The Living age ... / Volume 206, Issue 2662
65-128
LITTELLS LIVING AGE.
Sixth Series, ~ No3 O~O July 13, 1895. 5 From Beginning,
Volume VII. ) avuII j Vol. CCVI.
CONTENTS.
I. INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE WAR BE
TWEEN JAPAN AND CHINA By T. E.
Holland
II. CUCKOO CORNER. A West Country
Sketch
III. ENGLAND AND FRANCE ON THE NIGER.
The Race for Borgu. By Captain F.
D. Lugard,
IV. THE POETRY OF KEBLE. By Arthur
Christopher Benson, .
~ THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SMALLER
GENTRY (1660-1800), .
VI. THE AFTER-CAREERS OF UNIVERSITY-
EDUCATED WOMEN. By Alice M. Gor-
don
~\TJJ GUYOT OF PROVINS, THE FIRST FRENCH
PAMPHLETEER. By Edith Sellers,
VIII. A BIRD LYRIC
IX. A COLONY FOR LUNATICS,
X. ELECTRICITY FROM RUBBISH,
AT A DOMINICAN PRIORY,
Fortnightly Review,
Blackwoods Magazine,
Nineteenth Century,
Contemporary Review,
Macmillans Magazine,
Nineteenth Century,
National Review,
Argosy,
Cornhill Magazine,
Chambers Journal,
67
75
57
97
106
110
114
120
124
127
POETRY.
661 UNDER THE CANOPY, . . . 66
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY
LITTELL & CO., BOSTON.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.
~or EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for-
warded for a year,free of postage.
Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office inoney.order, if possible. If
neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are
obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made
payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.
Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.
At a Dominican Priory, etc.
AT A DOMINICAN PRIORY.
IN the old Priory garden the friars pace to
and fro,
Long level shafts of sunlight fall on each
robe of snow.
No sound comes thither wand ring of the
worlds jar and fret;
With tears of heaven only these garden
beds are wet.
Here peach and golden nectarine mellow
upon the wall,
And in the ancient orchard the red-cheeked
apples fall.
And here are Marys lilies, like virgins
white and pure;
And waving laurel branches for those who
shall endure.
Like outpour d blood of martyrs the crim-
son roses glow;
And sweet as little maidens the purple vio-
lets blow.
The cross-mark d flowers of passion hang
oer the victors palm.
And here is sad rosemary, and here is heal-
ing balm.
The bells of Benediction ring from the
ivied tower;
Slow creeping on the dial the shadow tells
the hour.
Within the dusky chapel, the lilies in his
hand,
The Patron of the Order stands fair, and
calm, and grand.
And calm as his, though living, is each
grave monkish face;
Of mellow age no brightning, of youthful
fire no trace.
No ecstasy of passion, nor mystery of pain;
No furrow plough d eraseless by the
hearts burning rain.
Nor bitter sweet of loving, nor agony of
life;
Nor trace of hopeless longing for respite
from its strife.
Dim eyes, or bright, look sadly, unlit by
joy or ruth;
From under hoar white tresses, or soft
dark locks of youth.
Can warmth of summer noontides, or
sound of wind-blown trees,
Or subtil scent of violets borne on the
jocund breeze,
Or silver hush of moonbeams flooding the
mystic night,
Stir in these hearts no rapture, nor fill these
eyes with light?
Calm cold to outward seeming as souls
from star-lit lands,
They teach the clinging children, they
clasp the wedded hands.
Does never aching longing in priestly
hearts have birth
For earthly love and pleasure, for worldly
joy and mirth?
We know not none may tell us of spir-
itual jars
Of struggling souls all vainly beating
against the bars.
The long slow years glide over as fall the
rosary beads;
The weeks are told by ayes, the months
are marked by creeds.
Sun after sun arises, and sun sets after
sun
The daily prayers are uttered, the daily
work is done.
With reverent hands they offer the daily
sacrifice;
They stay the erring footsteps, they close
the dying eyes.
Till comes unbroken slumber beneath the
dewy sod;
And passing from the altar they see the.
face of God.
Coruhull Magazine~
UNDER THE CANOPY.
YES, it is good for us that we are here;
Scarlet, and blue, and purple in the sky,
The covering of the holy sanctuary,
By day obscured, at last by night shines
clear.
Lo, yonder sinking sun is flaming there
In evening sacrifice to God most high,
And yonder moon is praying quietly,
And her one star holdeth his taper near.
Yes, good for us, albeit men may say
Could we climb higher past the paths of
men,
Vague mists would show for all that fine
linen,
And all that purple and scarlet turn to grey.
It may be, yet for us they keep their line,
And if thou climb beyond, there is still the
blue.
H. C. BEECHING.
66
From The Fortnightly Review.
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE WAR
BETWEEN JAPAN ANT) CHINA.
THE great xv ar in the extreme East
has lasted not quite ten months. It
has destroyed the reputation of one
empire, and made that of another. In
endless ways it has been full of in-
struction, but I propose to deal with it
only in so far as it has illustrated the
rules of international law. To the stu-
dent of this science an outbreak of
hostilities is always interesting. He
knows that in war time the questions
with which he is concerned come
thicker and faster than in time of
peace, and that he can turn for their
solution, either directly or by analogy,
not merely to the often ill-defined prac-
tice of nations, or the frequently un-
certain results of diplomatic discussions,
but, in many cases, to clear and au-
thoritative decisions of courts of prize.
The law of war, as is well known,
consists of two great chapters, dealing
respectively with the relations of one
belligerent to the other, and with the
relations of each belligerent to neu-
trals.
The former topic has been under dis-
cussion for at least six centuries ; for,
not to mention classical antiquity, the
literature of it may be traced from the
canonists and casuists, through the
dreamers of a law of nature, doxvn to
the l)ositive systems of the present day.
The latter topic is comparatively mod-
ern, dating, as a clearly defined subject
of separate inquiry, only from the
eighteenth century ; though it has
already come far to surpass in com-
plexity and importance the law of bel-
ligerency.
I propose to call attention to some
points in which each of these depart-
ments of international law has been
illustrated by the war which has just
been brought to a close. But, first of
all, a xvord or two upon the applicabil-
ity of international law to the nations
which have been engaged in this com-
It ended on 8th May, when the ratifications of
the treaty signed at Shimonoseki on 17th April,
were exchanged at Chefoo. During the armistice,
the war, of course, continued to subsist: Non pax
est induclic; bellum enjin manet, pugna cessat.
67
bat; a question upon which some very
random observations have appeared in
the public press.2 Are China and
Japan, with reference either to one
another or to other powers, subject to
the duties which are recognized as sub-
sisting between the States of Europe ?
We come here upon a large question,
no less than the essential character of
international law, and the sphere of
its operation. According to the older
theory, no doubt, the law of nations
was the law of Christendom; as little
applicable to infidels as was the coin-
mon law~ of the Greek cities (Ta KOIV&
rCv E2uftivov v6iu,sc) to societies of bar-
barians. The Reformation, by break-
ing up the religious unity of Europe
obliged the jurists of those days to look
less and less to religion as the test of
subjection to what was later described
as the public law of Europe, and
of membership of the family of na-
tions. It came to be understood that
the members of this family are the
States of western Europe and their
derivatives in North and South Ainer-
ica, as sharers not so much in a com-
mon religion as in a common civilization
and stock of moral ideas. That any
other States possess these qualifications
is not to be presumed, but needs to be
established from the special circum-
stances of each case. The accession of
the Oriental races to the law or con-
cert of Europe may be taken to have
begun by the formal admission into it
of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty
of Paris of 1856. Since that date, the
maintenance of permanent diplomatic
intercourse between the European
courts and several powers of the re-
moter East, together with the increas-
ingly large number of treaties made
with such powers, and well observed by
them, have accustomed us to regard
these new-comers as belonging to the
charmed circle ; though, perllaps, as
admitted to it only on probation.
Suell might seem to be the position of
2 E.g., in the Saturday Review, 11th August,
1894: There was no legal war. . . . The code of
international law does not apply to barbarians,
who have nothing of civilization beyond a chatter
of words and a supply of deadly weapons. Cf.
even the Law Journal, 1894, pp. 478, 513, 536.
International Law in the Japanese War.
68
Japan; but such could hardly be said
to be the position of China ; for China
is far behind Japan in readiness to
assimilate the ethical ideas of the
West, or to enter into the network of
treaties which so much facilitates the
social life of the world. In particular,
she has neglected to accede to the
Geneva Convention for the treatment
of the wounded, to which Japan long
ago became a party; nor have her
courts and codes any pretension so to
satisfy European requirements as to
justify the Western powers in resign-
ing, as they are about to do in the case
of Japan,2 the extra-territorial privi-
leges enjoyed in the empire by for-
eigners. Antecedently to the war,
therefore, we should have said that
Japan was admitted on probation, while
China was only a candidate for admis-
sion, to the family of nations. Let
us now see what further light has been
thrown upon the respective qualifica-
tions of the two empires by subsequent
events ; and first with reference to the
law of belligerency, where we have to
consider: I. The declaration of war.
II. The conduct of warfare. III.
The cornrnercia belli, i.e., such quasi-
friendly transactions as occur between
enemies.
I. War was formally declared by
Japan on 1st August, 1894, and the
challenge was accepted in a counter-
declaration issued by China on the
following day. But hostilities were
already in progress. On 251h July, a
Japanese squadron had been engaged
with Chinese men~of-war which had
been convoying transports carrying
reinforcements for Asan, in Korea
antI Japanese troops had captured Asan
itself on the 29th. A state of war ex-
isted therefore between the two coun-
tries as early as 25th July ; and there
is nothing irregular in a war thus com-
menced. It has long been a settled
doctrine of international law that a
declaration, though laudable and for
1 E.g., the universal conventions as to weights
and measures, posts, and telegraphs.
2 Great Britain, by treaty with Japan of 16th
July, 1894, provides for the cessation of such priv-
ileges after five years from that date. The United
States and Italy have already followed suit.
several purposes convenient, is not an
essential preliminary to legitimate war-
fare, and that, even when issued, it
may be followed by acts of hostility
without an interval.3 For proof that
practice has been in accordance with
tileory, it will be enough to refer to the
historical sketch of the subject which
was prepared for the War Office by
Colonel Maurice, when the possibility
of this country being invaded without
notice by means of a Channel tunnel
was under discussion.
II. With reference to the conduct
of warfare, China has not accepted the
customs, nor has she bound herself by
the express conventions, which prevail
among civilized nations. The signal
made by Admiral Ting, before the bat-
tle off the Yalu, If the enemy shows
the white flag, or hoists the Chinese
ensign, give no quarter, but continue
firing at her till she is sunk, ~ need,
therefore, occasion no surprise. Sn ng,
the imperial commissioner, is stated
to have posted notices in northern
Manchuria, offering ten thousand taels
for the decapitation of three Japanese
~ and
generals ; it seems to be estab-
lished that the Chinese commanders
habitually offered and paid rewards for
the heads and hands of prisoners,6 who
might indeed be accounted fortunate if
they escaped a fate far worse than in-
stantly inflicted death. It was the tor-
ture and mutilation of those Japanese
who happened to be made prisoners
during the operations against Port Ar-
thur which stung their fellow-country-
men into madness, and explains, though
nothing can excuse, the massacres
which were carried on by them for
four days after the place was taken.
See Lord Ellenborough in Orme v. Bruce, 12
East, 226; Lord Stowell in the Nayada, 4 Rob. 253,
and the Eliza Anne, 1 Dods. 247; Betts, J., in the
Hiawatha, 1 Blatch.
Statement by captain MeGiffen of the chen-
Yuen.
correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, 12th
April, 1895.
claims on this account are said to have been
found among the papers of a chinese general, and
Mr. Hart, correspondent of the New York World,
saw payments made for heads in the governors
yamen at I~ort Arthur.
International Law in the Japanese War.
International Law in the Japanese War.
With the lamentable exception just
mentioned, the conduct .of the opera-
tions of war by the Japanese seems to
have beeti in accordance with the best
European practice, and with the proc-
lamation addressed to the army on
22nd April, 1894, by Count Gyama, the
minister for war. This remarkable
document lays down that belligerent
operations being properly confined to
the military and naval forces actually
engaged, and there being no reason
whatever for enmity between individ-
uals, because their countries are at
war, the common principles of human-
ity dictate that succor and rescue
should be extended even to those of
the enemys forces who nie disabled
either by wounds or disease. It goes
on to state that Japan became a party
to the Geneva Convention ( more
commonly called the Red Cross Asso-
ciation) in June, 1886, and that her
soldiers had already been instructed
that they are bound to treat with kind-
ness and helpfulness such of their
enemies as may be disabled by wounds.
or disease. China, not having joined
the Convention, may behave badly,
but nevertheless her disabled must be
succored, and her captured kindly and
considerately treated.
lit may be worth while to mention
seriatim the points in which the Japan-
ese conduct of warfare may be tested
by the rules of internation~d law.
1. There seems to have been no em-
ployment of privateers. As against
China, a non-signatory of tile Declara-
tion of Paris, this would have been
lawful for Japan, though herself a sig-
natorv since 1886.2
2. There has been nO complaint of
any violation of the St. Petersburg
Declaration on tile part of tile Japall-
ese. The Chinese are, Ilowever, ac-
cused of firing explosive bullets.
3. Tile Japanese government seems
to ilave taken some precautions against
the employment of savage auxiliaries,
by prohibiting the enlistment of those
two-handed sword men the Samuri.
Some of these people, however, accom-
panied the troops in the guise of
coolies, and have been guilty of a cer-
taiii amount of wanton cruelty.8
4. The bombardment of Tung-chow~
by a Japanese squadron, as a feint, in
January last, was complained of by the
missionaries on the around that it is
an open town. But there seems to be
no doubt that it is defended by forts,
wilich replied to the enemys fire.4
5. The treatment of peaceful inhab-
itants and foreigners in places occupied
by the Japanese seems to ilave been
praiseworthy. Thus, when Kinchow
was taken, an officer was stationed in
every store to protect the proprietor
from soldiers and coolies, and the
Japanese governor of the town fed
ilundreds of Chinese daily.6 A special
guard was posted over a British mis-
sionary found in one of the houses dur-
ing the street-fighting at old Nien
Chang 6 and after the taking of Ying
Kow, On 6th March, 1895, protection
was assured to all law-abiding citizens,
and six hundred soldiers were detailed
to safeguard the forei~n residents.
6. Quarter seems, as a rule, to have
been freely granted to non-resisting
combatants. It is not establisiled that
tile Naniwa continued to fire, as was
alleged, upon the sinking Kowshing,
and upon tile troops and sailors who
had taken to the boats or had leapt
into the water to avoid sharing her
fate. At Port Arthur, for once, there
is no doubt that the behavior of the
Japanese was (letestable. Much may
be pardoned of what occurred when
tile strOmlgilOld was first entered by its
assailants. If a certain unulber of
non-uniformed coolies, or of soldiers
wilo Ilad thrown off their uniforms, re-
ceived short shrift, when found with
rifles in their hands, what was done
was not without the sanction of recent
European precedent. But unfortu-
nately the Japanese, officers and men
alike, were carried far beyond what
See an article in the North American Revie~#
for March, 1895, hy P. Villiers, special correspond-
ent of the Standard.
1 H. Norman, Tlie Far East, p. 378. Times, 19th March, 1895.
See the official collection of Japanese Treaties, New York Herald, IDecemher, 1804.
vol. ii. (Tokio, 1889), p. 399. 6 Times, 6th March, 1895.
69
70
could be excused even by their finding
the mutilated remains of their tortured
friends exposed ou the gateway of the
town. For four days, after the first,
the massacre of non-combatants, of
women, of children, was continued in
cold blood, while European military
attctch~s and special correspondents
sickened at the wholesale murders and
mutilations which they could do nothing
to prevent. It is said that at last but
thirty-six Chinamen were left alive in
the city. They had been spared only
to be employed in burying their dead
fellow-countrymen, and each was pro-
tected by a slip of paper fastened in
his cap, with the inscription This
man is not to be killed. 2
In pleasing contrast to all this, is
what occurred upon the capture of the
sister naval arsenal to Port Arthur,
Wei-hai-wei. The Chinese troops
found in the fortress were dismissed in
safety, as were the foreigners who had
been assisting in the defence of the
place, with the exception only of an
American who had been arrested under
suspicious circumstances at Kobe, but
released on giving his parole to return
forthwith to the United States. So,
after the capture of Makong in the
Pescadores. the Chinese officers were
sent to Japan as prisoners of war, but
the rank and file were despatched in
junks to the mainland, there to be set
at liberty.
