The Living age ... / Volume 205, Issue 2649
65-128
LITTELLS LIVING AGE.
Sixth Series ~ No 2649 April 13, 1895. ~ From Beginning,
Volume VI. ) Vol CCV.
C ON VENT S.
I. ROBERT SOUTHEY. By George Saints-
bury
II. THE Toucsi OF SPRING. By D Storrar
Meidrurn
III. THE NsI~E
IV. THE CRISIS IN NEWFOUNDLAND. By
William Greswell
V. THE BUILDER OF TEE ROUND TOWERS.
By Emily Lawless
VI. AMONG THE SNOW-MOUNTAINS OF THE
TmOL. By A. E. W. Mason,
VII. WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The Great Citoyenne (Madame Roland).
By M. Dale
VIII. ITALIAN GRANITE
HOME TO TIIFF
A FAREWELL,
P01: TRY.
6 NATURES MAGIC,
(5
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67
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Chambers Journal, . . . 127
66
66
HOME TO THEE.
HOME but not to thee, sweet,
As so oft before,
Home but home to thee, sweet,
Never, nevermore.
Laggard grow the feet, sweet,
Dragging wearily,
That stepped once so fleet, sweet,
Home to Love and thee.
Thourt not there to greet, sweet,
Nor to welcome me,
I no more shall meet, sweet,
Home and Heav n in thee.
Home ! without thy smile, sweet?
Home! without thy kiss?
Home ! without thy heart, sweet?
Home! and that to miss?
Home! no, not to me, sweet,
Till there can be this
Daylight without sun, sweet,
Heaven without bliss.
Yet thou art at home, sweet,
Waiting still for me,
While I homeless roam, sweet,
Home eternally.
And my steps may be, sweet,
Evermore may be,
Home, still home to thee, sweet,
Home to God and thee!
Cornhull Magazine.
A FAREWELL.
[E. 5. IIGOTT, FEBRUARY 23RD, 1895.]
FRIEND, farewell, the word is true and
sweet,
Although I say it not with any thought
Of parting long or severance complete.
Farewell, and yet farewell! may there be
nought
To hinder thy safe passage oer the line
Invisible that parts the lingering way
Which still is ours from that which now is
tliine.
Be here the darkness left ; meet thou th
encountering day.
Light be thy foot that has grown slow of
late.
And free thy breath, unstayed by fog or
Home to Thee, etc.
Hosen and shoon thou gavst with liberar
hands,
Kind words and gentle judgment ever-
thine;
Now take thy way, content, oer flowery
lands,
And meet, benignant thou, the eternal~
smile benign.
I far advanced upon the self-same road,
My heart forestalling still the footsteps
slow,
Waiting the opening of those gates of God,
Sick of believing, sick to see and know,
No word of parting say, no tear will shed,
But speed with tender greeting and iv ith~
praise
The guest that to a fairer hostel led,
Goes from our winter forth, content, by
happier ways.
Till next we meet ! and if meanwhile ere I
Make up to you, you meet with those of
mine
Of whom we talked neath this same
wintry sky
The other day ; oh friend, a friendly sign,.
A kind word give, as twas thy habit here,
Ever forestalling question with reply,
As Allis well, eh ? lending to the ear
A token kind of home, to be remem
bered by.
Then pass thou on, all cheerful to thy
place,
Thou whom no whisper of the envious-
crowd
Eer moved to evil word, suspicion base,
Or echo of ill rumor, low or loud.
The age is almost past was thine and mine,
The saner days and better near their end.
How glad would I my lingering past resign,
And faring forth like thee, recover many
a friend?
Spectator. M. 0. W. 0.
NATURES MAGIC.
GIVE her the wreckage of strife
Tumulus, tumbled tower,
Each clod and each stone shell make her-
own
With the grass and innocent flower.
chill, Give her the Candlemas snow,
Thy shoulders lightened of each mortal Smiling shed take the gift,
weight, And out of the flake a snowdrop make,
No prick of whin-strewn moor or thorny And a lambkin out of the drift.
hill; Good Words. VIDA BRISS.
Robert Southey.
From Maeinillanz Magazine.
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
NEARLY seventy years ago Macaulay
expressed a doubt whether Southeys
poems would be read in half a century,
but was certain that, if read, they
would be admired. The doubt has
certainly been justified ; the certainty
max- seem more than a little doubtful.
Southeys cl)aracter, which was once
subjected to the most unjust, though
not perhal)s the most uninteIii~ible
~ 7
obloqny, has long been cleared ; and
those who most dislike his matured
views in political and ecclesiastical
matters are the first to admit that few
English men of letters have a more
stainless record. His prose style, the
merits of which ~vere indeed never de-
nied by any competent judges, has won
more and more praise from such judges
as time went on. But he is less read
than ever as a whole, and his poems
are the least read part of him. These
poems, which the best critics of his
own generation admired ; on which he
himself counted, not in boastfulness or
in pique, but with a serene and quiet
confidence, to make him as much ex-
alted by the next age as he thought
himself unduly neglected by his own
which extorted a grudging tribute even
from the prejudice of Byron, now
find hardly any readers, and fewer
even to praise than to read. Even
among the few who have read them,
and who can discern their merits, es-
teem rather than enthusiasm is the
common note ; and esteem is about the
most fatal sentiment that can be ac-
cor(led to poetry.
It is of the prose rather than of the
ye rse that Macaulay s prognostication
has been thoroughly fulfilled. The
Life of Nelson represents it a little
less forlornly, but with hardly less in-
justice than The Battle of Blenheim
and one or two other things represent
the verse in the public memory. The
stately qnartos of The History of
Brazil and The Peninsular War,
the (lecent octavos of The Colloquies
on the Progress and Prospects of Soci-
ety an(l The Book of the Chnrch2
the handy little doudecimos of Es
67
priella and Omniana, with all the
rest, have to be sought in catalogues
and got together, not indeed with im-
mense research (for none of them is
exactly rare), but with some trouble
and delay. In any other country a de-
cent if not a splendid complete edition
would long ago have enshrined and
kept on view work so admirable in
style always, frequently so excellent
in mere substance, so constantly enli-
vened with flashes of agreeable humor
or hardly less agreeable prejudice, and
above all informcd by such an aston-
ishing knowledge of books. Johnson
may have been fitted to grapple with
whole libraries; but Southey did grap-
ple with them, his industry being as
notoriously untiring as the great lexi-
cographers was notoriously intermit~
tent.
Even in the article of biography the
same malign, and to some slight de-
gree mysterious, fate has pursued him..
His life was extremely uneventful;
but, except for the great catastrophe of
Sir Walters speculative career, it was
not much more uneventful than Scotts.
He was a delightful, though a some
what too copious letter-writer ; he
knew at all times of his life some of
the most interesting people of the day
and scanty as were his means he was a
hospitable host and an untiring cice
rone in a country flooded every year
with tourists. But he ~vas as unlucky
in his biographers as Scott and Byron
were lucky. Cuthbert Southey appears
to have been an excellent person of
good taste and fair judgment, but l)os-
sessed of no great literary skill in gen-
eral, and of no biographical genius in
particular ; while he had the additional
(lisadvantage of being the youngest
child, born too late to know much of
his father, or of his fathers affairs
during earlier years. Dr. Warter,
Soutbeys son-in-law, had more literary
ambition than Cuthbert ; but he was
deficient in judgment and in the indis-
pensable power of selecting from the
letters of a man who seems often to
have written much the same things to
three or four correspon(lents on the
same day. The result is that though
68
The Life and Correspondence is a
charming book as a book, with portraits
and froiitispieces showing the dead and
delightful art of line-engraving at its
best, and though both it and The
Selected Letters are full of interest,
that interest is in the ten volumes and
perhaps five thousand pages of the
two, so frittered and duplicated, watered
down and wasted, that only patient and
skilled extractors can get at it. An
abridgment, putting the life together in
Southeys own words, has, I believe,
been executed, and by no incompetent
hand; but there is always a curse on
abridgments. And besides, the charm
of a biography consists hardly more in
the actual autobiographic matter, found
in letters or otherwise, than in the
connecting framework. It is because
Bos~vell and Lockhart kne~v how to
execute this framework in such a mas-
terly fashion that their books possess
an immortality which even the conver-
sations of Johnson, even the letters of
Scott could not have fully achieved by
themselves.
Southey. for whose early years there
is practically no source of information
but an autobiographic fragment writ-
ten rather late in life, and dwelling on
detail with interesting though rather
disproportionate fulness,. was born in
Wine Street, Bristol, on the 12th of
August, 1774. 1-us birthday gave him,
according to an astrological friend, a
gloomy capability of walking through
(lesolation, but does not seem to have
carried with it any sporting tendencies.
At least his only recorded exploit in
that way is the eccentric, and one
would think slightly hazardous, one
of shooting wasps with a horsepistol
loaded with sand. His father, also a
Robert, was only a linendraper, but the
Southeys, though, as their omnilegent
represe ntative con fesses, so obscure
that he never found the name in any
book, were Somerset folk of old date
and entitled to bear arms. They had,
moreover, actual wealth in the l)osses-
sion of one of their members, the l)oets
uncle John Cannon Southey, and
expectations in the shape of estates en
idled ul)on them in default of the male
Robert Southey.
heirs of Lord Somerville. Southey,
however, never benefited by either, for
his uncles fortune went out of the
family altogether, and it turned out
that Lord Somerville had somehow
got the entail barred. His father, too,
failed and died early, and all the fain-
ily assistance that he ever had came
from the side of his mother, Margaret
lull, who was pretty well connected.
Herhalf-sister,MissTyler,extendeda
capricious and tyrannical protection to
the boy in his extreme youth (turning
him out of doors later on the score of
Pantisocracy and Miss Fricker), while
her brother, Mr. lull, a clergyman,
~vas Southeys Providence till long after
he reache(l manhood. After a child
hood (unimportant though interesting
to read about) in which lie very early
developed a passion for English litera-
ture, he was sent by his uncle to West-
minster in the spring of 1788, and
remaine(l there with not much inter-
mission till it was time for him to go to
Oxford.
This jatter translation, however, was
not effected without alarums and ex-
cursions. Although Southey, neither
as boy nor yet as man, was the kind of
person thoroughly to enjoy or thor-
oughly profit by a public school, he was
on the whole loyal to his own, and it
produced a valuable and durable im-
pression on him. The coarser and
more hackneyed advantage of making
friends he had to the uttermost ; for
it was there that he made the acquaint-
ance of Charles Watkin Williams
Wynn, who was through life his patron
as well as his friend, and of Grosvenor
Bedford, his constant correspondent
and intellectual double. lIe also prof-
ited as much as need be in the matter
of education, though, as has happened
with other boys who have, gone to
school with more general in formation
than solid instruction, he was promoted
rather too rapidly to become a thorough
scholar in the strict sense. Nor did
some rough experiences in his early
days do him much if any harm., But
the end of his stage was in a way un-
fortunate. Nothing could have less
resembled the real man than his ene-.
Robert Southey.
nAes representation of him as a supple
and servile instrument, keen to note
and obstinate to seize the side on which
his bread was buttered, and born to be
a frequenter of Mainchance Villa. As
a matter of fact he was always an un-
compromising and impracticable ideal-
ist, though with some safeguards to be
notice(l presently. In his last days at
school he showed this quality just as
he did twenty or forty years later,
when he constantly struggled to write
in the Quarterly Review as if he were
sole proprietor, sole editor, and sole
contributor thereof. It is needless to
say that in his time, as earlier an(l
later, any Westminster boy of ability
rathee above the average, and of toler-
able character and conduct, had his
future made plain by the way of Christ
Church or Trinity as the case might
be. But Southey must needs start a
periodical called the Flagellant, whereof
the very title was in the circumstances
seditious, an(I in an early number made
a (lirect attack on corporal l)unishlllent.
This arousing the authorities, he con-
fessed and expressed contrition ; but
the head master, Dr. Vincent, was iin-
placable, and not only insisted on his
leaving the school, but directly or in-
directly caused Dean Cyril Jackson to
refuse to receive him even as a com-
moner at Christ Church. He matricu-
lated at I3alliol without demur in
November, 1792, going into residence
in January. Perhaps, indeed, though
his fortunes were now entering on a
rather prolonged low tide, this particu
Jar ill luck was, even from the lowest
point of view, not such very bad luck
after all. At Christ Church even as a
commoner, much more as a junior stu-
dent, un(ler such a dean as Jackson,
who bore the sword by no means in
vain, a youngster of Southeys tone
and temper, full of Jacobinisni and all
its attendant crazes, would have come
probably, and rather sooner than later,
to some signal mischance, even more
decided and damaging to his l)rospects
than the close of his Westminster
career. At Balliol, though he was in
no l)articulaliy good odor, they seem to
have left him very much alone, ~iot
resenting even the shocking innovation
of his wearing his hair uncropped and
unpowdered in hall. His tutor, with
perhaps more frankness than sense of
duty, said to him, Mr. Southey, sir,
you wont learn anything by my lec-
tures ; so if you have any studies of
your own, you had better pursue
them. This he did by getting up at
five oclock in the morning to break-
fast (one shudders to hear) on bread
and cheese and red wine negus walk-
ing all over the country, learning to
swim and to row, and associating
chiefly with men of his old school. He
seems to have kept terms or not with a
casualty somewhat surprising even in
that age of lax discipline and few or no
examinations ; an(l after about a year
and a half of this sort of thing he
ceased to reside at all. It is scarcely
surprising that he shoulTl have felt
very little affection for a place where
he stayed so little and sat so loose
and long after~vards he notes that,
though he was constantly dreaming of
Westminster, he never dreamed of
Oxford.
In fact he was busy with thoughts
and schemes quite alien from the ex-
isting scheme, or indeed from any pos-
sible scheme, of the university, I-Jo
had made the acquaintance of Cole-
ridge his boyish friendship with the
J
Miss Frickers had ripened into an en-
gagement ~vith one of them, Edith ; he.
had, though the atrocities of the Ter
ior had much weakened his Gallo-
mania, written Joan of Arc, and he
had plunged ardently into the famous
schemes of Pantisocracy and As-
pheterism. Of these much has been
heard, though I never could make out
why, of these two characteristic speci-
mens of Estesian language, Pantisoc-
racy should have secured a l)lace in
the general memory which its com-
panion has not. As Coleridges many
biographers have made known, Pan-
tisocrasy, a scheme for a socialist
colony in Pennsylvania or Wales or
anywhere, broke down ; and it pleased
Coleridge to consider that the blame
was mainly Southeys. As a matter
fact it was impossible to ~start it with-
69
70
of which most of the Pan-
out money,
tisocrats had none, and the others very
little; and no doubt Southey, who,
visionary as he still was, had some
common sense and a very keen sense
of what was (Inc to others, saw that to
attempt it would l)e cruel and criminal.
While Coleridge had been ecstatically
formulating his enthusiasm in such
sentences as America ! Southey
Miss Fricker ! Pantisocracy ! his
more practical friend was inquiring of
Mr. Midshipman Thomas Southey, his
brother, What do your common blue
trouseis cost? Alas ! when a man
combines even an enthusiastic love for
Aspheterism with a sense of the cost
of common blue trousers, the end can-
not be (loubtiul.
If, ho~vever, anybody imagined (and
indeed the manufacturers of Mr.
Feathernest did try to set up such a
notion) that ~outhey relinquished his
generous schemes of honest toil abroad
for a life of pensioned and voluptuous
infamy at home, it was a very vain
ima~ination. For a time, in October,
1794, and later, his prospects were
about as little encouraging as those of
any young man in England. He had
steadfastly resolved not to take orders,
the cardinal point of his benevolent
uncles scheme for him ; his aunt
turned him out of doors ; his mother
had nothing to give him ; and his in-
tended bride was penniless. His
wants, however, were exceedingly mod-
est, but fifty pounds a year. He de-
livered historical lectures at Bristol,
lectures of the beautiful sweeping sort
( from the Origin of Society to the
American War ) which the intelligent
undergraduate delights in ; and they
seem to have been not unsuccessful.
John Scott, the future victim of that
unlucky duel, undertook to find him
journalism at a guinea and a half a
week, though it is not clear that this
ever came to anything. Cottle (Jo-
seph of Bristol, the brother of Amos)
gave him fifty guineas for Joan of
Arc and as many copies of the book
to get rid of by subscription. Lastly,
Mr. Hill, his unwearied uncle, sug-
gested that, as he would not take
orders, he should go to Lisbon (where
Mr. Hill was chaplain) for six months
to simmer down, an(l should then
read law. Southey consented, but,
resolving to make desertion of his be-
trothed impossible, married Edith
Fricker on November 14th, 1795, and
parted from her at the church (loor.
This marriage, and the Portuguese
journey which immediately succeeded,
may be said to have finally settled
Southeys fortunes in life, young as he
was at the time. He was never the
man to shirk a responsibility, and
though for some time to come lie loy-
ally attempted to read law, he soon
made up his mind that it was never
likely to give him a livelihood. On
the other hand his visit to the Penin-
sula, with the interest thus created in
its history and languages, gave him
that central subject and occupation
which is almost indispensable to a
working man of letters (such as he ~vas
marked out to be and 500U became) if
lie is not to be a mere booksellers
hack. Directly, indeed, Southeys
Spanish and Portuguese books and
studies were about the least remuner-
ative of all his mostly ill-paid work.
The great History of Portugal,
planned almost at once, never saw the
light at all ; and The History of Bra-
zil. its more manageable offshoot and
episode, was but an unprofitable book.
But this visit to Lisbon, and another of
somewhat longer duration which he
took with his wife some years later,
were of immense service. They thor-
oughly established his health, which
had been anything but strong ; they
gave him, as has been said, a central
subject to work upon in which lie be-
came an authority, and which served
as tie-beam and king-post both to his
multifarious work ; and they furnished
him with one of those invaluable stoics
of varied and pleasurable memory than
which nothing is of more consequence
to a man whose life is to be passed in
apparently monotonous study. He
more than once platinel a third visit,
but ~var, scanty finances, unceasing
occupations, and other th ings p1evei~ ted
it ; and though in his later years lie
Robert Southey.
Robert Southey.
4ook a fair allowance of holidays, not
unfrequently on the Continent, he
snever returned to Cintra and the Arra-
bida and those charmed territories of
the Roi de Garbe to which he
looked back as a sort of earthly Para-
~dise, for all his consciousness that
neither the things nor the people there
~were in all ways very good.
Nor were many years to pass before
he was established in the district with
which his name is connected only less
in(lissolubly than that of Wordsworth.
lie had indeed no special fancy for the
lakes, nor for their climate after that
of Portugal, and for some years at least
had great difficulty in reconciling him-
LeIf to them; but he hated London,
where, when he at last gave up the bar,
there was nothing particular to keep
~him; death and other chances weak-
ened his ties to Bristol, and he had
none elsewhere, while his fast-growing
library ma(le some permanent abode
imperative. At last Coleridge, who
had ~ready settled himself at Keswick
in a house too large for him, pressed
the Southeys to join him there. Mrs.
Southey naturally was glad to have the
company of her sister, and they went,
-at first for a short time, but soon took
root. Meanwhile the chief practical
question had been settled first by the
acceptance from his friend Wynn, a
man of means, of an annuity of 160,
an~l, secon(hly, by much miscellaneous
newspaper work in the form of poems
-and reviews. Thalaba, which had
been finished in Portugal, where The
Curse of Kehema, under the name of
Keradon, was begun, brought him
-some fame, though his gains from ~hi s
kind of work were always insignifi-
cant. But Southey, if he had expen-
sive tastes, did not indulge them ; his
wife was an excellent manager (too
excellent indeed, as the sequel was
thought to show), and he contrived in
some incomprehensible manner not
-only to keep out of debt, but to help
his own family liberally and strangers
with no sparing hand.
The sojourn at Keswick began in
1801, and only ceased with Southeys
life, though immediately after his.ar
71
rival an appointment, which he soon
gave up, as secretary to Mr. Corry, the
Irish official, interrupted it. Various
attempts were made by himself and his
friends to get him something better,
but without success, and his own pre-
ferments, until quite late in his life Sir
Robert Peel supplemented them with a
fresh pension, were a government an-
nuity of 200 a year (much reduced by
fees), which enabled him to relinquish
Wynns, and which was given him by
the Whigs in 1808, and the laureateship
in 1814 with its pay of rather less than
100 a year. Such were the ill gotten
gains for which, according to the
enemy, Mr. Feathernest sold his
conscience.
Although Southey was but seven-
an(l-twenty when he settled at Kes-
wick, and though he lived for more
than forty years longer, it is as unnec-
essary as it would be impracticable to
follow his life during this later period
as minutely as we have done hitherto.
The ply was now taken, the vocation
distinctly indicated, and the means and
place of exercising it more or less
secured. Thenceforward he lived in
laborious peace, disturbed only by the
loss in 1816 of his beloved son Herbert,
about ten years after by that of his
youngest daughter Isabel, and later by
the mental illness and death of his
wife. He never recovered this last
shock; and though he married again,
his second wife being the poetess Caro-
line Bowles, it was as a nurse rather
than as a wife that Ediths successor
accepted him, and he died himself,
after sonic years of impaired intelli-
gence, on March 21st, 1843.
An almost extravagantly Roman nose
(the other Robert, He rrick, is the only
Englishman I can think of who ex-
celled him in this respect) and an
extreme thinness did not prevent
Southey from being a very handsome
man. His enemy Byron, -who had
no reason to be discontented with
his own, declared that to possess
Southeys head and shoulders he would
almost have written his Sapphics ;
and, despite his immense labors and
his exceedingly bad habit of reading
Robert Southey.
as he. walkej, jie was till almost the
last strong and active. The excellence
of his moral character has never been
seriously contested by any one who
knew; and the only blemish upon it
appears to have been a slight touch of
Pharisaism, not indeed of the most
detestable variety which exalts itself
above the publican, but of the still
trying kind which is constantly in-
clined to point out to the publican
what a publican he is, and what sad
things publicans are, and how he had
much better leave off being one. We
know even better than was known fifty
years ago what were Coleridges weak-
nesses ; yet it is impossible not to wish
that Coleridges brother-in-law had not
written, and difficult not to wonder that
Coleridges nephew did not refrain
from printing, certain elaborate letters
of reproof, patronage, and good advice.
So, too, the abuse and misrepresenta-
tion which Byron, and those who took
their cue from Byron, lavished on
Southey were inexcusable enough ; but
again one cannot help wishing that he
had been a little less heartily convinced
of the utter and extreme depravity and
wickedness of these men. But there
was no humbug in Southey; there was
a great deal of virtue, and a virtuous
man who is not something of a humbug
is apt to be a little of a Pharisee unless
he is a perfect saint, which Southey, to
do him justice, was not. On the con-
trary, he was a man of middle earth,
who was exceedingly fond of goose-
berry tart and black currant ruin, of
strong ale and Rhenish, who loved to
crack jokes, would give his enemy at
least as good as he got from him,,and
was nearly as human as any one could
desire.
Of his alleged tergiversation little
need be said. Everybody, whatever
his own politics, who has looked into
the matter has long ago come to the
conclusion that it was only tergiversa-
tion in appearance. Southey once said
that political writing required a logical
attitude of mind which he had not; and
this is so true that it was a great pity
he ever took to it. From sympathizing
in a vague, youthful way with whathe,
imagined to be the. principles of the
French Revolution, he changed to a.
hearty detestation of its practice. His
liking for the Spaniards and his (lislike
of the French turned him from an
opponent of the war to a defender ot
it, and it was this more than anything
else that parted him from his old Whig
friends. In short, he was always-
guided by his sympathies; and as he
was never in his hottest (lays of As-
pheterism anything like a consistent
and reasoned Radical, so in his most
rancorous days of reaction he never
was a consistent and reasoned Tory.
Of his life, however, and his charac-
tei, and even of his opinions, interest-
ing as all three are, it is impossible to
say more here. We must pass over
with the merest mention that quaint
freak of Nemesis which made a mys-
terious Dissenting minister produce
Wat Tyler from nobody knows
where, and publish it as the work of
a Tory laureate twenty-three years.
after it was written by an under-
graduate Jacobin, the oddity of the
thing being crowned by Lord Eldons
characteristic refusal to grant an in-
junction on the ground that a man
could not claim property in a work
hurtful to the public, by this refusal
assuring the free circulation of this
hurtful work, instead of its suppres-
sion. And we can only allude to the
not yet clearly intelligible negotiations,
or misunderstandings, as to his suc-
cession to the editorship of the Quar-
terly Review when Gifford was failint~.
In these Southey seems to have some-
how conceived that the place was his to
take if he chose (which he never in-
tended), or to allot to some one else as
he liked ; with the very natural result
that a sort of bitterness, never com-
pletely removed and visible in the
review~ s notice of his life, arose be-
tween him and Lockhart after the
latters appointment. his selection by
Lord Radnor (who did not know him)
as member for Downton in the last
(lays of rotten boroughs, and his elec
tion without his knowing it, was an-
other odd inci(lent. The last important.
event of his life in this kind was the
72
Robert Southey.
offer of a baronetcy and the actual
conferring of an additional pension of
300 by Peel, who, whatever faults he
may have had, was the only prime
minister since Harley who has ever
taken much real interest in the welfare
of men of letters.
But we must turn to the works ; atid
a mighty armful, or rather several
mighty armfuls, they are to turn to.
The poems, which are the chief stum-
bling-block, were collected by Southey
himself in ten very pretty little v-A
umes in 18378. After his death they
were more popularly issued in one, his
cousin, the Rev. H. Hill, son bya late
marriage of the uncle who had been so
goo(l to him, editing a supernumerary
volume of rather superfluous frag-
ments, the chief of which was an
American tale called Oliver New-
man, on which Southey had been
engaged for very many years. He had
the good sense and pluck (indeed lie
was never (leficielit in the second of
these qualities, and not often in the
first) to print Wat Tyler just as
the pirates had launched it after its
twenty-three years on the stocks. It is
very amusing, and exactly what might
be exj)ecte(l from a work written in
three days by a Jacobin boy who had
read a good many old l)lays. Canning,
Ellis, and Frere together could have
produced in fun nothing better than
this serious outburst of Wats
Think ye, my friend,
That I, a humble blacksmith, here in
Deptford,
Would part with these six groats, earned
with hard toil,
All that I have, to massacre the French-
men,
Murder as enemies men I never saw,
Did not the State compel me?
One would like to have heard Mr.
Wopsie in this part. For the rest, the
thing contains some good blank verse,
and a couple of very pretty songs,
consi(lerably better, I should think,
than most other things of the kind pub-
lished in the year 1794, which was
about the thickest of the dark before
the dawn of the Lyrical Ballads.
Joan of Arc, Wats elder sister by n
year, though not published till a year
after Wat was written, is now in a
less virgin condition than her brother,
Southey having made large changes in
the successive (five) early editions, and
others in the definitive one more than
forty years after the first. Its popu-
larity (for it was really popular
shows rather the dearth of good poetry
at the time of its appearance than
anything else. It displays very few
of the merits of Southeys later long
poems, and it does display the chief
of all their defects, the (lefect which
Coleridge, during the tiff over Pan
tisocracy, hit upon in a letter of
which the original was advertised for
sale only the other day. This fault
consists in conveying to the reader a
notion that the writer has said,
to, let us make a poem, and has ac-
cordingly, to borrow the language of
Joe Gargerys forge-song,
Beat it out, beat it out,
With a clink for the stout,
but with very little inspiration for the
poetical. Joan of Arc is a most
respectable l)oeJii, admirable in senti-
ment an(l not uninteresting as a tale in
verse. But the conception is pedes-
trian, and the blank verse is to match.
