Flaubert understand by beauty, in the art he pursued with so much fervor, with so much self-command? Let us hear a sympathetic commentator Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists put one way of expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labor for the discovery in every phrase of that word, that verb, that epithet. In this way he believed in some mysterious harmony in expression, and when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony still went on seeking another, with invincible patience, cer- tain that he had not yet got hold of the unique word. . . . A thousand preoccupations would beset him at the same moment, always with this desperate certitude fixed in his spirit. Among all the expressions in the world, 41 forms and turns of expression, there is but one one form, one mode to express what I want to say. problem of style the unique word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely proper to the single men- tal presentation or vision within. In that perfect justice, over and above the many contingent and removable beauties with which beautiful style may charm us, but which it can exist without, independent of them yet dexterously availing itself of them, omnipresent in good work, in func- tion at every point, from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole book, lay the. specific, indispensable, very intellectual beauty of literature, the possibility of which constitutes it a fine art. One seems to detect the influence of a philosophic idea there the idea of a natural economy, of some pre-existent adaptation, between a relative somewhere in the world of thought, and its correlative somewhere in the world of language both alike, rather, somewhere in the mind of the artist, desiderative, expectant, in- ventive, meeting each other with the read. mess of soul and body reunited, in Blakes rapturous design; and, in fact, Flaubert was fond of giving his theory philosophical expression. There are no beautiful thoughts [he says] without beautiful forms, and conversely. As it is impossible to extract from a physical body the qualities which really constitute it color, extension, and the like without re- ducing it to a hollow abstraction, in a word, without destroying it; just so it is impossible to detach the form from the idea, for the idea only exists by virtue of the form. All the recognized flowers, the remova- ble ornaments of literature (including har- mony and ease in reading aloud, very carefully considered by him) counted, cer- tainly; for these too are part of the actual value of what one says. But still, after all, with Flaubert the search, the unwea- ried research, was not for the smooth, or winsome, or forcible word as such, as ~vith false Ciceronians, but quite simply and honestly, for the words adjustment to its meaning. The first condition of this must be, of course, to know yourself, to have ascertained your own sense exactly. Then, if we suppose an artist, he says to the reader, I want you to see precisely what I see. Into the mind sensitive to form, a flood of random sounds, .colors, incidents, is ever penetrating from the world without, to become, by sympathetic selection, a part of its very structure, and, in turn, the visible vesture and expression The one word for the one thing, the of that other world it sees so steadily one thought, amid the multitude of words, within, nay, already with a partial con- terms, that might just do: there was the formity thereto, to be refined, enlarged, STYLE. corrected, at a hundred points; and it is just there, just at those doubtful points that the function of style, as tact or taste, intervenes. The unique term will come more quickly to one than another, at one time than another, according also to the kind of matter in question. Quickness and slowness, ease and closeness alike, have nothing to do with the artistic char- acter of the true word found at last. As there is a charm of ease, so also a special charm in the signs of discovery, of effort and contention towards a due end, as so often with Flaubert himselfin the style which has been pliant, as only obstinate, durable metal can be, to the inherent perplexities and recusancy of a certain difficult thought. if Flaubert had not told us, perhaps ~ve should never have guessed how tardy and painful his own procedure really was, and after reading his confession may think that his almost endless hesitation had much to do with diseased nerves. Often, perhaps, the felicity supposed will be the product of a happier, a more exuberant, nature than Flauberts. Aggravated, certainly, by a morbid physical condition, that anx- iety in seekino- the phrase, which gath- ered all the other small ennuis of a really quiet existence into a kind of battle, was connected with his lifeloncr contention against facile poetry, facile art art, facile and flimsy; and what constitutes the true artist is not the slowness or quickness of the process, but the absolute success of the result. As with those laborers in the parable, the prize is independent of the mere length of the actual days work. You talk [he writes odd, trying lover to Madame X.], You talk of the exclusive- ness of my literary tastes. That might have enabled you to divine what kind of a person I am in the matter of love. I grow so hard to please as a literary artist, that I am driven to despair. I shall end by not writing another line. Happy [he cries, in a moment of dis- couragement at that patient labor, which for him, certainly, was the condition of a great success] happy those who have no doubts of themselves! who lengthen out, as the pen runs on, all that flows forth from their brains. As for me, I hesitate, I disappoint myself, turn round upon myself in despite; my taste is augmented in proportion as my natural vigor decreases, and I afflict my soul over some dubious word out of all proportion to the pleasure I get from a whole page of good writing. One would have to live two centuries to attain a true idea of any matter whatever. What Buffon said is a big blasphemy: genius is not long-continued patience. Still there is some truth in the statement, and more than people think, especially as regards our own II day. Art! art! art! bitter deception! phan- tom that glows with light, only to lead one on to destruction. Again: I am growing so peevish about my writing. I am like a man whose ear is true but who plays falsely on the violin: his fingers refuse to reproduce precisely those sounds of which he has the inward sense. Then the tears come rolling down from the poor scrapers eyes and the bow falls from his hand. Coming slowly or quickly, when it comes, as it came with so much labor of mind, but also with so much lustre, to Gustave Flaubert, this discovery of the word will be, like all artistic success and felicity, incapable of strict analysis; effect of an intuitive condition of mind, it must be recognized by like intuition on the part of the reader, and a kind of immediate sense. In every one of those masterly sentences of Flaubert there was, below all mere contrivance, shaping, and after- thought, by some happy instantaneous concourse of the various faculties of the mind with each other, the exact al)prehen- sion of what was needed to carry the mean- ing. And that it fits with absolute justice will be a judgment of immediate sense in the appreciative reader. We all feel this in what may be called inspired translation. Well! all language involves translation from inward to outward. In literature, as in all forms of art, there are the absolute and the merely relative or accessory beau- ties; and precisely in that exact propor- tion of the term to its purpose is the absolute beauty of style, prose or verse. All the good qualities, the beauties, of verse also, are such only as precise ex- pression. In the highest as in the lowliest litera- ture, then, the one indispensable beauty is, after all, truth truth to bare fact here, as to a sense of fact there, diverted some- what from mens ordinary sense of it; truth here as accuracy, truth there as ex- l)ression, that finest and most intimate form of truth, the vraie v6ritd~ And whd an eclectic principle this really is! em- ploying for its one sole purpose that absolute accordance of expression to idea all other literary beauties and excel- lences whatever; how many kinds of style it covers, explains, justifies, and at the same time safeguards! Scotts facility, Flauberts deeply pondered evocation of the phrase, are equally good art. Say what you have to say, what you have a will to say, in the simplest and most direct and exact manner possible, with no sur- plusage; there, is the justification of the STYLE. 12 sentence so fortunately born, entire, the one word, the one acceptable word, smooth, and round, that it needs no recognizable by the sensitive, by those punctuation, and also (there is the point!) who have intelligence in the matter, as of the most elaborate period, if it be right absolutely as ever anything can be in the in its elaboration. That is the office of evanescent and delicate region of human ornament; it is also the purpose of re- language. The style, the manner, would straint in ornament. As the exponent of be the man, not in his unreasoned and truth, that austerity (the beauty, the func- really uncharacteristic caprices, involun- tion,of which inliterature Flaubert under- tary or affected, but in absolutely sincere stood so well) becomes not the correctness apprehension of what is most real to him. or purism of the mere scholar, but a se- But let us hear our French guide again curity against the otiose, a jealous exclu- sion of what does not really tell, in the Styles [says Flauberts commentator], Styles, of relief, of life, and vigor, in the as so many peculiar moulds, each of which pursuit bears the mark of a particular writer, who is portraiture of ones sense. License again, to pour into it the whole content of his ideas, the making free with rule, if it be indeed, were no part of his theory. What he be- as people fancy, a habit of genius, fling- lieved in was style: that is to say, a certain ing aside or transforming all that opposes absolute and unique manner of expressing a the liberty of beautiful production, will be thing, in all its intensity and color. For him but faith to ones own meaning. The the form was the work itself. As in living seeming baldness of Le Rouge et le creatures, the blood, nourishing the body, de- Noiris nothing in itself; the wild orna- termines its very contour and external aspect, ment of Les Mis~rablesis nothing in just so, to his mind, the matter, the basis, in a Flaubert, amid work of art, imposed, necessarily, the unique, itself; and the restraint of t expression, the measure, the rhythm a real natural opulence, only redoubled the jus the form in all its characteristics. beauty, the phrase so colorable and so precise at the same time, hard as bronze If the style be the man in all the color and in service to the more perfect adaptation intensity of a veritable apprehension, it of words to their matter. Afterthoughts, will be in a real sense impersonal. retouchings, finish, will be of profit only I said, looking at books like Victor so far as they too really serve to bring out Hugos Les Mis6rables, that prose lit- the original, initiative, germinating sense erature was the characteristic art of the in them. nineteenth century, as others, thinking of In this way, according to the well- its triumphs since the youth of Bach, known saying, The style is the man, have placed music just there. Music and complex or simple, in his individuality, his prose literature are, in one sense, the op- plenary sense of what he really has to say, posite terms of art; the art of literature his sense of the world; all cautions re- presenting to the imagination, through the garding style arising out of so many natu- intelligence, a range of interests, as free ral scruples as to the medium through and various as those which music presents which alone he can expose that inward to it through sense. And certainly the sense of things, its purity, its laws or tendency of what has been here said is to tricks of refraction. Nothing is to be left bring literature too under those conditions, there which might give conveyance to any by conformity to which music takes rank matter save that. Style in all its vane- as the typically perfect art. If music be ties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, the ideal of all art whatever, precisely be. musical, stimulant, academic, so long as cause in it it is impossible to distinguish each is really characteristic or expressive, the form from the substance or matter, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous the subject from the expression, then lit- good taste of Cicero being as truly the erature, by finding its specific excellence man himself, and not another, justified, in the absolute correspondence of the yet insured inalienably to him thereby, as term to its import, will be but fulfilling would have been his portrait by Raffaelle, the condition of all artistic quality in things in full consular splendor, on his ivory everywhere, of all good art. chair. Good art, but not necessarily great art; A relegation, you say, perhaps a rele- the distinction between great art and good gation of style to the subjectivity, the art depending immediately, as regards lit- mere caprice of the individual, which must erature at all events, not on its form, but soon transform it into mannerism. Not on the matter. Thackerays Esmond, so! since there is, under the conditions surely, is greater art than Vanity Fair, supposed, for those elements of the man, by the greater dignity of its interests. It for every lineament of the vision within, is on the quality of the matter it informs WHICH WINS? 3 or controls, its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the greatness of literary art de- pends, as The Divine Comedy, Par- adise Lost, Les Misdrables, the En- glish Bible, are great art. Given the conditions I have tried to explain as con- stituting good art; then, if it be devoted further to the increase of mens happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or the enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of new or old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may ennoble and fortify us in our sojourn here, or immediately, as with Dante, to the glory of God, it will be also great art if, over and above those qualities I summed up as mind and soul that color and mystic perfume, and that reasonable structure it has something of the soul of humanity in it, and finds its logical, its architectural place, in the great structure of human life. From Murrays Magazine. WHICH WINS? MARY, Countess de Villermay, was a widow who lived at Hampstead. Her father had been a pig-killer in Chicago; but Mary had long forgotten, in the delight of spending his money, how the money was made. When she found it necessary to allude to her fathers trade, she used to say with the frank air that was one of her points, He made his money in business, I thinksomething to do with steel, which was true as far as it went. When Miss Mary Schwell married the Comte de Villermay she was twenty-four and he was seventy. The speculation turned out admirably for her; he died within a year of her marriage. He had been very kind to her, and she had become really attached to him. She mourned very sincerely the success of her speculation, and, losing sight of the motives which had induced her marriage, was quite desolated for some months. When she began to go out again she was much courted by younger sons and ineligibles generally, and also by more prosperous persons of sporting tendencies, who admired her fig- ure and style. The Countess de Villermay was what Joe Gargery called a fine figure of a woman. She had large arms, and an ob- trusive bust. Her throat was massive and round her hands and feet very plump. Her face was large and dimpled she had two well-formed chins, and a promise of a third. Her nose and ears were small. She wore her ample red hair in a Greek fly-away knot at the back of her head. Her white, even teeth showed when she laughed, and she was always laughing. Women called her coarse; men called her jolly. All who knew her called her good-natured; those who did not know her called her loud. She ~vas the kind of person at whom even the best-bred women will turn round and stare. Being rich, she was extravagant and generous in an impulsive and unreasoning way. Had she been poor, she would probably have been an excellent household manager, and the rigid both ends would in her hands have grown elastic and met. She was fond of poetry; she liked Tennyson better than Shakespeare, and Longfellow better than either. But she never con- fessed it. She knew her world better than that. For her main ambition, since she had been a free countess, was to be considered cultured. To this end she crammed somewhat, and got up a good deal of the current jargon. She could floor the ordinary person completely on such subjects as square- marked Worcester, book-plates, first editions, Bartolozzis, and the sonnet idea. But it was noticeable that the specialists in these lines soon exhausted her. In a ~vord, the countess was one of those unfortunate and embarrassing per- sons who will not submit to the evident intentions of nature, and be commonplace. Her servants and social inferiors adored her. Hers was the nature that insists on love and admiration; and, to gain it, will do a thousand kindnesses which it would never enter into the mind of your really unselfish person to conceive, much less to carry out. This kind of selfishness is at the bottom of a good deal of philan- thropy, and one would not quarrel with it, were it not that it is apt to grow exacting in the returns which it demands for its acts of benevolence. The countess would visit her servants if they were ill, and her common sense taught her to take more fruit than flowers, and more beef-tea than either; but there was no limit to the amount of service and endurance which she exacted from them when they recov- ered. She would give the crossing-sweeper a shilling, and feel (tho ugh she did not think) that the money was well laid out, to purchase the smile that thanked her, and the bright recognition that met her WHICH WINS? 4 next time she passed that way. She had many protdgdes and pensioners, who had come, by all sorts of odd roads, within the radius of her patronage. In spite of all this the position of the countesss companion was not an envi- able one, and more than one young woman had precipitately resigned it, worn out by the perpetual droppings of an inex- haustible egoism. The countesss com- panion had no time of her own. Even when the good-night had been said, and the bedroom key turned in the lock, it was not at all certain that a tap at the door would not announce a dressing-gowned countess, anxious for a listener to some long monologue on her one eternal sub- ject. Of course the question, Am I disturbing you? admitted of only one answer, and the companion would open the door, and then sit sleepily, biting her tongue to keep herself awake, while the countess discussed her admirers, her fig- ure, her disposition, her prospects, her handwriting, or her music-master. Mary, though luxurious, had some healthy tastes, She liked sea-bathing, she liked onions, she liked toffee, and she liked long walks. Few of her acquaint- ances cared for any of these things, so she took her walks, as ~vell as her onions and toffee, alone. Many people turned to stare at the tall, resilient figure, with its extremely fashionable costume at the red head, with its extremely high and pointed bonnet as it walked along the country roads that lead away from Hamp- stead towards Harrow. One hot June afternoon the countess had been talking at high pressure for a good hour to the author of a new socialist novel, who had gone away undecided whether she had or had not a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy. She had also received an offer of marriage from a sporting nobleman, for whom she entertained a kindly feeling, and had refused it on the ground that he had no ideals. His reply, that his ideal stood before him at that moment, pleased but did not soften her. She dismissed him, and immediately felt a need for com- plete change of scene. Half an hour later she was walking along a country road at a swinging pace, which was, to the gait of her women friends, what the pace of the sheep-dog is to that of the superannuated toy-terrier. The day was hot, the roads were dusty. The sky was blue, but for a black cloud- bank in the north. Presently the cloud- bank spread, the sky grew grey; the sun was covered, the birds stopped singing, the thunder pealed, and the rain caine down by the pailful. The countess kept up her sunshade and walked on; she had not passed any houses for some time, and she concluded that she would reach house-shelter sooner by going on than by turning back. As she walked, she saw through the rain a small figure leaning against a tree. She passed it, half-stopped, hesitated, and went back. Excuse me, she said, but do you know its dangerous to stand under trees in a storm? The small woman who stood there turned dark eyes upon the speaker and said, I dont care. Oh, very well, you know your own business best, Mary answered, and walked off in a huff. But again she turned she never did know her own mind and said persuasively, I think theres a cottage not far down; wont you come and shelter there? Id offer you half my sunshade, but its wet through. Here she laughed, showing her teeth. All this time the rain was pouring down. The road was a network of little streams and pools. The woman under the tree looked at the other with an expression of extreme repugnance. Come along, said Madame de Viller- may, in her loud, hearty voice, and held out her hand with a gesture of invitation. The other woman frowned, half drew back, and then came across the wet grass and walked along the road beside her. Mary felt interested. That I dont care suggested a romance. As they walked along in silence she looked at her companion a small person in black, with dark hair and eyes, arched eyebrows, a very pale face, a slim figure, and a quick, light step. No house was in sight, but th estrength of the storm was abating. I think its going to leave off, said the countess. Which way were you going? I dont know. Look here, said Mary abruptly; I see youre in some trouble. Cant I help you? I will if I can. That is a very rash offer, remarked the little woman in black. Not at all. Please tell me, if you dont mind, where you are going. I have nowhere to go to, since you WHICH WINS? insist on an answer. I wish you aood. afternoon. Mary stretched out a plump, detaining hand. Now dont be offended, she cried; I didnt ask you out of idle curiosity. People never do ask a question out of idle curiosity. Well, I didnt, at any rate. I thought dont be so angry I thought you might come home with me, if you have nowhere else to go. The other looked at her with prolonged scrutiny. For all you know I may be anything and everything that is bad. And for all you know, echoed the countess, with one of her rare but brilliant flashes of tact, I may be well, anything and everything that Im not too. Come, shall we walk back? With a sudden gesture of confidence the other turned to her. You are good, she said. I will tell you all about myself my name is Em. den. You shall tell me everything you think you can trust me with, by-and-by, when you are rested. Lets talk about the weather till then. And she stepped forward briskly. That evening, in a cool, flower-scented drawing-room, the countess heard Jean Emdens story: a story too sad and too common; a story of a weary fight against poverty, wherein poverty always won. My father had genius, she said proud- ly. He wrote nearly sixty volumes of prose and verse. He was a friend of Lady Blessingtons, and used to know all the people in her set; but when he grew old, his friends had died or forgotten him, and he could not get a pension, and we got poorer and poorer; and I have worked at anything I could get, and a year ago he died, and I have done all I could since then. I have done plain sewing, and I have sent stories to every magazine in London, I do believe; but I suppose I write too badly, for theyre always re- turned. Oh! it has been hard, and he had a paupers funeral at last! Here she broke down, and buried her face in her hands. The countess touched her on the shoulder, and said, as women always do under such circumstances, Dont cry ! Presently John Emdens daughter went on with her story; how she had fallen into deeper poverty when her fathers death had removed her chief incentive to work. How at last, unable to pay her rent, which 15 had not been paid for three weeks, she left her boxes as hostages, and came hope- lessly away from London. I thought I would come away and have done with it. She did not explain further, nor did Mary seek an explanation. She laid her hand on hers with the commonplace ques- tion, Was there anything valuable in your boxes? Miss Emden laughed. Poor Mrs. Fry! she said; she will only find re- jected MS.; and unless she can command a better market than I Though theres always the butterman, of course. We will get them back; give me the address, and to-morrow we will talk things over. Good-night, my dear. Jean Emden went to sleep that night, her whole being suffused with a glow of gratitude to the woman who had taken her in without fear or question brought her home. Talking things over next day ended in Miss Emdens being installed as useful companion to the countess, with an ample salary. Another set of links in the chain of gratitude. The boxes with their pre- cious manuscripts were redeemed an- other link. But the final riveting of the chain was done when the countess caused a monument to be raised To the memory of JOHN EMDEN, bearing further a laudatory inscription and a list of his sixty books in prose and verse. When Jean Emden returned from Ken- sal Green (whither the countess had sent her, in the carriage) she entered the room where Mary (or May as she called herself) sat alone, and running to her kneeled at her feet. Thank you! thank you! she cried taking the fat hands and covering them with kisses you are better than any- thing in the world. Let me do things for you; find ~len/y of things that I can do not to repay you, but to ease my own heart. Mary, much moved, kissed her, and deprecating the idea that she had done anything out of the way, promised to give her companion ample opportunity of repaying any little kindness she had had it in her power to show. She was as good as her word. As the days and weeks went on, these opportu- nities became more and more frequent, till Miss Emden, like all her predecessors, i6 WHICH WINS? found that her whole life was given up to the countess. But, unlike her predeces- sors, she rejoiced and gloried in it; and Mary felt the difference between the grudging payment of hired service and the free gift of the service of love. Miss Emden had been for three months an inmate, of the pretty house at Hamp- stead, when the countess received on her birthday, among some half-hundred costly bouquets and brilliant uselessnesses, the following verses: To such a one on such a day What is it I can bring, How to your summer can my spring Make any offering, say? The brightest gems that I can bring Show, by your beauty, grey, Too poor the flowers that deck my way To ask your gathering. But near you, round you, Lady May, My heart goes wandering, While autumn winds are whispering Down paths your face makes gay. Think that they say the unsaid thing I have no words to say, Nor shut me out, on this your day, From your remembering. They were carefully drawn on a card, on which a spray of hawthorn was painted, and for a blest five minutes the countess believed that they were written by Ever- ard Dobbs, the reigning critic in her set, and the handsomest man she knew, who combined the gift of verse-writing with the rarer one of discretion. He seldom published his verses, and the few he did publish appeared only in an ultra-demo- cratic weekly, which he ran himself (at a loss of about forty pounds a month), and which was never read by his own most in- timate circle. Look here! The countess passed the card across the breakfast table to the companion. As she did so her eye caught a glimpse of writing on the back of it. She drew back her hand. The companion was crimson. Why, you wrote it! You dear! The countess ran round to kiss her, knocking over a light chair with her skirts. Why, you never told me you wrote poetry! Thats not poetry, I fear. I should have written better if I had not wished so much to write well. Not poetry? why, its charming! Its the first time any one has ever written any poetry to me that did not make me want to laugh! The countess did not take much interest in her other letters and presents. She read and re.read her poem. She was rather silent during breakfast. As she finally set down her coffee.cup she said thoughtfully, I wonder whether I could write po- etry. I should think so, said Miss Emden cheerfully; its very easy.~ Mary plunged again into reverie. She was distraiie all day. That night at twelve oclock she knocked at Miss Em. dens door. Am I disturbing you? Ive been try. ing to write poetry, and Ive come to read you my first attempt. Next spring the literary world was taken by storm. May-blossoms, by the Countess de Villermaywith its white binding, its gold hawthorn spray (designed by Jean Emden), its wide margin and clear type was the verse book of the season. Critics praised it; people read it, and, above all, the public bought it. Its special feature was the piquancy given toit by the incon- gruity of its democratic sentiments with the fact that it was written by a countess. Not Wanted a Lifes Story, the most striking piece in the volume, was a real- istic poem of real power and merit. It was a tale of a desperate struggle against starvation. Probably the countess had never been so happy in her life. From her former position of a sprat among salmon, she was now raised to the rank of a salmon among minnows. People who had snubbed her, now cultivated her. She received dinner invitations from those who had formerly sent her At Home cards. Her friends became more friendly, her acquaintances more numerous. The Athenceurn called her our greatest living poetess, the dis- cerning reviewer remarking of the weakest poem in the book, Surely this has in it something of the inductiveness of vital- ity; and even the Saturday vouchsafed encomiums. Miss Emden was to the full as happy as the countess in the success of May blos- soms. She had copied out the manu- script, corrected the proofs, designed the cover. She collected the favorable re- views; there were no unfavorable ones, for the press was unanimous as it ought to be in praising a countess. And she read and re-read the book with a devotion that sometimes made Mary almost impa- tient. When Everard Dobbs wrote and asked to be permitted to call and offer his horn. age to the author of May-blossoms, Miss Emden and countess were equally excited. Ive only met him twice, said the countess, to speak to, that is. 1 almost wish he wasnt coming, I am horribly afraid he will find me out. How do you mean? Well, he will expect the author of May-blossomsto shine more in conver- sation than she will do. You are much more brilliant than most of the poets we know. And Mary, mentally reviewing in a flash a line of long-haired, flabby youths, felt her remark to be just. She had dressed herself to receive Mr. Dobbss visit, in a gown whose fashion- able trimmings were more than usually elaborate. She was now engagedinput. ti ng the drawing-room straight, as she called it. That is, she was dexterously obliterating all marks of human occupa- tion, and reducing the room to something between the drawing-room of an hotel, and that represented on our national stage. It was a delicious May afternoon. Hampstead Heath was profusely dotted with nursemai ds and perambulators. Everard Dobbs, in his hansom, leaned back and enjoyed through his j5ince-nez the beauty of the day. It was to him an hour more interesting than his hours were wont to be. He was a man whose un- healthy social environment had proved too much for his own healthy impulses. At five-and-twenty he had become an ex- treme Radical, but his early expressions of his changed views had been sneered and laughed at by his intimates, and he had reached thirty without having ever found strength enough to defy public opinionwhich with him, as with all of us, meant the prejudices of a very narrow circle. The five years struggle with his own moral consciousness had left its marks upon him, and he was unhappy. He compounded with his conscience for his cowardice by running the before-men- tioned paper under an assumed name, and by subscribing out of an ample income to several democratic and socialist socie- ties. But the hush-money brought him no comfort. His own set voted him a little mad on those questions, and promptly changed the conversatiomi when he approached them, which he did rarely now. His few working-class acquaint- ances, while they took his money, dis- trusted him, and called him dilettante. LiVING AGE. VOL. Lxv. 3330 17 May-blossoms encouraged him. Here at last was a woman of his kind. Surely a countess, though only a foreign one, would be able to live with a foot in both worlds, that of the ~haves and the have nots. By her side he might be able to occupy the same uncomfortable position. And he enquired about the authoress, not identifying her in his recollection with a stout lady whom he had occasionally observed at receptions and concerts. The poems haunted him. He read them again. They were stronger than he had supposed. They expressed not only subtle refine- ments of sentiment, and dainty fancies, but a seriousness, a determined champion- ing of the wronged and the oppressed which he had not met with in the poetry of any woman, and which he had never been quite able to get into his own. So he wrote and asked if he might call upon her. His mind was filled with the beauty of her poems, and when she came forward to meet him in her Parisian costume, he bowed low, rendered speechless by the emphasis of the contrast between her poems and herself. She held out her hand, which he took mechanically. Lovely weather, isnt it? she asked, as he seated himself. Yes, quite perfect, he replied, as ear- nestly as though that needed saying, with the sun shining outside and the May airs blowing through the room. He was violently disappointed. He could not have said what he expected her to be; but whatever it was, she was noth- ing like it. He pulled himself together, however, and plunged into praises of her book, she listening with a delight ~vhich Miss Emden, in the background, seemed to share. Do you mind my talking of your work? he asked, when his stock of ad- jectives began to run low. Oh no, I like it of all things; people who write always do, dont they? Only perhaps so much sugar is not good for me all at once. I shall be delighted to repeat the dose, as often as you will let me, with a banal smile which she found delightful. No more sugar now, please, with a look at Jean; let me have some criticism a good strong tonic. He leaned back a little and looked at her through his glasses. I dont want to criticise; I should like to question. The countess moved her arm suddenly, WHICH WINS? WHICH WINS? and overturned a glass of Mar& hal Niel such a woman should have written such a roses that stood near her. When the con- hook! this was the mystery. The prob fusion consequent on this accident and on lem was the old one, how to make the best its reparation was over, Mr. Dobhs re- of both worlds, the sensual and the spirit- turned to his point. ual. Had she solved it? he wondered. I xvas asking you if I might put ques- Apparently not, judging by her talk, tions. and yet her book so strong so earnest If you-dont ask very difficult ones. so utterly true. He read the poem Well, your poem called Not Wanted. again, Not Wanted. How did you find out all that about the The companion had been right. Not work-girls? Or was it sheer inspira- Wanted had been written by one who tion? believed every word she wrote. Dobbs She looked thoughtful. had written enough poetry of that kind Oh, one gets to know things l was himself to know the real thing when he the vague reply. saw it, and for him there was no mistak- And you really believe then, with the ing the note of passionate sincerity. slightest possible glance round the dam- Then how explain the contradiction of tily furnished room, that this awful pov- her poems and herself? erty must go on so long as we have all Suddenly the humiliating thought all our good things? flashed upon him that it was not in her Oh, dear l I dont think I meant quite but in him that the fault lay. Had she that. Ones poems are poems of moods perhaps seen through himseen that he not of opinions, dont you know? She was more or less of a timeserver and had heard a jolly poet thus excuse a pes- di/ellante democrat, and had she simply simistic sonnet. assumed that uncommonly commonplace His face suggested agreement, and she manner, as the easiest way of expressing was emboldened to go on, assuming an her determination not to cast conversa- argumentative tone, tional pearls before a half-hearted swine? Of course, you know, Mr. Dobbs, Im He got hot all overas we all do when not so foolish as to suppose that we can we think we are found out. He made one do much to alter these things; though, of of those sudden resolutions of honesty course, its very sad, and all that. whereby we seek to deceive ourselves and Dont believe her, cried Jean Linden, those whom we suspect of not being much to the astonishment of her audience. deceived by us. That poem was never written by a per- He flung himself into a chair and began son who thought such things could not be to formulate to himself his confession helped. shaping it to be understood by the writer The countess laughed. of Not Wanted. You see what a champion I have, she I will ~vrite and ask her to see me said. I must leave her to fight my bat- alone, and then she will help me. I am ties. I believe she knows what I mean as certain she could help me. well as I do myself. And at the moment rose a vision of the Dobbs turned to her, countess, her Parisian dresses, her smile, Of course, like the rest of us, you her voice. How could that confession be admire these wonderful poems tremen- made to a woman with three chins? He dously. stifled the thought. After all, the real Well, I dont know that I admire them woman was in that book and not in that so very much. I think they have faults French.gown. But the memory of that but I am very, very fond of them. triple chin somehow kept pen from paper, An attached dependent, was the and the letter was not written. mans comment, but not a toady. And The next morning brought him a coro-. he looked with some kindness at the little neted envelope containing an invitation to woman in black. a garden party, with a little line across Are you going to the Derby ? said the corner, I do hope you are not al the countess suddenly. ready engaged. Everard Dobbs accepted this remark as He was already engaged, but he broke a finger-post to point him away from her his engagement and went to Hampstead book. He took the path indicated, and at the day and hour indicated. He hardly the talk turned on the frivolities of life. hoped to be able to talk to her much, but Here she was eloquent even brilliant, reality surpassed expectation as far as When he left her presence he left a mys- opportunities of talk went. He almost tery, and took with him a problem. How monopolized her, and she seemed quite WHICH WINS? 9 willing to be monopolized; but be had no to one of the well-known Hampstead chance of making his confession, for, try Drawing-Room Meetings held to con- as he ~vould. he could not get her to talk sider Socialism. Unkind Philistines of her book. She carried her affectation have said that at these meetings there is of unconcern so far as to pretend not even more flirtation than socialism; but Dobbs, to remember the name of a certain church- at any rate, went single-heartedly, and with yard, which had inspired two sonnets in thatconsciousnessofextrenie virtue which May-blossoms. is one of the compensations of those who He came home baffled read her book attend discussions on political economy. again, and determined, with renewed en- He was there early, and when the arri- thusiasm, to break down the wall of re- val of the next guest drew his hostess serve she had built up between her xvork from his side, he stood leaning against and him, and to get at her real self. the mantelpiece, watching the door, and A vain determination. It was not that amusing himself with speculations and he did not meet her often. He met her criticisms on those who entered. There constantly, and sometimes wondered how were only three or four accredited Social- it was that whereas before he had seen so ists, and there was about most of the little of her as not to connect her with her others an air of premeditated good.humor name, he now met her two or three times the kind of expression which guests a week, at dance, concert, reception, and wear at desert when the children are literary riunion. He also found that he brought in. was receiving invitations from people who He rather st~rted to find himself look- were not quite in his own pet set; and as he ing up with increased interest when Miss had not written anything just lately, and Emden came into the room, and he was had done nothing very glorious, he found still more astonished to find that disap- this sudden influx of cards mysterious. pointment was not quite the feeling with But he concluded that talent was becom- which he noticed that the countess was not ing more popular, and accepted his invita- with her. tions. He went forward to greet her, and sat When he could not talk to the countess by her during the meeting. It was inter- he talked to Miss Emden, who interested esting to him to see every point made by him, in spite of her shy, constrained ways, the Socialist lecturer met by a flash of by her evident enthusiasm for and com- approval from her dark eyes. She looked prehension of Madame de Villermay. very handsome, he thought, when her face But ~vhen he did talk to the countess he lit up like this. The greater part of the found it always impossible to get her to audience listened with the tolerance which talk of the things he cared for. And his one shows to a schoolboy exhibiting his final stroke of ill-fortune in this direction stamp album, or his collection of birds was given by himself by the unlucky eggs. remark which he made one day at a When Socialism had been consid- picnic, ered for a couple of hours, the meeting I believe you hate me to talk of your broke up, and Dobbs found himself walk- book. ing along beside Miss Emden under the You are quite right, she said, I pale July stars. do, and laughed the loud gay laugh that She walked along quickly, only replying always echoed through his thoughts of by rather snappish monosyllables to his her. conventional commonplaces about the He then tried to get the companion to meeting. talk of the book and of the writers views. Im afraid somethings vexed you, he She would talk of the book readily enough, said presently. but of the writers views she had little to She turned her eyes on him quickly. say. And the impression deepened in Have I been disagreeable? I didnt him, that they considered him unworthy mean to be. But this sort of thing does of confidence on the great subject of the annoy me fearfully more than I can condition of the people. And yet the say. countess did not seem to think him This sort of thino-? unworthy of attention and kindness. In- Yes I mean oh, its too much to deed, Hampstead, after its manner, soon hear these smug, smirking people, in their began to talk, and to foretell, the good. comfortable drawing.rooms, talking about natured a match, and the ill-natured an the poverty they are causing and profit- esciandre. ing by just as they would discuss Chel- One evening in July he had been asked sea china or the last new novel. 20 WHICH WINS? ~You see they dont realize it. Then they should hold their silly tongues. When one knows what poverty means, one can hardly sit still and hear them talk. One wants so to jump up and knock their empty heads together.. I didnt know you felt so strongly about this. Have you ever looked into the condition of the poor? She kicked a pebble along the pave- ment. There I thats another of the phrases that drive me nearly wild. Looked into! Ive been in the condition. OhI beg your pardon and he stopped short, confused. Oh, theres no reason why you should beg my pardon. I am not in the least thin-skinned, thank God! about having been poor. And since we are on this subject I was penniless when the countess took me to live with her. I owe everything to her everything my very life. The vehemence of this astonished Dobbs still more. He hardly knew what to say. I suppose then it was from you that the countess got her knowledge of of that sort of thing? Yes. What a remarkable woman she is! she must have a wonderfully subtle and sympathetic mind to transmute all this into those beautiful poems. She smiled, frowned, and was silent. Do you know, she interests me pro- foundly. Her brain seems to be in water- tight compartments. The poet is so completely apart from the woman. Perhaps not so completely apart as you think. They walked along in silence for a few moments. Then suddenly, without know. ing how, Everard Dobbs found himself making, to Miss Emden, the confession he had meant to make to the countess. He told her how he had believed and not had the courage of his faith; how he had vainly tried to satisfy his soul with the husks of conventionalism; and how, though he was still starving, he had not the strength to seek noble food. She lis- tened absorbedly; now and then throwing in a word or a question. And when I read that book. I said to myself that the woman who wrote it was the only human being who could help me; that the sort of strength there is in that book was just the sort of strength I wanted. That was why I wrote and asked her to let me come to see her. Miss Emden, I felt I loved the writer of that book. And now? Well, I feel I havent yet found her. But I hope to find her. I have failed to understand Madame de Villermay, but I mean to understand her yet. You shall, she said earnestly. You will help me? I will good-night. Well! but this is not the house. No; but I feel I must run the rest of the way. And without a hand-shake she left him. He was a fastidious man, and had culti- vated the fastidious side of his nature. Somehow Madame de Villermay was a little too big, a trifle too fat; her laugh was a little too loud her embonj5oint a little too pronounced. Why hadnt the book been written by some quiet, refined, ~5iritue/le, dainty little woman, like well, even like Miss Emden? Madame de Villermay at that moment was sitting alone; on her lap a little bun- dle of his notes harmless, necessary notesabout dinners and at homes; and in her hand a photograph his photo- graph. She was looking at it with a tender ex- pression which became her much less than her usual society airs Her eyes half- closed and grew moist, and her features, being a trifle relaxed, looked larger than usual. She kissed the photograph a soft, hot kiss, and at the moment a tap at her door brought her up with a start. With one swift movement she thrust the letters and photograph under a pile of papers beside her, and was reading Mr. Whistlers Ten oclock, when the door opened and Miss Emden came in. She looked up. Well, dear? Have you had a pleasant evening? Who was there? Miss Emden mentioned a few names. And Mr. Dobbs was there, and he walked home with me. Oh! Why, what a pity! Why ever didnt you bring him in, dear? Because he told me he loved the au- thor of that book, and I cant bear it any longer. She caught u~ a copy of that book, there was one in every room in the house and flung it across the room. The countess sat bolt upright, her skirt stretched ungracefully tight across her knees. Her eyes shone. Do you mean to say he told you he loves me You .~ the contemptuous intonation WHICH WINS? 21 stung the countess like a lash no, not Even worth your trying to catch, eh? you, but the woman who wrote that book! Oh! how can you say such things? The other leaned back. Have I ever I suppose youre caught yourself, There, there, coldly, dont lets since you make such a fuss about it. have any heroics theres no need. I Well, if I am, I havent shown it to havent the slightest objection to telling him and everybody else! your friend that you wrote the book, and The countess jumped up and walked you can devote yourself to saving his val- across the room, and picked up the book, uable soul. Good-night. which lay face-downwards on the carpet. She smiled as Miss Emden left her. You seem very much excited. I must When she was alone she flung her hands say your Socialism doesnt seem to agree above her head, and then threw herself with you. face-downwards on the sofa. She had Look here the other came quite lost the man she loved but she had kept close to her, this man has been for her secret. She could not have refused the last ten years doing his best to lose to tell Everard Dobbs; and she was glad his own soul, and stifle everything thats she had consented in such an off-hand way good in him. He can be saved, Im cer- as to put herself completely in the right, tam of that. Do you think you can save and Miss Emden in the wrong. him ? Its always the way, she said to her- The countess turned away. self; the more you do for people the less Oh! bother! She tossed her head. grateful they are. Shell go away now You know I dont understand all this of course. So much the better. I hate high-falutin talk of losing souls and saving these up-in-the-clouds people, perpetually men, and all the rest of it. Tell me straight criticising you. She can have the money out what you want. You can be business, thats come in from May-blossoms. like enough when you like. Shed not take anything else, but she has a I want you to give up trying to catch right to that. Nobody would ever have this man; hes not your kind of man at published her book, without my name all, and its not much of a sacrifice. Youil she ought to remember that never catch him on your merits, and An hour later Jean Emden came down though you maynt understand it, youll her eyes red with crying, her hair dis- just kill the little good there is in him, ordered, her chin firmly set. and in you too. Look here, she said, you have been Well? good to me you have saved my life. Well, I want you to tell him the truth Im an ungrateful brute! Dont tell him. about the book. Ill go away. Tell him yourself. And what about his soul ? said the No, that I never will. Do you remem- countess maliciously. ber when we agreed to publish the book She looked troubled. Madame de Vil- under your own name, you said a hundred lermay laughed. times that if it succeeded, you would tell Well, make your mind easy. Ive just the whole world? Well, I dont ask that, been out myself and posted a letter to and I never will ask it, but I do ask you him, telling him the whole thing. to tell hIm. The letter Dobbs received put the mat- Agreed. Wasnt it your own pro- ter in a light not very unfavorable to the posal? countess; there is a ~vay of confessing a Yes, and a wicked one it was. A lie sin which makes the sinner seem more always ends like this. spotless even than before and he still You shouldnt have proposed it. visits her at Hampstead, occasionally. He Didnt you wish me to? Dont you much more often visits Miss Emd~en, in understand that I felt so ~rateful to you Shadwell, where she manages a Co-opera- that I would have cut off my hands if tive Needlewomens Association, estab- you d wanted it? lished with his capital, running now at a Your feelings have changed pretty small annual loss. She has published an- much now. I believe you hate me. other volume of poems, in her own name No, I dont hate you; but I hate to this time, and all the reviews say she has see you playing these stupid tricks, and cribbed shamefully from the authoress of trying to entangle men you dont care May-blossoms. She believes that Mr. about. Some men arent worth anything Dobbs is on the right road at last. He better, but I think this one is. took an active part in managing a recent The countess had suddenly grown calm. womens strike, and he is at present laid 22 up with a sore throat caught in lecturing from an inverted tub outside the Dock Gates. FABIAN BLAND. From The Contemporary Review. THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. BY ARCHDEACON FARRAR. THE very name Westminster Abbey indicates the venerable associations which have clung for so many centuries to that glorious building. It is an abbreviation for Ecciesia Abbatiae Westmonasferiefl- sis; and for more than three centuries it has been a beloved and inveterate mis- nomer for the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, which since i ~6o has been the legal designation for what Shakespeare calls the Cathedral Church of Westminster. If we may place any reliance on tradition, a church was built there by King Sebert in 6i6. Of the abbey church built by King Edward the Confessor, which Henry III. demolished quasi nullius omnino va- loris, the bases of two pillars may still be seen under the splendid mosaic of the sacrarium. The present building was the slow growth of five centuries. Begun by Henry III., and by him carried as far as the first pillar of the choir, it was con- tinued by Edward I. as far as the first pillar of the nave. Richard II. built four or five more bays of the nave, and when it it had been still further extended under Henry V., the nearly completed building was used at the Te Deum for the victory at Agincourt on November 23, 1415. The west end was built by Islip, who became abbot in i~oo. Henry VII.s glorious chapel was begun in 1513. The western towers, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, were not finished till about 1740. Thus the mere material structure reminds us of the condition and fortunes of England during many stages of her national career, and represents the three great phases of Norman, Gothic, and perpendicular archi- tecture, as well as the Italian taste of the Georgian era. By any nation in the world Westminster Abbey would be regarded as a precious possession, but it is not always borne in mind that it is unique in its preciousness. Other nations possess, or have possessed, the burial-places where kings had their gorgeous obsequies. The Byzantine emperors lay in their splendid sarcophagi of porphyry at St. Sophia; the kinbs of France were entombed at St. Denys; the kings of Spain at the Escurial; the czars of Russia at Moscow and St. Petersburg; the emperors of Germany and Austria at Innspruck and Vienna; the popes of Rome at St. Peters. In few of these instances was the scene of burial the scene also of coronation; but in the Abbey that antique pile behold, Where royal heads receive their sacred gold; It gives their crowns and does their ashes keep, Here made like gods, like mortals here they sleep. Other nations, too, have had buildings consecrated to the honor of the illustrious dead. Athens had her Stoa Poecile in memory of Marathon; Rome had her statue-crowned Forum; France has her Pantheon; Germany her Valhalla; Italy her Santa Croce in Florence. But West- minster Abbey is something more than all these. It is a church which for centuries has gathered myriads of worshippers under its high-embowed roof, as well as a place where kings have been bap- tized, and crowned, and married, and interred. It is a place of commemoration for every variety of departed genius and worth. It is haunted by innumerable memories. English literature is crowded with allusions to its majestic solemnity. It enshrines and illustrates the many va- rying tendencies of art. It has received an impress in age after age from the changing phases of religion. It has wit- nessed a thousand tragic and tender scenes in which the grandest of national events has been colored with the joy or pathos of individual destinies. Through every chapel and ambulatory of it flows the full majestic stream of English his- tory; into every nook and corner of it have eddied the lesser rivulets and back- waters of human life. There is no other building in the whole world where it is so impossible to take a single step without being endlessly reminded of great thoughts, of great men, of great events. Its popular name recalls the whole history of the Church, the in- fluence of the East on Christian feelings, the growth of monasticism, the Middle Ages, the scholastic theology, the Refor- mation. The entire structure, even down to the minutest detail, is one vast religious symbol of the Trinity, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the communion of saints, the grace of the sacraments, the expul- sion of evil spirits and evil influences. The immediate impression it was meant to make on the beholder was to recall to him the thought of God and the thought of death. THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 23 They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine in hours of fear, Or grovelling th3ught, to seek a refuge here, C)r through the aisles of Westminster to roam, Where bubbles burst, and follys dancing foam Melts if it cross the threshold. As we wander through the vastbuilding, the spirit of Shakespeare himself might seem to glide with us, and point us now to A base foul stone made precious by the foil Of Englands chair; * now to fhe monumental sword that conquered France; now to the helmet Which did aifright the air of Agincourt; or to the saddle into which the young hero king Vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropped down from the clouds, To witch the world with noble horsemanship. t And here, hard by his own cenotaph, in Poets Corner, on the spot which, as Fuller says, is enough almost to make passengers feet to move metrically, who go over the place where so much poetical dust is interred, is the grave of Spenser, by which Shakespeare may himself have stood at the poets funeral with Beaumont and Fletcher, and into which his own pen may have been thrown with the elegies of other poets and the pens that wrote them4 But while the words of Shakespeare add so deep an interest to the tombs and relics of the Abbey, we may take many another master of English literature as our guide. Addison, in The Spectator, will accom- pany us with Sir Roger de Coverley. Steele will take us with him to find mate- rials for his Tatler, and Charles Lamb for his Elia, and Washington Irving for his Sketch-book, and Charles Kingsley for his American Lecture. Macaulay shall point Out to us where over those venerable graves towers the stately monu- ment of Chatham, and from above, his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still with eab le face and outstretched arm to bid England be of good cheer and to * Richard III., act v., cc. 3. Compare Henry VI., Part II., act l. Sc. 2 Methinks I sate in seat of malesty In the Cathedral Church of Westminster, And in that chair where kings and queens are crowned. Henry LV., part I., act V.