7. In 1886, Japan gave in her adhe-
sion to the Geneva Convention for the
treatment of the wounded,8 and in the
same year a society which had been
founded in 1877, on the occasion of the
Satsuma rebellion, for the better relief
of the sick and wounded, enemies as
well as friends, was reorganized under
the patronage of the mikado, and for-
mally enrolled in the list of Red Cross
Societies, whose headquarters is at
Geneva. Many ladies of high rank
have qualified in it as nurses, it has
thousands of subscribers, and it pos-
sesses fine hospitals at Hiroshima,
Times, special correspondent, 8th January,
1895.
2 North American lieriew, March, 1895, p. 325.
Treaties, vol. ii,. p. 393.
International Law in the Japanese War.
Osaka, and Tokio, where such of the
Chinese wounded as could be moved so
far have received every kindness and
the best medical attendance.4
The Japanese had no opportunity of
conforming to the prescriptions of the
Geneva Convention which relate to the
surgeons and field hospitals of the
enemy, since no such functionaries or
institutions seem to be known to the
Chinese army.
III. The most rudimentary, and
therefore the longest and most gener-
ally accepted, principles of interna-
tional law, are those which teach the
sanctity of ambassadors, the respect
due to a flag of truce, and the good
faith which is required in the perform-
ance of such agreements as may be en-
tered into between enemies. Etiam
hosti fides servanda.
Little fault is to be found with either
belligerent with reference to these prin-
ciples, except that the Chinese are said
to have fired on a flag of truce sent to
inform them of the conclusion of the
armistice. When, at the outbreak of
the war, the departing Japanese minis-
ter was insulted by offensive cries and
pelted with mud, by a disorderly mob
of soldiers, while embarking with his
suite at Taku, the Chinese authorities
lost no time in expressing their regret,
and in punishing the offenders.
The Japanese government, though it
refused, and very properly, to treat
with Mr. Detring, and subsequently
with two Chinese envoys, as being
imperfectly accredited, received the
plenipotentiary, Li Hung Chang, with
every mark of friendly deference, and
at once opened negotiations with him,
at the little town of Shimonoseki,
which had been selected for the pur-
pose on account of its peaceful char-
acter. Greater precautions should, as
the event proved, have been taken for
his safety, but when, on the 25th
March, an attempt was made on the
life of Li Hung Chang, by a fanatic or
lunatic who fired at him in the street,
the would-be assassin was promptly
See a special article in the Times of 8th Jan-
uary, 1895.
International Law in the Japanese War.
tried, and sentenced to penal servitude
for life ; the police officials who had
failed to make the outrage impossible
were dismissed; and the mikado, not
content with tendering the fullest apol-
ogy to Li Hung Chang, and sending
his own medical attendants to see to
the wound, proceeded to grant to
China, what had previously been re-
fused, except on prohibitively severe
terms, an unconditional armistice, ex-
tending over the greater part of the
scene of military operations.
The armistice was scrupulously ob-
served,, and the peace negotiations,
down to the signature of the treaty of
peace on 17th April, and its ratification
on 8th May last, proceeded as correctly
on both sides as could have been the
case in Europe.
The questions raised by the relations
of belligerents one to another are less
complex and delicate than those which
arise between belligerents and neu-
trals. Great Britain announced her
neutrality in the late war by a proc-
lamation issue(l on 7th Auaust 1894
~nd her example was promptly fol-
lowed by the other maritime powers
of the West. The presumption is, of
course, in favor of neutrals being en-
titled to carry on their trade, or other-
wise pursue their ordinary avocations,
as if the ~var, to which they are no
l)arties, were not being waged. This
attitude of aloofness has, however,
become subject to numerous modifica-
tions, most of which are indeed inev-
ital)le. The ordinary rights of states
need, in many cases, to be specially
re-defined when those states, by the
outbreak of war between their neigh-
l)ors, come to occupy the position of
neutrals ; ~ and states which are so
placed become ipso facto subject to a
set of duties which have no existence
in time of peace.
A few words upon such of the rights
of neutrals as have made themselves
felt during the late ~var. The sover-
eianty of the neutral over its own ter-
ritorv including its territorial waters,
implies the right to prohibit hostilities
taking place there. No attempt was
made to infringe the British right over
Hong Kong, or to commit acts of war
within its waters. An engagement
seems even to have been given by the
Japanese that they would not attack,
and by the Chinese that they would
not by torpedos obstruct the access to,
a port in which all foreigners are so
interested as Shanghai. The persons
and property of neutrals in China have
been respected alike by the Chinese
and by the invaders. It is true that a
few days after the outbreak of the
war, a British vessel, the Chung King,
while lying at Tong Ku, was boarded
by a number of Chinese soldiers, who
seriously maltreated sixty Japanese,
men, women, and children, who hap-
pened to be on the ship; but an ample
apology for the occurrence was made
by the viceroy to the British consul.
The arrest, on a French mail steamer
in Japanese waters at Kobe, of two
American citizens, whose papers
showed that they were proceeding to
China to assist the government there
with certain military inventions,
though a novel proceeding, was prob-
ably justifiable. The neutral right to
continue diplomatic intercourse with
both belligerents was not interfered
with on either side during the war.
But the duties of neutrals are far
more prominent than their rights. In
the first place, a state by becoming
neutral, is precluded from certain
courses of action which would ordi-
narily be open to it. Secondly, a neu-
tral state is obliged to prevent certain
classes of acts with which, but for the
war, it would have nothing to do.
Thirdly, a neutral state is obliged to
acquiesce in penalties being inflicted by
the belligerents upon its subjects, for
acts which, apart from the war, would
l)e perfectly innocent. Let us see how
far these several heads of duty have
been illustrated by what has lately
occurred.
I. (1) A neutral state is, ex vi
termini, precluded from allowing its
armed forces, in any way, to take part
1 London and China Telegraph, 1894, p. 650.
71
72
in the hostilities. A salute fired by
Admiral Fremantle in honor of a
Japanese man-of-war is alleged to
have given notice to the Chinese of
what was intended to have been the
secret approach of a Japanese squad-
ron to the harbor of Wei-hai-wei.
This was unfortunate, and caused
much irritation in Japan till the acci-
dental character of the occurrence be-
caine thoroughly understood. (2) A
neutral state, though it may not furnish
troops to either belligerent, is not com-
promised by assistance rendered by
individuals not belonging to its own
army or navy, to one or the other com-
batant. A good many Europeans seem
to have been serving China during the
late war, but Germany was not respon-
sible for Major von ilanneken, nor we
for Admiral Maclure. (3) A neutral
state is bound to abstain from selling
its ships of war to either belligerent.
If, therefore, as was alleged, the Chil-
ian cruiser, Esmeralda, was sold to
Japan in November last, or if, as was
also alleged, half of the Chilian fleet
was sold to China, a gross violation of
neutral duty occurred.
II. A neutral state is bound to pre-
vent certain acts by persons, or within
territory, subject to its control. It is,
for instance, bound to prevent its ter-
ritory from being used as a base of
hostile operations. So the British
proclamation of neutrality brought into
force the two twenty-four hours
rules in all ports of the queens domin-
ions. Under these, no Chinese or
Japanese war ship could, under ordi-
nary circumstance, remain in such
ports for a longer time than that men-
tioned, nor could she leave such a port
within a shorter time after the depar-
ture from it of a war ship or merchant
vessel belonging to the other bellig-
erent. Again, although a neutral gov-
ernment is not bound to prevent the
export by its subjects of munitions of
war, to be used by the belligerents, it
is bound, according to modern views,
I Lieutenant Bouchier, R.N., who had been lent
to the chinese government, left its service, under
instructions from Admiral Fremantle.
International Law in the Japanese War.
to prevent tile export of ships of war
to be thus used. As to the limits of
tl~is duty, so much discussed with
reference to tile Alabama, there is still
much doubt; but, in order to be on
the safe side, neutral governments are
in the habit of taking, under Foreign
Enlistment Acts~ or similar pieces of
legislation, powers considerably in ex-
cess of their international obligations,
against a trade which so closely approx-
imates to the sending forth from their
shores of a hostile expedition against
a friendly power. An armed vessel,
the Tatsuta, built in the Tyne for
Japan, got clear away before the war
was declared ; but during the war so
close a watcll was kept by our customs
authorities upon all building yards, that
no accession to the naval strength of
either China or Japan was possIble
from that quarter. So, for instance,
when a vessel called the Diogenes,
built at Blackwall, and evidently fitted
for war service, was about to proceed
to the mouth of the Thames for her
speed trial, the Foreign Office, which
had been kept informed of the progress
of the ship, communicated with the
Admiralty, which sent a detachment of
thirty blue-jackets and marines to go
on board of her and see that she did
not leave British waters.
III. The duty of a neutral power to
acquiesce in belligerent interference
with the trade of its subjects relates to
three main topics, viz., blockade, con-
traband, and belligerent service. The
neutral power is under no obligation to
prevent its subjects from engaging in
the running of blockades, in shipping
or carrying contraband, or in carrying
troops or despatches for one of the
belligerents ; but, on the other hand,
neutral subjects, so engaged, can ex-
pect no protection from their own
government against such customary
penalties as may be imposed upon their
conduct by the belligerent who is ag-
grieved by it. With a view to the in-
fliction of such penalties, a belligerent
is armed with the right of visit and
search, i.e., his cruisers may stop and
overhaul any merchant vessel reason-
International Law in the Japanese War.
ably suspected of any of the offences in
question, may arrest her, and may
bring her in with a view to obtaining
her condemnation by a prize court.
No blockade seems to have been
established during the late war, but the
question of contraband from time to
time became prominent. There are
many objects, such as rifles and gun-
powder, as to the contraband character
of which there can be no doubt ; but it
is not unusual for a belligerent to an-
nounce, in a proclamation issued at the
outbreak of the war, what other objects
he intends to include in the prohibited
list. Japan seems to have made such
a proclamation with reference to lead
and coal, but to have promised not to
interfere with the carriage of rice. No
similar announcement was made by
China, although, early in September, a
British ship bound for Japan, on
touching at Shanghai, was not allowed
to proceed on her voyage till she had
discharged a quantity of chlorate of
potash which was part of her cargo.
On the 21st of the same month a
Chinese cruiser stopped the British
steamer Pathan, in Formosa channel,
on suspicion of carrying munitions of
war, and took her into Keelung
for further examination 2 Subsequent
searches for contraband have, of
course, been more usually made by
the cruisers of Japan. In the course
of March last several steamers, under
the British and the German flags, were
stopped and searched by Japanese fast
cruisers in the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. These
proceedings were, in some quarters, de-
scribed as high-handed, but were
perfectly legitimate. On 10th Apr11 the
British steamer Yiksang, with two hun-
dred and twenty thousand cartridges on
board, shipped at Shanghai, as was
alleged, in good faith as bamboos and
steel, was seized at Taku and carried
to Japan, where her case was speedily
brought before a prize court, sitting at
Sasebo, which ultimately released her.
It must be noticed that, quite early in
the war, a system of prize courts, of
first instance and of appeal, was duly
called into existence in Japan, and a
body of rules of procedure, wort hyof
the best days of Doctors Commons,
was promulgated for their guidance.3
[ have asked a friend, who is a mem-
ber of the Japanese government, to
send me any available reports of prize
cases. The cases have probably not
been numerous, and can have hardly
afforded an opportunity for the appear-
ance of a Japanese Lord Stowell.
The remaining ground for the arrest
of a neutral vessel by a belligerent,
that she is engaged in the service of
the enemy, by carrying troops, officers,
or despatches, was illustrated by a case
which occurred at the very beginning
of the war. On July 25th, 1894, the
relations between China and Japan
with reference to Korea being very
strained, and several transports con-
voyed by men-of-war having already
landed reinforcements for the Chinese
forces at Asan, in that country, a Jap-
anese squadron, cruising off the island
of Sho-pai-oul, on the Korean coast,
was attacked about 7 A.M. by Chinese
warships returning from Asan. About
9 A.~i. the Kowshing, a British vessel,
carrying further Chinese reinforce-
ments for Asan, appeared on the scene,
whereupon the Naniwa, one of the
Japanese cruisers, turned back from
pursuing the Chinese men-of-war and
signalled to her to stop. A boat from
the Naniwa then boarded the Kow-
shing, and finding that she was carrying
twelve hundred Chinese troops, with
several generals, including the German
Major von Hanneken, inquired of the
captain whether he would peaceably
follow the Naniwa to Japan. The cap-
taiii said, Yes. I am powerless to
refuse, as you are a man-of-war. The
Chinese officers, however, (lechined to
allow this to be done, and made prep-
arations for shooting Captain Glas-
worthy and his English officers should
any attempt be made to take the ship
to Japan. After some more parleying,
and a final signal from the Japanese to
quit the ship immediately, the
1 Times, 13th September, 1894.
2 Renters telegram, Shanghai, 26th September, 3 Set out in the Japan Weekly Mail, 25th Au-
1894. gust, 1894.
73
International Law in the Japanese War.
Naniwa, between 12 and 1 P.M., fired a
torpedo and then a broadside at the
Kowshing, exploding her boilers, and
eventually sending her to the bottom.
All on board who were able to do so
took to the boats or leapt into the
water, and most of the Europeans were
picked up by the boats of the Naniwa.
The first arrival of this news in En-
gland produced a certain amount of
excitement. Leading articles were
freely garnished with such phrases as
insult to the British flag, ample
aj)ology to be exacted from Japan,
wanton outrage in time of peace,
full compensation for the owners and
for the relations of such of the En-
glish officers and engineers as may
have perished. It was some time
before the facts of the case were
clearly ascertained, and still longer
before the public was educated in the
legal principles applicable to the occur-
rence. It is, however, now, I believe,
pretty well understood that the views
asserted from the first by Professor
Westlake and myself were correct.2
As early as August 8th, I maintained,
in a letter to the Times, that a state of
war may well exist without declara-
tion ; that a neutral vessel, after notice
of a war so existing, is liable, if en-
gaged in a forbidden traffic, such as the
carriage of troops for a belligerent, to
be arrested and carried in for con-
(lemnnation by a prize court, an(1 that,
if she refuses to allow herself so to be
carried in, her submission may be com-
pelled by the use of so much force as
may be necessary. Applying these
princil)les to the case in question, I
went on to say
The Kowshing, therefore, before the first
torpedo was fired, was, and knew that she
was, a neutral ship engaged in a transport
service of a belligerent. (Her flying the
British flag, whether as a ruse de guerre
1 For a good account of them by captain S.
Eardley Wilmot, R.N., see the Fortaightly Review
for January, 1895.
2 We were, however, described, in a paper called
concord, October, 1894, as recreant doctors of
law, backsliding jurists, who have brought
on their own reputations, or on their profession, a
scandal and reproach which public opinion will
insist on having removed.
or otherwise, is wholly immaterial.) Her
liabilities, as such ship, were twofold
1. Regarded as an isolated vessel, she
was liable to be stopped, visited, and taken
in for adjudication by a Japanese prize
court. If, as was the fact, it was prac-
tically impossible for a Japanese prize crew
to be placed on board of her, the Japanese
commander was within his rights in using
any amount of force necessary to compel
her to obey his orders.
2. As one of a fleet of transports and
men-of-war engaged in carrying reinforce-
ments to the Chinese troops on the main-
land, the Kowshing was clearly part of a
hostile expedition, or one which might be
treated as hostile, which the Japanese
were entitled, by the use of all needful
force, to prevent from reaching its destina-
tion.
The force employed seems not to have
been in excess of what might lawfully be
used, either for the arrest of an enemys
neutral transport or for barring the prog-
ress of a hostile expedition. The rescued
officers also having been set at liberty in
due course, I am unable to see that any
violation of the rights of neutrals has oc-
curred. No apology is due to our gov-
ernment, nor have the owners of the
Kowshing, or the relatives of any of her
European officers who may have been lost,
any claim for compensation.
Our review of the course of recent
eveilts would seem to lead to tile fol-
lowing conclusions. Japan, apart from
the lamentable outburst of savagery at
Port Arthur, has conformed to the
laws of war, both in her treatment of
the enemy and in her relations to neu-
trals, in a manner worthy of the most
civilized nations of western Europe.
China, on tile other hand, has given
no indication of her acceptance of
the usages of civilized warfare ; and,
although she was prel)ared to exercise
tue rights conceded to belligerents
against Ileutral commerce, took no
steps, by establishing prize courts, to
secure vessels engaged in it from im-
proper molestation. This is the more
to be regretted, because for more than
thirty years past international law has
been studied at Pekin. The works of
Wheaton, G. F. de Martens, Woolsey,
and Bluntschli, as well as the Man-
uel des Lois de in Guerre of the In
74
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
stitut de Droit International, have
been translated into Chinese ; and the
translator, Dr. Martin, is professor of
the law of nations at the Imperial
College of Tung-wen. But the Chinese
have adopted only what 1 have already
described as the rudimentary and in-
evitable conceptions of international
law. They have shown themselves to
be well versed in the ceremonial of
embassy and the conduct of diplomacy.