Between this crude l)roduction and
the very different Thalaha which
followed it at some years distance,
Southey wrote very many, perhaps
most, of his minor poems ; and the
characteristics of them may be best
noticed together. In the earliest of all
it must be confessed that the crotchet
of thought and the mannerism of style
which drew down on him the lash
of the Anti-Jacobin are very pie n
titully exhibited. A most schoolboy
Pindaric is The Triumph of Woman.
The strange mixture of alternate child.
ishness and pomposity which is almost
the sole tie between the Lake poets in
their early work pervades all the poems
on the slave trade, the Botany Bay
eclogues, the sonnets, and the mono
dramas. Even in the lyrical poems
written at Bristol, or rather Westhury,
in the years 17989, there would be n~
very noticeable advance if it were not
73
Robert Southey.
for the delightfuL Holly Tree, from
which Hazlitt has extracted the well-
~eserve(l text of a compliment more
graceful than Hazlitt is usually cred-
ited with conceiving, and which, with
the Stanzas written in my Library,
is Southeys greatest achievement as
n occasional poet in the serious kind.
His claims in the comic and mixed de
-partmeits are m ucli more conside iable.
Abel SI~uffiebott()Inis fun, and be-
ing very early testifies to a healthy con
-sciousness of the ridiculous. For his
English eclogues I have no great love;
but it is something to say in their favor
that they were the obvious inspiration
of Tennysons English idylls as much
in manner as in title. The ballads with
the much-discussed Devils Walk
-as an early outsider in one key, an(l
the curious All for Love as a late
-one in another have much more to be
said for them than that in the same
way they are the equally obvious origi-
nators of the Ingoldsby Legends.
They are not easily criticised in a few
words. In themselves they were not
quite fatherless, for Monk Lewis,
no great man of letters but something
-of a man of metre, had taught the
author a good deal. They are nearly
as unequal as another division of
Southeys own verse, his odes, of which
it is perhaps sufficient to say here that
they were remarkably like Youngs,
especially in the way in which they
rattle up and down the whole gamut
from sublimity to absurdity. The bal-
lads frequently underlie the reproach
~f applying Voltairean methods to any-
thing in which the author did not hap-
pen to believe, while nothing~ made
him more indignant than any such ap-
plication by others to things in which
he did believe, a reproach urged
forcibly by Lamb in that undeserved
but not unnatural attack in the London
Magazine which Southey met with a
really noble magnanimity. But at their
best they are very original for their
time, and very good for all time.
The Old Woman of Berkeley, one
~f the oldest and perhaps the most
popular in its day, is one of the best.
It has a fair pendant in -Bishop
Ilatto, and the bishop may meet the
modern taste even better than the 01(1
woman. The Fastrada story is too
much vulgarized in King Charle-
main, an(l it may be generally con-
fessed of Southey that to the finest
touches of romance he was rather
insensitive, his nature lacking the
strange and high feeling of passion.
But he is thoroughly at home in The
King of the Crocodiles. Everybody
knows The Incheape Rock, and
The Well of St. Keyne, and The
Battle of Blenheim ; indeed it is very
1)Ossible that they are the only things
of Southey that everybo~ly does know.
The Spanish l)allads are not nearly so
good as Lockharts ; but Lockhart had
the illegitimate advantage of grafting
Scotts technique on Southeys special
knowledge. Nevertheless it may be
said that all the ballads an(l metrical
tales are to this (lay well worth read-
ing, that both Scott and Byron o~ve(l
them not a little, and that they indicate
a vein in their author which might
have been worked in different circum-
stances to even better advantage.
Still Southeys chief poetical claim is
not here ; and the best of the things as
yet mentione(l have been equalled by
men with whom poetry was a mere
occasional pastime. Of The Vision
of Judgment it cannot be necessary
to say anything in detail. It is not so
bad as those who only know it from
Byrons triuniphan t castigation may
think ; but otherwise I can only sup-
pose that the devil, tired of Southeys
perpetual joking at him, was (letel~
mined to have his revenge, and that lie
was permitted to do so by the Upper
Powers in consequence of the bump-
tious Pharisaism of time preface. The
Pilgrimage to Waterloo and The
Tale of Paraguay are poetically no
better though rather more mature than
Joan of Arc; Madoc was ad~
mired by goo(l men at its appearance,
but frequent attempts, made with the
best good will, have not enabled me to
h)lace it much higher than these.
Roderick, the last of the long
p~em~ in blank verse, is also, I think,
l)y far the best. The absence of l)ulse
474
and throb in the verse, of freshness
and inevitableness in the phrase and
image ry, is in(leed not seldom felt here
also ; but there is somethIng which
re(leems it. The authors thorough
knowledge of the details and atmo-
sphere of his subject has vivified the
details and communicated the atmo-
sphere ; the unfamiliarity and the
romantic interest of the story are
admirably given, and the thing is about
as good as a long l)OCIfl in blank verse
which is not of the absolute first class
~am be.
Of Thalaba and The Curse of
Kehama we must speak differently.
The one was completely written, the
other sketched and well begun, in that
second sojourn at Lisbon which was
Southeys golden time
When, friends with love and leisure,
Youth not yet left behind,
He worked or played at pleasure,
Found God and Goddess kind;
when his faculties, tolerably matured
by stu(ly, were still in their first fresh-
ness, and when he had not yet settled
down, an(l was not yet at all certain
that he should have to settle down, to
the dogged collar-work of his middle
and later age. I have no hesitation
as to ~vhich I prefer. The rhymeless
Pindarics of Thalaba, written while
Southey was still under the influence
of that antirhyming heresy which no-
body but Milton has ever rendered
orthodox by sheer stress of genius, are
a great dra~vback to the piece; there
are constant false notes like this of
INlaimuna,
Her fine face raised to Heaven,
where the commonplace adjective mars
the passionate effect ; and though the
eleventh and twelfth books, with the
journey to Domdaniel and the success-
ful attack on it, deserved to l)rOduce
the effect which they actually did pro-
duce on their own generation, the story
as a whole is a little devoid of interest.
All these weak points ~vere strength-
ened and guarded in The Curse of
Kehama, the greatest thing by far
that Southey did, and a thing, as I
think, really great, without any com:.
75
paratives and allowances. Scott, al-
ways kind and well affected to Southey
as he ~vas, appears to me to have been
a little unjust to this poem ; an injus-
tice which appears between the lines of
his review of it, and in those of his
reference to it in his biography. It is
perfectly true as lie su~~ests, that
Southey was specially prone to the
general weakness of insisting on and
clinging to his own weakest points.
But this foible as it seems to me is less,
not more, obvious in The Curse of
Kehama. In the first place the poet
has given up the craze for irregular
blank verse, and the additional charm
of rhyme makes all the difference be-
tveen this l)OCIU and Thalaba. In
the second place the central idea, the
acquisition, through prescribed means
allowed by the gods, of a power greater
than that of the gods themselves, by
even the worst man who cares to go
th1ough the course communicates a
kind of antinomy of interest, a conflict
of official and poetical justice which is
Lmnique, or, if not unique, rare out of
Greek tragedy. The defeat of Kehama
by his own wilful act in demanding
the Amreetacup is as unexpected and
as artistically effective as the maxim,
Less than Omniscience could not suffice
To wield Omnipotence,
is philosophically sound. Moreover
the characters are interesting, at least
to me. And then, to supplement these
several attractions, there are, for the
wicked men who love passages,
quite delectable things. The author
l)reten(led to think the famous and
beautiful,
They sin who tell us love can die,
claptrap ; if it be so, would lie had
sinned a little oftener in the same
style. Nobody, except out of mere
youthful paradox, can affect to under-
value the Curse itself. It is thoroughly
good in scheme and in execution, in
gross and in detail ; there are ito better
six-andi-twenty lines for their special
purpose in all English poetry. But the
finest scenes of the poem are ushered
in by the description of the famous Sea
City which Landor described over again
Robert Southey.
76
in the best known of all his stately
phrases in verse, and from this to the
end there is no break. The scenes
in Padalon more especially want read-
ing ; they are in no need of praise when
they have once been read, and a right
melancholy thing it is to think how
few probably have read them now-
adays. The Curse of Kehama may
not l)lace Southey in the very highest
class of poets, if we demand those
sl)ccial qualities in the poet which dis-
tinguish certain of the greatest names.
But it l)uts him in the very first rank
of the second.
I am aghast when I see how little
room is left for the enormous and in-
teresting subject of Southeys prose.
As has been said, there is no collected
edition of it; and there could be none
which should be complete. There are,
it is believed, no documents for identi
fying his earlier contributions to news-
papers and magazines ; but lie wrote
nearly a hundred articles in the Quar-
terly Review, many in other reviews,
an(l the historical part (amounting to
something like a volume on each occa-
sion) of the Edinburgh Annual Reg-
ister for three years. He translated
or revised translations of Amadis, Pal-
merin, and the Chronicle of the Cid.
He edited the Morte dArthur, Cow-
pers poems, divers specimens and
selections from English poets, and
other things. And of solid inde pen-
dent books in prose lie published, be-
sides the three biographies of Nelson,
Wesley, and Bunyan, nearly a dozen
substantive works, some of them of
very great size. At the date of the
first, the Letters from Spain and Por-
tugal (1797), he had not outgrown
(indeed lie was only twenty-three).that
immature pomposity of style which
has been already referred to, and which
is al)parent both in his verse and in his
letters of all this time. The Letters
from England, by Don Manuel Es-
priella, ten years later in date, are also
at least ten years better in matter and
form. The scheme, that of enabling
Englishmen to see themselves as others
see them, was indeed rather old-fash-
ioned, and not of those thing& which
Robert Southey.
are none the worse for being a little out
of fashion ; but it is very pleasantly
carried out, and I doubt whether there
is anywhere a more agreeable picture
of the country and its ways in the first
decade of the century. It is surprising
that it has not been reprinted. The
Omniana which was to have been
written by Southey and Coleridge to-
gether, but to which the latter made
only a very small contribution, is less
original being a rather questionable
cross between a commonplace book
(such as, after Southeys death, was
actually issued in four huge volumes)
and a tabletalk, or miscellany of
short abstracts, sum mars, com ments,
etc., of and on curious pa~sages in
books. The history of Brazil fol-
lowed, the chief and, with The Pe-
ninsular War, the only one actually
erected of what South~y used fondly
to call my pyramids pyramids~
alas ! not often visited now, though
still in existence, and solidly enough
built and based. The latter suffered
perhaps more than any other of
Southieys books from the necessity
w hicli their authors poverty imposed
oti him of constantly laying them aside
for the bread-winning work of the hour
as it offered itself. This delay gave
time for it to be caught up and passed
by Napiers history, which, if as preju-
diced on the other side, is an in
comj)arabhy more brilliant and more
valuable performance. However, The
Peninsular War was one of the few
works of Southeys which brought him
a solid sum of money, a thousand
pounds to wit. Neither The Book of
the Church nor its append ix, the
Vindici~ Anglican~, had any such
satisfactory result, though both had a
fair sale, and though both aroused con-
siderable, if mainly angry, attention.
In fact Southiey seems to have bee~
singularly unlucky in his in onetar~r
transactions, for reasons partly indi-
cated by Scott in a passage given by
Lockhart. The large comparative
profits which Cottles apparently ven-
turesome purchase of Joan of Arc
brought to the publisher, toge thier with
his owu unshaken conviction of the
lasting quality of his work, seems to
have made Southey fall in love with,
and obstinately cling to, the system of
half-profits, which, in the case of not
very rapid sales, has a natural tendency
to become one of no profits at all. For
his naval history, or Lives of the
Admirals, he was paid down, and
very fairly paid; but I do not know
that he made anything out of The
Doctor, his last and one of his largest
works, a quaint miscellany of reading,
reflection, an(l humor, like a magni-
fled Omniana with a thread of con-
nection, which is, I believe, little read
now, and which never was popular, but
which a few tastes (my own included)
regard as, for desultory reading, one of
the most delightful books in English.
Macaulay, who, politics apart, cannot
be called an unfair critic of Southey, is
unduly hard on his humor ; but the
temper of Macaulays mind was al-
ways intolerant of nonsense, wherein
Southey took a specially English de-
light..
The characteristics of this wide and
neglected champaign of letters, a
whole province of prose, as it may be
called, especially when we add the
huge body of published letters pre-
sent the widest diversity of subject,
and cannot fairly be said to suffer from
any monotony of style. To some tastes
in the present day, indeed, Soutlicy
may seem flat. He scornfully repu-
diated, on more than one occasion, the
slightest attempt at decoration, and
ostensibly limited his efforts to the
production of clear and limpid sen-
tences in the best classical English.
Not that he was by any means alarmed~
at an appearance of neologism now and
then. His merely playful coinages in
The Doctor and the letters do not,
of course, count ; but precisian as he
was, he was not of those precisians who
will not have a word, however abso-
lutely justified by analogy and principle,
unless there is some definite authority
for it. On the contrary, he took the
sounder course of actually rejecting
wor(ls with good authority but bad in-
trinsic titles. His sentences are of
medium length but inclining to the
77
long rather than the short, and dis-
tinctly longer than the pattern which
the gradually increasing love of anti-
thetic balance had made popular in the
eighteenth century. His most ornate
attempts will be found in the descrip-
tive passages of The Colloquies, a
book which, though Macaulays stric-
tures are partly justified, is of extreme
interest and beauty at its best, and is
chiefly marred by the curiously unhappy
selection of the interlocutor, an in-
stance, with the plan of The Vision
of Judgment and some other things,
of a gap or weakness in Southeys oth-
erwise excellent sense and taste. But
in all his prose writings, no matter what
they be, even in those unlucky political
Essays, which he reprinted in two
very pretty little volumes at the most
unfortunate time and with the least
fortunate result, he displays one of the
very best prose styles of the century,
perhaps the very best of the quiet and
regular kind, unless Lockharts, which
is more technically faulty, be ranked
with it.
In the case of no writer, however, is
it more necessary to look at him as a
whole, to take his prose with his verse,
his writings with his history and his
character, than in the case of Southev.
Neither mere bulk nor mere variety
can, of course, be taken as a voucher
for greatness ; a man is no more a
good writer because he was a good
man than because he was a bad one,
which latter qualification seems to be
accepted by some ; and even learning
an(l industry will not cxeml)t a man
from inclusion among the dufli canes,
as Southey himself has it. But when
all these things are found together with
the addition of a rare excellence in oc-
casional passages of verse, with the
coml)osition of at least one long poem
which goes near to, if it does not at-
tain, absolute greatness, with an admi-
rable prose style and a curious bleuding
of good sense and good humor, then
most assuredly the mass deserves at
least equal rank with excellences higher
in partial reach, but far smaller in bulk
and range.
In the general judgment, perhaps,
Robert Southey.
The Touch of Spring.
there is a certain reluctance to grant
this. There is I)lausibility in asking
not if a man can do many things well,
but if lie has done one thing su-
premely; and unquestionably it is dan-
gerous to multiply the tribe of literary
Jacks-of-all-trades. There is no fear,
however, of an extensive multiplication
of Southeys ; happy were our state if
there were any chance of it. For the
man knew enormously ; he could write
a(lmirably ; it may be fairly contended
that he only missed being a great poet
by the constant collarwork which no
great poet in the world has ever been
able to endure ; he had the truest sen-
sibility with the least touch of the
mau(llin ; the noblest sense of duty
with not more than a very slight touch
of spiritual pri(le. If he thought a
little too well of himself as a poet, he
was completely free alike from the
morose arrogance of his friend Words-
worth and from the exubeiant arro-
gance of his friend Landor. Only
those who have worked through the
enormous mass of his verse, his prose,
an(l his letters can fully appreciate his
merits ; nor is it easy to conceive any
scheme of collection that would be pos-
sible, or of selection that would do him
justice. But if no one of the Muses
can claim him as her best beloved and
most accoml)lishe(l son, all ou~ht to
accord to him a l)refemence never (le-
serve(l by any oilier of their innumer-
able family. For such a lover an(l such
a practitioner of almost every form of
literature, no litemature possesses save
English, and English is very unlikely
ever to possess again.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
From Blackwoods Magazine.
THE TOUCH OF SPRING.
THAT morning everything at Tarpow
held a familiar conise. Magnus, the
foreman, passing through the kitchen,
where Julia I-lay, Tarpows dan ght er,
was bent over the porridge-pot, said
The maisters going to market tIme
nicht? and she answered him with a
smile as fresh as the break of day
Passing through the kitchen- and u~
the stairs to Tarpows bedroom, Mag
nus found Tarpow himself wide awake
an(l gruml)y. lie reporte(l the weather
an(l took his orders ; and when he re
entered the kitchen, the salt was being
added to the porri(lge amid the maid
had gone to the byre. Although you
could not have guessed it from his
wife, the foreman had an eye for come-
liness, the plainest wife that ever
was could not count against a mans
taste,and Magnuss eyes clung t&
his young mistresss face, and the
dainty hand through which the salt was
sifted to the pot. Never before had he
seen cause for marvel at her beauty; a
mine w spring and bountiful ness seemed
to have conic upon her. Still stirrin~
the porridge, and swinging ron ml upon
her heel, she detained him a minute to
a(lvise about Creamy, a do~vie calf,
who, she thought, would be better with
a bed l)y the fire here, and her care,
and milk from her own hands. Magnus
heard enough to sen(l him to the
calves house with a vague sense he
was too dull-witted to have expressed
itthat tIme good thimigs of earth were
to be wasted on a silly calf. Tarpow
got into his redbrown, weatherspotted
garmemi ts, amid was (lown in the kitchen
as his daughter poured the porridge
amid the mnaid came in with tIme milk
pails ; and at ami hour when most of us
think of awakening, all the hands at
Tarpow hind done half a days good
work.
An hour before midday Tarpow re-
tnrmmed to (hummer. TIme meal was laid
in the (hingy parlor, on the side of
the lobby opposite the kitelmen. The
farmer faced tIme weather at time head
of tIme table ; Julia, at time foot, nearer
tIme (1001% waite(l upon himn. She had
waited 111)011 Imima all her days.
1mm tIme mi(l(lle of his broth he mumn
bled imito his 5~OOfl
Broomielaws is coming the nichit.
Broomielaws came every other mar-
ket imighit. It was not Julias wish to
ackmmowledge, if she detected it, any-
tlmiming unusual in this visit~ and she
rel)hied
Yes, father.
78
The Touch of Spring.
Tarpow land was thin,it girned a
simmer an(I grat a winter, as Leddy
Pitlyal sai(l of Gutterstone, and Tar-
pows farmer had grown old and sour
in his fight with it. Yet all around his
own, the fields grew fat and heavy
Crops. Nature, said Tarpow, he
alluded to her in an unmentionable
term, Nature, the thrawn ,
stood on Tarpow and cuist her favors
roun~l it. Broomielavs especially had
been blessed in the dispensation. Al-
ready, in this forward spring, its fields
had flushed a gentle green. You could
crop them to the very edges. In sow-
ing and reaping and stacking and
threshing, Broomielaws was like a
great workshop that never ran on short
time. But Tarpow baclPlying Tar-
pow, with its mean land worked up
outside jobs, as it were, harboring
other mens sheep, as well as its own
cattle eating their heads off. Once
there had been enough original virtue
left in Tarpows farmer to be a plum-
met for the shallow thing that owned
Broomielaws. Looking from his stead-
ing upon his neighbors fields, Hay
felt that in a rightly constituted world
poor-spirited Broomielaws should have
Btood in his shoes. That was years
ago. Looking out upon his neighbors
fields now, himself more firmly set
in his own shoes, his only thought
was to share their bounty in some
measure by making Julia their mis-
tress. Worldly and selfish and little
sensitive as he was, however, it stuck
in his throat to speak more definitely
on that matter. At the same time it
irritated him, and had been irritating
him for months, that this well-grown.
and capable daughter of his should not
meet him half-ways and make explana-
tions easier. Her mother had courted
and wedded him ere she was Julias
age; why was the daughter so back-
ward? Perhaps Julia, with her Yes,
father, and no more, was wiser than
he wot of.
She carried out his plate and her
own, the one within the other, and
returned with a dish of boiled beef and
some potatoes with coarse salt still
sticking to their jackets.
Auld tatties? he said.
Yes. The east field.
Ay. Just so. Braw land to the
eastards at Broomielaws. Broomie
laws is coming the nicht.
Can ye not put him down at the
toll-house? said Julia, with a heat
that was new to her, and caused her
fathers yellow eyes to sparkle u~
nastily under his brows.
Can I eat my meat? he replied,.
sharpening his speech on hers.
Then why dont ye do it? What
needs he come bothering us?
Ive told ye how to keep him from
Tarpow at nights, he said. Draw
ben your chair at Broomielaws and
hell leave me at the toll-house quick
enough. Fegs! Hell be for (lriViI]g
me from St. Brise market past every
public. Broomielaws is takin his
wifes faither hame sober He ! he t
Thats what theyll be saying ; and
Tarpowll hae to (Irink his whiskey
cauld without his Jooley.
I thought ye had known my mind
on that score, Julia said, breaking in
on his laugh.
I thought ye had known mine, he
threw it back. Upsettin baggage.
Is it that laddie Leslie that has l)ut
l)otions in your head about being aboon
marrying Broomielaws ? Wheres the
sl)eem~its? You~ re very narrow wi the
speerits getting.
You dont need spirits when youre
going to market. Besides, theres none
in the house.
Send Liz to Mrs. Pratts for some
this very day. Would you shame your
sel and me afore Broomielaws wi a
toom bottle! Your heads full o they
mincing waysever syne that tillery
ball. Youre owre nice for Broomie-
laws, and owre guid for your am
faither, it would seem.
Will I tell Aleck to yoke the
beast? said Julia quietly, who gen-
erally saved herself in the blast of
her fathers wrath by bending in it.
slightly.
Youll just yoke your tongue,
Jooley, till Im done wi ye. Wornan~
ye dinna ken your guid fortune. Heres
a big, healthy man, wi that graund.
80 77w Touch of Spring.
land at Broomielaws, graund land, succeeded note in a strange, plaintive,
five Jiunder acre oL, a thousand dissatisfied melody. It expressed for-
pound in the bank, if he has a penny, eign feelings that had been gathering
~nd as fine a judge o kye as is on this for weeks ever since that Artillery
side o the Forth ; and ye turn up ball of which her father had spoken.
your nose at him ! Fie, ye ! Gie me She could not have pointed to anything
my muffler, and tell Aleck to yoke the that had happened then, or since, to
mare. And, mind ye, show me none account for the change in her. Her
o your perky ways wi Broomielaws! meeting with Leslie could not. Only,
A shade of decision in her fathers the angle of her vision had become
voice, the reflection of a more fixed more obtuse ; she sa~v ever so little
intention within him, alarmed Julia, wider ; and that little taught her of
and she stole to the kitchen door to immense possibilities. She was aware
watch him drive off in his gig. She of no definite wish to see more, to
pictured him picking up Broomielaws know or to feel more. Tarpow and
at the end of his ovn road, where he Broomielaws and Torrie Town had
had been hanging over the stile wait been her world, bounded by an infin
in~ middleaced pronounced, clad ity, for measuring which, somehow, St.
in a blue coat of a cut of forty years Brise gave her a line. Now that her
ago, from which emerged on the upper world had stretched to take in St.
side a neck encased in a stock that cut Brise, the infinite beyond was driven
his bare red cheeks, and below, long farther off and becofl~e immensely
legs in tight breeches. She pictured greater. And this young Leslie, as
him without a touch of caricature ; saw young as herself, with whom she had
him mount the gig, sitting high above danced, who sailed across the Firth to
her father, and the two swaying and Torrie Town to meet her (he told her
bumping over the ups and downs to so ; she thought of it as of a fact only)
St. Brise market. She was not ner- lie, too, widened her world for her,
vously observant, but she could see all and, in a dim, inexplicable way, the
that; and it showed her to be out of bounds of the mystery beyond her
her usual habit that she cast a thought horizon.
after the pair ere she turned to her She, herself, would go down to Tor
afternoons work. ne Town this afternoon on her fathers
She turned to it with a sense of un- errand. To that decision the thought
quiet. The spring sunlight flooding of Leslies landing there was one
the windows, the tender green of the determining consideration only. She
trees beyond, the lazy cattle under wished the walk, more of the air, the
them, the breeze skipping in through fresh breeze from the sea, more move-
the porch, and the fragrance and fla- ment anything to soothe this disquiet
vors it brought with it, all these within her.
things unnerved her. New and inde- The main road past Tarpow leads
scribable humors ~velled up within her. straight to Torrie harbor. Torrie
An ineffable sadness, derived from all Town lies on the east side of the basin,
things about her, it seemed, filled her and creeps across and up the hill be-
with pleasure and alarm. She went out hind it. The harbor is scooped out of
to look at some linen drying on a the sheer brown rock, which throws
hedge. What a day it was ! How back the grey and gold and blue of the~
freshly the air smelled ; how blue Baltic craft, and the black water in i~
like turquoise lay the sea beyond the reflects all that color steadily. Mrs.
dip o the fields ! On the blue there Pratts inn stands on the pier-head,
hung a white speck ; she knew it beyond the saw-mill ; so Julia came
the sail of Leslies yacht running down by the harbor instead of skirting
straight for Torrie Town. It was not the hill above and descending by the
of Leslie she was thinking ; yet the High Gait. As she stepped on to the
sail struck a note within her, aild note pier, the reflection of her in her light
The Touch of Spring.
print in the basin startled the quiet of
the place. The few eyes in it were
turned upon her, and in a minute Les-
lie was at her side.
Oh, Teddy, she said , giving him
her hand. She spoke as if she had for-
gotten about him and his yacht; and
she had forgotten.
Here on a Saturday, Julia! Whats
wrong at Tarpow ?
She touched her basket
Famine.
Leslie was in a chronic excitement
at the thought of Julia a glorious
girl like this, whom to see, he had
to sail his yacht across the Forth.
He was very much in love ~vith the
yacht, and he was very much in love
with himself. Julia the mere fact
~f Julia ministered to both feelings
Besides, he was very young.
Was it famine in the land, or
drought ? he asked.
There was a glo~ving anger in her.
She was as little sensible as any coun-
try girl ought to be of the talk of the
neighbors ;. but here They had
evi(lently gossiped to Leslie of her
fathers frailty, as they might of the
barrenness of Tarpows land. 11cr
father fought the barrenness with
failing spirit, it is true ; but he fought
it. He made no effort against the
other. The burden of that lay on
Julias shoulders. Yet she had fought
it, as she would have fought nettles in
the field corners, or dandelions in the
bleaching green, steadily ~ad imj)er
sonally. For the first tiiue, now that
Leslie took to hinting at the work, she
was ashamed of the nee(l of it.
I was coming up this afternoon,~
Leslie went on, without awaiting an
answer, and her anger fled. There
was something in his boyish ways, his
voice, and his looks, that responded to
~he new emotion of the morning.
Why ! My fathers at market.
There was not a touch of coquetry in
her manner of saying this, for she
laughed, as much as to confess, As if
it were he you vere coming to see.