~ Sc 2. 1 Stanleys Memorials, p. 270. hurl defiance at her foes; or he shall take us to look at the monument of Pitt over the western door, where the heaven- born minister stands in the attitude so well known to his contemporaries, while drawing up his haughty head and stretch. ing out his artn with commanding gesture, he pours forth the lofty language of inex- tinguishable hope. Or, leaving the graves and cenotaphs of poets, orators, musicians, and great actors, and passing to the north transept by Flax- man s monument over the grave where Murray, long enough his countrys pride, Is now no more than Tully or than Hyde is there any other spot of ground in all the world in which, within the space of a few yards, lie the mortal remains of a group of statesmen so eminent as Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Grattan, Wilberforce, Castlereagh, the two Cannings, and Palmerston? As he stands upon their graves who can fail to feel the force of the lesson pointed alike by Macaulay and by Scott? To Macau- lay, * who so often alludes to the Abbey, it was that temple of silence and recon- ciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried; the great Abbey which has, during many ages, afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the great hall. To Scott it pointed the same lesson. Speaking of the close vicinity of the coffins of Pitt and Fox, he says The solemn echo seems to cry, Here let their discord with them die; Here where the end of earthly things Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings; Here where the fretted aisI~es prolong The distant notes of holy song, As if some angel spoke agatn, All peace on earth, good will to men; If ever from an English heart 0 here let prejudice depart It This, however, is but one of the many national lessons ~vhich here the stone shall cry out, and the beam out of the timber answer it. I will not dwell on the trite yet certain truth of the vanity of human wishes which made Washington Irving see in this vast assembly of sep- ulchres a treasury of humiliation, a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the empti- ness of renown and the certainty of obliv- ion. Nor need I repeat with Kingsley, that awful is the Abbey, but not sad; for it is a symbol of both worlds, the seen and * Essay on Warren Hastings. t Marmion, Introduction to Canto I. (abbreviated). 24 THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. the unseen, and of the veil, thin as a cob- web, and yet opaque as night which parts the two. But I think that all may here be taught a duty much needed at all epochs, and not least in our own the duty of tolerance, founded on the essen- tial unity of all Christian faith, as seen in the light of death- Amid the vast diver- sity of religious opinions, in spite of the internecine conflicts of antagonistic sects, good men and saints of God for nearly a thousand years have here worshipped, with holy worship, the same Lord, in whose name they would fain have sent each other to the block or to the stake- We pause beside the pulpit. Here the Puritan divines thundered against the cor- ruptions of Rome. Here the Romish preachers anathematized the apostasies of Puritanism. These walls have heard the voice of Cranmer as he addressed the boy-king on whom rested the hopes of the Reformers, and of Abbot Feckenham as he preached in cope and mitre to Philip of Spain and Mary Tudor. They have heard the Anglican South shooting out his arrows, even bitter words, against the Independents, and the Nonconformist Baxter pleading the cause of comprehen- sion. They have heard Bishop Bonner, as he sane the Latin Mass, coming fresh perhaps from the death-warrant of mar- tyrs; and the Puritan Stephen Marshall pouring forth before the House of Com- mons the eulogy of Pym. They heard the angry murmur of the people when the timeserving Sprat read James LI.s declaration of indulgence, and their deep hum of applause when Burnet proph- esied the coming glories of William III. Here Wolsey received the hat of a cardi- nal, and Leighton the consecration of an archbishop. Here Cardinal Pole solemnly welcomed hack the Church of England into the communion of the Church of Rome. Here, side by side, in their stately tomb lie the Tudor queens, of whom the one burnt Protestants for their faith, and the other sent Romish priests to the block for their treason, of whom one defeated the Armada equipped for the thraldom of England by the husband of the other Regno consortes ci urna Ma- ria ci Elizabeika sorores, sharers in one quiet grave, and wearers of the same un- easy crown. And opposite them lies the other ill-fated queen, Mary Stuart, whom Elizabeth sent to the block, and whose tomb was once supposed to be resplen- dent with miracles. Here are alike the monuments of Dryden the Catholic and Sheffield Duke of Buckingham the highly unorthodox, and Watts the Independent. The tomb of Popham the Roundhead colonel stands close beside that of Cary the Cavalier, who died heartbroken at the execution of Charles I. And here stands the statue of Milton, the mere mention of whose name in a single line of anothers epitaph was once held to defile the Abbey. Many who would have cursed each other when living here lie side by side at peace, judged not by their unessential differ- ences, but by the larger eyes of divine wisdom and national gratitude. Mans opinionativeness is no measure of Gods infinitude, nor ought ~ve to exclude from our sympathy those whom God does not exclude from his forgiving love. The censers may be different, yet the incense is the same; the form may be different, yet the faith one; the theology different, yet the righteousness identical. It is a fact of which we need often to be re- minded, and which nowhere finds so em- phatic a witness as within these venerable walls, that God is not the leader of a sect. But the ways in which the Abbey exer- cises a beneficent and inspiring influence are very numerous. It does so, for instance, by its direct appeal to noble ambition. The colossal monuments raised by the nation to her sea-warriors; to the gallant Sir Cloudes- ley Shovel, to Harvey, and Hutt, and Mon- tague, killed at Brest in 1794; to Blair, and Blayne, and Lord Robert Manners, who fell in the West Indies under Rod- ney in 1782; to brave Captain Cornewell, shot down at Toulon in 1743; to Admiral Vernon, Sir Peter Warren, and others, show the pride that England felt in her naval supremacy, and the gratitude which she desired to show to her brave defend- ers. They explain the enthusiasm which consoled Nelson even under the thought of death in battle, and which gave rise to the famous exclamation: To-morrow a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The trophies of Miltiades would not allow Themistocles to sleep. These monu- ments may have had a like effect on the minds of many an English sailor. Nor have the great soldiers been for- gotten. We still look with interest at the tomb of the standard-bearer of Agincourt, of Major Creed and Colonel Bingfield, who fell by Marlboroughs side at Blenheim and of Major Andr6, who died a spys death in the American war. Athens was proud that her sons had in one year fallen in many parts of Greece. Does it tell nothing of the warlike activity of England THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 25 that on the tablet to Sir R. Bingham her saying that if the princes of Europe (1598) ~ve read how he had served his would cease their mutual quarrels and country in Scotland and Ireland, in the would go on a crusade, she would ac- Isle of Candy under the Venetians, at company them as their laundress. The Lepanto against the Turks, in the civil deans professed object was to show that wars of France, in the Netherlands, and we have something in life worth striving at Smerwich where the Romanes and for, and that this Abbey, by its various Irish were. vanquished? And we see examples, has something worth teachino how long that martial energy continued, How deeply, too, have the influences of when, on the neighboring tomb of General the Abbey affected the literature of En- Trigge, we read that he fought in the gland! Besides the poets and prose-writ- Seven Years War, took part in the battle ers whom we have mentioned, in what of Miriden and in the defence of Gibraltar, glowing terms is it alluded to by Beau- and captured Surinain in the West Indies, mont and Fletcher, and Sir Thomas More dying in 1814. and Milton, and Waller, and Burke, and Again, who can say how many may have by many another poet and orator from been encouraged and stimulated in the Chaucer and Skelton down to Wordsworth pursuit of peace by these memorials of and Emerson! And who can say how faithful duty and unforgotten effort? many literary efforts owe their origin to Ever their statues rise before us, the memories which it has awaked? To Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; mention but one instance: it was while At bed and table they lord it oer us, standing with Dean Milman under the With looks of beauty and thought~ of good. bust of Warren Hastings, that Macaulay first determined to enrich our history with One day, a hundred years ago, a weary his splendid essay on the great proconsul. boy of fifteen, struggling under a load of Once more: have none been inspired to books, which he had to carry as a book- conspicuous self-denial for the good of sellers apprentice, turned into the Abbey their fellow-men by observing that men for a moments rest; he laid down his load and women, without any other pre-emi-- and burst into involuntary tears as he nence, have yet won themselves immortal thought of an obscure and lifelong serf- names simply by the part they have played dom. Then suddenly looking up, he in great philanthropic movements? For caught sight of all the statues around him, there we find the tombs or memorials of and he thought: These men fought Mrs. Katherine Bovey, who claims some bravely the battle of their life and won; share in the honor of having originated and so will I. The incident proved to the plan of Sunday-schools ; of Jonas be a turning-point in his career. That boy Hanway, founder of the Foundling and was Joshua Marshman, the father-in-law Magdalen Hospitals; of Sarah, Duchess of Havelock, the colleague of William of Somerset, noted for her charities; of Carey, the joint author of the Bengali Dr. Andrew Bell, chief founder of the grammar and the Sanskrit dictionary, the pupil-teacher system; of William Wilber- translator into English of the works of force and Sir Foweil Buxton, the liberators Confucius one of the great pioneers of of the slaves; of Sir J. Mackintosh, who modern missions in the East. And if, helped to reform our criminal code. as Johnson said, the man is not to be There, on the tomb of Zachary lVlacaulay, envied whose patriotism would not gain we may read how during a protracted force upon the plains of Marathon, or life, with an intense but quiet persever- whose piety would not grow warmer ance which no success could relax, no among the ruins of lona, so it is certain reverse subdue, no toil, privation, or re- that multitudes have been taught and en- proach could daunt, he devoted his time, nobled by the influences of the Abbey. I talents, fortune, and all the enei-gies of his was in residence as canon during the last mind and body to the service of the most days work of Dean Stanley and heard his injured and helpless of mankind; ~ and last sermon. It was on a Saturday after- on the tomb of Granville Sharpe, how he noon, and was one of a seriesmarked aimed to rescuehis countryfrom the guilt with all the exquisite charm of the deans of using the arm of freedom to rivet the style on the Beatitudes, illustrated by fetters of the slave. the characters of those buried in the AlS- And this reminds me that I must not bey. I remember well how he spoke of entirely pass over the teaching of epitaphs Newton, than whom none ever had a whiter soul; and of Margaret of Rich- * The epitaph was written by the late Sir James mond, whose humility he illustrated by Stephen. 26 THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. and inscriptions. It is true that most of them are long, pompous, pedantic, illegi- ble; and that, in some instances, as on the shocking epitaph of Gay Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once, and now I know it they strike a radically false note. But here and there not to speak of mere felicities of language they inculcate a noble lesson. On the tomb of brave young Francis Holles we read that Mans life is measured by his works, not days; Not aged sloth but active youth hath praise. Solon had the Athenian Herm~ in- scribed with moral gnomes for the instruc- tion of the multitude. Many a brief expression on an Abbey tomb serves the same purpose. Is there nothing striking in the line, He feared man so little because he feared God so much, on the tomb of Lord Lawrence? Have none been stirred to generosity by the prayer that God would enable him to bless his fellow-men, re- corded on the place where lie the remains of George Peabody? Who is not tc~iched by the energetic reprobation of the slave- trade, that open sore of the world, the last words ever written by Livingstone in his solitude, and here engraved upon his tomb? The two monosyllables, Love Serve, on the pedestal of the statue of Lord Shaftesbury, will epitomize for thou- sands the main moral teaching of the Gos- pels. Many more instances might be given, but I will only add that they may often be found in unnoticed corners. Few slabs are less noticed than that humble piece of marble which records Jeremiah 1-lorrox, the young curate of Hoole, and the inventer of the micrometer, who died at twenty-two, after detecting the long in- equality in the mean motion of Jupiter and Saturn, and determining the motion of the lunar apse. He was the first to observe the transit of Venus, on Sunday, November 24, 1639 (O.S.), in the brief in- terval between three full Sunday services. Important and intensely interesting as he knew the observation to be, he yet would not sacrifice to it one moment of his sa- cred duties, but nobly says of them, Ad majora avocatus qu~ oh hiec parerga negligi non decuit. I have said nothing here of the inesti- mable value of the Abbey and its monu- ments as preserving for us in a striking and concrete form the marvellously chang- ing phases of art as represented by sculp- ture, and the manner in which those phases represent the influence of age after age on the minds of the people, and on their mode of contemplating death. This and much more must be left untouched. Obviously in this paper s~atiis inclu- sus iniquis I have only been able to touch, as it were, on the outermost fringe of the subject; but even what I have writ- ten here may suffice to show the reason why I ask the question, and I would fain ask it of the whole English and American people What is to be the future of Westmi;zster Abbey ~ I say of the American people as well of the English, for America, too, has a share, and a large one, in our national mauso- leum. One great purpose that the build- ing and its history may serve, is to bind the two nations which are yet one nation in closer union. Such burning ques- tions as fishery disputes ought very rapidly to burn themselves out when En- glishmen and Americans worship side by side in the Abbey, and remember that all its glories and memories up to the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, nay, up to the War of Independence, belong equally to both. In signing away his own empire George IlL did not sign away the empire of En- glish law, of English literature, of English blood, of English religion, or of the En- glish tongue. Elsewhere I have shown more fully the share of Americans in Westminster Abbey.* It contains the bust of their most beloved poet. It is enriched by their gifts. It is the first object of their pilgrimage. They feel rightly and proudly that it is theirs as well as ours. Therefore, I ask Americans and Englishmen what shall be the future of a building which has been equally a seat of royalty and a cradle of freedom? For hitherto there have always been one or two interments in it every year of men whose fame England would not ~villingly let die, and in the course of the next very few years those burials must finally cease. The dust of the mighty shall mingle under its pavement no longer; and, what is even more to be regretted, a few more memo- rials and very few will exhaust the possibility of continuing the long, un- broken line of its famous records. The stream of English history which has flowed through it since the days of the sainted Confessor will cease to flow. It will become a record of a proud past, but of a past which it will no longer link into any continuity with the living present. If the student or the patriot wishes to find some contemporary trace of any past age * In a paper in Harz5ers Magazine. IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS. 27 of English story of the struggles of Saxon and Norman, of the Plantagenets, of the Crusaders, of the Barons War, of medi~eval thought, and worship, and le- gend, of the Tudors, of the Stuarts, of the house of Hanover, of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, of the eighteenth cen- tury, of the dawn of literature, of the dawn of science, of the dawn of philanthropy, of the dawn of art, of the drama, of the pursuits of peace, of glorious wars by sea and land, of education, of mens thoughts about life and death at any particular epoch he has only to walk into the Abbey and he will find them. He may look at the sculptured shields of the Con- fessor, of Louis IX., of Frederic Barba- rossa, of Simon de Montfort; he may see Aylmer de Valence, riding to Bannock- burn with the mantelets streaming from his helmet; he may see the has-relief of the first pupil teacher instructing his class of junior boys; he may look on the tomb of Chaucer; he may read the epitaphs of Pope. The antiquarian may study the armor of Prince John of Eltham, or the jewelled bodice of Blanche de la Tour, or the peaked shoes of Edward the First, or the horned headdress of Queen Phi- lippa, or the exquisite Limoges enamel on the tomb of William de Valence, or the fine hammered ironwork which protects the tomb of good Queen Eleanor. The herald may find a hundred quaint devices which are but little known, and the histo- rian may find proofs of facts and feelings which have found their way into no ordi- nary record. Are these memorials to cease forever? Shall our descendants, centuries hence, look in vain in the Abbey for any traces of the thoughts, emotions, discov- eries, arts, religion, of the generations which succeeded Queen Victoria? It need not be so. Mr. Shaw Lefevre, in the last number of the Nineteenth Century, has mentioned a plan for build- ing a cloister or chapel in immediate connection with the Abbey, and forming part of its buildingswhich many years ago, in a slightly different form, excited the warm interest of the late prince con- sort. He has suggested that part of a certain derelict fund of public money be applied to assist in the large expense which will be required for carrying out this design. If this sum be granted by the House of Commons, the rest can and will be raised by public subscriptions. It does not follow that the exact design suggested will be ultimately carried out. Other plans, and perhaps better ones, may be devised; but the great main question is whether there be in the English nation aided as we doubtless shall be by the splendid generosity of Amen-ca enough of magnanimity, of public spirit, of pride in and gratitude for Englands unequalled past, to consider the advantage of the generations yet unborn, and to see that Westminster Abbey should continue to be in the future what it has beta in the past. When the Athenians bade Pheidias to make his statue of Athena in the Parthe- non of ivory and gold, because those were the costliest materials, they showed the spirit of a great nation which says, Nil ~arvo aut hurnili modo. Is it too much to hope that, both in Parliament and elsewhere, all the meaner self-interest and niggardly economies of the present may be laid aside, and that the question how best to preserve and continue the rich historic associations of the Abbey for ages yet to come, may be approached in the large and generous spirit which shall prove us to be worthy inheritors of the memories which the great Abbey sets before us in so visible a form? From Blackwoods Magazine. IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUS- TOMS IN THE LAST CENTURY.* THE past exercises a certain fascination over the mind. We like to hear of those who lived in the days when we were not; their customs interest us, and distance veils in part the discomforts they endured. A sketch, then, though necessarily brief and imperfect, of every-day life in lreland during the last century, may have a degree of novelty for readers already familiar through history, biography, and tradition with English customs at the same period. Irish life one hundred years ago, while marked by characteristic features, resem- bled in many particulars that of the Scotch, as depicted by their great novelist. Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards Mrs. Delany, who first visited the country in 1731, writes of the people: There is a heartiness among them that is more like Cornwall than any I have known, and great sociableness; but if one may judge of the contemporary Cornish from Baring Goulds Gave- rocks and John Herring, the Irish * The writer begs to acknowledge the kindness of Mrs. Morgan John OConnell, of Longfield, Co. Tip. perary, who supplied many interesting details of Clare, Cork, and Kerry costoms, and also gave permission to print extracts from MSS. in her possession. 28 IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS had the advantage on the score of refine- ment. This was probably owing to the constant communication kept up with France and Spain. Visitors to the capital describe it as having been a gay and charming city. In most ways it was superior to the Dublin of i888. Men of rank and wealth resided there, and kept up state consistent with their position; it had not yet sunk to the level of a provincial town; and we get glowing accounts of the Duke of Lein- sters stately dwelling in Kildare Street, and the decorations of Moira House, of Lord Charlemonts town house in Rutland Square, and his country place, Marino, at Clontarf; of Buck Whalleys residence in Stephens Green, and the Earl of Meaths mansion close by, all of which, and many others, have now been trans- formed into convents, colleges, hospitals, government offices, or other public insti- tutions. There were balls, dinners, recep- tions, masquerades, operas, and concerts in abundance. Arthur Young says: Dub- lin far exceeded my expectations. There is very good society there in a Parliamentary winter ; a great round of dinners, and parties, and balls, and sup- pers every night in the week, some of which are very elegant. Ridottos were held, to which the men subscribed two moidores apiece, and got in return two tickets to present to ladies of their acquaintance. There were also subscription concerts on the same plan, so that we are told the women were at no expense fortheir entertainment. One curious custom is mentioned namely, that on the 23d of October, the anniver- sary of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, open house was held at the Castle, and the nu- merous guests were sumptuously feasted. Dinner over, the doors were thrown open, and the crowd outside permitted to rush in, clear the dishes, and carry off the fragments. We read with interest of a visit paid to the Irish House of Commons by two ladies, thus recorded by one of them We rose at nine oclock, put on our genteel dishabille, and went to the Parliament House at eleven to hear an election determined. The parties were Brigadier Parker, the sitting member, and Mr. Ponsonby, the petitioner. Mr. Southwells interest was the first, and the last was Sir Richard Meades. . . . I believe we were the most impartial hearers among all the ladies that were there, though rather in- clined to Sir Richard Meades side. I was very well entertained. . . . Mr. Hamilton brought us up chicken and ham and tongue, and everything we could desire. At four oclock the Speaker adjourned the House till five. We then were conveyed by some gen- tlemen of our acquaintance into the Usher of the Black Rods room where we had a good fire, meat, tea, and bread-and-butter. When the House reassembled we resumed our seats, and stayed till eight. Dublin was, however, at no period a typically Irish city, and if we seek traces of customs now obsolete, we must collect the traditions of the west and south-west, for there old ways lingered longest, and isolation from the busy world of fashion and politics tended to concentrate the in- terest of women in particular on their household affairs. Life in these remote districts, if sometimes painfully exciting, was not lively as a rule; but the people were always gay and light-hearted, until the famine of 1848, which changed at once and forever the national character. A ride of fifteen miles or thereabouts to a neighbors house for dinner or a dance was quite an ordinary affair; every one was hospitable, and it was customary to set each day two or three extra places at table on the chance of stray guests. They not only treat us magnificently, writes Mrs. Pendarves from Mayo, but if we are to go to an inn, they constantly provide us with a basket crammed with good things. No people can be more hospitable or obliging, and there is not only great abundance, but great order and neatness. The roads are much better in Ireland than in England, mostly cause- ways, a little jumbling, but very safe. In all parts of which this last remark held good, the gentry kept handsome coaches or chariots, drawn by four or six horses, according to their rank and means; but in mountainous districts, where there were only rough bridle.paths, ladies rode on pillions behind a male relative or a groom, and continued the practice even when quite old women. It may be added, that until about seventy years ago horses were not clipped, while cobs were cropped that is, had their ears and tail docked, like terriers. Every lady, no matter how remote the place where she lived, wore at that period a silk gown when dressed for the day, it being an epoch when people kept things for best. In the morning, and when occupied in household duties, woollen was in winter the favorite wear, and in summer, linen, stamped in gay colors like chintz, and very durable. The manufacture has since been discontinued, but it might with advantage be revived. Hunting and dancing were the favorite amusements, together with the national IN THE LAST CENTURY. 29 game of hurling, a species of hockey. Great interest ~vas taken in matches be- tween opposing counties or baronies, and we even hear of games played in Paris by the Irish Jacobite exiles, wherein Munster was pitted against Leinster, and each side had its champion hurler. Nearly all the sons and daughters of the Irish Catholic gentry were educated abroad. They thus had engrafted on their Irish liveliness that stateliness and dignity characteristic of Continental society previous to the French Revolution. The difficulty was to get them safely away, to conceal their absence, and then to secure their return home. Jane OConor of Clonalis, greatgrand- mother to the present writer, was brought back from her Parisian convent by the Rev. Dr. Clifford, a priest of the Sorbonne, and great danger to both was involved in the journey. Dr. Cliffords clerical char- acter of course was concealed, and the girl, who rode behind him on a pillion through France and England, her maid similarly mounted on a grooms horse, doubtless passed for his daughter. All the upper classes spoke and wrote English. Irish was in general use for communicating with servants and tenants unacquainted with the Sassenach tongue. French or Spanish was naturally acquired by the upper classes while residing in the coun- try where one or other was spoken; and Latin was a language familiar even to Kerry and Galway peasants, as we learn from the popes Nuncio Rinuncini. All the best Irish families were poor at any rate, all who were purely Irish, as distinguished from Anglo-Irish; but they ~vere proud to a degree. They looked on most of their rich neighbors as 5arvenus, and received and exacted as much respect and homage as if still in possession of the estates that had fallen into other hands. My dear, said a Galway lady of the old school, speaking of a well-known no- bleman, you cannot say he is of ancient birth ; ~vhy, his ancestor only came to this country in the reign of Henry II. !a fair record, some dukes might think, who trace no higher than the seventeenth cen- tury. After the invasion of Ireland in 1172, five families the ONeills of Ulster, the OConors of Connaught, the OMelachlins of Meath, the MMorraghs of Leinster, and the OBriens of Thomond were granted a special charter allowing them the benefit of English laws, and were known as de quinque sanguinibus, or the five bloods. In the eighteenth century the descendants of the first and last named, Viscount ONeill and Lord Inchi- quin, bore English titles, but the repre- sentatives of the other three ~vere men of fallen fortunes. Arthur Young,* writing in 1779, says: At Clonells (Clonalis), near Castlerea, lives OConnor, the direct descendant of Roderick OConnor, who was king of Ireland six or seven hundred years ago. There is a monument of him in Roscommon Church, with his sceptre, etc. I was told as a certainty that this family ~vere here long before the coming of the Milesians. Their possessions, for- merly so great, are much reduced. The common people pay him the greatest respect, and send him presents of cattle, etc., upon various occasions. They regard him as the prince of a people involved in one common ruin. We are told of MDermot, known as the Prince of Coolavin, who belonged to one of the principal Connaught families, that his income in 1776 barely amounted to /Jtoo a year, yet he never suffered his children to sit down in his presence. Lady Morgan adds that his daughter-in-law alone ~vas permitted to eat at his table; even his wife was not accorded this privi- lege, as, though well-born, she was not of royal blood. When Lord Kingsborough, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. OHara, Mr. Sandford, and others, all men of position, came to see him, he only took notice of the two last-named, whom he thus addressed: OHara, you are welcome! Sandford, I am glad to see your mothers sun (his mother was an OBrien). As to the rest of ye, come in as ye can. One more illustration, and ~ve have done. A certain Mrs. D, a Roscommon woman, and a friend of the writers family, died some eighteen or twenty years ago, being then anextremely old woman, but retaining her memory, her sharp tongue, and her grand manner to the last. Of her it was related that in her youth, being a noted beauty and toast, she was complimented by being requested to open a county ball. On her way to the entertainment some delay oc- curred through her carriage breaking down, and on arriving she found to her mortification that, having waited for her in vain, the stewards had called on a rival belle to lead off the first dance. * While accurate on the whole, Arthur Young, from not knowing Irish history, falls into two or three errors. The OConors are descended from Thorlough OConor, Rodericks father, through his second son, Ca~hal crovdearg, or Charles of the Red Hand. Roderick is hur;ed at Cong in County Gaiway. The monument in Roecommon Abbey is that of Felim OConor, the son of Cathat Crovdearg, who died in 1265, and was buried in the Dominican monastery he had founded ten years befo,e. 30 IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS The indignant fair one was equal to the emergency. She promptly desired the attendants, who dared not disobey, to place benches across the assembly room, so as to cut off the party dancing at the upper end, and sent a peremptory order to the musicians to cease playing until she gave a signal. Then taking up her position with her friends outside the bar. ncr she had created, she announced: Ladies and gentlemen, the ball will now begin; and you will please remember that wherever Mrs. D of C stands, is the head of/he room! At all times the Irish carefully traced and preserved their pedigrees, the Ollams, or Seanchaidhe, being especially devoted to genealogy before the advent of the Normans. Yet while haughtiness of man- ner and family pride were characteristic of the eighteenth century, these people were kindly, warm-hearted, sympathetic to their equals and to those admittedly their inferiors. The consciousness of having, through no fault of theirs, lost land, money, and position, occasioned and excused many outbursts of self-assertion, that un- der happier circumstances would have been unpardonable. We have said that women found their chief interest and occupation in household affairs. They attended to many details now delegated to servants, and frequently, like the gentlewomen of the Middle Ages, led a secluded life spinning or embroider- ing with their maids. Numerous atten- dants ~were de rigueur at the period of which we write~ Wages were low, and food was plentiful, so the kitchens of country-houses were filled with troops of sturdy, red-armed, bare-footed lasses, who carried home peat, the sole fuel, drew ~vater in pitchers from the well, ground corn in a stone quern as Eastern women still do, milked the cows and helped about the dairy in summer; prepared flax, cleaned and scutched it, and spun it into thread during the long winter evenings, by the glare of a bog-wood torch or the feebler light of rush candles. Bad to have many horses without ploughing to do; Bad to have many maidens without spinning to do, says a Kerry proverb. Rough lads were always to be found hanging about the stable-yard, ready to run errands or lead round a visitors horse. Besides these irregulars, there was a staff of upper servants who waited at table, cooked, washed, did fine sewing, and all the lighter work of the establishment. The men were provided with livery; the women were neatly dressed, and wore shoes and stockings. Families of any position kept a butler; each lady had her own maid, each gentleman his man, these being, as a rule, foster-sister and foster. brother to those they served. The ties of fosterage were considered in Ireland to be as sacred as those of blood; and as all children of the better classes were given out to nurse, they had a number of quasi relations amongst their tenants and de- pendants. We frequently hear of one fos- ter-brother giving his life for another, and of a young man of family joining the Irish brigade in France, or Spain, or Austria, ac- companied by the son of his peasant fos- terer, who would fight as a private in the regiment his master commanded, and die if need be at his side. In the romantic family traditions common in Ireland, when a beautiful girl falls in love with one who differs from her in rank, creed, or politics, a foster-sister is almost invariably reported to have been her messenger and confidant. A well-known character in Irish coun- try-houses was the old sportsman or keeper, who could do a little of every- thing; who knew the bend of the river where salmon rose freely or trout lurked behind stones, the coppice where a litter of foxes was hidden, the corner of the plantation nearest the oat-field beloved by the pheasants ; who was an authority on bait, traps, and snares, and whose princi- pal duty was to keep his masters table supplied with game and fish. The cost of living was less than in En- gland at the same period. We hear of a wife, three children, a nurse, three maids, three men, a good table, a carriage and four horses, being kept for 5oo a year. Servants in the last century were not highly paid. Fifteen shillings to a pound a year was all the rougher domestics re- ceived, in addition to food and clothing. A footman earned from four to six guineas per annum; a professed woman-cook might be had for six guineas, a good housemaid for three pounds, a kitchen- maid for two pounds or less; and a but- ler, the best paid of all, was happy with from ten to twelve pounds a year. Their food was plain but abundant. For break- fast they had porridge or brick bread and milk. Brick bread consisted of whole meal coarsely ground and made into flat round cakes, baked on a griddle over peat embers; it probably derived its name from the Irish word brack, speckled. For din- ner there was salt meat and vegetables, IN THE LAST CENTURY. 3 eggs, and occasionally fish, with abundance of potatoes, accompanied by piggins or noggins of butter-milk or cider. Piggins and noggins, it maybe explained, are beechen drinking-vessels with a han- dle, resembling miniature milking-pails. Deif was little used, the servants eating off pewter. Arthur OLeary, the outlaw, was proscribed by the government for refusing to sell his priceless mare for 5~ as was then the law for Catholics. He stood a siege, and resisted stoutly, aided by his beautiful wife, Dark Eileen OCon- nell. She had married him in opposition to her family, and clung to him with un- swerving devotion through all the vicissi- tudes of his checkered career. She loaded his guns as he fired, and when ammuni- tion ran short, had the servants pewter plates and dishes melted down and cast into bullets, while her linen was torn up for gun-wads. Her husband was after- wards shot by soldiers, May 14, 1773, and she wrote in Irish a highly poetical cczoin ~pronounced keen), or funeral chant, which is still in existence. In this she tells of her happy home, her wedding, the feast on her home-coming, her peaceful, luxuri- ous life, their many friends, the gay hunt- ing-parties, and contrasts past joys with present woe. She describes the murder, how the riderless mare came home, how she sprang on its back and rode to find the corpse her horror at the sight; and she ends by fiercely vowing ven- geance on Morris, the instigator of the crime. Truly, from some aspects, one hundred years ago seems very far off; and it is difficult to believe that Dark Eileen, with her outlawed lover and her wild death-song, was aunt to a personage as prosaic and modern as Daniel OCon- nell. There was infinitely less difference between manners and customs in the reign of Elizabeth and those in the reign of George III., than between the times of George III. and the days of Queen Victoria. To return to our domestic details. Sal- mon was so abundant in some places that it was not unusual for servants entering a new situation to stipulate that they should not be required to eat it oftener than three days in the week. Similar agreements~ we are told, used to be made between masters and servants in the districts wa- tered by the Scottish salmon rivers, down to the beginning of the present century. Every mansion had an orchard and a cider- house attached, with press and various utensils complete, so that no one entered the servants hall and retired with thirst unquenched. As tea cost from fifteen to twenty shillings a pound, it was a luxury never bestowed on domestics, unless by way of a special favor, or in case of ill- ness, its medicinal value being rated highly, but the butler or ladys-maid some- times secured a little after the family meals. In the breakfast-room two tables were laid every morning. At one the mis- tress of the house presided ; it was sup- plied with tea, coffee, and sometimes chocolate. Mrs. Delany speaks of tea, coffee, toast-and-butter, caudle, etc. There was abundance of home-made bread, white and brown, soda-cakes, slim-cakes, and other delicacies familiar to Irishmen cream, fresh butter, honey, preserves, and fruit. At the other table, intended for the men of the family, appeared sub- stantial joints of cold beef and mutton, ham, cold fowl, game pies, and fish, with potatoes, washed .down by claret, cider, and strong ale in abundance. The ladies seldom partook of this substantial fare ex- cept on a hunting morning; and it was cus- tomary for the men, having satisfied their appetites, to draw near their hostess and take a cup of tea from her hands. It must be remembered that in those days lunch as a meal was not known; even at a compara- tively late period it was looked on as an effeminate institution, nor is it to this day as much favored in Ireland by gentlemen as in England. In the last century only two meals a day were eaten by many men, or three at the most, the third being a nine-oclock supper; and though their wives and daughters sipped tea in the interval, the lords of creation disdained the beverage. Dinner was generally served at four P.M. It was abundant to profusion. The wines were excellent, being the choicest produce of French and Spanish vineyards, whose quality was remarked by almost all visitors to Ireland; and the potations were, as at the same period in England, long and deep. Costly silver, handsome glass and china, and the finest linen, ap- peared in all the better-class houses. A characteristic feature was the potato- ring. This was of silver, richly chased, and was used to support the great bowl in which potatoes were then brought to table. The sequence of the courses differed widely from that now general. Soups came in the third or fourth place; fish, flesh, and sweets jostled each other; while potted meats and cold pasties were not unfrequent items on the bill of fare. For more accurate knowledge of what our ancestors ate at their principal meal, we 32 IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS are indebted to a chronicler of the time. In 1747 she sends the following menu of a dinner to her sister; the quaint spelling is retained: First Course. Fish, beef-steaks, rabbit and onions, fillet of veal, blamange, cherries, Dutch cheese. Second Course. Turkey, pout (poult ?), salmon, pickled salmon, grilde (grilse ?), and quaills, little terrene peas, cream, mushrooms terrene, appie-pyc, crabs, leveret, cheese- cakes, almond cream, currants and gooseber- ries, orange butter. Dessert. Raspberries and cream, sweet- meats and jelly, strawberries and cream. She adds: I give as little hot meat as possible. The invitation was to beef-stakes, which we are famous for. A less elaborate meal is thus recorded: First Course. Turkeys endove (?), boyled neck of mutton, greens, etc., soup, plum- pudding, roast loin of veal, venison pasty. Second Course. Partridge, sweetbread, collared pig, creamed apple-tart, crabs, fricas- see of eggs, pigeons. No dessert to be had. On the 6th of October, 1764, at a dinner given to eleven persons in honor of a mar- riage, this was the bill of fare : Turbot and soles, remove ham, forcemeat, etc., 2 partridges and 2 grouse, rabbits and onions [apparently a favorite dish], sweet- breads and crumbs, salmigundi, soup, boyled chicken, collop veal and olives, pease, cream- pudding, plumb crocant, chine of mutton, turkey in jelly, hare, lobster fricassee. Dessert. Nine things, six of them fruit out of our own garden, and plate of fine alpine strawberries. As the writer was a woman who mixed in the best society from her childhood, and as her husband, if not rich, was coin- fortably off, her dinners may be taken as fair specimens of their class. Supper dif- fered from dinner only in the number of dishes being fewer. A novel mode of cooking was popular in Mayo. It consisted in roasting a sheep whole in its skin, and was called swilled mouton. This is the hogg in hairst, as it was styled north of the Tay. We are assured by those who tasted it that it was excellent so good, indeed that noth- ing else was eaten when it was to be had. While all the necessaries of life were cheap and abundant, the gentry of the west and south-west coasts depended for rum, claret, Spanish wines, snuff, silk stockings, cambric, French shoes and gloves, laces, dried fruit, and other luxu ries, on the smugglers who abounded at the time. None amongst them thought smuggling wrong. The government for- bade it, of course; but then it forbade many things which they knew were not sinful, and moreover, being Jacobites to a man, they did not acknotvledge its author- ity. Protestants condoned the practice for the sake of the good things they gained thereby; and even some magis- trates, it was whispered, were not averse to finding mysterious casks of rum, or rolls of silk, laid at their door during the night. If they suspected the donors, they were prudent men, who held their peace on the subject, and were discreetly blind to the comings and goings of strange craft. The Catholics, apart from profit, were thrown, by circumstances and the penal laws, into the arms of the contra- band traders, who, when no ordinary sea- men would take the risk, conveyed their sons and daughters to the Continent for education; who brought tidings from ex- iled friends and relatives at the courts of St. Germains, Vienna, or Madrid; and who perilled their lives many a time and oft to secure spiritual ministrations to their patrons, by landing disguised priests on their shores. They were brave fellows those smugglers, and kindly despite their calling. ln country places, remote from shops, all ordinary domestic requisites were made at home. Most Irish gentlewomen, even poetesses like Eileen Dhuv, were notable housekeepers; with the valiant woman of the Scriptures, they sought wool and flax, and wrought by the counsel of their hands. Go to your spinners was, one hundred years ago, a form of rebuke from a husband to a wife, when the latter showed a disposition to meddle in matters outside her province. The heroine of the old ballad says, Ill sell my rock, Ill sell my reel, Ill sell my only spinning-wheel, To buy my love a sword of steel; and devotion could go no further. English ladies at the same period had not abandoned the spinning-wheel. Mrs. I)elany, and her mother Mrs. Granville, were noted spinners. The former had the honor of giving a lesson in the art to Queen Charlotte, and we hear the pupil succeeded tolerably well fi~r a queen. Many Irish families possess to this day fine linen woven from thread spun by a great-great-grandmother. Weavers lived in every village who were glad to earn a few shillings in the week by working for IN THE LAST CENTURY. families around. The web was made in different qualities, according to the pur- pose for which it was intended; one almost as coarse as canvas was for ser- vants sheets and shirts, or linen to be given to the poor; another somewhat finer, such as Mrs. Ernest Hart now em- ploys for embroidering on, was intended for the upper servants; the very finest was for family use. A kind of diaper ~vas also made with a diamond pattern, for towelling, very strong and durable, and tablecloths of various lengths and degrees of fineness. One of the patterns, having a raised double cross-bar, was known as farmers fancy, and is still made in Glare and Kerry. It seemed hardly pos- sible to wear out these home-made linens. Wool, too, was spun at home, and made into frieze, flannel, blankets, and coarse stuff for maidservants gowns and pet- ticoats. The blankets were much too heavy for use, according to modern no- tions, but our ancestors associated weight with heat, and bore the load uncomplain- ingly. They were woven in the favorite double-diamond or herring-bone patterns, and were almost everlasting in wear. Counterpanes for servants use were made of dull green or russet flannel, stuffed with the dhags or dhaggauns that is, the short coarse woA off the sheeps legs, with the trimmings of the fleeces, and quilted on a frame. Similar articles are still to be seen in many Connaught cot- tages. The wife of the shepherd always claimed, as her perquisite, such tufts of wool as were found attached to briers, and many a comfortable pair of socks her husband gained thereby. Angry farmers often accused the women of deliberately driving sheep through hedges to secure a more abundant supply of their fleecy cov- ering. To make grey frieze, a certain proportion of black sheeps wool was, and still is, taken; a small quantity of undyed wool; the same of wool colored with in- digo; and the rest, having first been boiled in a decoction of the young shoots and leaves of the alder, was dyed with dkuv, a sticky resinous black stuff, most likely a vegetable product, found in small quan- tities in certain bog-holes. A great feature of Kerry life in the last century was the annual slaughtering of the cattle. Stall-feeding was unknown, and at that period very few grew turnips or mangels; consequently, in the Novem- ber of each year, all the superfluous stock was sacrificed and pickled for winter use. This was the Anglo-Saxon custom, from which November derived its name of LIVING AGE. VOL. LXIV. 3331 33 Slagtmaand, or the month of slaughter. An old lady still living in County Limerick remembers the last survival of the usage, the killing of a cow each Christmas for distribution amongst the poor. One can fancy how busy all good housekeepers must have been, having personally to su- perintend the scouring and scalding of pickle-vats, and the making of strong brine to fill them anew. Salt meat, in quantities sufficient to last until summer, no matter what demands were made on the masters hospitality, was laid by, and formed during the cold season the ~i?ce de resistance at the family board, supplemented by fresh fish, fowl, and game. The hides were salted and laid aside for a time, then thrown into tan-pits filled with water and oak-bark. When dressed, they were made into the brogues formerly worn by the peasantry. Though the word is now used to designate a clumsy, hobnailed boot, the original Irish brogue was a kind of moccasin of soft skin, doubled or trebled for the sole, and laced with thongs of hide or sinew half- way to the knee. The skin of a little Kerry sufficed to make two pairs. Italian conzadini still wear a somewhat similar foot-covering, but made with the hair on. A home industry arising from this prodigious storing of provisions was the manufacture of rushlights or dips for the servants use. While wax candles illu- mined the dining-room, the drawing-rooms, and the bed-chambers, these others were alone employed in the kitchen. All the superfluous fat was set aside to make them at the time of the annual slaughter; but if the supply ran short, it was readily augmented by the contents of the drip- ping-pan, which no mistress at that pe- riod dreamt of considering as her cooks perquisite. On this point modern mis- tresses might, with advantage, imitate their great- grandmothers, who knew that granting perquisites encouraged dishon- esty. Amongst the kitchen utensils the greasehood (pr. grisset) held a promi- nent place this being a long, shallow iron vessel, resembling an exaggerated ladle, used for melting the tallow. Old- fashioned pairs of tongs may yet be seen which were used in conjunction with it. These had in the centre of each plate a groove through which the liquid grease ran into the pan beneath, when, as wa~ sometimes customary, they were heated red-hot, and used to squeeze pieces of fat. This was considered wasteful and extrav- agant, and was adopted only by the care- less, who had neglected to store their 34 IRISH HOUSEKEEPING AND IRISH CUSTOMS rushlights in time, and so were compelled of the ODonoghues of the Glens), was a to make some hurriedly for immediate sufficiently remarkable woman. She was use. In summer, the very old and the at once a notable housekeeper, the mother very young, with other feeble persons, of twenty-two children (one of them the were employed in cutting rushes, the best father of Daniel OConnell), and a poetess kind for candle-making being the common who composed a farewell to sons and soft 7uncus conglornera/us. These grow nephews going to France. The themes best by river-banks and in marshy pastures. that inspired Irish verse at the period The longest and plumpest were selected, were chiefly sad, and the wrench of parting and deprived of the outer green covering, drew forth many a lament, of which not a process facilitated by first steeping them the least pathetic is the old peasant in water. One very narrow strip alone song was left from top to bottom as a support Tis my grief that Patrick Louglilin is not for the pith, or two if the dip was intended earl in Irrul still; for a night light, when it burned slowly And that Bryan Dhu no longer rules as lord and with a feeble flame. After being upon the hill; pealed, the rushes were bleached on the And that Colonel Hugh OGrady is lying grass, and then dried in the sun. Six stark and low, pounds of grease were allowed to a pound And I sailing, swiftly sailing, from the count of rushes; these last required to cool of Mayo. between each immersion in the boiling Though Mor-ni-Dhuv spoke and wrote fat, and were dipped again and again until English habitually, she could order dinner of sufficient size. Where bees were kept, in improvised Irish verse; and a rhymed a small quantity of wax was added to the dispute about a farm, in the form of a tallow, the candles acquiring greater con- dialogue between her and the tenant, still sistency thereby, but mutton fat was con- exists. Some of her belongings are still sidered to answer the same purpose. The to be seen at Darrynane,amongst the rushlights thus formed burned from half rest, an immense silver spoon with a long an hour to forty minutes on an average, handle (used after one hundred and fifty A curiously shaped candlestick was used years of service for skimming preserves), to hold the.m, and similar ones are still two huge christening.bowls of rarely beau- employed for the purpose by some of the tiful china, a dessert-service, blue china Connaught peasants. Machine-made can- baskets with open-work edges for fruit, dles, however, are now so cheap, and par- and plates to match; a collection of queer affine oil is in such general use, that only teapots and old porcelain; and a mirror in the remotest districts does one see a with a very thick bevelled plate and a home-made rushlight. deep rococco gilt frame, smuggled from A County Tipperary lady, living until France. Through her good friends the quite recently, remembered making harts- smugglers, the old chieftainess got over horn jelly from the horns of her fathers every year a piece of cambric, a length of deer in days when prepared isinglass and black silk, French shoes, and silk stock- gelatine were unknown, except by name, ings. Her eldest son, John OConnell, in country parts of Ireland. The horns who died early, married a Miss Faley of were cleaned, scraped, and boiled down Faha, near Killarney, and lived his brief for the purpose. life with his bride in the house of his It will be seen that women, who were father and mother. For their exclusive expected to overlook these wonderful use they had her maid, his man, and a processes, not to mention the making of boy, whose duties are not specified pickles, preserves, and home-made wines, possibly a last-century buttons. These led no idle life, as each season brought its they clothed; but they seem to have paid round of household duties. them very low wages, since in an account- When a girl of good family married, book belonging to the young husband, and immense droves of cattle formed her dated 1749, we find the following entry: dowry, either with or without a sum of One quarters wages to Bridget Sulivane, money down. An old steward living in 8s. 5d. From the same book it appears 1820 remembered the herds of black that Bridget got cloaks and dresses, but K~erry cows that had formed the portion of the cost of these items cannot be ascer- a Miss OConnell of Darrynane, seventy tamed, since they are included in the bulk years before. This lady was sister to the sum of a paid bill. The man, Martin beautiful Eileen OLeary; and her mother, Geran, got linen, serge, cloth, and livery, Mor.ni-Dhuv, or Dark Mary (of the buttons, also shoes, knee and shoe-buckles, ODonoghues Dhuv a younger branch etc. The boy was likewise supplied IN THE LAST CENTURY. 