To a respect for the laws of war they
have not yet attained.
T. E. HOLLAND,
Chichele Professor of International Law and
Diplomacy in the University of Oxford.
From Blackwoods Magazine.
CUCKOO CORNER.
A WEST COUNTRY SKETCH.
IT was a damp, chilly afternoon in
March, and the tall black poplars were
still leafless as in December, when
a young girl passed under them and
turned the corner, to go up the lane,
between the hedges covered with buds
and catkins, which seemed to make the
distant trees rise through a silvery
haze. A little brook trickled down
over the rough stones in the middle of
the pathway, and the girl had to pick
her way across from one side to the
other ; but it was with a slow, heavy
step which had little of the joyous
freedom of youth.
As she turned her head she revealed
a pale, delicate face, with soft, dark
eyes and brown hair smoothly brushed
back from her low forehead, round
which clustered a few little vagrant
curls. The sensitive mouth, with full,
red lips, half open, and the short, reced-
ing chin, spoke of a weak, timid na-
ture. Her dress was neat and simple
a plain straw hat and a dark stuff
gown with a black jacket; and she
carried in her hands all her worldly
goods a 1)undle of clothes tied up in
a red shawl, and a white bandbox
no heavy burden, and yet her whole
manner was of one who was weary and
heavy laden. Half-way up the lane
she paused for a moment to listen to a
blackbird sinaina in the hedae just
above the bank where the starry white
blossoms of the stitchwort bent clown
towards the grey film of coming blue-
bells.
Her eyes were dim with tears, and
as she stretched out her hand long-
ingly, she slipped ankle-deep in the
water.
Poor Letitia! How familiar it all
was to her, for her earliest remem-
brances were bound up with that
watery path to school, which had been
so often trodden by her little toddling
feet. Oh, if she could but call back
those bygone days of her innocent
childhood!
She had reached the poima where the
winding lane took a sharp turn up from
the hollow towards the wooden slopes
above. Beneath a clump of gaunt,
weather-beaten fir-trees her home stood
before her one of those two cottages
with grey stone walls and a thatched
roof, tinted with many-colored lichens,
where the swallows always built under
the deep eaves.
Why it was called Cuckoo Corner~
nobody knew for certain, but from time
immemorial such had been the name of
that secluded nook, away and apart
from the rest of the village of Combe
Dallwood. A lovely spot in summer,
when the world is flooded with sun-
shine ; but seen through the gathering
mist, it seemed to echo back the sad-
ness and gloom in the girls own heart.
By the broken gate of the nearest
cottage Letitia paused a while irreso-
lute, until some sound from within
startled her, and summoning up her
courage, she crossed the few yards of
garden path, with the tangled mass of
violets and snowdrops on either side.
Then with a deep sigh, which was al-
most a sob, she pushed open the rough
door left ajar, and stood trembling on
the threshold of her home. Coming
out of the daylight, it all looked so
dark that she could distinguish noth-
ing at first, for the big oak settle hid
from her the firelight on the hearth.
Mother ! she murmured faintly,
and in a moment her voice was heard
and recognized, and a worn-looking
75
76
Cuckoo Corner: A
woman with a wrinkled face came for-
ward in a stiff, awkward manner.
Titia ! she cried, in sudden
amazement. Why, if it beant our
Titia a-come hoam, dear maid !
With a great effort the girl had kept
up till that moment, but it was well for
her that her mothers arms closed
round her ere she fell, and gently drew
her towards the place of honor the
high-backed chair with a chintz cush-
ion, which stood inside the snug refuge
of the chimney-corner. Full of anxious
love, Aim Lever bent over her child
an(l kissed her pale face ; then kneel-
ing down by her side, she gently chafed
her cold hands, and loosened her
jacket.
Whatever havee a-left thy pla~ee
vor ? asked a hoarse voice from the
other side of the hearth, in a level,
undemonstrative tone.
It was the first sign that Timothy
Lever, the girls father and the master
of the house, had given of his pres-
ence; but he was al~vays a man of few
wor(ls, one of the quiet, ruminatino
order, almost sharing the nature of the
peaceful beasts among whom his days
were spent.
Now do ee let the maid alone,
Timthy ! exclaimed his wife, in a
sharp, peevish voice, a complete con-
trast to that in which she had been
crooning over Letitia. Her be that
beat wi her long traipse, you mid
knock she down wi a feather, an nar
a word shall her zay, good or bad, till
her ye had a bit o zupper.
So Mrs. Lever set to work with a
will to kindle the smouldering embers
of the wood fire on the hearth, and to
boil the big kettle hung above it and
hooked on to the iron chain. Then she
put ready on the table the old brown
teapot with a broken spout, and the
loaf of home-made bread, and a tiny
pat of butter, and the blue - vinny
cheese ; and in honor of her Titia, she
took- down, with tender solicitude, the
pink cup and saucer which always lived
on the top shelf.
Meantime Timothy sat there in his
soiled smockfrock, his stiff leather
gaiters tied on with wisps of straw,
West Country Sketch.
and his heavy Imob-nailed boots, thick
with mud which was slowly (Irying in
that warm corner. He was quietly
smoking his pipe, and to all appearance
taking no interest in what was going
on. But a keen observer would have
noticed a nervous twitch about the thin
mouth, and an anxious look in the
small, deeply sunk blue eyes, which
revealed the workings of the poor soul
in that uncouth body. As his master,
Farmer iDorymeade, had once re-
marked, Timothy Levers silence do
mean so much as most mens speech.
He loved his daughter, the last and
youngest of his children, and she
knew it ; but he lacked the lower to
express his feelings. Then, too, he
was stiff and weary with his long (lays
work along the furrows, which had
begun before four oclock that morn-
ing ; for he was a carter, and he had
to get up in the dark and trudge
through the muddy lanes and wet
grass, to feed his horses before taking
them out to plough. When once he
sat down in the chimney-corner, he
rarely had the energy to move again
till bedtime, when his wet clothes had
mostly time to dry on him. Every-
thing was so close at hand that he even
took his supper on his knee, cutting his
hunch of bread and cheese with a big
clasp-knife, which was always handy
for every purpose.
His wife was a great contrast to him
an eager, excitable woman, with
keen black eyes and scarcely a grey
hair amongst her thin locks. Her fig-
ure was bent, more from work than
age ; she was untidy in appearance,
wearing a short, rusty black skirt and
not over-clean greenish body, while
she was scarcely ever seen without a
purple sun-bonnet, carelessly pushed
back from her face. As she busied
herself in making the tea and getting
supper ready, her husbands eyes fol-
lowed her movements, and then turned
towards his girl, with almost pathetic
hungry longing.
If he could only do or say something
to show how warmly he welcomed her
home. And all the time there was the
kind of quiet look about him with
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
77
which he used to stand up in his place that it was a wonder her family did not
in church on Sundays, and which was turn ont worse. Two of the sons had
like nothing so much as the patient enlisted, and another worked as under-
demeanor of his own cart-horses, as carter under his father. The eldest
they were wont to wait at the end of a girl, Polly, a brisk, capable lass, had
furrow. married a yonng dairyman in the
Meanwhile Letitia leaned back in her neighboring village of Stoke Melford.
chair, thankful that she was allowed to But Titia stayed at home with her
be silent, while she gave herself up to mother, and being of a meek and timid
the soothing influence of the warm disposition, she dreaded any change.
fire, and the kindly home feeling of rest It so happened, however, in those
and love. Surely now all her care and days, that there was a curate in charge
trouble would be forgotten and fade of the parish who had an energetic,
away like a bad dream, but yetshe well-meaning sister, and she took upon
must not think of it. herself to be a kind of Providence to
Her eyes glanced languidly round the the poor people, and rule their lives for
poor little dwelling, of which every de- them better than they could do for
tail hind been so familiar to her from themselves. Now she was quite scan-
her earliest childhood. She saw the dahized at the idea of this big girl of
low ceiling, full of cracks, discolored Levers, going on for fourteen, remain-
with smoke, and the rough ~vooden ing at home and doing nothing, but
rack for hanging bacon, when such a only a burden to her parents. So the
luxury was to be had. There was the flat went forth that Caroline, as she
wooden dresser, with its motley assort- was to be called, ignoring that ridic-
ment of cups and jugs and odd dishes ulous name of Letitia, must go out
and other miscellaneous articles in to service at once. The good lady lost
fact most of the household property no time ; she made inquiries up North
was kept there, or on the narrow table amongst her friends in Birmingham,
by the stairs. The rough and much and soon found a situation. A
stained plaster of the walls was partly cousin of her own had recently married
hidden by pictures from old illustrated the managing clerk of a bank, and
papers of the most varied and incon- wanted a young country servant.
gruous kinds. Just in front of her The girl Lever was told of her good
there was hung, in a black frame, a fortune in being selected for such a
work of art of which she was very post, and despite her mothers loud
proud the sampler she had worked at protestations and her fathers ominous
school, with her full name, Letitia silence, she was sent off to Birming-
Caroline Lever, in red cross-stitch, ham, for, as a last resort, the squire~ s
and various quaint designs round it. authority was invoked, and from this
She had never distinguished herself in there was no appeal.
any other way, for she had always been The curates sister, who could ill
a weakly child; and as the youngest of afford it, had helped with Letitias out-
a large family, many of whom had fit, and had herself made the neat black
died, her mother had spoilt her and frock and white cap and aprons, which
kept her at home from school as much she was to wear in the afternoon. But
as possible. even with her strong supporting sense
Indeed, as to this matter of sending of duty fulfilled Miss Wilson was
thie children to school, most of the haunted for days afterwards by the
Combe Dallwood folks were agreed look of dumb despair on the childs
that it was a sad waste of time for their face, as she started on her long journey
boys and girls, who might be so much in the third-class railway carriage.
more usefully employed. Yet what- Poor little Titia ! There were
ever might be their views about edu- worse troubles in store for her than
cation, they all said that Ann Lever even the parting from her home and
was a poor, weak sort of mother, and her mother.
78
Her new mistress was young an(1 in-
experienced, and expected a great (leal
more from the untrained creature than
she could possibly perform. There
was no other servant kept, an(l she had
to get through all the work as best she
could, be housemaid, parlotmaid,
cook, all in one. But perhaps her
greatest grievance was that she was
expected to put on her one tidy frock
before early (linner, and wait at table,
and answer the door to visitors,
while, as she described it in after days
The kitchen, he were all of a caddle,
while misess, her did zit i the parlor,
vor all t world bike a wax doll, wi
her yaller hair all frizzed and touzied,
an a black velvet gownd wi a tail to
un
But, after all, the work and even the
worry, the poor child might possibly
have endured; what was most terrible
to her was the death-like silence and
loneliness at night, when she was shut
up all by herself, far away in the
kitchen of the gloomy town house.
The desolate, home-sick giriwould sob
her heart out at such times, for hours
together. Escape was impossible, for
she had no money to pay for her jour-
ney home ; it was no use writing to her
mother, who could not read her letters,
and might show them to the wrong
person ; she must bide her time. But
at the first quarter-day, when she was
paid her accumulated wages the sum
total of half-a-crown a week she tied
up her bundle and went straight off to
the station and took the next train back
South, to the dear old home. She was
sure of a loving welcome there; and
oh, the luxury of pouring out all her
troubles in the ear of her indignant
mother, after the long three months
purgatory of silence and despair
No, they shouldn never zend my
maiden away agen, never no mwore,
along wi they stuck up vok; no, I
wunt let un, not vor no squier an no
passon liven, pore lamb!
So she vowed, did Mrs. Lever, and
for nearly two years she had her way
and kept her girl at home. But then,
alas ! bad times came, and Timothy
was laid up for months with the
Cuckoo Corner: A West Uountry Sketch.
rheumatics, and the potatoes got
the disease, and the pig died ; and so,
little by little, their small savings went,
and their credit down at the shop was
almost exhausted.
The position was so serious that
Polly, the eldest daughter, came over
from Stoke Melford to. consider what
was to be done. She took her sister to
task at once, and clearly pointed out
to her that she was another mouth to
feed at home, and that the best thing
she could do to help the old people
was to earn her living and save her
wages for them. Mrs. Lever shed
many silent tears ; but she was like
wax in the hands of Polly, whose hard,
sensible view of the matter carried the
day.
So another place was found for
Titia, but this time in a farmhouse
about ten miles away, where she would
live in a homely way with the family,
and share their domestic life. Here it
was, at Steynford-under-the-Hill, that
she had been living for nearly a year,
when, as we have seen, the young girl
suddenly and without warning ap-
peared at home again.
Not until she was rested and warmed
and comforted were any questions
asked of the poor wanderer, and then
her mother could make but little out of
her broken, incoherent replies.
Yes, sure theyve a-ben main good
to I, over to the varm, an Ive nowt to
zay agen they; but howsomdever tis
up early an late to bed, an the work,
why, tidden never done. Then she
added with a burst of tears, An now
I be comed hoam to bide.
Not one word of blame did her
mother speak; she kissed and petted
her darling as though she were a little
child again, and made a place ready for
her in the one low bedroom under the
thatch.
But the poor woman herself never
slept that night, for she was full of sad
and anxious thought. A dim brooding
shado~v hung over the future, which
only the inherited instinct of genera
tions, laden with sorrow and suffering,
enabled her to face with pathetic resig-
nation.
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
Time passed on, as it does for us all,
whether in hope or fear. The early
spring, with its vague, misty promise
of bud aud blossom, had melted away
into the full flush and glow of summer.
But in vain for Letitia had the prim-
roses filled the earth with their pale
delicate color ; in vain had the blue
hyacinths clothed the hillside with a
shadowy veil of azure, and the golden
daffodils shone like stars in the copse
the days would come again no more
when the eager child filled her hands
with flowers, and brought them home
rejoici ug.
A great change had come over the
girl; she never willingly went beyond
the cottage door, and while the outside
world was flooded with sunshine, she
turned her face away from the cheer-
ful light, and crept back into the dark-
est corner of the room. Soon the
neighbors down in the village street
began to gossip and shake their heads;
there was trouble somewhere, that
they were sure of ; but if the girl had
been defiant, and held up her head,
not shunning them and withholding
her confidence, the village critics
would have treated the matter very
(lifferently.
After a while, no one knew how it
befell, a dark rumor reached the
squire, and one day he bore down like
a whirlwind, upon poor Ann Lever,
who was taken unawares, and so he
got the whole truth out of her. Now
Squire Ingram ruled Combe Dallwood
with an absolute despotism in those
days, and would have no scandal there.
So his imperious word went forth
that Levers daughter must be married
at once.
It so happened that the squire owned
the very farm in the neighboring
parish where poor Letitia had been in
service, and he could thus bring strong
pressure to bear both on the farmer
and on the rustic Lothario in his em-
ployinent, who was soon discovered.
Thus it came about that before many
weeks the banns of marriage between
Caleb Thornden and Letitia Caroline
Lever were given out in the old
church, to a congregation which
scarcely tried to hide its amusement.
It was an awful time of misery for
the poor girl, whose affairs were thus
made a public laughing-stock, and she
could never have lived through it, but
the very depth of her trouble had
called forth friends where she least
expected them.
As we have seen, there were two
cottages at Cuckoo Corner, in a meas-
ure isolated from the rest of the vil-
lage ; and one of them was tenanted
by the Levers, while in the other dwelt
old Tom Lane the thatcher and his
wife Hephzibah. There had never
been much intimacy between the two
families, though Tom was a genial old
fellow, who always had a ready word
and jest for every one he met. But
the women did not quite hit it off to-
gether. Ann Lever, with her untidy
ways and spoilt children, always at
work and always behindhand, had an
aggrieved feeling towards Hephzibah,
who seemed to have so much leisure,
and whose bare-looking cottage was
the ideal of order and neatness. Old
Toms wife was a tall , gaunt figure,
with her head always shaking as
though the long, thin neck could
scarcely support it, and her wisp of
grey hair was smoothly drawn back
from her prominent forehead. She
was never without a big clean apron
over her short faded print frock, of
which the sleeves were always tucked
up, showing her lone, bony arms and
hands, all gnarled aud distorted by a
lifetime of hard work.
Poor Hephzibah had a stern, forbid~
ding look, and few people had any idea,
how that uncouth body hid a shy,
timid, gentle nature, painfully con-
scious of the fact that she was looked
on askance by the village as being a
stranger, a furrener, one o they
Chillerton vok, for she was a
native of the next village, and had
only been Tom Lanes second wife for
a matter of the last twenty years. Yet
such is the force of prejudice that she
was never felt really to belong to the
village.
On that particular Sunday when the
79
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
banns were given out, Torn Lane had
been sitting in his usual place, in the
choir in church. True, his poor old
cracked voice was secretly scoffed at
by the younger men and boys, yet he
had once sung the solo in the village
anthem, and played the big bassoon in
the gallery. Alas ! those days were
long past, and only the tradition of his
musical greatness remained.