And he said, I know hes away
and they laughed together.
By this time they had walked round
LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 266
81
the basin, and stood at the head of the
pier, regarding the yacht which lay at
the end of it.
Isnt she a beauty? Leslie said.
Shes a trim little thing. A little
heavily sparred, maybe eh ? but I
like her lines.
Julia put her head on one side, and
with a connoisseurs toss of it, Hm,
yes, she said ; and she mocked his
voice and words and critical air to a
nicety.
For the first time he thought of more
than himself and her comeliness, and
was amazed at her cleverness. Poor
young cub! She was only new to him.
She wasnt clever. His own sisters, at
the moment golfing on the other side
of the Forth, had nimbler wits than
she, by far.
Bravo ! he cried. Now she de-
serves her name !
What dye call her ?
The Julia.
Julia ?
Yes, Julia. Bob Pratts painting
it On her now.
Then Bob Prattll just paint it out
again, she said, leading the way down
the pier with a decision which Bobs
grin, as he looked up at her from his
paint-pot, approved. The grin pro-
jected the popular opinion on the sub-
ject.
Leslie, following her in chagrin,
could only say
You must christen her, then.
She had no nimbleness of wits to
suggest a name on the instant, but she
had nimbleness of manner. There was
an old gin-bottle lying on the pier-
head, and she stooped to it. Leslie
picked it up for her, and, as they rose
together, she saw something in his face
that changed her intention.
Oh ! very well, she crie~1, and
smashed the bottle on the yachts
bows I christen her the Julia.
It was the war of sense and sensi-
bility. Her good sense was derived
from the conditions of her life. To
day, now that she was bursting into
womanhood, the conditions of her life
bred sensibility.
But she would net stay longer. In
82
no case should she have allowed him
to accompany her ; she did not care
that he should see what was her errand
to Mrs. Pratts. To-day, to-(lay all
things were altered, their relationship
among the rest. That which she saw
in Leslies face may have been the
image of her o~vn feeling. For her, at
any rate, it changed everything be-
tween them ; and, had she known it,
the reserve and withdrawal it led her
to ~vere the most potent steps she could
have taken to affect him.
She made her purchase, and soon
was out UI)0fl the Tarpow road again.
The heat was more suffused, the sun-
shine a shade more golden. The wind
from the sea crept up behind her, near
the ground. The road was empty.
Yonder, on either side of it, Tarpow
and Broomielaws lay slumbering under
their red-tiled nighteaps. There was
a lull in her dissatisfaction an inter-
lude of re-action, in which Tarpow and
even Broomielaws wore a homely air.
This grew upon her as she entered the
house. Everything was as when she
left. The doors stood open, the cattle
browsed un(ler the trees, the wind rus-
tled delicately about the porch, and
bore in upon her the fragrances of the
earth. And to these things, which in
the morning had hemmed her in with
the tight grip of their familiarity, she
turned now with a sense of restful-
ness.
Her awakened womanliness, from
which she was seeking escape, had
touched into life in Leslie a new sen-
sation. Bob Pratt dug about its roots
an(l ~vatered it with his gossip of the
life 01(1 Tarpow led his daughter, and
the marriage he sought for her. The
new chivalry, love, call it what you
will, sprouted like a mushroom, and
Leslie was half-way to Tarpow before
he could word his purpose.
From the end of the Tarpow road
he caught a glimpse of Julia in the
yard. The wind wound her print dain-
tily about her lissom figure. She wore
no hat above the straight hair ~~isped
into a broad, flat coil. The sunlight
swirling within the dish red without,
yellow within which her arched arm
held to her side, lit up Julia herself in
the middle of the roughand tumble
crow(l of poultry she was feeding
0~
Julia among her poultry discovered a
country girl with her rusticity rounded
with a considerable elegance and knowi
e(l~e (lerived from her father in early
days. It was her fathers humor, not
hers, that had named a flighty old hen
Atalanta, and a combative cock with
a very dissonant crow Anacreon.
But the fight with his land ha(l so de-
moralized him now, that she had as
little (liscernment of his better nature
as of his ill condition.
Julia cleaned her fingers, all sticky
with the hens meat, on the side of the
basin, and washed them in the over-
flow of the horse-trough. Next she
visited the calves house, and went to
the straw-loft to gather the eggs which
the clucking hens announced. She
clambered up the straw massed in the
back of the barn, and stood among the
rafters. From there she looked down
to some loose straw heaped on the floor
in a soft bed. The memory of earlier
days swam to her head.
Mans lifes a vapor, full of woes;
He cuts a caper, and off he goes,
she chanted, and clapped her hands,
and jumped down to the soft bed,
startling the sitting hens, which
clucked and beat their wings among
the rafters. She climbed and flopped,
and climbed and flopped again, until at
length she sank, hot and breathless and
laughing at the foot of the heap.
And there Leslie found her.
Her thoughts when he darkened the
doorway were not of the wonder of his
being there. She forgot that in her
concern to account for her flustered
condition. Then she did what the old
Julia might have been expected to do
at once. She told him how delightful
it was to flop from the height of tl~
straw, and showed him how it was
done, and bade him follow her. And
so, for a few minutes again, the barn
was full of the sound of scared poultry,
and of the rhymes jerked from these
two breathless children, and of their
smothered ejaculations.
The Touch of Spring.
The Touch of Spring.
Then the whole thing was spoiled.
At any rate, that is how the old Julia
would have thought of it ; she could
never again be the old Julia. For over
him, like the cloud-shadows scudding
over the fields outside, swept the
thought that this was not what lie had
come there for ; and the thought swept
on an(l shadowed her. His words out
;it1 his l)nrl)ose. When he talked of
ve she (li(l not recognize it, so little
iid she thought of it or dreamed of it.
All she knew was, that it was exactly
what she had been waiting for so
satisfying to her there in his arms,
with his kisses on her hot face. Why
should she remain at Tarpow ? Why,
indeed? Tarpow was a prison ; its
ways, its very scenes, gripped at her
heart now. And Broomiela~vs ; her
father would marry her to him to it
rather. Oh, Teddy knew it all. All
Toirie Town knew it, and perhaps St.
Brise as well, knew it from Tarpows
own lips, it seemed. At that thought
she became conscious of herself, of her
physical self, inch by inch, the body
which she robed and could touch, as
well as of this intangible thing within
her that was quick to-day for the first
time. This all this ~vas to be sold
by her father. He talked of the sale.
Was lie worth her care more? Was
lie worth the sacrifice of life? of love?
For she saw them both now, or thought
she saw them,love and sacrifice.
It was Teddies plan. The yacht lay
at Torrie pier. They dared not sail
from there ; but lie could moor the
yacht iii the bay to the eastwards, at
the caves, and row Julia out to her
from the jetty ; and she should go with
him, for always. lie had no one in
the world save her. There were his
sisters, to be sure ; but they would
welcome her in the 01(1 house, on the
other side of the Firth, where she
might look ever to the smoke of Torrie
Town, but never again beat her wings
against the bars, as at Tarpow. Julia
might have known at any other time
~vould have known how idle it all
~vas. But to-day her whole beini~
swam to the vision. She would await
her fathers return. With him would
83
come Broomielaws red, vast, middle
aged, brutal. She had never thought
of him so before, and she shut her
eyes, an(l her minds eye, oii the horrid
sight, and opened them upon the future
Teddy painted. She would await their
return, and Broomielaws departure.
By eleven oclock the house would be
quiet ; then she would steal down to
the jetty at the caves. She would be
there, if she were at all, hal fan
hour after midnight.
It was the old story ; love is an in-
stinct as well as a passion ; and it was
the instinct of love only that was work-
ing in these two. Leslie became wiser
with every step lie took from Tarpo~v.
He was not a very far-seeing hobble-
dehoy ; but there are some things come
up very close to the eyes, and an elope-
ment with Julia was one of them.
Heres a devil of a mess I lie was
saying to himself at the main road
turn; and by the time lie got to Torrie
pier the affair had become one of many
devils. He had no thoughts of draw-
ing back, however, but got on board,.
an(l stood up for the bay at the cave&
very bravely, and lay there, tossed
about between his admiration for Julia
and wrath for himself.
With Julia it was different. Tier
mood, such as it was, had come with a
(Iraught of spring which every atom
of her body absorbed till it became
newly constitute(l. The appetite of
the wonian, newly unchaimied by con-
sciousuess now, would have upleapt
had not pressing duties kept it nuder.
Julia had many things to attend to.
Leslies leavetaking had been hastened
l)y the return of the phoughnmen, which
was irregular in this offseason of the
year. The bothy-boys were hungry,
and she had to make porridge to ap-
pease them, and the cows had to be
milked. The return of her ftither with
Broomielaws found her finishing her
work calmiily enough ; but when she
lifted her busy hand from off her agita
tion, it fluttered within her.
Tarpow took the beatings of it for
the fulfilment of his instructions. The
maid, lie thought, had l)ut off her perky
ways, and was clothed iii assent. He
The Touch of Spring.
was seated as straight as an old man
could be, close up to the table, brewing
toddy for himself and for Broomielaws,
who lolled in the armchair with his
long legs bent stiffly in front of him
like a locusts, or a spinning-jennys,
thought Julia, as she set a bit of sup-
per. Tarpow watched her out of the
coiner of his eyes. She had a large
graciousness always that was some-
thing akin to grace ; but to-night her
bountifulness had a sparkle in it. her
womanliness was in the bud. Tarpow
had angled for Broomielaws artfully
and persistently with the artificial lure
of Julias domestic virtues, and had
found him a lumpish biter at best.
That nii~ht Julia was a natural bait at
which lie came with a rush. That lie
was a very ill-conditioned, unseason-
~ible fish mattered little to Tarpow,
chuckling over the sport. The quarry
was iiot a soninlaw, but a soninlaws
land ; and Julia assenting was not a
daughter angling for a husband, but a
daughter in conspiracy ~vith himself for
five hundred acres.
Tarpows sly grimaces and Broom ic-
laws ar(lor (lefeate(l their ends by
spurring Julia in her resolve. On the
other hand, her resolve was like to
dcfeat itself, for its verce drew on
Broomielaws until the man was breath
less in his pursuit. When at length lie
rose to go, and her father went to the
door with him, both unstea(ly in
their gait, she accompanied them.
To both men the act seemed unusually
vricious ti ey were not to know that
it was to see how the night fared that
she went. Broomiclaws way lay across
the fichds, Tarpows aiid his own,
and her father walked with him to the
e(lge of the yard. From there they
watched the girl in the doorway who
was looking out upon the night. The
spring air still lingered ; but, above,
the wind was high, and the moon drove
across the sky through clouds. She
felt Broomielaws eves upon her. She
burned a kiss upon her palm, and flung
it towar(ls the caves. She could not
know that she should have flung the
kiss to herself.
When her father re-entered the
house, she would have sent him to bed
immediately, but lie set himself on his
chair again.
Sit down, Julia. Sit down ,girl ,
lie said.
The formality, and what he would
have called the Anglifled turn of
his speech, registered the degrees of
his insobriety
Julia, he said, youre like your
mother tonight.
A pompous exposition of the affair
of Broomielaws and herself was exactly
the thing for a drunken man to take up
and enjoy. Besides, domestic senti-
ment is suited to one stage of intoxica-
tion. When lie said, Youre like
your mother, Julia, this whiskey sen-
timent was in his eyes and voice ; and
Julias condition made her peculiarly
sensitive to any sentiment, even of the
limeligh ts.
Father, she said, crossing to him
and sitting on the floor at his feet, (10
you really think Im in love with
Broomielaws ?
You are well off having Broomie-
laws in love with you, lie caught her
up, with a laugh. What is love ?
hIo~v easy it would be to answer that
question I thought Julia.
Ive buffeted the warl this six-and-
sixty years, he ~vent on, and Ill tell
you what love is. Whats everything?
Just a yoke we yoke oursels xvi. We
saddle oursels wi duty. We put the
bit o morality tween our own teeth.
Love ? just a pair o blinkers, Jooley.
Ah I we can keek roun(1 the corner,
fine. We gang straight in front os
aince weve set our cen in the ~~roper
airt and inakbelieve we see nothing
else. Youve got your een set on
BroomielawsI saw it the nicht,
sensible lass the nicht, Jooley, -like
your mother. Noo, jist put on the
1)linkers, and say, Broomiehaws thor
iiievitable I Marige made in hieaven.~
My inevitable son-in-law Broomie-
laws
11cr mood was such that her fathers
speech amused as much as it l)ained.
She said, half to herself, I have got
the blinkers on, and turned her eyes
straight to the corner of the house that
84
The Touch of Spring.
faced the bay at the caves. That was
in the direction of Broomielaws also,
and the 01(1 man grinned.
Theres more nor a man there,
Jooley. Theres fields, fat fields, but
they mann be husbanded. Ill hus-
band them. And you, Jooley, youll
husband love it maun be husbanded
too. Paul may plant, and Apol~os
water, but if ye (linna manure. Broom-
jelaws ! Mrs. Broomielaws I Young
Bioomielawses I all inside the blink-
ers.
He hiccoiighed, and wept, and stag-
gered to his feet; and the coming of
l)er ol)~)ortnnity drove out the anger
that was in her.
The clocks were on the stroke of
midnight etc Julia was clear of the
house. She had said that she would
be at the caves by half past twelve at
the latest ; that gave her half an hour
only to cover the ground, and she took
to the fields. She gave herself no time
to consider that Leslie would wait on
her, that he would be on the way to
meet her. Leslie himself was less in
her mind than the fact that she had an
arrangement to meet him, to be taken
away from Tarpow. Her way was
Broomielaws short cut home, across
Tarpows tields and his own ; only, a
parks breadth from Broomielaws she
must make a point or t~vo to the south
and descend Ul)0~ the caves. The
moon was behind a cloud, and her only
gui(le beyond her instinct for the way
was the light or the May. The going
was rough ; but sIte labored on, until a
sharp jerk in a ditch-d rain at the ed~e
of her own land brought her up against
a paling to draw a clear breath. As,
she leaned on it for a moment, the
moon shook itself free of the clouds.
Everything was still, except that the
hum of the sea was louder here thati
west~vards at Tarpow. A plough lay at
the corner of her field, almost at her
feet, and on the instant of wondering
how she should have escaped tripping
on it, her eye caught a heap beside it.
It was not to be mistaken ; and the
humorous thought, that took the edge
off her disgust was that Broomielavs
tightly breeched legs were 5l)eci~tlly
hideous when he was in drink. She
had started running again, when a
something in the heap caused her to
return and look a little closer. The
collar cutting the neck and cheeks was
redder than the cheeks an(l neck them-
selves. Accustomed as she was to
accidents and wounds, she saw in an
instant that he had fallen into the
(langer she had missed, an(l had struck
his head upon the coulter ; and at the
same moment she had found the wound
an(l was assua~itw it.
To her skilled eye the seriousness of
Broomielaws condition gaped like his
woun(l, and all her purpose of that
night ran out of her. But it left in her
a solicitude for the man in her arms,
which would have been impossible had
she not harbored the false sentiment
that she threw off as soon as an appeal
to her practical self set it in its true
light. At the same time, it did not
cause her to forget the stark facts of
her condition. She could not leave
him thus to search for help ; yet,
~vhether she brought help or attracted
it, how could she account for her ~~res-
ence there at that time of night? That
made action easier, for the only alter-
native was to return to Tarpow, sIte
never gave ~oin~ on to the caves a
0 0
thought now, and keep silence con-
cerning Broomielaws. If that conise
crossed her mind, it did not linger.
Keeping her handkerchief tight to the
woun(l, she ransacked the matis pock-
ets until she found matches. The
hidden moon favored her plan, and
the lights, as she struck thetti, flared
brightly against the darkness. It was
a random shot to aiti her shouts for
help. On market night some wantler
ing ~)lot1ghmen might be hieing home
from Torrie Town across the fields.
Twice as the moon glinted through the
tack, she thought she saw a figure be
t~veen her and the coast, the second
time nearer her att(l close to the hedge
to~v that ran from Iter side.
By an(l by a singularly sweet piping
smote her eat. It came (lelicately
tltrouglt the night in tite strains of a
Jacobite air, becoming louder and
louder, until a rustling, (lo~vn the hedge
85
86
side told her that the piper was near.
A shyness came upon her like a shiver,
and she drew her cloak close up to her
eyes, as if that might hide her. Be
fore she could make out the gaunt,
wizened old man, with coal-black face
andi hands, she knew whom to expect.
IRab Cuick !
Mistress Hay !
Her alert nature threw off its shy-
ness. She motioned him to kneel at
the other side of her from Broomie-
la~vs, discovering the wound mean-
while.
Its Broomielaws tatties youre
after, Rab, she said sternly.
Im lying o nights at the 1)itheadl
fire, he grumbled ; but Im hungry,
and not so snpl)le as I used to be, and
Broomielaws tatties
He was fumbling with an excuse,
an(l with a chamoisleather case for his
flute, as black as his hands. She felt
in her pocket. Two half-crowns lay in
it, her only dowry to Leslie, and
she held theni up between Rabs eyes
an(l the moon.
Go to Broomielaws, she said.
Send one of the bothy-boys to Torrie
Town for the (1oct01, and then rouse
the others and bring them on here.
You found him here, Rab ; and youll
cariv him to Tarpow, and waken me
Up. You un(lerstan(l ?
Rabs face was as stolid as the pal-
ing-stab ~vhen lie held out his hand for
the halfcrowns.
When you bring this to Tar
pow, she said, slipping the coins into
her 1)ocket again.
Rab Cuick had been gone some
twenty minutes, when the faint sound
of voices from Broomielaws came to
Julias ear. As the sound (irew near,
she could make out that Rab was
bello~ving unnecessary directions. A
break in the clouds (liscovered him audI
his following making straight for her
and (Irawing her cloak round her, she
slipped through the hedlge, and ran for
Tarpow.
When she let herself in everything
was quiet. She raked together the red
cinderS In the fireplace, and set the
kettle oti them. She looked into the
The Touch of Spring.
cupboard and made certain that there
was brandy there. Her father was
snoring up-stairs as she stoIc to her
room and ransacked her work-basket
and presses for linen for bandages.
Wheti she stole downstairs agaiti, and
listened at the door, there was a sound
of voices in the yard.
From the noise he made, it was evi-
dent that Rab Cuick thought that Tai.-
pow household slept deep. When
Julia opened the door, Broomielaws
foreman was very terse in (lescribing
~vhat hadI happened, and led the way to
the sparc bedroom with his loadi ; but
Rab, who followed, was loudly al)olo-
getic about wakening up Julia at such
an utitimely hour. He followed the
ploughman down again, after a short
interview with Julia in the bend of the
staircase.
Theres a receipt, Miss Jooley, he
had said, as he pocketed the half
crowns ; and handed her her own
handkerchief, smeared with blood and
coal-dust.
It was very honorable of Rab, of
course ; but Julia got hot with chagrin
at the act.
Broomielaws was laid upon the bed
until the arrival of the (loctor. When
lie came, Julia left him audi stepped
across the passage into her fathers
room. Once or twice she was called
to minister to the wants of the case,
but she didi not linger. At length she
heard Tarpow and the dld)ctor (lescend,
and by and by her father came up to
her.
You can put them off, he girned.
What? Put what off? she
asked.
The blinkers, he said, with a
snap.
That meant death, andi her womans
tears came instinctively ; yet a smile,
half amused, half scornful, fought with
them for a place in her eyes and o&
her face. To hide their comiflict, she
turned to the window and pulled aside
the blind. The moon lay on the bay,
audi on the waters beyondl it, audi with
almost spiteful emphasis lit up a little
speck of white sail well over to the
other side. Evidlently Leslie hadi not
The Nile.
lingered at their tryst a minute behind
the hour.
At the stab to her pride that the
discovery gave, the blind (Iropped from
her hand. The next instant she had
plucke(l it asi(le, as if to scourge her
mature sense ~vith the sight of her raw
humors. So that is the end of that,
she thought, as she watche(1 the white
sail mount to the opposite shore. She
would never marry Broornielaws ; that
had been settled for her. Whether
she ever could have married him was
; yet it
beyond consideration now
seemed to her that it was as likely she
slIoul(l have married him as that she
should marry this laddie, who was even
now landIng on the other side of the
Forth. She was a girl when the boy
came to her that morning, with the
first touch of spring, the harbinger of
her womanhood. The boy had sailed
away from a woman, years older than
himself in knowledge, and ripe in the
consciousness of what the world held
in store for her. No ; she would never
marry Teddy.
And, indeed, he did not ask her
again.
D. STORRAR MELD1IIJM.
THE NILE.1
From Nature.
I AM to speak to you to-night of the
Nile, and I think I may fairly say it is
the most famous river in all the world
famous through all the ages, for the
civilization that has existed on its
banks ; famous for its mystic, fabulous
rise, about which so many sages anJ
philosoph em~s have pondered ; famous
for its length, traversing one-fifth the
distance from l)OlC to pole ; famous,
aIl(I a~)~)arently destined to be famous,
for the political combinations that ever
centre around it. But I feel I must
begin by an apology, for now that
Egypt has come so completely within
the tourists range, probably many of
my hearers have seen more of the Nile
than I have.
I A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution,
~n January 25, by Sir Cohn Scott-Moncrieff. -
87
If a foreigner were to lecture to his
countrymen about the river Thames,
aiiil were to begin by informing them
that ile ilad never been above Green-
wich, he might be looked upon as an
impostor ; and perhaps I am not munch
better, for I have never been higher
up the river than Phil~, six hundred
and ten miles above Cairo. For infor-
mation regarding anything higher up,
I must go, like you, to tile works of
Speke, Baker, Stanley, and our other
great explorers. I shall not, then, de-
tain you to-night with any elaborate
account of this upper portion of the
river, but will only remind you briefly
of that great inland sea, the Victoria
Nyanza, in extent only a little less
than the American Lake Superior,
traversed by tile equator, and fed by
many rivers, some of them taking their
rise as far as 50 5. lat. These rivers
form the true source of the Nile, the
mystery only solved in the present gen-
eration.
The outlet of tills great lake is on its
north shore, where the river rushes
over the Ripon Falls, estimated by
Speke at only four hundred or five hull-
dred feet wide, and with a d.rop of
twelve feet. Thence tile rivers course
is in a north-west direction for two
hundred and seventy miles, to where it
thunders over the Murchison Falls, a
cliff of one hundred and twenty feet
high. Soon after that it joins the
northern end of Bakers Lake, the Al-
bert Nyanza, but only to leave it again,
and to pursue its course through a
great marshy land for more than six
hundred miles, to where the Bahr Ga-
zelle joins it from the west ; a little
further (Iowa tile great Saubat tributary
comes in on the east.. This is the
region in which the river is obstructed
by islands of floating vegetation, which,
if checked in their course, at last block
up its whole width, and form solid ob-
structions known as sadds, substantial
enough to be used as bridges and ob-
stacles, of course, to navigation, until
they are cleared a~vay. The waters of
tue Saubat are of very light color, and
tinge time whole liver, which, above its
junction, is green and unwholesome,
88
The Nile.
from the long chain of marshes which
it traverses. Hence it is called the
White Nile. Six hundred miles fur-
tlier brings us to Khartoum, where the
Blue Nile from the Abyssimiian mnoun-
tains joins it, and at two hundred miles
still further to the north it is joined by
the Atbara River, also from Abyssinia,
a torrent rather thamin a river.
Baker gives a graphic account of how
he was encamped by the (Iry bed of
the Atbara on June 22, 1861. The
heat was intense, the country was
parche(l with drought. During the
night the cry ivent forth that the floods
were coming, an(l in the morning he
found himself on the banks of a river,
lie says, five hundred yards wide and
from fifteen to twenty feet deep. All
nature had sprung into life. A little
north of the junction of the Atbara is
Berber, whence you will remember is
the short cut to Suakin in the Red Sea,
which so many thought would have
been the true route for our army to
take in relieving Gordon. From Kliar-
toninn to Assouan is a distance of eleven
hundred miles of river, (luring which it
makes two immense curves, for on a
straight line the (listance is not half so
much, and it is in this part of its course
that it passes over the six great cata-
racts or rapi(ls which block all ordinary
navigation. The first or furthest north
cataract is just above Assouan, a dis-
tance of seven hundred and fifty miles
from the Mediterranean, through the
country known as Egypt. From the
junction of the Atbara to its mouth in
the Mediterranean, a distance of six-
teen hundred and eighty miles, the
Nile receives no tributary. On the
contrary, during every mile of its
course its waters are diminished by
evaporation, by absorption, and by irri-
ga tion. The river gets less and less as
it flows through this rainless land, an(l
its maximum volume is to be found
during the floods at the junction of the
Atbara, and at other seasons at Khar-
toum, eighteen hundred and seventy-
five miles from the Mediterranean.
The whole distance by river from the
Victoria Nyanza to the sea is about
thirty-five hundred miles. It may jiot
be easy to derive any clear impression.
from this bare recital of mileage. Let
me try to convey to you in some other~
ways the idea of the length of the
Nile. Standing on the bridge at Cairo,..
I used to reflect that I was just about
half-way between the source of the
Nile and the White Sea. Or to put it
another way: if we could suppose a
river crossing our English Channel,.
and that the Thames should find its
outlet in the Euphrates and the Persiaii
Gulf, that river would be about as long
as the Nile.
In this short sketch of the course of
the Nile, I must not forget to mention
one interesting feature. About forty
miles south of Cairo, the low Libyan.
chain of hills which bounds the Nile
valley on the west is broken by a gap,
through which the waters of the river~
can flow, and beyond this gap lies a
saucer-shaped depression called the
Faytim, of about four hundred square
miles in area, sloping down to a lake of
considerable size, the surface of whose
~vaters stan(ls about one hundred and
thirty feet below that of the sea. This
lake is known as the Birket el Kuriin.
From the time of the earliest Egyp-
tian records, this province of the
Faviim was famed for its fertility, and
to the Egyptian taste for its delightful
climate. Many of the most precious.
monuments of antiquity have been
found in the Fayiimn. The famous
Labyrinth is supposed to have stood
just at its entrance ; an(I vhat has ex-
cited most interest for the engineer in
all times, it is here that Herodotus
places that wonderful Lake M~ris,.
which receiving for half the year the
surplus supply of the Nile, rendered
it back again in irrigation to Lower
Egypt during the other half. Where
this lake actually was, has excited (us-
cussion since any atteniion has been
paid to ancient Egyptian history. It
seems pretty clear that in earlier days.
the Birket el Kuriiu was of much
greater proportions than it is now, but.
how it ever could have been large
enough to allow of its waters flowing
back into the Nile valley whemn the
river was low, without at the same
The Nile.
time drowning the whole Faytim, is
not very clear.
Now, what are the functions of a
great river, what are the offices which
it readers to man ? And first of all, at
least iii this latitu(le, we ~vould mention
the carrying off to the ocean of the
surplus water that descends from the
skies. Nobly (loes the Nile fulfil this
duty ; but with this enormous qualifica
ion, that it trallsl)orts the water from
tracts where there is too much, and
carries it all free of cost, not to ~vaste
it in the sea, hut to bestow it on tracts,
where it is of priceless value, more
than taking the place of rain in water-
ing the fields.