35 with serge-cloth, bandle-cloth, that is, homespun flannel, sold by the bandle, or length of the extended arms, combs, gaiters, shoes, and ink. The curious item occurs, Thirteen pence to Jasper Lisk, for one years schooling of my boy. The lad was apprenticed for seven years, and the portion of his indentures that had not expired at the time of his young masters death was left by will to his mistress, ~vho survived her husband. A great variety of gloves, shoes, and boots are debited in John OConnells account-book. The long silk stockings worn by gentlemen when in full dress are set down as costing fifteen ~hillings a pair. Fine linen for shirts came to three shillings and threepence; cambric for the ruffles, imported from France, to eight shillings and sixpence. At the same period, in Kerry, a two-year- old heifer cost only one pound five shil- lings. Everything of the kind being provided for the young couple, there are naturally but few entries relating to pro- visions, except on one notable occasion. A son was born in due time to Mr. and Mrs. John OConnell, and the father ap- pears to have paid the incidental expenses. We find these entries For a christening suit . . . ii 8 Cambric, linen and lawn (babys out fit) 3198 On the izth of January, ~ occurs the following, which gives a good idea of the fees usual on such occasions in the last century To cash to Mrs. Carr (the nurse?) . . . I guinea To Dr. Cronin . - . . 1~ a guinea To a pint of Cinnamon water for my wife . - - 2 shillings A pint of Hungary water for my wife is also entered. Brown sugar, white wine, almonds, barley, nutmegs, oranges, and candied fruit appear as ingredients re- quired for making caudle - On the same occasion the young husband bought twen- ty-nine pounds of beef at 4d., the pound, and a side of lamb at iid., doubtless for the christening feast. The maternal grandparents sent four guineas to buy silver spoons, and the paternal grand- parents presented thirteen guineas for the benefit of the infant, while the father of the child sent a present of rum and salt fish to his father-in-law. Another book from which the writer has been permitted to make extracts belonged to Mrs. Coppinger, of Barrys Court, in Cork. She had been a Miss MMahon, of Clare, and brought with her, as maid to her new home, on her marriage in 1777. her foster-sister, Nellie Buckley. When Nellie married, she was put in posses- sion of a farm with a neat slated house thereon, quite an aristocratic dwelling amongst the thatched cottages round, such a reward for faithful service being not uncommon at the time. The tie be- tween the descendants of mistress and maid has not been broken. The son of Mrs. Morgan John OConnell, and a Mrs. ONeil, one of his tenants, are respectively the great-grandchildren of Jane MMahon and her foster-sister. Mrs. Coppingers collection of house- hold receipts is interesting; some are medicinal, others culinary, and, judging by the antiquated spelling, not a few would appear to have been copied from some older book. The handwritings, too, differ, friends and relations having ap- parently contributed cherished formulas. When reading the ingredients of these supposed remedies, one is irresistibly re- minded of that paper in the The Specta- tor which attributes the unusually high death-rate of a certain village to the min- istrations of a charitable lady. Who, for instance, could survive this Cure for Fits, at any rate, if he knew of what it was composed ? Equal parts of pow- der of human skulls, red earth-worms, and wall-rue mixed! About the same period Mrs. Delany recommended to her sister two infallible receipts for ague. The first consisted in applying a pfaster of ground ginger and brandy spread on sheeps leather, which might or might not be efficacious; but what shall we say of the second ? A spider put into a goose-quill, well sealed and secured, and hung about the childs neck as low as the pit of his stomach! To return to Mrs. Coppinger. Many of the diseases and their supposed remedies are given in language unsuited to the more refined taste of our day. Besides specifics for rheumatism, jaundice, cancer, warts and corns, we find a diet-drink and sev- eral ointments. One of the items is called Lord Trimblestons Universal Plaster, purchased abroad by a member of the Butler-Esmonde family, to which Mrs. Coppingers mother belonged. A note says it ~vas brought from foreign parts, where the secret of its composition was secured for a hundred pistoles in gold, and a promise never to sell it, but to give it away for the relief of suffering. The book states that the receipt was at that time (x777) eighty years old. This plaster contained new bees-wax, burgundy 36 THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. pitch, black pitch, and the best fresh and cattle, and numerous feather-beds are dis- greenish Venice turpentine, boiled to- posed of, and his master is appointed sole gether, and rolled into sticks like sealing- executor. C. OCoNoR-ECCLES. wax. When required for use, a sufficient quantity was melted and spread upon linen. Lord Trimbleston studied medi- cine on the Continent, and on his return From The Nineteenth Century. home practised gratuitously. He is men- THE BEOTHTJKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. tioned by Mrs Delany as living in her BY LADY BLAKE. day. AmQngst the culinary receipts are one for beef-stock, two for curing beef; THERE are few of our colonies whose another, very old, for oyster pye; one name is better known, and about which for oyster soup, and one for making rasp- people are so ignorant, as the ancient and berry jam the two last signed by fair loyal colony of Newfoundland. In En- Frances Esmonde, daughter of Sir John gland, if pictured at all, it is usually Esmonde,* a relative of Mrs. Coppinger. thought of as a small rocky island, sitti- Most of the puddings, tarts, and cakes ated somewhere in the direction of the mentioned are familiar to us. Instructions arctic regions, incapable of producing any- for pickling samphire remind one of a thing but codfish, seals, and misunder- scene in The Gaverocks. There are standings with France, but with a certain two receipts for barm, and one each for interest as being the home of the magnifi- ginger beer, with real beer no temper- cent white and black dogs to whose race ance beverage currant wine, and rasp- Landseer gave world-wide renown in his berry wine, great picture of A Member of the Royal With regard to wills made by Irish gen- Humane Society. tlemen in the last century, one finds that In point of fact, the island is larger than the husband always left the wife her own Ireland; the greater portion is covered jewels, the family coach, and at least one with thick and almost impenetrable for- pair of horses, to be selected by her, if ests of spruce and pine trees, interspersed they lived in a level place; if in the moun- with birch, larch, and poplar. The forests taitjous districts, her riding-horse, pil- give way at intervals to open spaces, lion, and horse-furniture. Jointures in known locally as barrens. They are money were small as a rule, but the widow covered with a dense carpet of mosses, was allowed to select a considerable num- which, in places, attains a depth of from her of cows, some young horses, and a one to two feet. There is a great variety flock of sheep, as her own property, a of mosses, and some of them are of much portion of the demesne being allotted to beauty. Long trails of stags-horn moss her for pasturage. Sometimes there was strike the eye amongst the velvety greens a choice between a fixed jointure and hold- and deep olives, and the delicate grey and ing certain lands for life. Generally the intricate tracery of the reindeer lichen widow had the use for life of a certain give a pleasing contrast of color and amount of plate and furniture, as also of form. Besides mosses, the barrens are all the property, whether in cattle, money, rich in bilberries or hurts, partridge-her- or land, which she had brought as a dowry ries, swamp-berries, and berries of various to her husband. She and her eldest son other kinds in extraordinary abundance. were given in most cases almost despotic In summer, flowers are not wanting, and power over the younger children. Faith- the rose-colored kalmia and azaleas afford ful servants were not forgotten, and the a pleasing variety to the pervading sombre gift of land, either rent-free or at a nomi- tones of green and grey. nal sum, often rendered an aged domestic Innumerable lakes, or as they are called independent. In conclusion, we may cite in Newfoundland ponds, are thickly in proof of the kindly spirit existing be- dotted over the country, and though there tween classes, and of the comfortable is nothing that can be called a mountain sums amassed, despite the low wages cus- in the island (the highest elevation being tomary at the time, the will of Andrew only twenty-four hundred feet) there are Connell, butler to Maurice OConnell, hills from one of which no less than one uncle to the Liberator, wherein a farm, hundred and eighty lakes or ponds have * Sir John served as a captain of horse in Spain been counted. early in the eighteenth century. His portrait is in the Large rivers traverse the island in van- possession of his descendant, Sir Thomas Grattan Es- ous directions, hut none are navioable for b monde, M. P.. and that of his beautiful daughter be- stance, for craft larger than a canoe, longs to Mrs. OConnell of Longfield, Mrs. Coppinger any di having been her late husbands maternal grandmother. as they are broken by falls and rapids, and THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. 37 soon become shallow. The two principal rivers are the Humber, running westwards into Bay of Islands, and the Exploits, which falls into Notre-Dame Bay to the north east. As to its arctic position, the most north- ern point, Cape Bauld, is in the same lati- tude as Bristol the presence of seals, ~vhich visit the coast in vast numbers on the floating ice, being due, not to the close vicinity of polar seas, but to the fact of the great current that sweeps down floes and icebergs, which in spring keep the coast fast locked for weeks in their chilling embrace. Lastly, the typical spotted black and white dog is altogether a delusion, and if he were to make his appearance in New- foundland would be regarded as of very doubtful parentage. The so-called New- foundland dog cannot properly be re- gardedas a native of the island, as we are expressly told that the aborigines, unlike most Indians, did not possess any dogs. The breed prized in Newfoundland is coal black, with only a few white hairs on the chest. The theories as to the discovery of the island are contradictory. John Cabot is popularly believed to have been the first discoverer of Newfoundland. However, the Borgian map in the Vatican libra~ry, which the pope permitted to be copied for the Colonial Exhibition of the year before last, seems to settle the point that Labra- dor, and not Newfoundland, was the land- fall of Cabot. There is no doubt that Newfoundland was known to the North- men, who settled Greenland in the tenth century, and who about the same time ap- pear to have visited the coast of Labrador. The Icelandic sagas relatin~ to the doings of the Norsemen in Helluland, Markland, Vinland, and Greenland were by many authorities regarded as untrustworthy till the runic inscriptions discovered in Green- land, and brought to Copenhagen in 1831, not only vindicated the authenticity of the sagas, but even determined the sites of the settlements of Eric the Red and his successors. The claims that have been advanced for Newfoundland as the Vinland of the sagas are more difficult to settle, Rhode Island, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton all laying claim to the distinction, the two latter be- ing able to advance strong pretensions to being, one or other, the country where Lief, Biorn, and their thirty-five followers remained for a winter, and made them- selves happy with the abundance of fine salmon and good fish, and where, later on, Thorwald, Liefs brother, built a new ship, having damaged the old one, which they laid up on a promontory to which they gave the name of Kioller Ness, and where they fought with the Skroellingers, or dwarfs. Thorwald soon after died of a wound received in the skirmish with the Skroellingers, and, in viking fashion, was buried by his people on the same promon- tory to which they had previously con- signed their stout old ship. Two crosses were now erected on it by Thorwalds de- sire, and it received the name of Krossa Ness. If by any fortunate chance this ship be ever unearthed, like the celebrated vikings ship in Norway, the point in dis- pute as to the identity of Vinland will be satisfactorily set at rest. The pretensions of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, to being Vinland, rest chiefly on the fact that that country received the name from the abun- dance of its wild vines. A German named Tyrkoer, who was one of Liefs party, having been missed for a time, his companions went in search of him, and ultimately found him in the woods regaling himself with grapes, from which he told them in his country they used to make wine Grapes are said to grow wild in Rhode Island, but are not found in the countries which are rival claimants, but the hurts or whortleberries found in such profusion in Newfoundland grow in clus- ters or bunches, and are almost the size of the diminutive German grapes. It is conceivable that Tyrkoer pointed out to these dwellers in rugged Greenland that they now beheld fruit resembling the grapes of which he had often spoken. Lief tasted the berries, and thereupon called the country Winland dat Gode, that is, the good wine country; but we hear of no attempt being made by the party to manufacture wine there. It seems highly improbable that such men as the vikings should have passed large coun- tries abounding in deer, otter, beaver, and numerous animals valuable for food and fur, and have sailed on till they arrived at a small island which would never have offered so many attractions to men of their stamp as a residence for several years. Wherever Vinland was, the colony in- creased; but the people, probably influ- enced by the paganism of the surrounding Skroellingers or Innuits, relapsed into heathenism. In 1121 a certain Eric was appointed Bishop of Greenland, but in- stead of going straight there, he deter- mined on first visiting Vinland, from whence he never returned. About 1401 the ice increased around Greenland to 38 THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. such an extent that it is believed to have a wooden spit, also a boot, garnished on been the cause of all communication hay- the calf as it were with raw silk, also a ing been cut off between that country and great ~varm mitten. Europe. Master Hores people were driven to If the supposition be correct that Lab- sore straits for want of food. At one time rador ~vas the country discovered by they obtained a scanty supply from the Cabot, the first voyager of the more mod- nest of an osprey or eagle that hou:ly em times with ~vhose name we are ac- brought to her young great plenty of divers quainted, who visited Newfoundland, is sorts of fishes, which, however, must have the Portuguese Gaspar de Cortereal. In been short commons for a company of one 1500 he sailed into and named Conception hundred and twenty, amongst whom were Bay, and found that fishermen from Brit- several merchants of London, who, doubt- tany and the Basque provinces were less, were no less addicted in those days already availing themselves of the teem- to good living than at the present time. ing fisheries around the coast. Famine stared the miserable travellers in Of succeeding expeditions to Newfound- the face, so that they were fain to hunt on land there is no necessity to now take the mainland for herbs and roots, which notice in detail, as the present object is not being sufficient to satisfy the pangs of to trace, as far as possible, the history of hunger, one man was driven to the horn- the aborigines of the country. If we ex- ble expedient of killing one of his coni- cept the three natives brought by Cabot panions as he stooped to take up a root, to the court of Henry the Seventh, and afterwards cutting pieces from the body who, from the fact that it is stated that to broil and eat. The murdered man was when taken they did eat raw flesh, missed, but for some time his fate was not would appear to have been Skroellingers suspected. When the crime was discov- or Eskimo, the first description we have ered the captain made a notable oration, of the Indians of Newfoundland is from containing how much these dealings of- Jacques Cartier, who, in 1534, states that fended the Almighty. He exhorted them the natives were of indifferent good to repentance and besought all the com- stature and bigness, but wild and unruly. pany to pray that it might please God to They wear their hair tied on the top like look on their present miserable state; and a wreath of hay, and put a wooden pin in such was the mercy of God that the same it, or any other such thing instead of a night there arrived a French ship in that nail, and with them they bind certain port, well furnished with vittaile; and birds feathers. They are clothed with such was the policy of the English that beasts skins, as well the men as the they became masters of the same, and women; but the women go somewhat changing ships and vitaling them they set straighter and closer than the men do, sail for England; they saw many islands with their waists girded. of ice, and arrived at St. Ives in Cornwall In 1578 a disastrous expedition to New- the latter end of October. How the foundland was undertaken by Master French crew supported themselves after Hone and a party of one hundred and Master Hone and his company had an- twenty persons, whereof were thirty gen- nexed their ship and provisions, we are tlemen. They sailed in two ships, and not told. Probably there were fishermen after two months fell in with Cape among them who would fare sumptuously Breton, from whence they steered north- where cockneys and landsmen starved in east and reached Newfoundland. The the midst of plenty. Support themselves details we have of this expedition are they did, for in a few months time the from Master Richard Haklnyt of Oxford, Frenchmen arrived in England and made who, as he tells us, rode two hundred a complaint to Henry the Eighth, who miles to ascertain the circumstances con- hearing the great distress his subjects nected with the voyage, from the only man were in, and the necessity there was to do then alive who had participated in it as they did, paid the Frenchmen full nec- This man was Master Oliver Dawbeney, ompense of his own purse. who informed Hakluyt that after they had The next notice, with any details, that been at anchor some days, he (Dawbeney) we find of the natives of Newfoundland is saw a boat with savages, rowing towards in the time of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, them, to gaze upon the ship and our peo- on the ~th of August, 1583, landed in the pIe. They manned their ships boat in harbor of St. Johns, where lay several order to have taken them, but they fled to fishing vessels of other nations, and took an island in the bay and escaped our men. possession of Newfoundland in the name They found a fire and a side of a bear on of ueen Elizabeth. The royal arms cut THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. 39 in lead were affixed to a wooden pillar near the waters edge, and the flag of England was hoisted and unfurled, Sir Humphrey afterwards explaining to all foreigners not conversant with the English language the meaning of the l)roclamation. Two eye- witnesses of this ceremony, Captain Hayes of the Golden Hind and Captain Richard Whitbourne of Exmouth, have left descriptions of the aborigines as they found them. The latter had during a period of forty years made numerous voy- ages to Newfoundland, and from his chamber at the sign of the gilded cocke in Paternoster Row in London in 1622 wrote a discourse to prove how worthy and beneficiall a plantation may there be made. He says : The natural inhabitants of the country, as they are but few in number, so are they some- thing rude and savage people, having neither knowledge of God nor living under any kind of civil government. In their habits, customs, and manners they resemble the Indians of the continent, from whence (I suppose) they come. They live altogether in the north and west part of the country, which is seldom frequented by the English. But the French and Bis- canies (who resort thither yearly for the whale- fishing, and also for the cod-fish) report them to be an ingenious and tractable people (being -well used): they are ready to assist them with great labor and patience in the killing, cutting, and boiling of whales, and making of train oil, without expectation of other reward than a little bread or some such small hire. Further on the same writer says : It (Trinity Harbor) is near such a great bay lying on the north side of it, to which place no ships repair to fish, partly in regard of sundry rocks and ledges lying even with the water and full of danger, but chiefly (as I con- jecture) because the savage people of that country do there inhabit; many of them secretly every year come into Trinity Bay and harbor in the night-rime purposely to steal sails, lines, hatchets, hooks, knives, and such- like . . . which people, if they might be re- duced to the knowledge of the true Trinity indeed, no doubt but it would be a most sweet and acceptable sacrifice to God, an everlasting honor to your Majesty, and the heavenliest blessing to those poor creatures, who are buried in their own superstitious ignorance. The task thereof would prove easy, if it were but well begun and constantly seconded by industrious spirits, and no doubt but God Himself would set his hand to rear up and advance so noble, so pious, and so Christian a building. . . . If, therefore, near the harbor of Trinity it were inhabited by some of your Majestys subjects, I see no reason to the con- trary but ihat a speedy and more certain knowledge might be had of the country, by reason those savage people are so near, who, being politely and gently handled, much good might be wrought upon them, for I have had apparent proofs of their ingenuous and subtile dispositions, and that they are a people full of quick and lively apprehension. I have quoted at length from Whit- bourne as his testimony is valuable as showing the apparently tractable and doc- ile disposition of the native Indians previ- ous to intercourse with the British. Later on we shall see how the pious work of redeeming them from barbarism was effected. Captain Hayes bears similar evidence as to the natives; he says, The savages are altogether harmless. John Guy, afterward mayor of Bristol in i6io, established a plantation or colony at Cupids Cove in Conception Bay. One of the patentees of Guys grant was the famous Sir Francis Bacon. Guy met with the natives, whom he found friendly and with whom he established a trade in furs. For two years he persevered in the attempt to colonize, when scurvy the scourge of many of the early attempts at colonizing broke out, and several of his company died, which induced Guy to abandon his purpose and return to En- gland, only a few individuals, who thought they might make some profit by contin- uing there, remaining in the country. Well would it have been for the un- happy natives if men like John Guy and Whitbourne had established permanent hold on the country, but before long the short-sighted policy that too often rules in England induced the British government to discourage and even to forbid coloniza- tion in Newfoundland. Prompted by a handful of interested merchants, England endeavored to keep the island as a mere fishing station, which she believed would prove a nursery for her navy. In spite, however, of stringent rules to that effect, it proved impossible altogether to prevent settlers from establishing themselves on so large an island, but instead of the ad- vent of respectable and energetic colo- nists, it became a sanctuary for men that broke in England. Deserters from the navy, refugees from Ireland, reckless and unruly characters of all kinds who dared not return to their own country, sought an asylum in Newfoundland. There was no government; every man could do what seemed good in his own eyes, provided it did not interfere with the fishery regula- tions laid down by the fishing admiral, as the master of the first fishing vessel from England, Wales, or Berwick that 40 THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. entered a harbor on the opening of the fish- ing season was termed. The English statute-book was then disgraced by the sanguinary code which decreed that a mans life paid the penalty of the theft of a sheep, or the stealing of a cow; and no doubt to rough and ignorant men, as were for the most part these skippers of fish- ing vessels, it appeared simple justice, while invested with the brief authority of a fishing season, to punish petty larceny on the part of the natives with death. We know that the Red Indians, hitherto only acquainted with implements of stone or bone, did not resist the temptation of oc- casionally purloining such inestimable treasures as a steel knife, or iron hatchet and fishhooks. Probably if any trifling article were missed, the first Indian seen was shot in revenge. After a time it became the habit on the part of the fisher- men to shoot an Indian whenever they got a chance. Cupidity added to the zest for shooting Indians, as they often wore rich furs, and the French and English furriers deliberately shot the natives to ob- tain possession of their deer and fox-skin robes. Not many years ago persons were still living on the north-western coast who had been in the habit of boasting of the number of head~ of Indians they had killed, the record of such murders being scored on their gun-stocks. The Newfoundland Indians were distin- guished as Red Indians from their habit of daubing their garments, canoes, weap- ons, and all their possessions with red ochre mixed with grease. Whether this custom had any religious significance, as with the Maoris of New Zealand, who regard red as a sacred color; whether it was merely a traditional custom, or whether it arose from the habit of using a coating of ochre and grease on their skins to protect them from the attacks of mosquitos and black flies which swarm in countless myriads in woods and wilds during the summer, it is impossible to say. Beothukis believed to be the name by which these Indians distinguished their nation; it is said to be the generic expres- sion for Indian, equivalent to our men. So the Apaches, Dakotahs (Sioux) and many other Indian tribes, are all names signifying the people. The Eskimo call themselves Innuits, ~vhich has a sim- ilar meaning, Eskimo being derived from Ashkimai, i.e., eaters of raw flesh, a term applied to them in contempt by the Cree and Sauteaux Indians. It seems probable that the Beothuks were never a numerous race; but, apart from the sadness of their fate, they were a peculiarly interesting race; their origin is wrapped in mystery, and the scanty vocabulary of their language which alone has been rescued from oblivion is said to show little or no affinity to the great Al- gonquin tongue, dialects of which were spoken over the greater portion of the north-west of America. The distinguished American ethnologist, Mr. A. Gatschet, has made a careful study of the remnants of the Beothuk language, and has come to the conclusion that it belongs to a sepa- rate linguistic family, clearly distinct from Innuit, Tinn~, Iroquois, and Algonkin. The study of the manners, customs, and language of isolated tribes, on an island. like Newfoundland, is of great interest and importance to the ethnologist, when it. is found that such a people differ substan- tially in these respects from the nations. on the neighboring continent, it being a. received axiom that, in general, islands derive their aboriginal population from the nearest mainland. Whence, then, came the I3eothuks to Newfoundland? Some authors have asserted that they are descended from the Northmen about whom we have already spoken. If New- foundland be really identical with Vinland, it would not be impossible that some of the company of Thorfin and Gudrid his wife, numbering about seventy men and women, who settled in Vinland, and estab- lished a trade with the Skroellingers after the death of Thorwald, may have inter- married with Skroellingers and Indians,. and that some of the old viking blood ran in the veins of the Beothuk tribe. Sir William Dawson, F.R.S., informs. us, in his interesting work on Fossil. Men, that the Mic-macs of Nova Scotia have traditions of a primitive people whom their ancestors had driven from Nova Scotia into Cape Breton, and pursued into Newfoundland across the comparatively narrow sea separating the two islands. In 1768 Mr. John Cartwright made an expedition into the interior of Newfound- land. He had been told by a Red Indian boy, named June, that a people called by the boy Canadians possessed the west- ern shores of the great lake, over sixty miles lono which is now known as Red Indian Lake. On the eastern shores of this lake a great part of the Beothuk tribe had their headquarters. June also said that his people held no intercourse with the Canadians, and that they saw no signs of each other during whole winters.. Cartwright did not explore the western. THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. shores of the lake, so that we know noth- ing as to the tribe to which these Cana- dians belonged. So entirely ignorant were the white inhabitants of the coasts of the interior of the island, that possibly the Mic-macs had effected a permanent set- tlement in the country long before their presence was suspected. It seems singular that so little was then known of an island that had nominally been a British possession for a couple of centuries. However, after the lapse of more than another hundred years the coasts alone have been thoroughly ex- plored. One or two enterprising travel- lers have indeed visited the great lakes and rivers, but except to them and a few hunters and trappers, the interior remains as much as ever terra incognita. No Beothuk has been seen alive since 1828, but it is just possible that a few individ- uals of the persecuted tribe may still drag on a life of concealment and misery in the great trackless forests, or hiding like wild beasts amid the unknown rocks and bar- rens of the northern portion of the island, of which, till the coming of the white men, they had been the free and happy owners. The more probable supposition, however, is, that if any remnant of the race escaped the barbarity of trappers and fishermen, it retreated across the straits of Belle Isle to seek a refucre in the vast interior of Labrador. Sir Richard Bonnycastle mentions be- ing, in 1831, in the Bay of the Seven Islands in Labrador, when the inhabitants were greatly alarmed by the sudden ap- pearance amongst them of a fierce-looking people of whom they had neither knowl- edge nor tradition, and who were different from the Montagnais with whom they sometimes traded. Professor Jukes, when residing in Newfoundland, was told of a body of strange men in red-deer skins having been seen on the Labrador coast. James Howlty, Esq., F.G.S., geological surveyor to the Newfoundland govern- ment, whose unwearyi ng researches have brought to light and preserved many val- uable Beothuk remains that otherwise would have perished, and whose authority on all matters relating to theories and facts concerning the island and its aborigi- nes is of great value, is of opinion, that if any representatives of the people remain, they must have migrated to the coast op- posite the Belle Isle Straits. The Beothuks, it is said, were on friendly terms with a tribe of Indians from Labrador. whom they named Shau- namuncs. These people were not Eski 4 mo, whom the Beothuks, like most other Indians, hated, and despised on account of their filth)- habits. The Shaunamuncs, like the Beothuks, dressed in deerskins, but did not redden them with ochre. Most probably they were Nasquapee or Montagnais Indians, both of which tribes still inhabit Labrador. With this friendly tribe some kind of trade was carried on, and they are said to have mutually visited each others coun- tries in former days. The stone hatchets and celts used by the Beothuks are sup- posed to have been supplied by the Shau- namuncs. The art of making stone im- plements was very generally known and practised amongst Indian tribes, though some were much more skilful than others in the manufacture. To shape and polish a celt or arrow out of stone, to people un- acquainted with metals, was a tedious and lengthy process; to perfect a fine hatchet or tomahawk was sometimes the work of a lifetime. The art was not universal, some tribes being especially famous for the skill of their arrow and hatchet mak- ers. The productions of these skilled ar- tificers were eagerly sought by warriors and hunters of other nations, and traders of stone ~veapons seem to have been priv- ileged persons, often permitted to journey from tribe to tribe unmolested. This fact accounts for green-stone and flint celts, etc., being found in far distant countries, where no such stone as that of which they are made is to be found. Such was not the case with the Beothuks; they had plenty of material, but their skill may not have been so great as that of the Shau- namuncs. That they manufactured stea- tite or soapstone utensils for themselves is certain, as the quarry may still be seen whence they obtained it, some of the half- cut vessels being in statu quo. The soap- stone pots, however, were a rough manu- facture and the material soft and easily worked. After Europeans began to settle in Newfoundland the intercourse between the Shaunamuncs and the Red Indians must have become more and more difficult to maintain, and as the latter were now able to purloin the metal axes and knives of the invaders, it would be of less imnpor- tance to them to maintain a trade for stone ones. As their white enemies gained a greater extent of the coast, the Beothuks were hemmed more and more into the in- terior, till at length their position became one of complete isolation. We are wont to shudder over the bar- barities inflicted on the Indians by their THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. 42 Spanish conquerors, and to deplore the cruelty with which the native races are still too frequently treated by our American cousins; but no Spanish freebooter or Yankee could show more utter disregard for the life of an Indian than did British- ers in Newfoundland. Cartwright says : The Red Indians have no intercourse with Europeans, except an hostile one, which there is great reason to think is founded on their part upon a just, and to an uncivilized people, a noble resentment of wrongs. On the part of the English fishers, it is an inhumanity that sinks them far below the level of savages. The wantonness of their cruelties toward these poor wretches has frequently been almost in- credible. In illustration of his assertion he re- lates the following incident. One day a small family of Beothuks was surprised in their wigwam by a party of fishermen. On the appearance of their foes, the Indians fled in consternation, all except one woman on the eve of becoming a mother, who, being unable to follow her companions, gave herself up as a prisoner, endeavoring by signs to implore mercy from her captors. Her gesticulations and entreaties were in vain; one of the wretches with a well-directed blow ripped open the body of the unhappy woman, and in a few minutes she expired in agony at their feet. Not content with murder, the monsters proceeded to mutilate the body in a barbarous manner, and on their re- turn boasted of what they had done, ex- hibiting in triumph the hands of their victim, which they had cut off and re- tained as a trophy. Such shocking barbarities were not confined to the last century, as the fol- lowing anecdote, related to me by a gen- tleman ~vho heard it from one of the party present, will show. Some fifty years ago a small party ~et out from one of the set- tlements to look for Indians, as it was termed. Before long some tracks were discovered, and on rounding a point of rock three or four Indians came in view, all of whom they forthwith shot, save one who was taken alive and brought up to the leader of the band. The Indian made gestures beseeching for mercy, then tore open the breast of her robe to show them she was a woman, whereupon the leader (whose name it is unnecessary to give) fired ~nd shot her dead. There is no object in quoting further stories all of the same t~rrible nature; these two will sufficiently prove the sort of treatment the Beothoks experienced from the settlers. It cannot be wondered at if, when opportunity offered, they avenged their wrongs, though, as they possessed no weapons except arrows and spears, the odds were all against them. When at length a government was es- tablished, which was not till 1728, when the first governor was appointed by the crown, it must not be supposed that such proceedings were approved; probably the government was altogether ignorant of what was going on, for when Mr. Cart- wright, in 1768, brought the cruel treat- ment of the Red Indians under the notice of governor Sir Hugh Palliser, he issued a proclamation to the~effect that, it having come to the knowledge of the king that his subjects in Newfoundland do treat the said savages with the greatest in- humanity, and frequently destroy them without the least provocation or remorse: in order, therefore, to put a stop to such inhuman barbarity, and that the perpetrators of such atrocious crimes may be brought to due pun- ishment, it is his Majestys royal will and pleasure that I do express his abhorrence of such inhuman barbarity, and I do strictly en- join and require all his Majestys subjects to live in amity and brotherly kindness with the native savages in the said island of Newfound- land. I do also require and command all offi- cers and magistrates to use their utmost dili- gence to discover and apprehend all persons who may be guilty of murdering any of the said native Indians, in order that such offenders may be sent over to England to be tried for such capital crimes as by the statute of io and ii William III. for encouraging the trade to Newfoundland is directed. After Sir Hugh Pallisers time a similar proclamation was issued by succeeding governors for mapy years, but to no effect. There were no means of enforcing in the interior, or at any considerable distance along the coasts, the provisions of a proc- lamation issued at St. Johns. So perse- cution and slaughter of the Red Indians continued, till at the present day the race is gene rally regarded as extinct. According to Whitbourne the French were at first on friendly terms with the Beothuks, who assisted them in fishing, and preparing oil. What led to a rupture of friendly relations is not very clear, but about the middle of the last century the French offered a reward for the heads of Red Indians. After the English had made them- selves masters of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, the governor of Newfoundland was alarmed at receiving information that parties of Mic-mac Indians were coming over from Cape Breton and establishing THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. themselves in Newfoundland. All through the war these Indians had been efficient and faithful allies of the French, and it was supposed that the latter were now using them to further designs upon New- foundland. Accordingly the governor is- sued orders to the Mic-macs to withdra~v from the island, which seems to have met with little attention, for the Mic-macs in- stead of retiring effected a permanent set- tlement in the colony, maintained their friendly relations with the French, and before long availed themselves of every opportunity of obtaining the offered re- ward for the heads of Beothuks. At first the Mic-macs and the native Indians are said to have been on friendly terms; if so, we may conclude that the tribes entered into some alliance together, as no less an authority than Schoolcraft says that an Indian nation regards it- self as at war with all others not in actnal alliance. Unhappily some of the Mic- macs, tempted by the hope of reward from the French, privately shot two of the Red Indians, and were descending a river near St. Georges Bay with the heads hidden in their canoe, when they chanced to fail in with a party of Beothuks. The latter, with the usual hospitality of Indians, ignorant of the treachery of which the Mic-macs had been guilty, invited them ashore to a feast. The Mic-macs accepted the invitation. Whilst preparations were in progress for the entertainment, some of the children of the tribe examined the canoe of the visitors, discovered the con- cealed heads, and confided the secret to their people. No notice was taken of the discovery till each Mic-mac had taken his place at the feast, seated between two of the Beothuks, who at a given signal turned on their guests and slew them. After this the two tribes fought whenever opportu- nity offered; the Mic-macs, being supplied by the French with firearms, of course had the advantage. Cook, the celebrated navigator, who was for some time engaged on a survey of the Newfoundland coasts, where several of his surveying marks are still to be seen, penetrated for some distance into the in- nor, where, it is said, he discovered some of the large lakes, but John Cartwright is the first European with whom we are ac- quainted who succeeded in reaching Red Indian Lake by way of the Exploits River. His account of his journey, though most interesting, has, I believe, never been published in full, but it has been the source from which much of the informa- tion we have of the Beothuk manners and 43 customs has been derived. Through the courtesy of the owner of the MS. I am enabled to quote from it. Mr. Cartwright undertook to explore the unknown inte- rior parts of Newfoundland, to examine into the practicability of travelling from shore to shore, across the body of that island, and to acquire a more certain knowledge of the settlements of the Red Indians, as well as to surprise if possible one or more of those savages, fo rthe purpose of effecting in time a friendly in- tercourse with them a tribe, as he ob- serves, with whom, though the original native inhabitants of a country so long in our possession, we held no intercourse whatever, except indeed the unfriendly one of reciprocal injuries and murders. Cartwnight believed he was the discoverer of the great lake now known as Red In- dian Lake, but called by him Lieutenants Lake. He and his brother (who was the author of a work on Labrador), with a party of thirteen others, started on the 24th of August, 1768, from Indian Point in Notre-Dame Bay and pulled a short distance up the river Exploits to a place named Start Rattle. Here they left the boats and began their search along the banks of the river. The party was divided into two, each company taking opposite banks of the river. They had to carryall their provisions on their backs, as well as fowling-pieces, pistols, and heavy rifled guns, which were always loaded, as they feared an attack from lurking enemies in the unknown region. Before long they came upon wigwams recently erected and other apparatus, which, indeed, were so numerous that the party were in high spir- its, as they expected soon to find parties of the savages. Their attention was par- ticularly struck by the great scale of the preparations made by the Beothuks for taking deer. Vast herds of cariboo deer range throughout the interior of New- foundland. On the approach of winter they migrate southwards, crossing the river Exploits in thousands; and in order to capture the deer on these migrations the Indians made fences so high and strong that the deer could neither jump over, nor force a way through them, but were obliged to avail themselves of purposely left open- ings, at which the hunters stationed them- selves and slaughtered abundance of deer with comparative ease. These fences were made by partially cutting through the trunk of a tree and causing it to fallin the desired direction, parallel ~vith the river, each tree being guided so as to fall on the one next to it. The fences were 44 from six to ten feet high ; the weak parts were filled up and strengthened with branches. In places where the trees grew too stunted, or were too scattered to be available for fences, the Indians placed sewels. These were thin sticks about six feet long, which were stuck into the ground, tassels of birch bark being fas- tened to the end so as to wave to and fro with the least breath of air. The sewels were pricked into the ground at a distance of ten or a dozen yards apart, and were effectual in frightening and turning back the deer. Deer-fences skirted the banks of the river for thirty or forty miles. At certain places there were small half-moon breast- works erected, behind which the hunters crowded and shot the passing deer with arrows, though sometimes they killed their game with spears, and would follow in their canoes when deer took to the water. Fences on a similar plan were used by Indians on some of the Canadian rivers, though nowhere do they seem to have been undertaken on so great a scale as in New- foundland. At that time the number of the Beothuks was estimated at from two to three hun- dred souls, but from the numerous wig- wams he saw on his journey, Cartwright was inclined to believe the tribe must amount to at least five hundred individ- uals. As it is probable they had resi- dences in other localities, the computation does not appear excessive. Although numerous dwellings and traces of Red Indians were found, none ot the natives were met with on this journey. The adroitness of the Beothuks in hiding themselves, learnt no doubt from sad ne- cessity, was extreme. Any of the people still occupying the country through which Cartwright passed could probably easily have concealed themselves, but as it was summer, the greater number would then have left the lake and their wigwams by the river. It was the habit of the Beo- thuks to go inland during the winter and to return to the coasts and adjacent islands during the summer months. It was when resorting to the seashore that they were so cruelly exposed to the attacks of the fishermen, but the reason for their run- ning the risk was obvious. During autumn they were able to sup- ply themselves abundantly with venison, which was kept in large storehouses forty or fifty feet long, for use during winter, the frost preserving the meat. In January, a party who, at the instance of Gov- ernor Holloway, set out up the Exploits River, then frozen over, in quest of Red Indians, came upon one of these store- houses, in which they found about a hun- dred carcases of venison. The Beothuk cuisine must have been a good on e,forin these storehouses they also preserved dried salmon, dried eggs, dried lobster- tails, seal-oil, and deers paunches filled with fat. A kind of sausage made of seals fat, livers, and eggs was one of the dainties. The wigwams were conical in shape, formed of long poles covered with deer- skins or sheets of birch-rind laid sheet upon sheet in the manner of tiles. In these wigwams they made oblong hollows in the earth, and lined them with young branches of fir and pine, for sleeping- places. This kind of sleeping-place has been considered peculiar to the Indians of Newfoundland. However, among a far- distant tribe at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the Atnahs, whose lands are contiguous to Thompsons River, the women are accustomed to prove their industry by digging holes in the ground which they inlay with grass or branches. Such nest-like hollows can only be used as places of repose, and seem to bear a strong resemblance to the sleeping-places of the Beothuks. Beds of spruce branches are commonly used amongst various tribes of North American Indians. They are made by sticking a number of springy branches close together, in a standing position in the ground, and in this fashion form an elastic and comfortable substitute for a mattress. In Cape Breton a dying Indian is always laid on a bed of spruce branches, as it is held an Indian can die on no other couch. The Beothuk canoe is said to be differ- ent in shape from that of all other Indians. It was about seventeen feet long and seven wide, and made of birch-bark, and was shaped something like an elongated crescent coming to a point at the centre of each side of the vessel. A slicrht rod served as a keel, and the seams were sewn with fine spruce-root, and caulked with a preparation of turpentine, oil, and ochre. A thwart was introduced in the centre and at each end of the canoe, to keep the sides apart, and the inside of the frail structure was lined throughout with thin, flat sticks. These canoes were hal- lasted with stones, over which was laid a covering of sods and moss, on which the Indians knelt while paddling. In fine weather they occasionally fixed a very slight mast to the middle thwart, and sailed these rickety craft, in which they THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. must have ventured considerable dis- tances, as Beothuk remains have been found on Funk Island, which is thirty miles from the main island. Funk Island was formerly covered with multitudes of the now extinct great auk, whose presence doubtless induced the Beothuks to visit an island on which landing is impossible unless the weather be exceptionally calm. Until recent times the walrus frequented Newfoundland seas, and the Beothuks must have been in the habit of securing these huge visitors from arctic regions, as some of the Red Indian ornaments and counters for games are carved out of walrus-tusk. These ornaments are pe- culiar. Cartwright supposed some which he found to have been worn as amulets or charms, from the fact of a slender thong being attached to some of them. The recent discovery of a grave containing the body of a child enveloped in a deer-skin robe, has shown that the supposed amu- lets were worn as ornaments attached to ~ fringe into which the edges of the deer- skin were sliced. Some are triangular in shape, but many of the ornaments resem- bled two or three pronged forks with a wide handle. They vary from an inch to five inches or so in length, and are made of deer-bone. Usually on both faces are scratched or engraved notches and lines, forming designs, some of which are intri- cate and show considerable ingenuity and fertility of invention. The common Indian vapor bath was in frequent use amongst the Beothuks. It was made by heating stones red hot, which were then introduced under a small birch-bark hut somewhat resembling a large beehive, the patient or batheras the case might be pouring water on the stones, by which a dense steam was pro- duced. As to the religion of the Red Indians, we are almost entirely in the dark. Whit- bourne declares that they believed the Great Spirit stuck an arrow into the ground, and from thence they issued. This seems but another version of the tradition very general amongst Indian nations, many of which assign their origin to the earth or rocks. The Choctaws be- lieved that they suddenly emerged from the earth, a numerous and mighty people. The Oneidas point to a large boulder of flesh-colored granite, from which they think they sprang, and the Hurons are said to have believed that they issued from a hole in the mountain-side. Cart- wright says that he had not been able to obtain the least insight into the religion 45 of the Red Indians, and thought it re- markable that in a journey of about seventy miles through the heart of their winter resort, he had not met with a single object that appeared to be devoted to any religious or superstitious purpose, unless it were the carved bones of which we have spoken. It has been stated by some per- sons that if the natives had any worship it was that of the sun and moon, but on this point the evidence is meagre and unsatis- factory. It is singular that, although vocabularies have been taken of their lan- guage, supplied by natives captured from time to time, and a Beothuk society was established, one of the objects of which was to preserve any knowledge that could be obtained of the fast-expiring race, no information seems ever to have been ac- quired on such an important point. How- ever the recent discovery, in Notre-Dame Bay, on a small island, of the childs grave already alluded to, throws some light on the hopes and beliefs of the Red Indians regarding a future state. The body lay on the left side as if asleep, the legs drawn up, and the arms lying along the sides, as if the child slept. The body was in ~von- derful preservation, even the skin and nails remaining. We know some tribes lament more over the loss of a child than at the death of a grown person, on the ground of the helplessness of its soul in the strange spirit-land. The happy hunt- ing-groundsto which nearly all Indian people looked forward after death, lay to the westward, far beyond the setting sun. The Beothuk parents believed that their childs journey to that distant country would be a toilsome and tedious one, so with the little corpse they had buried all things needful by the way: packets of dried meat and fish, drinking-cups of birch-bark, tiny canoes lest there should be rivers or lakes over which the soul must cross, and bows and arrows to bring down game when the supply of food which was provided should be exhausted. Sev- eral pairs of moccasins were ready, so that the youthful feet might not be bruised on the long, long journey. Beside the body was a curious little wooden figure, which one would suppose was a doll, but for the fact that Cormack found three small wooden images of a similar kind when he visited the burial-place of Mary March at Red Indian Lake. This would seem to point to the conclusion that these images or dolls interred with the dead had some religious or mystical signification. The idea that the welfare of the soul, and its reception in the unseen world, were infiu THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. 