As he walked slowly up the lane,
homewards, he caine suddenly upon
Letitia Lever, standing at the threshold
of her cottage, the very picture of
limp, absolute wretchedness. She
looked up at him with a hunted cx-
pression in her eyes, which went
straight to the heart of the old man,
who had never had chick nor child of
his own.
He went up to her with a sudden
impulse. Titia, my dear, he began,
(10 ee mind how thee was wont to
come an sit cc down by our vireside,
when thee was but a little toddle, and
mother were out to work? But us
doant never zee thee now. Tell ee
what, lass ; us have zum rare good
teaties for dinner, an a tidy bit o
bacon ; an my misess, herll be n)ain
glad, zo do ee just come along o we.
There was such a look of genuine
kindness and sympathy in the old
mans broad face, all covered with
queer little wrinkles, that the poor girl
felt any chani~e might help to make life
more endurable, and so she let him
take her by the hand and lead her
across the few yards which separated
one door from the other.
His eyes rested on the two hands
linked together hers so white and
trans~irent, and his so brown and thick
an(I horny.
Wonderful tackle our hans do be,
zure enow ! he exclaimed. Why,
ef zo be that Id a worn gloves vor my
thatchen, like as zuni o they vok do,
bless ee, what a sight o they Id a
het all to finders ! An zee, my hans
be zo hard an zo vit as ever.
She smiled, as he had meant her to
do, and so he got over the awkward-
ness of the introduction to his wife,
who came forward, looking extra grim
when she meant to be more friendly
than usual. When she found that Le-
titia was coming to dinner with them,
nothing could exceed the shy, nervous
delight of the old woman in welcoming
her visitor; but beyond mildly fussing
about to fill her plate, and press her to
eat, she had no power to express her
kindly feelings.
Not so the old thatcher. He talked
incessantly, and told his old stories
with such a zest that Letitia quite
forgot her troubles for the time be-
ing, and once or twice actually joined
in his hearty laugh. She was such a
young creature after all barely seven-
teen, and a child for her years.
A pore lot tIme lads be nowadays, to
talk o thiccy hard toimes, zimmen to
I I Why, when I was a young chap, I
minds a-goen along o vather in the
wagon vor to take coin to Radstock
an vetch coal back, a matter o vifty
mile goen and comen. An vor to
save ma~ster that war t ould squier,
a-payen turnpike moren onst over to
Beemster, us had to be anigh the
ga~te, an bide alongzide o he till the
church clock had ahet twelve. Oft-
times twas bitter cold an pitch dark
when us ood call up wold Bill as kept
the pike to let we droo an then,
hawk! how us had to look sharp to get
over to Radstock, an back to Beemster
turnpike ga~te agen, avore twelve
oclock o midnight coined round agen.
Bless ee, my dear, when Ive a got
back safe to hoam, Ive a ben that stiff
an clemnmed wi cold that I coodn
budge, an vather ye a had to haul I
out, an~ Ive a tumbled into bed wi
all my ~vet clothes on, an coodn taake
never a bit or zup.
Oh, vather wouldn like that I He
doant hold wi night work, said Le-
titia, to fill up the expectant pause.
Ay zure; zo twur in my young
days ! An zum vok says tes hard
times now, exclaimed Tom Lane
triumphantly. Lar bless ee I I can
tell ee lots more. How squier used to
beat I when I wur a bit of a chap~ ef
zo be as he cotched I in they woods o
hisn up the Hang~n. An twarnt no
better of a Zunday, vor ef I zo much
80
cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
as let slip a marble on t vloor, or a
waps corned a-buzzen agen I, lawk!
passon, hed a-come down church an
take I vast by the ear, an ear I up
alongzide o lie in the preachen-box.
This greatly amused his listener,
who could not conceive their grave
solemn curate doing anything of the
kind. The time had been so pleasantly
beguiled that Letitia was quite sur-
prised to find how quickly it had
passed. This was how the ice was
broken with her old neighbors, and
during the next few trying weeks she
was thankful indeed for their kindly
support and sympathy.
At home there was her mother al-
most always in tears ; her father,
whose silence was more oppressive
than ever, and who seemed to take care
never even to look her way ; while as
for her brother Joe, unable to face the
village in this time of disgrace, he had
taken himself off and enlisted.
Hephzibah Lane had carried her
charity so far as to offer to go down to
shop for Ann Lever, and do her
arrants for her ; but this the poor
woman was too proud to accept, and
she xvent about as usual amongst her
neighbors with a set face and a bleed-
ing heart.
Meantime the day fixed for the wed-
(ling was rapidly approaching, and
many were the jovial bets amongst the
men as to whether the bridegroom
wonld turn up or not. For the most
l)art the opinion in Combe Dallwood
was against his doing so. But what
caused folks to wonder most of all was
the report that Titia, instead of cheer-
ing up now that all was going to turn
out well for her much better than
she deserved, they said did not ap-
preciate her gOO(1 fortune, but became
more miserable every day.
This ~vas quite true ; and on the
third and last Sunday of her banns be-
ing published, when she had gone in
next door to sit a bit with her old
friends, she broke down altogether.
Doant ee take on zo, lass, said
the old thatcher kindly. Now youve
a-ben axed in church dree times, an
youll be wed all right come Wensday,
LIVING AGE. VOL. VII. 318
81
an have a new hoam, an usll gi thee
you chiney mug wi the vlowers round
un.
No, no, Daddy Lane, cried the
girl passionately. I doant want no
wedderi ; I doant want never to zet
eyes agen no more on that Caleb
Tliornden. I (10 hate un, that I do.
An lie doant care vor I ; tes only that
our squier an his iiic~ster over to
Steynford have a-made un come.
She had spoken her mind at last, and
the violent outburst of sobbing which
followed seemed to relieve her.
Old Tom and Hephzibali looked at
each other in dismay. What was to be
done ? All their long experience of
life was at fault now; for much as they
pitied the poor girl, yet they could sug-
gest no other solution of the difficulty.
In the face of this tragic passion, an
irrelevant remark was all that occurred
to the kind old man
Ay, zure enough ; our squier lie
do be a bit masterful, times ; but, Lor
bless ee ! tes nought to what his gina-
fer, t ould squier, ud a done. Why,
in they days us coodn zo much as call
our hoams our own, vor us was allers
abein a-changed about. Twas my
xvold mother used to zay, vor her were
that spry wi her tongue, Tes dreven
out and lieven out, an us be huffed an
roughed aii scuffled about, till zo be as
as be carrd do~vn street to churchyard
an covered up, an then they caant
heave we no more.
An thats where I do want to be,~
cried the poor child, with a sudden out-
burst of weary longing; I do want to
be let bide in peace, safe away vrom
the likes o lie.
She could not forgive the cruel
wrong which she had suffered in her
heedless ignorance, and the forlorn
creature spoke the truth from her in-
most heart when she said that she
would rather be dead thian~ wed.
But the eventful Wednesday morn-
ing came at last, and with it, to the
surprise of most people, the reluctant
bridegroom turned up. He hind a good
situation as shepherd over at Farmer
Mitchells, and lie hind no mind to lose
it, though lie could not understand why
82
all this fuss should be made about
nothing. If, however, the powers that
be were so set upon it, why he wotild
marry the girl; but as to his future
intentions after the wedding day he
kept his own counsel.
So Caleb Thoruden was at Combe
Dallwood, waiting inside the old Nor-
man porch of the quaint village church
as the clock struck eleven oclock.
He had walked over all the ten miles
from Stevnford that morning; and to
brace himself for the unusual effort, he
had refreshed himself more than once
at a public house on the way.
As for poor little Titia, she would
never have summoned up courage to
fulfil her part, and go to meet him, on
the chance of his turning up, but for
the chivalrous support of her old friend
Tom Lane, who gave up a days work
and wages to go down the village street
to church with her.
Doant ee never let en zay as
twur thy vault thee warnt wed, Titia,
an that twas thee as wouldn havun,
was his anxious warning.
As for her own father and mother,
neither of them appeared at the cere-
mony. Timothy Lever had gone off at
daybreak as usual to his horses, and
had not returned, though his daughter
had turned many wistful glances up
the road in hope of seeing him; and
Mrs. Lever could not bring herself at
the critical moment to face her neigh-
bors.
Never was there a sadder wedding.
The bridegroom was sullen, and almost
defiant in manner, and the unhappy
brides answers were scarcely audible
for her sobs.
Old Hephzibah, who had followed
her husband at a distance, shyly kept
at the far end of the church, under the
tower, with the group of children and
other lookers-on ; but her poor old
head shook more than ever as she cried
for very sympathy.
At length the registers were signed,
and Letitia Thoraden received a
copy of her marriage lines, and the
doleful little procession made its way
out through the shadowed porch into
the sunshine without. As they reached
Cuckoo Corner: A I Vest Country Sketch.
the churchyard gate Caleb paused for
a moment and quietly lighted his pil)e,
and so with a jaunty air went smoking
up the village street, never so much as
looking back towards his wife or speak-
ing a word to her. She, poor creature,
the very picture of wretchedness in
her bridal gown of purple stuff, kept
her head bowed down, and, shunning
the curious looks of the passers-by,
crept along close under the hedgerow
all fragrant with wild roses. It was a
glorious summer day, and all the
wealth of flowers in the cottage-gar-
dens as she passed them above all,
the blood-red snapdragons and the tall
white lilies, which peeped over the
wall seemed to flout her in her mis-
ery.
Old Lane, who had lingered behind,
from a delicate instinct, not to anger
the sulky husband by ill-timed ined-
dhing, could not resist speaking his
mind to Ilephzibah, who had made
bold to join him.
Did e er a one ever zee sich a
graceless lout? Couhdn lie zay a kind
word, an walk up street arm-in-crook
wi she, pore lass, on her weddin day?
Tell ee what, missus ; Id best not
go a-nigh that chap, or Id giun what
vor wi they earms o mine.
His wife nodded in approval, but she
quickened her steps, for her heart mis-
gave her as to how much more igno-
miny the hapless girl could endure.
Meantime the ill-mated couple had
reached the turn of the lane, and were
close against Cuckoo Corner, when the
bridegroom suddenly came to a stop,
quietly took his pipe out of his mouth,
and, turning to his meek little follower,
said in a thick voice, speaking to her
across the road
I be a vair man, Titia; an Ive
a-kep my word to measter, an a big
vool I be to a done it. But, look ee, I
beaint a-gwine to take no miswords
vroin thy vok. Zo here Ill ~ay good-
bye to ee ; go thy ways, an Ill be off
to hoam.
He paused for a moment, evidently
expecting remonstrance or entreaty
but the girl never looked at him. She
only gave one startled cry, and then
Cuckoo Corner: A We& t Country Sketch.
with faltering steps, blindly feeling for
the open (loor of the cottage, she stag-
gered forwards. In another instant
she would have fallen, but her mothers
quick ear had caught the sound of her
apl)roach, and hastening to her on the
wings of love and pity, she caught her
in her arms, and clasped her to her
breast.
The radiant flush of blossom in gar-
den and orchard had fulfilled its prom-
ise and faded away ere it ripened into
fruit beneath the summer sun ; the
golden grain had been reaped and gar-
nered, and the autumn breeze had
swept and eddied round the village till
the trees were stripped of thcir leaves,
and stood up gaunt and bare against
the wintry sky.
Slowly and sadly the days had passed
at Cuckoo Corner, for one trouble after
another had fallen upon the Lever
family. Timothy, the bread-winner,
had the misfortune to have his leg
broken by the kick of a restive young
cart-horse, early in the autumn. After
receiving the weekly allowance for a
month from his club, the payment had
stopped for want of funds, as so often
happens with village clubs. It was a
hard winter, and the poor man had
been reduced so low as to apply for
parish relief ; but even this had been
refused him, on the ground that Letitia
and the baby ought to be supported by
her husband.
Joe, the younger son, had nearly
broken his mothers hcart by going off,
like his brothers, to enlist for a soldier,
driven away by the scandal at home.
As for Letitia herself, she had been
desperately ill, and had only slowly
struggled back to life. Then she had
taken a chill in the damp, cold cottage,
which was close above the water-
meadows, from whence a heavy mala-
rious mist always rose at fall of day
when the sun went down.
It was just a week before Christmas,
and the girl was sitting once more at
her favorite place, in He phzibah Lanes
chimney-corner, with the child on her
knee. She looked but the shadow of
her former self ; her features were thin
and pinched, there was a feverish flush
on her cheek, and at times her voice
was broken by a hard cough. She was
full of excitement in telling the old
people about her sisters visit the day
beforeas once again, in a bitter
emergency, Polly, representing the
common sense of the family, had come
to the fore.
Tes clean and wholly useless vor to
talk to she, said the weaker sister.
Her (10 tell I as tes all my fault, an
us ca~nt goo on no more this way;
vather lie do get no better, an mother
be most worn out, what wi all the
caddle, an fretten zo vor Joe ; an the
parish, lie woiit help we, an zo usll
be all a-took in t Union avore long.
Titia broke down at this point and
began to cry, adding through her sobs,
An her do zay as I mun go an live
along o Caleb.
Old Tom shook his head thoughtfully,
and preseiitly remarked, in a low voice,
looking steadily into the fire all the
time
Zimmen to I, hcrve a got a lot o
sense, have Polly. I minds what a
spry peart little maId hiei was, an
what a mort o work her did, when t
ould grannie ~vere ill a-bed.
To tell the truth, Polly, like a wise
woman, had taken the old man into her
confidence, and pointed out that things
were going from bad to worse, and that
some change must be made. She took
a practical, matter-of-fact view of the
case, and urged that the natural solu-
tion of the difilculty was for Titia to go
and live with her husband.
He beant a bad zort o chap, as
men go, Ive heard tell, an a wonder-
ful hand wi young lambs, she said
an ef zo be lie do love they little
helpless things, why, zure enough, hell
be pleased an proud xvi a baby.
So the elder sister argued, with
homely logic, and quite won over Tom
Lane as an ally, for he delighted in her
shrewd mother wit. She felt that the
affair had been so hopelessly misman-
aged at the time of the wedding, by the
interference of the squire and Calebs
master that she longed to take it into
her more capable hands.
83
84
Her theory was that men were queer
creatmes, and that there wasnt much
to choose amongst them, but there was
a right and a wrong way of taking them
in hand; and, moreover, whatever a
womans lot might be, she could always
make the best of it. She believed that
her sister, spoilt and foolish as she was,
would probably get on all right with
her husband, if once she had a fair
start ; but if the poor girl were to bide
on at home, in that damp cottage, with
only her troubles to think of, and no
proper food and firing, why, she would
go off in a decline, for certain sure.
So this was Pollys plan she would
get Sam the carrier, who was a big,
good-tempered fellow, and a friend of
hers, to drive her over to Steynford
with Titia and the child on some by-
day when he would not be going to
market at Mere or elsewhere. It
would not take them more than two
hours or so to get there in the light
cart, and they would go as suppliants,
and not try to put Caleb Thornden in
the wrong, but give him the oppor-
tunity of feeling that he was doing
a generous deed in taking back his
wife and child. When all this was
talked over and explained, old Hephzi-
bali had timidly ventured to suggest an
improvement that they should choose
Christmas day for the venture, and that
she should make a real good plum-
pudding for Titia to take as a peace-
offering.
Polly smiled somewhat at this sug-
~e4ion she was so overflowing with
common sense that there was very
little room for sentiment in her coin-
position. However, she was willing to
humor the old people who had been so
kind to her sister, and so the matter
was settled.
Christmas morning dawned cold and
misty in the valley ; but the hoar-frost
had caught the dew on tree and hedge,
and as the day advanced, and the sun
gleamed dimly out through the shroud-
ing mist, every leafless branch was
clothed with sparkling silver, till the
whole world was transfigured in the
glowing shimmering light.
Letitia and her mother had long since
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
exhausted their feeble protests and
shed their unavailing tears in secret.
They well knew from past experience
that Polly always had her own way
when she set her mind to it, and indeed
they were forced to own that there was
no choice for them. The only alterna-
tive would be for the old people to
break up their home, sell their bits of
furniture precious to them as house-
hold gods and say farewell forever to
all that made life dear to them the
homely cottage with its memories of
joy and sorrow, the friendly greetings
and even the gossip of their neighbors
and last, not least, the priceless free-
dom of going in and out, at no mans
will but their own. All this would be
lost to them when once the gates of
the big prison-like House should
have closed behind them; they would
leave all hope beyond those high walls,
and the familiar place of their dwelling
would know them again no more. This
was a depth of misery and degradation
which Timothy and Ann Lever could
not face.
It was not much past eight oclock in
the morning when the carriers cart
came slowly up the lane, with the old
white mare, driven by young Sam, a
lad of about twelve, with a shock of red
hair and a round, good-tempered face.