The next function of a river is to
form a highway through the land, and
for most of its course the Nile fulfils
this (luty well too. Gordon considered
it l)ossible for steamers to ascend the
Nile (luring the floods from its mouth
to the Fola rapids, a distance of about
three thousand an(I forty miles ; but at
other seasons, the six cataracts cannot
be passed. Leaving out the eleven
hundred miles which they occupy, there
is an unbroken seven hundred and fifty
miles in the lo~ver, and nearly twelve
hundred miles in the upper river. I
cannot look on it as probable that it
will ever pay to make navigable canals
and locks round these cataracts, as it
would entail so much hard rock-cut-
tiiw
Another function of a river is to pro-
mote in(lustry by the employment of
its water-power. We know how valu-
able is this power even in England, and
ho~v much more in countries like S~vitz
erland, where it abounds, and on the
great rivers of America. Excepting a
few very rude woo(len wheels in the
Fayiim, I (10 not know, through all the
annals of the past, of a single water-
wheel ever turned by the power of the
Nile. But that power exists to an
almost unlimited extent. And may we
not prophesy that some day in the fu-
ture, when that long stretch of Nubian
cataracts has fallen into civilized hands,
and when we know how to transmit
electric energy with economy, that
then our (lescendalits will dra~v ~vealth.
89
to Egypt from its chain of barren cata-
racts ?
As a drainage outlet to a continent,
as a long highway, as a source of
power, the Nile is great; but not s~
much so as many other rivers. Its
unique position is due to the benefit it
confers on Egypt in turning it from
being a desert into being the richest of
agricultural lands, supporting with ease
a pol)ulation of about six hundred t&
the square mile. Herodotus truly said
Egypt is the gift of the Nile. It more
than supplies the absence of iain, and
this it does, first, by the extraordinary
regularity with which it rises and falls ;
an(l secondly, by the fertilizing mattet-
which the ~vaters carry in suspension,
and bestow upon the land. Imagine
what it would be to the English farmer
if he knew exactly when it would rain
and when it would be sunshine. When
the Irrigation Department of Egypt is
properly ad ministered, the Egyptian
farmer possesses this certainty, and lie
has this further advantage that it is
not merely water that is poured over
his lands, but, (luring nearly half the
year, water charged with the finest;
manure.
According to the early legend, the
rise of the Nile is due to the tears shed
by Isis over the tomb of Osiris, and
the texts on the Pyramids allude to the
night every year on which these tear-
(Irops fall. The worship of Isis and
Osiris has long passed away, but to this
(lay every native of Egypt knows the
Lailet en Nuktah, the night in which a
miraculous drop falls into the river,
~iiid causes it to rise. It is the night of
June 17. ilerodotus makes no allusion
to this legend of Osiris. In his time,
he says, the Greeks gave three reasons
for the rivers rise. He believed in
none of them, but considered, as the
most ri(liculous of all, that which as
eribed the floods to the melting of
snows, as if there could possibly be
snows in such a hot region. It was
many centuries after He rodotuss ti me
when the snowy mountains of central
Africa were (liseovered.
The heavy rains commence in the
baSin of the White Nile during April,
90
J7~e Nile.
and first slowly drive down upon Egypt
the green, stagnant waters of that
marshy region. These appeal at Cairo
about June 15. About a fortnight biter
the real flood begins, for the rains have
set in in Abyssinia by May 15, and the
Blue Nile brings (Iowa from the InOun
tairis its suj)~)ly of the richest muddy
water. It is something of the color
and nearly of the consistency of choc-
olate, an(l the rise is very rapid, as
much sometimes as three feet per (hem,
for the Athara torrent having saturated
its great safl(ly bed, is now in full flood
also. The maximum flood is reached
at Assouan about Septeml)er 1, and it
woul(l reach Cairo some four days later,
were it not that (luring August and
September the water is being (liverted
on to the land, an(l the whole Nile val
1ev l)ecornes a great lake. For this
reason the maximum arrives at Cairo
about the beginning of October. The
rains cease in Ahyssinia about the mid-
dle of September, and the floods of the
Blue Nile and Atbara ra.~)i(lly decrease
but in the mean time the great lakes
and marshes are replenished in the
upper regions, and slowly give off their
Suj)phies, on which the river subsists,
uiitil the following June. Yearly this
phenomenon presents itself in Egy pt,
an(1 with the most marvellous regular-
ity. A late rise is not more than about
three weeks later than an early rise.
In average years the height of the flood
at Assnuan is about twenty-five and
one-half feet above the minimum sup-
ply. If it rises t~venty-uine feet above
this minimum, it means peril to the
whole of Egypt, and the irrigation
engineer has a hard time of it for two
months. If the river only rises twenty
feet above the minimum, it means that
whole tracts of the valley ~vill never be
submerged. Such a poor flood has
happened only once in modern times,
in 1877, and the result was more serious
than the devastation caused by the
most violent excess.
The mean flood discharge at Cairo is
about two hundred and eighty thou-
sand cubic feet per second, the maxi-
mum about four hundred thousand.
The mean lowest Nile is about -four-
teen thousand cubic feet per second at
Cairo, but some years there is not
moie than ten thousand cubic feet per
second passing Cairo ill Juiie and
within three months after this may
have increase(l fortyfold.
Until this century, the irrigation of
Egypt only employed tIle flood waters
of the river, and it was tilis that nla(le
it the granary of the worlil. No (loUbt
rude maclImes for raisillg Nile waler
were used at all 5easons an(l from all
times. But by these it was not possi
l)le to irrigate On a large scale, and in
reality they were olIly employed for
irrigatilig vege tal)les or gardens, or
other small patches of land. It must
not be thought that tlle water of the
flooded river is ever allowed to flow
where it lists over the lands. The gen-
eral slope of the valley on each side is
away from the river, a feature which
the Nile shares with all Deltaic streams.
Along each edge of the river, and fol
lo~ving its course, is an earthen em
banklnent, high enough not to be
top~)e(l by the highest flood. In Upper
Egypt, the valley of which seldom cx
cee(ls six miles in width a series of
eulbankinents have been thrown up,
abutting on their inner ends against
those along the rivets edge, and on
their outer ends on the ascending sides
of the valley. The whole country is
thus divided into a series of oblongs,
surrounde(l by embankuients on three
sides, and by the slope of the (lesert
hills on the fourth. Ill Lower Egypt,
where in ancient days there were sev-
eral branches of the liver, this system
~vas some~vhat modified, but was in
1)rincil)le the same. Tllese oblong
areas vary in extellt from sixty thou-
sand to three thousand or four thou-
sand acres, and tIle slope being away
from the river, it is easy to cut short,
deep canals in the banks, which fill as
the flood rises, an(l carry tile precious
mudellarged water ilItO these great
flats, or, as they are termed, basins of
illioation. There the water remains
for a month or more, some three or
four feet deep, (lepOsitrng its mud, and
then at the end of the flood it ma~r
either be run off direct into the reced
The Nile.
ing river, or, more usually, passed off
through sluices from one basin to an-
other, and ultimately back into the
river. In ~Noveinber the waters have
passe(l off, and wherever a man and
a pair of l)Ullocks can walk over the
mud, anil scratch its surface with a
woo(len plough, or even the branch
of a tree, wheat or barley is sown,
and so saturated is the soil that the
grain sprouts and ripens in April or
May without a (lrop of rain or any
fresh irrigation. And a fine crop is
real)e(l. One of oui (treat brewers told
me the other day, that when bailey
grown in this country was spread in
the malting-honse, al)out three per
cent. of it must be counted on as not
sprouting antI heiiig (lea(l. If grain
two 01. three years 01(1 was used, as
much as tweiity ~)ei~ cent. would be
found oleaci. With Egyptian barley, he
sai(l, even after several years, you
could count on every grain germinat-
ing. The crop once reaped, the fields
remain oliv, anti crack in the fierce
summer heat until next flood comes on.
The tourist who only comes to Egypt
to shun ~vinter and foul weather,
knows nothing of the majestic glories
of the Nile flord. The ancient Nib-
meter at the south end of the island of
Roda, just above Cairo, is one of the
most interestiiig sights of the l)lace.
The water enters from the river by a
culvert into a well about eighteen feet
square, with a graduated stone pillar in
the ceiitre. On each side of the well is
a recess about six feet wide an(l three
feet deep, surmounted by a poiiited
arch, over which is carved in relief a
Ku tic iiiscril)t ion, and a similar inscrip
tioii is carried all round the well, con
sisti ng of verses of the Koran. A
staircase goes down the well, from the
ste1)s of which the initiated may read
the height of the water on the pillar
bnt they are few in number, an(l the
hereditary sheikh of the Nilomtter,
whose oltit~ it is to keep the record, is
a l)ei50n of some iml)ortance. The
Nilometer (lates from A.D. 861, and I
believe in the archives of Cairo may he
fonnd the daily record for one thousand
years. -
91
I need hardly tell you that when our
English engineers took the river in
hand, we established a number of
ganges at Wadi Haifa, Assouan, Cairo,
and many other l)oints, on more scien-
tific principles than the venerable Nib-
meter of the Roda Island.
After the river has begun to rise, its
heedit is daily chanted through the
Cairo streets until it reaches sixteen
clll)its on the gauge. At this point the
Khalig el Masri, the old canal that
flows through the heart of Cairo, is
opened up to this point it is dry, and
full or empty it is little more than a
sanitary abomination at present; but
in former days it occupied an important
place, and when the Nile water was
high enough to flow down its bed, it
was looked on that the flood had fairly
set in, an(l that the kindly fruits of the
earth might be duly expected.
The head of this canal is on the right
bank of the river, just south of Cairo.
The water enters a channel some thirty
feet wide, with a high wall on its left,
an(l a sloping bank on its right or
southern flank. The water then flows
tinder the pointed arch of an old stone
bridge. The bed of the canal is cleared
so that it would flow in at a gauge of
about fourteen and one-half cubits, but
an earthen bank is thrown across it
about four feet higher.
There is no more interesting cere-
mony in Egypt than the annual cutting
of the Khalig, as the opening cere-
mony is called. It takes l)lace be-
tween August 5 and 15. Days before
preparations are being made for the
festival. Tents with innumerable
lamps are placed along the wall on the
one side. Frames for all manner of
fireworks are erected on the sand-bank
on the other si(le. All the notables are
there in full uniform, or in canonicals.
The khedive himself, or his represen-
tative, the Sheikh ul Islam (the highest
dignitary of the Muhammedan faith),
the Sheikh el i3ekri, the Sheikh es
Sad~t, all the learned scribes of the
great university of the Azh~r, the cab-
inet ministers and undersecretaries,
the sirder of the army and his staff, the
judges and the financiers.
92
The Nile.
The Egyptian troops are turned out,
salutes are fired, and about eight
oclock in the warm summer night the
classes all assemble under the gaily
lighted tents, the masses crowd round
the frames for the fireworks, the street
is lined with harem carriages full of
closely veiled figures, though it is not
much that they can see from their
broughams. Out in the river, just
opI)osite the canals mouth, is moored
an 01(1 hulk of a certain sea-going out-
line, which has been towed up from
Boulak during the day, and is an
emblem of the time when the great
republic of Venice sent an envoy to
witness the ceremony. This boat is
full of lamps, and fireworks too. As
the night deepens the excitement in-
creases. The populace on the bridge
an(l the opposite bank are shontin~
yelling, and dancing wildly roun(1 the
fireworks. On the other side are the
gay uniforms and lighted tents, from
whence we can look over the wall
down on the dark water, where you see
brown figures plunging in and waist-
deep digging with their hoes at the
eml)anklnent that blocks the canals
mouth.
Long before midnight the fireworks
have gone out, and left the splendid
stars to themselves ; the grandees have
all gone to bed, but the people keep up
the revelry, and in the morning, by
7.30, every one has come back. Then
but little of bank is left uncut ; a few
more strokes of the big hoes will do it,
and the brown skins and the brown
water reflect the bright sunlight from
above. Then the Sheikh ul Islam
solemnly thanks the Almighty, Allah
he All-powerful, the Allmerciful. He
implores his blessing on the flood, and
at a signal the bank is cut, the waters
rush in, an(l with them a crowd of
swimmers. A bag of silver piastres is
scattered among them, an(1 the cere-
inon~ is at an end.
There is a pretty legend, worth tell-
ing, of the cutting of the Khalig.
Amr, the Muhammedan general, took
Cairo in A.D. 640. Long before then
there had been a heathen ceremony,
and a virgin was yearly sacrificed to
the god of the river. When the Beasen
came roun(l, Amr was called upon as
usual to sacrifice the girl. He sternly
refused. That year the Nile flood was
a failure. You can fancy how the in-
dignant heathen popuhition must have
rage(l at the invader, an(l said, We
warned you ~vhat would happen if you
didnt p1ol)itiate the river god. Can
not we fancy, also, how Amrs wild
Arab soldiers must have had their faith.
sorely tried, and how they must have
felt puzzled as to whether in this
strange new count ry, ~vithi all those
demonbuilt temples and pyramids,.
obelisks, and sphinxes, it might not be
as well to make friends of the local
gods. Could Allah really help them.
here ? Again the Nile flood came
round. This time surely Amr would
sacrifice the girl, and save the land.
No ; he would not. The people rose
in rebellion. Amr stood firm. But he
wrote to the Kalif Omar for orders
(Omar, whose name you will remem-
ber has come do~vn in history as the
destroyer of the Alexandrian library).
Omar approved of his conduct, but sent
him a paper to throw into the Nile.
On the paper was written, From Abd
Allah Omar, Prince of the F~~itl~fL1l,to
the Nile of Egypt. If thou flow of
thine own accord, flow not ; but if it
be Allah, the one the mighty, who
canseth thee to flow, then we implore
him to make thee flov. Ami~ threw
the PaPe1~ into the water, and the Nile
rose forthwith exactly as it was wanted.
Since that day no girl has been sacri
ficed ; but a pillar of earth is yearly
left to be ~vashed away in the middle of
the canal, called the bride or the girl.
Such, as I have briefly descril)e(l it,
~vas the irrigation of Egypt until this
century, when it fell un(ler the rule of
Muhammed Ali, a very sagacious and
strong if a very llnscrul)ulons ruler.
He saw that the coul)try could l)1~o(luce
far more valuable C~Ol)5 than cereals.
The European market could he sup-
plied with these from the fields of
Europe, but Europe could not produce
cotton and sugarcane. Egypt had the
climate, had the soil, had the teeming
populatioi~ ; but these crops required
The Nile. 93
~water at all seasons ; nor would it do and so raise the xvat~r, and the result
to flood the fields to any depth, for just was the great Barrage.
at the flood season the cotton croi~ is About twelve miles north of Cairo
ripening. There was plenty of water the Nile bifurcates, and finds its way
in the river ; but how was it to be got to the sea, by the Rosetta and Daniietta
on to the land ? Perennial irrigation branches. Across the heads of these
was a fresh (leparture. As I have sai(l, two branches were built two stone
the Nile rises about twenty-five and bridges, one of seventy-one, the other
one-half feet. A canal then running of sixty-one arches, each five metres or
twelve feet deep in flood has its bed 164 feet span. These arches were in-
thirteen and one-half feet above the tended to be fitted with gates ; by low-
surface of the Low Nile. Either the cling which, all the water would be
Nile water hal to be raised, or the beds dammed up, and diverted into three
of the canals had to be lowered, in or great trunk canals, taken out of the
der that one should flow into the other, river jnst above these bridges. One to
and after that the water had to be the right or east of the Damietta branch
raise(l from the canal 011 to the land. was to supply water to all the pr~vinees
Muhammed Au began by lowering the of the eastern delta, one between tile
callal beds of Lower Egypt, an enor- two bridges was to supj)ly tile splen-
mous work considering the great num (Ii(lly fertile central delta, tile third to
ber of the canals ; and as they had the left or ~vest of the Rosetta branch
been laid out on no scientific princi- was to water all the western (lelta
pIes, but merely to suit tile fancies of down to Alexandria.
Turkish pashas or village slieikhs, and There was no intention of water
~as tilose who had to excavate tilem to storage at the Barrage but it was
tilis great depth Ilad only tile slightest merely with tile object of controlling
knowledge of levelling, the inevitable tile su~)ply. While there was water
Tesult followed the (led) channel be ellough in tIle river, by closing the
came full of mild during the flood, and gates it could be kept to a uniform
zall the excavation had to be done over level, and sent down the three trunk
agaln. Illcre(lible as it may seem, tilis canals, froul wilicil it was to branell
great work was done year after year. into many minor ones. As tile liver
It was a great serf population ; if tlley weilt down, gate after gate would be
were Ilot figllting Muilammed Alis closed, and so a constant supply could
battles ill Arabia and Syria, tlley aligilt be kept in tIle canals. Tile i(lea was
:~tS ~vell l)e (ligging out tile canals. No thoroughly sound. The execution was
olle tilought of paying or feeding tile feeble.
workmen. Tile bastilla(lo was freely Mougel Bey, the Frencil engineer in
~li)l)lie(l if tiley attemi)te(l to run away. charge of the work, lIad no doubt many
If they (lied under the labor there were difficulties to contend witll. Tile work
plenty more to come. But of course went fitfully on for many years, tilon-
the work was badly (lone. The waler sands of men being forced to it one
might enter the canal ; but as tIle bed year, and carried off to a campaign
was Ilot truly levelled, it (lid not follow tile next. But at last it was sufficiently
tilat it would flow far. Then, as tile finisiled to allow of an opening cere-
river daily fell, the water in the canals monial in 1861. Gates Ilad been fitted
fell too, and lessened in volume as tile into tIle Rosetta branch ardlles, never
Ileat increased, and more was require(l. illto the Damietta.
At lastin JulIe, perilapsthe canal The central canal had been dug in
was dry, and tile cotton crop tilat ilad tolerably satisfactory style. The ~vest-
been sown and watered, weeded and em callal, too, had been dug, but pass-
nurtured, sillee March, was lost alto- ing through a stril) of (lesert it had
getller. become very much filled up with sand.
Then some one advised Muhammed Tile eastern canal was dug some five
Ali to t~hrow a dam across tlle river, miles, and then stopped. Of course
94 The Nile.
the Barrage without these canals was made to get it off. In a properly irri~
useless. Ho~vever, they began to ex- gate(l tract, between every two canals
with it, ~ the gates on of sUI)ply, there should flow a (lrainatve
wriment
the Rosetta si(le. It was intended to channel ; the former shouhl follow as
hold up four and a half metres, or four- far as possible the highest lands, the
teen feet nine inches of water. It latter should follow the lowest. The
never held up five feet, till in 1867, it canal gets smaller, till at last it is ex
cracked across from tol) to bottom, on hausted, giving itself out in innumer
the western side. An immense coffer able branches. The drain, like a river,
dam was built round the cracked poi gets larger as it proceeds, being con
tion, and the ~vater ~vas iiever held up stantly joined by branches. But if
again more than about three and a half there be no (lrains, an(I if the canals
feet, while the work was looked on as are laid out to flow into one another, so
a (leplorable failure. In 1883, all hope as to divide the COLII)try into, as it
of making anything out of the Barrage were, a cluster of islands, you can uii
,v~ abandoned, and the government derStan(l how the drainage water has
was on the l)oint of concluding a con no means of flowing off into the sea,
tract with a company to supply Lo~ver and settles in unwholesome swamps.
Egypt with irrigation by means of an These we found ~)revailing to an alarm
immense system of steam pumps, to ing extent in the rich provinces of the
cost 700,000 to begin with, and 250,- delta. Such was the wretched state of
000 a year afterwards. Egyptian agriculture the one single
That year there was a wretched serf source of the countrys wealth when
army of eighty - five thousand men Lord Dufferin laid down the lines of
working at canal clearances for one the English administration, ~vhich have
hundred and sixty days, unfed, unpaid. been amplified and l)urstle(l ever since.
The burden was nearly intolerable. It was in May, 1883, that I took
The irrigation was all by fits and starts. charge of the Irrigation Department in
There was no drainage ; every hollow Egypt, having before then had some
became sour and water-logged. With twenty years experience of similar
waterways everywhere, there was no ~vork in India ; and I soon had the in
navigation. In Upper Egypt things estimable advantage of being joined by
were better, as the system was a sim- a band of the most indefatigable, en
pIer one. But when we came to look ergetic and able engineers, also from
into them too, we found great abuse, India, with whom it was my great priv
an(l on an average about forty thousand ilege and happiness to be associated for
acres never succeeded in obtaining the next nine years. I cannot talk too
water, though in the midst of abun- highly of these my colleagues men
dance. who knew their work and did it, who
The Fayilm had long been a much- kept constantly moving about in the
neglecte(l province, though a most ~~ic provinces, badly lodged, badly fed, de
1uIe~qne and attractive one. From nied domestic comforts, constantly
carelessly allowing Nile ~vater to flow absent from their wives and families
into the lake during the floods, it had (they were all married men).
risen enough to swamp ten thousand My friends, happy is the reformer
acres of valuable land, and this mis who finds things so bad that he cannot
chief we found still increasing, make a movement without makin5Z an
Throughout the whole country drain i in prO~TemeIIt. Happy the reformer~
age had been absolutely neglected. who has as colleagues a staff of thor-
And here I would point out that irriga- oughly loyal, (lutydoing and capable
tion without (Irainage means the sure men. happy the reformer who is not
deterioration of the land sooner or pesterel on all sides by the officious
later. Considerable pains had been advice of the ignorant. happy the
taken in Egypt to get the water on to reformer who has behind him a strong,
the land. No sort of effort hadbeen brave chief, as honest and truthful as
like Nile.
he is strong. Such rare happiness fell
to tllC in Egypt with my noble col-
leagues, and with Lord (3ronier as our
chief.
It is not my intention to enter into
any (letails tonight of what our work
was in Egypt. I have lately spoken
about that elsewhere, and there woul(l
be 110 time to do s~ tiow. I must just
(lCSctil)e it generally.
On first arrival, I was pressed, both
by English and Frenchmen, to go into
the questioti of the storage of the flood
wateis of the river on a large scale.
I declined to do so, cousitlerillg it
would be time enough to thitik of in
creasing the quantity of water at our
disposal when we had profitably used
all that we already had, all(l while
mighty volnmes were daily flowing
out to the sea, it could not be said that
we were doing that. The first great
work to be studied was the Barrage.
We vere warne(l on all sides to have
nothing to say to it, as it was thor-
oughly unsound; but we felt sure we
must either tilake it sound or build an
entirely new one, and we resolved on
the former. The work had failed be-
cause it was faulty in design, the
floorings and foundations not being
sufficiently massive, an(l faulty Ill exe-
cution from the (lishonest use of bad
materials and from bad work mansh i p.
The bed of the river consists of noth-
in~ more stable fllan sand, and alluvial
mud for at least t~vo hundred feet
deep. It was out of the question to
think of getting down to solid rock. It
was not, as we thought, very safe to
excavate very deeply close to the exist-
ing works, so we (leci(led not to try it,
but merely to strengthen and cotisol-
idate the foundations, l)uilt as they
were on sand. I have said that the
work consisted of two great bridges
over the two brandIes of the river.
We could not shut np either branch
entirely ; but we decided to strengtllen
and complete one-half of each bridge
each seasotI, which meant four sea-
sons work. While the river was still
ill considerable flood each November,
we began to throw out great embank-
ments of earth about two hundred feet
95
fronl the bridge ; one up-stream, the
(ltllet~ (lownstream of it, heginnit gat
the shore end, and ultimately enclos-
ing onehalf of the river as in a potul.
This used to take three nIotIths hard
work. TIlen we pumped the water out
of this enclosure, and laid bare tile
very bed of the river. Then we laid a
massive stone flooring, five and a half
feet thick, extenditig one hundred feet
U p5tream, and as nluch dow tistream,
of the bridge. This was very (lifficult
and hard work. It was kept going (lay
atl(l nigllt, without iIltCrnliSSiOtl from
March till tile end of June. Then we
cnt great holes ill our eulbankulents,
cleared out our machinery, and p~e
l)are(l for the arrival of the flood at the
beginning of July. Each year onehalf
of one bridge was fltiished, and the
whole was completed at the end of
June, 1890.
Iti contiection with the Barrage were
completed the three great canals to
carry off all the river supply from
above it. So that practically now the
Low Nile is emptied every ~easou at
the Barrage and diverted into these
canals, and no water at all escapes to
the sea. The natives wade everywhere
acm~oss the river north of this limilt.
Since it was completed the Barrage has
giveti no troul)le. It l)01(1s L1~ every
year four metres, or thirteen feet of
water. Tile fllree truilk canals were all
sul)plied with locks otie ilutl(lred all(l
sixty feet by t~ventv-eight feet, and
a(lal)ted for navigation. The whole of
these works cost about 800,000. The
ailnual increase of tile cotton crop,
colllpared to what it was l)ef ore 1884. is
never less than two and a half millions
sterling, which has not been a bad in
vesttlleilt for Egypt.
Turning to Upper Egypt, my col-
league, Colonel Ross, (lirected his at-
tention very closely to the adjustment
of Cit nals overlapping one atiotlier,
passing uIl(ler all(l passing over one
another ; so that ill future I trust that
with the feeblest Nile flood it will he
possible to pour water over every acre
of the lttn(l.
The question of (Irainage was very
thoroughly taken up. Twelve years
The Nile.
ago it may be said that there were no Whitehouse, in search of the real
drainage channels in Egypt. Two M~ris, found a very remarkable saucer
years ago there ~vere about one thou shaped (lepression just south of the
sand miles of such channels, some with Fayiim. We knew it could not have
beds as wide as sixty feet and flowing been M~ris, because in its bed we
deep enough to carry cargo boats, found no traces of a deposit of Kilotic
others with beds only three or four mud, but it might be possible all the
feet wide. I am glad to say by these same to utilize it. The place was very
means large tracts in Lower Egypt carefully surveyed, and the project was
which had been abandoned as totally estimated ; but it was found that the
ruilIe(l have now been restored to culti- cost of conveying the water into this
vation. The level of the lake in the basin would be so great that it was out
Fayiimn was reduced by thirteen feet of the question.
between 1885 and 1893, and most of Attention was then turned to the
the inundated lands around it have possible sites where a stone dam might
been again dried, be built right across the river. The
I ha~e already mentioned the cruel southern boundary of Egypt just now
bar(lship of the corv~e, the serf army of is near Wady HaIfa, the second cata-
eightyfive thousand men ~~rho were ract. It is nO use going to look for
employed in the canal clearances from sites south of this, for the country is in
January to July, nearly half the year. the hands of the Mahdi and his fierce.