46 THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. enced by the value and variety of the one of the small islands to take birds eggs. offerings interred with the body may have Her captor, in hopes of obtaining a reward, been held by the Beothuks, for in this took her to the capital city. The follow- instance the boy had been buried in his ing account is given by the Rev. Mr. finest clothes, the deer-skin robe being Anspach fringed, and many carved ornaments dcc- She appeared to be about fifty y& ars of age, orated the border. very docile, and evidently different from all Few Indian nations were free from a the tribes of Indians or savages of which we belief in the malignant powers of evil have any knowledge. She was of a copper spirits, and a dread of their vindictive color, with black eyes and hair like the hair of ness, which was so vivid as, in some a European. She showed a passionate fond- cases, to embitter existence, and to drive ness for children. Being introduced into a whole tribes to actions of folly and cru- large assembly by Governor Gambier, never elty. A black man or devil, called were astonishment and pleasure more strongly Aich-mud-yim, was declared to have depicted in a human countenance than hers exhibited. After having walked through the been seen at the great lake, and described room between the governor and the general, as having a long beard and being dressed whose gold ornaments and feathers seemed to in beaver-skins, attract her attention in a particular manner, The chief obstacle in deciding to what she squatted on the floor, holding fast a bun- branch of the great Indian family the dle, in which were her fur clothes, which she Beothuks belonged, is the difficulty of would not suffer to be taken away from her. tracing their language to a common root. She was then placed in a situation from which The vocabularies extant are principally she had a full view of the whole room, and on derived from one taken in 1820 by the the instant lost her usual serious or melan- Rev. J. Leigh from a Red Indian woman choly deportment. She looked at the musi- cians as if she wished to be near them- A called Demasduit, by the ~vhites named gentleman took her to the band, pointing to Mary March; and another obtained by theinat the same time; she perfectly under- Mr Corinack, who traversed the country stood his meaning, went through the crowd, in 1828. Cormack seems to have taken a sat with them for a short time, and then ex- lively interest in everything concerning pressed, in her way, a wish for retiring. She the native Indians, and had good opportu- was everywhere treated with the greatest nity for studying them, as while he resided kindness, and appeared to be sensible of it. in Newfoundland, an Indian girl called Being allowed to take in the shops whatever Shannandithit was captured and lived for took her fancy, she showed a decided prefer - in ence for bright colors, accepted what was some time St. Johns, a year of which - ut she would not for a moment leave she spent in Cormacks house. She given b a little English, but when we re- hold of her bundle, keenly resenting any at- learned tempt to take it from her. member how difficult it is for educated persons to translate into a foreign tongue, The authorities decided to send the we must allow for grave errors in a vocab- woman back to her people, provided with ulary acquired from an Indian whose lan- presents which it was hoped might concil- guage probably had no term to convey the iate them. The presents consisted of word she was called upon to translate. nails, fishing-lines, handsaws, blankets, When Elliot was engaged on his Massa- clasp-knives, and such articles. It is mel- chusetts Indian Bible, in working at the ancholy to know that the man who cap- song of Deborah, he found a difficulty in tured and brought the woman to St. Johns rendering the passage, The mother of who for his trouble in the matter had Sisera cried through the lattice. At already received fifty pounds is sup- length he called an Indian and described posed to have murdered his captive on the to him, as well as he could, a lattice win- return journey to the interior, the crime dov; but on further inquiry the mission- being inspired by the desire of possessing ary found that his translation, according himself of the trifling articles given by to the assistance he had received from the the governor to the unfortunate woman. Indian, would literally mean, The mother About 1809 Governor Holloway, who was of Sisera looked through an eel-pot. The anxious to open friendly relations with the Indian, having no idea of any lattice-work Red Indians, after consultation with Lord except for eel-pots, supplied the only term Castlereagh, the colonial minister, who ap- with which he was acquainted, proved of the expedient, had a painting No Red Indian appears to have been executed in England which represented seen in St. Johns till the time of Governor Indians bringing furs, etc., to traffic with Gambier, when, in 1803, a woman was cap- the English, who were offering blankets, tured as she was paddling in a canoe to hatchets, and trinkets in exchange. It THE BEOTHUKS OF NEWFOUNDLAND. was intended that this picture should be left, together with a few presents, in some suitable spot, where the natives would be sure to find it, and it was hoped that the contemplation of such a work of art would convince the aborigines of the pacific in- tentions of the English government. Lieutenant Spratt of the Royal Navy was entrusted with the charge of the expedi- tion and of the painting, but was unsuc- cessful in opening communications with the Indians, and returned with the picture to St. Johns. Demasduit, or Mary March, was taken by some men from Twillingate in 1819. These men surprised a party of Indians on the ice, and succeeded in capturing one of them, the rest taking to flight. The captive was Demasduit; her husband, a tall, fine-looking Indian, seeing his wife a prisoner, turned back to come to her rescue, and was forthwith shot dead, and the men returned homewards with their prisoner. The poor woman, it afterwards appeared, left behind her an infant, which died a couple of days after the capture of its mother, who only survived her hu~band and child one year. The last Beothuks seen alive were taken prisoners in 1823. The account of their capture and arrival in St. Johns, I extract from the journal of the Rev. W. Wilson, a Wesleyan missionary. June 23, 1823. Last week there were brought to this town three Red Indians, so- called, who are the aboriginal inhabitants of this island. They are all females, and their capture was accomplished in the following manner. In the month of March last, a party of men from the neighborhood of Twillingate were in the country hunting for fur. The party went, two and two, in different directions. After a while one of these small parties saw, on a dis- tant hill, a man coming towards them. Sup- posing him, while at a distance, to be one of their own party, they fired a powder gun to let their friends know their whereabouts. The Red Indian generally runs at the report of a musket; not so in the present instance. This man quickened his pace towards them. They now, from his gait and dress, discovered that he was an Indian, but thought he was a Mic- mac, and therefore felt no anxiety. Soon they found their mistake, and ascertained that the stranger was one of the Red Indians. He was approaching in a threatening attitude, with a large club in his hand. They now put themselves in a posture of defence, and beck- oned the Indian to surrender. This was of no use; he came on with double fury, and when nearly at the muzzle of their guns, one of the men fired, and the Indian fell dead at his feet. As they had killed a man without 47 any design or intention, they felt deeply con- cerned, and resolved at once to leave the hunting-ground and return home. In passim~g through a droke of woods, they came up with a wigwam, which they entered, and took three Indian females, which have since been found to be a mother .~nd her two daughters. These women they brought to their own house, where they kept them until they could carry them to St Johns, and receive the government re- ward for bringing a Red captive Indian. The parties were brought to trial for shooting a man, but as there was no evidence against them they were acquitted. The women were first taken to Government House and, by order of his Excellency the Governor, a comfortable room in the court- house was assigned to them as a place of resi- dence, where they were treated with every possible kindness. The mother is far ad- ~anced in life, but seems in good health. Beds were provided for them, but they did not understand their use, and slept on their deer-skins in the corner of the room. One of the daughters was ill, yet she would take no medicine. The doctor recommended phle- botomy, and a gentleman allowed a vein to be opened in his arm, to show her that there was no intention to kill her; but this was to no purpose, for when she saw the lancet brought near her own arm, both she and her compan- ions got into a state of fury, so tbat the doctor had to desist. Her sister was in good health. She seemed about twenty-two years of age. if she had ever used red ochre about her per- son, there was then no sign of it in her face. Her complexion was swarthy, not unlike the Mic-macs; her features were handsome; she had a tall, fine figure, and stood nearly six feet high; and such a beautiful set of teeth I do not know that I ever saw in a human head. In her manner she was bland, affable, and affectionate. I showed her my watch; she put it to her ear, and was amused with its tick. A gentleman put a looking-glass before her, and her grimaces were most extraordi- nary; but when a black-lead pencil was put into her hand, and a piece of paper laid upon the table, she was in raptures. She made a few marks on the paper, apparently to try the pencil; then in one flourish she drew a deer perfectly, and, what is most surprising, she began at the tip of the tail. One person pointed to his fingers and counted ten, which she repeated in good English; but when she had numbered all her fingers, her English was exhausted, and her numeration, if numer- ation it were, was in the l3ceothic tongue. This person, whose Indian name is Shanan- dithit, is thought to be the wife of the man who was shot. The old woman was morose, and had the look and action of a savage. She would sit all day on the floor with a deer-skin shawl on, and looked with dread or hatred upon everyone that entered the court-house. When we came away Shanandithit kissed all the company, shook hands with us, and dis. tinctly repeated good-bye. 48 SOCIETY POETS. After a few weeks the women were sent back to where they had been taken, but when the boat landed them on the beach and was about to leave them, they cried, they screamed, and rushed into the water after the boat, so they were taken to Twil- lingate till the pleasure of the government concerning them could be known. Before long the sick girl died, and the mother did not live long after her, but Shannan- dithit survived for many years, and died in the hospital of St. Johns. From her it was understood that the reason she and her mother and sister had been so unwill- ing to return to their own people was that, having been for some time amongst the white men regarded by their tribe as deadly enemies, they would be put to death as traitors. The man supposed to have been Shan- nandithits husband was in reality her uncle. The family had been driven by want of food to the seacoast to look for shellfish. At that time the tribe had dwindled down to a very few individuals, and the fate of the remnant of the race is wrapped in mystery. No doubt the Red Indians retaliated on the fishermen and settlers in many in- stances. Driven from his fishing-grounds, robbed of his lands, his kinsmen shot down like wild beasts, what wonder that the despairing Beothuk, lurking amid the surrounding bushes, when he got the chance stealthily let fly his arrows at the encroaching white man, who possibly, in cold blood, had murdered the Indians wife and child? As no attempt had ever been made to Christianize, or even to civilize, them, the sin could not be laid to their charge. When a tardy conscience awoke as to the treatment of the Red Indians, like most tardy consciences it came too late. The wrongs of the Beothuks had been too many and too deep for them ever again to trust the white man. In silence they passed away, and the solemn pine forests and desolate barrens of Newfoundland alone know the secret of the doom of those who have been termed the most forlorn of all human creatures. From Temple Bar. SOCIETY POETS. To treat of trifles in a style not trivial this is the art of the society poet. It may be taken as an axiom, that the more trifling is the subject of a poem the more exquisite should be the workmanship. Writers of vers desocidM exist by legions; but as fine workmen must in every art be rare, the names which attain to the first rank are few. None but a master of style can write a ballad to his mistresss eye- brow that will live; but for a master-hand there is no theme too slight. De Musset never excelled in finish and felicity the immortal lines on Mimi Pinsons bonnet. Pope on Belindas ravished lock is at his highest point of sparkle. Gray left no choicer stanzas than the Lines on a Fa. vorite Cat: Twas on a lofty vases side Where Chinas gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow, Demurest of the tabby kind The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared: The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes She saw, and purred applause. Such is the style ~vhich turns trifles into gems, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever. The curiosa felici/as of Horace is not finer. Among society poets, ~ar excellence, of this century, who have more orless of this preserving quality of style, Praeds is the earliest and, on the whole, is still the highest name. His art, ~vhen at its best, was of that highest kind which seems to be spontaneous. Mr. Matthew. Arnold has remarked of Wordsworth, with ex- treme felicity, that nature seems not only to have inspired his greatest poems, but to have written them for him. Just such is the impression of Praeds finest work. Take the merest trifle of it : Lets talk of Coplestone and prayers, Of Kitchener and pies, Of Lady Sophonisbas airs, Of Lady Susans eyes; Lets taik of Mr. Attwoods cause, Of Mr. Pococks play, Of fiddles, bubbles, rattles, straws 1 No politics to-day! The lines seem to have sprung into being without conscious effort, as the leaves come to a tree. Take a longer specimen the result is still the same. Here is part of Miss Medora Trevilians Letter of Advice to Miss Araminta Vavasour, her absent friend : You tell me youre promised a lover, My own Araminta, next week; Why cannot my fancy discover The hue of his coat and his cheek? Alas! if he look like another, A vicar, a banker, a beau, Be deaf to your father and mother My own Araminta, say No! If he studies the news in the papers While you are preparing the tea, If he talks of the damps and the vapors While moonlight lies soft on the sea, If hes sleepy while you are capricious, If he has not a musical oh! If lie does not call Werther delici ous My own Araminta, say No l If he speaks of a tax or a duty, If he does not look grand on his knees, If hes blind to a landscape of beauty, Hills, valleys, rocks, water, and trees, If he dotes not on desolate towers, If he loves not to hear the blast blow, If he knows not the language of flowers My own Araminta, say No! Dont listen to tales of his bounty, Dont hear what they say of his birth, Dont look at his seat in the county, Dont calculate what he. is worth; But give him a theme to write verse on, And see if he turns out his toe; If hes only an excellent person,~~ My own Araminta, say No! Such lines possess, in full perfection, what Mr. Arnold, in another of his happy phrases, has called the note of the in- evitable. This stream of verse, limpid and sparkling, dancing like a mountain rill, as if it could not help it, is Praeds pe- culiar excellence. We ~vill take one more example. Here are some verses from the Prologue to the Honeymoon: Cruel papa! dont talk about Sir Harry So Araminta lisped; Ill never marry; I loathe all men; such unromantic creatures, The coarsest tastes, and ah! the the coarsest features! Betty, the salts! Im sick with mere vexa- tion To hear them called the Lords of the Creation. They swear fierce oaths, they seldom say their prayers; And then, they shed no tears unfeeling bears! I, and the friend I share my sorrows with, Medora Gertrude Wilhelmina Smith, Will weep together through the worlds dis- asters In some green vale, unplagued by Lords and Masters, And hand in hand repose at last in death As chaste and cold as Queen Elizabeth. She spoke in May, and people found in June This was her Prologue to the Honeymoon! LiViNG AGE. VOL. LXV. 3332 SOCIETY POETS. 49 But lo! where Laura, with a frenzied air, Seeks her kind cousin in her pony chair, And in a mournful voice, by thick sobs broken, Cries, Yes, dear Anne! the favors are be- spoken; I am to have him; so my friends decided; The stars knew quite as much of it as I did! You know him, love; he is so like a mum- my I wonder whether diamonds will become me! He talks of nothing but the price of stocks; However, Im to have my opera box. That pert thing, Ellen, thought she could secure him I wish she had, Im sure I cant endure him! The cakes are ordered; how my lips will falter When I stand fainting at the marriage altar! But Im to have him! oh, the vile baboon! Strange Prologue this for Lauras Honey- moon! This is the very spirit of Popes lightest satire of such, for example, as the sketch of Papillia Papillia, wedded to her amorous spark, Sighs for the shades How charming is a park! A park is l)urchased, but the fair he sees All bathed in tears Oh, odious, odious trees! Such facility as Praeds nearly always slides into slipshodness. There could be no surer proof of his innate artistic sense of style than that his verse, spontaneous as it is, can stand beside Popes own. Charles Stewart Calverley the bril- liant C. S. C.was a writer of quite different qualities. His song had more the note of a trained birds; there is art in every turn of it. His verse is less nat- ural, less catching, than Praeds; it less often remains humming in the readers brain like an air which one hears and goes away whistling. He had studied Horace like a loverhis versions of the odes are among the best existing and that most artistic of all poetic workmen had taught him something of his craft. It is interesting to observe how, in the lightest branches of an art, the study of great mas- ters gives a touch of greatness. Both Praed and Calverley (like Gray) were Cambridge classics of great fame. Here is the first stanza of Calverleys Ode to Tobacco: Thou who, when fears attack, Biddst them avaunt, and black Care, at the horsemans back Perching, unseatest; Sweet, when the morn is grey; Sweet, when theyve cleared away Lunch; and at close of day Possibly sweetest! 50 SOCIETY POETS. Just thus might Horatius Flaccus have conceived an ode Ad Tobacconem. Calverley never wrote anything, in our opinion, better than the piece called In the Gloamincr; indeed, there are few better verses of their kind existing than the four which we will quote In the gloaming to be roaming where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet; What the gloaming is I never made the ghost of an endeavor To discover but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet. Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady, Lalag~, Nei~ra, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann Love, you dear delusive dream you! very sweet your victims deem you When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff they can. Then, to bring your plighted fair one first a ring a rich and rare one Next, a bracelet, if shell wear one, and a heap of things beside; And serenely bending oer her, to inquire if it would bore her To say when her own adorer may aspire to call her bride? Then, the days of courtship over, with your wife to start for Dover Or Dieppe and live in clover evermore, whateer befalls; For Ive read in many a novel that, unless theyve souls that grovel, Folks prefer, in fact, a hovel, to your dreary marble halls. Quite apart from the wit and sparkle of the thought, it is a treat to read lines moving, in the phrase of Marvel, on plumes so strong, so equal, and so soft. Calverley, it ought to be remarked, was not a society poet alone. He was a fine translator; and he was one of the very best of parodists. The Cock and the Bull, after the manner of The Ring and the Book of Mr. Browning, is perhaps the most exquisite piece of mockery in the world. Mortimer Collins had much of Calver- leys Horatian finish when he chose to use it, which was not always. There is not much choicer work in its own line than A Game of Chess, or Chloe, M.A. ad aman/em susan. This last an admirable example of Mortimer Col- lins at his best it will suit us well, in our comparisons of diverse styles, to call to mind. Careless rhymer! it is true That my favorite colors blue: But am I To be made a victim, sir, If to puddings I prefer Cambridge ~r? If with giddier girls I play Tennis through the summer day On the turf, Then at night (tis no great boon) Let me study how the moon Sways the surf. Tennysons idyllic verse Surely suits me none the worse If I seek Old Sicilian birds and bees Music of sweet Sophocles Golden Greek. You have said my eyes are blue; There may be a fairer hue, Perhaps and yet It is surely not a sin If I keep my secrets in Violet. Judging by the conclusions of the first stanza and of the last, this most persua- sive and engaging of girl graduates pos- sessed one tiny fault no doubt the only one a taste for puns. Shall we add, for the benefit of ladies who are not Chloes in Greek learning, that w is pronounced pi? Mortimer Collins, Calverley, and Praed have all three passed away. Let us match them with three poets who are still among us: Mr. Frederick Locker, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Ashby Sterry. Mr. Locker is, at times, a charming poet. Yet he has some defects which a little mar our pleasure. His verse, which at its best is excellent, is seldom at its best for long together. He has a habit now and then of changing his mood completely, without warning or passing from the gayest laughter into ecstasies of woe. In the lines To my Grandmother, for ex- ample, the sudden change of view from the young and blooming bride, with her bridal wreath, bouquet, lace farthingale and gay falbala, to the poor old woman waiting for the end, afflicts us with a sense of pain, but nothing more. The pathos has been sprung upon us when we are out of tune with it; we have had no time to quench our laughing humor. The effect, at least to us (and in this we speak only for ourselves) is as if a marriage chime had died into a knell, as if a harlequin had burst into tears, as if a deaths-head had grinned suddenly upon our joyous feast. Probably, the first half of the poem was written at a different time, and in a differ- SOCIETY POETS. ent humor, from the last half. But the reader, who runs through the whole poem in two minutes, has not time to change his mood with speed enough to corre- spond. Yet, when all is said, Mr. Lockers place stands very high. Some of his best verses are quite captivating; these, from the first half of the very poem To my Grandmother of which we have been speaking, for example This relative of mine Was she seventy-and-nine When she died? By the canvas may be seen How she looked at seventeen As a bride. Beneath a summer tree Her maiden reverie Has a charm; Her ringlets are in taste What an arm! and what a waist For an arm! With her bridal wreath, bouquet, Lace farthingale, and gay Falbala Were Romneys limniug true What a lucky dog were you, Grandpapa! Her lips are sweet as love; They are parting I do they move? Are they dumb? Her eyes are blue, and beam Beseechingly, and seem To say, Come! What funny fancy slips From between those cherry lips! Whisper me, Sweet deity in paint, What canon says I maynt Marry thee? Could anything be better, also, of their kind, than these stanzas from the poem To my Mistresss Boots ? They nearly strike me dumb, And I tremble when they come Pit-a-pat: This palpitation means That the boots are Geraldines Think of that! 0, where did hunter win So delectable a skin For her feet? You lucky little kid, You perished, so you did, For my sweet! The fairy stitching gleams On the toes and in the seams, And reveals 5 That Pixies were the wags Who tipped these funny tags And the heels. The simpletons who squeeze Their extremities to please Mandarins, Would positively flinch From venturing to pinch Geraldines. Come, Gerry, since it suits Such a pretty Puss-in-boots These to don, Set your little hand awhile On my shoulder, dear, and Ill Put them on. Here, a gain, are stanzas from The An- gora Cat, of quite a different kind, but which, once read, are not to be forgotten. Long hair soft as satin A musical purr Gainst the window shed flatten Her delicate fur. Qnce I drove Lou to see what Our neighbors were at, When in rapture cried she, What An exquisite cat! What whiskers! shes purring All over. A gale Of contentment is stirring Her feathery tail. Monsieur Pons, will you sell her? ALzfemme est sortie, Your offer Ill tell her, Butwill she? says he. It is a pleasure to learn that Monsieur Pons proved not to be of adamant, and that the charming creature went home in Louisas lap. Mr. Locker has a natural love for what is old and of the pastan old muff, an old oak-tree, an old letter, an old cradle these are among his themes of song. The lines on An Old Cradle, we must not quote in full as we should like to do; but here are two stanzas : And this was your cradle? why surely, my Jenny, Such slender dimensions go somewhat to show You were a delightfully small Pic-a-ninny, Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago. To hint at an infantine frailty were scandal; Let bygones be bygones and somebody knows It was bliss such a baby to dance and to dandle, Your cheeks were so velvet so rosy your toes. 52 SOCIETY POETS. And here is the delightful termination Ay, here is your cradle much, much to my liking, Though nineteen or twenty long winters have sped; But hark! as Im talking theres six oclock striking, It is time Jennys baby should be in its bed. Mr. Austin Dobson is not, in our opin- ~on, a society poet, but a serious poet, first of all. Such stanzas as The Song of Angiola in Heaven are fine and great poetry, and will endure. But his lighter work is often admirable of its kind. It has a color of its own, not easy to define, but quite distinct, and not the least re- sembling that of any of the writers at whom we have been glancing. The mas- ters whom he most delights to study are not classical, but French; and perhaps no English writer has more skilfully adopted foreign forms of verse the rondeau, in particular. He is a poet, too, of great variety of subject, and very difficult to represent by extracts. Of his very light- est manner Tu Quoque: an Idyll in the Conservatory, is an admirable example. De Musset, in his happiest humor, could hardly have improved the little comedy. NELLIE. If I were you, when ladies at the play, sir, Beckon and nod a melodrama through, I would not turn abstractedly away, sir, If Iwere you! FRANK. If I were you, when persons I affected Wait for three hours to take me down to Kew, I would, at least, pretend I recollected, If I were you! NELLIE. If I were you, when ladies are so lavish, Sir, as to keep me every waltz but two, I would not dance with odiour Miss Mac- Tavish, If I were you! FRANK. If I were you, who vow you cannot suffer, Whiff of the best, the mildest honeydew, I would not dance with smoke-consuming Puffer, If I were you! NELLIE. If I were you, I would not, sir, be bitter, Even to write the Cynical Review FRANK. No, I should doubtless find flirtation fitter, If I were you! NELLIE. Really! you would! why, Frank, youre quite delightful! Hot as Othello, and as black of hue Borrow my fan I would not look so frigid- ful, If I were you! FRANK. It is the cause I mean your chaperon is Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu, I shall retire. Id spare that poor Adonis, If I were you! NELLIE. Go, if you will at once and by express, sir, Where shall it be? to China, or Peru? Go! I should leave inquirers my address, sir, If I were you! FRANK. No, I remain. To stay and fight a duel Seems, on the whole, the proper thing to do. Ah! you are strong I would not then be cruel, If I were you! NELLIE. One does not like ones feelings to be doubted. FRANK. One does not like ones friends to misconstrue. NELLIE. If I confess that I a wee bit pouted? FRANK. I should confess that I was piqul, too. NELLIE. Ask me to dance. Id say no more about it, If Iwere you! Waltz exeunt. Mr. Ashby Sterry is an eminently tanta. lizing poet. The immortal maxim for a picture-critic, that the picture would have been better if the artist had taken more pains, is literally applicable to the great bulk of his work. His verse, even at its best, seems as if he might easily have made it better; his slap-dash, happy-go- lucky manner never seems to give itself fair play. He appears to be absolutely without the artists aching for perfection; he has certainly never taken to his heart the noble precept, A little thing makes perfection, but perfection is not a little thino And yet Mr. Ashby Sterry has every gift of the society poet in an eminent de- gree. He has a quick and pretty fancy; he can turn out with facility a copy of verses on the first trifle that presents it- self; a fan or a feather is enough for ten stanzas as a French cook can make MY RIDE TO SHESUQUAN. 53 twenty dishes out of a nettle-top. He is emphatically, as he calls himself, the lazy minstrel; he is forever lounging some- wherein a boat among the ripples, in a hammock in the summer shadows, in an easy chair before the winter fire. And all this is extremely pleasant, but that his laziness infects his verses, which are at times as thin and jingling as the twanging of a banjo. It is curious to remark that the more difficult his form of metre, the better, very often, is the poem the fet- ters force him to be careful of his steps. Here is a charming rondeau, for example: A Diving Belle! pray who is she? For swimming thus armed ca/-s-pie, (The sea is like a sea of Bretts) A graceful girl in trouserettes, And tunic reaching to the knee. Her voice is in the sweetest key, Her laugh is full of gladsome glee; Her eyes are blue as violets A Diving Belle! of Tarpauline, in navy blue, with silver whistle and sailors necktie, dreaming in her skiff of St. May, plump, dimpled, a nimbus of bright hair about her head, kneeling in the old, high, black oak pew ~vhen we think of these and of their charming sisterhood, we become aware that we owe the lazy minstrel a debt of gratitude which, in & arping at his laziness, we seem to have but ill repaid. A full treatise on the subject of society poets would include several other present- century names. But it is not our aim to be exhaustive. An essay has its privilege, to pick and choose. XVe have entered with our reader into a rich garden, we have wandered at our pleasure, have plucked whatever flowers most struck our fancy, and now leave the rest behind us. From Blackwoods Magazine. MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN. I DO not know whether it was merely from love of adventure, or from curiosity to see a place that, as far as is known, has been only once before looked upon by Christian eyes, that I made up my mind to attempt to reach Sheshouan, a fanatical Berber city situated in the mountainous district of northern Morocco, between the large tribe-lands of Beni-Hassan and the Riff. But whatever was my first im- pulse, this helped to bring me to a decision the very fact that there existed within forty hours ride of Tangier, a city into which it was considered an utter impossi- bility for a Christian to enter. That such a place can exist, seems almost incredible to those whose sole experience of Morocco is based on the luxurious Tangier hotels, and the more than semi-civilization of that town. My mind once made up, it did not take long to prepare myself for my journey; and on a Friday of July in this year I might have been seen purchasing in the native Tangier shops the articles of cloth- ing that were needed for my disguise, for any attempt to proceed thither in Eu- ropean dress must prove unsuccessful. The form of this, indeed, is far from The costume that I chose consisted of the the correct rondeau form. But what a white long shirt and baggy trousers of the dainty little piece it is I how graceful, Moors, a small crimson silk sleeveless light, and witching! jacket, the tarboosh orfez, and aft/aba or Mr. Sterrys Diving Belle, is one of white-hooded cloak that envelops one from the many pictures of delightful maidens at ones ankles to ones head. Having suc- which he is at his best. When, indeed, cessfully purchased these articles, my next we think of these of Kitten, in her business was to send for a boy by name short skirts, playing cricket like a boy Selim who lived in Tangier, but who I wonder what her name can be? Her sunny tresses flutter free; Now with the ripples she coquets, First one white foot, then two, she wets, A splash! shes vanished in the sea A Diving Belle! This is admirable; yet we confess that we are not greatly enamored of these highly artificial forms of verse. To write a good example as good as that above is certainly a very clever t,rick of words; but the result, after all, is but a step or two removed from the old conceits of verses in the shape of hearts, butterflies, or true-love garlands. Poetry, even the poetry of wit, is a bird which, if pent in these close cages, sometimes sings, but often droops and dies. The best rondeau in the language, to our thinking, is Leigh Hunts Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say Im weary, say Im sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say Im growing oldhut add, Jenny kissed me! MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN. 54 was a native of Sheshouan. An hour later he came, looking very thin and down on his luck; I told him of my idea, and found him much to my surprise ready for a comparatively small sum of money to accompany me, and act as guide. I forthwith sent him into town, where he hired two mules with burdas, or Moorish pack-saddles, which were to be at my hotel at two oclock the following morning. I then packed my luggage a not very tedious proceeding, as it consisted merely of a small red leather native bag, which I wore slung over my shoulder, containing a tooth-brush, a revolver, twenty-five rounds of cartridges, a few sheets of writing-paper, a pencil, and fifty cigarettes. Beyond this I only took a blanket, which was spread over the rough pack-saddle. About three the next morning we left, and arrived at Tetuan our first stage, distant from Tangier some forty-five miles in about ten hours. I shall not describe the journey thither, as it is one so easily and so often undertaken; but I cannot pass on without some little mention of the splendid situation of that town, with its mosque towers and flat - roofed white houses, its gorgeous gardens, its river, the banks of which were crimson with olean- ders now in full bloom and the glo- rious background of wooded and rocky mountains. I put up at a Moorish fondak or cara- vanserai a dirty place, full of mules and vermin; but it was a necessity to keep up my disguise and go through any dis- comforts rather than risk discovery. My guide spoke no language but Ara- bic, of which I was only sufficiently cog- nizant to be able to understand the gist of his remarks, and just render myself un- derstood by him ; but of course, had I opened my mouth to speak in the presence of other Moors, I should have been at once detected. The following morning we were up be- fore dawn, and fording the river near Tetuan, proceeded on our way. As soon as it was daylight, we began to pass Moors coming into town with vegetables and wood, laden on donkeys; and I was pleased to find that my disguise was suffi- ciently satisfactory to lead them to as- sume that I was an Arab, and to salute me with the salutation never offiered to a Christian Salaam alikzlrn. After about two hours on the road, we passed through the village of Zenat, perched high on the mountain-side, a pretty, pictur- esque little place, half hidden in its groves of olives and oleanders, with tiny streams and miniature waterfalls in every direction, and rocks clustered with maidenhair fern~ When we had left the village behind, the road led us along the mountain-side at a great distance above the valley beneath, till, an hour later, we descended by a winding path, forded the river, and pro- ceeded up the valley on the left-hand bank. Up to this point the country had been fer- tile and well cultivated, and the fields full of men and women gathering in the har- vest; but now we had entered the country of the wild Beni-Hassan tribe, and the aspect entirely changed; instead of fields, nothing but steep mountains, covered with arbutus and other stunted growth, being visible, except ahead of us, where the great bare rocky peaks of the Shesh- ouan mountains stood out boldly against the morning sky. The next object that we passed was a ruinedfondak or caravanserai, not unlike that which exists half-way between Tan- gier and Tetuan, but entirely deserted and out of repair. It was near this fondak that my first adventure befell me. We had been overtaken by two Beni-Hassan tribesmen, who, I had noticed, had scanned me very closely far more closely than I appreciated; and I was not particularly pleased suddenly to discover these two, and a third who was holding a chestnut horse, stationary about two hundred yards in front of me, engaged in conversation, and now and again turning in my direc- tion. There was no other course than to proceed, which I did. On nearing them, the owner of the horse placed it across the road, completely blocking my way, while his two companions took up their position on either side. On my reaching them, one, seizing my bridle, told me I must go no further, while a second pulled me from my mule by my jelaba or cloak. I knew that if I uttered a sound my chance of reaching Sheshouan was at an end, so grasping my revolver firmly under my cloak, for the double reason of having it ready in case of necessity and keeping it from the sight of my assailants, I remained dumb. My Arab boy proved himself on this occasion as he did on several after- wards to be quite worthy of the confi- dence I had placed in him, for, lying in a calm and collected manner, he asserted that I was a Moor from Fez. Why does he not speak?~~ asked one of the men. Is it likely a Moorish gentleman would speak to robbers who attack him on the road, and insult him by pulling him off MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN. 55 his mule? responded Selim; but he was carried on in whispers, and I saw my will be revenged, for when the sultan boy and an elderly mountaineer leave the comes (referring to the approaching visit group and wander off engaged in conver- of the sultan to Tetuan) he ~vill come here sation. A few minutes later I was discov- and lay your country waste. ered and marched forth from the river-bed Thereupon the men, with a still incred- to a large tree growing near by on the ulous look, relinquished their hold of me, plain, where I found myself alone with a and mounting once more I proceeded on dozen or so wild-looking fellows. I knew my way. An elevation having rendered that to deny I was a Christian was use- us invisible to the tribesmen, we thought less now, so I informed them at once that it as well to place a more satisfactory dis- I was one, and that I was on my way tance between ourselves and them, so to Sheshouan, handing them meanwhile whipped the mules into a gallop, and were (much to my grief 1) some of my cigarettes. soon some way ahead. They seemed very much surprised at the Turning a corner, we suddenly came calm way in which I took matters, and upon a band of some twenty or thirty not a little amused; and five minutes Beni.Hassani working by the roadside. later, conversation as far as my Arabic These we passed without any difficulty, would allow was being carried on in an though the minute or two that we took to animated but amicable manner. Suddenly pass through them was scarcely a pleasant my boy appeared on the scene, and never time, as I expected every moment to hear in my life have I seen a face of greater our first assailants shouting to them to surprise than he wore then, on finding me arrest my progress. Then we again pro- seated in the group of Berber mountain. ceeded at a gallop over terribly open eers, who a minute or two before had been country; I say terribly open for I felt telling him to brino~ me out from my hid. sure that before many minutes were over ing-place, presumably to kill me, and not I should need some place of concealment, only seated there, but apparently on the We were crossing the high tableland that best of terms! exists between the Zenat and Sheshouan On my rising a few minutes later to valleys an elevation that is entirely ig. proceed on my journey, they begged me nored on most of the maps of the country to go no further, assuring me that if I and the only spot that would offer any were discovered I would for certain lose cover was a stream, the banks of which my life, and that even their own people were overgrown with oleanders. For this would kill me if they detected that I was we at once made, and entering the bed of a Christian. I told them that I had made the stream I dismounted and hid myself up my mind to reach Sheshouan at any amongst the shrubs, while Selim led the risk, and bade them adieu, shaking hands mules to a spot some little way further up with all of them, but closing my ears to the river, their ill-omened warnings. By this time the three men who had We had soon left the watershed, and first stopped me had reached the band we once more the path led us along the steep had seen at work, and informed them of mountain-side the new valley runnihg their belief in the presence of a Christian; almost due south, while that we had left and as I had expected, a few minutes ran in the opposite direction. From later some dozen Arabs appeared in sio-ht where we were now we obtained a o-lorious running along the path we had just tr~v- view, rivalling any scenery I haveSseen in elled over. In five minutes they had found Morocco, with the exception of some of our mules, and were questioning Selim as the valleys of the Atlas Mountains, which to my whereabouts. From my hiding. it much resembled. Thousands of feet place I could overhear sufficient of the into the now sunset sky the great moun conversation that passed between them. tam of Sheshouan reared its rocky crags; Where is the Christian? they asked. while far below, purple in the evening What Christian? said Selim. shadow, lay the wooded and cultivated The Christian who was with you. valley, with its rapid river turning and There was no Christian with me. twisting here, there, and everywhere like Who was with you? a thread of silver. A Moor; the son of Abdul Malek We were now at no great distance from from Fez, who is going to Sheshouan to Sheshouan, so concealing ourselves in the see some of his mothers people. bushes, we awaited the setting of the sun. Bring him here. As soon as he was down we resumed our I dont know where he is. Then for a minute or two the talkino~ journey, and an hour later, in bright moon- light, crossing the sharp ridge of a hill, 56 MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN. caine suddenly upon Sheshouan, and found ourselves in the s~ko, or market- place, situated outside the walls of the town. Crossing the s6ko at a brisk trot, we entered the town by the Bab-el-S6k, and proceeding through several streets, passed under a dark archway. Here dis- mounting, we knocked at a door, which being opened, we entered the house of my guides parents. In the dark they did not recognize me as a Christianin fact it was not till some minutes later, when we had secured the mules in the patio of the house, and ourselves in a large bare room, that my boy confided in them. They were not at all pleased to see me, but they knew as well as I didand therein lay my safety that my detection meant death to their son for bringing me, as well as to myself. Half an hour later, having partaken of some food, and rested a little for we had been sixteen hours en route from Tetuan, I left the house, and with Selims father walked through the town. Sheshouan, which is a large town cov- ering more acreage than Tangier, and possessing seven mosques and five gates, is magnificently situated on the slope of the mountain, which rises from the town almost perpendicularly to a great height. The houses are different from those of any other city in the country, as they do not possess the general flat roof, but are gabled and tiled with red tiles, which gives the place more the appearance of a Spanish than a Moorish town. But what to the natives is the great attraction of Sheshouan is the abundance of water; for issuing from caves far above in the moun- tain-side are three waterfalls, whose water is so cold that the natives use the expres- sion that it knocks ones teeth out to drink it. I tasted it, and found it too cold to be pleasant drinking. From the pool at the bottom of these three falls aque- ducts carry the water to the numerous mills which are clustered there, after turning the wheels of which it continues its course to the many fruit-gardens for which Shesh- ouan is famous. After about two hours walk in the town, we returned once more to the house, where I was only too glad to roll myself in my blanket and surrender my weary body to sleep. All next day I lay in hiding. During the afternoon we decided that my safest means of leaving would be after dark in the disguise of a woman, as that would render me almost entirely hidden from sight under the enor- mous haik that completely envelops wom- ankind in Morocco. About sunset my boy returned from purchasing some fowls and eggs for sup- per, looking very much upset and in tears. I was sorry to see this, for up till now he had behaved splendidly, though his mother had been in one long fit of hysterical cry. ing ever since I had arriveda circum- stance which was not warranted to improve anyones spirits. Even when I saw Selim in this state, I never suspected anything was wrong, except that his spirits had given way under the strain, and it ~vas quite casually that I asked him what was the cause of his trouble. Oh, sir, he cried, it is all up Those Beni-Hassan men have told that they had seen a Christian on his way to Sheshouan, and all the town is on the alert to catch you! I went at once to the tiny window and looked into the street. It was full of men hurrying to and fro. Twice I heard the question asked, Have you seen the Chris- tian? My prospects certainly did not look golden; but nothing could be done for an hour or so, till it was dark; and on an empty stomach one can do very little, so I set to work and cooked and ate my supper. I had not much appetite, but I made a point of eating half a roast fowl and drinking a large jugful of milk, mean- while carefully considering my plans in my mind. First, I determined to abandon the womans disguise, as being of a sus- picious nature, and instead borrowed a torn and ragged mountaineers brown cloak. Supper was over, and in half an hour more it would be sufficiently dark for me leave. What a wretched half-hour that was! Selim was in tears, his mother in hysterics, his father sulky; in fact, the only persons who kept up any show of spirits were myself and I confess it was nothing more than a mere show of spirits and a man whose help had been sought, a native of a mountain village some hours distant, and who all through never lost his cheerfulness., though the risk of losing his own lifea risk that he was voluntarily running was very great. At last the half-hour was over, and all our plans completed. Mahomed, my new-found friend (and verily a friend in need), was to accompany me out of the town by the principal gate, thus hoping to excite less suspicion than if we attempted to escape by one of the less important and more obscure exits; while Selim was to proceed by another way and meet us out- side the s6ko. The mules we left for the present, arranging for Selims father to bring them early in the morning to our MY RIDE TO SHESHOUAN. 57 next hiding-place, the cottage of Mahomed, situated in a village some four hours distant. My disguise ~vas light and airy,far too light and airy for such a cold night consisting as it did merely of a brown jelaba and a pair of slippers. Creeping quietly through the door we left the house, and walked through the now crowded streets to the gate. Every now and again I felt an uncomfortable, creepy sensation, as I heard the hurrying natives saying to one anotherand saying it once or twice even to my companion and myself Where is the Christian? Have you seen the dog of a Christian? At the gate was a guard placed to stop me; but in my disguise I passed them successfully and entered the s6ko, where men were passing to and fro on the lookout for me. Here, to avoid suspicion we seated ourselves cross-legged on the ground and remained sitting for several minutes,it seemed like an hour. While in this position a native came and seated himself next to me, and carried on a short conversation with my companion. Every moment I expected detection it seemed an impos- sibility that I should escape. Then we rose and were once more en route. Soon we had reached the spot where Selim was to have met us, but there were no signs of him. We sat down on some rocks and waited, but he did not come. Then Mahomed left me to search for him, and I was alone, but completely hidden among the ferns and stones. While Ma. homed was away, a man passed me so closely that his jelaba touched my knees; but he went on without perceiving me. A few minutes later Mahomed and Selim appeared, the latter having mistaken the trysti ng-place. We at once set off at a brisk walkacross country to Mahomeds cottage. For four hours and a half we walked in the cold night, over the most terrible ground. We had not been on our way half an hour, when I slipped in crossing a stream, and got my shoes soaked with water, which rendered them impossible to walk in. From that moment, till we arrived at the cottage, I walked bare-legged and bare- footed, pushing my ankles, already raw from sunburning, through the sharp, thorny bushes, till the blood was trickling down over my feet. At last we reached the village, and creeping from tree to tree, Mahomed reconnoitring ahead, we entered the cottage. I was at once taken to my hiding-place, a kind of cellar, but very clean, where, half an hour later, when I had bound up my legs in some strips of sacking, we ate a supper of native bread and goats milk, and very good it was too. My kind friends then left me, and were soon slumbering in another part of the cottage, their snore reaching me even in my cellar. I felt better, though far from safe, yet I was out of Sheshouan. I opened my red-leather bag, and drew out some cigarettes ; then rolling myself in my blanket, I lay and watched the blue smoke curl up and up till it was lost in the dark. ness. Never did I enjoy a cigarette so much as then, and were I a poet, I would have written an ode to that benefactor of mankind, Nestor Gianaclis. It was not long, however, before I fell asleep, worn out with the excitement of the day, and the long night walk; nor did I wake till late the next morning. My breakfast bread and eggs and milk was brought me at once, and I received the welcome news of the arrival of my mules. Luck, however, was against me, for one of the very Beni-Hassan men who had accosted me on the road turned up in the village by some evil chance and recog- nized my beasts. However, Mahomed denied that they belonged to Christians; but the suspicion of the villagers was aroused, and again I was in great danger. It had been our intention to proceed on our way when the sun set, but toward evening we discovered that the villagers were on the lookout for me, and that it would be unsafe to leave before the moon went down, about midnight. That day and evening seemed very long, but Mahomed never lost his cheerful mien, and kept me interested by telling me stories of himselfhow he was the head of a robber band, and only a few months before had shot two rich Moors, whom he had robbed, and whose mules he had stolen. Never for a moment did I mistrust him, as I knew that whatever he might be, his ideas of hospitalitythe greatest virtue the Arabs possess would render impossible any treachery. The only reason I can think of why he should have rendered me such services was his love of adventure, for he positively seemed to enjoy the risk he was himself running in saving me. There was no monetary rea- son in his acts; for on my parting from him the next day, he absolutely refused to take what I offered him, and it was with great difficulty that I persuaded him even to accept payment for the food, etc., I had partaken of in his house. At last the moon went down, and ac- companied by Mahomed I set out, again 58 THE CIRCUITS. creeping from tree to tree and hedge to hedge, once even taking refuge in an empty stable, till the village and the guard around it were safely passed. Then Ma- homed hid me in a clump of trees while he returned to the village, and, with Selim, brought out my mules. The cold was in- tense, in spite of its being July, and I felt cramped and sore indeed as I crouched down, not daring to move a muscle. So an hour passed, then my eyes were glad- dened with the welcome sight of Ma- homed, Selim, and the mules. Selim and I at once mounted the beasts, while Ma- homed walked ahead to show us the way. When dawn appeared we were well on our way, and an hour or two after sunrise had left almost all danger behind us. At the ruined fondak, which we reached after about eight hours ride, Mahomed left us and turned back. Never did I grasp a hand to say good-bye with more kindly feelings than I did that of this stalwart, handsome mountaineer, who had risked his own life and had saved mine. I tried to thank him in fitting words, but he stopped me and said, It is nothing, it is nothing. Four hours later the white walls of Tetuan were in sight; and thirteen hours after leaving the village, tired and hungry, with blood-stained legs and torn clothes, I passed through the gates with a sigh of relief such as I have seldom sighed, and felt myself at last safe from all dan- gers. Possibly in three months time there will be no such place as Sheshouan, for the inhabitants have always been at war with the sultans people, and denied his authority. Not long ago his Majesty sent a governor there to try to bring about a more orderly state of affairs; and had he survived, he might have done so, but he was at once murdered by the fanatical in- habitants. Rumor, which often speaks the truth, says that the sultan, on his ap- proaching visit to Tetuan, intends to turn aside from his route and revenge his gov- ernors death, to lay waste their country, kill their men, carry their women and children captive, and burn their city. My only hope is that my friends may escape. WALTER B. HARRIS. Tangier, i555. From The Spectator. THE CIRCUITS. YEAR after year, and term after term, the judges of the Queens Bench division meet in the vain hope of reforming the circuit system. The summit of their rea- sonable ambition must necessarily be to succeed in reducing inevitable inconven- ience to a minimum. The provinces will not be denied in their claim for a share of the judicial talent which is collected upon the Common Law Bench, and so long as that claim is recognized, London suitors and London lawyers will continue to have ground for complaint. There is here, in truth, no question of fairness or unfair- ness. Except from a sentimental point of view, it matters very little whether Man- chester and Liverpool, to take cases which are important, or Bodmin and Presteign, to select cases which are of less gravity, obtain a larger proportion of the services of the bench than their population de- serves. Yet this is the basis upon ~vhich the problem is commonly discussed, as though the principles of arithmetic were the only legitimate foundation of the ar- rangements of society. In truth, we stand in some danger lest arithmetic should become our tyrant, and even the judges occasionally show a tendency to hasten the advent of the tyranny. What is the amount in dispute? So a lord justice will interrogate counsel for an appellant in the court to which appellants must go; and when the halting answer comes that the question is only one concerning the right destination of a hundred pounds or less, the court assumes an attitude which is partly pitiful and partly indignant. It is a scandal so we read the thoughts lying behind those serenely contemptuous faces that the trained judgment of the most eminent men on the bench should be forced to direct itself to the settlement of these petty disputes at a time when mo- mentous issues are waiting for solution. So London lawyers and London suitors exclaim that it is an outrage that the com- mon-law judges should be engaged in try- ing prisoners in distant parts of the coun- try, while the courts of the Queens Bench division are an echoing desert. Nothing, in reality, is more difficult to justify than the tone of these complaints. The same principles of law apply to a bill for 20 as to a bill for 5,000; a dispute over a peasants will is as important to the par- ties concerned as a quarrel over millions is to men of greater wealth. A question affecting the liberty of the humblest sub- ject is at least as grave as one in which millions of money are involved. More- over, if the truth must be told, this fact is one to which the minds not only of the public, the poor purblind public which may easily be misled, but also of the judges who, above all others, ought to recognize to the full the fundamental prin- ciple that the poor man and the rich are equal in the eye of the law, ought to be earnestly directed. The existence of a circuit system can only be justified on the principles which have been set forth in the foregoing lines. That such a system has certain special advantages to recommend it, an attempt will be made to prove later. For the pres- ent we are concerned to show that the metropolis, although it puts its complaint in a form which is almost immoral, in that it involves the assumption that wealth de- serves better justice than poverty, has a genuine and serious grievance to exhibit notwithstanding. A map of this griev- ance may be bought for a penny in the shape of the circuit paper, which, in order that it may be complete as a map, must he supplemented with a note to the effect that, by virtue of the special commission, two additional judges are, as far as ordi- nary litigation goes, not at the disposal of the community. The paper shows that Mr. Justice Field opened the commission at Reading on November ioth. Mr. Jus- tice Cave was due at Aylesbury on the I4th~ but has since found time to hurry up to London in order to attend to his busi- ness as bankruptcy judge. Looking round the other circuits, we find the commissi on- day at Carlisle fixed for the 17th, Salis- bury for the same day, Cambridge for the 19th, Newcastle for the 22nd, Carnarvon for the 27th. The net result is that from November 27th till the end of the term, Baron Pollock, Justices Field, Stephen, Mathew, Cave, Wills, Grantham, and Charles, have engagements in the prov- inces. There remain in London, the lord chief justice, Mr. Justice Manisty, Baron Huddleston, and Mr. Justice Denman; and of these, one must be engaged daily in judges chambers. Surely, then, Lon- don has reason to complain that three judges are a ridiculous force to oppose to the common-jury list, the special-jury list, the without-jury list, to say nothing of the multifarious matters which call for the attention of a divisional court. Yet the period of Autumn Assizes is not that at which the grievance is most conspicuous, for, except in Manchester and Liverpool, the judges have only to deal with criminal business ; and on the smaller circuits the prisoners of many counties will be con- centrated in a few centres for trial. An- glesey men, for example, will be tried at Carnarvon; prisoners from the counties 59 of Merioneth and Montgomery must jour- ney to Denbighshire; and if they are poor men, who might have been able to call witnesses if they had been tried in their own counties, their cases call for no small measure of sympathy. Soon, too, Bir- mingham will be added to the list of towns which will not be denied acivil assize at every circuit, and those who know her well predict that her assize courts, the fabric of which is now rising, will find occupation for judges for many weeks at a time. Beyond question, such a state of affairs as this is not creditable to the good sense of the community, and it is high time to look for remedies. Tinkering at the ex- isting circuit system is obviously of no avail. The judges have been engaged in that hopeless task for many a year, with the same result in every case. The prov- inces protest, the members of the various circuits coml)lain that a constant state of uncertainty is ruinous to them, and preju- dices them in mapping out their forensic careers; and metropolitan suitors coin- plain without ceasing that their interests are neglected. In truth, the problem be- fore the judges is insoluble under existing conditions. Fifteen men cannot do the work of twenty, nor can they so arrange the ~vork of twenty that it can be done by fifteen. All that they can achieve is to crowd the work of the provinces into as little time as possible, insomuch that pro- vincial solicitors urge that the work is scamped at assizes; to sit on occasion for fourteen hours at a stretch the writer has twice known this to happen and by this means snatch a few days for London. The evil is one, in short, which calls for thorough reform. Either the number of the judges must be increased, or something must be done in the direction of decentral- ization; or~ in other words, the jurisdic- tion of county courts and quarter-sessions must be extended. Whichever course is adopted, money must be spent; and here the traditional parsimony of the Treasury stands in the way. The Treasury, which can hardly be induced to find funds in obedience to the express commands of Parliament, invariably opposes any meas- ure which threatens to call upon it for money. Now, new judges would have to be paid; that is beyond question. An extension of the county-court jurisdiction would involve an increase in the wages of the county-court judges, since, in the first place, it is unjust to increase mens xvork without raising their pay; and, in the sec- ond place, the pay of county-court judges THE CIRCUITS. 