He could not manage to drive close up
to the cottage gate, for the ruts were so
deep just there, so they had to come
out to meet him. Letitia was carefully
wrapped up in a big red shawl of her
mothers, under which she could cuddle
the baby up warm, and was hoisted up
into the middle of the seat, whe ic they
were to sit three abreast Polly on
one side and young Sam on the other.
Ann Lever stood at the gate in her
purple sun-bonnet, waving her hand,
and straining her eyes to watch them
till the last moment when they disap-
peare(l into the mist.
The travellers jogged on in silence
down the village street, on past the
church, and up the steep hill under
the, overhangin~ fir-trees, where every
needle shot out its sparkling diamonds
of frost, and the tall poplars beyond
seemed to bend forward like shadowy
ghosts in the dim gloaming, while all
the near foreground was lightly coy-
ered with a silvery sprinkle of pow-
dered snow.
It was scaicely ten miles by the road
to Steynford, and yet it seemed an end-
less drive that day ; for they had a
hard matter to get beyond a walk the
whole distance. As the boy driver
cheerfully remarked
Taint nar a bit o good to hurry t
wold me~re ; herll go her own pace,
be t never zo. Lawk I mid het she
wi a besom-stake, and tooden be no
odds.
No doubt he spoke the truth from old
experience. Anyhow, it was nearly
eleven oclock when the desolate little
party reached their destination, and the
villagers were just going into church
at least, they passed some children and
a few men by the porch, who stared at
the furreners with mild curiosity.
The women were probably at home
cooking the Christmas dinner, thought
Polly, with a touch of envy as they
drove on very slowly up the road to
Farmer Mitchells, and came to a full
stop in front of the lonely cottage to
which they had been directed as.
shepherds hut agen the vold.
Here Letitia, who was all trembling
with cold and anxiety, was helped
down, as soon as her sister had quite
satisfied herself that she had come to
the right place. Next a variety of
queer-looking packages were handed
out, and young Sam was sent down to
the Red Lion to put up, with the cart
and mare, and a bundle of good things
for his own dinner, which set his face
in a broad grin.
The critical moment of the whole
expedition had now arrived, and it was
with a sigh of relief that Polly found
the door on the latch; and though the
cottage was empty, she knew that the
owner could not be far away, and
would soon return. On her way up
the hill she had seen through a gap in
the hedge the sheltered fold, built up
with hurdles and straw, and she felt
sure that shepherd was close at
hand looking after his ewes. It was
all very bare and comfortless inside the
85
low, dark room, with only a narrow
windoxv at one end, cut through the
thick wall. In the middle of the
rough stone floor there was a deal
table ; while two rush-bottomed chairs,
a dresser with a few odd bits of crock-
ery, a black kettle, and a pot or two,
and an old settle by the fireside, coin-
pleted most of the scanty furniture.
But Polly, nothing daunted, was
equal to the occasion in fact, the
more she had to do, the more her
sl)irits seemed to rise. She looked
about and fetched wood from the out-
house at the back, and soon made up a
bright, crackling fire from the smoul-
dering embers on the hearth, for the
place struck damp and cold to her.
Then she put Letitia on the settle in
the chimney-corner to feed and comfort
the poor baby, who had woke up and
was beginning to cry, and next hung
the kettle on to boil foracup of tea
that unfailing support and luxury of
poor women. Meanwhile her (left
fingers soon produced a change in the
wretched place which was little short
of magical. She seemed to have
thought of everything, and no one
ever knew at what personal sacrifice
she had collected all the little odds
and ends, which go so far to~vards
turning the poorest dwelling into a
home. She nailed up a muslin blind
in the window, and a strip of colored
chintz along the black boamd in front
of the chimney ; laid a bright cushion
on one of the stiff-backed chairs, and
stuck a few sprigs of holly about the
room. Then she carefully opened a
roll of paper and took out her last
treasures, a few gaudy pictures, some
rude engravings, an(1 a grocers al-
manac ; an(l, making a little paste with
the now boiling water, she stuck them
up against the bare, whitewashed wall.
This was her greatest triumph, and
after she hind given a touch here and
there, the transformation was really
marvellous.
Having thus satisfied her artistic
taste, she was free to devote all her
energies to the cooking, or rather
warming-up of the good things she had
brought. Before long, a savory smell
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
86
from the black pot hung over the fire,
aud from an earthen crock on the
hearth, began to pervade the room
next she took a white cloth and sundry
small articles from her basket and laid
out the table. Then she set the door
ajar and began to listen anxiously for
footsteps.
La, dear! I do hope as shepherd
be a-comm zoon, she murmured to
herself, vor it be all ready, an tes
gone dinner-time.
The genial warmth of the fire, before
which the baby. was spreading out his
little pink toes, the hot cup of tea, and
a gradually increasing interest in
Pollys doings, had brought a smile
and a faint flush of color to Letitias
pale face, when the door was abruptly
pushed open, and Caleb Thornden
came in. He gave a great start at the
sight of his unexpected guests, and
looked round in utter amazement at
the scene before him. He had scarcely
time to recover himself before Polly
came forward to meet him, with a
cheerful face.
I do wish ee a Merry Christmas,
shepherd; an us have a-come to put
ec a bit straight. It do zecmn a pity,
now, she added wistfully, vor vok
as be wed to bide apart, an zo Ive
a-brought Titia an the little chap ; tes
all my doin, zo doant ee lay the blame
on she.
With a smile on her face, but trem-
bling inwardly, the brave woman
paused for the answer on which her
sisters fate depended. She cherished
still the vague hope that, as he was
known to be a good shepherd and
tender with the lambs, there should be
the making -f a kind husband and
father in such a mami. There was ab-
solute silence in the room while she
waited patiently, but no words came.
Caleb cast a bewildered glance round
the cottage, which had an air of com-
fort, and a promise of good cheer, to
which he had hitherto been a stranger,
and his heart was softened.
At a sign from her sister, whose
quick perception realized that the
battle was half won, Letitia timidly
Cuckoo Corner: A West Country Sketch.
came up to the table, and her husband
took his seat in silence by her side,
while Polly made an excuse to fetch a
stool which she had seen in the out-
house. She was in no hurry to come
back, and presently the shepherd in a
shame-faced sort of way, nudged out
his elbow towards the baby on her
knee, and asked
What be un called?
Caleb, replied the poor little
wife, almost in a whisper.
When Polly caine in and took her
place at table, she piled up the mans
plate well with hot beef and potatoes,
and finished off with thick slices of old
Hephzibahs plum-pudding. To cover
the silence of the other two, she kept
up a constant chatter about everything
she could think of, till what with the
good dinner and the lively talk, shep-
herd was worked up into quite a pleas-
ant temper.
Then Polly felt that her part was
done, and she got up to go.
Young Sam an the me~re 11 be
a-weary o bidin down to the Red
Lion ; zo now, Caleb, do ee tell I ef
zo be thee wants they and she
pointed to her sistet and the child on
her knee vor to bide along o thee
or not?
Half involuntarily the poor young
creature had risen from her seat, and
was beginning to wrap the big shawl
round her precious burden, when
such is the contrariety of human na-
ture possibly that very movement
may have decided him he put out his
hand to stop her.
No, no, Titia, he cried abruptly,
doant ee go vor to leave I agen
Thee be~nt half a bad lass, an usll jog
on together zumways, an the young un
too. Zo theeve a-called the little chap
Caleb, did ee ? he added in a low
tone which was almost a caress.
For all her common sense, Pollys
eyes were full of blinding tears a s,with
a hearty kiss and a mute farewell to
her sister, she slipped away, leaving
the husband and wife to dree their
weird like other folks.
England and France on the Niger.
From The Nineteenth Century.
ENGLAND AND FRANCE ON THE NIGER.
THE RACE FOR BORGU.
BY CAPTAIN F. D. LUGARD.
IT has been the reproach of the
British possessions in West Africa
the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold
Coast, Lagos, and the Oil rivers that
though they have been under the Brit-
ish flag for so many years (some of
them, indeed, for several centuries),
little or nothing has been done to ex-
tend our influence into the interior.
British administration has been con-
tent to sit as a custodian at the ports,
and to reap the benefit of such com-
merce as found its outlet there, con-
ducted, as it mainly was, through
unscrupulous negro middlemen, who
denied the real producers access to the
markets, and levied such arbitrary ex-
actions from the natives of the interior
as their own avarice and greed might
prompt. Cannibalism, human sacri-
fice, and the worst forms of slavery
might go on unchecked in the interior,
and cven among the middlemen, as
witncss the recent orgies of the natives
of the coast town of Brass, but the
British traders meant dollars, and,
like Gallio, cared for none of these
things. Until the year 1809 the dol-
lars accumulated by the British traders
were the direct price of human blood,
but in that year the slave trade was
abolished, and the exports took the
form of palm oil and other natural
products. The abolition of the over-
sea slave trade was, however, but a
veneer of humanity which soon overlay
a practice hardly less destructive to the
native races than the slave trade itself.
In exchange for the commercial prod-
ucts which had superseded the traffic
in slaves, the European pioneers of
civilization imported into the country
thousands nay, millions of fire-
arms, with powder, and a flood of
poisonous liquor. These imports con-
tinued unchecked until very recently,
when the obligations incurred under
the Brussels Act necessitated some
prohibition of the import of firearms.
The import of spirits, however, re
mained practically unchecked. Hu-
manitarian motives now furnished an
excellent cover for the imposition of
duties on spirits which, though too low
to check the import, served to enrich
the administrations of the coast ports,
and to provide a large revenue for the
mere trouble of collection.
It is due to the unceasing energyof
French extdnsion in West Africa an
extension which in England we have
invariably stigmatized as ion,
notwithstanding the fact that our colo-
nies had during all these years made
little or no effort to develop their own
hinterlands that within the last year
or two England has awakened to the
necessity of some action, however vacil-
lating, with regard to her West African
possessions.
Recently, the energy and enterprise
of Sir Gilbert Carter have boldly faced
the problem of the middlemen, and the
defeat of the Jebus, followed by the
submission of the Egbas in 1891, has
thrown open the hinterland of Lagos
to British exploration. The immediate
hinterland of Lagos consisted of the
country of the Yorubas, a most indus-
trious race passionately devoted to
trading. The majority of their coun-
try~ up to the eighth degree of north
latitude, abounds in the oil palms. The
ela bush (Lonchocarpus cyanescens),
largely cultivated for its excellent in-
digo dye, thrives everywhere ; cotton
is grown in great quantities, aiRi the
native looms produce an admirable,
strong, and beautifully woven cloth;
the forests abound in rubber, and the
industry of the people produces in
abundance these and other products in
exchange for the imports of Lagos,
which consist, alas ! for the most part
of poisonous gin, for which a more ex-
tended market has thus been created
by this opening up of the interior. So
far, however, Lagos has succeeded in
penetrating only some one hundred
and twenty miles from the coast. Be-
yond this, to the north-west, the Yoru-
bas are harassed by large plundering
bands of the Borgu. Passing south-
wards from their own boundary (about
lat. 90 N.), and circling round the
87
88
larger towns, these freebooters cut off
communications from the south, fall
daily upon little parties of traders, and,
not content with~ plundering, massacre
them with ruthless cruelty. The
greater part of northern Yoruba has
thus become a wilderness, and in such
centres of pol)ulation as still exist the
towns are defended by lines of walls
within walls, by- deep moats and nias
sive gates. Outside of their fortifica-
tions the Yorubas dare not call their
lives their own, and every party pass-
ing from the north to convey their
produce to, or visit their friends in,
the southern to~vns, is escorted by a
small army of warriors. When the
escorts meet the enemy they are
usually victorious, but a superstitious
dread of the witchcraft rind of the
deadly poisoned arrows for which the
]3orgu are famous throughout West
Africa, has prevented their ever mak-
inv head against them by an invasion
in force of Borgu. Sueh an invasion
has been attempted, but the Yorubas
are firmly convinced that the Borgu pos-
s ess the power of creating dissension
in the minds of their enemies, and thus
predisposed to panic, it is little to be
wondered at that the result they dreaded
overtook their armies, and internal
dissensions compelled them to abandon
the war. Sir Gilbert Carter was not
the man to allow this unsatisfactory
~tate of things to continue, but his
ener~ies were for the moment directed
to~vards the north-eastern frontier of
Yoruba, and the settlement of a diffi-
culty between two powerful sections of
the Yoruba peol)les the Ibadans and
the Illorins detained his officers.
The Ibadans represented the Yoruba
people properly so called, and were in
treaty with the Lagos government;
the Illorins represented the Foula Mo-
hammnedan conquerors of the great
Sokoto Empire, who had in earlier
times overrun the whole country, but
were now restricted to its north-eastern
district under the Foula Emir of Illorin.
This emir, as an outlying tributary of
the Sokoto Empire, was in treaty with
the Royal Niger Company, and since
that company thus already controlled a
England and France on the Niger.
half of northern Yoruba, it lay at least
as much to their hand as to that of the
Lagos government to undertake the
administration of the remainder of the
northern district by entering into treaty
relations with its principal chiefs.
The coast area of the iloyal Niger
Company is but small, consisting
merely of the main mouth of the
Niger, with some portion of its (lelta.
Their rOle, in opposition to that of the
other governments of the West Coast,
had been the development of the far
interior. Sitnated, as the mouth of the
NPrer is, in the angle of the great curve
called the Gulf of Guinea, the term
hinterland could hardly be applied to
their territories which consist of the
countries accessible from both banks
of the river and its great tributary the
Benu~. The Niger is navigable by
light-draught steamers for three months
and by launches for nine months, to a
point a few miles past the small river
island of Jebbi~ (lat. 90 10 N.) ; and
the countries which border this north-
ern part of the river as far as Jebba
are Nup~ an(l Illorin, both of which
have long been in treaty alliance with
the company. On the left bank Nup6
extends far beyond the limit of naviga-
tion, and as the countries on this, the
eastern, side of the river were secured
to England under the treaty with
France (August, 1890), which fixed the
boundary between the two pow~rs at a
line drawn from Say, on the Upper
Niger, to Barrun, on Lake Chad, there
is no question as to the European
suzerainty in this district. On the
right bank, however, the case requires
more explanation. The company main-
tain that the Say-Barrua line, being an
east and ~vest line, has no significance
unless it be to delimit the territory
lying between the meridians passing
through its extreme points. They
maintain, therefore, that all the terri-
tory lying south of the Say-Barrua line
(with the exception of a l)ortioml of
Dahomey, which was admitted as
within French influence by separate
and simultaneous instruments), is,
under this international agreement, a
part of British territory quite indepen
The Race for Borgu.
dently of any local treaties with tribal
chiefs. They support their contention
by the fact that the inception of the
treaty was in order to protect the hin-
terland of the French Mediterranean
possessions, and this is specified in the
text. These possessions are distant
from the Say-Barrun line more than
fifteen hundred miles, and the interi
tion, therefore, was clearly to secure to
France all this vast area north of the
latitude of Say, except a small protrud-
ing portion of the Sokoto Empire,
while that lying to the south should
remain British. There was no indica-
tion in the treaty that the area assigned
to Great Britain should l)e limited to
the east side of the Niger. On the
contrary, the company maintain that
the purpose of the treaty was to assign
to France the whole of the Upper
Niger (navigable throughout its greater
portion), together with sole control
over all territory on both its banks,
provided that Great Britain obtained a
similar control on the Lower Niger
south of Say. This intention was
clearly understood in the pourparlers
which preceded the signature of the
treaty, and the French thereupon,
abandoning all idea of finding an outlet
for the trade of their countries by the
Lower Niger, proceeded to connect by
a railway the towns of Bammako, on
the Upper navigable Niger, with Me-
dma, on the navigable Senegal River,
so as to bring the products of the
buckle of the Niger to the seaport
of St. Louis in French Senegal. At a
later period, however, after the French
had annexed Dahomey, it seems to
have occurred to them to dispute the
validity of Englands exclusive claim
to the right bank of the Niger. North
of Jebba, and debouching for a few
miles on the Lower navigable Niger,
extends the eastern limit of the country
of Borgu. The Borgu chief who owned
sway over this riverine territory, had
his capital at Boussa, above the rapids
(south of Say). His authority over the
whole of that portion of Borgu which
extends along the Niger appeared to be
unquestioned, and he energetically in-
sisted that he was moreover titular
89
king of all Borgu. With this chief the
Royal Niger Company concluded a
treaty in January, 1890, and since that
date he has never swerved in his alle-
giance to the company, from whom he
has been in receipt of an annual sub-
sidy. North of Borgu the company
had treaty rights over Gurnia, a prov-
ince of Gandu, whose territories bor-
dered the river on both sides up to and
beyond Say. As a portion of the So-
koto Empire, moreover, these countries
were especially excluded from any
French interference under the treaty
of August, 1890. Such was the posi-
tion in 1894.