I believe this institution ~vas as old as dervish soldiers. NortW of this point,
the Pharaohs, and it was not easy to unquestionably the best site, perhaps
abolish it. But of course it went sorely the only possible site is where the Nile
against our British grain. Little by valley is traversed by a broad dyke of
little we got money to enable us to pay hard Syenite granite, in passing over
our labor. By an annual outlay of which the river forms its first cataract
400,000 this spring corv~e has en- just south of Assouan. It is here
tirely cease(I since 1889, and no~v the divided into several channels bet~veen
lEgyptian laborer carries out these rocky islands, an(l no channel is deep,
clearances in as free a manner as his so that it ~vould be easy to divert the
brother in Middlesex, and gets paid water from one after another, to lay
for his work. hare the bed of the river, and lay the
Ilaving thus, to the best of our foundations of the darn in the open
l)o~veLs, utilized the water in the river air. It wants no engineer to under
flowing past us, we turned our atten- stan(I ~vhat an advantage this is.
tion to the storage of the surplus And the great darn, such as was de
waters. Without some such storage it signed by Mr. Willeocks, would have
is impossible to increase the cultivation been a work worthy of the laud of the
during the Low Nile. All the water is Pyramids and Karnak a ~zreat wall of
used up. During High Nile there is squared granite blocks eighty - two
always a great volume escaping useless feet thick at base, of a maximum
to the sea. height of one hundred and fifteen feet,
There are two ways in which the a mile and a quarter long, pierced by
water may be stored either by throw- sluices large enough to allo~v of the
ing a dam right across the river an(I whole Nile at highest flood rushing
forming a great lake above it, or, if through. The lake formed would have
such a place can be found, by diverting been one hundre(l and twenty miles
the flood water into some suitable hol- long. Would this not have been a
low, and drawiiig it off from there at work of some majesty to commemorate
the season of low supply, as done by forever the Emiglish rule in Egypt a
Herodotuss celebrated Lake M~ris. work one woul(l have been proud to
At one time there was a hope that such have had a hand in ? But it was jiot
a storage basin might be found. Au to be. The Egyptian saw no objection
American gentleman, named Mr. Cope to it. The money could have been
The Nile.
found~ But there was an insuperable
obstacle created when, on the Island of
Phike, about 250 B.C., Ptolemy II. built
a temple to Isis, on the site of older
buildings long disappeared. Round this
temple other buildings clustered, built
by Greeks and Roinans. Those of you
who have not seen them, are probably
familiar from pictures with the group
of venerable buildings standing amidst
palm-trees on the rocky island, and
reflected in the waters below.
Had Ptolemy only built his temple
on the island of Elephantine, a few
miles north, it would have been un-
affected by the great dam, but Philm is
just ~o the south, or up-stream side of
where the great dam must necessarily
have come, and in consequence the
island, with its temples, would be
drowned for about six months every
year. You probably remember the
outburst of rage and indignation which
the announcement of this proposed
desecration created in London last sum-
mer. It was not to be tolerated that
England should commit such vandal-
ism. In vain it was answered that the
place belonged to Egypt, not to En-
gland that the Egyptian, who was
to gain so much by the dam, eared
absolutely nothing about Ptolemy and
his temples that he was prepared to
pay a large price for a great work to
benefit his country. What business
was it of England to forbid him ?
And it was not only the English who
were indignant. For once, and only
for once, I fear, since we occupied
Egypt in 1882, was educated opinion in
England and France at one. Both
alike insisted that Phil~ should not
be (Irowned. Nor must I admit had
all the engineers that were interested
in the question the full courage of
their opinions. While they longed to
build the dam, and lamented the per-
verse fate that had put Phil~ there,
still they wished to spare Phil~ and
their voice has prevailed. The majes-
tic structure has been cut down twenty-
seven feet, and now will only be
eighty-eight feet high, and Phil~ will
stand henceforth in a lake, but will
never be drowned. -
LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 267
97
Personally I accept the situation, for
I never believed that it would be sac-
rificed. But yet as an engineer I must
sigh over the lost opportunity for En-
gland of making such a splendid reser-
voir. And as a friend to Egypt, I sigh
still more that the country will not
have such a splendid supply of water
as would enable Upper Egypt to have
the full benefits now possessed by
Lower Egypt, and Lower Egypt to ex-
pand and flourish.
The reduced scheme will, however,
be a great boon to the country, and I
trust will now be put in hand without
delay.
In 1884, when the expedition np the
Nile was first being considered, I was
asked by the general officer command-
ing in Egypt, whether I thought there
was any possibility of the Mahdi
diverting the river in the Soudan, and
depriving Egypt of its water. The late
Sir Samuel Baker was in Cairo at the
time, and I consulted him as to
whether he knew of any place in the
Nile valley where during highest flood
the water spills off to the right or left,
towards the Red Sea or the Libyaa
Desert. He ~aid he was sure there
was no such l)la~e,and I then told the
general it would be impossible for the
Mahdi to divert the Nile. I was sure
that with his savages lie would never
dam up the low supply until its surface
attaine(I the height of flood supply, and
if even then during flood there was no
spill channel, Egypt was safe enough.
But what the Mahdi could not do, a
civilized people could do. A govern-
ment official has no business to talk
politics, and the Royal Institution is
no place for politics ; but I may be
allowed to point out an evident enough
fact, that the civilized possessor of the
Upper Nile valley holds Egypt in his
grasp.
At this moment the Italians are on
the eastern edge of that valley a na-
tion, I must say, who have been con-
sistently most friendly to us in Egypt.
Supposing that they occupied Khar-
town, the first thing they would natu-
rally and very properly do would, be to
sprea(l the waters of the Low Nile over
The Crisis in Newfoundland.
98
the Soudan; and no nation in Europe one-sixth of the amount received in
understands irrigation so well. And the corresponding mouth last year, and
what theii wonl(l become of Egypts a large deficit is feared at the end of
cotton crops ? They could only be the quarter. The secretary of the
secure(l by a series of the most costly Colonial and Continental Church So
(lams over the river, and the fate of ciety reports that every one is de
Phil~ would surely be seale(1. But l)ressecl beyond description. There is
mere than this a civilize(I nation on no lal)or for the poor because there is
the Upper Nile would surely build leg- no money to pay for it. We are organ-
ulating sluices across the outlet of the izing relief l)alties to provide for the
Victoria Nva nza, an(l control that great prevailing (listress. A correspon(lcnti
5e~L as Manchester controls Thirlemere. also states that the hnngry and half
This would probably be an easy oper- clad crowds are in a miserable Onildi-
ation. Once done, the Nile supply tion, and what they need most is warni
would be in their hands ; and if 1)001 clothing for the biting month of March.
little Egypt had the bad luck to be at The missionaries themselves are in aii
war with this l)eople Ofl tile upper evil plight ; as one of them pleads
waters, they might flood them, or cut earnestly for an overcoat for himself,
off their water supply at tileir pleasure. and clothes for Ilis children. in a
Is it not evi(lent, tllen, that tile Nile climate wilere the tilerinometer is often
from tile Victoria Nyanza to the Mcdi- below zero in the winter, sucll tales of
terranean sllould be under one rule ? hardsllip must elicit our Warmest sym
That time is perhaps far off. I con- pathy.
elude what I have to say to-nigilt, by Great as were tile calamities and pii-
giving you tlle assurance, and I ch~il vations that followed the great Mann
leilge contra(lictioIl, tIlat at 110 time tiall Ilurricane of April 29, 1892, they
in tile long history of Egypt under were, nevertheless, more endurable
Pllaraoll or Ptolemy, Roman or Arab tilall tilose of Newfoundland, for the
or Turk, have tile people of tile coun- Ilorrors of famine an(l starvation are
try been so prosperous, or so justly largely mitigated in a warm and trop-
ruled as during tile last nine years. ical climate. Tile appeal to tile charity
of onr pililalltllropists is great, atid it is
to be hoped that it will meet with a
ready response. It is not long ago that
From The Fortnightly Review, a Illost destrnctive fire (July, 1892) (Ic-
THE CRISIS IN NEWFOUNDLAND. stroyed a large portion of St. Johns,
IT is rarely that a I3ritish colony, the capital of Newfoundland, and the
llavin~ once acllieve(l responsible gov- centre of goverilmeilt. But now the
eriiment, contelilpiates a return to tile colonists are faced ~vitll tile more per
conditions of a crowii colony. Yet, manent aild terrible evils of bank
from the latest information to hand, it ruptcy.
would appear that suell a return is it is well known tilat tIle prosperity
~vitllin tile range of practical politics in of Newfoundland has always depended
Ne~vfoundiand. Tile first step would U~O1l the successful prosecution of one
be tile appointment of a Royal Coin- industry, viz., tile fishing industry.
missioll ill tile island to inquire into Ne~vfoundland cod is considered supe
tile existing and most deplorable state nor to that caught off tile coasts of
of affairs, and altllough tile govern Scotland, Norway, Iceland, aild th&
ment is naturally averse to this, local Faroes. It is the task of tile New
OpilliOll, 110W tilorouglIly on tile alert, foundland fishermen to provide fish for
is largely in favor of it. For some Roman Catilolic Europeans, for Bra-
tinle past tile colonists have been face zihians, and for tile colonists of tIle
to face with a most serious commencial West Indies, and the trade has fall~u
crisis. Tile revenue for January is ciliefly into the hands of a few capi-
only thirty tllousaild dollars, being only talists.
The Crisis in Newfoundland. 99
The immediate cause of the present niary straits, and Lord Grey, in his
financial disasters is accounted for in review of the colonial policy of Lord
some quarters by the action of the John Russells a(lmiuistration, de
trustees of the estate of a London mer- scribes the pauperizing effect of gifts
chant who carried on a large business made by this country to Newfoundland
in Newfoundland. It was his custom in 18461847 in relief of losses by fire,
to maintain the fish exporters by ac hurricanes, and the potatoe failure.
cepting their drafts, but now the tins- At one time no less than onefifth of
tees of his property have refused to do the public revenue was absoibed in the
this, and so the panic began, commu necessary calls of charity and of poor
Iicating itself with lightning rapidity relief. There have been few wealthy
to all classes. There are only two residents and very little taxable prop-
banks, The Union and The Coin erty in the island to fall back upon ifl
mercial, having in circulation bank tunes of an acute crisis. Generally
notes to the value of one million four speaking, the merchants who have
hundred thousand dollars, but not suffi made money out of the fishing industry
cient in the way of specie to redeem have been non-resident monopolists
them. On December 10 last they living in London or Bristol. In addi
closed their doors, and a general panic tion to the natural uncertainty of the
set in. It is clear that a colony that is harvest of the sea, the colonists of
so easily upset cannot boast of a very Newfoundland have frequently beeu
stable equilibrium. The system of compelled to face complications arising
banking as it prevails in our colonies is from a foreign policy over which they
not exactly that which finds favor with have exercised no control. Indeed,,
banking institutions in England, and from this cause no British colony has
perhaps it can hardly be expected that exl)erienced greater vicissitudes.
it should be similar. Land mortgages Just one hundred years ago the New
are a favorite kind of investment in the foundland merchants were setting forth
colonies, and in many instances cob- before a committee of the House of
nial banks have ample security and a Commons in 1793, the (lecliI)e of the
fair margin if only time be given for fisheries, but no sooner were their
realizing. But, in a panic of a few complaints uttered than a season of
days, the best calculations may be up- unexampled prosperity set in which
set an(l bankers forced to close their lasted from 1793 to the peace of 1814.
(loors. During this period our colonists, re
In colonies where there are many lieved from French and American
strings to the colonists bow, and many competition, pulsue(l their trade un
sources of agricultural and mineral challenged and untrammelled along the
wealth, it is evi(lent that recovery, whole seaboard, and princely fortunes
either complete or partial, is merely a vere amassed in a few years by people
question of time. A certain number of who entered the trade without any cap
sl)ecul:ttive bubbles are pricked and ital. Some wellknown houses netted
unsoun(l securities exposed, and there 20,000, 30,000 and even 60,000 p~r
is a general clearing of the financial annum, but of this enormous l)rofit
atmosphere, not without some salutary scarcely a single penny was invested
effects. But in a colony of one in in the island of Newfoundland. The
dustry only, and this a somewhat pre merchants and 51)eculators withdrew,
canons one, as in Newfoundland, the an(l the peace with France an(l Amer
difficulties of banking must be excep- ica cause(l a complete revulsion of
tionally embarrassing. For where, trade. A crisis arose and the large
indee(1, are the investments which PoI)ulatiofl that was attracted to the
p~m~e ample security and quick real- island in l)IO5PerOu5 times were ex-
ization ? posed to bankruptcy an(l ruin. Again
It is not the first time that New~ there was a cry for help to the impe
foundland has found herself in pecu- rial government, and through the solic
100
itations of the merchants, a select
committee of the House of Commons
was appointed to inquire into the state
of the trade of Newfoundland and into
the situation of that settlement. The
merchants coul(I only suggest one of
two alternatives, a bounty on the
fisheries to enable the British to com-
pete on equal terms with the French
and Americans, or the transportation
wholesale of the l)opulation elsewhere.
From the report it would appear that
there was little promise of agricultural
development, an(l no mention is made
of l)ossil)le mineral resources at that
date. The (listress of Newfoundland
is of a periodic if not of a chronic
or(ler, and, in spite of recent efforts of
Newfoundland politicians to iml~rove
the position of their country, the inev-
itable crash has come. Candid critics
affirm that for the l)ast ten years there
has been an annual deficit ; that the
civil service is extravagant, and there
has been a somewhat premature ambi-
tion to construct a railway of five hun-
dred miles, which will inflict a burden
of fourteen million dollars upon a pop-
ulation of two hundred thousand.
in ad(lition to their troubles, the
Newfoundlanders have a special griev-
ance in the French Shore Right,
which is none the less irritating be-
cause it has been going on for nearly
two hundred years. Along seven hun
died miles of the (leeply indented Ne~v
foundland coasts, from Cape St. John
to Cape Ray, the French claim a right
of landing for the pUrp~5e of curing
and drying their fish. In a discussion
on InterBritish Trade an(1 its Influence
on the Unity of the Empire, before
a meeting of the fellows of the Royal
Colonial Institution (189091), Sir Wil-
liam Whit eway, the present l)remier
and attorneygeneral of the new gov-
ernment, ma le some pertinent obser-
vations. The French Shore Rights
interfere l)rilcticilll~ with colonial (le
velopment. The only access to the
best mineral regions is on the western
coast, an(I here the French bar the
way. No capitalist., he remarked, will
invest money under the present, irri-
tating conditions of opening up a new
industry. The country, therefore, is
likely to remain a wilderness for-
ever, because the French have a right
to fish upon the coast, and object to
the slightest interference. He put the
situation forcibly when he remarked,
The sovereignty of the island of
Newfoundland is in the queen ; but if
this be the construction of the treaties
far better is it to possess a right of
fishing four or five months in the year
than to be sovereign of the soil. On
the one hand we are crushed by the
French bounties, and on the other the
aggressions of the French. on the west-
ern shore prevent us from developing
one-1]alf the island. I will mention
one or two examples. A gentleman
has a tract of land in which there are
seams of coal, and, he was forming a
company to work it ; but the moment
the (liscovery was made that the coal
(leposit could only be reached from the
treaty coast, and that the grants would
be clothed with the conditions to
which I have referred, then those who
were allowed to form the company (IC-
dined to do so, and the land remains a
waste. Again, a gentleman on the
coast discovered a valuable lead-mine,
and sank a shaft within about three
hundred yards of the coast. No
Frenchman had ever fished within the
neighborhood, but a remonstrance ~vas
made by the French government that
the working of this mine might in some
way affect the French fishery,.and the
working was discontinued. A factory
for the canning of lobsters was erected
by an Englishman on the coast. The
factory was ordered to be taken (lown,
and he had no redress ; yet, soon after,
he had the mortification of witnessing a
French factory erected under the in-
structions of a British officer ,andin
the very locality from which his own
l)roperty had been removed.
Apropos of the lobster trade, a curi-
ous natural history point was raised as
to whether a lobster was a fish or
not, an~l an appeal was made to the
scientific kno~vledge of. Sir William
Flower, who certainly excluded lobsters
from the class of fish according to the
modern naturalists definition, although,
The Crisis in Newfoundland.
at the same time, he owned that, at
the time of the treaties, natural history
delinitions were not so clear in the
minds of the signatories. Around the
wl ole question of Newfoundland there
hang, it would seem, a large number
both of small and great uncertainties.
The late Judge Pinsent, a New-
foundland colonist, has added his testi
monv, and records in a paper read
before the fellows of the Royal Colo-
nial Institute in 1884, that the French
exercise practically exclusive right of
fishery along the treaty shore. This
not only circumscribes the fishing area
of the colonist, but it practically
closes to agricultural settlement and
mining enterprise a region which pos-
sesses great cal)abilities. In no other
colony is there such an imperiurn in
irnperio as this. British colonists are
actually debarred from their o~vn
shores, and the French have construed
a mere favor into a positive right ; and
the worst of it is, that no diplomacy as
yet has ever succeeded in allaying the
irritation felt on both sides. At the
time of the Treaty of Utrecht, Great
Britain had the power to (lictate her
own terms absolutely, but, as events
have turned out, certain ill-conceived
reservations, pregnant with mischief,
were made in favor of France. Unfor-
tunately, neither the Treaty of Ver-
sailles, in 1783, nor the Treaty of 1814
men(le(l matters much, and the clause
in the latter treaty, which confirmed
fishing l)rivileges to France, was de
dared by Mr. Pitt to be most (Ian
gerou s to the maritime strength and
future power of Great Britain. The
worst of it is that the Newfoundland
question is never argued by our neigh-
bors exclusively upon its own merits.
French diplomatists se em t.o import
from Egypt, from West Africa, and
wherever English colonial interests
touch those of France, a kind of acri-
mony which carries them beyond the
51)irit and letter of former agreements.
To our naval officers, the task of put-
ting in force hardly (lelined regulations
against our own colonists is most irk-
some an(I disagreeable. -.
Historically, Newfoundland, as En
101
glands oldest colony, has a most pic-
turesque and interesting past. It was
discovered by Cabot and an English
crew, in June, 1497, and, in 1583, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, under commission
from Queen Elizabeth, landed and took
formal possession of the island. Here
it was that Lord Baltimore (Sir George
Calvert) embarked, in 1624, upon his
romantic entc rprise at Ferryland, in
the peninsula of Avalon, offering his
home as an asylum to Charles I. ; here
it was that visions of colonization pre-
sented themselves, in the early days of
British colonization, to Lord Bacon,
and a number of noblemen and gentle-
men. Lord Bacon declared that the
fisheries of Newfoundlan(l were richer
than the mines of Peru, and it is cer-
tainly true, that a gold mine may soon
exhaust itself, but the capacity of the
codfish for reproduction is infinite.
That our oldest colony should now
bc banned and stigmatize(l as bankrupt
and impecunious is an evil stroke of
fate.
There are two alternatives before the
Newfoundland colonists, one of them
being absorption into the Dominion of
Canada, the other a return to the con
clition of a crown coh)nv. In the end
the colonists will have to choose for
themselves which alternative to adopt.
Numerically they would he but a small
addition to the Dominion, being two
hundred thousand all told, and it is by
no means certain that the central gov-
ernment at Ottawa would welcome
them, in their present plhzht , as pooi
and (listressed neii~lbors. It is a far
cry from St. Joli ns to Ott a wit, and the
provinces of the Dominion are suffi-
ciently scattered already for the central
government to a(lmiI)ister, an(l the
guarantees the Canadian izove rnmnent
will have to offer must be of a substan-
tial kind. The business that New-
foundland does is mai mmlv with countries
outsi(le the Dominion, with Europe,
South America, and the West Indies,
an(l it is (loubtful whet her incorpora-
tion with the Domnimmion would end in
giving an impetus to their solitary in-
dustry. They may find little in com-
mon with the province of Quebec, and
The Crisis in Newfoundland.
102
The Crisis in Newfoundland.
be strangers, commercially speaking, Comparatively little is known of th~
in the lake i)roviilces, where the cob interior, which abounds in rivers atid
nists are their own fishermen. On the ponds, as they are locally called,
other hand, it is said that a very large and lakes. Apparently there is no
section of the colonists are in favor of very lofty mountain range to explore,
the conditions of a crown colony. but it is somewhat a reflection upon
There is much to be said in favor of our enterprising geographers, whose
this alternative. Credit would be re name is legion, that they have so com
store(l to the colony and schemes of pietely l)assed Newfoundland over.
development in the river valleys and in The adjoining coasts of Labrador, a.
the interior assume a tangible form. dependency of Ne~vfoundland, peopled
The late Ju(lge Pinsent has set before in the summer chiefly with a migratory
us the l)Os.Sibilities of Newfoundland, fishing population, are more or less
in oilier places than the hinterland of unexj)lored by the knightserrant of
the French shore, in a paper read be geography, although they are probably
fore the fellows of the Royal Colonial fairly well known in their genera] fea
Institute, in 18845. tures by the Moravian missionaries,
In Newfoundland, he then observed, who have been long settled at certain
there has not been the marvellous well known centres. But we might
progress which has attended the great fairly ask for a closer examination of
Australasian colonies, which teem these regions, where we have good
with various and boundless wealth ; reason for believing that John Cabot
nor (10 I compare her as a centre of made his first landfall, and won the
populatioii with some of the richer honor of discovering the Americaii
fields of settlement which their su- continent for an English vessel and
perior soil offers to the Canadian crew.
immigrant but this I (10 say of New- In the case of Newfoundland, as in
foundland, that, with her incomparable the case of all our colonies, the ques
fisheries she combines a soil which tion of trade piiiicipies forces itself
nearly everywhere in the island can be upon our notice. In the discussion
made a valuable auxiliary to them for above alluded to, on InterBritish Trade
the 5u1)l)Ort of the people, and in other and its Influence on the Unity of the
parts may be ma(le more thai self Empire, the lion. A. XV. Harvey, mem-
supporting and independent of the ber of the new government, without
fisheries. Then, as a mii~eral-bearing a portfolio, contributed some remarks
country, the rich metalliferous char which have a bearing upon the alterna
acter of the island, as attested by the tive presented to Newfoundland of
common consent of scientific men, only linking her destinies with Canada.
requires to be (levebope(l to place the Clearly, if Mr. Harvey represents any
colony in the very foremost rank of considerable section of public opinion
British possessions abroad ; then at in the island, the alternative cannot be
the heads of the great bays, in the very Pol)lIlar. He said, One of the
tracts surroutabing the great lakes, in great differences which separates me
the valleys of many of the ~ there from Canada at the presei~t time is
are reporte(l to be contained nearly that, as a Newfoundlander, I am the
three million acres adapted for settle- strongest of freetraders. Under the
uent and cultivation, and that there circumstances of our island, our policy
are large areas of fine timber land. is to be entirely for free trade. Can-
The deposit of gypsum is enormous, a(la, with her immense territory, diver
an(l buildingslate, granite, limestone, sities of climates and soil, her immense
and marble abound. mineral and fishing resources, is almost
To the tourist and sportsman, and self-supplying with all necessaries and
especially the fisherman, Newfound- luxuries of life. her best market for
land holds forth in the summer and all her produce would be within her
autumn a great number of attractions. own (boors, and consequently she de
The Crisis in Newfoundland.
sires greatly a larger population, and
therefore her natural policy is strongly
p1~)tective. Newfoundland, on the
oilier hand, produces little that she
consumes, and must export nearly all
she pro(luces. Naturally, then, her
necessities are for a free-trade policy.
A ~)olicy, then, which at the l)resent
time suits Canadas needs would be
disastrous to Newfoundland, and as
Cana(la cannot, and ought not, to sub
or(linate the welfare of the many of
her l)opulation to the few of the people
of Newfoundland, we must, in case of
union, l)e the sufferers by a policy
which would be for the benefit of the
whole Dominion. It is rarely so can-
did an avowal comes from Englands
colonies in favor of her ruling trade
l)rii)eil)les, and federationists may be
cxeuse(l if they indulge in the thought
and wish that perhaps from En-
glands oldest colony the beginnings
of federation may come, and come, as
may seem most desirable to some polit-
ical economists, from the adoption of a
similar trade policy. For the rest,
there is no lack of loyalty and of the
iml)erial sentiment in the island, in
sl)ite of niggard treatment in times
past. There must be substantial agree-
ment on defence questions in a set-
tlement that is so imbued with naval
tra(litions and the maritime spirit, and
feels that Englands arm is the strong-
est that the colony, as an island, can
rest ul)on.
Fiom another point of view it is in-
structive to contrast the apathy of En-
gland in these ~vaters with the feverish
zeal of the Freneh. St. Pierre and
Miquelon and the French shore are
simply insignilicant remnants of that
~ast transatlantic empire once the
dream of Colbert and Richelieu. But
it is a foothold out of which something
may be made, an4 the fishing industry
in itself l)lovides a capital school in
which seamanship ma.y be learned anew
by every generation of the French
mercantile marine. From Dunkirk to
St. Jean de Luz there is scarcely a
hamlet which has not sent forth the
prime of its youth to court danger on
103
the shores of Newfoundland, and if a
hardy class of seamen are thus pro-
duced, State bounties are not spent in
vain. In all our naval wars the Breton
privateers have been our most formi-
dable antagonists. We possess in New-
foundland a seafaring population no
whit inferior to the best material that
goes to man the French ~var-ships;
there is a fleet of eighteen hundred
vessels in Newfoundland ~ivin~ occu-
pation to thirty thousand able-bodied
seamen, and if ever a transatlantic
wing of our imperial navy were
formed, no better headquarters could
be discovered than St. Johus, which is
only sixteen hundred and forty miles
direct steaming from the coast of Ire-
land, and on the line of telegraphic
communication.
Strategically there is no place on the
face of the globe that boasts such
a commanding position as Newfound-
land, lying, as it does, in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, and holding the gateway
to Canada and the West; and there is
no l)lace in the whole of our colonial
dominions where we could less afford
to lose influence and power. But we
might lay the greatest stress first and
foremost upon the opportunities we
possess in gaining there a few recruits
for our navy. England has ships and
money, but she is by no means rich in
able-bodied seamen. Our mercantile
marine has frequently to fall back upon
Scandinavians and foreigners for re-
cruits, and the mercantile marine
should be a nursery of seamen. It will
be an evil day for England if she finds
that she is unable to man fully her
ships, which are her first, if not her
only, line of defence. The germ of a
colonial navy has appeared in Austra-
lian waters ; but neither around the
coasts of the great island-continent in
the south, nor in New Zealand, nor at
the Cape, is there such material as in
the hardy brood of seamen who plough
the waters of Newfoundland, the Gulf
of the St. Lawrence, and of Baffins
Bay. Under the circumstances of a
crown colony the most may be made
of our opportunities.
WILLIAM GRESWELL.
104
From The Nineteenth Century.
THE BUILDER OF THE ROUND TOWERS.
A CHRONICLE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
Beatissimus Episeopus Fechinus,
Sanctus Hiberni~, forever arid ever
blessed an(l honored ! I, who am but
a poor monk, very unlearned and un-
skilled in writing, dare scarce for shame
inscribe his name. For the report of
his (leeds and of his miracles, and the
fame of his great glory, and of his
Courage and wisdom and sanctity, have
gone abroad into all lands, and not in
Eriun alone, but wheresoever the saints
of God are spoken of. Nevertheless
must I endeavor to do what I can, un-
worthy though I be, seeing that the
task has been laid upon me as a duty of
obedience, therefore may I not shrink
from it.
Now, touching that first thought and
conception with regard to the island
which he eventually inhabited, and
which is still called by his name, that
first thought and conception has been
related in diverse manners, but this is
the manner in which I have received
it, therefore if I tell it wrongly, or if in
the telling I make any error, or omit
anything that I ought to tell, I pray
that it may be forgiven me, arid im-
puted to my ignorance, rather than to
any malice or desire to deceive.
One thing at least is certain and
beyond dispute namely, that the mon-
astery of Cluain-Duach in Corca Bas-
ciun, where the saint grew up and
received his training, stands close to
the edge of the Western Ocean, in the
region which men now call Thomond.