6o THE SUBMISSION OF GREAT BRITAIN TO QUEENSLAND. is not at present sufficient to tempt first- rate men to leave the bar. Again, in the case of quarter-sessions, as at present constituted, it not seldom happens that the real arbiter upon questions of evi- dence is not the chairman, but the local attorney, who as clerk directs the bench. If the jurisdiction of quarter-sessions is to be enlarged, then the justices must be placed under the direction of professional chairmen of ability and experience, and such men must be paid. But for all that, it is extremely questionable whether any call need eventually be made upon~the Treasury, for courts of law pay their own expenses, and increased facilities for litiga- tion have invariably been followed by an increase in the-number of suitors. Nor is increased litigation an evil of necessity, since your sad-litigious individual, whether he be the typical party in person or a speculative attorney, will go to law in spite of difficulties, while honest men are coerced into yielding to injustice because of the laws delays. Between the two remedies suggested there is not much to choose in the way of expense; but it is submitted that the balance of convenience is in favor of an increase in the number of judges such as would enable circuit business to be done properly, and London work to be efficiently performed. Decentralization involves crystallization. County - court judges, after some years in a given locality, begin to know too much of the inhabitants, become familiar with the appearance of suitors, and the manners of the advocates who appear before them. Sometimes they become but this is rare violently dogmatic, or take an objection on prin- ciple to an act of Parliament. The writer has experience of one who can hardly be induced to recognize the Married Wom- ens Property Act, and of more than one whose patience yields to the strain caused by the feeling that, if he listens to argu- ment, he may lose a convenient train. Moreover, if you increase the jurisdiction, you make it inevitable that the county- court judge should, from time to time, be compelled to try cases in which the inter- ests of his friends are involved, which is a thing by no means to be desired, for, let him be ever so impartial, he will in such cases be accused of favoritism. Under the circuit system, on the contrary, legal intelligence circulates. Judges fresh from London, from contact with the highest ability at the bar, go through the country administering justice to men who are complete strangers to them, and knowing nothing of the antecedents of the parties. They have the evidence before them, and decide accordingly; and so deciding, or in criminal cases apportioning punish. ment, they are, in addition, an example of judicial demeanor. A judge on circuit is, in fact, a teacher of the law no less thar. an administrator, and the lessons which, by example and precept, he instils into the magistrates in his grand-jury box are of inestimable value. Further, the cir- cuits are of great profit as a practical, if expensive, school to young barristers. In the prosecution of prisoners, a simple task and a lightly paid, they flesh their forensic steel and learn to conquer ner- vousness; at the bar mess they are brought into closer contact than would otherwise be possible with men who are imbued with the best traditions of an honorable pro- fession. Thus do they establish friend- ships with and profit by the experience of men who are worth knowing, and the country; in the long run, is the gainer, for the code of honor on circuit is high, and the nation would be indeed in evil case if its barristers, as a body, were not worthy of implicit confidence. From The Economist. THE SUBMISSION OF GREAT BRITAIN TO QUEENSLAND. THE government has announced, through Baron de Worms in the Commons, and Lord Knutsford in the Lords, that it has submitted to the ministry of Queensland in the matter of Sir I-I. Blake, and that this officer, though his ability and services are acknowledged on all hands, will not be appointed governor in that colony. We are not about to remonstrate further, for the submission once announced is, of course, irreversible, but we doubt if those who have approved it are quite aware of all the many and serious consequences it will entail. One of them is, that it dis- tinctly puts back that federation of the empire of which so many politicians, some of them, like Lord Rosebery, desir- ous of reputation as practical men, have recently been dreaming. To use one of the American phrases, which fifteen years ago were so familiar to us all, the move- ment of the Queensland government, whether justified or not, has ended in a victory for State rights, and no tfor any closer union of the empire, federal or otherwise. The great bond which has hitherto united the kingdom with its free THE SUBMISSION OF GREAT BRITAIN TO QUEENSLAND. 6i colonies has been the imperial authority expressed and exercised through the free choice of governors by the Colonial Office, and this bond is now materially relaxed. It will henceforth be impossible for the colonial minister to appoint a governor, whether in Australia, Canada, or the Cape, without previous communication with the government of the colony, and as that is a party government, it will have a strong interest in vetoing particular men and sug- gesting others. It will be found much less troublesome in practice to allow a colony to submit names; and the governor so chosen will feel that he derives his ap- pointment from a kind of informal elec- tion by the colonists themselves. He will therefore seek favor in the colony, and become a colonial officer, and the royal or central authority will be, ~ro bznto, weak- ened, the Colonial Office having no longer freedom in giving its rewards. There will, in fact, hardly remain any official tie with the mother country at all except the ap- peal to the Judicial Committee of Privy Council, and that cannot stand long against the growth of colonial jealousy fostered by every local barrister. When that has dis- appeared there will remain no semblance of authority except the seldom used royal veto on legislative acts, and the colonies will, in fact, have become protected States in an unusually strict, but not mutually equal, alliance with Great Britain. We shall have the expense of defending them, and they all the profit of being defended. That may be a good development or a bad one, but it is a development in the direc- tion of State rights only, and is fatal, until totally new policies have been adopted, to any scheme whatever of imperial federa- tion. There will be but one flag, as at present, but that will be the only symbol ~of a united empire visible to all eyes in the colonies. Secondly, the blow to the colonial ser- vice will be much more severe than is imagined. We have before explained that the Colonial Office will lose its l)OWC~ of keeping up a regular flow of promotion, but the injury to the service will go deeper than this. Able governors with characters, wills, and conspicuous histo- ries will soon be at a discount. The colonial governments will henceforward watch the service, and their natural dispo- sitioh will be to veto any striking individ- uality; first, because he is sure to be unaccountable to some class or other, for instance, a very philanthropic gov- ernor of Jamaica would arouse much trep- idation among Queensland planters and, secondly, because ministers wish the gov- ernor to be a figurehead, and not a man with a policy of his own. Colonial minis- ters are human, and they can hardly help wishing for governors with colorless char- acters, who will be very pleasant to every- body, and will not detract in any way from ministers credit or even overshadow them in society. Strong governors will find themselves by degrees tabooed and re- stricted to the crown colonies, which neither are nor can be objects of the high- est ambition, while they are from climatic considerations, and the great difficulty of educating children in them, avoided by the most experienced men. The change will lower the tone of the whole service, which will see its prizes greatly diminished, if not in value, at least in the certainty with which they can be attained, and which will be taught in the most practical manner that to gain reputations, and thereby make enemies is not the quickest or the most successful road to advancement. The ablest will be laid aside, as they are in presidential elections, both in America and France, in favor of those who are the least disliked. Ordinary Englishmen are hardly aware how good this colonial ser- vice is, or how valuable an instrument will be injured by any change which greatly impairs either its hopefulness or its freedom in administering the colonies entrusted to it to the best advantage of their populations. Thirdly, the service will also be impov- erished by another cause, the intrusion into its prize appointments of persons who in England possess distinction either political or social. The first objection of the Queensland government to Sir H. Blake is, no doubt, that he is an Irishman and a Unionist, but the second is that he was only a police magistrate without any distinction at all, except that of having won the confidence of his superiors. The colony desired a man, the ministry said, and was entitled to a man, who might have entered a Cabinet, or have been entrusted with a great English department. Such men are not often willing to exile them- selves in mature life after a long struggle to attain political position at home, but it is well understood that persons of rank will be accepted as their equivalent. They, if they cannot help in governing, can at least help in giving colonial society that tone and distinction for which En- glishmen who are growing rich instinct- ively sigh. Nowhere is the value of a title higher than in a colony, and peers and eldest sons will be the most acceptable 62 THE TRAINING OF KINGS. candidates for governorships. There is no particular objection to that, for the poorer peers are as able as any other class, and make, for example, fair govern- ors in India, but they will interfere greatly with the prospects of the regular servants of the office, who are expected to work hard in unpleasant climates, and so earn their promotion. Their character as a corporation is one of the guarantees of the empire, and in abandoning Sir H. Blake, Lord Knutsford has, we fear, suffered it to be lowered. There may have been no alternative in the present condition of opinion, and the announcement has been made in the most decorous and gentle~ manly way, but it is impossible to avoid feeling that Sir T. Mcllwraith, the Queens- land premier, has succeeded in weakening considerably the ties which bind the free colonies to Great Britain, and in reducing perceptibly the hopefulness of the valuable class who depend upon a just exercise of its patronage by the Colonial Office. From The Spectator. THE TRAINING OF KINGS. THE occasional, though, we are happy to see, the infrequent telegrams from Madrid about the king of Spain seem, we fancy, to most readers to have in them something a little pathetic. The strange- ness and separateness of the position of the only child who in all modern history has been born a king, excites even in for- eigners a sympathy which in Spain itself is so deep as to be a powerful factor in all political combinations. A monarch in the measles, a king crying for his toys, the possessor of the last Bourbon throne hold- ing audiences from his nurses lap, these startling incongruities, though they pro- voke a smile, awaken also a sentiment of pity. The contrast between the loftiness of the position and the powerlessness of its holder is so great, that it arouses the natural protecting instinct of grown-up mankind; and republicans of the kindlier sort, while detesting thrones, catch them- selves wishing better luck than usual to this occupant of the Spanish one. He is a sovereign, but a baby too. He has need of good wishes, if they are of any use; for although he has the advantage of an able mother, who displays the freedom from fidget characteristic of her house, every member of which seems to believe that Hapsburgs are part of the economy of nature, there is nothing which is so difficult, not to say impossible, as the fit training of a modern king. So much has to be attempted, and, in this special in- stance, so much in so short a time, that the task may well seem overwhelming. Everything must be finished, after some fashion or other, within the next fourteen years; for once crowned, a king can be trained only by the work of his life, or by some dominant minister who may never arise, or arising, may wish nothing less than to make his pupil capable of doing without him. The little king will, fortu- nately, not be oppressed from the first, like his cousin of Austria, by the neces- sity of thinking in five languages; but he must learn two, Spanish and French, and will probably from the first use his moth- ers tongue besides. There is a theory growing in England that such an obliga- tion is a pure advantage; and so it is as far as the mere knowledge of lan guagesis concerned; but it may be gravely doubted whether it conduces to strength of thought, whether the mind is not confused rather than benefited by the multiplying of its instruments. We do not find that chil- dren born in border lands, or in India, or in the great houses of Russia, excel in thinking; while the mark of the royal caste, which is very cosmopolitan in re- spect of language, is want of originality. Learning the etiquettes is, fortunately, no burden, for the courts have decided by a happy inspiration that etiquettes worry least those who always observe them, and that an observance of forms, if it is only so constant as to escape notice, does not impair simplicity of character. The wor- ship paid to royalty, if it begins with birth, is hardly perceived, and no more inflates the character than do the eti- quettes which, in all private houses where there are servants, constitute such an im- passable and separating wall. Still, a king of Spain should be a trained soldier, a politician of ability, well read in history at least, a competent critic of the arts, a man familiar with social questions, and, besides, a stately gentleman; and how to make him all these things almost before his life has really commenced, must be a rare perplexity. Something may be done, no doubt, by the regular device of substi- tuting tutors for books, living dictionaries for dead ones, and pouring into the mind results without the processes by which tl{ey are usually attained; but the system is the royal road, and speed is pur- ~chased by the sacrifice of mental disci- pline, and by the reduction of opportuni- ties for mental effort. The position helps THE TRAINING OF KINGS. 63 a little, for a lad-king, unless incompetent by nature, or made frivolous by surround- ings, can hardly fail to take an interest~~ in his soldiers, in the governing men around him, in his subjects, and in the great topics which cannot be kept, even when that is intended, out of courts. You learn rapidly what you care about, and we know that Louis XIV. became, under no other pressure, a sort of professor of roy- alty, and that his great-grandson, also a child-king, was spoiled by the inherent tendency of his character towards vice, rather than by want either of capacity or knowledge. (It is curious to remember that Louis XV. was almost throughout his reign a ~vorking king, and never fell into the hands of any minister.) Still, the dif- ficulty of the task of training must be enormous, as great as if we had to make of a lad, while still under age, a fair sol- dier, a good barrister, and a competent manager of estates; and in the absence of special gifts, we should be inclined to anticipate failure. Nature smiles at us all with the irony of absolute power, and the next king of Spain may be a great man, able to make a deep impression on history; but if he is, it will be by virtue of that power of governing which of all powers seems to be the most independent of education, and which historians even now hardly define or describe. It lies somewhere in the nature rather than the mind, though all successful rulers have clearness of insight, a perception of the relation between their means and their ends this, no doubt, is affected by train- ing, though mere training will not give it and the gift of understanding the pow- ers as well as the characters of those about them, a variety of insight by no means common. Women, who usually understand character, constantly make egregious mistakes in their marriages through their misreading of their favorites powers. The difficulty of training kings must be indefinitely increased by the want of a clear ideal. No one that we can recollect has defined successfully what a modern king should be likein mind, we mean and this failure is not confined to the phil- osophers. Princes themselves, as they appear in memoirs, are either without ideals, or set before themselves some one king as a model for imit~ion. Victor Emmanuel, one of the most successful kings of our time, never, it is said, ceased to consider his father his political exem- plar; and all who can read may hear the German emperor at least three times a week declaring that his ideal is his grand- father, whose chief royal faculty, which supplied every defect and carried him to the top of the world, ~vas insight into men, a faculty which, unhappily, is incommuni- cable. In truth, it is very difficult, with all aid from the lights of history, to think out what manner of mind one would de- sire an ideal king to possess. The judicial mind, it is suggested, self-controlled, open to the teaching of evidence, incapable of rancor, unmoved by passion; and no doubt there is in modern monarchy much of the judicial position, and a man who might be a good judge would also make a good constitutional king. Sir Henry Maine would have reigned well in England, and successive Cabinets would often have felt it a relief to take his carefully concealed opinion. Unequalled influence and per- fect irresponsibility would exactly have suited him, and so brought out his powers that in a long reign he would probably never have made a mistake. But then, there is only one monarchy of that sort, and if the king is to govern, to act quickly, to run risks, and to seize happy moments for adventure all things necessary, say, to the three emperors and the kings of Italy and Spain something more than the judicial capacities would seem to be required. There was certainly something more in the emperor Frederick, who was in many ways the most ideally kingly man of our time, but who was so because, be- sides so much else, there was a Hohenzol- lern bite in him, a possibility of sharp and angry action, which his biographers, IVIr. Rennell Rodd included, are all tempted by their pity for his fate to overlook. The scholar does not do as the ideal, scholars not being necessarily efficient, though, as literary men are the distributors of fame, scholarly kings are usually admired. We do not know that Sweden is much the hap- pier because her king is a poet; fancy that there was more kingliness in the emperor XVilliam than in his brother and predecessor; and would much rather see Queen Victoria reigning than Queen Carmen. The wide-minded officer of engineers, the officer who is cultivated, and who may possess a certain loftiness of character, is a very good ideal, and has struck all Frenchmen in particular in a very curious way. But we are not sure that the best type of all is not the king himself, though he is so difficult to de- scribe, the man with a certain royalty of nature which is consistent with much or little ability, but is inconsistent with smallness of any kind, whether of view, or 64 THE TRAINING OF KINGS. action, or temper. The man nearest that only word for it, pliability. On the whole, ideal in our cycle was probably Lord Wil- we should say, though we did not expect ham Bentinck, though, like his great pro- to do so, that the best ideal happens to totype, XVilliam III., he lacked the gra- have been a king, and that if kings were ciousness a king should have; and Baron makable, the wiser part of the world Ricasoli must have come very near it So would probably make one as like the did Mazzini, strangely enough, though he emperor Frederick as they could reach. was rather high priest than king; and of But then, training a Bourbon into an em- all men living among us, so does Lord peror Frederick is work not only for a Hartington, though the last lacks some- Mentor, but for a Mentor who, when he thing which we misdescribe in using the cast his skin, revealed himself divine. ELEPHANTS AT WORK. For a fortnight the employ6s about the arsenal in Central Park have been occupied with the preparation of the winter quarters of the animals in the menagerie. The tank in the lion-house has been enlarged, so that it will afford room for the hippopotami, which begin to find their out- door bath unpleasant of a keen, frosty morn- ing. The prairie dogs are getting ready to retire for the winter, the black bears are be- coming sluggish, and the polar bears corre- spondingly active when a sharp northwest wind blows and the sky and the air are wintry. The most active animals in the course of these preparations have been the elephants. Three young elephants which have been in the menagerie during the summer were secured by Director Conklin for four years. They are the property of Cole, the old circus proprie- tor, and were with Barnums animals last year in Bridgeport when the big fire destroyed so large a portion of the collection. These animals escaped uninjured, though badly scared by the conflagration. These elephants were taken about twenty years ago, when they were only a few years old, and have passed most of their lives in captivity. Their ages are about twenty-five years each, which in the elephants career is the full period of youth. The two males, Tom and Billy, are the largest, but Jennie, the female, is b~ far the itiost in- telligent and tractable. The keeper of the elephants says that she knows everything that is said to her; she will follow him about, if permitted, like an immense Newfoundland dog. The elephants average in weight nearly five thousand pounds apiece, and their sides have become round and fat during the summer from eating great quantities of fresh Central Park grass. In the winter these animals are kept in a large outer buiiding in the mena- gerie, but during the summer they remain almost all the time in the open air, and have become acclimated and able to endure ex- tremely severe weather without taking cold. The only way of tethering these enormous animals is by fastening a heavy chain around the ankle of one foot and attaching the end of the chain to a staple deeply imbedded in the ground. This answers all ordinary purposes, but by putting forth a small portion of their enormous strength, they can readily snap the massive links of iron. The tremendous strength which these ani- mals are capable of putting forth cannot be realized until it is seen. The keeper says that any one of the elephants has the strength of a dozen horses. When they exert this power they suggest some enormous engine which has become endowed with life instead of moving mechanically by steam power. Whenever any heavy weight is to be moved about the arsenal the elephants are employed. The keeper has a short hook which he uses like a spur, directing the animal by a touch on the trunk. Last week a frame building was to be removed to another part of the grounds. It was a small two-story structure partly filled with grain and implements, making a weight of twelve or fifteen tons. With some diffi- culty the workmen raised the huge mass on rollers. The elephant Jennie was then brought up to push. She would place her great head against the structure and brace herself; then the building would strain and creak and move on as rapidly as the rollers could be placed in position. Jennie and her keeper would follow it up, and she would bend her head to give the building another push when the foreman shouted Ready! The crowd which col- lected to watch the spectacle cheered their admiration, and Jennie would reply with a trumpet-like snort of pleasure at their appre- ciation. NOTWiTHSTANDiNG the considerable diffi- culties which have been met with in the dig- ging of a canal to connect the Obi with the Yenisei, and the want of money for the com- pletion of the undertaking, the work of con- necting the two great arteries of navigation in Siberia is still advancing. In the summer of the present y~r a boat fifty-six feet long and fourteen feet wide, taking three and if half feet of water, was drawn from the Obi into the Yenisei with a load of forty tons of flour. The two rivers are six hundred and thirty miles apart. Nature. I

LITTELLS LIVING AGE. Fifth Series, No, 2324. (From Beginning, volume LXV 5 January 12, 1889. Vol. CLXXX. CONTENT S. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. I. THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AF- FAIRS THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. By General Viscount Wolseley SKETCHES IN ATHENS, . SWANS, SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE . CONCERNING SHEEP VIII. THREE GENERATIONS ov ENGLISHWOMEN, IX. ODD THINGS FROM CHILDREN, Nineteenth Century, Cornhill Magazine, Fortnightly Review, Temple Bar, Blackwoods Magazine, Macmill ns Ma6azine, Carnhill Magazine, Blackwoads Magazine, Chambers 7ournal, P0 E T R T. THE MISTLETOE 66 FIRST FROSTS, VILLANELLE OF THE LOTAL JACKASS, 66 THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDATS, MISCELLANY, . . . 67 . 75 55 94 103 LII 117 121 126 66 66 128 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EsGE~ DcRLAsLS, reNsitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for adet~ foravear,free ofjIostage. gemittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, iS cents. 66 THE MISTLETOE, ETC. THE MISTLETOE. THE wind blows cold, and the sun is low, And the sapphire sky has changed to gray; But blithely, blithely over the snow The children troop from the woodland way, Laden with holly and evergreen, And the mistletoe peeps out between. From many a church tower far and wide The bells ring out with their merry chimes, Telling glad tidings of Christmas-tide: And the old folks dream of bygone times; But the lads 0 the lads, they whisper low As slyly they hang up the mistletoe. Grandfather sits in his old armchair Spreading cold hands to the cheerful blaze; Dear grandmamma, in her kerchief fair, Remembers Christmas in her young days; But the maidens smile, and their soft cheeks glow As they linger under the mistletoe. With a wreath of laurel and ivy bound On the ruffled curls of her silken hair, Ba~jr sits like an empress crowned (Her only throne is a cushioned chair). Ah! many a kiss is in store, I know, For our small sweet queen neath the mistle- toe. Open the purse and unbar the door; Let the Christmas angels in to-night; Hearts that remember the sad and poor Are filled with joy, though the purse grows light: The milk of kindness should freely flow Under the holly and mistletoe. Let anger, and envy, and strife all cease, Old wounds be healed, and old wrongs set right: We hail the birth of the Prince of Peace Shine into our hearts, 0 kindly light, That brotherly love may burn and glow Under the holly and mistletoe! Chambers Journal. E. MATHESON. VILLANELLE OF THE LOYAL JACKASS. IM sick of Harcourts sounding brass, Of Morleys tinkling symbolism: Why am I such a loyal ass? I wish theyd put me out to grass Far from this everlasting schism: Im sick of Harcourts sounding brass. My features in the looking-glass Seem sicklied oer with pessimism: Why am I such a loyal ass? I flounder in the rank morass Of Separatist syllogism: Im sick of Harcourts sounding brass. The Parnellites are not first-class: Their creeds the rankest Communism Why am I such a loyal ass? I cannot worship with the mass: I cant endure this fetishism: Im sick of Harcourts sounding brass: Why am I such a loyal ass? Echo: Ass! Spectator. C. L. G. FIRST FROSTS. BLACK where last night gleamed ranks of beaten gold; Death where but yesternoon late roses hung; Silence where bees their languorous vespers sung Deep in fair sunflowers heart: all, all is told: The promise that bright Spring spake free and bold, The tale that Summer heard from flatterers tongue, The thrilling songs that through yon forest rung, In haste are gone: the world lies white, lies cold! The crisped leaves flutter through the am- ber air, Scarce changed in color, dying in their prime, And sunshine mocks them as they slowly fall; The clear blue sky beams chilly, bright, and fair, And robin harbinger of Christmas-time Sings loud, sings clear, triumphant over all. World. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. THE holiday time has come, But the boys, where are they now? The boys who made the home So bright mid frost and snow. The holiday time tis years Since I counted the shortning days, Then, hark! for the ringing cheers Their boyish voices raise. But the boys are gone: one wed, A man who is full of care; The other, ah! he is dead And winter days are bare. Yet Christmas joy is meet, Though the holidays never come With the boys we loved to greet And bid them welcome home. Academy. B. L. TOLLEMACHE. THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. From The Nineteenth Century. the most serious and thoughtful persons THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN in that city, and when we find that any AFFAIRS. slackness in sympathizing with them is WHEN at the lord mayors dinner Lord regarded as contrary to all the laws of Salisbury abandoned the optimistic tone righteousness, we may fairly suspect that in which it is his habit to speak of foreign anxiety has disturbed the minds of those affairs, he must have raised in many a persons. And I, for one, have no doubt British mind the question, What has hap- of this: there is no set of statesmen in pened, then? what has changed of late? Europe so conscious of danger, or s oanx- The truth is that a great deal has hap- ious for the future, as the rulers of the pened since the beginning of the year; German Empire. In France there may be dangers long visible in the distance have graver reasons for dread in point of fact; drawn nearer; and so considerable is the but, to all appearance at any rate, there is change in the whole aspect of European far less nervousness, more of the spirit of affairs that the anxiety which the prime hope, less of the spirit of foreboding minister allowed us a glimpse of is fully amongst the ruling men of that country accounted for. than of the other. In a very large meas To Germany we should look for the ure, no doubt, the difference may be ac- main or the more immediate cause of a counted for by temperament, by a more disquietude which runs high enough to thoughtful if not a more vigorous German determine our government upon adding to patriotism, or by the absence or the silence its naval armaments without delay. No of all perceptive and alert intellect in doubt the Germans would point behind French statesmanship. But it is doubtful themselves to France as the source and whether these things afford a full explana- origin of the uneasiness that afflicts all tion of the greater anxiety which is so Europe ; and much that they have to say plainly visible in the nation accounted so on that point is true enough as a state- much the more powerful and fortunate. ment of fact though slightly ridiculous as As for the fear of a gush of popular matter of complaint. It is true that in passion ~ in France, which is the common France the Germans are hated vengefully; explanation, we need not believe that that but Prince Bismarcks fellow-countrymen has much to do with it. The truth is that might acknowledge the feeling to be what all the grounds of uneasiness which have it is, a perfectly natural one, without weak- troubled German statesmanship from the ening their right to the provinces they time when France showed such amazing have conquered or enfeebling an equally alacrity in providing the expiatory mil- natural resolve to retain them. It is true liards have deepened and broadened very that the French mean to be revenged for sensibly since the year began. the losses and humiliations inflicted upon Let us look back a few months to the them by Germany, and moreover that they death of the august personage who is now are steadily and constantly preparing to most often heard of as the present em- strike the blow. But they are not on that perors grandfather. The general belief account so obviously wicked that all the as to the temper and policy of the em- world should be called upon to hold them peror William was not a mistaken one. in restraint; and yet this really seems to Content to leave the government of his be the general opinion in Germany, where empire in the hands of Prince Bismarck, the crimes imputed to the French would he did so with one reservation at least: become the highest of all virtues if ever namely, that he should be allowed to end the tricolor or the white flag were car- his days in peace that there should be ned in trmumph across the Rhine. There no more fighting in his time except for is nothing dignified, nothing Roman, noth- defence and on compulsion. For years ing even reasonable in the complaints of this desire, this injunction, remained the French preparations for revenge which best security for peace in Europe; though constantly arise from Berlin; and when we should not forget that for a long period we see that these complaints proceed from of time much was due to the patience of 68 successive French governments under provocations many and grievous. All the while, possibly, Prince Bismarck was as firmly fixed on the maintenance of peace as his master was; but there is reason to believe that in his heart the great chancellor was not at all content with a long-continuing, ever - amassing burden of armament at home, while month by month and year by year the strength of the nations he dreaded most was increas- ing in formidable proportion. To be sure, he was a very old man whose personal desire limited the schemes and put re- straints upon the policy of Prince Bis- marck, and therefore submission to the restraint and the limitation was the more easy; in all likelihood they would soon he removed. And yet that was a doubt- ful matter; for whosoever looked forward to the death of the emperor William saw another prince advance to take his place. What prince? Prince Frederick; of whom it was strongly suspected that he was yet more likely than his father to limit the schemes and put restraints upon the policy of Prince Bismarck. This should be remembered as an important particular; because it not only accounts for a great deal that happened at Berlin, but it may have affected the calculations of other governments; our own, for in- stance, when projects of alliance ~vere dis- cussed in the later days of the emperor William the Second. It may be that the greater dread amongst the chancellors friends was that Prince Frederick ~vould bring his own will to bear upon domestic government, and might even revolutionize it by too sudden and too full an applica- tion of Liberal doctrine. But that was not all. There was an apprehension that the crown-prince was for peace a little too much; that is to say, for armaments of defence as great as need be perhaps, but not for wars of defence, planned to fore- stall a potential enemy and destroy him before he could strike. More. This con- ception of what might be expected of the emperor Frederick was strengthened by a belief, now openly avowed, that the crown- prince Frederick had become perverted to English ideas and poisoned with En- glish sympathies. Therefore it did seem not improbable that the restraint im- posed by one sovereign, and for one set of reasons, on a particular line of policy might be continued by his successor for another set. Now this was no solace for a German statesman who feared that race- hatred and ambition in Russia and that race-hatred and revenge in France would combine to strike at the new gre at empire before it had become fairly consolidated. However, all that could be done in the emperor Williams day to secure friends and to embroil friends with enemies (the operations of German diplomacy are often of the crudest and most elementary kind I do not say unfair) was done; and though from time to time leagues of peace were established under the immutable security of imperial words of honor, in order that anxious chancellors might sleep o nights, yet from time to time all Eu- rope went in fear that a terrible war was not far off. We now come to a point that more nearly concerns ourselves. Leagues of peace have been mentioned. In the days of the old emperor the utmost pains were taken to bring England into a close fight- ing alliance with Germany, Austria, and Italy. This, of course, is perfectly well known. There was never any secret about it; nor was there much secrecy about similar overtures previously under- taken, and sometimes accompanied by covert menace. Now, for my part, it always seemed to me that such an alliance was to be desired; or if not to be desired, yet not to be rejected; which for practical purposes comes to much the same thing. Of course no Briton of sense could wish to see England in such a coalition unless its purpose was to be a league of peace in the fullest and widest sense. To be particular, the articles of agreement could not be satisfactory to England if they did not forbid war anywhere by any of the European powers. To be yet more par- ticular, war in the East would have to be forbidden as much as ~var in the West; so that a Russia baffled in south-eastern Europe would not be allowed to attack one of the allies in India any more than another in Europe. Not a man to be moved, not a gun to be fired anywhere; THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. 69 unless this were the prime condition of agreement, it would not do for England to engage in any such coalition as she was pressed to join. But if that was the prof- fered understanding it had many and great seductions. Nor was it rejected off- hand, I believe. Indeed, there is no like- lihood that it was so rejected, for the reason that the risks implied in joining such a coalition had to be weighed against the dangers of being left out of it. But whether because the terms of partnership were too onerous, or because some fatally objectionable project of disarmament was mixed in with them, or because it is so hard in these days for any British minister to pledge the country to lasting engagements of the kind contemplated, the proposal came to nothing. Except, perhaps, for some conditional promises to Italy, En- gland remains free from whatever risk may be involved in a strict alliance with this or that great power and destitute of its advantages. * * Prince Bismarcks views as to the part which En- gland should play in a league of peace may he thus expressed It may he contended reasonably that an alliance of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England, to maintain the independence of the Balkan States and forhid all aggressive war, would be so formidable that no other comhination would dare to defy it. And we admit that there are a hundred chances to one that the allies would never he called upon to fulfil their engage- ment to each other. But there is that one chance; and considering our geographical position, considering where the blow would fall if it fell at all, and further considering tisat the German Empire could not sustain a great defeat as France did, hut would he smashed up altogether, we cannot risk the one chance. There must be no doubt, then, that England is pledged to fight if need he; if there is any douht shout that, our one chance of attack hecomes very considerahie indeed. And even so we must ask ourselves what forces you could bring in aid. Your navy? A great navy with a vast com- merce and a dozen seahoard cities to defend. So far as your land-fighting allies would he concerned, the British navy seems to offer small prospect of effective help. You might destroy the French fleets without doing much to prevent a defeat that would hreak the German Empire in pieces. Your army? You have no army. What you call your army barely suffices to police your enormous empire. But yet yes, you have an army, one of the finest in the world; the Turkish army. Undertake to pay and officer the sul- tans land forces should war he declared against the coalition, and the thing is done; the hargain is com- plete. If you think the stipulation a hard one, correct that impression by these facts: Your military obliga- tions would be met out of the cashbox; ours, not only in that way, but out of the blood of the people also. When a Turk is killed, he does not leave an English widow in a ruined English home, neither do tbe rates suffer; for every German soldier that is killed pain and We are at liberty to believe, however, that for Lord Salisbury the impossibility of negotiation was a matter for regret; all the more because at Berlin it was too ob- viously regarded as matter of offence. They have very strong feelings in Berlin, especially in ministerial circles; and they became impatient of what to them seemed the mingled selfishness and stupidity of standing out of the alliance, with mere protestations of good-will and proffers of moral support. It was a deep disap- pointment; and I dwell upon it because it is felt more bitterly now, perhaps, than it was at the time of its infliction. Yet then it occasioned irritation enough, and the more, perhaps, because a new portent had arisen to add to the chronic uneasiness of German statesmanship. General Boulan- ger had appeared; and though for many a long month that soldier and his preten- sions were ridiculed by all the more sober politicians in his native land, and by nearly all in our own, no such mistake was made in Germany. From the first hour of his appearance as a distinct personage he was viewed at Berlin with anxious curiosity, which deepened and became more dour as time went on. Naturally. For one reason alone the appearance in France of a man like General Boulanger was an event of signal importance for the Ger- mans. French politics interested them, of course; but what engaged their atten- tion most was the French army. And though year after year they saw that army steadily improving in numbers, equip- ment, efficiency, they had the satisfaction of knowing that what makes the French soldier most formidable was lacking still. In all France there was not a single gen- eral in whom officers or men had any con- fidence; certainly not one who commanded enthusiastic faith. The want of such a man is a serious thing for any army; to the French it makes a far greater dif- ference for the worse than to any other, misery are installed on a German hearth. The stipula- tion is not a hard one, and its acceptance would leave you with very great advantages over your allies. It must be allowed, I think, that there was much truth and much weight in this argument, whicb was strongly insisted on. But our government was not moved by it, and the negotiation (if that is the right word) came to an end. 70 THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. perhaps. But give the French soldiery take leave to doubt whether he gave a general with a star, a star in which enough promise of a wise obedience to they believe as well as he does, and we all justify the Bismarckian longings for his know what they can do and what they can accession. One thing is clear no sooner endure. Now General Boulanger may be had the emperor Fredericks heir become no Bonaparte, be may not even be a sec- master of Germany than he launched upon ond-rate soldier; but no sooner does he a course of conduct which can hardly have offer himself to popular notice than he is delighted thechancellor at any point. bailed as a man of destiny. Thousands Evidently, the young emperors visit to saw the star above his head at once; tens the czar an idea of his own, I fancy of thousands, hundreds of thousands, mil- was meant to signalize a new departure. lions see it now. That is what the Ger- Instant proclamation was to be made that mans feared from the beginning; knowing the time of hesitation and procrastination, that although there may be nothing to whether for this reason or that, had come dread from Boulangers generalship, belief to an end. This was not an unexpected in his star may work wonders in exalting consequence of the death of the old em- the spirit of an army which had lost belief peror and the decease of his unfortunate in itself. Besides, when a man of destiny successor. Before either event occurred appears above the horizon, not far off will the opinion was a common one that the be found one or two men of genius roused disappearance of father and son would be to share his luck, and ~villing to enhance followed by a prompt and vigorous exer- what they share by supplying his deficien- tion of effort at Berlin to safeguard the cies. For these reasons alone, then, the empire; by bargain alone, perhaps, but sudden rise of General Boulanger added more probably by bargain precedent to much to the uneasiness which had never war. There was much to alarm in this ceased to torment the conquerors of prospect, but nothing to surprise. The France from the time when the milliards surprise came when the young emperor, were paid so promptly~ And though the putting the chancellor aside apparently, dread of a Russo-French alliance came himself took up the business with a turbu- into existence long before General Bou- lent haste for which there was no obvious langer was heard of, it took a far more explanation that could be accounted rca- definite shape when, after a long proces- sonable. Nor was it possible to view sion of French ministers in swallow-tailed without misgiving this display of restless- coats, the brave ghzdrals figure appeared ness by the master of so many legions. with the star more or less visible above Energy, fire, and vigor are all very well as it. A Russo-French alliance was now long as they are controlled by wisdom; talked of more openly than ever; in France but it is quite another thing when they are certainly, where the hope of that alliance, not so guided, and of this young princes silently cherished even before the time character little thenwas known. Yet one when Skobeleff betook himself to Paris thing had become known, even before a to see what could be done in the matter, general suspicion of it arose from the now began to promenade the streets of venomous squabbling that raged about a Paris with plume and sword, so to speak. certain sick-bed; and this knowledge gave So affairs stood when the old emperor to every Englishman who shared it a par- died, amidst a rising turmoil of intrigue, ticular interest in the emperors proceed- of accusation, of recrimination, more odi- ings. It is true, and no mere matter of ous than anything else of the kind in guessing and gossiping, that Germanys modern history. About that, however, I new master has a deep dislike of England propose to say nothing; but it is neces- and all things English. What is more, he sary to remark that more than one high convinced himself long before he came to personage in Berlin must have doubted, the throne that understandings and alli- when the turmoil began to subside, ances with England are worse than worth- whether the decencies had been outraged less; it was the foundation of his political to any profitable purpose. ilere, again, creed that alliances for Germany should was more disappointment, and a further be sought elsewhere. Moreover, they are darkening of the outlook. The crown- not far wrong, I take it, who perceive in prince Frederick actually did come to the him a more or less seriousbelief that he throneactually did proceed to manifest is a special provision of destiny for this strong Liberal principles and to act upon particular juncture of affairs. The ques- them. But when he too passed away, and tion has often been asked, Who will fill the young man who was so much more a Prince Bismarcks place when he drops? statesman than a son succeeded him, I ~vho can fill it? My persuasion is that THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. 