The French meanwhile had been
gradually extending eastwards from
their possessions in Senegambia, on the
Atlantic coast, and had cut off all the
natural hinterland of the British col-
onies of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and
the Gold Coast, together with those of
the Free Negro State of Liberia. It
now became evident that it was their
intention to carry this extension to the
rear of German Togo-land and the
Lagos territory of Yoruba, gaining a
fresh outlet to the sea through their
new possession of Dahomey. Entirely
setting aside the British claims under
the international agreement I have
described, they went further, and
threw doubts on the validity of the
Boussa treaty under which the com-
pany claimed to have acquired suze-
rainty over all Borgu. Suddenly,
therefore, this little-known country
became the centre of interest to three
of the greatest powers of Europe. Ex-
tending as it does to the north of
Yoruba (Lagos), Dahomney (French),
and part of Togo-land (German), each
nation became eager to contest the
title-deeds to its possession. But
important as it was to France and
Germany, it was of vastly greater im-
portance to England. By the Berlin
Act of 1885 freedom of transit on the
Niger was secured to the commercial
vessels of all nations. But so long as
the territory on both banks from the
mouth up to Say was exclusively Brit-
ish, while the navigation of the river
north of Jebba was hopelessly inter
90
rupted by cataracts, this freedom of
transit could not be employed to injure
the companys revenues. On the Up-
per Niger, between Bammako and
Timbuctoo, the French have placed
steamers and gunboats, nud if they
could also acquire Borgu, and so obtain
a long stretch of the right bank of the
Lower Niger, they could draw the
trade from the British regions of
the central Soudan to the detriment of
the British revenues.
The possession, therefore, of Borgu
became a matter of some importance to
France, but of vital importance to the
Royal Niger Company if they desired
to maintain the sole control of the
lower waterway by Great Britain. In
pursuance of these aims France now
declared that the British treaties with
Boussa were valueless as regards the
suzerainty of Borgu. The leading
French journals emphatically insisted
that Nikki alone was the capital of all
Borgu, and its king the ruler of the
whole country. Convinced that the
powerful expedition which had sud-
denly left France for Dahomey on the
24th of July, 1894, under Captain Dc-
c~ur would reach Nikki long before
any other could possibly arrive there,
they were loud in their protestations
that whoever first concluded a treaty
with the king of Nikki would be the
real European suzerain of Borgu. It
is, said the Potitique (Jotoniale, the
chief colonial organ in France, a ver-
itable steeplechase to which France,
England, and Germany are devoting
themselves to gain that part of the
buckle of the Niger which impinges on
the lower river (December 19, 1894),2
and believing, as they did, that France
was bound to win the race, they scarce
took the trouble to restrain a somewhat
premature exultation. Already M.
1 The authority of the king of Nikki extends to
the north, and to the east as far as the right bank
of the Niger, where it includes the important
points of Gomba and of Boussa. Politique t?olo-
aiate, December 19, 1594. Vide also same paper,
dated January 29, 1895.
2 cest une v6ritable course an clocher, que se
livrent en ce moment Ia France, lAngleterre et
1Allemagne pour Ia mainmise de la partie de la
bouche du Niger attenante au cours moyen du
fleuve.
England and France on the Niger.
Ballot, governor of Dahomey, had pre-
pared the way for Decceur by proceed-
ing beyond the northern limits of Ba-
homey, through the Sab6 country to the
borders of Borgu. Decceur on landing
had but to march straigilt through to
join ilim, and thence only some fifty
miles separated him from Nikki. It
would seeni that the feverish anxiety
of France hInd placed in the field some
four or five separate expeditions to gain
her object. In the far west Monteil
was advancing on Kong with an army
of eleven hundred and forty-six sol-
diers, while towards Borgu itself were
directed tile expeditions of Captain
Decceur, Captain Tout~e, Lieutenant
Baud, and M. Alby, ladministra-
teur of Dallomey (Pot. Got. Decem-
ber 19, 1894).
Under such circumstances the Royal
Niger Company were not idle, though
at this period they had no knowledge
of the scale of preparations which were
being made by France. Decceurs de-
parture was known, but inquiries only
resulted in tile assurance that his
objects were solely confined to Daho-
mey. Although maintaining that tile
treaties with Boussa were effective
over the whole of Borgu, the company
was well aware how difficult would be
the task of proving this by native evi-
deuce against a French treaty with
Nikki. They therefore entrusted to
me a mission, whose object was to en-
deavor to anticipate French enterprise
in this direction. I left London on tile
28th July, 1894, with this object.
Tile country of Borgu which had thus
acquired a temporary notoriety is one
of the few districts remaining in Africa
which were as yet unexplored by Euro-
peans. The invasions of tile Foula
Mohammedans who swept over all this
portion of Africa, and formed the
mighty empire of Sokoto-Gandu and
Sainory, spent their force against it in
vain. To the north, south, east, and
west their conquests met with no
check, but Borgu remained uncon-
quered. At the present day the Fon-
las, who throughout these vast regions
hold a position as a superior race, and
call themselves white men, are but
The 1?aee for Borgu.
slaves in Borgu. It is estimated that
at the present moment the kings of
Sokoto and Bornu could, place 11 force
numbered by thousands both of infan-
try and cavalry in the field. The ar-
mies of Samory and Ahmadou
offshoots of the Foula race which
have been opposed to the French, have
likewise numl)ered many thousands.
El Hadj Omars original army in 1854
numbered twelve thousand men, while
later armies opposed to the Fiench ad-
vance by his successors, Ahmadou and
Samory, have included much greater
numbers, and the vast quantities of
arms of precision and munitions which
from time to time fell into the hands of
the victors, included Gras rifles of
native manufacture. It is no wonder,
then, that the comparatively small
nation of Borgu, which alone had re-
sisted the tide of Foula conquest
which had repelled with equal success
the incursions of the invincible army
of Dahomey with its dreaded Amazon
warriors from the south should have
sums up the available information
about Borgu
These people are decidedly the most in-
teresting of the tribes of the Middle Niger,
being the sole pagan tribe which has suc-
cessfully resisted the Mohammedan inva-
sion. For years did the Foulas of Sokoto
and Gando attempt to conquer the country,
desisting, however, in the end, in the firm
belief that the blessing of their prophet
was not with them in fighting against this
strange people. They themselves ascribe
their invincibility not so much to their
fighting powers as to their religion, which
they affirm is that of Kisra, a Jew (our
Christ 2) who gave his life for the sins of
mankind. They are most indignant, and
perhaps justly so, at being called pagans,
considering themselves in every way far
superior to the Mohammedans. They say
that their forefathers were originally set-
tled in the north of Africa, and were driven
from thence about the eighth or ninth
century by the Mohammedan conquerors.
They claim connection with Bornu, and it
is to be remarked that, as Bariba is the
native name for Borgu, so also the native
name for Bornu is Berebere, or Barn-ban.
attained a singular prestige a pres- The two tribes, therefore, before they were
tige so great that throughout the west- driven south, possibly formed part of the
era Soudan the people of Borgu were Barbary States. Be that as it may, there
credited with occult powers of witch- is no doubt that Borgu and Bornu estab-
craft. Not only had they thus held at lished order and a regular form of govern-
bay the hostile hordes which had anal- ment in their present provinces ages before
hilated the nations around them, but any other tribe of these parts dreamt of
hitherto fhey had, as we have seen, ~- such things; and to this day both have
remained unfettered by the Foula yoke.
cluded the European explorer, and the The Borgu people are much feared by their
greater part of their country remained neighbors, since they have frequently
wholly unknown to Europe. Wolf, a proved their bravery in the field. Ten
German, in 1889 succeeded in penetrat- Borgu horsemen are enough to defeat one
ing western Borgu ,and arrived near hundred Foula horsemen is a Housa
to Nikki only to die. Kling had to proverb. The Borgu arrow is very
turn back before he reached that point, poisonous expresses the Nu$s view of
Duncan, in 1846, had travelled far into their neighbors; while in Yoruba-land old
Borgu only to meet the same fate as women say, God deliver one from a Ba-
Wolf. Later, in 1893, the expedition nba war. Their arms consist of spears
and arrows, the poison on the latter being
of M. Hess, a Frenchman travelling very deadly, and they have been able to
northwards from Yoruba, was cut to hold their own with these weapons even
pieces by the Borgu, and the leader against the forces of the king of Dahomey,
was himself killed by a poisoaed arrow. armed with muskets. . . . Their knowi-
In the extreme east only, near the edge of medicines is proverbial. What-
Niger, had Clapperton and Lander suc- ever disease cannot be cured in Bariba-land
ceeded in passing unscathed. The can be cured nowhere else, is a common
great traveller Barth had left Borgu to saying among the tribes of the Western
the south, though he collected much Soudan. With all their good points, how-
information about the country. The ever, the Borgu are cut-throats and rob-
latest writer on the Niger district thus iMockler-Ferryman, p. 144.
91
92
bers at heart, and travelling in their
country is attended with much danger, and
caravans, unless well armed, have to
pay a heavy blackmail to secure a safe
passage.
Without endorsing everything here
stated, my experience in Borgu led me
to conclude that this verdict is in the
main correct.
The English expedition under my
comman(l consisted of forty soldiers
undisciplined and raw Housa recruits
ham j)ered by large impedimenta,
numbering over three hundred and
twenty unarmed men and some forty
donkeys. The race for Borgu made
it imperative to start without waiting
for the cessation of the rains. The
flooded watercourses and swollen rivers,
the dense impenetrable vegetation
which in Africa springs up during the
rainy seas on, and the mortality among
the transport animals unable to stand
the wet and exposure, together with
other difficulties which it is needless to
specify here, made progress far more
difficult and slow than it would have
proved a few months later.
I may perhaps be permitted to di-
gress in brief explanation, since it is
probably hard for English readers to
appreciate how very greatly the diffi-
culties of African travel are increased
when it is necessary, as it was in this
case, to start during the rainy season.
Had we waited, however, for a more
convenient season, without attempt-
ing to surmount these difficulties I
should have beeii at least two months
too late, and instead of anticipating
Captain Decceur by sixteen days, I
should have reached Nikki a month or
two after it had become (in his view)
a French possession. It took us, for
instance, eight hours to cross our first
stream, fordable with hardly a check
later in the year. A single tiny canoe,
obtained after great delay and with
junch difficulty, carries across about fif-
teen loads (or twelve of the men who
cant swim) at each journey. Crossing
and recrossing the boiling stream more
than a score of times, the passage is at
length effected, while the transport
animals are unladen, and swum across
England and France on the Niger.
one by one and reladen on the other
bank. On another occasion, where no
canoe was available for an unfordable
stream, we had to construct a rough
bridge by cutting down such trees as
overhung the water. Such work was
familiar to me, but to my men it was
wholly new, and to describe the diffi-
culty of getting savages to grasp ones
intention and assist with any sem-
blance of sense, especially when one is
ignorant of their language, is a task
beyond the ability of my pen. Apart
from swollen streams, the dense drip-
ping grass six feet high which soaks
the sacks of hay which (10 duty as sad-
dles and doubles their weight the
descending torrents of rain, which in-
duce fever among the Europeans, an(I
send the l)Orters to bed foodless by ex-
tinguishing their camp fires, while it
utterly prostrates the donkeys all
these add to their discomfort, and delay
the progress of the march. Beyond
extra work and discomfort, however,
there is a more serious side. The men
and animals tired, and often foodless
through a march spun out from day-
dawn to sunset, straggle hopelessly,
and the caravan (at shortest a mile in
length) becomes indefinitely prolonged.
The dense grass which later will be
burned by the annual fires of the
Soudan invites an ambush, and pie
vents the soun(ls of conflict reaching
through the intervenin~ bush.
This, in a dangerous country teeming
with freebooters atid robbers, adds
greatly to a leaders anxieties and to
his work. I quote these minor details
only to show that the imperative neces-
sity of reaching our objective before
our rivals knew no law of delay ; that
we succeeded in spite of these obstacles
was entirely due to the unwearying
efforts of my comrades, Messrs. Mot-
tram and Reynolds, whose energy noth-
ing could deter, and whose willingness
nothing could damp. Material indeed
were not wanting for the more graphic
pen of a special correspondent,
eager to excite the imagination of his
readers.
Landing at Akassa, at the mouth of
the Niger, Bous sa, some six hundred
The Race for Borqu.
and fifty miles from the sea, was vis-
ited on the 15th of September, the as-
cent having been made by steamer as
far as Jebba, and thence overland for
one hundred miles. The whole ex-
pedition reached Kiama, the first in-
land district of Borgu, a mouth later,
and on the 10th of November I con-
cluded a treaty with the king of Nikki.
Five (lays after we had left Nikki the
French expedition under Captain De-
c~ur arrived, and it was closely fol-
lowed by a second under M. Alby. In
spite of the prior treaty made by my-
self, the Frenchmen determined to
conclude one, and the French papers
state that they succeeded in doing this
on the 26th of November. The En-
ghish papers, however, announce that a
report was current in Lagos in Janu-
ary, long before the news of the En-
glish treaty was known, to the effect
that French protection had been re-
fused by the Borgu. Two officers of
the Deceur expedition travelling down
the Niger many months later informed
Lieutenant Turner that the expedition
consisted of five hundred Senegalese.
These tirailleurs were, it is believed,
armed with magazine rifles, and in ad-
dition it is reported that the French
had some guns. In the face of such a
force the Nikki king would sign any-
thing, for he was apparently taken
wholly by surprise. In fact, there was
no rumor of the advance of the French
at the time we left the town, only four
or five (lays apparently before their
arrival. According to the French
papers Captain Deceur concluded his
treaty, and M. Alby, on his arrival,
added to this a declaration that no
previous treaty had been concluded.
Their telegrams announcing the French
treaty made no reference to the En-
glish expedition, so that when the
news of the prior treaty by the British
reached Europe, the French press
naturally stigmatized it as false, re-
marking that it was absurd to suppose
that Captain Dec~ur would not have
heard of my having been at Nikki.
But, strange to say, the two French
officers already alluded to acknowl-
edged that they were well aware the
British had been before them ! The
British expedition passing southwards
concluded treaties with the frontier
chiefs of North Yoruba, and obtained
a voluntary declaration from the chief
of Southern Borgu that he was wholly
bound by the treaty entered into by
his brother at Nikki. Meanwhile the
commanders of the French expeditions,
claiming Borgu as theirs in virtue of
their belated and futile treaty at Nikki,
considered, I presume, that the En-
glish treaty of 1890 with Boussa had
thereby become valueless, since they
had emphatically maintained that the
Nikki king was suzerain of all Borgu,
including Boussa. They, therefore,
proceeded to visit that town, and
thence passing southwards they estab-
lished themselves on the Niger. It
appears that from here they en-
deavored to open a route to north
Dahomey. I had, however, been care-
ful to close this very route by prior
treaties with Kishi and Ilesha. Later
intelligence is to the effect that they
have quarrelled with the Nup~ chiefs
on the left bank of the Niger, and have
plundered and burnt a Nup6 village.
Nup~ (a portion of the Sokoto Empire)
has for many years been included iii
the Niger Protectorate, and has been
in treaty with the Niger Company, and
in receipt of a large annual subsidy
from them. The quarrel has probably
arisen from arbitrary and wholly un-
justifiable exactions and demands for
food and canoes, which should have
been made through the companys
agent. If it be true that an armed
French expedition has actually crossed
the Niger, the position becomes still
more critical. It is stated that Captain
Tout~e is a private individual, but in
the case of both Emimi Pasha and Dr.
Carl Peters, who led armed expedi-
tions into British East Africa in 1889
91, the German government formally
disavowed their acts and repudiated
them. Is the French government pre-
pared to act with similar courtesy in
the case of Captain Tont~e ? Evi-
dence, however, is not wanting, and
can be produced on requisition, that
Captain Tout~e did not start in the
93
England and France on the Niger.
capacity of a private traveller, though
it is easily credible that he may have
subsequently exceeded his instructions.
In brief, the case stands thus the
company claim that the French had
no right to enter Borgu east of the
meridian of Say under the international
agreement of 1890. Apart from this,
Borgu belongs to whichever power first
concludes a treaty with the local king.
The company claimed to have done so
in respect of their treaty with Boussa.
In deference, however, to the repeated
assertions of France, that Nikki was
the sole and only suzerain of Borgu,
they sent me thither. The British
treaty (concluded solely in deference
to this assertion by France) preceded
the French treaty by sixteen days, con-
sequently it baffles the wit of man
to divine on what grounds the French
can justify the continuance of their ex-
peditions in Borgu territory, while we
on our part are willing to admit the
error which led to their arrival, and to
rest content with their immediate with-
drawal. If the later news be true that
any armed French expedition, private
or otherwise, has crossed the Niger, it
is nothing short of a national insult,
and for the sake of our good relations
and continued peace with our neigh-
bor, it is earnestly to be hoped that the
French government will lose no time
in repudiating any such action on the
part of its officers.