And that Western Ocean, and portioii
of that Western Ocean, is known to be
the fiercest and most robustious in the
entire world. For the waves of the sea
beat eternally against the rocks along
its edge, the water rising up whitely,
even to the top of the same, so that in
winter time, or in the great gales of
autumn, no man can approach the
shore without his soul failing him, both
for the rage of the elements them-
selves, and still more for thinking upon
those evil powers and influences, whose
The Builder of the Bound Towers.
fury is seen in that watery fury, and
their hellish hate an(l turbulence in
the beating of the sea against the
rocks, and the gnashing and twisting of
their lost and evil souls in the gnashing
and twisting of the froth, which is
flung high up to the very tops of the
cliffs, so that even good. and pious men
monks and bishops who dwell in
these par~ts are oftentimes afraid t&
apl)roacli the shore, fearing to encoun-
ter the like hellish influences, which
influences, (loubtless for some good
purpose, are permitted to endure for a
season.
Now in the midst of this fury of the
ocean there are found along that part
of the shore of Erinn a great s tore of
islands, which are called of the people
illauns, skerries, or carrigeens, accord-
ing to their size. An(l against these
illauns, skerries, and c~rrigeens the
waves attain to a yet greater violence
than elsewhere, they being of such a
small size, and having the sea upon
every side of them. And several of
them bear a very evil and (headly repu-
tation, such as the one called mis
Gloire, upon which no woman, nor yet
creature of the sex of woman, dare
lard but she will immediately (lie, or
yet again another upon the which
whoso touchcth it, or even touchieth
aught that hath grown on it, his flesh
and his skin withereth, and the hairs
of his head drop off. But of all those
islands in the Western Ocean the one
which at that tune bore the worst and
the deadliest reputation was a small
and very steep illaun lying a little way
from off the land, which was known as
the Wicked iflaun, and by no other
name, being so called by reason of the
curse which St. Enda of Aran had laid
upon it. For St. Enda having sent
certain of his monks from the three
holy islands to visit St. Senan in his
monastery at Inis Cathargh,2 on the
way back they were caught in a great
1(1 the waves risino~ high er ~
storm ni ~
higherSatan himself doubtless as-
sisting from beneath their curraghs
were cast ashore and dashed to pieces
South Clare. 2 Iniscattery.
against the illaun, the sides of which
were too steep for them to climb.
Therefore St. Enda cursed it, and
cursed it did remain, so that no fishing
boat durst so much as pass near it, and
it was sai(l that even to rest the eyes
upOn it ~oul(1 scarce be done save at
great risk both to the body and to the
soul.
Thuis being known to all men, not to
be gainsai(I, it remaineth but to see in
what manier that great and solemn
curse was lifted off again. Now the
first iati nation that such a miracle
~vould come to pass befell in this wise.
It chanced upon a certain ti(Ie that the
01(1 abbot of CinainDuach, whose name
was Garbhain, with Ferdomnach the
sacristan, and others of the younger
monks, went dowuu together to the
shore seeking for sloke-weeds to boil.
And having gathered together a good
store of it, also of shellfish, both the
smaller and the larger kinds, they
l)aused for a while upon the shore,
close to the point which is now called
Foo ii agh.
It chanced that day the sun was
shining very brightly, and it shone not
only upon the sea and upon the nearer
rocks, but upon all that country of
Corca Bascinn, an(l beyond it again to
the noun tains of Con macn eMai a 1
which rise over the New Sea. Then
the abbot turned himself round, and,
seeing him (10 50, the monks also
turne(l themselves round with one ac-
cord, and they all looked south. And
lo ! there too the sun shone brightly,
even to the uttermost bounds of the
ocean. Also towards Ciarraige Lua-
cra 2 the sun shone, making it all ap-
pear faii and seemly. Only upon one
spot it shone not, and that spot was no
other than the wicked Waun, the edge
of which rose up steep and black
against the water, its shadow also lying
out behind it, as it were a stain of ink
Upon the sea.
Then the sacristan Ferdonmach,
looki n~ quickly away from it, crossed
himself, and said to the monks that
stood nearest to him that it was easy
1 Gonnemara.
2 Kerry.
loti
to see that tile island was indeed ac-
cursed, for that it was tile one sj)ot in
all that coast upon which the sun never
shone, neither in winter nor yet in
summer, and that for his part he Ilad
little doubt that it was at that time and
continually inhabited by raging and
turbulent devils.
Hearing him speak so, St. Fechin
(who was at that time only a plain
monk, and the youngest, moreover, of
the entire company) lifted up his eyes,
and looked long and stea(lily at the
Wicked Waun, as if to challenge it.
Then, being filled with the Spirit of
God and with great boldness, he sj)oke
out suddenly before them all, saying
that for his part he was not afraid of
any devils, howsoever turbulent, and
that he would as lief go there as any-
~vllere else, and that he was certain,
moreover, that St. Enda would never
l)ermit devils to destroy any man who
was (loing no harm, and that a monk
who durst not go to any place, whether
it were cursed or ~vhether it were not
cursed, was not fit, in his opinion, to
be a monk at all.
But the abbot, hearing him speak
so, rebuked him for his presumption,
and for opening ilis lips without
license, he being the youngest of them
all, and they not discerning the spirit
that spoke through his lips. Also tile
sacristan Ferdomnach, wIlo was a
choleric man, smote him su(Idenly over
the mouth, which chastisement Fechin
accepte(l silently, uttering no word of
coniplaint. Nevertheless that which
lie had spoken lie kept in his mind, he
being never one wont to take up aughlt
lightly, nor yet to relinquishl it again
when once it had found an entrance
into his mind.
With that tile abbot once more
turned himself about, and the monks
did so likewise with one accord, and
they all fared back together to the
monastery. But it was often after-
wards observed that whensoever he
was not at work Fechiin would stand
upon the seashore, and look away
towards the Wicked Waun, as if some
thought worked in his heart concerning
it, and from that day and that hour he
The Builder of the Round Towers.
The Builder of the Bound Towers.
106
seemed to all men to increase in stat astery, and reported himself (lutifully
ure, and in strength, and in wis(lom, to the al)bot, lie woUl(l repair straiirht
and in all things that pertain unto way to his own cell, which he loved
knowledge. For he grew exceedingly, exceedingly, albeit it was ruder than
both in his outward man and in the any other, being open on two sides,
strength of his hands, and yet more in and blown about by all the gales of
the inner thini~s of the mind and of ocean. And here he would labor hard
the soul. For the Spirit of God ~vorkec1 with his hands, his aims bare, an(l the
in him, so that his fame increased sweat pouring from his face, fashion
daily, and was spread over the whole ing all manner of vessels, both large
south of Erinn. For lie grew to be amid small, of which die greater numu
knowledgeable in all the arts, and be her have in the evil times l)eemi lost,
caine captain and head monk, the first but of which some remain with us unto
in the monastery for the fashioning of this day.
the vessels of the ehiurch, aiid of every- Yet these works amid fashionings of
thing that is wrought in iron, oi in his were but a small portion of all that
silver, or in gold. And great fame St. Fechuin accomplished at that time.
came to the monastery because of him, For he travelled imieess~mntly, not oily
and because of the number of his throughout Corca Bascimimi and Ciar
works whdchi lie wrought, ~vhiich was raige Luacra, but over the whole of
greater thami the number wrought by Erimin, visiting all monasteries, amid
any other simighe monk ever before or shrines, and eremnitical hilaces. Like
since in Erian. For the number of xvise, the greater chiefs lie visited, amid,
the iron bells that lie beat amid ham wheresoever lie went, lie admuonished
mnered out with his own hands was one them, showing that evil days were at
hundred amid thirtyseven, and of silver hand, amid would shortly come, and
croziers twelve, arid of the larger chal- that they ought to make ready for
ices fourteemi, amid of the lesser ones them, trustimig in thie power of God,
sixty-two, so that it became clear to all but also preparing themselves, even as
men that lie must have had aid fiom lie would hiave them to (10.
on high, else had lie iiever accomii rrhiemi a (lay cammie whiemi the resolve
phishied thie half or the quarter of all took Fechiin suddenly that lie would
that lie did accOiiil)hish and did achieve, visit Rome. Accordingly lie started to
One score and seveii years St. Fechiimi walk thither without warmiimig or ~rep
spent iii thIs manner, vorking contin aratiomi of any kind. Amid as lie jour
ualhy iii the monastery, but at the end neyed Rornewards, he visited all the
of that time, having beemi consecrated lawhs that lie between it amid Erimmn,
a bishop, lie remained no longer ~vholly ani(h all the cities, and stromig fomtresses,
in it as heretofore, but travelled about and monasteries, amid kimigs palaces in
to an(1 fro over all Corca Bascimin amih thiose lands, so far as they ~vere on his
Ciarraige Luacra, not having any fixed path, walking always by himself, hay
1esi(lence, but going backwards an(l ing neither company nor chiamige of
for~vards, wheresoever he was called raimnent, wearimig ever the hnahdt of his
amid ~vamited, accordinig to tine mannier order, and hiavimig his head hare, and
and the pattern of the aiicient bishops for all defence a great kimoti ed holly
of Erinn. stick, which he carried reahy in his
Nevertheless, lie held himself stiih hands.
in a measure to belong to his own Imi this way, travelling day and night,
nioniastery, and oftentimes they would aiid niot resting ammywhiere for more
hear his voice calling to them while than one night at a time, lie arrived
lie was still a long ~vay off upon the before the gates of Rome. Albeit,
seashore, for hiis voice was the most when lie arrived thiere, it was the
powerful, and the one that had the gloamning of the evening, so that he
deepest compass, of any voice in founid them shut before hnimn. Accord-
Eriun. And having entered the mnon- imgly lie called to the gatekeeper, and
The Builder of the Bound Towers.
desired thatthe gates should be oj)ened.
But the gatekeeper refused to open
them, saying that it was now past the
hour, and that none therefore might
enter the city until the mornino.
0
When he heard that wor(l, St. Fechin
was wroth, and he lifted up that great
knotted stick of Irish holly which he
carrie(l in his lian(ls, and struck with it
three times loudly upon the gates of
Rome. And then occurred that great
an(l won(lerful miracle the fame of
which has gone abroad unto all lanols,
for the glory of God, and the greatcr
praise and manifestation of the saints
of Erinn. For no sooner had the echo
an(l the soun(l of those three l)lows
which the saint struck die(l away, than
the i.e followed i in ine(l iately a gre~o t
(lrummii]g, and clashing, and riving
noise, so that the whole city of Rome
heard it. And great fear fell Ul)O~ all
the l)eoI)le of the city, they being fully
persuaded that the judgment (lay had
come. And lo! Romes great gates,
even her gates of iron and of bronze,
and of beaten gold, opened suddenly
and wi(lely of themselves. Further
than this, every gate and door through
out the whole city of Rome, aiid every
single thing upon the which there was
any lock or fastening (whether inter-
nal or exterior), they all opened su(l
(lenly of themselves ; there was not
so much as one single bolt or lock that
remained closed and fastened within
the city.
Then St. Fechin walked in, and
abode peaceably there that night. And
it was told to the pope early the next
morning how that a tall cleric of the
Irish Scols had conic to Rome, and all
that had occurred when the gatekeeper
had refused to open the gates to him.
Then the pope marvelled greatly at
what he heard, and he said to those
that told him, Bring us here that
Irish cleric. So St. Fechin was
brought before the pope, wearing his
rol)e in which he had walked from
Erinn, and carrying his great knotted
stick of Irish holly in his hand. And
the pol)e, when he saw him, marvelled
the more, because of the great height
and breadth of the man, which wa~
107
greater than the height or the bieadth
of any man whom he had ever seen
before ; also at the report of all that lie
had (lone, and of the marvels that had
been wrought by him. And when the
l)OPC sl)ake to him, ati(l inquire(l con-
cerning his travels, Fechin answered
him in a voice so great and masterful
that the POPC was fain to turn away his
head, not being able to support lime
volume of it. And every known or
famous man in the whole of that city
of Rome, as well as the abbot of Rome,
and the POI)C himself, and his twelve
cardinals, all gathered round to see the
treat and ~vonderful Irish cleric.
0
Then, when a few days wei~e past,
being anxious to test him moie com
pletely, the pope gave or(lers that he
should say mass in his presence, and
iii the presence of Romes people all.
So they led Fechin with them to St.
I~eters high altar. And the altar was
(Iressed for his use, but no missal was
given him, neither was any vessel, nor
any bell provided. So, having put on
his vestments, and looked about him,
St. Fechin perceived that, these things
being absent, the altar was not fit or
rea(ly for the celebration of mass.
Lo, I see plainly that this is meant
for the proving of me, said he to him-
self, I being a stranger here, and
coming from a far land, and a small
land, and one that has not of late won
any fresh fame or reputation. With
that he bowed himself down before the
altar of St. Peters, and prayed ear-
nestly to God, the Creator of all things
whether animate or inanimate, also to
~t. Patrick, and to St. Columba, and to
St. Columbanus, and to St. Kieran of
Saigher, that his country and their
country might stiffer no wrong or
diminution at his hands. And havino
thins prayed, lie stood erect, and
stretched his haiids above his head,
high into the air before them all, he
standing before the altar and having
his back to them. And lo ! when lie
dre~v his hands down again, one of
those small iron bells which lie had
himself fashioned at Corca Basciun, far
off beside the great sea, was in lois
hands, also a chalice of the Irish pat-
108
tern, and a small Gospel (Soscila beg)
such as he was wont to use at home.
Then he rejoiced greatly, not for his
own sake, but for the glory of God, and
for the sake of his country, which ha(l
suffered no shame, but had rather
received fresh glory at his hands. And
straightway he celebrated mass in the
prescnce of the ~~pe and of the Ro-
mane all, and afterwards he preached
to them in the same place. And his
voice was heard not only throughout
the church, but across the entire city
of Rome. So that certaiu mockers (of
whom there were a great store in that
town) (leclared jestingly that, for a cer-
tainty, one of the old gods of the
heathen must have come back to visit
it, for that no mere mortal could have
had such a voice, it having a sound as
of the wind, audi of the sea, and of all
the stormier elements of nature in it,
as well as a power and persuasiveness
which carried it straight into the hearts
of all that listened.
After that St. Fechin remained five
weeks in Rome, and when he left yet
another miracle was vouchsafed to him.
For that small iron bell with which he
had celebrated mass, and ~vhich, on his
departure, he left behind him upon the
altar of St. Peters, was found after-
wardIs to have gone from thence, and
so soon as ever he returned to Corca
Bascinn, as lie neared his own cell,
behold I it was there waiting for him,
hanging upon a birchen bough near
the door. And this miracle happened
three times over, for thrice he sent it
back to Rome, and each time it stole
home again after him. 1herefore, the
name of eloidhech, or The Deserter,
came to be henceforward bestowed
upon that bell.
Then, after leaving Rome, St. Fechin
walked homewards to Erinn, returning
to it by a (lifferent way from that which
he had taken on leaving, to the intent
that he might see all that lay upon his
road. And all that he saw, and all that
he learned upon his travels, and every
fresh work and new thing that he ob-
I For very similar Roman miracles performed by
St. Molasius of Devenish, see Silva Gadelica,
pp. 28-29.
The Builder of the Round Towers.
serve(l, these lie carefully noted down,
not writing them upon parchment, or
UI)Ofl waxen tables, but carrying theim
with him engraved on his o~vn heart,
ready for the use and for the service of
his own country and his own people.
In this way, as he was nearing home
it chanced that upon a certain tide he
was in the land of the Armorican Gauls,
~vhich is upon the seacoast. And
having arrived late one night in a mon-
astery, early the next morning lie
walked abroad to see what manner of
place he was in, as was his wont and
habit. And as lie did so, he came sud-
denly upon a number of masons, who
were at work upon a tower for the
(lefence and protection of that monas-
tery. Then, having stood a while to
contemplate them, St. Fechin perceived
how that this tower was not only of a
great height, and of a great strength,
but was built quite differently from any
tower that lie had seen ever before.
For the (loorway of it stood some
twenty feet or more above the ground,
and the windows, though small, were
exceedingly strong, amid the shape of it
entirely round, and the masonry ~vork
extraordinarily close and fine ; roof it
had as yet none, that portion of it being
uncompleted. Then, having stoo(l a
while longer to observe it, suddenly the
Spirit of God dlesceli(le(l upon him ~vith
great force, so that he l)erceived ari(l
knew for a certainty of what great
h)roflt the like towers would be, and
were destined moreover in Gods good
provi(leIice to be, to his own land, and
es~)ecially to the monasteries iii it,
which greatly needed protection. With
that, girding up his robe, lie ~vent (lowli
sudl(leiily aniongst the masons, and
takinm~ a tool out of the hands of one
of them, set to work silently in their
midst, for lie spake not the tongue
whuich they spoke, neither did thiey(
sl)eak nor un(lerstan(l his tongue.
But those masons beholding one
whom they knew not thus suddenly at
work amongst them, an(l not being
willing that a stranger should learn
I heir secrets ran upon him with one
accord to lay hands upon him violently.
Seeing which St. Fechin, cryingout in
The Builder of the Bound Towers.
his great voice, and calling upon God
to aid him, their feet became stuck fast
to the ground, and their hands and
their arms glued to tl)eir SI(leS, an(l
their very tongues dave to their
mouths, so that they could utter no
word, neither in their own tongue nor
in any other. And so they remained,
lost in won(leI and miserable confusion,
until St. Fechin. taking pity on them,
restored to them the use of their limbs
and of their tongues, and moreover
gave to them for their usc both the
Latin and the Irish tongues, neither of
which before they knew a single word
Then, when their tongues were
loosed, they perceived with one accord
what a miracle had been wrought upon
them, an(l they turned to God, and be-
lieve(l with their whole hearts. And
straightway they showed to St. Fechin
all their secrets, and all the art of their
masonry, and all that they knew, so
that in a little while he became a mas-
ter builder, more expert than any of
them, able to build such to~veis, and to
set them straight and firm and solid
upon the ground, as was afterwards
abundantly seen and tested.
After that he abode nine days in that
monastery in order to perfect his knowl-
edge. And all who saw him there, and
all who became acquainted with him,
bestowed their souls affection upon
him. So great was the favor that he
~von in the eyes of the abbot, and of
his monks, and of all who saw him,
that they could not en(lure it when the
time came that he must leave them.
And when that day came, they fol-
lowed him a long way on his road,
weeping and lamenting because he
would not remain. And having come
to the spot where they must needs part
company, they all lifted up their voices
together, and blessed him, saying
Good bath been thy visit to our house, oh
strong-armed and pleasant-tongued cleric
of the western Scots! Prosperous be the
road that thou takest back to thine own
land. Happy shall he be that showeth
thee any kindness or hospitality, bitt he
that showeth thee any evil thing, let his
dwelling become an abomination to him;
upon the black fiagstones of Hell let him
lie for ever and ever, because thy face has
been a benediction to us, and thy voice as
loud music in our ears, and our hearts
cleave tenderly to thy heart, and we are
grieved and exceedingly loath to part with
thee, oh strong-armed and pleasant-voiccd
cleric of the western Scots
These were the words that they sang
that (lay, all of them together, and
they all wept, lifting up their voices
and complaining, because he woul(l not
remain. Nevertheless, after he had
parted from them with many friendly
words, St. Fechin travelled away right
joyfully over sea and land, neither
pausing nor delaying any more, but
growing lighter in heart day by day,
because he was now nearing home.
And so he came at last to the shores of
little Erinn, and to his own country of
the Corca Basciun once more.
But as the devil, which loveth dis-
cord would have it, a very evil and a
very contentious spirit had meanwhile
got abroad over all that l)art of Erina.
For every chief and prince, and every
son of a l1.ince, was at war with some
other chief or prince, so that the whole
of south Erinn was filled with the
noise of their contentions. Neither
were these contentions about any great
matters, such as might fittingly take
men to their deaths, but about matters
of no account, so thimt more men were
slain that year than had been for many
years past, yet none could say where-
fore they were slain, or to what end,
nor yet in whose cause, nor could even
l)ut any name to those ivais, for the
friends of one (lay became the foes of
the next, and all was noise, and fury,
and most bloody and discomfortable
confusion.
Seeing this, and observing how great
a store of men and treasure was being
wasted to no end, St. Fechin was
greatly grieved, and, moreover, was
very wrathful, knowing, as he did,
what evil days were in store, and must
surely come soon, and all the sooner
an(l the more surely because none
made any l)rovision for them. For
already, three veais before this, the
black ships of the heathen Gall had ap
109
110
peared for the first time upon the coast
of Eriun, and had descended Upon Lois
Patrick, and had ravage(l and (lestroye(l
many places, carrying off everything
that they found in them, as well as
many men and women as slaves to
their ships.
Being, therefore, fully persUa(1C(l
that they would shortly come again,
an(l yet in greater numbers an(l with
more ferocity than before, St. Fechin
went to and fro over the whole south
of Erino, and along both shores of the
river Senan ,~ en(Ieavoring to persuade
the chiefs and 1)rinces to lay asi(le their
disputings and to unite as brethren,
assuring them an(l prophesying to
them that, unless they did so, they
woul(l, withoutdoubt, be (lefeated afl(l
destroyed, the heathen being so fierce
and cruel, as well as so skilled an(l
practise(l in all the arts of war, and
that they, being found separate an(l
divided, would become the prey of the
pagan Gall, and would be made his
slaves and his bondsmen, and that the
altars of God would be everywhere
overturne(I, an(l that their wives and
their daughters would become the chat-
tels and the things of the heathen ; all
which predictions have since come to
pass, as we who have lived in the evil
days know only too well, even as the
saint at that time predicted.
Then certain of those chiefs and
princes believed his words, and for-
bore from their disl)utes. But others,
and the greater number of them, said
Lo ! the pagan Gall have come but
once, wherefore, then, should we look
that they should ever return again ?
While others thought ~vithin them-
selves that if it was only the men of
the east or the north that were harmed,
an(l slain and carried away, well, it
was no very great matter. For one
reason, therefore, or another they
mostly betook themselves presently
again to their fightings, and their host
ings, an(l their harryings in which they
Look such delight, even as they had
done before St. Fechin returned to
Eriun.
1 Shannon.
Then when he perceived that his
words went for nought with them the
saint was full of wrath, and pro
nounced a great curse against those
who, having heard his words, paid no
heed to them. Likewise he went con-
tinually to and fro, visiting all the
monasteries throughout the whole of
Erinn, an(l wheresoever he went he
besought the abbot and the brethren of
those monasteries that they would make
haste to build them defences ; and
es~)ecialhy lie besought them to erect
tall bell-towers, or cloicctheagh, of the
same kind and description as those
which he had learned himself to con-
struct in the land of Armorica, show-
ing them how all the sick of the
monastery, and all treasures, whether
precious metals or manuscripts, could
be safely stored in such towers, they
being of their own nature so strong
that a few men, and those unlearned in
the arts of war, might readily defend
them against a host.
Then at certain of the monasteries
the abbot and the brethren attended to
his wor(ls, and having obtaiiied their
consent, St. Fechii n straightway gathi
ered together a store of workmen and
these lie taught all that lie had learned
in the land of Armorica, showing them
how to build the towers, and how to
set thieni firm an(l erect upon their
bases. And then for the first time tall
cloicctheagh began to arise in the land,
aII(l all who saw them were greatly as-
tonished at their strength and their
height, and at the symmetry of their
mason-work, although as yet they were
less lofty and of a less l)elfect sym-
metry than many that were in the
after-days built.
Howbeit at the greater number of the
monasteries the abbot and the nionks
refused to allow him to build such
towers, (leclarin(~ that the cost of then(
was too great, an(l tiot believin~ more-
over, that the (langer was so near as he
Sai(l. And anion~st those was his own
monastery of CluninDuach, in Corca
Basciun, whose old abbot beiiig now
(le~l(h, t he sacristan Ferdoninachi bed
been elected abbot in his room, which
same was a man suspicious by nature
The Builder of the Bound Towers.
like Builder of the Bound Towers.
of all things that were new, and one,
moreover, never willing that aught
Shoul(l he l)r0P05C(l or done in the
monastery but such things as he him-
self proposed or did.
Finding thut all he coul(l say availed
not hin~, St. Fechin at last rose up sud-
denly in his phice, and with a great
oath swore that he would no longer
ietnain in that monastery, nor yet set
foot in it ever ai~ai11 till he die(1. Key
ertlicless, because of the trouble that
he foresa~v coming upon Corca Bas-
cinn, lie resol~ed that lie would not
depart from it altogether. Therefore,
lie l)resently (letermine(l in his own
miii(l that lie would build himself a
small (lamliagh, or cell, upon one of the
waste ishinds which lay hard by in the
niidst of the sea, even as other saints
and holy men had (lone before him.
And of all the many islands in that sea
none would he choose, and upon no
other would lie live, only upon the
Wicked iUaun, as it was still called,
which lay opposite to the point of Foo-
hagh.
having got hi mself a w ickerwork
coracle, he embarked in it, therefore,
aloiie. And having rowed himself
across the space of sea which lies be-
tween the islan(l and the shore, lie
reached its foot, aiid tied his coracle to
the rocks, and began to climb. And
the abbot Ferdomnach atid all the
brethren of the monastery assembled
upon the seashore opposite, an(I they
all trembled exceedingly, and prayed
aloud, expecting to see him torn in
pieces by the (levils, or else of a surety
to fall into the water, the sides of the
islali(l being so straight and precipitous
that it seen~e(l scarce possible for any
man to scale them. Nevertheless St.
Fecliin reached the top safely, being
aided as some maintain by two strong
angels, who supported him on either
hand, while others declare that a great
cord was let down to him from on
highi. And next (lay he returned to
fetch away his books an(l his hammer-
Then, having ma(le a load of them,
and fastened them upon his back, he
once more returlie(l to the island. And
here lie built himself a cell of loose
stones, rooting it over with scraws,
which lie cut from the turf. And there
lie abode for two years and seven
months, even as his namesake, St. Fe
chiiii of ConmacueMara had abode in a
like cell upon the little island of Ard
Gilen, opposite the point called Ren
vyle, living upon shellfish and stale
bread, of which a bag was left at the
foot of the cliff, seeking and finding a
desert in the ocean (qucerere desertum
in Oceano), as holy iiien and confessors
of Erinn have in all ages (lehighted
to (10.
Iii this way the time passed on tintil
that black year caine, the blackest and
the niost (leadly amongst the many evil
years of Erinn, when for the second
tinie, and now withi greater daring
and ferocity ali(l cruelty than before,
the pagan ships once more visited its
shores, being seen thus time first off
the liea(llan(l of Cnoc I3randon in Ciar
raige Luacra. And having ente re(l
Ciarraige Lu acra by the Cashien River,
they ravage(l and destroyed it utterly,
seeking out all its holy shirines, and
churches, and monasteries, an(l de-
stroying all that was found therein,
save such things as they carried away
with them to their shiips.
Then there arose a great wailing,
atid a great trembling panic throughiout
the land. And fi~om all directions the
people who dwelt upon the seacoast
and upon the banks of the rivers lied
inland, niid went to hide themselves
in the innermost parts of the forests.