7 the young emperor answered that question to himself some time ago. He proposes to fill the chancellors place himself; and it was partly, perhaps, to make his pur- pose known, partly to show at once that it is not beyond his reach, that he rushed into the r~1e of vigorous statesman at the earliest possible moment. How he would play the part was, for the reason above stated, a matter of deep interest for Englishmen, and from the moment when his visit to the czar was announced his conduct was watched with some anxiety. That his Majesty com- bined restless energy with absolute self- confidence seemed clear enough. Whether any considerable measure of prudence was ~added to those qualities we had still to learn; and it was a question of great im- portance for us, for Englishmen, I mean. For supposing him to be at bottom a wise man patient, calculating, discreet his hostility to England and his contempt for what he deems its sinking strength and paralytic will, would still be a misfortune for us, but we should be able to reckon on such restraints as cautious and consid- erate minds habitually submit to. How, then, did the emperor conduct the diplo- matic campaign into which he flung him- self with such precipitancy? The haste with which he took up the business was not itself Bismarckian, though undoubt- edly significant of vigor. It was, in fact, ~a mistake a mistake of which I believe he received some inkling from Petersburg as soon as it was committed. For the emperors father was only just dead; and though it is true that the reign of that un- happy prince was very brief, true that it was understood from the beginning to be no more than a passing interlude pertinent to nothing, yet emperors are emperors in the eyes of every czar; and we need no backstairs informant to tell us that the Russian potentate was rather shocked at his cousins haste in seeking festal inter- views in Russia and elsewhere. Now it cannot have been wise to begin with the administration of such a shock, apart from the display of indiscretion that accompa- nied it. Moreover, it is but reasonable to suppose that when attempts are made to bustle a czar of all the Russias into some grand arrangement, instinctive impulse bids his Majesty stand off; and that a variety of new reflections may occur to him in this attitude. But let us look to the event. Though at first we were led to believe that the German emperors inter- view with the czar had been most fruitful of success, there is no such belief now, nor any pretence of it even in the Berlin news- papers. The visit was a failure per- haps worse than a failure. Worse it certainly would be if certain revelations of personal character contributed to the result. It has been said that the main purpose of his Majestys tour in Europe was to obtain personal knowledge of the various potentates with whom he has to deal. It may have been so. But in carry- ing out that design he had to give as well as take; offering himself for the same process of investigation which he em- ployed UI)Ofl others. And for my part, when I think of what the emperor is re- ported to have said and done at Vienna, and again at Rome, and again when he returned home, I doubt whether the czar did not see in the young mans character flew reasons for playing the waiting game which Germany and her aged chancellor have most to dread, perhaps. But, how- ever that may be, the parade of the Rus- sian visit was all thrown away. Nor can it be said that wisdom attended the Ger- man emperor on his visit to Vienna; though here again the vigor of his temper- ament was most impressive. But so rudely or carelessly was it displayed that he seemed to assume a right of boss ing the Austrian Empire. Men who were pre- pared to welcome him, and did welcome him, were presently convinced that that really was his own simple, unaffected view of the situation. Obviously no good could come of that. In Italy the emperor was more and less fortunate. He took amaz- ingly with the people, who were flattered by his mere presence amongst them. But then then the emperor, travelling on his own business to show how he meant it to be done, did more mischief in an hour than his chancellor can hope to remedy. Here again, no doubt, the source of offence was pride in the iron hand; the iron hand, which is to be laid upon popes, princes, and ministers with equal rigor and indifference to results. But the em- peror has yet to learn what the results may be in this case. Possibly they may teach him what so many of us are loth to believe or slow to understand; namely, that the papacy, with a vast obedient organization spread half the world over, is a power which no other in Europe can safely defy. It is a mistake to fancy it in these days a decaying force. On the contrary, it is stronger now than it was (for example) when Prince Bismarck closed with it in conflict and after a little while found himself undermost. As for the young and lusty prince who with spurs 72 THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. jangling, with sabre clattering, with plumes flying, undertakes to walk in upon the pope and J)ut him in his right place, he may boast of a thousand qualities good in the barrack and the tented field, but he is manifestly capable of blundering fatally as uncontrolled head of a great military empire. That the young prince entered upon this ostentatious and untimely tour at Prince Bismarcks desire is incredible almost. It has all the look of an original imperial conception, and we may doubt whether the chancellors assent to the undertaking was easily obtained. In any case, the outcome must have been pain and grief to him, even if the worst of it was too speedy and too broad a revelation of the young em- perors character. No doubt it may be said that if be made mistakes he is but young; that it is no uncommon thing for young men to be hot-headed and self- willed; and that in the perpetration of these errors his Majesty has probably learned a lesson which be will turn to good account. There is a great deal in the argument, but there would be more comfort in it if this were a period of re- pose, affording time for the lesson to work. But it is not a period of repose; and in all likelihood, the emperors mani- fest impatience is only one expression of a feeling common to his advisers that the time has come for pursuing a settled course of action with a view to safeguard the future of the empire. That this feel- ing should have become importunate is all the more probable because, while there is no longer an aged emperor William or a peace-loving emperor Frederick in the way of action, the great chancellor knows that he cannot be far off from the day of his own departure, while the future of Germany appears more doubtful than ever. It is certainly more doubtful if the result of the conversations between the emperor and the czar was what it seems to have been. In affairs like these it is hazardous to trust to appearances, however convinc- ing they may appear. But we can hardly doubt that the most important and most definite piece of information which the emperor carried away from the interview was this : The czar will not allow of the destruction of France for any price that Germany can offer. Of course we can all see that the price might be made a very high one. J3ut then the czar can wait. He may xvell believe that after a little while certain advantages may fall to him on much more easy and much more agree- able terms; and we may venture to sur mise that the events of the last six months, and more particularly his interview with the German emperor, may have decided the czar that to wait is his best policy. We may imagine his Majesty saying to himself, for instance, If this is to be the new Bismarck when the old one dies or resims, we had better wait to see what will happen in Germany itself. Judging from all we hear and all we know, this would seem to be a not unnatural reflec- tion. But if the czar feels that he can wait there may be no similar confidence at Berlin; where, indeed, the return of the emperor to his capital seems to have been followed by a sort of suppressed flurry, which circumstances unconnected with his Majestys tour cannot have ap- peased. The ascendency of General Bou- langer in France is hardly doubtful any longer; and if the Germans see danger to themselves in a Boulanger dictatorship, and in the fact that the general has royal- ist support (which may affect the Russian view of him very considerably), they can only fall back on the hope that a Radical insurrection will ensue when the general makes his grasp at power. Rioting in Paris would be serviceable to them, no doubt; but inasmuch as it is known to be so it is less likely to break out. Again, whether there be much or little disquie- tude at Berlin, it cannot be diminished by the proposed addition to the armaments of France; as to which we may remark that no similar proposal has been made with less apology or followed by so little menace. What has happened in east Africa is another mortification for the Germans; in a certain condition of temper and circumstance what mortifies irritates; and all Europe is concerned in the amount of irritation that may exist at Berlin at any given moment. The discussion of this matter between the German and En- glish governments, extremely interesting in itself, carried with it a great deal of information for outsiders. From the nature of Prince Bismarcks most embar- rassing proposals, from the way in which their discussion was carried on, from the menacing insinuations employed to overcome Lord Salisburys reluctance, and from much that has happened since, we may fairly infer this: there was no friendly understanding between England and Germany ~vhich Prinqe Bismarck feared to jeopardize, and none of any value that he hoped to gain. Otherwise the pressure exerted upon the English minister would have been less urgent and vexatious than it actually was. THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. This brings us to the main point for us in considering the present state of affairs abroad our own relations with the various European powers. That is what we have first to think of at a time like this. We know pretty well what those relations might have been. The German- Austrian-Italian alliance was at one time open to us on certain conditions, of course. Naturally, we were expected to take our share of the risk, and to pledge ourselves by formal treaty to the bargain. But apart from the difficulty of making treaty engagements for offensive and de- fensive purposes (a difficulty which will some day bring upon us many a worse one), it may be that Lord Salisbury thought our share of the risk, as proposed from Berlin, too considerable for accept- ance. More probably, however, he was repelled by the character rather than by the weight of the obligations that were to be imposed on England (see footnote on page 69). But as a matter of fact, no such arrangement with England as the Germans tried so hard for was ever come to. The failure angered them extremely, as it was sure to do; and the bitterness thus engen- dered adds to the doubt whether the re- jection of the German overtures was wise. Unquestionably their acceptance would have involved risks and responsibilities of great apparent magnitude. But it al- ways seemed to me that they were not nearly so great as they looked, since it may be regarded as a matter of certainty that no other European combination would dare to move against a firm fighting alli- ance of England, Germany, Austria, and Italy. A league so formed would be strong enough to forbid all attempts to disturb the peace without the slightest fear of resistance; and of course if there was no drawing of the sword there could be no risks for the coalition as long as it kept faithfully together. Moreover, the aggregate fighting strength of the alliance would be so enormous that every member of it might reduce its armaments a little; at any rate there could be no further need of increasing them. Further, it seemed to me that the accession of England to the alliance would have made of it far more truly a league of peace. What the coalition of Germany, Austria, and Italy may mean, or to what purposes it may be turned, nobody can say. Or if nobody is too wide a word, millions of us, in every land, whose happiness and prosperity de- pend upon the ul)shot, live in doubt on that point. Had England joined the alli- ance there would have been no such 73 dubiety. Every merchant, every work- man, in these latitudes would have gone about his business in assurance of a long spell of tranquillity; while as for the homes that supply the multitudinous sol- diery of Europe, we know the dread that would have been expelled from them. All these considerations, however, must have been well weighed in Lord Salisburys mind, and we must suppose that the bal- ance went, against them. For one thing, there was the reign of the (then) crown- prince of Germany to look forward to. The fatal disease that broke down that most valuable life had not yet declared itself, and the great age and the increas- ing infirmities of the emperor William announced that place would soon be made for his heir. In a day that might happen in a year or two it would happen almost certainly; and Lord Salisbury may have thought it only reasonable to abstain from leagues of peace which the accession of Prince Frederick would render unneces- sary. Possibly that consideration had much influence in Downing Street, and another one yet more. Had Lord Salis- bury, moved by stronger reasons than any we have knowledge of, bound or sought to bind this nation to a treaty engagement like that which unites Italy and Germany, another Midlothian campaign would have been commenced in the twinkling of an eye. Who can doubt that that would have been the instant result? And whose imagination can compass the vigor and fervor of the campaign if it became known that our engagements extended to feeding a Turkish army, under any circumstances whatever? The Union! is it not clear that the very Union might be jeopardized in the outbreak of denunciation that would have followed the discovery? I dont know what answer might be given to ques- tions like these by a minister who, being eloquent, candid, courageous, went before his fellow-countrymen to tell them the truth; speaking plainly, as Prince Bis- marck does; confessing the danger, ex- pounding it, and boldly appealing to the pride and the common sense of the nation. My own humble opinion is that such a minister, taking such a course, would suc- ceed in his purposes; but though Lord Salisbury has never spoken his mind on the subject there is ample ground for be- lieving that he thinks differently. Mr. Gladstone, that gentlemans prodigious capacity for campaigning, fear of the Lib- eral Unionists and fears for the Union these alone sufficed to deter Lord Salis- bury from entangling alliances. THE RECENT CHANGE IN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. 74 As matters stand, then, we have no alli- giving in to Prince Bismarcks demand, ances; while the death of the emperor considering that otherwise we might have Frederick, after a few weeks of ineffective seen the sultan of Zanzibar overthrown, sovereignty, destroyed whatever calcula- and Germany launched upon a course of tions had been raised on his pacific but conquest in those regions which (if we did powerful character. Had he ascended not choose to fight) would have ousted us the throne with a promise of long life, it from them altogether. Very well ; but to would have been of little consequence to my mind it makes a difference in the gen- England none at all perhaps that she eral outlook of affairs whether this conse- remained out of the European coalition. quence occurred to Lord Salisbury as a But since his reign was so brig, since it suspicion or whether it was presented to began and ended amidst controversies him from without as a threat. In point that bred a most rancorous feeling against of fact, I believe, it was suggested with us, and since the new emperor is animated sufficient clearness as a threat; together by a bustling, impatient hostility to En- with some pregnant hints about some- gland, the case is altered. What it has bodys having to ans~ver for anarchy in now become may be illustrated by what I the Soudan. This was no friendly course believe to be an unquestionable statement of proceeding, and in truth there is very of fact. If the present emperor of Ger- little friendship at all in the dealings of many could follow his own desires, he Germany with England just no~v. would definitely turn his back upon all Whatever the more sober spirits in the thought of alliance with England. If he one country may think of this state of could choose his own way out of the things, it must be deplored in the other. troubles that beset the German Empire, For years past most Englishmen have he would do so not with Englands help looked to a German alliance as a suffi- but at Englands cost. And this he would ciently understood thing as a mere do not as a mere matter of temper as matter of arrangement at the right time. some may think but Qf policy. He has But with a hostile, hot-headed, altogether thought about it. He has made his youthful prince on the German throne, choice, and to carry it out only needs the and surrounded by men who, while they right understanding with other potentates. find him a handful, fret under disap- But so far, apparently, the need remains; pointments inflicted by ourselves, share and in all likelihood it will remain as long his contempt if not his dislike, and seek as liberty to attack, crush, and dismember right and left for some speedy means of France is a German stipulation. And making their work secure the case is hence, no doubt, the uneasiness, the bit- altered. Meanwhile the Russian danger terness, so very evident there; feelings advances steadily. Year by year the which we may expect to suffer from. strength of the Muscovite Empire be- Upon England they have been and prob- comes more formidable, while the pur- ably will be vented. Already we have poses to which it is devoted never slacken had a taste of this treatment, and should and never change. Seeing where Russia prepare for more. Of the east-African now stands in central Asia, no one sneers agreement Lord Salisbury has given us an any longer at alarmists deluded by the account which it would be unreasonable study of small maps. Looking to the to complain of, though it does not tell us rapidity with which the empire consoli- all. It is not for the prime minister to dates while it spreads, no one talks now of complain to all the world (though it is crumpling it up at need like a sheet of true) that Prince Bismarcks anti-slavery paper. Practically insolvent, its very scheme was framed in splendid indiffer- debt is held as a weapon of offence or ence to the embarrassments and disad- retaliation. An enormous mass of Rus- vantages it mPxht inflict on English com- sian bonds are held in Germany; and merce if, indeed, that consequence was already the rulers of that country have not intended; and it was certainly urged heard whispered hints of suspension if upon our government in a masterful and Russia is provoked to war. And surely it even menacing way. It would be scandal- is a remarkable fact that at this hour there ous to suppose that the English minister is scarcely a nation in Europe which by assented willingly to a joint-action pro- its necessities, its weaknesses, its pas- posal so needless for the alleged purpose sions, its embarrassments, does not testify and so likely to provide a large crop of to Russias power, or contribute to the difficulties and vexations before long, furtherance of her designs. Germany is Lord Salisbury yielded to pressure. He not out of the list, nor Austria, nor has been congratulated on the wisdom of France, nor Turkey. Neither can En- THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. gland claim to be out of it, governed as she is by a race of dubitating statesmen, under a Parliamentary system which would hamper the strongest minister, and which certainly affords shelter and excuse to timidity. If all Sir Henry Wolffs despatches were l)ublished there would be considerable alarm at the extent of Russian operations in Persia; but they will not be published. The later news from Roumania and Servia must be a vast encouragement for Russia in south-eastern Europe, though mitigated perhaps by ap- prehensions that movement may be forced too soon. The symptoms in Prussia, in Austria, in France, in Italy (where Signor Crispi is thought to be a little rash, it seems), all conspire to enjoin on Russia the waiting game. So, at any rate, it is reasonable to think; and therefore I for one take little account of the new Russian loan. The restlessness, the irritation, or what if it were not so strong a ~vord I should call the desperation at Berlin is far more likely to break the peace than any precipitancy on the part of Russia. The one great restraint, as Lord Salisbury has said, is the tremendous hazard of the game. But sooner or later the game will be played. It is a vain hope that those vast Continental armies are destined to trickle tranquilly back to the homes they caine from. At present they are still accumulating; by which we may see that though, as our own foreign secretary still assures us, every government in Europe is striving for peace, not one of them believes that the others mean it. In this state of things I hope it is under- stood at home that England is quite without alliances, and that if they are wanted they are not so easily obtainable perhaps as they were a little while ago; that our friends on the European Continent are feeble and few; and that while the might of our rivals ( enemies~ is not the right word for them) is rapidly increasing, so also is the disposition to deal with us in a swag- gering, contemptuous, and aggressive way. It may be said in answer that ~ve are safer without alliances; and the reply might be readily admitted if our navy were as strong as it ought to be, and if it were not still possible for the Continental States to put off their contentions, to postpone the tre- mendous hazard, by agreements made at our expense. Call it an unlikely thing to happen if you please; but as a mere pos- sibility (and I knowthat on more than one occasion it has looked like that at least) it is far too serious to be put out of ac- count. Such agreements we could hardly 75 prevent; but we can make our navy strong, and to that alternative the govern- ment, they say, is about to apply itself at last. Just as these remarks are brought to a close, a report of the German emperors address to the Reichstag appears in the newspapers. The most remarkable pas- sage in it, perhaps, is that in which his Majesty avows that his recent tour was undertaken for political purposes; he went forth to seek an understanding with certain of his neighbors for the better ful- filment of the task of securing peace and prosperity for our people. Welcome is the emperors declaration that to inflict upon Germany without necessity the sufferings of a war, even of a victorious war, I should not consider consistent with my Christian belief and my duties to the German nation; but in these days it is taken for granted that great wars are never undertaken without some conviction of necessity some sense of compulsion. His Majestys assurance that his relations with all foreign nations are peaceful is sufficiently emphatic ; of course it is accurate; and of course similar assurances ~vill be heard from similar quarters till the week before the next war breaks out. To conclude, while the members of the Reichstag were listening to the emperors speech, they had before them a budget providing for an addition of twenty-eight war vessels to the German navy. Six millions sterling are to be spent on these ships, anii they are to be built in six years. FREDERICK GREENWOOD. From The Corohill Magazine. THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. You are English, I take it, sir? It was clear to me that at any rate the speaker was. I was travelling alone. I had not fallen in with three Englishmen in as many weeks. And I turned to in~ spect the newcomer with a cordiality his smudged and smutty face could not wholly suppress. I am, I answered, and I am very glad to meet a fellow-countryman. You are a stranger here? he did not take his eyes from me, but indicated by a gesture of his thumb the busy wharf be- low us, piled high with hundreds and thousands of frail crates full of oranges. From the upper deck of the San Miguel we looked directly down upon it, and could 76 THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. see all that was coming or going in the I gena! I answered brusquely. No, I trim basin about us. The San Miguel, a am not going to stay at Carthagena. Why steamer of the Segovia Quadra and Coin- should you suppose so, may I ask? Un- panys line, bound for several places on less, indeed, I added, as another con- the coast southward, was waiting to clear struction of his words occurred to me, out of El Grao, the harbor of Valencia, you think I want to see a hit of fighting? and I was waiting rather impatiently to No, my friend, the fun might grow too clear out with her. You are a stranger furious. here? he repeated. To explain this I should add that three Yes; I have been in the town four or days before there had been a mutiny five days, but otherwise I am a stranger, among the troops at Carthagena. It ~vas I answered. mentioned at the time in the English pa. You are not in the trade? he contin- pers. An outlying fort was captured, and ued. He meant the orange-trade. the governor of the city killed before the No, I am not; I am travelling for attempt was suppressed. Of course this pleasure, I answered readily. You will was in every ones mouth, and I fancied be able to understand that, though it is that his question referred to it. My man- more than any Frenchman or Spaniard ner or my words, however, disconcerted can. I smiled as I spoke, but he was him. XVithout saying more he turned not very responsive, away, not going below at once, but stand- It is a queer place to visit for pleas- ingon the main deck near the office in the ure, he said dryly, looking away from afterpart. There was a good deal of bustle me to the busy throng about the orange- in that quarter. The captain, second offi. crates. cer, and clerk were there, giving and tak- Not at all, I retorted; it is a lively ing receipts and what not. He did not town and quaint besides, and it is warm speak to them, but leaned against the rail and sunny. I cannot say as much as that close at hand. I had an uncomfortable of Madrid, from which I came t~vo or feeling that he was watching me, and this three weeks back. I suppose gave rise to a strange shrinking Come straight here? he asked lacon- from the man, which did not stay with me ically. always, but returned from time to time. I was growing a trifle tired of his curi- Presently the dinner-bell rang, and si- osity, but I answered, No; I stayed a muitaneously the San Miguel moved out short time at Toledo and Aranjuez oh, to sea. We were to spend the next day at and at several other places. Alicante, and the following one at Car- You speak Spanish? thagena. Not much. Muy~oco tie castellano, Dinner was not a cheerful meal. The I laughed, calling to mind that maddening officers of the ship did not speak English grimace by which the Spanish peasant or French, and were not communicative indicates that he does not understand, and in any language. Besides myself there is not going to understand you. He is a were only three first-class passengers. good fellow enough, is Sancho Panza, but They were ladiesrelatives of the newly having made up his mind that you do not appointed governor of Carthagena, and speak Spanish, the purest Castilian is about to join him there. I have no doubt after that not Spanish for him. that they were charming and fashionable You are going some way with us people, but their partiality for the knife in perhaps to Carthagena? persisted the eating was calculated to prejudice them inquisitor, unfairly in English eyes. Consequently, He laid a queer stress upon the last when I came on deck again, and the en- word, and xvith it shot at me a sly glance gineer Sleigh, he told me his name was a glance so unexpected and so unpleas- sidled up to me, I received him gra- antly suggestive that I did not answer him ciously enough. He proffered the omni- at once. Instead, I looked at him more present cigarette, and I provided him in closely. He was a wiry young fellow, return with something to drink. He urged rather below than above the middle height, me to go down with him to see the en- to all appearance the chief engineer. gine-room, and after somehesitation I did Everything about him, not excluding the so. You see, it was after dinner. atmosphere, was greasy and oily, as if he I have pretty much my own way, he had come straight from the engine-room, said boastingly. They cannot do with- The whites of his eyes showed with un- out English engineers. They tried once, lovely prominence. Seeing him thus, I and lost three boats in six months. In took a dislike for him. To Cartha- harbor, my time is my own. I have seven THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. stokers under me, all Spaniards. They tried it on ~vith me when I first came aboard, they did I But the first that out with his knife to me, I knocked on the head with a shovel. I have had none of their sauce since! Was he much hurt? I asked, scan- ning my companion. He was not big, I have said, and he slouched and shambled. But with all this there was an air of swag- gering dare-devilry about him that gave color to his story. I dont know, he answered. They took him to the hospital he never came aboard again that is all I know. I suppose your payis good? I sug- gested timidly. To confess the truth, I felt myself at a disadvantage with him down there. The flaring lights and deep shadows, the cranks and pistons whirling at our elbows, the clank and din, and the valves that hissed at unexpected moments, were matters of every hour to him me they imbued with a mean desire to pro- pitiate. As my after-dinner easiness abated, I regretted that it had induced me to come down. He laugheda short, harsh laugh. Pretty fair, he said, with my oppor- tunities. Do you see that jacket? Yes. That is my shore-going jacket, that is, with a wink. Here, look at it! I complied. It appeared on first sight to be an ordinary sailors pea-coat; but, looking more closely, I found that inside were dozens of tiny pockets. At the mouth of each pocket a small hook was fixed to the lining. They are for watches, he explained, when he saw that I did not comprehend; I get five francs over the price for every one I carry ashore to a friend of mine duty free, you understand. I nodded to show that I did understand. And which is your port for that? I said, desiring to say something as I turned to ascend. He touched me on the shoulder, and I found his face close to mine. His eyes were glittering in the light of the lamp that hung by the steam-gauge, with the same expression in them that had, so per- plexed me before dinner. At Carthage- na! he ~vhispered, bringing his face still closer to mine; at Carthagena! Wait a minute, mate, I have told you somethino~ he went on, hoarsely. I am not too par- ticular, and, what is more, I am not afraid! Aint you going to tell me something? I have nothing to tell you! I stain- mered, staring at him. 77 Aint you going to tell me something, mate? he repeated monotonously. His voice ~vas low, but it seemed to me that there was a menace in it. I have not an idea what you mean, my good fellow, I said, and, turning away with some abruptness my eye lit upon a shovel lying ready to his hand I ran as nimbly as I could up the steep ladder, and gained the deck. Once there I paused and looked down. He was still standing by the lamp, staring up at me, doubt and chagrin plainly written on his face. Even as I watched him he rounded his lips to an oath; and then seemed to hold it over until he should be better assured of its necessity. I thought no worse of him by reason of his revelations. In a country where the head of a custom-house lives as a prince on the salary of a beggar, smuggling is no sin. But I was angry with him, and vexed with myself for the haste with which I had met his advances. I disliked and distrusted him. Whether he were mad, or took me for another smuggler which seemed the most probable hypothesis or had conceived some other false idea of me, whatever the key to the enigma of his manner might be, I felt sure I should do xvell to avoid him. Like should mate with like, and I am not a violent man. I should not feel at home in a duel, though the part were played with the most domestic of fire- shovels, much less with a horrible thing out of a stoke-hole. About half past ten, the San Miguel be- ginning to roll, I took the hint and went below. The small saloon was empty, the lamp turned down. As I passed the stew- ards pantry I looked in and begged a couple of biscuits. I am a fairly good sailor, but when things are bad my policy is comprised in berth and biscuits. With this provision against misfortune, I retired to my cabin, luxuriating in the knowledge that it was a four-berth one, and that I was its sole occupant. In truth I came near to chuckling as I looked round it. I did not need a certain experience I had had of a cabin three feet six inches wide by six feet three inches long, shared with a drunken Span- iard, to lead me to view with contentment my present quarters. A lamp in a glass case lighted at once the cabin and the passage outside, and so gave assurance that it would burn all night. On my right hand were an upper and lower berih, and on my left the same, with ample standing room between. A couch occupied the 78 THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN side facing me. The sliding door was supplemented by a curtain. I could hardly believe that this was all my own. What joy to one who had known other things, to arrange this and stow that, and fearlessly to place in the rack sponge and tooth- brush ! What wonder if I blessed the firm of Segovia Quadra and Company as I sank back upon my well-hung mattress. I sleep well at sea. The motion suits me. Even a qualm of sea-sickness does but induce a pleasant drowsiness. I love a snug berth under the porthole, and to hear the swish and wash of the water rac- ing by, and the crisp plash as the vessel dips her forefoot under, and always the complaint of the stout timbers as they creak and groan in the bowels of the ship. Cosy and warm, with these sounds for a lullaby, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was again down in the engine-room, and sitting opposite to the other Englishman. Havent you something to tell me? Havent you something to tell me? he was droning monotonously, wagging his head from side to side the while, with that same perplexing smile on his face which had so distressed me waking. Havent you something to tell me? I strove to say that I had not, because I knew that if I did not satisfy him, he would do some dreadful thing, though what I did not know. But I could not utter the words, and while I was still struggling with this horrible impotency, that surpassed any waking misery, the thing was done. I was bound hand and foot to the crank of the engine, and going up and down with it, up and down! Oh, it was fiendish cruelty! I wept and prayed to be released, but the villain took no heed of my prayers. He sat on, regarding my struggles with the same impassive smile. In despair I strove to think what it was he wanted what it was and How the ship was rolling! Thank Heaven I was awake, or half awake! In my berth at any rate, and not in that hor- rible engine-room. But how was this? The other Englishman was here too, standing by the lamp, looking at me. Or was it the other Englishman? It was some one who was not smiling, yet some one too who had a smudged and smutty face. All the wonder in my mind had to do with this question. I lay for a while in an indolent mood, between sleeping and waking, watching him. Then I saw him reach across my feet to a little shelf above the berth. As he drew back something that was in his hand the hand that rested on the edge of my berth glittered, glittered as the light fell upon it, and, wide awake, I sprang to a sitting posture in my berth, and cried out with fear. He was gone on the instant, and in the same second of time I was out of bed and on the floor. A moments hesitation, and I drew aside the curtain, which was still shaking. The passage without was still and empty. But opposite my cabin and separated from it only by the width of the passage was the door of another cabin, which was, or rather had been when I went to bed, unoccupied. Now the curtain drawn across the doorway was shaking, and I scarcely doubted but that the in- truder was behind it. But behind it also was darkness, and I was unarmed, whereas that upon which the light had fallen in the mans hand was either a knife or a pistol. No wonder that 1 hesitated, or that dis- cretion seemed the better part of valor. To be sure I might call the steward and have the cabin searched, but I feared to seem afraid. I stood on tiptoe for a few moments listening. All was still; and presently I shivered. The excitement was passing away, I began to feel ill. With a last fearful glance at the opposite cabin had I really seen the curtain shake? might it not have been caused by the motion otthe ship ? I drew close my sliding door, and climbed hastily into my bunk. Robber or no robber I must lie still. In a very short time, what with my qualms and my drowsiness, I fell asleep. I slept soundly until the morning light filled the cabin, and I was aroused by the cheery voice of the steward, bidding me Buenos dias. The ship was moving on an even keel again. Overhead the deck was being swabbed. I opened my little window and looked out. As I did so the nights doings rose in my memory. But who could think of dreams or midnight assassins ~vith the fresh sea air in his nostrils, and before his eyes that vignette of blue sea and grey rocks grey, but sparkling, gemlike, ethereal, under the sun of Spain? Not I for one. I was gay as a lark, hungry as a hunter. Sallying out before I was dressed, I satisfied myself that the opposite cabin was empty and bare, apd came back laughing at my folly. But when I found that something else was empty and bare, I thought it no laugh- ing matter. I wanted a biscuit to stay my appetite, until the steward should bring my cafd com~let, and I turned to the little shelf over my berth where I had placed them on going to bed. There were none there now. Curious ! I had not eaten them. Then it flashed upon my mind that it was with this shelf my visitor had meddled. After that I did not lose a moment. I examined my luggage and the pockets of my clothes; the result relieved as much as it astonished me; nothing was missing. My armed apparition had carried off two captains biscuits, and nothing else what- ever! I passed the morning on deck puzzling over it. Sleigh did not come near me; was he conscious of guilt, I wondered, or offended at the abruptness of my leave- taking the night before, or was it merely that he was engaged about his work? I could not tell. About noon we came to our moorings at Alicante. The sky was unclouded. The shabby town and the barren hills that rose behind itbarren to the eye, since the vines were not in leaflooked baking hot. I had found a tolerably cool corner of the ship, and was amusing my- self with a copy of Don Quixote and a dictionary, when the engineer made his appearance. Not going ashore? he said. For the twentieth time I wondered what it was in his manner or voice that made everything he said to me seem a gibe. Whatever it was, I hated him for it, and I gave my feelings vent by answering sul- lenly, No, I am not, and forthwith turn- ing to my books again. I thought you travellers for pleasure wanted to see everything, he continued. Maybe you know Alicante? No, I dont, I answered snappishly. And in this heat I do not want to know it I All right, governor, all right! he replied. Think it might be too hot for you perhaps? Ho! ho! ho! And with a hoarse laugh that lasted him from stem to stern, and brought the blood to my cheeks, he left me. But I could see that he did not lose sight of me, and I heard him chuckling at intervals at his own wit for fully half an hour afterwards. Though where the joke came in, I could not for the life of me determine. Towards evening I did go ashore, slip- ping away at a time when he had gone below for a moment. I found a public walk in an avenue of palm-trees which ran close by the sea. The palms were laden with clusters of yellow dates, that at first sight were more like dried seaweed than fruit. As darkness fell, and with it cool- ness, I sat down here; and fell to watch- ing the vessels in the port fade away one by one into the gloom, and little sparks of 79 light take their places. A number of peo- ple were still out, enjoying the air, but these were sauntering, one and all, in the indolent southern fashion, so that on hearing the brisk step of a man ap- proaching in haste, I looked up sharply. To my surprise, it was Sleigh the encri~ neer! He passed close to me. I could not be mistaken, though he had put off his half- slouching, half-i mpud ent air, and was keenly on the alert, glancing from this side to that, as if he were following or searching for some one. For whom? I was one of half a dozen on a seat in deep shadow. If I were the person he wanted and I had leapt, at sight of him, to that conclusion, and cowered down in my place he overlooked me, and went on. I sat some time longer after his step died away in the distance, my thoughts not altogether pleasant ones. But he did not return, and I went up to the H6tel Bossio prepared to eat an excellent dinner. The table dhc~te in the big whitewashed room was half finished. I was late. Per- haps this was why the waiters eyed me, as I took my seat, with attention; or it might be that the English were not numerous at Alicante, or not popular; or, again, it might be that some one Mr. Sleigh, for example had been there making in- quiries for a foreigner, blonde, middle- sized, and speaking very little Spanish. Their notice made me uncomfortable. It seemed as if I could nowhere escape from my old man of the sea. Nowhere indeed, for I was to have another rezcontre that night, with which he may or may not have had to do, but ~vhich must be told because of the light afterwards thrown upon it. Returning to my ship along the dark wharf, I here and there caine upon figures loafing in the shadow of bales or barrels; and, passing them, clutched my loaded stick more tightly. I got by all these, however, in safety, and reached the spot where the ship lay. San Miguel! Bota! I shouted in the approved fashion of that coast. San Miguel! Bota! The words had scarcely left my lips the second time when there was a rustling close to me. A single footstep sounded on the pebbles, and the light of a lantern was flashed in my face. With an excla- mation I recoiled. As I did so two or three men sprang forward. Dazzled and taken by surprise, I had only an indis- tinct view of figures about me, and I was on the point of fighting or running, or making an attempt at both, when by good THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. 8o THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. luck the clink of steel accoutrements fell upon my ear. By good luck! For they were police who had stopped me, and it is ill work resisting the police in Spain. What do you require, gentlemen? I asked in my best Spanish. I am English. Perdone usted, sefior, replied the leader, he who held the light. Will you have the goodness to show me your pa. pers? Con mucho gusto! I answered, de- lighted to find that things were no ~vorse I was going to produce my passport on the spot, when the sergeant, with a polite but imperative This way! directed me to follow him. I did so for a short dis- tance, a door was flung open, and I found myself in a well-lighted, barely furnished office, which I guessed was a custom- house post. The officer took his place behind a desk, and by a gesture of his cocked hat signified his readiness to pro- ceed. I had had to do with the police before, and should have smiled at the matter now, but I was aware of a suppressed excite- ment in the group around me, of strange glances which they cast at me, of the gen- eral drawing round their chief as he bent over my passport things which seemed to indicate that this was no ordinary case of passport examination. Singular,too, was the disappointment they evinced when they found that my passport bore, besides the ordinary vise, the signatures of the vice-consul and alcalde at Valencia. Of course, as their faces fell my spirits rose. A deep conviction and deeper dis- appointment took possession of them, and, after I had answered half-a-dozen questions, the interview ended with the same Perdone usted, sefior, with which it had begun. I was bowed out; a boat was instantly procured for me, and in two minutes more I was climbing the ladder which hung from the San Miguels quar- ter. The first person whom I saw on board was Mr. Sleigh. He was lolling on a bench in the saloonconfound his impu- dence ! drinking aguardiente and star- ing moodily at the table. I tried to pass him by, and reach my cabin unnoticed, but on the last step of the companion I slipped. With a muttered oath at the in- terruption he looked up, and our eyes met. Never did I see a man more astonished. He gazed at me as if he could not trust his sight; then started to his feet and ex- ecuted a loud whistle. Well, I never! he cried, slapping his thigh with another oath, and speaking in a coarse, jubilant tone. Well, I am blest, governor! So you did not go ashore after all I Here is a lark ! I saw that he had been drinking. I have been ashore, I answered coldly, my dislike for him increased tenfold by his condition. Honor bright? he exclaimed. I have told you that I have been ashore, I replied indignantly. He whistled again. You are a cool hand, he said, looking me over with his thumbs in his pockets and a new expres- sion in his face. I might have known that though, precious mild as you seemed. Dined at the H6tel Bossio, Ill ~varrant you did, and took your walk in the Ala- meda like any other man? Yes, I did.~~ So you did! 0 Lord! 0 Lord! So you did! And again he contemplated me at arms length. I could construe his new expression now it was one of ad- miration. So you did, governor. And came aboard in the dark, as bold as brass. That thawed me a little. I thought my- self that I had done rather a plucky thing in coming on board alone at that time of night. But I told him nothing, in his present state, of the affair with the police. I merely answered, I do not understand why I should not, Mr. Sleigh. And as I am rather tired, I will bid you good- night. Wait a bit, governor. Not so fast, he said, in a lower tone, arresting me by a oesture as I was turning away. Dont you think you are playing it a bit too high? You are a rare cool one, I swear, and fly there is nothing you are not fly to, Ill be bound. But two heads are better than one, mateyou take me?letting alone that it is every one for himself in this world. Do you rise to it? No, I do not rise to it, I answered haughtily, as I drew back from his spir- ituous breath and leering eyes. He was more drunk than I had fancied. You dont? Think again, mate, he said, almost as if he were pleading with me. Dont play it too high. Dont talk such confounded non- sense ! I retorted angrily. He looked at me yet a moment, a scowl dropping gradually over his face and not impro.ving it. Then he answered, All right, governor! All right! Pleasant dreams! and a pleasant waking at Car- thagena! I have no doubt I shall enjoy both, I THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. 8i replied, smarting under his mocking tone; floor, though, as I was lying in the upper ~nd added, as his words brought another berth, I could not see it. That I would matter to my mind, That is, if you will soon set to rights. have the goodness not to disturb me as Accordingly I vaulted out after my you did last night! He should not think usual fashion. But instead of aliohtin, he had escaped detection, fairly and squarely on the floor, m~ bars It is your turn now, he replied more feet struck against something some- soberly. I dont know what you are up thing soft, a good distance short of it, to now. I did not disturb you last night. and I came down smartly on my hands Some one did I Some one uncom- and knees to form part of the queerest monly like you too. tableau upon which even a cabin-lamp What did he do? he asked, eying ever shone. There was I, lightly clothed me as though he suspected a trap were in pyjamas, glaring into the eyes of a being laid for him. dingy.faced man, who was likewise down I startled him, I answered irritably, on his hands and knees on the floorwith or I do not know what he would not have more than half the breath knocked out of done. As it was he did not do much. He his body by my descent upon him. I do took some biscuits. not know which was the more astonished. Took some biscuits! He pretended Hallo! how do you come here? I that he did not believe me, and he did it exclaimed, after we had stared at one an- so well that I began to doubt his guilt. other for some seconds. You must have been dreaming, mate. He raised his hand fiercely. Hush! I could not dream the biscuits away, he whispered; and obeying his word and I retorted. gesture I crouched where I was, while he That stroke went home. He stood in seemed to listen. Then we rose silently silence drawing patterns on the table with to our feet as by one motion. I had not his finger and a puddle of spilled water. time to feel afraid, though it was far from Guilty or innocent, he did not seem a pretty countenance that was so close to ashamed of himself, but rather puzzled mine. Rage and terror were written too and perplexed. Once or twice, without plainly upon it. speaking, he glanced cunningly at me. You are English? he said sullenly. But whether he wished to see how I took I said I was. Although I saw that he it, or really suspected me of fooling him, had a pistol half concealed behind him, I I could not tell. somehow felt master of the position. His Good-night! I cried impatiently; fear of being overheard seemed so much and I went to my cabin. I had told him greater than my fear of his pistol, and it my mind and that was enough. The last is not easy to do much with a pistol with- I saw of him, he was still standing at the out being overheard. You are English table, drawing patterns on it with his too, I can see, I added, below my breath. linger. Perhaps you will kindly tell me what I turned in at once, satisfied that after you are doing in my cabin? what had passed between us there would You will not betray me? he said be no repetition of last nights disturb- irresolutely. ance. In a pleasant state between waking Betray you, my man! If you have and sleeping I was aware of the tramp of taken nothing of mine, I replied, with a feet overhead as the moorings were let prudent remembrance of his weapon and go. The first slow motion of the engines the late hour of the night, you may go to was followed by the old familiar swish the deuce for me, so long as you dont pay and wash of the water sliding by. Then me another visit. the ship began to heel over a little. We Taken anything! he cried, forget. had reached the open sea. After that I ting his caution, and raising his voice, slept. do you take me for a thief? I will be 1 awoke suddenly; awoke in the full bound he went on bitterly, yet with possession of my senses. The cabin was a pride that seemed to me very pitiable still lit only by the lamp. I guessed that when I understood it that you are it was little after midnight; and lay a about the only man in Spain who would while execrating the disordered health not know me at sight. There is a price which made such an awakening no new upon my head! There are two thousand thing. 0 u/main I I sighed, that I pesetas for whoever takes me dead or had not taken that cup of coffee after alive! There are bills of me in every dinner! My portmanteau too had got town in Spain! Ay, of me! in every town loose. I could hear it sliding about the from Irun to Malaga! LIVING AGE. VOL. LXIV. 3331 82 THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. The wretched braggart! I knew now who he was. You were at Carthagena, I said sternly, thinking of the old grey- headed general who had died at his post. He nodded. The momentary excite- ment faded quickly from his face, leaving him to appear again what he was, a man dirty, pallid, half-famished. About my height, he wore also clothes, shabby and soiled indeed, but like mine in make and material. In his desperate desire for sym- pathy, for communion with some one, he had already laid aside any fear of me. When I asked him how he came to be in my cabin, he told me freely. I intended to ship from Valencia to France, but they watched and searched all the boats. I crept on board this one in the night, thinking that as she was bound for Carthagena she would not be searched. I was right; they did not think any one would venture back into the lions jaws. But what will you do when we reach Carthagena? I asked. Stay on board and, if possible, go with this ship to Cadiz. From there I can easily get over to Tangier, he answered. It sounded feasible. And where have you been since we left Valencia? I asked. Behind this sailcloth. He pointed to a long roll of spare canvas which was stowed away between the floor and the lower berth. I opened my eyes. Ay! he added with a grimace, they are close quarters, but there is just room behind there for a man lying on his face. What is more, except your two biscuits I have had nothing to eat since the day be- fore yesterday. Then it was you who took the bis- cuits? I said. He nodded; then he fell back against my berth, all his strength gone out of him. For from behind us came another a more emphatic answer. You may take your oath to that, governor! it ran; and briskly pushing aside the door and cur- tain, Sleigh the engineer stood before us. You may bet upon that, I guess! he added, an ugly smile playing about his mouth and eyes. The refugees face changed to a sickly white, and his hand toyed feebly with the pistol, but he did not move. I think that we both felt we were in the presence of a stronger mind. You had better put that plaything away, said Sleigh. He showed no fear, but I observed that he was watching us narrowly. A shot would bring the ship about your ears, my friend. There is no call for a long explanation. I took the governor here for you, but when he told me that some one was stealing his bis- cuits, I thought I had got the right pig by the ear, and five minutes outside this door have made it a certainty. Two thousand pesetas! Why, hang me if I should have thought, to look at you, that you were worth half the money! he added bru- tally. The other plucked up spirit at this in- sult. Who are you? What do you want? he cried, with an attempt at bra- vado. Precisely. What do I want? replied the engineer with a sneer. You are right to come to business. What do I want? A hundred pounds. That is my price, mate. Fork it out and mum is the word. Turn rusty, and He did not finish the sentence, but grasping his neck in both hands, pressed his thumbs upon his windpipe and dropped his jaw. It was a ghastly performance. I had seen a garotte, and I shuddered. You would not give the man up? Your own countryman? I cried in horror. Would I not? he answered ruth- lessly. You will soon see, if he has not got the cash!~ A hundred pounds! moaned the wretched fellow, whom Sleighs perform- ance had completely unmanned. I have not a hundred pesetas with me. As it happenedalas, it has often hap- pened so with me ! I had but some three hundred pesetas, some twelve pounds odd, about me, nor any hope of a remittance nearer than Malaga, whither I was on my way. Still I did what I could. Look here, I said to Sleigh, I can hardly be- lieve that you are in earnest, but I will do this. I will give you ten pounds to be silent and let this man take his chance. It is no good to haggle with me, I added, because I have no more.~~ Ten pounds! he replied derisively, when the police will give me eighty! I am not such a fool. Better ten pounds as a gift than eighty pounds of blood money, I retorted. Look here, mister, he answered sternly; do you mind your own business and let us settle ours. I am sorry for you, mate, that is a fact, but I cannot let the chance pass. If I do not get this money, some one else will. Ill tell you what I will do, though. As he paused I breathed again, while the miserable man whose life was-in the balance glanced up with renewed hope. I will lower my terms, he went THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. 