The extremely untenable nature of
the French claims towards the Niger,
and the gratuitously aggressive appear-
ance of some of the actions of their
agents in this direction among which
may be included the forcible entry into
the. Niger of the French gunboat
LArdent, in violation of international
law lead me to infer that these
actions must have a definite ulterior
motive, and that it is absurd to suppose
that that motive can possibly consist in
the idea of justifying such acts of
wanton aggression, and thereby acquir-
ing any rights in the territories in
question. The real objective of France
as I have repeatedly pointed out
during the last three years is the
Nile Valley. Events have now justi
fled my forecast. Her motive is triple.
(1) Access to the navigable waterway
of the Nile, as an outlet for the trade
of her central Soudan possessions, a
claim she would be certain to advance
if she had a station on any navigable
tributary of the Nile. (2) Extension
of her African Empire from the At-
lantic to the Red Sea, an extension for
which she has long been energetically
preparing from her base at Obok and
Tanjurrah, opposite Aden, and by
agents in Abyssinia. (3) The embar-
rassment of England in Egypt by the
acquisition of the Upper Nile and the
control of the waters of the river.
The steady and uniform policy pur-
sued by France in West Africa since
1876a policy never interrupted, and
prosecuted at a cost of millions for-
bids us to judge French colonial exten-
sion by the standard of our own
spasmodic efforts. In spite of almost
insuperable difficulties, the splendid
victories of Achinard, Humbert, and
Combes over the gi~eat armies of Au-
madou and Samory secured the stea(ly
advance of France eastwards from
Senegambia. This unbroken policy of
annexation has of late years been sim-
ilarly inaugurated in the more southern
possession of the French Congo.
Early last year we heard of an ex-
tremely powerful army under Colonel
Monteil, which was reported to be
marching from the rapids at the junc-
ture of the Well6 and Mobanghi Rivers
towards the Bahr el Gazal and the Nile.
Monteil was indeed recalled with a
portion of his force in order to under-
take new operations against Samory
and Kong, but the bulk of the force
presumably remains, with an enormous
staff of officers and munitions. 80,0001.
was voted unanimously in the French
Chamber for the establishment of a
telegraph and the placing of gunboats
on the river, in order to make in fact
(and there was no secret about it) a
thoroughly effective base for an expe-
dition towards the Nile. These events
took place a year ago, and long before
that time it was understood that Cap-
tain Decaze had been engaged in trans-
ferring an already powerful expedition
94
The Race for Borgu.
from the lower to the upper river.
What has become of these forces, and
of the money voted for the prosecution
of these schemes? The French papers
boasVed that the Anglo-Congo treaty
would be confronted with un fait cc-
cornpli; and it is likely we may ere
long find that their boast was not an
idle one. From Bungasso to Dem
Sulimau on the navigable Balir el
G-azal, the great tributary which enters
the Nile at Sobat (Fashoda), is not
more than three hundred miles. The
time we have wasted in inaction is
more than sufficient for an army, even
in central Africa, to accomplish this
distance. An authoritative statement
recently made in Parliament by the
responsible minister of the crown, has
irrevocably committed this country to
uphold her rights in the Nile Valley;
and all who have our national interests
and our national honor at heart are
glad of it. But the time has come
aye, and almost passed for definite
action, and not for mere words. There
are several forms which that action
might take, but it is beyond the scope
of the present article to deal with this
large and very grave question, nor
would it, perhaps, at the present mo-
ment be adx isable to do so here.
Borgu is a peculiar country to travel
in. The British expedition was invari-
ably received with courtesy and hospi-
tality by the chiefs of villages and
towns. But in every Borgu village
there is a faction led by one or more
princes, whose business it is to raid
and plunder the surrounding district.
Over these lawless spirits the village
chief has little or no control, and doubt-
less, in some cases, there may be col-
lusion between the two. The leader of
a caravan has, therefore, to exercise
peculiar vigilance, and is never free
from fear of treachery, or at least from
sudden hostility where everything had
worn the garb of friendship. The
British expedition had made many
friends at Nikki, and the king declared
that henceforth the agents of the com-
pany would be welcomed throughout
the length and breadth of Borgu. He
thanked God, he said, that this great
event had happened in his lifetime,
and declared himself especially struck
by the strict discipline and supervision
which had rendered the stay of so large
a body of men unfruitful of any quar-
rels with the peasantry, and had re-
dressed their lightest complaints. His
letters and guides procured us a hearty
welcome in each town we passed
through ; but while I was in the act of
receiving cordial niessages and presents
from the chief of the town of Neeshi,
it was whispered in my ear that a com-
bination of the freebooting princes
and their lawless followers hind deter-
mined on a night attack. Reports
reached me from time to time that the
old chief was doing his utmost to dis-
suade these robbers from their scheme,
and his bona fides was proved later by
a midnight message of warning. But
the princes had called together allies
from many neighboring villages and
would not now be deterred. Baffled in
their intention of a night surprise, they
waylaid us as we left camp the follow-
ing morning. The attack was repulsed
with much loss on their side. One
porter in our caravan was struck in the
shoulder by a poisoned arrow, and
though our guide from Nikki gave him
antidotes and charms, and lie was
carefully tended, lie was never fit for
anything afterwards, and on the return
of the expedition into the Niger terri-
tories lie had to be left in a friemidly
village, unable to walk. The only cas-
ualty in the fighting line was myself, an
arrow having penetrated deep into my
skull. I ate indiscriminately all kinds
of native concoctions said to be anti-
dotes against the poison ; for, as vari-
ous kinds of poison are employed, the
antidotes are necessarily as vat
and are administered on the principle
that if one does not succeed another
may! Undoubtedly some of the roots,
etc., which were brought to me to eat
had powerful properties, as one could
perceive froni their taste and action,
and I have brought home samples of
each for analysis. They probably could
not have been obtained under other con-
ditions, and no one is likely to court a
wound merely in the interests of science.
95
96
The result proved satisfactory, though
the process of waiting to see what
will happe~is by no means an agree-
able one under such circumstances.
The robber bands of Borgu, who ap-
pear to form a very large part of the
population, appeared to have made up
their minds that this large caravan,
laden with expensive goods, and de-
fended by but forty rifles, whose pres-
ence was inappreciable in so large a
concourse, was a godsend which fate
had delivered into their hands. They
had seen the beautiful (lamasks and
shawls, the brocaded satin taborets,
and heavily embroidered covers which
had formed the presents seat by the
company to the kings and chiefs with
whom treaties had been concluded.
Their imagination filled the boxes of
ammunition, the cases of provisions,
the tent loads and paraphernalia of the
expe(lition with similar valuables. A
retrospect of the various reports and
warnings which reached us from the
time we entered Borgu, induces me to
think that these marauders had from
the first looked upon us as their legiti-
mate prey, only deferring the climax
until we should be well in the heart of
the country, and anticipating that the
king of Nikki would decline to receive
us at the capital, and so place us in
their power. The lesson their hastily
organized band had ieceived at Neeshi
taught them caution, and they deter-
mined to attack in overwhelming force
on the next occasion. The bands, led
by various well-known robber chiefs,
were reported to number from two
hundred to six hundred fighting men
apiece, and I received incontrovertible
evidence that an extremely powerful
combination had planned an attack
upon us as we marche(l out of Ilesha,
the most southern and one of the larg-
est of the towns of l3orgu. The dense
six-foot grass and heavy jungle, as vet
unburnt by the annual hush fires of the
Soudan, favored their plan of attack
by simultaneous ambushes on various
points of the mile-long caravan as it
wound along the narrow jungle path.
By a stratagem I avoi(led them, and
entered North Yoruba safely.
England and France on the Niger.
I was at much pains to ascertain by
continual inquiry the limits of Borgu,
or Barbar, as it is more commonly
called. On the east the kingdom is
bounded by the river Niger from the
confluence of the Moshi in the south to
the borders of Gurma, a province of
Gandu. in the north. This province of
Gurma, extending approximately along
the twelfth parallel of latitude, forms
the northern limit of Borgu, which in-
cludes the important frontier town of
Illo. On the west the Gurma roa(I ~
separates Barh)ar from Mossi, Gerunsi,
and Salaga, the frontier town on the
main Salaga road being Kirri-kirri,
E. long. 10 34 (Kippert), and this
meridlian forms the general western
limit. From Kirrikirri, the southern
boundary, roughly speaking, follows
the ninth parallel of latitude, though
the Sabd country north of Dahomey
extends a few miles to the north of that
parallel, and Ilesha is situated some
six miles below it. From Ilesha the
boundary trends northwards, and fol-
lows the Moshi River to its confluence
with the Niger.
The Borgu are a proud and self-
important race, they are steeped in
superstition, and their dread of witch-
craft and fetish influences most of
the actions of their daily lives. When
going to battle or to raid, they festoon
themselves and their horses with innu-
merable charms to render them invul-
nerable. There are fe~v or no firearms
in Borgu.
The horsemen are armed with swords
and lances, but the bow and deadly
poisoned arrow is the main weapon of
their armies. Its lightness renders
them active in thick bush], and its
noiselessness and the speed with which
volleys of arrows can be discharged
preeminently adapt it for th]e am-
bushes and night attacks in which the
Borgu delight. The whole nation al)
pears permeated with a passion for
organized plundering. The robber
chiefs appear to have little (hiffiCulty in
recruiting their bands to many bun
(Ireds strong, and small armies of these
freebooters form war-camps throughout
northern Yoruba for the purpose of
raiding the roads which connect the
principal towns. Colonies of Foulas
are settled in separate villages attached
to most Borgu towns, but, as I have
already said, these people the con-
quering race of West Africa, from
whose royal stock the great kings of
Sokoto, Gandu, Nup~, and Illorin, are
drawn are but mere slaves in Borgu,
as are also the Yorubas settled in the
country.
There are few or no striking physical
features in Barbar-land. The country
is uniformly level or undulating, with
no mountains and but small chains of
hills. Geologic ally the formation con-
sists of masses of ironstone and honey-
combed lava impregnated with iron,
alternating with surfaces of grey gran-
ite. It is sparsely inhabited and
thickly wooded with jungle and dwarf
forest. Various trees of the Ficus
class are cultivated around the villages;
the cotton-tree, adansonia, tamarind,
and acacia are met with, though not in
abundance. The shcea-tree is common,
and its butter is collected for trade.
The elu dye plant (Lonchocarpus
cyartescens) and a superior tobacco
form, with capsicunis, etc., articles of
trade. The oil-palm and the rubber
vine appear in the south towards
Yoruba, and become more and more
plentiful as one travels southwards.
There is, however, but little trade in
the country owing to the predatory in-
stinets of the people; but since the
great trade route connecting the coin-
mercial centres of Kano, etc., in the
Sokoto Empire with the marts of Salaga
and Vendi passes through the heart of
Borgu from east to west, there is no
doubt that with an era of security a
considerable volume of trade would
pass through Borgu. The imports are
principally Kola-nuts, potash, salt,
brass, and iron, and leatherwork.
ilorses thrive in the country, and are
imported from the north, but both
these and donkeys are scarce and ex-
pensive. All the kinds of African
grain are cultivated, but the devasta-
tions caused by flights of locusts (from
the north and north-west) compel the
people to rely chiefly on yams against
LiVINg AGE. VGL. vii. 319
97
the contingency of famine. Very ex-
cellent native cloth is woven in the
country. The Borgu do not appear to
be much addicted to slave raiding or
slave trading. A few slaves pass con-
stantly through the country on their
way from the north and east to the
southern markets of Yoruba and Illo-
rin, but, in contradistinction to the
peoples and tribes who surround them,
my observation led me to conclude that
the Borgu are not a slave raiding peo-
ple. Cattle and flocks are conspicuous
by their absence, and indeed the people
are essentially poor in all that consti-
tutes wealth in Africa. This they owe
not to the incapacity of their land, but
to the lawless bands which keep trade
and industry out of the country.
Spirits in small quantities have pen-
etrated from Lagos, but the same
causes which have impoverished the
country have also contributed to keep
it practically free from the inroad of
firearms and spirits.
From The Contemporary Review.
THE POETRY OF KEBLE.
IT is a difficult matter to criticise a
religious poet from a purely literary
standpoint. There was a curious in-
stance of this last year. When the
Keats memorial was unveiled at Ilamp-
stead, Mr. Gosse spoke some disre-
spectful words of Kirke White. There
followed a short, sharp controversy in
the Standard on the subject. The de-
fenders of Kirke Whites position as
a poet, based their arguments, as far
as I can remember, on the grounds
(1) that he was a good Christian,
(2) that he might have been senior
wrangler, (3) that he was the victim of
an early death. The facts themselves,
or rather the facts in combination, may
certainly be said to invest Kirke White
with a romantic interest. Soutlicy,
indeed, felt this so strongly that he
wrote a memoir of the young man, and
edited his Remains. But any one who
will study Kirke Whites poems in
themselves, as literature, without prej-
udice, will inevitably come to the con-
The Poetry of Keble.
The Poetry of Keble.
elusion that they are worthless, and
disfigured by every fault that can be
laid to the charge of poetry. They are
not even promising. They are tedious,
grotesque, inharmonious, dull. And
yet they have a place in the Aldine
edition of British poets.
No one would, of course, dream of
classing Keble with Kirke White.
Keble was a wise, able, devoted man,
narrow-minded, no doubt, and timid in
thought, if not in action. Not imagi-
native nor vivid, but intensely affec-
tionate, dutiful, and reserved ; a lover
of nature, scenery, friends, children,
reflection; somewhat melancholy, no
donbt, and not growing in hopefulness
as years went by with little indepen-
dence of thought or character ; but
reverent, a lover of precedent, and
authority, and thin~s established.
Altogether a wholesome, valuable man,
like Telemachus in Tennysons Ulys-
ses, of a type of which Englishmen
may be proud; but not a man who can
be called interesting or romantic in any
degree ; even Mr. Lock, who has writ-
ten his life in a lucid style and with
pious discretion, would admit that.
There is something eminently de-
pressing about Kebles want of per-
sonal ambition ; no doubt, it was a
triumph of grace over nature but one
would have liked the triumph to have
been a little more impressive. In the
celebrated canvass for the provostship
of Oriel, where the decision of New-
man and Pusey turned the scale, and
gave it to Hawkins rather than Keble,
it is evident that Keble was not greatly
disappointed ; he acquiesced too easily.
In some men, this could almost be
called indolence, but in Keble we may
call it modesty. It argues, however,
a certain want of fire, of intensity, and
the same is the case with his writings.
Keble never lets himself go; he is
always checking and controlling the
impulse of song. And thus he spoke
of his own poetry as a relief from
graver thoughts Poetic~ vis mcd-
lea, the healing power of poetry, he
called it ; as something to which he
could turn to distract and soothe him,
but a parergon nevertheless, not
the business of his life, not an over
mastering impulse, an imperious need
of self-expression. This did not lead
to the careful chastening and correct-
ing of his verse that one might expect~
There have been poets, in whom the
sense of perfection was very strong,
like Gray, who worked rarely, slowly,
painfully, producing a marvellous, jew-
elled masterpiece, wrought out touch
by touch. But there was nothing of
this about Keble; he was copious,
fluent, uncritical; he was never fas-
tidious, and allowed much to go out
under his name which was quite un-
worthy of an able man ; puerile, inele-
gant stuff ; few, we may say, were ever
capable of such extreme flatness as
Keble reached in some of the poems in
the Lyra Innocentium ; such as the
compositions entitled Irreverence in
Church, and Disrespect to Elders,
where it is asked that some good angel
may wait, With unseen scourge in
hand, on the church path, and by the
low school door, in order to Write
in young hearts Thy reverend lore
very advisable, no doubt, but how
suggestive of Bumble, and the charity
children, and the rod of office I A
sense of propriety, we will not say of
humor, would have saved such a bathos
as this.
It is not, of course, contended that a
sense of humor is, in the least, part of
the outfit of a poet. Shelley had none,
but was rescued from bathos by enthu-
siasm. Wordsworth had none, and
re mained great, although he wallowed
in bathos. The sense of humor is
merely negative in a poet ; it does not
give a poet sublimity, but it rescues
him from puerility and absurdity. And
so into both of these faults Keble not
infrequently fell. In the Lyra Inno-
centium ~ and the Miscellaneous
poems are many very lamentable
verses. In the Lyra, indeed, there
are few that are not lamentable. The
fatal blight of the book is that it is
occupied throughout, not with what
one can learn from children, but with
what one can teach them. It upholds
an impossible and undesirable ideal
for childhood, the ideal of the sainted
98
infant, cheerful, high-principled, de-
vout, obedient, but neither natural nor
child-like. Keble was very fond of
children, but only a childless man
could have constructed so false a pic-
ture. This false note vitiates the
whole book; we are conscious of an
under-current of rebellion as we read
it. We realize that, after all, we do
not want children to be such as Keble
describes them. We do not wish them
to be prostrate in their sin and
shame, as in the poem of Absolu-
tion in Early Encouragements.