And in the monasteries also there was
great wailing and tribulation, especially
iii those that had ma(le no ~rovision
for defence. And at the monastery of
Clnain-Duach in Corca Basciun, the
abbot Ferdomuach became like a man
distraught, so filled was he with terror,
by reason of the monastery standing
close to thie edge of the seashore, and
ing tools, yet, because of his oath, lie the heathen being at that time so near,
would not set foot in the monastery, scarce half a days sail distant, and
but bade one of the monks bring them sure therefore to come and ravage it,
to him where lie stood. so soon as thicy had done ravaging and
111
The Builder of the Round Towers.
destroying the monasteries of Ciarraige
Luacra. And being utterly given over
to fear, and to a craven love of life, he
fled away secretly from the monastery
by night, ~vitli two other monks, all
three of them slipping off their sacred
robes, and disguising themselves in lay
ones, so that they might, as they
hoped, the more readily escape.
Then, finding themselves left with-
out any head or gui(lance, a great panic
seized upon the other monks, and they
likewise fled, carrying with them all
that they could lay hold of, both of
food an(l goods. Nevertheless a few of
those that were left took shame to
themselves thus to fly before the hea-
then, telling one another that it were
better to suffer death than to live in
like dishonor. And these put out in
cots and whatsoever boats they could
find, and betook themselves to St.
Fechin upon his island. And having
come to the foot of it they cried aloud
to him, saying that they had come to
stay with him to the end, and that
they were ready to obey his commands,
and to endure even Red martyrdom, so
only it might redound to the glory of
God and to the better ransom of their
immortal souls.
Then, having understood what they
purposed and what they had come to
do, St. Fechin let down a cord to them
from the top of the island ; an(l whexi
they had reached him he fell upon
their necks, and embraced them ten-
derly, and blessed them. And other
monks also, who had at first fled, re-
pented and came in like manner, till
there were as many as the island could
contain.
Then, while the heathen still tarrie(l,
certain of the men of the coast that
had not been able to fly, especially of
the very poor and the very starving,
who cared not greatly, perchance, for
their lives, gathered themselves to-
gether in a little band upon the sea-
shore. And perceiving them there, St.
Fechin spoke to them, telling them,
and proclaiming aloud, that God was
stronger even than the heathen, and
would in the end surely ov~rcome
them, although the tribulation was so
great and so furious for a season.
And then was ma(Ie manifest the xea-
son of that great voice of his, ~vhich
was greater than the voice of any other
man before or since in Erinn. For
such was the l)owet of it that he could
be heard by those that stood upon the
shore, and that, too, despite of the roll-
ing of the waves, and the grinding of
the rocks, and the loud cries of the sea
birds. And daily the number of those
that came to listen to him increased,
for he filled their souls with awe, and
with confidence, anxl with a power
above death, so that, forgetting for the
moment their fears, they seemed only
to dread one thing namely, to lose a
single word of those that the saint
nttere(l. For he spake as one ~vho
stan(ls upon his own grave, to whom
all things are known, and all secrets
revealed ; for whom lif& and (leath are
as one, and everything is made clear
and manifest. And he spake to them
of Heaven and of Hell, and of the
great Judgment to come, and of the
certain joys reserved for the Faithful,
amid the sure destruction, misery, and
(lamnation of the Wicked. And of
Erina herself, moreover, he spoke, and
he prophesied many things, saying
that she must be persecuted, and must
be tormented many years, both at the
hands of the heathen Gall and at the
hands of other strangers ; and that
her strength would never lie in her
great wealth, nor yet in the abundance
of her treasures, for that these things
would never be hers in any great (le-
gree. Neither would she be a irreat or
a powerful nation, as some other na-
tions were, but would know defeat,
an(l shame, and sorrow, so that her
sons would oftentimes have to hang
their heads in humiliation because of
her. Nevertheless would a golden
seed, he said, remain in her, and would
swell and inciease continually, so that
by reason of those very tribulations,
and of the evil things that would befall
her, and of the many tears that she
would have to shed, and of all the
hlood With which her fields would be
bedewed ~ these very reasons, and
because of the pity of her great beauty
112
Among the Snow-Motmtains of the Tyrol. 113
which was to be so wasted and marred great and a burning flame, such a flame
by trouble and evil usage her sons as may be seen upon an altar when a
and her daughters would love her and sacrifice is made before God. And
would cherish her, as no other land in further than this no man knoweth,
all the wide earth had ever been loved only God himself, who knoweth all
~or been cherished. And that they things; from whom no secrets are hid,
would gather out of all lands, north with whom is all power, might, maj-
~and south, and east and west, men and esty, and dominion forever and ever.
women of diverse race, an(l of diverse Here endeth the life of St. Fechin of
creeds, and of diverse ways of thought. Gorca Bascinn.
And this one thing alone, he said, EMILY LAWLESS.
would unite them all namely, the
love of that poor country of theirs, who
was the nurse, and the mother, and the
dear hearts beloved of them all. From Temple Bar.
And many other things declared he, AMONG THE SNOW-MOUNTAINS OF THE
and prophesied he, where of I, who TYROL.
write down these words, have no To the English tourist the by-ways
strength to tell ; nor did he ever cease of the Austrian Tyrol are as little
until a day came when as he was still known as its snow-mountains to the
speaking to the people gathered to- English climber. Whatever the cause,
gether on tile shore to hear him, lo! one may journey for a month amidst
the black galleys of the heathen were tile peaks and valleys of tile Ortler and
seen advancing high above the water, Oetzthaler Alps, and never hear ones
and coming towards them, laden with mother-tongue. Many, it is true, visit
.~ill tile spoil which they had collected M~ran, but only in the late autumn,
ill Ciarraige Luacra. and to reanimate their digestions with
Then at that sigilt a great cry arose the grape-cure ; others spend a week
from tilose that stood upon the sea- at Cortina; some rare mountaineers
silore, and, tlleir courage once more attack the Dolomites; and an occa-
failing them, they ran, and went to sional few pass a nigllt at Innsbrnck on
hide themselves in the woods and in- their way to the Engadine. But there
land places, and St. Fechin and ilis tile English invasion of the Tyrol
little band of monks remained alone to ends ; the rest of the country is handed
see the end. over as a playground to the German.
Of that end, and of what there be- Consequently, some account of an Au-
fell, no mortal can tell, for none were gust expedition into tilese neglected
there to see it, only the angels of God. parts may prove of interest to English
Nevertheless one wilo stood afar off readers. Our party, whicil consisted
declared that he belleld the black silips of three, as all well regulated parties
-of the heathen gatilered about the should two to quarrel and one to
island of St. Fechin, even as wolves in keep the peace was organized, in the
-a forest gather about some prey tilat main, for mountaineering purposes
they have marked out to devour. And but the weather was unpropitions at
for a time it seemed that tiley were tinles, and so we travelled among the
unable to ascend it, both because of cedars and the pines as much as over
the steepness of its sides, and because tile snowfields above them.
of tile great rain of stones and rocks Our first destination was Gepatch,
wllich tIle saint and iliS companiOlls wilicil lies on tile nortil side of the
ceased not to fling down continually Oetzthaler Alps and fornls the nios~
upon their accursed heads. Nevertile- convenient spot for exploring them.
less in the end they succeeded in doing We travelled along the Vor-Arlberg
:80, being. doubtless aided by Satan and Railway to Landeck, posted from there
his hosts. And thereupon there went to Prutz, and tllen walked up the
tip from the- whole top of that island a twenty-four miles of the Kaunser Thai.
LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 268
114
It was early. August, and the valley
was carj)eted with bilberries and Al-
pine flowers, the blue aconite, and a
pale pink carnation, unknown to any
of us, prevailing amongSt the latter.
Wil(l strawberries, each one compress-
ing in its tiny shape the sweetness and
color of a half-dozen of our home-
grown, fringed the path ; while on
each side the rocks rose steeply, broken
now and again by a cluster of trees ci
the channel of a waterfall, ~vhich here
poure(l (lo~vn in a solid cascade, there
leal)ed into the air sideways, with a
circular motion, like the opening of a
fan.
Far above us, at the head of the val-
ley, we could see the Gepatch glacier
sparkling in the sun, and just beneath
it, 01] a bluff of cedars, Gepatch itself,
i~s ~ roof showing red against the
dark green of the trees.
The building, which goes by this
name, needs thc German language to
define it. However, the language has
risen to the occasion and describes it
aptly, though with its usual preference
of literal truth to grace of speech, in
three words, as a behotelled lint.
The distinctive feature of a hotel in
the Tyrol is the possession of bed-
rooms, and this quality Gepatch can
claim. In other respects, as the defini-
tion suggests, the hut preponderates.
We were received into a long, uncar-
peted room, thick with a fog of Aus-
trian tobacco. Down its entire length
stretched a bare, pine-wood table ; on
each side of this were kitchen chairs
closely ranged, and as most of them
were occnpie(l by Gern~ans, all heatedly
ar~uin~ shcutin~ and cresticulatino at
the same time, the scene seemed to us
like the burlesque of a board-meeting.
however, they were only discussing
their records.
The love of the German for the Alps
is perhaps the most remarkable in-
stance that can be found of the peculiar
fascination ~vhich mountains exert.
lie is for some reason essentially a bad
climber. The mountaineering instinct
may perhaps be occasionally acquire(l
1W him after long experience hut lie
is never born to it. None the hess, he
Among the Snow-Mountains of the Eyrol.
constructs admirable l)atlis over th~
lower slopes, builds elaborate huts cii
glaciers an(l rocks, stretches wire ropes
along narrow ridges, and, as it were, iii
spite of himself, works his way to the
tops of the peaks. That lie signals his
return by making incredibly long
sl)eeclies at the top of his voice is i~
regrettable fact. But, after all, lm~
atones for his noise by the sincerity of
his enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, our landlord iii his shirt-
sleeves, and with a Virginian be
tiveen his teeth, served up our (linner,
aiid we went to bed. The next morn
ing we started early for the glacier.
kept for some (listance along its left
bank, and then turned up at ris~ht
angles towards the Hinter Oelgrubeui
Spitze. A wearisome ascent over grass
and snow brought us to the foot of a
sharply defined arr~te, ~vhich ran down
eastwards from the mountain summit,
and which, as far as we could gather
from subsequent investigation, had not
been previcusly climbed. Here we put
on the rope and proceeded along the
ridge. On the north side, the cliff fell
in a sheer precipice of several hun-
dreds of feet; on the south it sloped
steeply in a succession of smooth slabs.
The thin edge, besides, which we were
traversing was insecure through the
looseness of the rock ; it broke and
crumbled beneath the foot, and, where
sound, was covered with a gritty debris
like gravel ; so that, altogether, ccnsi(l
erable caution was necessary. About
three hundred feet below the summit
the line of our ar~te was interrul)ted
by a deep gap, and on the further side
of this a gendarrne, or upstanding rock,
curiously similar to Scafell Pinnacle in
appearance, promised effectively to bar
cur way. Closer examination from its
actual base, however, revealed a gully
which could be climbed, and from its
top the path ~vas easy.
The expedition was mainly tinder
taken in order to reconnoitre the
Weisssee Spitze, which is in visible
from the valley. This mountain is
usually ascended either from the east
across die Weisssee, a snowfield which
rises in a gentle slope for spm~ monot
Among the Snow-Mountains of the Tyrol.
115
onous miles, or from the Weiss Joch of one member of the party was, more-
on the south-west. Both ways are over, accentuated by the solid weight
singularly uninteresting. To the north, of a camera. This, by the way, was
however, it l)resents a steep face of the cameras first and last mountain
ice an(l snow, varie(1 with hanging ascent, though the rest of us, who had
glaciers and wall-like seracs. This not the carrying of it, loudly deplored
side we now had full in view, and we its abandonment. For, indeed, it had
Scanne(I it eagerly in the hope of dis- its uses ; when one was tired and
covering a practicable way to the top. nee(led a rest, one could stop to con-
1he ice which, with the sun full on it, dole with its owner, or to readjust it
wore a rich, smooth look as of white more firmly on his back. The last
velvet, overhung the lower inclines, device, however, through frequent rep-
but on the west corner of this face we etition, aroused bad blood in the end,
could see a long slope which, commene- and was reluctantly discontinued. The
ing about a third of the height up, sky was already paling in the north
seemed to lead directly to the summit. east when we stopped, and each mo~
It ~vas traversed by three bergschrunds, ment the outlines of the hills wer&
o chasms, at different elevations, but growing sharper and blacker against it..
we trusted to find snow-bridges over A colorless light, bringing to mind
these, and had little doubt that if we Stevensons description of clean, es-
could once reach the bottom of this sential daylight, began to pour~ over
slope, we should be able to make a new the gaps of the mountains. Opposite
route across the mountain. At any rate to us the planet Venus was (Irowning
we determined to essay the attempt. slowly in the increasing flood, and in a
Consequently we (levoted the next day few minutes we saw the highest snow-
to l)leparations, that is to say, we lay tops flush to a pale pink across the
on the giass under a cedar, with a cOl)i- valley. The sight warned us to be
ous supl)ly of tobacco and three volumes moving, and by half pist five we had
of Tanclinitz. Late in the afternoon, gained the foot of the Weisssee glacier.
however, we collected our energies and There ye halted for breakfast. After-
~oi11
down to the tongue of the Ge- wards we l)1Oceeded up the lateral mo-
patch glacier, selected the point at raine, avoiding the first ice-fall, took to
which it ~vould be most advisable to the glacier above it, found an easy path
cross. From here to the inn the way through the mi(ldle of the second ,and
stretched over a plaimi of boulders and finally set foot upon the actual snow-
Stones, and knowing how easy it would slope of our mountain shortly after
be for us to miss our direction in the seven.
dark, we marked out a path across this For some distance there was no need
first mile by building a succession of to cut steps, and we were the more
cairns. To a party which dispenses gratified by this in that our way was
with guides, this l)lecantion is ~)i~ac here overhung by the fringe of the
tically necessary, as the hours which hanging glacier. Masses of ice bulged
one can least afford to waste are those out of the incline above us, amid, worst
prece(hing sunvise. sign of all, blocks which had broken
We left Gepatch at two oclock on avay from it lay scattered about the
the following morning, and with the snow over which we passed. We were
aid of a lantern, traversed the glacier unable to change our (hirection on ac
and mounted by a rough l)atli on to the count of a bergschrund which lay
grass slopes of the Kumgampfen ThaI. ahead, and which, widening out towards
Here we sat down to wait for the morn- both of its ends, only afforded a pas-
ing an (I recover our teml)ers. For few sage in the direct line of oui ascent.
of the minor annoyances of life are so Once, however, that had been crossed,
thoroughly and completely irritating as we bore off hurriedly to the right, and
those consequent upon stumbling up a passing under sonic huge seracs which
hillside in the dark. The indignation stood one behind the other like ruined
Among the Snow-Mountains of the Tyrol.
116
fortifications, threatening to fall, came figure in a flannel shirt bei~ding over a
out upon an open space. Above us lay candle shaded with red gauze. In the
the sloj)e which we had observed ; it morning I saw fragments of black glass
was some three thousand feet in height, littering the room ; the photographer
and consisted of hard, black ice, here was heaving restlessly in a troubled
and there overlaid by a strip of snow, sleep, babbling incoherently of over-
so that the axe was in use during most exposure. He came down last to
of the climb. Of the bergschrunds breakfast and wore an unnecessarily
only one caused trouble. The gap aggressive look upon a haggard face.
itself was fairly narrow, but the upper He carried a parcel firmly corded under
lip of the chasm rose in a sheer wall of his arm. We politely inquired its con
some feet, so that when we had dis- tents; but he only glared in reply, and
covered a spot where we would cross addressed it with a somewhat vindic-
its width we had still to cut a ladder up tive decision
its further side. Altogether this por- Poste Restante,
tion of the mountain took us five hours B~sle.
to climb, and it was half past eleven
when we stood upon the summit. That was the last we saw of the
There was hardly a wisp of cloud to be camera.
seen. The day after we crossed the Glock-
In front of us stretched the high thurm, and came (Iowa its north side
lands of the Engadine as far as the eye into the valley of Radursehal. The
could see, a tossed ocean of peaks, here limpid clearness of the air which we
purple, there white, and on all the had noticed from the Weisssee Spitze
sparkle of the sun. To our left, under had prepared us for, a change of
a green sky, rose Monte Cevedale and weather. The morning too had broken
the Italian Alps, and in the foreground in the east in long bars of an orange
was the sturdy Ortler with its flying color. So that we were not surprised
buttresses of rock. On all sides the when we reached. tlia peak of the
mountains were distinct with a marvel- Glockthurm to see an ominous strip of
bus clearness. Needless to say the black beginning to broaden out from
camera was brought into play and some the edge of the horizon. Consequently
twenty photographs were taken. we wasted no time in the descent, but
For two hours we remained on the the storm travelled the faster ; and
top, unconscious of the lapse of time. before we were free from the snow, we
The extreme note of admiration was could see the rain, no great distance
struck by the Londoner of the party. off, drawn between the hills like a di-
lie stood by himself for some time on aphanous curtain, shot here and there
the edge of the slope, fortifying his with a gold thread of sunlight. By
strength with Kola biscuits and sizing the time it swept across to us ~ve had
up the scene. At last he turned still two miles of stone and scree to
towards us and said, with a grave air cover before we could hope for shelter.
of conclusiveness, This is better than Tyrolese legends tell of a wild
Taplow or Maidenhead. hunter who lured a certain baron from
The descent was as monotonous as the chase; and made him a formal
the climb had been interesting. We demand for his wife. The barons
follo~ved the usual route across the prayers and entreaties secured a sar-
Weisssee, atid all the afternoon plod- donic offer of an alternative. If within
ded knee-deep in fresh snow, with a month the baroness eGuld guess
the sun burning on our backs. We the three words which composed the
reached Gep~tch at eight. hunters name her domestic happiness
Late that night the photographs should not be disturbed. The baron
were developed. We all three slept in returned homewards in despair, and
one room, and at intervals I kept wak- broke the tidings to his wife. But
ing ~p. Each time I saw a pfttient she, sitting in the highest tower of her
Among the Snow-Mountains of the Tyrol.
117
castle and looking over the dark tree- a certain quaint monastic look. A
tops to where the hunter lived, imag- large, bare hall of whitewashed stone
med his name from the nature of his stretched from front to back ; it was
demesne, and, clapping her hands paved with cobbles, and solidly arched
gaily, exclaimed, Tree, Fir, Pine. like a Norman church, while on either
This simple myth might fitly have side a massive stairway led upwards
grown up in the Radurschal Thai. For and downwards. The most interesting
pines and firs clothe its steep sides feature of the building, however, was
(lown to the very level. The only gaps the kitchen. It dispensed with the
are the green tracks of winter ava- luxuries of a fireplace and chimney, an
lanches. Even the waterfalls which outlet for the smoke being obtained by
leap and brawl throughout the Tyrol the primitive device of leaving the
are missing here, and the unusual (loor open. The roof was low and
silence gives the. hollow an added lone- naturally black, and from an angle of
liness. To us, indeed, seen in the dim the room a large square of brickwork
light and through the driving rain, it waist high had been built out to cover
seemed as lonely a spot as the world a fourth of the area. On the flat top of
provides. Even the Church had for- this some wood logs were crackling
gotten it. Wherever else one goes, under a gipsy kettle. The reappear-
even though no dwelling-place be vis- ance of our hostess with an apron hill
ible, one may be sure of distinguishing of eggs checked further explorations,
the high white tower capped with its and we retreated to the guest-chamber,
brown cupola asserting the domination and whiled away the period of waiting
of the priesthood ; but here only an with an examination of the visitors
occasional woodcutters lint or a rare book. It accounted completely for th~
chalet in the midst of a tiny alp gives a locking of the door, for only nine
touch of life to the solitude, strangers were recorded to have slept
The inn, dignified by the title of there since the summer of 88.
Radurschal Hans, stands in the cen- During the evening the storm in-
tre of the valley, some three miles creased, thunder volleyed about the
from its head. We found the door hills, and every now an(l then, in an
locked and the house empty. But as occasional lull, came a flash of light-
the nearest village lay a good ten miles ning so vivid that the glacier and snow-
off at the mouth of the Tlial, we had fields at the head of the valley shone
no resource but to kick our heels in the rose-pink in the light. The morning,
rain on the bench outside. There we however, broke brightly, as if washed
soaked for half an hour. At last we clean by the rain, and we were up be-
heard the tinkling of bells, and four times, only to find that the house held
cows slouched lazily from the trees yet another surprise in store. For,
into the clearing. Our landlady was entering the kitchen, we saw a young
pursuing them with guttural expostu- girl drying her dress before the fire.
lations ; she carried a gigantic um- She did not turn or indeed give any
brella, and her skirts were tucked up sign that she noticed our entrance, but
to her knees, so that she looked like we observed that she was well and
a dingy mushroom which had been neatly clothed, and had a certain
galvanized into life. Our appearance fragile air which ill accorded with her
cause(l her a most palpable shock, loneliness and the long journey she
however, she unlocked the door with must have come. For the nearest
profuse apologies, and departed to for- posting-station was twelve miles away,
age for provisions. and it was evident at a glance that she
The interior of the house deepened belonged to none of the peasants in the
the impression of remoteness which ThaI.
the valley produced. It had the pe- After breakfast we strolled on to the
culiar odor which one associates with grass in front, and noticed a couple of
deserted dwellings, and wore besideW chamois, which had been driven by the
Women of the French Revolution.
.118
storm down to the level, carelessly From Beigravia.
sauntering back to their heights. . After WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
a while the girl followed us into the THE GEEAT CITOYENNE
light. She was pretty, with a certain
delicate finencss about the contour of (MADAME ROLAND).
her face, rare in the Austrian or IN these days when a bloodless but
German. She looked, moreover, in complete revolution has been effected
troul)le, and seeing us, hesitated as if in the position of English women, the
about to speak. But i11 of a sudden fruits of ~vhich are (lestine(l to lie last-
her face cleared, and, following the ing, it cannot but be interesting to
direction of her gaze, we saw a thin recall to mind the immense part taken
coil of smoke rising from a ebMet in the great but by no means bloodless
above us. We had remarked this on Revolution of France a hundred years
our ~vay down to the inn on account of ago by women, who absorbed more
its superiority and finish. It was cnn attention and power, and played a
ningly fashioned of little overlapping more striking part than was ever (lone
shields (if pine woo(l, and seeme(l to be~ before in the (Irama of lire.
a hunting-box. But on the evening In reading their histories, we cannot
before there had been no hint of life help being struck by the intensely
within it. The windows had been modern tone of the French hero
shuttered, and the gate barred. The ines of the end of the last century.
girl turned from us with her speech The so-called new and a(lvanCe(l
unspoken, and tripped lightly up the ideas of the women of our day were no
path, leaving us to imagine a romance. novelties to the French of the last (Icc-
and fast for the (letails. ade of the eighteenth century. They
From the inn ~ve ~valked down the were accepted as a matter of course,
Radursehal ThaI, passing continual and received no additional opposition
shrines set up to memorialize the on the score of sex from their ~ppo
deaths of peasants who had been sud- nents. It never seems to have entered
denly overwhelmed by the winter the heads of the advanced men of
snows, and reached Pfunds with its the period, that women could be ex-
frescoed houses at two. cluded from participation in all that
Nothing l)eiliill)s marks so clearly made life to them worth living, free
the relh~ions character of the Tyrolese dom, liberty to lead their own lives,
as the frescoes and inscriptions which and the right to a share in mens perils
adorn their dwellings. Pictures of the and heroisms, as well as their i)livi
Virgin Mary are most frequently seen, leges. Even the latest development of
an(l after them, fl~uies of patron saints womens careds to-day in England
with their feet upon the world. The had its counterpart during the French
inscriptions usually are of a sombre Revolution, though originating froni a
nature. One may be quoted as typi- different motive. Whereas of late, a
cal certain sectioli of English women have
desired to enlist themselves as v(ilun
We build our hamlets well and strong. teers in order the more effectively to
Only we are but guests in them. carry out their ambulance dulies in
Where we shall live forever, we build but time of ~var, a number in France en-
little. rolled themselves as women v(ilunteers
At Pfunds we waited till the heat of in order to repel the foreign invader& ~
the day was past, an(l in the evening who hovered oii their borders and en-
touched civilization again at Finster- deavored to crush the new-born hiber
miintz. ties of French patriots. In one thing
A. E. W. MASON. only (10 we find French women of the
end of the eighteenth century inferior
in initiative to our women of the ciA
- of the nineteenth century there was
Madame Roland.
119
no demand for womans suffrage ; those who at last hind nothing left to
tAIL this may probably be explained by tax, culminated in the intense misery
the fact that men had only re-acquired of the years immediately preceding
the privilege of voting for the National 1789, the first year of deliverance, and
Assembly as late as 1789, after many bred in the hearts of the victims a
years of desuetude, and events marched ferocity of hate for their oppressors, a
so fast and furiously to the end of the fierce love of the principles of liberty,
Reign of Terror in 1794, that time and and an overwhelming desire for its im-
opportunity were lacking for the pro me(liate fruition.
mulgation of this (loctrine~ Probably In 1789, women of all classes threw
if the great Napoleon, the enemy- of themselves with ardor into the great
freedom, had not arisen to crush all Revolutionary movement, and by their
liberty for the time being, the political burning enthusiasm intensified the zeal
~nfranehisement of women would not of the men, and ni~ged them on to be-
have had to wait another hundred roic deeds of self-sacrifice and duty to
years to germinate in the minds of suffering humanity.
men. Women of noble and unselfish ideals
At all times, in France, women have such as Madame Roland, or of stainless
exercised potent influence, politically, life and character like Charlotte Cor-
socially, an(l sentimentally. (lay, or the fascinating, fearless, Un
The country of Jeanne dArc has happy Th& -oignc de M& icourt, the
never lacked heroines and martyrs. heroine of the womens march to Ver-
During the reigns of Catherine de sailles, or the women of the people,
Medicis miserable SOIlS, their Italian full of hate and desire of vengeance,
mother, by her absolute, cruel, and who crowded round the guillotine in
narrow-minded policy, plunged the 1793, uttering ferocious shouts and
eountry into the horrors of St. Barthol counting with exultation the ghastly
~mew, which were only equalled by heads as they fell before the axe of
the excesses of the Reign of Terror. Sanson, were one and all animated by
During the corrupt reigns of Louis the same passionate love of liberty, the
XIV. and Louis XV. the influence of mother of all virtues. All were ready
women at court, and therefore all over to sacrifice their lives gladly for free-
France was paramount and entirely dom, conscious of the righteousness of
pernicious to the welfare of the people. their cause and of its ultimate tri-
Women in all ages have matched the umph.
men, so as noble aspirations, unselfish Many unthinking, superficial people
ness, love of justice and right were at even now who have never known
~a discount amongst the men who what it is to suffer and be despoiled to
crowded the courts of the licentious support the luxury and vice of tyrants,
Bourbons, where the debauchery and while shuddering at the excesses of the
depravity were unl)aralleled since the Reign of Terror, entirely ignore the
era of Tiberins and Commodus, the causes of the sanguinary deeds which
throngs of titled courtesans merrily stand forth so luridly. They do not
joined their royal and aristocratic realize that nothing but a terrible bap
lovers in spending the revenues ex- tisin of blood could have regenerated
acted from the miserable peasants with such a corrupt country, and purged it
tears of blood, until similar tears were from its grossness and selfish indiffer-
extorted from them in turn by the ence to wrong-doing. It was civil war
Revolution they originated, in another form.