83 on. I would rather get the money hon- estly myself, I am free to confess that. If you will out with two thousand pesetas, I will keep my mouth shut, and give you a helping hand besides. If not? I said. If not, he answered, shiugging his shouldersand I noticed that he laid his hand on his knife if you do not accept my terms before we are in port at Cartha- gena, I go to the first policeman and tell him who is aboard. Those are my terms, and you have until then to think about them. With that he left the cabin, warily, and with his face to us to the last. Hateful and treacherous as he was I loathed him so that I could scarcely meet his eyes I could not help admiring his per- fect coolness and courage, and his quick grasp of the men he had to do with. For I felt when he was gone that we were a sorry pair. I suppose that my companion, bad as his case had seemed before, had yet cherished strong~hopes of escape. Now he was utterly unmanned. He sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his head resting on his hands, the picture of despair. The pistol had disap- peared into some pocket, and although capture meant death, I judged that he would let himself be taken without strik- ing a blow. My own reflections were far from being of a comfortable nature. The man grovel- ling there before me might deserve death; knowing the stakes, he had gambled and lost. Moreover, he was a complete stran- ger to me. But he was an Englishman. He had trusted me. He had spent well, an hour, but it seemed manyin my com- pany, and I shrank from the horror of see- ing him dragged away to a violent death. My nature so revolted against it that I for- got what the consequences to myself of interference might be. Look here, I said, after a long inter- val of silence, I will do what I can to help you. We shall not reach Carthagena until eight oclock at earliest. Something may turn up before that time. At the worst I have a scheme, though I set little store by it, and advise you to do the same. Put on these clothes in l)lace of those you wear. I handed to hi~ a suit taken from my portmanteau. Wash and shave. Take my passport and papers. It is just possible that if you play your part well they may not identify you, and may arrest me, despite our friend upstairs. For my- self, once on shore I shall have no diffi- culty in proving my innocence. Not that I was without my misgivings. The Spanish civil guards have the name of giving but short shrift at times, and even at the best I might be punished for connivance at an escape. But to some extent I trusted to my nationality; and for the rest, the avidity with which the hunted wretch at my side clutched at the slender hope my offer held out to him, drove any last hesitation from my mind. As long as I live I shall remember the scene which ensued. The grey light was beginning to steal through the porthole, giving a sicklier hue to my companion~ s features, and making my own trembling fingers as I helped him to dress seem to myself strangely wan and thin. A heavy odor from the expiring lamp hung upon the air. The tumbled bed-clothes, the ransacked luggage, the coats swaying against the bulkheads to the music of the creaking timbers, formed an entourage deeply imprinted on the memory. About seven oclock I procured some coffee and biscuits and a little fruit, and fed him. Then I gave him my passport and papers, and charged him to employ himself naturally about the cabin. My own plan was to be out of the way, ashore or elsewhere, when Sleigh should spring his mine, and to trust my companion to return my luggage and papers to my hotel at Malaga, until I reached which place I must take my chance. I may seem to have been playing a fine and magnanimous part, but, looking back now, I do not think that I believed for a moment that the police would be deceived. A little after eight oclock I went on deck, to find that the ship was steaming slowly in between the fortified hills that frown upon the harbor of Carthagena; a harbor so grand and spacious that in its ampitheatre of waters I fancy all the navies of the world might lie. For a time the engineer was not visible on deck. The steward had pointed out to me some of the lions the deeply emnbayed arsenal, the distant fort, high-perched on a hill, which the mutineers had seized, and the governors house over the gateway where the wounded general had diedand we were within a couple of hundred yards of the wharf, crowded with idlers and flecked with sentinels, when Sleigh came up from below. Although the morning was fine and warm, he was wearing the heavy pea-jacket which I had seen in the engine-room. He cast a spiteful glance at me, and then, turning away, affected to busy himself with other matters. I think that he was 84 THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN. ashamed of the work he had in hand. Bad wards us. When I saw that this was as he was, I think so. effected, I stepped hastily in front of Do we stay here all day? I asked Sleigh, and before he had any clear notion the steward. of what I was doing, I was at the officers No, sefior, no. Hasta las diez solo, side. Sir, I said, raising my hat, do I understood him to say. Only until ten you speak French? oclock, and it was close upon nine al- Parfaitement, monsieur, he answered, ready. He explained that the town was politely returning my salute. yet so much disturbed that business was I am an Englishman, and I wish to at a standstill. The San Miguel would lay an information, I said, speaking in merely land her passengers by boat and French, and pausing there that I might go on at once to Almeria, where much look at Sleigh. As I had expected, he cargo awaited her. Here is the police- did not understand French. His baffled boat coming, he added. and perplexed face assured me of that. Then the time had come too. I was He tried to interrupt me, but the courte- quivering with excitment and with ous official waved him aside. something else a new idea. Darting This man here who is trying to shut from the stewards side, I flew down the my mouth is a smuggler of foreign stairs, through the saloon and to my watches, I resumed rapidly. He has cabin, the door of which I dragged aside them about him now, and is going to take impatiently. Give me my passport them ashore. They are in a number of my papers! I cried, breathless with pockets made for the purpose in the lining haste, the police are here ! of his coat. I am connected with the The man he ~vas pretending to pack watch-trade, and my firm will give ten with his back to the door, but at my en- pounds reward to any one who will cap- trance rose with an assumption of ease ture and prosecute him. drew back. Why? will you desert me I understand, replied the officer. too? he muttered, his face working pite- And, turning to Sleigh, who, shut out ously. Will you betray me? Then, my from the knowledge of what was going God! I am lost! and he flung himself forward, was fretting and fuming in a upon the sofa in a paroxysm of terror. fever of distrust, he addressed some words Every moment was of priceless value, to him. He spoke in Spanish and quickly, This a conspirator, indeed! I had no pa- and I could not understand what he said. tience with him. Give them to me! I That it was to the point, however, the cried imperatively, desperately. I have engineers face betrayed. It fell amaz- another plan. Do you hear? ingly on the instant, and he cast a venge- He heard, but he did not believe me. ful glance at me. He was sure that my courage had failed That which followed was ludicrous me at the last moment. But and let enough. My heart was beating fast, but this be written on his side of the account I could not suppress a smile as Sleigh, he gave me the papers; it may be in clasping the threatened coat about him, pure generosity, it may be because he had backed from the police. He poured out a not the spirit to resist. torrent of fluent Spanish, and emphat- Armed with them I ran on deck almost ically denied, it was clear, the charge; as quickly as I had descended. I found but, alas! he cherished the coatat the position of things but slightly changed. which the police were making tentative The police.boat was now alongside. The dives overmuch for an innocent man officer in command, attended by two or with no secret pockets about him. three subordinates, was coming up the His No, sefior, no! his For dios! ladder. Close to the gangway Sleigh was and Madre de Dios! and the rest, were standing, evidently waiting for this group. breath wasted. At a sign from the now But he had his eye on the saloon door grim-looking officer, two of the policemen also, for I had scarcely emerged from the deftly seized him, and in a twinkling, not- latter when he stepped up to me. withstanding his resistance, had the thick Have you changed your mind, gov- coat off him, and were probing its recesses. ernor? Are you going to buy him off? It was the turn of the bystanders to cry, he muttered, looking askance at me as I Madre de Dios! as from pocket upon still moved forward with him by my side. pocket came watch after watch, until five My answer took him by suprise. No, dozen lay in sparkling rows upon the deck. sefior, no! I exclaimed loudly and re- I could see that there were those among peatedly so loudly that the attention of the ships company besides the culprit the group at the gangway was drawn to- who gazed at me with little favor; but the THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. 85 eyes of the police officer twinkled with ing out to the last horrible threats which gratification as each second added to the my ears were long in forgetting. I walked rich prize. And that was enough for me. up and down the deck, brazening it out, Still I knew that all was not done yet, but very sick at heart. and I watched keenly what was passing. However, the San Miguel, despite her Sleigh, taken into custody, had desisted engineers mishap, duly left in half an from his disjointed prayers and oaths. I hour a nervous half-hour to me. With perceived, however, that he was telling a a thankful heart I watched the fort- long story, of which I could make out little crowned hills about Carthagena change more than the word Inglese repeated from brown to blue, and blue to purple, more than once. It was his turn now. If behind us, until at length they sank down he had not understood my French, neither in the distance. could I understand his Spanish. And I But officers and men looked coldly on noticed that the officer, as the story rolled me; and that evening at Almeria, I took on, looked at me doubtfully. I judged up bag and baggage and left the San that the crisis had come, and I interfered. iVliguel. I had had enough of the thanks, May 1 beg to know, sir, what he says? and more than enough of the company, of I asked courteously. my cabin.fellow, whom I left where I had He tells me a strange story, Mr. found him or nearly sobehind the Englishman, was the answer; and the sailcloth. I believe that he succeeded in speaker eyed me with curiosity but not making his escape; not that I have since unfavorably. He says that Morrissey, seen him or heard from him. But fully a the villanous Englishman your pardon month later a friend of mine staying at who was at the bottom of the affair of the H6tel de la Paz, at Madrid, was placed last Sunday, has had the temerity to re- under arrest for some hours on suspicion turn to the scene of his crime, and is on of being Morrissey; so that the latter this vessel. must at that time have been at liberty. I shrugged my shoulders. A strange story, indeed! I answered. But it is for monsieur to do his duty. I am the only Englishr~ian on board, as the steward From The Fortnightly Review. will inform you; and for me, permit me THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. to hand you my papers. Your prisoner wishes, no doubt, to be even with me! BV GENERAL VISCOUNT WOLSELEX. He nodded brusquely as he took the SINCE the abolition of slavery, and papers. That upon which I had counted until recent years, the ranks of our West happened. The engineer in his rage and India regiments have been filled with fairly excitement had not made his story plain, good fighting material. Recruits were No one dreamt of his charge being aimed obtained from every slaver taken on the against another Englishman. No one coast of Africa, and upon joining were knew of another Englishman. The stew- baptized and given high-sounding names, ard sullenly corroborated me when I said those of Nelson, Napoleon, and Welling- I was the only one on board, and so all ton being in very common use. These who heard Sleigh slightly befogged, liberated slaves could not, of course, speak perhaps, by his Spanish, which, good English; they were very slow to learn, enough for ordinary occasions, may have and generally wanting in intelligence. failed him here did not doubt that his They had a good physique, however, were was a pure counter-accusation preferred obedient, and much attached to their offi en revcznche. cers. Before the introduction of rifled No doubt the improbability of Morris- arms, and especially of the breechioader, sey s return had some weight with them. the private who could bear fatigue, who Then my credentials were ample and in was brave, absolutely obedient, and who order. Among them, too, a note for two was to be depended upon to stand by his hundred and fifty pesetas had somehow officer under all circumstances, possessed slipped, which had disappeared when they the best qualities which go to make up a were handed back to me. Need I say really good soldier. As long as success after this how it ended? Or that while in war depended on fighting at close quar- the police officer bowed his Courteous ters, and when accuracy in shooting was adios to me, and his men gathered up of little or no account, the natural instinct the watches, and the crew scowled, the of the savage from the interior of Africa prisoner was removed by force to the boat went far to make up for his want of intel- fairly foaming at the mouth, and scream- ligence as a soldier. The instinct of some 86 THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. breeds of dogs the setter, pointer, and at Cape Coast Castle. A previous gov. retriever renders it easy to teach them ernor, finding that his native servants were their sDecial work, which other species, given to robbing him by daily carrying though equally intelligent, cannot be away bundles of things from his kitchen, effectively taught. So it is with races of had orders given to the sentry before his men. There are some to whom drill and door that no one was to be allowed out the ordinary duties of the soldier in the carrying any parcel with him. Very field can be more easily imparted than to shortly afterwards the governor, in a hurry others. That sort of work seems natural to consult his chief justice, put some pa- to them, and in accordance with their in- pers into a despatch-box to take with him stincts. The wild tribes dependent upon to the judges house. He reckoned with- hunting for their daily food possess a sort out his host, however, for the sentry, stand- of intuitive knowledge of wild animals, of ing in front of him with bayonet at the their ways and habits, which gives them charge, would not allow him to pass with in war an immense advantage over the the offending despatch-box. The gov- ordinary town-bred soldier. The trappers ernor remonstrated, and urged that it was rude life of daily hardship and privation he himself who had given the order, but fits him physically for the ups and downs all to no purpose, for in the quaint and and rough usage which war brings with it. amusing gibberish which these men speak, The hunter is already half a soldier, and and emphasizing his words in a very de- not only accepts the miseries of war in an termined fashion with his bayonet, the uncomplaining spirit, but regards them sentry said that his copral had told him as the natural and ordinary incidents of not to allow any one with a bundle to every-day life. To have no dinner at all pass, and the coprals order was his is as little strange to the wild man as to law. be late for it is to the civilized citizen who Our West Indian battalions retain many is so in consequence of having missed his of their old good qualities, but they are train. The slave-trade on the west coast no longer of the same use to us as for- having now practically come to an end, we merly, when they were composed of liher. can no longer obtain the wild negro from ated Africans. In those days each man the interior of Africa, as we formerly did, could tell you the tribe on the west coast to fill the ranks of our West India regi- to which he belonged, or at least the name ments. which we had from time immemorial given I do not think Europeans learn drill as to all slaves exported from the district quickly as the Basuto or the Zulu. It is from which he had sailed. Now the West astonishing to see the zeal, the undis- Indian soldier will tell you he is a Barba. guised interest and application these say- dian, an Antiguan, a Jamaican, and so on, ages bring to bear upon all military lessons according to the West India island where given to them. They take the utmost he was born. A large proportion of them pride in being soldiers, and in acquiring have an infusion of white blood, which, any art or drill or exercise connected with strange to say, does not improve them the management and handling of arms, or physically. The ~vhole negro race in these the movements of armed bodies. There islands is seriously infected with the dis- seems to be something in the disposition eases which have impaired the vitality of and genius of the common stock from many European families. Since the aboli- which they come, some hereditary bias in tion of the Contagious Diseases Acts in their brain, in their very blood, which fits the West Indies this evil has been alarm. them for the easy acquisition of a soldiers ingly intensified. The result is that only a duties. And yet many of these races who small proportion of those willing to enlist thus quickly acquire an excellence in drill, can pass the doctor. One of the great etc., cannot he taught any mechanical objects for which these negro regiments handicraft; indeed, many can never even were kept on foot was for the purpose of learn to draw a straight line, finding garrisons for our stations on the The African in our West India regi- xvest coast of Africa. The climate there ments has always displayed that childlike is abominable, and specially injurious to affection for, and implicit reliance upon, Europeans. We could not keep British the officers who treated him well which is soldiers there with safety for more than a so marked a feature in the character of few months at a time. When these regi- the negro slave. His obedience to orders, ments were chiefly composed of Africans especially when a sentry, was remarkable. we had no trouble with them on the score Many amusing stories on this point were of health, but now that they are raised current at Government House when I was from a class of negroes with a considera THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. 87 ble proportion of English blood in their veins they stand the climate at Cape Coast Castle and in the neighboring provinces little better than the white man. Civiliza- tion, however, has made them more teach. able. The man who has been educated in Barbadoes to read his Bible and they are very fond of reading it and who has learned to sing Wattss hymns, acquires a knowledge of drill more easily than the released slave who came from equatorial Africa, and whose mental faculties were little superior to the apes. The infusion of white blood into the West Indian negro has certainly not improved his physical strength, whilst the education we have given him has as certainly injured his fighting qualities; He has lost the best qualities his forefathers possessed as sav- ages, and he has failed to acquire those which belong to that civilization with which he is now more or less associated. In fact we cannot hide from ourselves the conviction that civilization has not as yet effected any desirable change in the negro character. It has not only most certainly failed to foster a military spirit in him, but has even succeeded in depriv- ing him of his natural hardihood, and also of the courage which he had acquired in his African home under the severe laws which governed him there. Freedom has not made him brave, nor has civilization mproved his physical strength. Let us now inquire how it is that some of the negro nations we are acquainted with have become powerful, and what it is that has converted the timid negro into the Ashanti, the Zulu, or the Soudan war- rior. It is very curious to note the great difference which their respective laws have effected in the fighting qualities of neighboring African tribes of the same race, and who speak the same language, though with perhaps some local peculiari- ties. Two striking examples have come directly under my notice in the Zulu and in the Ashanti. Each was a fine, brave, fighting people, but each had neighbors of their own race who did not equal them in courage and other soldierlike qualities, while some of them were positive cowards of the worst type. I shall not attempt to give dates in their very uncertain history, but very long ago both those nations had been consolidated into powerful kingdoms, each by its own reigning family. They had been formed into purely military mon- archies, whose first aim was to be powerful and to dominate over all their neighbors. Their laws were little more than an iron code intended for the government of an army, before the wants and requirements of which every other consideration had to bend. All those laws ~vhich in most civ- ilized nations of to-day are designed for the protection of property and the social well-being of the men, women, and chil- dren who compose them, were in these instances contrived solely with a view to the fighting efficiency of the army upon which the kingdom rested, and which, in fact, was that kingdom itself. This brings me to consider a feature in the negro character which is common to the natives of both eastern and western Africa. I refer to the fact, that high mili- tary qualities can be and are developed amongst them by the stern discipline which the fear of heavy and relentless castigation and of capital punishment en- genders. This is, I think, proved by the fact that whereas one community of those who are by race and language the same people, consists of formidable warriors, another community adjoining it may be the most arrant cowards, entirely destitute of every military virtue. Such is the dif- ference, for example, between the Ashanti and the Fanti on the west coast of Africa, and between the Zulu and several of his neighbors in south-eastern Africa. In both cases the comparison is instituted between what we may call nations of the same race and language, but living under an entirely different system of law. It is not education or civilization that has en- gendered this cowardice. Over-cultiva- tion is calculated to convert manliness into effeminacy; it is conducive of luxury and love of ease, the sure precursor of those indolent habits which kill all virile energy, and when that dies, not only the greatness of the nation but its independent existence are buried in the same grave. It is the nature of the Anglo-Saxon race to love those manly sports which entail violent exercise, with more or less danger to limb if not to life. They cultivate their powers for the physical endurance of fatigue ,and often also of actual pain. This craving for the constant practice and employment of our muscles is in our blood, and the result is a development of bodily strength unknown in most nations, and unsurpassed by any other breed of men. Strength and fearlessness are natural characteristics of our race, and it is only that effeminacy of mind and body which grows out of the indolence, love of ease, and claptrap sen- ti mentality which over-civilization engen- ders, that could or can convert us into a nation of cowards. On the other hand, the negro begins by being a cowardly, 88 THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. lazy fellow, and courage can only be im- planted in such unsuitable soil by educa- tion; not the education of the mind as we understand that expression, but a physical education which appeals to the dread of bodily punishment. It was this which made the Ashanti the warrior he was, whilst the absence of it amongst those Fanti tribes that have lived for genera- tions under our mild rule, has left them the contemptible cowards they are by nature- The Ashanti knows that, if he disobeys the orders of his superiors, he will be immediately put to death; the Fanti knows he can run away with im- punity. If in battle the Ashanti turns to fly, there are men on the lookout close behind him who have positive orders to kill him without any question. If these men in the second line fail to do their duty in this respect, their superiors again in the third line, whom I may call the subaltern officers, will kill both them and the runaway coward. There are several lines of several grades behind the front lighting-line, each having a similar pre- ventive duty imposed upon it, until the general commanding is reached. If he fails, if he is defeated, he answers for his failure with his head when he returns to his king at Coomassie. In the organiza- tion of all civilized armies, much stress is laid upon the chain of responsibility that runs through all ranks from the com- mander-i n-chief to the private soldier. In the Ashanti army, or nation, for they were one, the emblem of that responsibility is the executioners knife. The man in front feels that under every circumstance he incurs less risk by going forward than by running away, for the latter at least is certain death. The refrain of the Ashanti war-song, which they sang together in a shouting voice when going into action, was If I go forward I die, If I go backward I die; Better go forward and die. tered their imagination, and consolidated them into a nation, extremely proud of their warlike prowess. This feeling in the course of time begat a, pride of race that certainly elevated them in the scale of mental development. Their rigorous code of laws, in which death was the corn- mon if not almost the only punishment, educated them to the daily practice of that extreme reticence which was one of their most striking characteristics; and their frequent wars had given them an experience in foreign negotiation which had converted them into really first-class diplomatists - A very remarkable effect of these cx- tremely rigorous laws upon the negr& mind, was the wonderful power for mili- tary organization it developed. Both Ashantis and Zulus had their own pecul- iar tactics, to which their men were well drilled, which every warrior thoroughly understood, while he realized the advan- tages they conferred and knew why they had been adopted. In both these nations there had been great generals who had invented for them, at a very early period of their history, their mode of lighting. Others had perfected these systems, ac- cording as increased experience in war taught them the necessity for reform. Their armies were fed upon a well-organ-- ized system, by which the women prepared the food and carried it to the army. The Zulu and the Swazi armies were divided into regiments of so many corn- panies, each regiment having its own dis- tinctive badge. Their law also punished the coward with death, but the spear and not the knife was the instrument used. To make death as ignominious as possible, the Zulu executioner was always a girl. She ran the spear downwards through the cowards shoulder, and pushed it very slowly until it came out at the lower end of the stomach. I have heard a Zulu war- rior imitate, with tindisguised pleasure, the noise the spear-head made as it was thus being slowly pushed through the If the coward deserted to the enemy, or cowards intestines. became a fugitive to avoid this condign These great warrior negro nations had punishment, not only was he an outlaw been so long accustomed to victory, that forever, but his children and nearest rela- they went into action fully expecting suc- tions paid for his heinous sin by suffering cess, a feeling that of itself xvent very far decapitation, or by being sold as slaves, towards securing victory. The great dis For many generations the Ashantis had tinction I would draw between the Zulu lived under this stern systern of discipline, and the Ashanti, the foremost fighting and, until they fought us in 18734, the peoples of the east and west of Africa, is, result was success so uniform that every that whilst with the pure Ashanti it was neighboring nation trembled before them. the principle of fear that had converted The greatness and the number of their him into the brave and skilful warrior we victories gave them a renown which flat- found him to be, it was rather a pride of THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. 89 race, of nationality and of loyalty to his king, based also upon an education of fear, which made the Zulu a formidable antag- onist to all comers, the white man even included. The warriors of both these nations are brave and daring; even indi- vidual Ashantis, far removed from the influence of the executioners knife, often displayed courage worthy of a free people. After the Ashantis had failed in their at- tack on our post at Abracampa, I sent a party with some officers in pursuit. The Ashantis had fallen back to gather food, leaving only a few isolated men to watch over their camp. One of these men, quite alone, who might easily have escaped, re- mained within five yards of the road along which our men were advancing with much noise. He coolly fired into the party, and unwatched by any of his people, faced alone the pursuers. A little later another of them, alone and in the open pathway, this time not even concealed by the en- circli:~g forest, fronted the officers who were leading the party and quietly fired at them. Clearly these men were inspired by some feeling which made them act, regardless of their own lives and indiffer- ent to odds, without any other influence over them but their own courage. The military system based upon fear had from generation to generation so taken hold of the Ashanti mind, that what at first was only done from a dread of the decapitation which all knew would swiftly and surely follow if it ~vere left undone, was per- formed eventually as a matter of course, as an ingrained habit. In fact, habit had, I may say, in the course of generations, disciplined into actual courage the mind of a negro race who, when left absolutely free, as the Fanti portion of it was under our rule, were without exception the most ignominiously cowardly people I have ever been associated with. The Zulus, like the Ashantis, had been consolidated into a nation through the action of their laws. Whilst the standard of courage and military excellence was quite as high amongst the former as the latter, the Zulu code of morality also was far higher. The virtue of their women was superior to that of any civilized peo- ple I know of, and it was rigidly enforced by the severest laws. All the men below a certain age were formed into regiments, and were forbidden to marry. As a re- ward, the king would at times grant per- mission to a whole battalion to marry, but until that permission was given, death was the punishment for every infringe- ment of this law. Like the Germans of to-day, they felt so intensely that their existence as a nation depended upon the power of their army, that they ~vere pre- pared to obey any and every law that con- duced to its efficiency. The Zulus had as neighbors the cruel Transvaal Boers, who never lost an opportunity of cheating them of their land, or otherwise imposing upon them. It may be almost said that it was the intolerable exactions of the Boers that created Cetewayos power, as it ~xas the tyrannical oppression of the great Napo- leon that forced the exasperated Prussians to adopt that military constitution upon which has been gradually built up the modern German Empire. It is well to remember, however, that in each case there was an earlier period of military power, and glory, and conquest, to look back to and be proud of, with an interme- diate interval of degradation, the result of external oppression, when foolish rulers had allowed military establishments to fall into decay or powerlessness. It is difficult to imagine any nation becoming great in a military seuse that is without some very strong faith in a God or in some great moral principle. Now the Zulus had no God; but the principle, the elevating sen- timent of true loyalty to a king, has never been stronger or more ingrained in the instincts of any people than it was witl them. This feeling influenced all the ac- tions of their lives as individuals. After we had defeated Cetewayos army, and he was a fugitive, with columns scouring his~ territory in every direction in search of him, none for a long time would betray him, although they knew how largely tbat betrayal would have been rewarded. It was at last his own prime minister who enabled us to capture him, and, delighted as we were with the treason, I could never look upon the traitor except with loathing. I know of nothing so debasing as cow- ardice in a people. It is a shock to the nervous system, the first time a man looks straight into your eyes, and without any consciousness of shame, tells you he ran away because he was afraid, and that all his friends and comrades had done the same. Examining a Fanti boy as to what took place at a fight between the Fantis and the Ashanti army, he said he had ac- companied his father into action, and car- ried a case of ammunition on his head When asked what his father did, the answer was, He run away. And what did you do? I run away too. And what became of the ammunition? I threw him away. This was all told as a mere matter of natural occurrence, for it 90 THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. did not strike him that there was anything unworthy or shameful in the proceeding. One of the funniest scenes I have ever witnessed was an endeavor to make some thousands of these Fantis fight, who had turned out to help us to relieve a small British garrison which was besieged by the Ashantis in 1873. I had had a great meeting with their chiefs before we left Cape Coast Castle. They had used the most flowery language to express their courage and devotion. Wherever the governor laid his head there they would lay theirs. The scene I now witnessed was this. We relieved the place by night, and the next day these Fantis were or- dered to follow the retreating enemy into the bush. They were drawn up in line under their kings and headmen, but ad- vance they would not. Two English offi- cers strove to drive them on by smacking the hacks of even kings with their um- brelias. But the kings and people most ingeniously evaded all danger, either from the umbrellas or from the Ashantis, run- ning hither and thither in mortal fear. In spite of all our efforts, they made no progress towards the enemy, but managed to consume what seeiried like hours in useless movements. One felt inclined to open fire on them, but they were not in fact even worth the ammunition it would have taken to kill them. In one of the regiments raised expressly for the ~var, there was a company drawn from a savage and cannibal tribe who fought exclusively with swords. They were about the most diabolical-looking fiends I have ever seen. They were placed behind the cowardly Fantis with orders to drive them forward. These savages had a fashion of clanking their swords in a terrifying way, and of howling like fiends as they advanced upon an enemy. When they approached the rear of the Fanti lines, an overwhelming terror seized those cowards, and to escape the threatening cannibals they rushed into the bush. We never tried the Fantis as soldiers again. Large numbers deserted to their homes that night, and thencefor- ward they were only employed to carry stores and provisions to the front. The women were not only more reliable as car- riers than the men, but were far pluckier; and still more strange, the boys, a large number of whom also carried burdens and were employed as officers servants, sel- dom showed any fear. Indeed, they fre- quently accompanied their masters under fire, and seemed highly delighted with all they saw. Another curious phenomenon is, that the boy is far brighter, quicker, and cleverer than the man. You can appar- ently teach the boy anything until he reaches puberty, then he becomes grad- ually duller and more stupid, more lazy and more useless every day. The love of bloodshed and of watching human bodily suffering in any shape is a real natural pleasure to the negroes of west Africa. I dont believe a son could resist going to see his own father flogged or hanged. As far as one can at all understand the his- tory of these people, human sacrifices have from all time been very common amongst them, and so thoroughly has the idea become an instinct, that I verily be- lieve if we were now to withdraw from the gold coast, before many months had elapsed there would again be human be- ings sacrificed to some fetish in every Fanti market-place. When one reproached the Fanti kings and chiefs for not turning out in force to fight the Ashanti army in defence of their homes and liberty, the answer always was that, owing to the mildness of our laws, under which the Fantis lived, they, the recognized headmen, had lost all the power and authority they had possessed in olden times. I was often requested by some king to allow him to behead half-a-dozen of his recalcitrant warriors, being assured that if I did so his whole tribe would fight. From all sides we were told that by no milder course could we so mu~ch as obtain the services of these men as carriers ; their innate fear of the Ashantis was so great that even the tempting offer of high wages could not overcome it. The kings and headmen were right; we no longer allowed them to execute their subjects at will, and, consequently, those subjects no longer respected them as rul- ers or would obey them. The dread of very severe bodily punishment and of death could alone make them act like men. The fear of punishment has not, how- ever, been of itself enough to convert all west-African communities into formidable military nations; had it been so, Dahomey would long since have developed into a strong fighting kingdom, for these men only continue to live by the favor of the bloodthirsty tyrant xvho rules over theni. This fear of the death punishment must be accompanied by a strong, well-thought- out military system, and that can only be created by the fortuitous advent at an early period in the nations history of some great leader with a natural gift for army organization. Without some such Alex- ander as a king, or some such Hannibal THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. 9 as a general, although ruled over by a succession of despots who punished the smallest offences with death, no such kingdom as that of Ashanti or of Zulu- land could ever have come into existence. In primitive conditions of life a code or system of laws once established by some national Moses is seldom willingly changed. It takes some great upheaval to alter the scheme and principles upon which the system is based; nothing less than a successful invasion that robs what we call an uncivilized people of their national independence has the effect of entirely reversing any well and long estab- lished form of government and the laws and superstitions by which it is main- tained. Thus it is, that the laws enacted by a despot, under which a primitive peopl,e live, have greater influence in forming the national character, than have the laws of civilized communities which are made by themselves, and ~vhich they can change as they will to meet every fluctuation of public opinion. In what- ever negro people a great law-giver has appeared, there a powerful army and a military spirit has been called into exist- ence, and the nation has prospered until its national existence has been destroyed by a still stronger people. Tribes far removed from contact with conquering races have stewed in their own juice for centuries without any change in their form of government, and their level amongst human beings, their habits, virtues, and characteristics, depend upon the nature of the laws under which they have existed. We thus come across tribes of negroes in all parts of tropical Africa with many curious customs and religions the can- nibal, the fetish man, the Mahommedan, etc., etc., each with his own peculiar no- tions as to right and wrong, and each with his own standard of courage. Amongst these tribes, the Kroomen, whose territory impinges upon the sea, have long been employed with advantage on board our ships of war. They are strong, cheery, obedient, and faithful, ex- cellent as boatmen, and most useful all round; their weak point is want of pluck. They object to go under fire, and openly talk of their cowardice as a national trait of which they have no need to be ashamed. We used them in our boats during the Nile expedition, but they were employed on the distinct understanding that they were not to be taken into action. They are quite like children in their ideas, and although apparently without any religion are very superstitious. They believe in a spirit whom they know as Duppy. If during an illness a Krooman thinks this spirit has appeared to him, he at once makes up his mind to die, and such is the power of this superstition over him, that die he does forthwith. I had a personal experience of this kind in one instance. I had seen a Krooman at one of our sta- tion hospitals on the Nile, and when I asked for him some time afterwards I was told that one morning he announced that he had seen Duppy, and thereupon had refused all further treatment and regularly laid himself out for death. In a very short space of time he departed to those regions where he believed Duppy waited for him. This tribe is, I think, a strong illustra- tion that the mere enjoyment of national liberty will not make the negro a good soldier, nor even induce him to fight for that freedom which we, rightly or wrongly, believe to be the first and greatest of all earthly blessings. It sustains my argu- ment that the west-African negro is a coward by nature, and that it is only by means of a military system enforced by terrible punishments that he can be con- verted into a courageous warrior like the Ashanti. Had any great king or general appeared in ages past amongst the Kroo- men, and given them a similarly drastic code of laws to that which made Coomas- sie the capital of a great military nation, the Kroomen would doubtless, in the proc- ess of time, have acquired courage as the Ashantis did. It must be remembered that Kroomen and Fantis, and, I might indeed add, all the tribes and races of western Africa, have no such great instinctive horror of domestic slavery as would cause them to fight in defence of their freedom. If we had not fought the Ashantis in 187374, King Coffee would have made slaves of the Fanti people, a fact the latter knew full well. But they would have infinitely preferred the possible miseries of slavery to the positive and certain terrors and dangers which a war of resistance would have entailed upon them. They have lived amidst slaves, and domestic slavery has really no terrors for them. I have known intelligent slaves refuse their free- dom, preferring to have a master who was bound by custom to feed them when ill, or old, or unable to find employment. One of our interpreters in Ashanti, who though a slave was an intelligent fellow, when asked by the officer who paid him off what he meant to do with his money, said he would keep one-half himself and 92 THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. give the remainder to his master. When told he was a freeman and no longer a slave, he said he preferred being a slave, for the reasons I have just stated. The nature of the country or district the negro inhabits has certainly some in- fluence upon his fighting qualities and national character. No man has had more varied experience of the military value of the equatorial negro then Sir Samuel Baker. He found that the lowest, the most cowardly and most animal races, are the denizens of the vast, flat, swampy dis- tricts. They are the least warlike, and when apl)roached take refuge under cover of the very high reeds and gigantic vege- tation with which their country is covered. On the other hand, the great pastoral tribes are almost always brave and ac- customed to xvar, through their ever-re- curring quarrels with those around them. Wherever you come upon the Mahom- medan negro, even though few know much about their Prophet or his teaching, he is a better fighting man than the idolater, or than the men of most of the tribes who have no religion at all. No enemy is so dreaded by even the Yery best soldiers as the Indian Ghazi or the Arab dervish. I am certain our men would much prefer to fight the best European troops rather than the same number of African warrors who were under the influence of Mahommedan fanaticism. To meet men trained to your own methods of warfare, who think and feel as you do, strikes one as an ordinary proceeding. Ask the British soldier if he is ready to fight any number of men from beyond the English Channel and he will scornfully laugh at the notion that any foreigner~ could stand up against him. But a campaign waged against the Ma- hommedan fanatic is quite another thing. There is something very uncanny about the black man, who comes straight for you as fast as he can cover the ground between you and him; and who, if not shot down before he reaches you, will drive his spear through your body. Battle is death or glory to the Englishman, but, come what may, it must be glory to the true follower of the Prophet. If he slays the accursed infidel, Allah will bless him in this world, and if he falls, the loveliest of women start forth to greet him from the gates of Paradise. It is only the man who has seen the dervishes charge, or who has gone to meet the Ghazi hand to hand, who can fully realize the position. This duel ~ mod with one who will not even pause to parry your cuts or thrusts in his eagerness to have your lifes blood is a trying sensation to the stoutest heart. Pride of race, patri- otism, fervid loyalty, intense love of lib- erty, in fact, all ihe noblest and strongest feelings of the civilized European are weak and poor when compared with the religious frenzy which can convert the peaceful Arab camel-driver near Suakim into the most terrible and most dreaded of foes. In one of our Indian battles I remember seeing a party of two or three hundred Mahommedan fanatics who showed des- perate valor. Our native cavalry would not tackle them, there was no infantry of any sort near at hand, and they were only disposed of at last by being charged through and through several times by a squadron of the 7th Hussars, led by one of the bravest of men, now General Charles Fraser, V.C. * Not one of them would surrender; they stood grimly dealing out death to all within their reach, and were cut down to a man. Having traced the cause of the Ashanti military strength to the stringency of the laws under which their army existed, and of the Zulu power to an intense spirit of nationality and the ardent sentiment of loyalty which inspired them, I pass on to consider the influence which an intensely bigoted religious enthusiasm has exer- cised and still exercises ever the Soudan negro. The strength of Mahdiism lies in this feeling. It has converted the most peaceable and inoffensive of Arab tribes into fierce warriors for whom death has no horrors. The Arab tribes who became followers of the Mahdi have almost all been influenced by a sincerely religious sentiment, closely resembling that ~vhich spread over Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The abuses of the Roman Church then prepared the ground for Luther, as the laxity of morals and the neglect of the teaching of the Koran amongst the Soudanese did for the man who styled himself the Mahdi. Upon the negro races of the Soudan the precepts and teaching of Mahomet had never made any very marked impression. Notwith- standing this fact, however, it must be admitted that religious enthusiasm has certainly been the most important factor in the Soudan rebellion against the khe- dives authority. Whilst this is without doubt, it is to be noted also that the slaves feeling of fidelity and of gratitude to the master who feeds him, has also ex- erted a great influence ov~r the negroes * He is now M.P. for Lambeth. THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER. 93 who fought for and against General Gor- don at Khartoum. What caused the Arab spearmen to charge home upon our squares, from which they were shot down in hundreds, was solely the religious side of the question. Their religion taught them to risk everything in Allahs cause, for if they fell, each man firmly believed that his spirit passed at once into that l)aradise which the Prophet knew how to make so attractive to all Easterns. This spirit of religious enthusiasm is very in- fectious even the negro soon caught it up, and when he entirely adopted it, his fierceness and his daring were scarcely less remarkable than the fierceness and daring of the Arab dervish. Nevertheless it must be noted that he has not only lead- ers, but men who gave him in numbers the example of courage and devotion. It was the dervishes who charged up to our squares at Abou Klea with reckless indif- ference to danger. These dervishes died to a man, not only in the attacks upon us, but in the fights which took place before our arrival between them and the mudir of Dongola. There was not in the Sou- dan fighting the pure feeling of negro tribal courage which appeared in the Ashantis and the Zulus. The Zulus, when they had failed in their attack upon Sir Evelyn Woods camp at Kamtula, marched proudly away. Even when pursued and killed in numbers their lofty bearing and their calm acceptance of fate almost awed their victors. In the Soudan the negro was a mere tool in the hands of his cun- ning masters. Being much duller of in- tellect, and regarding himself in a great measure as still the slave he was when young, and when first taught by the white man to be a soldier, he was not, however, so easily moved to rebellion as the more quick-witted and more religious Arab. His duty to his officer, whom he looked upon as his master and owner, was his strongest instinct, and influenced him more than religion. The uncivilized ne- gro will adopt any superstition and believe in it firmly, but you cannot teach him the- ology or the Bible code of morals. He is not thinker enough for anything higher than superstitionin a spiritual sense. Why do you believe in the Mahdi ? an officer one day asked a negro prisoner. Because he comes from God, he re- plied. How do you know he comes from God? Because he ~vorks miracles. This it was that appealed to the innate superstition of the black man. I believe that a clever conjurer who could manip& late spectre figures well, would be the most successful of Mahdis in the Soudan. The negro soldiery whom we encountered on the upper Nile are very low in the order of humanity, but they fight with ex- treme fierceness, and many of them, even at long distances, are very fair shots. Treat them, however, as we have done the Fantis or the soldiers of the West India regiments, and you will very soon change them into lazy, good-for-nothing creatures. This quality of imitation in the negro and of taking up a courage not his own showed itself in our own black regiments in the Egyptian army, which are certainly the best fighting bodies in that army. Curi- ously enough also, even in the old Egyp- tian army which fought against us at Tel-el-Kebir, the black regiments were certainly the most plucky. One battalion of these quietly awaited the attack of our Highland regiments and charged them at a disadvantage, even for the time driving them back from the rampart. This seems to prove that when once the negro has been raised by discipline into a soldier, he is able to retain his fighting quality for many years. It is only discipline that can convert men into valuable soldiers, and this can only be instilled into the negro by the in- fluence which the fear of very severe punishment imparts. The more one asso- ciates with the African negro, the stronger becomes the impression that he is no more suited to stand alone than a white child would be. Until he learns to do vol- untarily his fair share of daily work in this great domain ~vhich God has ordered man to till and cultivate, it is in my opin- ion better for the negro and for the world that he should learn discipline under an enlightened but a very strict master. It is very natural to ask how it came that we have so often suffered defeats from Ashantis, Kafirs, Basutos, and Zulus. The explanation is simple. The anxiety of the general in command of our troops to conform his plans to his notions of the rules of war, has often induced him to violate the true spirit of those rules. I think I may say, that almost all our colo- nial military misfortunes during the reign of Queen Victoria, are to be accounted for by the fact that we have attempted to fight great warlike native races with the same formal tactics as those which succceded at Waterloo. \Ve have heard of artillery and heavy cavalry being sent into the South African bush against an enemy whose best weapon was the assegai; of 94 New Zealand pahs being besieged with all the regularity of a fortress ci /a Vauban. The Afridi is a horn warrior, and man for man is a far better soldier on his wild, roadless mountain-side than John Hodge, the Dorsetshire hedger and ditcher, or than John Smith, the street Arab from Whitechapel. It is only by our superior arms and superior discipline that we can beat these fighting tribes, who have done soldiers work since childhood. If we meet them with the same tactics with which we should meet a French army, we are almost certain to be defeated. The routine general thinks he must have a fair proportion of all arms. It is his notion of making xvar, and the consequence is that he encumbers himself with cavalry in a country where that arm is as useless for charging purposes as it would be in the enclosed and cultivated England of to-day. The idea of fighting without artillery is to him simple madness, so he hampers his movements with guns and their ammuni- tion trains, which can seldom even be of any use, whilst they impede his progress, and are always difficult to protect. The best commander in our Kafir wars whom I ever knew, once said to me that he always estimated the difficulties he had to encounter in the following order of grav- ity first, his own artillery, then his own regular cavalry, and, lastly, his recognized enemy, the Kafirs. What are commonly termed the rules of war are invaluable to the commander who knows how to apply the spirit of their teaching to the under- taking he has in hand, whilst he has the genius to fill in the details required by the nature of the country and by the tac- tics, mode of fighting, and arms of the enemy. The rules of war have proved fatal to many an English general who lacked that military instinct which is so far above the best rules, and which tells its possessor when he must ignore them. The theory of war as we learn it from books is an excellent servant, but to him who obeys its orders literally it is often the falsest and most fatal of masters. Ours is the only European army that is thoroughly experienced in what we may properly call savage warfare. This war- fare is an art in itself; so much so that the troops which could go through an ordinary campaign against an equally civ- ilized enemy with great credit, might very possibly fail altogether if pushed some hundreds of miles into the interior of Af- rica to encounter hordes of fighting barba- rians, such as we have so very often been at war with. It would be a novel sensa tion to the soldiers of most armies to find themselves outnumbered, say ten to one, by really daring warriors, who charged home, regardless of all musketry and ar- tillery fire. And yet, to how many thou- sands of Englishmen is that situation well known! From Temple Bar. SKETCHES IN ATHENS. Iv has always seemed to me an impru- dence to dash the enthusiasm with which one is imbued in the midst of a famous city, by a hasty course of mere and delib- erate sight-seeing. Fatigue inevitably follows; and nothing is admirable or even very respectable to a sated mind, and a tired body on tired legs. And as no wrong or injudicious action is without its chain of inevitable consequences, it no less in- fallibly happens that one is led to carp at the celebrity which time and great circum- stance have conferred on such a place or city; and in this mood the man satirizes what he came to praise. And, thus in- juring what he ought not to injure, he does injury to himself; and so the whole purport of his travel is distorted. The rain had come down in torrents on the night of my arrival in Athens. The railway station was surrounded with agi- tated puddles, and through these, and over the wretchedly uneven roads in its vicin- ity, the car conveyed me to the hotel in the upper part of the city, much distracted with doubt; for it was so dark, and the visible personality of Athens was so un- gracious, that I did not know what to think of it. Clouds had wrapped up the moun- tains in the Gulf of Corinth for the greater part of the way, and it had drizzled there also; but the steady resounding deluge from a sky black as coal was vastly more depressing in the city of Cecrops and Pericles, of Socrates and Phidias. The Ancient of days! august Athena! seemed clad in a fit of most lugubrious and lachrymose mourning for her vanished past. But early the next day all was changed. A civil modern Athenian in the guise of a boots~ called me, prattled a little about the warmth of the sun, and the charming view from my French window, when I chose to get out of bed to enjoy it, and then pleasantly left me in quest of coffee and rolls. He was no sooner out of the way than. SKETCHES IN ATHENS. I was at the window, and thence I stared straight at a mass of rock, capped by some noble columns, gold-colored under the deep sunlight, it could be nothing but part of the great Acropolis. And so for a while I looked at it, careless that I too was in full view from a soaring tier of windows in another wing of the hotel, and that one Greek maid was leisurely airing a carpet from a balcony a mere arms length from my domain, and singing like a blackbird while she gazed at me. I de- clare it was as much as I could do to hin- der myself from a responsive song; the air through the opened window was so fresh without being cold, so exhilarating and soft, and the sunlit pillars against the calm blue of the heavens were so joyously stimulating to the imagination. A full-blooded girl just loosed from her convent could not have gone out into the world with livelier expectations than mine when I stepped into the roadway from the flight of stairs of the hotel. There was a long wide street disappearing into space on the one hand, and a square on the other. I chose the square, and in a few minutes was in the midst of the orange- groves and fountains which lead up to the white marble palace of King George. The orange-trees were in blossom, the water was sparkling, the spotless marble of the palace and of the neighboring mansions glowed to the eye, and there was a hub- bub of talk from the hundreds of gaily dressed loiterers in the square itself and round about the palace. There were offi- cers, spic-and-span, discussing the war news, and gesticulating or shrugging their shoulders, according to their tempera- ment; Athenian butcher boys and baker boys smoking cigarettes while they pad- dled their feet in the waters of the foun- tain; civilians in broadcloth and billy- cocks soberly discussing the daily papers, or arguing heatedly about the predilec- tions and friendly intentions of the great Mr. Gladstone, who loves the Greeks like brothers; all the motley attires of the different country troops included in the national army of Greece, from the petticoated Albanians to the stereotyped blue-coats with their muskets over their shoulders ; nursemaids, their pretty brown faces peeping from under voluminous white linen headdresses, leading frilled and flounced little children, who could hardly stoop for their hoops and balls in the strenuousness of their martyrdom to fashion; and the cosmopolitan element of uncertain sightseers, men, women, and adolescents, strung with opera- glasses, 95 Baedekers in hand, halting at every other step to refer to their books, lest haply they might pass something famous or in- teresting without being able conscien- tiously to put a pencil mark against it in their record. These palace gardens were a feast of color. One could sit and smoke a cigar and watch the kaleidoscopic changes of the populace by the hour, without a touch of ennui. And, if in the humor for some mild moralizing, there was material at hand with a vengeance; from the kite-fly- ing little Greeks, or the small gamblers who made piles of copper pieces and then banged them into confusion with a brick- end, pocketing as lawful gain all that stayed unmoved, to the old stones and new hard by. But Athens is no longer a heap of ruined marble morsels. There is the pungency of commercial life in the bustle of its streets and the shrill cries of the vendors of everything who go up and down its thoroughfares. And one may wander for a long time in quest of the Acropolis itself, unless one knows well where to look for it. It is a city of mod- ern times under modern conditions, with embryonic boulevards where in the time of the Moslems were forts and fortifica- tions; it is a city of museums and univer- sities, of Sunday schools, and churches, and tramways, as well as ruins; and it has three railway termini already. Had Byron lived and roamed in Athens in x886 instead of 1812, his muse would have been either considerably more or less tear- ful. Strolling aimlessly for twenty minutes under the shade of the trees which line the best roads of Athens, and past a side of the great square of garden and forest land which goes by the name of the pal- ace gardens, I came to a small graveyard, and then, by a gentle slope over some naked gravel ground, to a purling brook. Here was a fine white marble bridge, of a size quite disproportionate to the volume of the water under it. By the stream-side were some young plantains, in the fresh leaf of their sprint. A score of ducks bobbed with the spasmodic current or drifted calmly down the stream, submerged except their perpendicular snowy tails. A little to the north of the bridge were some cottages by the water-side; and the women of the cottages were thrashing clothes in the shallows with big pebbles, squatting in an ungainly manner over their task. A coffee-house dedicated to the scanty brook stood at the other side of the bridge, and a couple of common men SKETCHES IN ATHENS. 