Many generations of bad government When tile (lay of vengeance came,
by kings, courtesans, and courtiers, the how was it tilat tile women seemed
oppressions of the rich clergy and more ferocious than the men ?
nobles who monopolized all that was The answer is very simple. They
worth having in tile State, find exacted had suffered more, and Great mis
Their taxes and seignorial dues from cries are always ferocious.
120
The hearts of thousands of mothers
had been tortured by the sight of their
children dying before their eyes of
cold, hunger, nakedness, and disease
untaught, uncomforted, unfed, or
gr owing up miserable mental and
physical abortions. Compelled as
women to stay at home and have this
suffering ever present to their senses,
goaded to madness by the sight of it,
and the feeling of their own impotency
to relieve it, worn out by toil and pri-
vation so that women of thirty-five
looked sixty, could they do aught but
bate the rich and in most cases infa-
mous seigneurs and their families who
lived in idle luxury, dead to all feelings
of humanity and pity, while exacting
their legal dues to the last farthing, to
spend in wantonness and prodigality at
court? There is small wonder for the
unexampled and bitter hate which
surged up in the hearts of men and
women against the rich, the nobles,
and above all the great churchmen
who looked smilingly on their misery,
sunned themselves in the sight of roy-
alty and harlots, but preached submis-
sion to the powers that be, while like
the nobility they owned vast estates,
which were practically exempt from
taxation.
The monstrous burdens, too many to
enumerate, which crushed down the
poor, seem to us, born in happier
times, extraordinary exaggerations, but
they were cruel facts.
The flocks were not tended, they
were only shorn.
When the twenty-four millions of
haggard faces became flushed with
the hope of better days, and a possible
era of plenty and freedom dawned
upon their dazed senses, we can quite
understand that they lost control over
themselves, that in their mad haste for
freedom and relief, they swept away
all who stood in their way many
bitter foes, but also staunch devotees
of the cause of humanity.
The name of one of the most prom-
inent women of the Revolution, who
also became its martyr, rises at once to
our minds in connection with this sub-
ject.
The great, the incomparable Citoy
enne Roland, a woman of stately
beauty, of splendid gifts of mind and
heart, whose nobility of soul shone
forth in her mobile and expressive
face, and who by her goodness and
charm won all hearts, even the most
hardened and degraded, when they
came under the spell of her magnetic
personality.
Surely no woman ever appealed more
to the minds and hearts of the great
majority of her sex than this one, who,
with only the most ordinary advantages
of culture, rose by the force of her
genius above the commonplace sur-
roundings of the small shop-keeping
class in which she was born and bred,
and became the intimate friend and
equal of the most intellectual and
noble-minded men of the day.
A high-toned Republican from con-
viction, taste, and inclination, many
years before the word republic had
even been whispered in France ; dur-
ing the last few years of her life, she
became the idolized inspirer of the
Gironde party, who, in spite of mis
takes, absorbed to itself all that was-
most noble, devoted, unselfish and high
principled in Revolutionary France~
This beautiful and intellectual woman
was possessed with a love of suffering
humanity, and a burning desire to re-
dress its wrongs. She herself saw all
her life how stoically misery and priva-
tion were endured, and her heart beat
with indignation when she contrasted
this with the frivolity of the heartless-
an(l polished courtiers whom for one
brief week she critically surveyed froni
the back-stairs~ at Versailles. Far
from being impressed or overawed by
the gorgeous sight of the court ceremo-
nial, the young girl turned away in
disgust, to the astonishment of her
ordinary - minded bourgeoise mother,
and requested to be taken home~
Otherwise, said she, I shall detest
these people so heartily I shall not
know what to do with my hatred.
They make me feel injustice and see
Events of any importance were rare
in the early years of Manon Phlipon
Women of the French Revolution.
Madame Roland.
121
such was her maiden name the only herself, whose shrewd sense, mature
one being the death of her mother; judgment, and variety of knowledge
yet iii the back parlor of her fathers attracted the fastidious Marion.
shop, or in the solitude of her own For nine years Madame Roland led
room, this wonderful girl, with no com- a peaceful and uneventful life near
panions but her beloved books, and Lyons with her husband and only child
no cultured acquaintances of either Eudora. She identified herself in all
sex in Paris after she left her convent Rolands intellectual pursuits, however
school, evolved for herself a scheme dry and tedious to a young woman of
of duty and principle from which her breadth of mind, and led the busy
she never swerved, and cultivated life of the middle-class Frenchwoman
one of the most critical aud intellec- (than whom a more clever, capable,.
tual minds ever possessed by man or and active member of her sex does not
woman. exist). She helped the poor around
Probably no young damsel in the her and formed life-long friendships
middle-class of life ever attracted more with men of culture and intelligence,
admirers than Manon Phlipon. In such as Champagneux, the founder of
turn, she rejected a music master, Le Gouirier de Lyon (a paper of ad-
dancing master, butcher, jeweller, pas- vanced Liberal principles, to which
try-cook, and woollen-draper. Viewed Madame Roland contributed articles,
from her high intellectual standpoint, one of which created so much effect
these doubtless worthy but uninterest- that sixty thousand copies of it were
ing tradesmen were decidedly wanting sold), and the admirable Bosc, wh~
in all that she valued most highly. published the incomparable memoirs
Have I lived with Plutarch and the she afterwards wrote in prison. A
philosophers, she wrote to her school friendship once formed with Madame
friend, Sophie Cannet, at Amiens, Roland ended only with death.
simply to marry a tradesman with When the news of the fall of the
whom I have nothing in common? Bastille, July 14th, 1789, thundered in
So she turned for companionship to the ears of all France, and the Revolu-
her pen, her violin, her guitar, her tion was fairly launched, no one was
books, and above all to Rousseau, more deeply stirred than Madame Ro
whom she worshipped absorbingly, and land. Her soul was fimll of joy and
who had immense influence on the hope of a new natiomial birth, amid she
heart and imagination of the enthusi- followed the Revolutionary battle with
astic young Republican, the deepest emotion. Henceforth she
After a time aspirants for her hand lived only for her country. All her
in a higher position, a doctor, a writer, previous training had led up to this.
a deputy from Pondicherry, were re- She wished for nothing now hut the
jected by this particular young lady, triumph of great truths, and the re
who declared that Marriage should generation of the country. She wrote
be the most intimate union of hearts, soul-stirring letters, most of which ap
and so exasperated P~re Phlipou, the peared in print, to her friends in Paris,
typical French father in his ideas of and inspired her readers with her own
matrimony, that lie threatened to marry detestation of the unqualified powers
her off-hand to the first man who came of evil of the French monarchy and its
in his shop, if she did not change her parasites.
line of coiiduct. In 1791, Roland being elected deputy
After several vicissitudes, and at last for Lyons in the French National As-
being turned out of the house by her sembly, he and his wife and child set
unworthy and dissipated father, she thed in Paris, where the gifted and
eventually espoused a gentleman of eloquent wife of time Lyons deputy
good position, Roland de ha Plati~re, became at once a power, and the centre
a philosopher, or learned man of of the political circle which surrounded
austere life, twenty years older than her husband.
122
Women of the French Revolution.
The year 1791, When love of coun- tariat, only just enfranchised, cared
try, liberty, the human race, filled the nothing for ideal sentiments. Brutal~
hearts of men, was the year of worn- ize(l by many years of coarse tyranny
ans influence par excellence, and misery, with dulled and blunted
Nothing contril)uted more to urge feelings, without culture, the moral
men on to heroic deeds than the enthu sense stifled, the academic Girondins
stasm of the women, or more hastened with their high standard of itttelligence
the cause of the Revolution. They and feeling touched theni not. Ma
compared the men of their (lay to the rats cry of heads, thousands of
heroes of old time, and held up for hea(l5, they well understood. This
their emulation the sacrifices and pure appealed to their feelings of vengeance.
patriotic i(leals of reptbhican Greece They (lehighte(l in the seeties of car
an(l Rome. Their enthusiasm as usual nage roUn(l the guihhtine, as the Ro
was conta~ions. Who could resist mans did in those of the Amphitheatre.
these large-hearted women, says Bread an(l blood was ~)ractically the
Michelet, who suffered for others, Jacobin cry. Food and slaughter the
and artictllate(l their (lemands in glow SansCulottes ap~)reciate(h. The Giron
ing hittgnage, an(l appealed powerfully dins were not thoronghgoing enough
to the emotions by their courage, abil for the mob, who had now gained the
ity, and (levotion ? The heart played upper hand, whereas Danton, Robes
att immense part in the history of that pierre, atid Marat possessed their en
time. The ~vomen ruled the men by tire eOflh(lenCe.
sentiment, passion, and the superiority If the Girondins had exercised more
of their initiative. brute force, and had talked less, they
Of all the women who in their turn would have (hominated the situation
influenced their contemporaries, notte as it was they entirely misuuderstoo(l
surpassed or equalled Madame Roland. the development of the latter part of
Her salon in the Rue (he ha Harpe be- the Revolutioti. This may be summed
came the chosen resort of the cele- up by saying that on September 21st,
brated Girondins, of the eloquent 1792, when the Republic was declared,
Verguinud, of the hi~hsouled Bu they congratulated thtemsehves that the
zot, sooti to be passionately in love Revolution had ended, the Jacobins on
with Madame Roland, of the handsome the contrary thought that it had only
and gifted Barbaroux, of P~tion, the just begun.
i(lohiZed mayor of Paris, of Brissot, the Always clear-sighted, Madame Ro-
originator of the celebrated saying, land was fttlly alive to the fact thtat thte
La propri~t~, cest le vol, and many Girondins, in spite of their learning
others, mostly young, and all ardent and ability, did not know how to lea(h.
atid enthusiastic votaries of, and be The Jacobins realized lwrfectlY that
lievers in, the Revolution, violence and brutality joined with seti
By her eloquent words, Madame timent would make them masters of
Roland inspired these men with her the position.
own lofty republican ideals, and polit When the Roland ministry was
ical dogmas, and if not nominally the fortned in the spring of 1792, and Ro
head of the Gironde, she was so in land became minister of the interior,
aeality. his gifted wife came in contact with a
Nothing base, or mean, or ~cruel was numerous circle, but what struck her
to enter into the formation of the re most painfttlly was thte universal mcdi -~
public of thte Gironde. It was to be ocrity of intelligence, which surpassed
founded on the noblest and finest prin all that could be imagine(l, from the
ciples of the great old-world republics, clerk to the minister, from the soldier
when only the best and most cal)able to the ambassador.
citizens were to rtile for the benefit of I never, without this experience,
all. Unfortunately they ignored the could have believed my species so
fact that the huge mass of the prole- poor, she 8aid.
Madame Roland.
Before that she thought that men
with stronger wills were also cleverer.
When the misguided Louis XVI.
ietoed the decree of the National
Assembly for the banishment of the
priests, and dismissed the miiiistry,
Roland as minister of the interior ad
dresse(l to the poor monarch, who had
neither sufficient force to stem the Rev-
olutioii nor sense to go with it, one of
the most plainspoken an(l ablest re-
inonstrances that his wifes pen ever
indited. In this letter, written at one
sittino an(l without correction, Ma-
0~
dame Roland gave a masterly review
of the events of the last four years,
and exactly gauged the feeling of
the community. She told the king
There is no time for drawing back,
there is no time even for temporizing.
The Revolution is accomplished in all
minds, it will be achieved by blood
an(l cemented l)y it, if wis(lom (10 not
forestall the evils vhich can still be
avoided. The ferment is extreme in
all parts of the empire, it will burst out
in a terrible manner unless confidence
in the intentions of your Majesty can
calm it.
She then sketches the dangers more
fully to the king and the monarchy, by
his resistance to the peoples will, and
asks why should tardy delays give him
the al)l)earance of reluctance when ex
l)edit ion would gain all hearts ?
I know, she writes in conclusion,
that the austere language of truth is
rarely welcomed near the throne ; I
know also because it is hardly ever
heard there, that revolutions become
necessary. I know above all, that it is
my duty to maintain it with your Maj
estv, not only as a citizen in submission
to the laws, hut as a minister honored
with your couiti(lenee, or invested with
powers that infer it, and I know noth-
ing which can prevent me fulfilling a
(luty of which I amu conscious.
Such plain speaking to a king as
tenacious of his royal prerogative as
Louis XVI. could have only one result
the (lismissal of the Roland ministry.
Then immediately follo~ved such an
event as Madame Roland ha(l puogims
ticate(1 The 20th of June, when
the mob in thousands fr6nu the Fan-
bourg St. Antoine, headed by Santerre
amid Thdroign e (le Mdricou rt, poti red
into the Tuileries Palace arme(l with
pikes, and shouting Down with the
Veto !
Even then the kings eyes were not
opened. It require(I the massacre of
his Swiss Guards on the 10th of Au-
gust to (10 this thoroughly, when the
Marseillaise hymn was first heard
in Paris, and by that time all was over
for him an(l his forever.
Then follo~ved the prison massacres
of the first week in September. Dan-
ton, Marat, aiid Robespierre had lashed
the populace into frenzy by their de-
nunciations of the foreign troops on
their borders, who had begun the cam~
paign by taking Longwy. The cry ivas
that their enemies were coming to
Paris to crush out their newly won
liberty. Maddened by panic, the peo-
ple rushed to the prisons and ruthlessly
butchered fourteen hundred and eighty
Royalists on the steps, or in the court~
yards of the prisons.
The horrors of the massacre made
an intense amid ineffaceable impressioui
on Madame Roland. She with the Gi-
ron(le party never ceased denouncing
Danton an(l the Septembriseurs, and
(leniandiuig their chastisement.
Nothing however shows the incom-
petency of the Girondins to rule unore
than their inability to stop these inns-
sacres.
They were in power, as the king had
recalled the Roland muinistry in Au-
gust, P& ion, one of their chief men,
was mayor of Paris, yet ministers and
officials did nothing but wring their
hamuds, when a small numuber of deter
mined men sent by the mayor to the
prisons would have prevented the car-
nage. Rulers of a laivless and sangui-
nary mob must be something more
than Parliamentarians.
The horror which Madame Roland
had conceived of the crimes of Septemu-
ber filled her with unappeasable imudig-
nation and grief. She, the disciple of
Rousseau, who believed with her mas-
tel that it was not allowable for a
nation to purchase, the most desirable
123
124
revolution with the blood of one inno-
cent person, could never gloss over
sanguinary crimes from motives of ex-
pediency.
She inspired her party with her own
hatred of Danton, whom posperity has,
however, absolved from the immediate
instigation of the prison massacres.
The Girondins attacked him unceas-
ingly in the Convention, but he and
Robespierre were too strong for them.
We want men who see by other
eyes than those of their wives, said
Danton jeeringly of Roland.
For a few months after the declara-
tion of the Republic, September 21st,
1792, the Girondins waged their hope-
less war with the Jacobins, but with
the formation of the Revolutionary
Tribunal with powers to kill or to fill
the prisons with suspects, or oppo-
nents to Jacobinism, the Reign of Ter-
ror of 17934 began, and in the spring
of that year Madame Roland and the
Gironde party were arrested or pro-
scribed.
In the meanwhile, the warm friend-
ship and sympathy that existed be-
tween Buzot and Madame Roland, had
in the midst of dangers and trials de-
veloped into profound love. We know
that Madame Roland and her contem-
poraries did not regard the marriage tie
as inviolable. The society of the day
looked upon such a bond as ridicu-
lous, if it were uncongenial or hateful.
Divorce was easily procured, and con-
stantly resorted to. Air honor, then,
must be given to Madame Roland for
her determination never to take facile
advantage of the law, and seek divorce
from Roland, now grown old, queru-
lous, and a source of ii~ritation,in order
to unite herself to the only man she
ever passionately loved. Her husband
now entirely depended upon her; she
honored and respected him, although
we know from her memoirs written in
prison, that life with him had often
been very trying. She felt the dig-
parity in their age when going into the
world, and surrounded by younger and
more congenial spirits.
I loved my husband as a tender
daughter adores a virtuous father, to
whom she would even sacrifice her-
husband, but I have found the man
who could be my lover, she wrote.
She had confessed to Roland that
she loved Buzot, but had promised the
ailing man she would never leaye him.
She struggled against her feelings for
Buzot, and even quitted Paris to avoid
coming in contact with him.
Buzot was married to a woman
~vorthy of esteem and regard which he
fully recognized, although she would
not bear comparison with the brilliant
wife of Roland.
The latter suffered as only a woman
of her intensely emotional and passion-
ate nature can do. She felt there was
no hope of happiness for all four of
them, and when the prison door shut
her off from the outside world and
freedom forevermore, we can well be-
lieve what she tells us, that it was a
relief to feel that her struggle be-
tween love and duty was over..
Prison removed the strain, and was
welcome to the worn, passionate soul.
On May 31st, 1793, twenty-one mem-
bers of the Gironde were arrested by
order of the Revolutionary Tribunal,
and in the middle of the same night
the Great Citoyenne was aroused
from sleep, and conveyed to the Ab-
baye Prison during the early hours of
June 1st.
The women of the streets and mar-
kets, always exulting at the prospect of
another victim, shouted after her To
the guillotine!
She languished in the stifling, hor-
rible prison for three months, bearing
all her sufferings with exemplary pa-
tience and sweetness, and winning the
love and respect of all, even the most
debased and criminal. Her cell was
just large enough for her bed, one
chair, and a small table.
Her faithful friends did not desert
her. Bosc came tQ see her and sent
her plants from the Jardin des Plantes ;
Champagneux came so often that he
became suspect through his visits,
and Henriette Cannet offered to ex-
change garments with her, and give up
her life for her friend.
She occupied her time in reading,
Women of the French Revolution.
Madame Roland. 125
-writing, and drawing, and endeavored How often I read them ! she
to lighten the captivity of her fellow wrote, referring to his two letters. I
j)risoners by her sympathy and help, press them to my heart, I cover them
She always presented a cheerful face with kisses. I never hoped to receive
to them, although the jailers wife told any again.
one of Madame Rolands friends she She feared he would make some im-
would sometimes weep for hours to- prudent attempt to rescue her, and
gether when alone, begs him not to do so.
Worst torture of all to a sensitive My friend, it is in saving thy coun-
mind, she had to listen to horrible and try that thou canst work out my salva
filthy denunciations of herself that tion. Death,torments, pain are nothing
were shouted beneath her prison win- to me. I can defy them all. . . . I
dow, by the newsvendors sent by dare tell thee, and thou art the only
TI~bert, the owner of the infamous and one in the world who can appreciate
disgusting journal, P~re Duch~sne. it, that I was not very sorry to be
H~bert, the jackal of the press, had arrested. I owe it to my executioners
never ceased attacking Madame Ro- that they have reconciled love and duty
land, her principles, actions, manners, for me. Do not l)ity mc.
and even her looks. Toothless hag The conflict between love and
was one of the least offensive epithets duty was over, she was about to die.
;he applied to this most beautiful henceforth her heart and feelings could
woman. P~re Duch~sne from first to go forth unreservedly to her lover.
last was full of the most indecent ac- On the 3rd of July she wrote her
cusations and insinuations against all second letter to Buzot, in which she
reputable people, which were im- says of Roland
mensely palatable to the taste of the I should like to sacrifice my life for
mob. The paper pandered to the vil- him to acquire the right to give my last
est instincts, and urged the people on breath to thee.
to theft and murder. Loathsome de- In her third letter, on the 6th of
tails of fictitious interviews with Ma- July, she tells him she had had this
dame Roland were shouted under her dear picture (Buzots miniature)
windows during the hot summer days. brought to her in prison. It is on
Every gross and insulting epithet was my heart, hidden from all eyes, felt
applied to her. From this she could every moment, and of ten bathed with
not escape. The Sans-Culottes gloated my tears.
over the stories, and crowded round Her fourth letter, dated the 7th of
the newsvendors with delighted appre- July, was the most ardent of them all,
ciation. and was the last Buzot received.
The wretched H~bert, contrary to In her fifth letter, written the same
what may be expected, was a man of evening, she says 0 thou! so dear
distinguished manners, with fair hair, and so worthy to be, moderate the
blue eyes, and the sveetest expression impatience which makes thee shudder.
of face possible. He left an enormous In thinking of the irons with which
fortune behind him, which was confis- they fetter me, dost thou not see the
cated after retribution in the shape of blessings which I owe to them? With
the guillotine overtook him in 1794. thy portrait on my heart, or beneath
Three weeks after Madame Rolands my eyes, I thank Heaven for having
arrest, two letters were brought to her made me taste the inexpressible happi-
by a Mademoiselle Goussard from ness of loving and being loved with
Buzot, who had escaped from Paris, that geneiosity, that delicacy, which
and was wandering about with other vulgar souls will never know, and which
Girondins in Normandy. On the 22nd are above all other pleasures.
of June she wrote to him the first of During the months of September and
five letters, all of which have been pre- October, she was at the prison of Ste.
~served. - - P~laoie.
0
Women of the French Revolution.
By a refinement of torture, she had
beeii released from the Abbaye only to
be re-arrcste(l that same hour. At the
P6lagie, only a thin partition separated
her from low assassins and depraved
women, foul language an(l revolting
spectacles being ever present to her
senses ~in(l ima~inatio1).
It was here that she wrote her mar-
vellous and unique memoirs, in which
she dcscribed her infancy, life, and the
political career of her husband, and
CoInIi)Cnt5 on the fate of France, her
friends, arid the prisoners around her.
These wonderful memoirs were written
in twentytwo days, an(l were entircly
without revision on her l)art.
11cr good friend Bosc took the leaves
of the pieciolis manuscril)t from time
to time, and hid them in the hollow of
a tree in the forest of Monimorency.
It was Bosc who took charge of Ma-
dame Rolands Qnly child Eudora, ~vho
eventually married the son of her moth-
ers other devoted friend Champagneux.
It was Bosc who dissuaded Madame
Roland from suicide. It was lie who
follo~ved the cart which conveyed her
to the guillotine. It was lie who wrote
the preface to her memoirs, the profits
of the sale of which he reserved for
Eudora Roland.
Champagneux wrote the i)reface to
the secon(h edition. The orii~inal man-
uscript is now in the Biblioth~que Im
p~i~iale in Paris.
In p~~~n the mother wrote to liei~
young daughter My example will
remain to thee, and I feel it is a rich
inheritance.
At the (lreadful and squalid prison
of 11w Conciergerie, to which she was
taken just before her (heath, she exer
cised the same wonderful spell over
the prisoners as at the P6lagie and the
Abbaye. Her mere presence pacified
tumults an(l disorder. When sum
nioiie(l to the usual mock trial before
the Revolutionary Tribunal, she (Iresseol
herself carefully in white. Her beau-
tiful (lark hair hung down her hack,
and her complexion appeared ravish-
ing, in spite of the months of confine-
nient she had experienced. When she
descended into the courtyard, her~hand
was repeatedly kissed by the poor crea-
tures who crowded round her, and
cried and sobbed at her departure. She
was the only one who preserved her
equanimity.
No serioU5 accusation could be made
against the great citoyenne, but her
condemnation was a foregone conclu-
sion. After an eloquent defence from
her, she was sentenced to be guillo-
tioied.
At a quarter past four on the after-
noon of the 9th of November, 1793,she
was taken to the scaffold. In the same
cart with her was Lamarque the forger,
who displayed the most abject terror at
the thought of death. Ever kind to
suffering humanity, whether deserving
or not, she pitied and consoled him
and even succee(led in making him
smile faintly several times, so that lie
was eiiabhed to meet his doom with a
certain amount of fortitude.
At the scaffold, she requested San-
son to allow her conipanion to be exe-
cuted first, in order to spare him the
sight of her blood, and when lie de-
murred, she said smilingly Come,
you cannot refuse the last request of a
lady I and Sanson gave way.
On going herself up to the exe-
cutioner, her eves fell upon the gi
ganiic statue of Liberty, when she
exclaimed
0, Liberty! what crimes are com-
mitted in thy name I
It was rightly said of her, All was
in tune, nothing was imperfect in this
celebrated womal) ; she was not only
the strongest character, but the truest
of our Revolution.
Roland committed suicide on hearing
of his wiles (leath.
Buzot died of want and starvation
after several miserable months of hid-
ing.
His miniature, this dear l)icture,
was found as late as 1863, on the
ground, amongst a lot of vegetables
at a greengrocers open stall in the
Marchd des Batignolles. It was dread-
fully dilapidated, but on the removal of
the paintin~. a piece of paper covered
with the line woitin~ of Madame Re-
loud, was found containing a short his-
126
Italian Granite.
12~T
tory of Buzots life, which she had ture of mica ; whilst the latter has a
written in prison. Similar sthicture and texture, but with
Buzot will live in the remembrance the orthoclase or potash-felspar of a
of men of worth, she wrote ; but that white instead of a red color. Both
which chiefly commends him to the varieties of granite have a medium
notice of l)osterity is the fact that he grain, take a fine l)OliSh, and whilst
was beloved by the great and good admirably suited for ornamental pm
Madame Roland. po5es, are eminently serviceable in the
M. DALE. arts owing to their (lurability and
strength.
The principal quarries are situated
on the western shore of Lago Mag-
From Chambers Journal. giore, whose scenery is well known to
ITALIAN GRANITE. all lovers of the picturesque. A fea-
ITALIAN marble has long been ture of interest is the mode of workino-
known in this country, and the trade adopted, which consists in detaching
carried on ill its itnl)ort has attained to enormous masses of granite by huge
consl(lerable dimensions ; w hilst, cnn blasts. At the Monte Grassi quarry, in
ously enough, the granite res~,urces of 1885, a charge of six tons of gunpow
Italy have for some reason been almost (Icr was iire(l by electricity ; whilst four
entirely oveirlooked, and Ital ian granite months later, a similar blast, with eight
has remaine(1 to the l)iesent (lay almost an(l a half tolls of the same explosive,
entirely ignored in the United King was carried out. It was, however, in
dom. Under these circumstances, the the autumn of 1886 that a monster
atteml)ts now being made to place Ital- blast was executed. when seventeen
ian granite on the Britisll markets, and tons of blastingpowder and half a ton
to render it a commercial and eco- of Nobel dynamite were exploded
nomic success, call forth consi(lerable simultaneously, displacing something
interest, and have induced us to lay like five hundred thousand cubic yards
before our readers some succinct ac- of granite ; while some twenty or
coulIt of what may with justice almost thirty blocks, ranging from one thou-
be described as a new product ill oni sand to six thousand five hundred
lildustries, together with some brief cubic yards each, were carried fully
notes of its mode of occurrence in three hundred yards by the explosion.
Italy and the methods in which it is So much interest attached to tllese
quarried and worked, phenomenal blasts, that in the inter
The most important seat of the gran ests of science tile Italian ministry of
ite industry in Italy is the group of war deputed a major of engineers to
quarries in tile l)rovince of Novaro, l)e present and to fully rel)ort thereon.
situated around Baveno and AIzo. Tile position of thuis quarry on a
Here not only is the quarrying of the mountain side attaining an altitude of
granite carried on, but the turning, about two thousand feet is particularly
ieral execut
polishino- an(l o-eu ion of all advantageous, as the material descends
work in connection with the finished by the actioll of gravity to tile finishing
product is also performed. The gran and polishing works below, whence it;
it