96 SKETCHES IN ATHENS. sipped their penny cups of coffee while they tilted their chairs and talked. This brook is the ilissus. My readers will not need to be reminded of the different events which have made this little rivulet as rich in honor as it is poor in water more famous than the greatest rivers of the earth. From the time when Codrus sacrificed himself on its banks for the good of his country (he did not drown himself, understand; he could have done that with difficulty in the Ilissus) to the still distant days of Plato and Socrates, when the sires of the pres- ent plantains gave shelter to the philoso- phers in their noonday walks, the river has been an important factor in old Greek life. But it can never have been much of a stream, even in the time of the autumn rains; and it has the peculiarity of being better furnished with water nearer its source in ilymettus the long grey mass of mountain five or six miles due east of the bridge than where it traverses Athens towards Phalerum and the sea, which it never reaches. I tasted its wa- ter, from sheer instinctive veneration but, alas ! the women had been washing in its upper parts, and, though clear to the eye, it was not of crystal purity to the palate. The nymphs of Ilissus even in ancient times ought to have been repre- sented a little meagre in body; and, if any of them survive, they must feel humbled in the degradation and impoverishment of their once pellucid sire and homonym. From the Ilissus, I walked through some miserable patches of barley into a long oval enclosure, the high banks on either side, with rudimentary lines along the banks, proclaiming that this was the site of the Panathenian games of old; in other words, the Stadium. A little way past the barley were some muddy pools from the last nights rain, and in one of them, immersed to the depth of two or three inches only, lay a dead dog. Thin grass and gravel, where the grass was trodden from the surface, formed the arena of the Stadium. Scanty indeed were the surviving relics here. A fragment of a column, some marble blocks, and the semi- circle of stone at its extremity; this was all. Of the marble seats which rose am- phitheatrically from the level there is nothing left. The banks are overgrown with meadow grass and buttercups, and the tracks which have a semblance of tiers of seats are sheep-walks only. But there are breaks in the banks, showing their artificial construction and substrata. And one large, cavernous opening from the summit of the northern bank is said to have been the withdrawing place of those who were unsuccessful in their con- tests. For those others who were tn- umphant in the wrestlers hardy toil no chamber of retirement was needed. Their toil had been public, and so also was the bestowal of their reward such as it was. While I sat in the Stadiums farthest end, as Pindar has it, and gave my imag- ination the rein, a troop of lads came run- ning and jumping into the arena from the riverside. There were seventeen of them, and in a trice they had thrown off their jackets, and were wrestling or play- ing at hop-skip-and-jump from the boun- dary stone. Anon, they had had enough of this, and turned aside for new sport. A cannon-ball lay in the grass. No doubt it was a Turkish relic; in Greece such relics are as common as graves. They seized upon the heavy ball and began throwing it as far as they could, which was not very far, for it must have weighed twenty or twenty-five pounds avoirdupois. But it was a pretty and suggestive sight to see these representatives of modern Greece, in trousers and starched shirts and collars, indulging in modern athletics on the self-same site which ages ago had witnessed the triumphs of their fore- fathers. One could hardly refrain from echoing their shouts of approval, their kalo! (good!), and their resounding laughter. But from these robuster games the lads fell to commonplace pitch-and- toss, and the chink of the tenths of a drachma succeeded the thuds of the can- non-ball. And, ere I left the Stadium, they had taken up from the ground their crook-handled sticks, and, holding their heads erect, had walked out of the ground with a gait and bearing in no way different from that of some hundreds of thousands of their intelligent contemporaries in En- gland and the western Continent. It was but too apparent that they also had fallen victims to the epidemic of western fash- ions. Doubtless they had now gone home to eat a commonplace dinner, before be- ginning their college work of the after- noon. A few hundred yards from the Stadium are the noble columns of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius, standing on a bare level now used for the exercising of troops and other public service. One need not say anything about these sublime frag- inents of a sublime building. Are they not known by heart all over the world? They have been popularized on grocers almanacks, modelled in marble, salt, sugar, SKETCHES IN ATHENS. and soap, and copied by aspiring archi- tects wherever a building of the Corinthian order is in question, and money is no ob- ject. One strolls in their mighty shadows and leans against their prodigious plinths, looking aloft to their luxuriant capitals, or, at the west end of the city of Athens, the fine rock of Lycabettus which seems to impend over King Georges palace, or at the distant sea burnished under the sun, and its islands ,grey lumps in the glowing water, and, conspicuous among them, iEgi na, the eyesore of Athens, as Peri- cles called it; or, lastly, at the frowning Acropolis itself, close at hand, whose glo- rious pillars seem built on the edge of the rock which falls precipitously to the marble ruins at its base. And, seeing the Acropolis thus near, one forgets the Temple of Jupiter Olympius forthwith, or salves the will with a pretext of viewing it from the Acropolis, even as now one looks at the Acropolis from the temple. There is an excellent carriage road from the city round this southern side of the old citadel and cradle of Athens, but I for one felt no envy of those Athenians who were priv- ileo-ed day by day to driye past these majestic stones in the enjoyment of a constitutional exercise. The citizen of Athens is of necessity familiarized with these ruins, which are the pride of Ath- ens; they can never more be a source of joy and pride to him, therefore. On the southern side of the Acropolis one hears little of the turmoil which roars from its northern base. It bounds the city in this direction. Between it and the sea at Phalerum, five miles away, are the isolated rocks of the monument of Phi- lopappus, the Observatory, and sundry others of low elevation, naked and divested of building nowadays, though the tombs and the old walls and the bases of columns and steps cut or rooted in the matrix prove that formerly this was an important part of the city. The road that winds round it is clumped with aloes; a fig-tree strives its best here and there; and farther west is a grove of flourishing caroubs, the fruit of which hangs thick this spring day, though far from ripe. But, save for the passing of the carriages of the rich Athe- nians each in its cloud of dust the outlook is lonely towards the south. One is soon put in trim for a proper apprecia- tion of these dry bones of the genius of men whose own bones have crumbled to dust centuries ago. The length of the plateau of the Acrop- olis is about a thousand feet; its base may be estimated at about thirteen hun- LIVING AGE. VOL. LXV~ 3335 97 dred feet. And all the thirteen hundred feet are covered with a wealth of white marble and Roman ruins, and from be- txveen the blocks and capitals and columns and headless statues and trunkless limbs which litter the slopes are nettles and thistles, large, fragile, blood-colored pop- pies, buttercups and daisies, and other purple and yellow flowers which attract the bees and butterflies of the plains. One stumbles eternally, and, thus led to examine the cause, one is tempted to spend an hour in the farther examination of the charming detail of the sculpture of every foot of ground. For many and many a year the Turks, who kept their gunpowder in the Parthenon, calcined these art treasures of old Greece ; but, work as they might in turning intellect into lime, there is much remaining. To my momentary disgust, I find that the Acropolis is not open to the public on this day. There is no admission except on business. And why? I asked of the porter, a young man in black frock- coat and felt hat. Because, because it is not allowed to-day, he replies with irritation. And, as he has other affairs to engage him, he does not stay longer par- leying at the little wooden slide which communicates between the outer and the inner precincts. I am left to conjecture whether it is owing to a fit of royal pique against all European foreigners, or to a late discovery of marble or bullion treas- ure among the wreck which covers the summit of the rock, or to the fact that it is a festival of a remarkable kind. Since the embroilment with Turkey, and conse- quently with the other powers, a tax of a drachma has been put on visitors entering the Acropolis bounds; and it is a wonder the tax is not extended to the outer walls also. In olden times Pericles could store his thousands of talents in the Parthenon, whose mutilated pediment and columns look down at us amid the ruins of the Odeon of Herod Atticus. But in modern Athens the paper currency of the State has so insecure a foundation that there is perpetual fencing between the astute Athe- nians and ignorant foreigners. The for- mer are anxious to repudiate their kings paper currency in favor of silver or gold coins of their own coining or of the other European States; while, on the other hand, rather than lose a fraction of a drachma themselves, these same Athe- nians will cram their pockets with cop- pers, to the weight of many pounds, and acquit their daily debts in this miserable currency. 98 SKETCHES IN ATHENS. Having viewed to my contentment some But ones best pleasures are never un- of the treasures that lie recumbent by the alloyed. I a~voke suddenly in the throes south wall of the rock, I sat down on one of uncanny sensations; and, looking down, of the seats of the Odeon. Fifty feet be- I found that I had uncivilly broken the low was the old arena. The face of the procession of a myriad of large ants, which building fronting the road stood up un- were punishing me by clambering over my supported by wings. Its thick Roman legs as if I were an obstruction to their walls and vast cistern, still half-filled with highway, whose permanence had to be cold water, which adjoins it, have defied taken into consideration. Of course there the many storms with which man and na- were also many adventurous spirits among ture have assailed it. Shot and shell have them who were not content to keep to the damaged it; fire has done yet more; earth- highway, and these erratic creatures put shocks have also no doubt thrown stone me in an agony. upon stone from time to time. But it is Subsequently, I was curious to trace still very impressive in itself, and in the the movements of these ants. The dark alluring view over Greek lands and waters line, tremulous with their fervor in busi- which its upper stones offer. ness, was a couple of inches broad, and There was a heat haze over the iEgean, rose from stone to stone for a distance of through which Salamis stood forth with twenty yards. It originated in a thicket boldness, ~Egina irresolutely, and distant of dead leaves, decayed thistles, and other Hydra like a shadow. Landwards, the refuse between the marble blocks, and by snow mountains of the Morea just gleamed a little scrutiny one could see that the through it, like pointed clouds stayed in whole body of them descended thither their progress from the horizon. The impetuously, as it were, empty-handed, white houses of Pir~us, six miles away, but ascended thence, each with a fine fat were of course distinct, and so were i~s seed of grass, or a morsel of thistle pollen, chimneys, and some of the masts in its and so returned home, deposited the load, harbor. But they looked sleepy them- and issued again for a fresh burden. And selves and made one drowsy to look at the home of these energetic little mortals? them. And the promontory of Laurion, It was a mere sandy flat on one of the running its miles south into the sea, was marble seats of the Odeon. The rains in a similar plight. Even the dust from had deposited the sand here, and in time the few vehicles passing at my feet took the deposit had thickened; and into the the form of dull clouds ere it descended depths of this sand the ants burrowed by upon the man who was cutting green thousands. For the space of about a foot corn in a field on the other side, and these square on the surface, their presence un- clouds also were sleep-compelling. One derneath was indicated by a number of need not count it shameful to sleep on the very neat holes in the sand, giving the im- Acropolis under the speckless blue sky of pression of ventilators. And now and Greece and her hot sun. The time was again, from one or other of these holes a noon; I was surrounded by emblems of sturdy animal looked forth, retreating im- power and intellect which bad long been mediately afterwards, as if he were well sleeping; there was a seductive stillness satisfied with the sanitary condition of the omnipresent; even the noise of voices on hive. But when I returned to my seat the other side of the rock was lulled; and and saw the havoc 1 had unconsciously the hum of active bees is a sound provoca- made in this industrious population, I was tive of no activity in others. And so, sit- for the moment heart-broken. A litter of ting where fair Roman or Greco-Roman dead and dying ants strewed the stones, dames were wont to sit, in the earliest and a swarm of their living comrades were centuries of our Christian era, with their poking and pushing and pullino~ at the life- bright eyes fastened on the spectacle be- less ones, and cari-ying them along, two to low, whether it was a dramatic perform- each dead body, up towards the home ance, or one of those musical contests for which they were to enjoy never more. which the building was primarily intended May it not be accounted to me as folly if I thus sitting, I fell asleep. aver that I could not refrain from sweep- They say that slumber in the presence ing the corpses all together, and laying of beings that endear themselves to us is them in one mournful heap at the thresh- one of the happiest contingencies in life, old of the habitation? Else, 1 could not If things may be substituted for beings, I have borne to think of these industrious also may be esteemed fortunate. For one little brutes striving by the hour to lug could not dream lawlessly, surrounded by their dead friends up the precipitous face these gracious remains of old Athens. of the different stones which intervened. SKETCHES IN ATHENS. Even in their death agony, the ants clung tenaciously to the spoil they had gotten. Methought the city of London itself could not afford a more emphatic testi- mony of the instinctive love of gain over- mastering even life itself. Somewhat sadly, I clambered down over the masses of ruin, and into the highroad. Here was a huckster of old coins, jars, scarab~ei, bits of marble with a pedigree of their own, and photographic paper-knives, pencils, etc. He was not persistent, however, and with a wish that we might meet again he kindly pointed to a Titanic rock a few paces away, and told me that this was the Areopagus. My guide-book had taught me as much, but I was glad to have my convictions con- firmed. It is an isolated mass, with its spurs sinking northwards to the very houses of Athens. On the summit, to which one attains by some rude steps cut in the rock, the surface is level; and a nobler assem- bly-place, with the whole city mapped out to the north, and the Acropolis close by on the east could not be found. Here it was that the great court of-the Areopagus sat. There were altars set on the rock then, some of the bases of which are still discernible. And hither it was that /Es- chylus transferred the scene of his drama Eumenides, in order that Orestes, with Apollo as counsel for the defence, might be judged by the twelve old men who constituted the court; while Minerva sat as president, with a casting vote,andthus addressed the assembled citizens Ye citizens of Athens, now attend, Whilst this great Council in a cause of blood First give their judgment. But through future ages This awful Court shall to the hosts of ~Egeus With uncorrupted sanctity remain. Here on this mount of Mars the Amazons Of old encampd, when their embattled troops Marched against Theseus, and in glittring arms Breathed vengeance; here their new-aspiring towers Raised high their rampired heads to storm his walls; And here their hallowed altars rose to Mars: Hence its illustrious name the cliff retains, The mount of Mars. Here also, from this red rock, St. Paul made his famous address. The Atheni- ans of his day, to the full as curious about any new thing or doctrine as their pos- terity, coaxed him to Areopagus, that he might there expound his views; he would amuse them, at the least; more, they did: 99 not wish nor look for. And then, stand- ing in the midst of the hill, facing the city, the farther plain of Attica, tinted with sad-colored olive woods, and the moun- tain of Parnes which dominates the plain from the north, Paul spoke those words which must have had so notable a com- mentary in the marble gods and temples and altars within a stones throw of him on all sides, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. But the new teachers sublime Panthe- ism was not likely to be readily accepta- ble to these residents in a city whose gods were to them by this time little more than pretty symbols to point a philoso- phism; and so Paul departed from among them. The Areopagus has no modern build- ing upon it; nor is it likely ever to be so insulted. Two or three hundred yards from Mars Hill is the Temple of Theseus, the most perfect Doric building in the world, say competent judges. It may be so; but its comparatively low-lying position puts it at a disadvantage with the Parthenon. Not that it is on wholly level ground. From its very pillars the ground slopes north and south gently. Some starveling olive-trees grow on the northern incline, until a rail- way station puts an end to them. And south is a parellelogram of space, which on this day is being used as an exercise- ground for a few hundred country re- cruits. The men charge each other from opposite sides, and bring up, as it were, on their haunches, just when their bayo- nets touch. It were quite superfluous to attempt a description of the Theseion. Every Euro- pean country has its bank, picture-gallery, or stock-exchange in reproduction of it more or less accurately. Every one knows that under its heavy blocks of marble from Pentelicus lie the bones of that fa- mous old ruffian Theseus, who had all the vices and some few of the virtues which attract the respect of an unenlightened people. And in certain matters it must be confessed that even the Greeks of Athens were not civilized in the fifth cen- tury before Christ. After a turbulent life, Theseus had died in Skyros, one of the Greek islands of the archipelago. In 476 B.C. an oracle bade the Athenians go in quest of his honored bones, and hav- ing with much trouble secured these, they were joyously buried, and the Temple of Theseus as now it stands was erected over them. In those days the Acropolis SKETCHES IN ATHENS. 100 was not remarkable for its temples. The Theseion may be looked upon as the first-born of Greek architectural genius, therefore. In the course of the twenty-three centu- ries of its existence, this temple has seen some quite remarkable changes around it. For a while it was a Christian place of worship; and at that epoch the sculpture of its metopes was no doubt in fair pres- ervation. Worshippers at the Christian altar within could look up before entering, and admire the truly admirable figures of Hercules engaged in the various heroic deeds of his lifetime, or of Theseus him- self in his manifold adventures. A good deal of this fine sculpture is in Great Russell Street now; and it is with oddly mixed feelings and thoughts that one reads the words written on the wall within the old temple Quod non fecerunt Goti Hoc fecerunt Scoti. very shadow of the sublime Theseion, but in Greece one is soon tempted to treat antiquity with disrespect. But it will not do to yield for long to the seductive meditation begotten of this sacred spot. There are two or three other famous places to visit before it is time to withdraw and think about the days results. First of these, the Pnyx hill a stu- pendous lump of rock cut and chiselled by the old Athenians, and much resem~ bling the Areopagus, of which it is a near neighbor. The elevated surface of this rock is some five or six thousand square yards in extent. In olden times, it stood to the Athenians very much as Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square stand to the demo- crats of London; it was a rare place for a meeting. And from one side of it, an orator with a good voice mounted in the beina or pulpit of the place could stir the minds of many thousands of his fellow- men. One may easily suppose that the It may be added that the Goths referred Pnyx hill was a place not loved in the to had no appreciation for art, or else it is abstract or the reality by the more oh- pretty certain that they would not have garchical of the Athenians, and positively spared the Theseion.. Is their ignorance hated by those despotic spirits who hoped then to be imputed to them as a virtue? to rule the city sooner or later. For the But there is no believing an epigram. self-acting Demos assembled in the Pnyx Martial and all his successors will turn a very often became, on little or no real truth inside out for the sake of a rhyme or provocation, that angry, waspish, intrac- rhythm. Thus it is with no insuperable table little old man Demos of Pnyx, of feeling of humiliation as a fellow-Briton whom Aristrophanes wrote with such ex- with the barbaric Scot that one ex- cellent personal knowledge. amines the art treasures hived in the And is this the place where Socrates Theseion. For particulars of these, the is buried, d~ear? asked a pretty young catalogues and guide-books may be con- lady of a young gentleman whom she had sulted. There are friezes and sculptured led this day to the crest of the rock, slabs and inscriptions in exquisite preser- chiefly, as it would seem, on the strength vation, each with its actual as well as of their very recent union in matrimony. incidental history. But they are of more Socratess tomb! Good gracious, no. interest to the antiquary whose heart is How on earth do you suppose they could set upon a personal elucidation of their dig a hole in this hard stuff? Its just texts, than to the common tourist who like iron. hungers for mere sights. I didnt know, dear, sighs the pretty Outside the Theseion, it is worth while young Englishwoman. to pause for a moment, and look about There is a certain gratification in this one from this standpoint. On a dark day, meeting of ones fellow-countrymen in there is something very awesome in the every part of the world. But it seemed a blackness of the historical rocks which little hard that these bright young spirits rise in irregular humps to the south of should in time tocome have to associate the city, and in the menace of the Acrop- Athens and Greece with sundry little ohs itself, frowning over the houses of the mannerly tiffs and imbecihities which be- Keramicus quarter, between it and the gan to take the glamor off their sweet Theseion. Dotting the space before the illusions and let them into the secret of temple are a number of little iron tables each others naughty real personality. and chairs; and a clap of the hands will The Pnyx hill will be recorded as a sigh bring from a neighboring coffee~house a in the retentive mind of the one child; white-aproned waiter with a cup in his and the other will perhaps remember palm. There is maybe a measure of pro- shrugging his shoulders and frowning in fanity in this drinking of coffee in the an impudent manner when he thinks of it. SKETCHES IN ATHENS. I0I But the ladys mention of Socratess drink nasty xvine at a penny the tumbler- tomb was opportune. I should have for- ful. It is at least as unlikely that Socra- gotten it otherwise, although it is probably tes ever grew spring onions and lettuces as little the tomb of Socrates as of you or in the garden attached to this humble me. wine-shop, as that he was buried in one of There are three eminently conspicuous the three caves which grin all the day long rocks in Athens, or rather on the boundary at the Acropolis. lines of the city. The one is the Acrop- Scrambling from these caves to the ohs; another is Mount Lycabettus, to be ridge of the rock in which they are cut, mentioned by-and-by; and the third is the one comes at length to the crest and ex- hold hill which looks at the Acropolis tremity of the rock. Here is a gaunt frag- from the south, and on which is the mon- ment of a monument which once reared ument of Philopappus a gentleman who itself eighty feet into the air. From its has come into a very large inheritance of curious shape it excites interest at once; fame without exactly deserving any fame but as soon as one looks around, this poor at all. ruin is quite forgotten in the noble pano- In the northern face of the last of these rama of Athens and all the worth of Ath- rocks are three caverns which owe much ens, the mountains and the plain, the if not the whole of their existence to the sea and the islands, which one sees from hand of man. The first is a chamber hence. No one who ascends this rock about twelve feet square by eight in height; cares two pins about the poor Philopap- the second is little else than a rude hole; pus. He lived in the reign of Trajan, and and the third is as respectable as the first, is reputed to have been the rightful heir with a recess in which a prisoner, if con- to the crown of Syria. But as in those fined in the cave, might withdraw from days Syria was part of a Roman procon- the public gaze. These holes are now sulate, and poor Philopappus was a mere kept sacred from invasion by wickets, native of Attica, whither his royal parents with strong padlocks attached. One peers had been transported by Pompey the through the boarded gates, and sees what Great, his claim, had he preferred it, there is to see, which is nothing. As for would not have been worth much. One the tale about Socrates having been in- may quote the words of Chateaubriand for terred in one of the caverns, this may be the sake of the comment of this thought- dismissed in favor of the more reasonable ful traveller upon human vicissitudes: assumption that he was kept here during Fortune, by making him (Philopappus) a his trial and after his sentence. One may citizen of Athens and consul of Rome at then people the hole to some advantage, a period when these titles were equivalent And, remembering also the direct view of to nothing, seemed inclined to play new the Acropolis from the portal, one may freaks with this disinherited monarch, to thus carry away the most picturesque of compensate him for one shadow with an- all the picturesque groupings which old other, and to show in one and the same Greek history affords. individual that she laughs alike at the At the foot of the hill of these caves majesty of a people and at the majesty of one discovers that Socrates is still famous kings. in the locality. Here, where the road The marble ruin is some thirty feet high bends, is a one-storied house which a nowadays. The statues with which it was sickly vine tries to climb. And over the adorned are gone, like the bulk of the door of the house is a white bust of Soc- building, save a couple of maimed and rates painted on a vivid blue background. infinitely scarred figures. These have He is endowed by the artist with a long served as targets for pistols again and head, a high intellectual forehead, and a again. And as far from the base as an debased singularly kind of nose. Under adventurous hand may reach the monu- the philosophers picture is an inscrip- ment is deeply cut with initials and dates, tion, the words of which are taken from Greek, Roman, Turkish, and Anglo-Sax- the speech of Socrates to his judges, re- on. Philopappus was not very remarka- corded in Platos Apology; and their ble in his lifetime. The kindness of his meaning may be thus rendered: You kingly forefather induced the Athenians Athenians would be a sleepy, ignorant to dedicate a quarter of their city to his race of men, if the gods in mercy did not memory. This rock was included in the now and then send you such men as me. quarter. And this is as much as one may This little house is in British parlance a say for certain about Master Philopappus, tavern, dedicated to the Garden of the whose monument is less significant than Philosopher Socrates. Here one may its situation. I Of~ SKETCHES IN ATHENS. I was retracing my steps into the city and towards the sharp peak of Lycabettus when from the northern end of Solon Street there came the quick, solemn pat- ter of drums, and the mournful wail of trumpets, betokening military honor to the dead. In the van of the procession was the usual escort of small boys and girls, who chattered while they glanced in- termittently over their shoulders, that they might the better regulate their pace. An Athenian citizen of note ~vas being carried to the cemetery of cypresses south-east of the city. First came the band. Then followed a man holding parallel with him- self the white concave coffin-lid, decorated ~vith a black cross of florid design, which caught the eye like phosphorus in ihe night. Boys with long tapers and priests walked next. After them was the bier, On which, raised high, so that his profile was to the bystanders cut against the air clear as a cameo, lay the dead citizen. He was in evening dress, his gloved hands were crossed on his breast, and the very wart on his nose was conspicuous at a distance of many yards. Thus they bore him, with his prodigious following of pedestrians and carriages, between the Acropolis and the pillars of the Temple of Jupiter Olym- pius, outside the city. Unlike the rocks of Philopappus and the Pnyx, Lycabettus, rising some nine hundred feet in the north-east of Athens, is much encroached upon by building. Its southern and western roots are quite incorporated into the city, and from the Senate House, proceeding up Lycabettus Street, to the mountain itself, one ascends sharply between rows of white marble houses, until the rock comes as a cul de sac somewhat too precipitous to be as- sailed by the bold Athenian builders. A devious scramble past an elevated coffee- house, with little tables set in the shelter of orange and almond trees, and the water- works which for centuries have been con- cerned with the well-being of Athens, brings one in touch with the network of tracks which bespread two of the sides of the mountain, and wind through its wiry covering of herbs and pointed crags to the summit. There are boards here and there about the mountain, and little patches of plantation; one learns that it is a trespass to leave a highway in Athens as else- where, and that prosecution may follow the trespass. From the whitewashed little edifice on the foot of Lycabettus one hears the tinkle of a bell now and again. It is the Church of the Agios Georgios, looking upon the relics of paganism in the spread- ing city at its feet; perhaps the citizen being buried this day was a benefactor of the building. Visitors ascend Lycabettus and Snow- don with a common intention to see the sun rise or set over the surrounding coun- try. But Lycabettus is vastly more kind than Snowdon in satisfying its votaries. The day is bad indeed when clouds come between it and the city and plain which seem to proceed from its spurs. And one may usually be sure of a beautiful pano- rama of blue sparkling sea studded with grey islands, of distant mountains north, west, and south, some with their cool, snowy crests against the cloudless sky, and of dark woodland in the recesses of the Athenian plain, where the olives and low pines shadow the hot soil with their sad-colored foliage. Lycabettus humiliates the Acropolis; this must be said in its disfavor. It towers so many hundred feet above it that the old citadel and its tem- ples are foreshortened; and the Acropolis then claims attention as but one amid other rocky masses which cluster south of the red and white roofs and blocks, the church-spires, the long, white road-lines, and the stiff, sombre cypresses which, in association, make up the city of modern Athens. But, nevertheless, when the sun- light falls aslant upon the Parthenon pil- lars, and dyes them a soft crimson, or when at sundoWn they glow like gold, one is fain to forget the wrong done by Lyca- bettus to the Acropolis in overcapping it. This mountain also takes one out of the zone of sentimental respect for the old stones of Athens. One sees too much at a time here. Gasworks and foundries, lines of railway with puffing engines glid- ing to and fro upon them, ships of war, and merchantmen in the placid sea a tew miles distant, the clatter of masons and carpenters in half-finished houses at ones feet, and the faint words of command with the jingle of arms from the battalions of soldiery, marching and countermarching, charging and halting, in the exercise- grounds right and left of Lycabettus all these sights and sounds put one out of tune with the Acropolis and its immediate surroundings. Toe side issues are dis- tracting. It may be also that there is a large gathering of tourists on the top of the mountain, voluble and restless; and one must be gifted with a quite uncomn- mon power of concentration to be able to think or feel independently when volatile young ladies from the New World are rushing from papas to mammas asking impetuously for information they are little SWANS. 103 likely to get about the pretty mountain over yonder, or that delightful ruin which excites their interest below. As a further anomaly, there is the nondescript little church at ones elbow, with its white- washed exterior, its blue-washed portal, and bright vermilion lines of paint be- tween the white and the blue. Within the church, the most insatiable lover of grim tragedies may have a surfeit from the queer, ill-drawn pictures which deco- rate its walls. The sorrowful life-history of two or three obscure saints may be deduced from these pictures, and one fol- lows them through their various sufferings, on the ~vheel, by decapitation, flagellation, pressing to death, burning, and stabbing, to the final and comforting scene of all, where they are depicted, naked and joyful, bursting from their square white tombs, and flying to the realms of eternal bliss. In short, the interest of Lycabettus is somewhat too miscellaneous. And one hurries down the mountain and to ones hotel, not a little disturbed by the fear that the more tender impressions wrought by ones earlier and nearer acquaintance with the individual charms of Athens will of a surety be obliterated by this unwise panoramic view of them wholesale. CHARLES EDWARDES. From Blackwoods Magazine. SWANS. THERE is no bird not even excepting the nightingale which has furnished a more frequent theme for poetic inspira- tion, both in times ancient and modern, than the subject of this article. From the time when Juvenal penned his famous Sixth Satire, up to the discovery of the antipodes when a black swan no longer remained a rare bird on the earth, and onward through a succession of more mod- ern poets to the present day, the bird of Apollo has formed the subject of many a beautiful passage (almost as sweet as its own fabled song), both in prose and verse, the collection of which would amply repay the trouble and research necessary for the purpose; whilst the flood of con- troversy as to the vocal powers of the paradoxically named mute swan of which Sir Thomas Browne remarks, Surely he that is bit with a tarantula shall never be cured by its music as well as the antiquarian interest attached to the curious laws and customs regulat- ing the ancient swan-rights, would fill no inconsiderable volume. On the present occasion, however, it is not our purpose to dwell upon the antiquarian aspect of the subject, undoubtedly interesting though it be, but after introducing the various mem- bers of the family, to give some. account of the present state of two ancient swan- neries, about one of which very little has been written, although it certainly claims to be of interest from more points of view than one. The genus Cygnus comprises nine or ten very elegant species, which are widely distributed over the temperate and arctic portions of both hemispheres, but mostly abounding, at least in the number of spe- cies, in the northern division of the globe. If we oive, as in duty bound, the first place to those from a distance, the now familiar black swan takes precedence. This fine species was discovered by the Dutch navigator Willem de Vlaming, who, on 6th January, 1697, landed in an estuary in West Australia, now called Swan River, ~vhere his boats crew met with several, and succeeded in capturing four of these birds, two of which they sent alive to Batavia. The news of this remarkable find soon reached Amsterdam, and Mr. Witsen, the burgomaster of that town, communicated the fact to Dr. Martin Lister, by whom it was communicated to the Royal Society of London in October, 1698, and published in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. xx., p 361).* Here, says Witsen, is returned a ship, which by our East India Company was sent to the South Land called Hollandia Nova; and adds that black swans, parrots, and sea-cows were found there. Cook found this bird on several parts of the coast, and from that time to the present it has been mentioned by all authors who have written on the natural productions of the antip- odes. It was not till the year i8oi that the black swan was introduced into this coun- try, when a pair, which arrived in the Buf- falo, were presented to Queen Charlotte, and placed on the waters at Frogmore. Since then it has become well known in the ornamental waters of this country, where it breeds freely; and its graceful carriage, jet-black plumage, and bright coral bill, present a very striking appearance. The native habitat of this species is very re- stricted, being confined to South Australia, Tasmania, and the islands of Bass Strait, where it was formerly very numerous; but great numbers have fallen victims to the same fatal method which, in days gone * Newton, Ency. Brit., ninth edit., article ~ Swan. SWANS. 104 by, proved so destructive to the wild-fowl Turning to the northern hemisphere, breeding in the fens of Lincoinshire there are six, or perhaps seven, known viz., driving the moulting birds when species of swan, one said to inhabit unable to fly, or hunting them down in northern China, which has received the that helpless condition, on the water, by name of Davids swan, from its discov- means of boats. Mr. Gould, referring to erer, and is only known from a single this practice, remarks that he has heard of specimen seen by P~re David at Pekin, the boats of a whaler entering an estuary, unless, indeed, two swans from Corea, re- and returning to the ship nearly filled with corded (P. Z. 5., 1887, p. 590) by Messrs. black swans. So great has been the de- Giglioli and Salvadori, and doubtfully re- struction, that Professor Newton, in the ferred by them to this species, really prove article before quoted, remarks that per. to be identical with the bird imperfectly haps.even now there are more black swans described by David. Of two North Amer- in a reclaimed condition in other lands ican species, one, the American swan of than are at large in their mother country. Baird, has, according to Mr. Sclater, never And it is much to be feared that, in a been brought alive to Europe, nor does state of nature, it will indeed soon become he know of its having ever been exhibited a rare bird upon the earth. in any of the American gardens; the Even still more curious than the swan other, the well-known trumpeter swan, totally black is a very beautiful species inhabiting, like the preceding species, the also found in the southern hemisphere arctic portions of America, has frequently the body of which is pure white, but its bred in confinement, and it is this species head and neck are black as ebony. This which yields the skins so largely imported species, which is found in the extreme by the Hudson Bay Company. southern portion of America, the Falkland We now come to the European species Isles, Straits of Magellan, La Plata, and of swan; and the smallest of these, al- Chili, was first introduced into this coun- though noticed by Pallas, who appears to try by Admiral Hornby, when in command have regarded it merely as a small race of of the Pacific station, who, Mr. Sclater the whooper, was first described as a tells us in his notes to Wolfs Zoological distinct species by the late Mr. Yarrell, Sketches, at different times sent home who named it (in honor of Thomas Be- to the late Lord Derby eight individuals, wick) Bewicks swan. It is an elegant six of which were living at the dispersal little bird, and by no means rare on our of the Knowsley collection in i8~i, since coasts in some seasons. Mr. Seebohm which time it has become well known in found it breeding in north-east Russia collections, and has bred freely in confine- and in eastern Siberia; its true home ap- ment. A remarkable circumstance con- pears to be arctic Asia. Althouo~h a nected with the breeding of this species peace-loving bird, living amicably ~vith is on record. At Melbourne, in the year other water-fowl, and said to be capable 1883, two black - necked cygnets were of strong attachment to other individuals hatched from one egg. The twins pro- of its own species, it has not been known gressed very slowly in growth, and al- to nest in captivity. though perfectly healthy, the smaller of A very touching story is told of a Be- the two at seven months old was a queer wicks swan, which, being wounded on little fellow still covered with down, and the ioth December, out of a flock of in appearance not more than two months twenty-nine, was unable to follow its com- old. This species is mentioned by Nar- panions in their flight. It was not wholly brough, in the first edition of his Voy- deserted, however, for a second bird, pre- age, as having been found by him in sumably its mate, haunted the spot till August, 1670, in the Straits of Magellan. banished by persevering efforts to effect There is one other southern species its capture. Not even then did it finally known as the coscaroba swan, which is desert its captive companion; for on the found in about the same limits as the 23d of March, a swan believed to be the preceding species. It is much smaller same individual, made its appearance, and than the domestic swan, but is an exceed- until the 13th April, when it was again ingly beautiful bird. Although it has on alarmed by some strange dogs, was assid- one occasion at least produced eggs in uous in its attentions to its still inca- confinement, hitherto no young ones have pacitated companion. On the ~th of the resulted. It was introduced into this following September, the wounded swan, country from Chili in 1870, and is now an having quite recovered the use of its inhabitant of several of the Continental injured wing, took its departure let us zoological gardens as well as of our own. hope, to rejoin its faithful mate where SWANS. 105 dogs and men would cease from troubling them. The cry of this species is a loud, musical tong, tong, very like the sound of a violin-string. Almost every winter brings to our shores flocks of another species of swan, known as the whooper, or whistling swan. In some seasons it is by no means rare, and its presence in greater or less numbers is much influenced by the com- parative severity of the weather; long- continued frosts occasionally witness the arrival of immense flocks of these fine birds. The whooper, which a hundred years ago, according to Low (Fauna Orca- densis, p. ~ nested in the holms of the loch of Stenness where, however, he adds, it was always robbed by the country people has quite deserted Orkney, and now breeds principally in the arctic por- tions of Europe. By the inhabitants of the high latitudes through which it passes on the approach of summer, its whoop, whoop, as it wings its way to its breed- ing-station, is as ~velcome a sound as is to us the note of the cuckoo. How differ- ently it is regarded by the inhabitants of our more southern latitude, and for what reasons, has been charmingly told by the Rev. Richard Lubbock in the following passage in his Fauna of Norfolk: The whooping of a herd of these birds [says Mr. Lubbock] is by the Laplander compared to the sound of a violin, and it conjures up to his mind agreeable hopes and thoughts, telling him that winter is past, that pasture is at hand for his reindeer, and that short-lived arctic flowers shall bloom again on the banks of the Tornea. He therefore thinks it harmonious in the extreme. The English fenman, on the contrary, listens with disgust to the phalanx of whoopers which sweep on high over his head: they speak of increase and continuance of cold, remind him of want of fuel and of dearth of occupation. The voices of the un- welcome visitors grate upon his ear, and from association of ideas he calls them melancholy and unpleasant. Low says: When the swans go soon away, the Orkney people expect a forward season; but when they go south in the spring, fear the worst. In Ireland, Sir R. Payne-Gallwey says that there is a very strong feeling aeainst slaying a swan, for the strange reason that the fowler believes that in each indi- vidual swan is imprisoned a departed spirit, it may be of one of his own kin. Should he be guilty of such an act, he believes the consequences will be dire in- deed. In the hard winter of s88i, Sir R. Payne-Gallwey says that in a small lake at Castle Gregory, on the coast of Kerry, which has from time immemorial been celebrated as a resort for wild swans, there were about eight hundred of these birds present at one time, and that upon a gun being fired they rose on the wing as one great white cloud and left for the sea, only to return, however, at nightfall. Mr. St. John, in his charming book, Natural History and Sport in Moray,~~ thus speaks of the arrival of the wild swans in the Findhorn Bay, which takes place about the middle of October. In 1844 he estimated the number at nearly three hundred, and says their appearance, as they circle round the fresh-water lakes on their first arrival, is one of the most beauti- ful sights imaginable. There is, too, a wild harmony in their bugle-like cry, as they wheel round and round, now separating into small companies, as each family of five or six seems inclined to alight, and now all joining again in a long undulating line, waiting for the word of command from some old leader, whose long acquaintance with the country and its dangers constitutes him a swan of note among the common herd. At last this leader makes up his mind to alight, and in a few moments the whole flock is gradually sinking down on the calm loch. After a moment or two spent in looking round them, with straight and erect necks, they commence sipping the water, and bending their flexible necks into a thousand graceful curves and attitudes. Then they break off into small companies, each appar- ently a separate family, and set to work, with seemingly a most excellent appetite, on the water grasses and plants. Their food in these situations, Mr. St. John says, consists chiefly of the aquatic grasses Glycericmflui/ans and G. aqua/icz. To those who have only seen occasional flocks of seven or eight of these grand birds wending their way in wedge-shaped formation high in the air with extended necks, the beauty of such a sight as that described by Sir Ralph Gallwey or Mr. St. John can hardly be imagined. The whooper is not a gracefnl bird in the waterhe carries his neck too straight, and has none of the elegance of the mute swan; but a bird pure white, and measur- ing from beak to tail five feet, with a stretch of wings reaching eight feet, and weighing twenty-four pounds, is certainly a magnificent object when on the wing. These birds have frequently bred in con- finement, and Yarrell tells of the proud father of a brood in the Zoological Gar- dens which was escorting its young ones on the water, when a carrion-crow had the temerity to strike at one of the cygnets. He paid dearly, however, for his boldness; the male whooper, coming to the rescue, i o6 SWANS. seized the marauder, and immersing him in the water, held him there till life was exti net. Whether or not there is a third species of swan which visits our shores in a state of nature, naturalists are not unanimous; certain it is that from time to time birds, to all appearance wild, are killed which present certain peculiarities which led Mr. Yarrell to assign to them a true spe- cific value, the claim to which was, he considered, greatly strengthened by the fact that individuals possessing the same peculiarities had for many years been im- ported from the Baltic by the London dealers under the name of the Polish swan, and that the offspring of these birds, instead of being grey like those of the mute swan, were white or nearly so; this induced Mr. Yarrell to name his new spe- cies Cygnus immutabilis. Of late years many broods of the so-called Polish swan have been known to be produced of a white or very pale buff color, a circum- stance of extremely rare occurrence in the young of the mute swan; and it has been suggested that, even in the few instances recorded, the fact may be due to the pres- ence, although unsuspected, of Polish blood in one or other of the parents. It seems, therefore, highly probable that Mr. Yarrells swan is really a good species. Far exceeding any of the preceding species in beauty and graceful bearing is the common swan of our ornamental waters, of which it is itself the great- est ornament the so-called mute swan. Why the mute swan, who can say? for although it is not possessed of the fabled song so often attributed to it by poets of the past, and although Sir Thomas Browne was fully justified, as he usually was in most of his conclusions, in his re- marks already quoted, still our domestic swan is by no means mute; and it may frequently be heard, more especially when accompanied by its young, indulging in a soft, low, contented sort of murmur, which Colonel Hawker, in his Instructions to Young Sportsmen, has reduced to music. The swans melody, he says is formed with two notes C, and the minor third (E flat) and the musician kept working his head as if delighted xvith his own per- formance. In addition to this song of peaceful love, the usual call of the mute swan is a croaking note, which, although certainly not musical, is by no means out of harmony when heard in the haunt of the coot and moor-hen; and who has not heard, when venturing too close to the jealously guarded cygnets, the hiss of ianger and defiance with which the parent bird threateningly pursues the intruder? What becomes of the dead swans is al- most as difficult a problem to solve as the like disappearance of defunct donkeys; but that they do die, the writer had once an opportunity of witnessing. In the reed-bed by a river-side, the poor bird, probably injured by some means of which there were no outward indications, had beaten out a small dock amongst the water-weeds, and was swimming round and round in a narrow circle, like a boat pro- pelled by one oar, using one foot only the other apparently paralyzed till it became more and more feeble, and its beautiful neck at length dropped into the water, never more to be proudly arched between its snowy pinions, the very em- blem of pride and stately beauty. But where was The warble loud and full and clear which should have heralded the death of Apollos bird? Alas! the swans dying song existed only in the poets imagina- tion, and poor Cygnus expired without a sound, mute only when he should have been musical. The mute swan in a state of nature is found in the present day, according to Yarreli, in Denmark, Sweden, some parts of Germany, central and southern Russia, the lower Danube, Greece, the Black and Caspian Seas, and Turkistan. It is much more intolerant of cold than the other species of the genus, and in the northern portion of its range is migratory, being found in winter as far south as the lakes of Algeria and Egypt. Whether this country is ever visited by the mute swan in its migrations is uncertain, but it has always been accorded a place in books on B