And it is not poetry, whatever it may
be, to tell a child that
The Sunday garment, glittering gay,
The Sunday heart will steal away.
Even from the religious point of
view, the book is pharisaical; it tends
to multiply offences, to create a fan-
tastic and elaborate morbidity of con-
science fatal to the natural simplicity
of childhood, that should be so jeal-
ously guarded.
The following incident casts a cii-
rious light on Kebles taste. On a
stray piece of paper still preserved in
his writing are the following prin-
ciples ia choosing and correcting
hymns
(1) Al~vays use we instead of I,
or nearly always.
(~2) Insert as many touches of doctrine
as may be.
(3) Under every head have at least
one ancient or archaic hymn.
This is an interesting and character-
istic fragment, because it illustrates so
well Kebles intense dislike to the per-
sonal, the autobiographical element in
poetry, that self-revelation~ which is
so much in demand at present. Sec-
ondly, it shows that he labored under a
deep-seated error as to what was and
what was not suitable material for
poetical treatment. The second prin-
ciple would be bad enough if it referred
to composition, but when it deals with
the correction of the hymns of other
authors it is unpardonable. The third
principle illustrates his reverence for
antiquity and tradition.
We will now take the Christian
99
Year, and we will say at the outset
that we do not propose to consider it,
except incidentally, from the doctrinal
and hortatory point of view. We must
first remember that whatever be its
merits and demerits, it is a book that
has achieved a popularity of an abso-
lutely phenomenal kind. It is a book
that has been bought and read in En-
gland as Shakespeare, Bunyans Pil-
grims Progress, and Robinson
Crusoe, and, in America, as the
works of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. In 1853
it was in its forty-second edition,
twenty-five years after its publication.
In 1873, when the copyright expired,
it had reached the one hundred and
fifty-eighth edition, and it is still in de-
mand. For many years it took its
place, with High Church people, by the
side of the Bible and Prayer-book. It
would be incredible, were it not true,
that a book of religious poetry, not
suitable for public ~vorship, the out-
come of a very definite school of
thought, should have achieved such a
success. It was undoubtedly what the
world wanted.
Now, let us first take some of its ob-
vious demerits before we proceed to
discuss its merits. In the first place,
it is often careless in form and obscure
in expression. It was consciously so,
and Keble, probably wisely, refused to
alter and amend it, imagining that such
afterwork often sacrificed some of the
freshness of inspiration. It was this
carelessness that made Wordsworth,
who read it with great admiration, say
of it, It is very goodso good that,
if it were mine, I should write it all
over again.
The metrical schemes are often com-
plicated and unsatisfactory. Many of
the poems are so much too long as to
be hardly lyrical. The poems for Ad-
vent Sunday, and for the Second Sun-
day after Trinity, contain between
seventy and eighty heroic lines. Then,
again, the cyclical instinct which beset
Keble, made him provide poems for
every event, every service of the
Christian year. Thus we have Gun-
powder Treason and the Churching of
Women celebrated, though it must be
The Poetry of Keble.
100
owned that these poems have but the
slightest connection with the subject.
Next and this is a more serious
pointthe poems have been praised
for their frequent references to nature
and the fidelity of their imagery ; after
careful study of the Christian Year
one is compelled to say that this is not
deserved ; the imagery is of a purely
conventional character, and the ob-
servation employed of the most general
kind. Dean Stanley said, in praise of
Kebles descriptive passages, that his
local and topographical details, when-
ever he spoke of the Holy Land, were
marvellously clear and accurate. But
this is not really a compliment. It
shows that Keble was content to de-
scribe without his eye on the object,
and relying on the observation of
others ; and if the pictures of land-
scapes that he had not seen are among
his most felicitous passages, we may
well be excused for mistrusting his
powers of observation when dealing
with the features of his own native
country. The fact is that he did not
seize upon salient features ; Matthew
Arnold, in such a poem as the
Scholar Gypsy, brings the Oxford
atmosphere, the high, gravelly hills, the
deep water-meadows, before the eye
but Kebles landscape is the conven-
tional English landscape, and has no
precise definition, no native air. For
instance, in the poem for Trinity
Sunday he says
As travellers on some woodland height,
When wintry suns are gleaming bright,
Lose in archd glades their tangled sight:
By glimpses, such as dreamers love,
Through her grey veil the leafless grove
S~hews where the distant shadows rove.
Will any one say that there is the least
precision about this picture ? It is like
a line-engraving after Creswick. What
kind of a place is he describing? How
different it is from such verses as are
found on every page of Tennyson, as
A full-fed river winding slow
By herds upon an endless plain,
The ragged rims of thunder brooding low,
With shadow-streaks of rain.
Again. when Keble is describing the
The Poetry of Keble.
source of the moorland spring, some of
which is beautifully delineated, he says
(Monday in Easter Week) : .
Perchance that little brook shall flow
The bulwark of some mighty realm,
Bear navies to and fro
With monarchs at their helm.
Or canst thou guess how far away,
Some sister nymph, beside her urn
Reclining night and day,
Mid reeds and mountain fern,
Nurses her store, with thine to blend?
This is pure conventionalism ; the mix-
ture of the reclining nymph and the
mountain fern is not felicitous. Con-
stitutional monarchs do not steer their
own ironclads, and it is not picturesque
even to pretend that they do.
The following may stand as instances
of Kebles failure in precise delinea-
tion. In the very first stanza of the
book we have :
Hues of the rich unfolding morn,
That, ere the glorious sun be born,
Around his path are taught to swell.
Swell is the property of bulk or
sound, surely not of light? Again, ad-
dressing the breeze, he says
Wakenest each little leaf to sing.
This is purely conventional ; how dif-
ferent from the dry-tongued laurels
pattering talk of Tennyson. Again:
The torrent nil
That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell,
Touched by the blue mist well.
how weak a word to end a stanza.
Again :
The birds of heaven before us fleet,
They cannot brook our shame to meet.
How falsetto, how preju(hiced a tone I
And these are not isolated instances
similar infelicities occur on every page.
Kebles whole view of nature, it
must be said, was onesided and want-
ing in insight. Nature was to him
nothing but a type of mild fervor and
uncomplaining patience. All true,
all faultless, all in tune, he says. To
the cruelty, the waste, the ugliness,
that seem so inextricably intertwined
with natural processes, he diligently
The Poetry of Keble.
closed his eyes. Thus in No. 9 of the
Lyra Innocentium he propagates
a host of innocent superstitions as to
the power of childhood over wild
beasts. It surely is not poetical to say
to a baby
The tigers whelp encaged with thee
Would sheathe his claws to sport and play;
Bees have for thee no sting,
because it is not true.
Again, in the beautiful stanzas on
the Second Sunday after Trinity, he
sees the many-twinkling smile of
ocean up the glade. His only thought
is
Such signs of love old Ocean gives
We cannot choose but think he lives.
An agreeable view, but hardly consis-
tent with the vast and barren cruelties
which are as natural to the ocean as his
genial presence.
We do not mean that a poet is bound
to insist on the harsher aspects of the
case, but in a poet like Keble, who
made so much of close communion
with nature, of intimate musings, it is
mere blindness not to take these things
into account. The fault, with ~eble,
was entirely in mans corrupt heart
further than that he did not care to
follow it; he deliberately ignored the
bewildering anomaly, the law of fail-
ure and suffering that runs through
nature, as surely as through the history
of nations. How different a view it was
from the vie~v that Tennyson found
grow more and more intense with ad-
vancing years that the world was, as
it were, the creation of some vast poetic
heart, with its necessary concomitant
of failure and incompleteness.
Keble himself, in his Prtelectiones
Academic~, or lectures delivered as
professor of poetry at Oxford, and in
his review of the Life of Sir Walter
Scott (British Critic), enunciated a
theory of poetry which it will be well
to examine. Dean Church said of the
former work, that it was the most
original and memorable course ever
delivered from the chair of poetry in
Oxford ; but the statement does not
imply any very extravagant claims.
Again, Bishop Moberly said that the
101
book exhibited a power and delicacy
at once so original and so just, as to
make these lectures one of the most
charming and valuable volumes of clas-
sical criticism that have ever issued
from the press. Allowing for all pos-
sible partiality, this is strong praise
but it is difficult to see how it is justi-
fied. As to its critical value we may
say at once that no one was ever less
fitted to be a critic than Keble. What
Keble hated instinctively, says New-
man, was heresy, insubordination,
resistance to things established, claims
of independence, disloyalty, innovation,
a critical and censorious spirit. That
is an indifferent outfit for a poet, but
an impossible one for a critic. And
even granting to Keble a certain sub-
missive acumen, a certain relish for
masterpieces, criticism which deals
only with the pancgyric of great mas-
ters, or the classification of established
reputations is surely the most valueless
of all criticism. If it is presented in
attractive literary form it merely
diverts to itself the attention it l)ro-
fesses to direct elsewhere ! If it is
elucidatory, it is excusable ; but Keble
is not elucidatory. The only true
function of criticism is the judicial and
tentative selection of contemporary
excellence. Artistic impulse, literary
progress, poetical production, have
orbits of their own. Depreciative criti-
cism is nothing more than a kind of
attendant umbra, and has never done
more than retard, if it has done even
that, the popular verdict. Dr. Johnson
was perfectly right when he said, De-
pend upon it, sir, no man was ever
written down but by himself. The
criticism of the Edinburgh and Qldar-
terly Reviews, brilliant in form, retro-
grade in spirit, made a few writers
uncomfortable and gave a malicious
pleasure to a great number of readers;
but poetical creation continued its calm
advance quite independently. Nay,
they even overshot their mark and
called attention to the very writers they
professed to crush. Had the reviewers
had their way, we should have heard
no more of Keats, Wordsworth, Cole-
ridge, or Tennyson. The only valuable
102
criticism is the unprejudiced republi-
can criticism, that dares to see what is
good and give instant encouragement
to it. And Keble is just the opposite,
as might be expected from the whole
tone and habit of his mind. A cautious
appeal to authority, predetermined can-
ons of taste and propriety these are
his characteristics.
He enunciates a theory which would
divide all poets into primary and sec-
ondary poets. Primary poets, ac-
cording to Keble, says Principal
Shairp, are they who are driven by
ove im astering enthusiasm, by passion-
ate devotion to some range of objects,
or lii)e of thought, or aspect of life or
nature, to utter their feelings in song.
They sing because they cannot help it.
. . This is the true poetic flavia of
which Plato speaks. Secondary poets
are not urged to poetry by any such
overflowing sentiment; but learning,
admiration, choice, and a certain liter-
ary turn have made them poetic
artists. Of the former kind are
Homer, iEschylus, Lucretius, Virgil,
Pindar, Shakespeare, Burns, Scott ; of
the latter, Sophocles, Milton, Dryden,
Horace, and Theocritus. This, in it-
self, is a somewhat singular selection.
But what absence of insight is there in
Kebles judgment that the Iliad and
Odyssey are the work of one hand,
the former in youth, the latter in later
life. The overmastering feeling of
Homer, he says, is a sad regret for
the decay of the heroic age, with its com-
mon national feeling, its reverence for
its leaders. What a fantastic judg-
ment! Homer the poet of a sad re-
gret Surely it is the very absence of
all critical or introspective or even
latent thought which gives the poems
their overwhelming charm.
The truth is that Kebles theory of
poetry is practically an expansion of
Aristotles poetics, and is a narrow
generalization on wholly insufficient
grounds. Poets cannot be swept off
the board entire, like chessmen. There
are many writers of verse, whose im-
pulse to sing was certainly original,
and, according to Kebles definition,
primary; yet their work was essen
The Poetry of Keble.
tially second-rate. Take such a poet
as Southey; he composed in a mood
which he mistook for solemn inspira-
tion; his poetry was written in obedi-
ence to a high and sacred sense of
vocation; he in a letter which can-
not be called conceited, for it is written
with a serene and stately consciousness
of greatness placed his own poem of
Madoc second only to Miltons
Paradise Lost. Wordsworth again
writing sometimes from a large and
grave inspiration, sometimes from a
sense of duty was he always a pri-
mary poet? The fact is that it is al-
most entirely a matter of expression
and style. Many men are poets at
heart, and have a vivid n~nd eager con-
sciousness of beauty, but only a small
percentage of these have the gift of
transmuting it into language. The
truth is that secondary poets are mere
literary men, dilettanti verse-writers
and all poets who establish a real hold
on the minds of others, if it be, as
Lovelace, by two lyrics only, or Shirley
by one, are primary poets. The thing
cannot be done at all without a genuine
inspiration ; but granted the inspira-
tion, even the mood, the expression is
not always there.
Keble, says Principal Shairp, was,
when tested by his own theory, a pri-
mary poetthat is, his impulse and
treatment were alike original. The
former of these statements may be
granted at once, with certain reser-
vations the Christian Year~~ is an
original book. The idea was an orig-
inal one and a happy one. To assign
to each of the seasons of the Church a
devotional commentary; to enrich the
austere and narrow melody of the
ecclesiastical tone running, like its
own plain song, with a severe and
plaintive monotony with chord upon
chord of rich and suggestive philoso-
phy, was no ignoble thought. Indeed,
the best and most apt comparison that
can be found for Keble is to consider
him as a skilful musician, embroider-
ing and enlarging, with intricate har-
monies, a series of strict and uniform
subjects. It is not, indeed, the highest
form of art, but it gives scope for the
The Poetry of Keble.
exercise of a wide and tender skill.
But Keble had no really original im-
pulse ; he required to have his ground-
bass found for him, and he could
construct a descent of admirable soft-
ness and delicacy, while underneath
moved the solemn and measured music
of the ancient tradition.
As to the originality of the form
which he employed, it is impossible to
agree with Principal Shairp ; indeed he
vitiates his whole case by comparing
Keble to George Herbert and Henry
Vaughan. Was ever a more inapt
comparison made? To begin with,
Keble was neither a mystic nor even a
symbolist. With George Herbert, and
even more with Henry Vaughan, the
outward sign, the ordinance, the orna-
ments of religion were weak and faint
foreshadowings of some distant glory,
some vast truth dimly understood.
But to Keble, the form, the ceremony,
the material detail of service and sac-
rament were far too real and desirable.
An instance of this is to be found in
his poem on Holy Baptism.
Where is it mothers learn their love?
In every church a fountain springs,
Oer which the Eternal Dove
Hovers on softest wings.
What a failure of human perception
It is sai(l that Wordsworth, once read-
ing with admiration the above-men-
tione(l l)oem, stumbled at the lines I
have quoted the statement that
mothers learn their love at the font.
~o, no, said the old poet, it is
from their own maternal hearts.
Henry Vaughan could never have been
betrayed into so intimately unreal a
statement as this.
Then, as to technical treatment and
form, it would be difficult to select two
poets so utterly and radically unlike as
George Herbert and Keble. The only
point of resemblance is that they are
both sometimes unnecessarily obscure
but in George Herberts case this arises
from a curious elaboration of expres-
sion, an intensity of compression, an
omission of logical steps, a tendency to
cram a sentence into a word ; while in
Kebles case his obscurity arises from a
kind of indefinite garrulity, a tendency
to divergence on side issues, a vapid
displacement of language.
The eye in smiles may wander round,
Caught by earths shadows as they fleet;
But for the soul no help is found
Save Him who made it, meet.
What could be more inartistic than the
disarrangement of the last two lines ?
No, the strength of Keble lies in the
gentle lucidity of many of his finest
poems, never in the arresting force of
his epithets, never in intricate and in-
genious conceits of language.
The real prototypes of Keble in En-
glish literature are Gray and Words-
worth. Keble on more than one
occasion echoes the stately and majestic
cadence of Gray. Could such a stanza
as the following have been written
without the example of the Elegy ?
Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has willd, we
die,
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our
own
Knows half the reasons why we smile
and sigh?
And again, from the Second Sunday
after Easter
In outline dim and vast
Their fearful shadows cast
The giant forms of Empires, on their way
To ruin; one by one,
They tower and they are gone
Yet in the Prophets soul the dreams of
avarice stay.
He watched till mornings ray
On lake and meadow lay,
And willow-shaded streams, that silent
sweep
Around the bannerd lines,
Where, by their several signs,
The desert-wearied tribes in sight of
Canaan sleep.
These sober ,grave stanzas have some-
thing of the cadence of The Bard.
The resemblance to Wordsworth is
more general, but it may be said that
the tone, the structure, the language
of many of Kebles lyrics, the back-
ground of nature in which his thoughts
enact their part, the presence of skies
an(l woods and waters, of which he is
103
104
forever conscious, for which he is ever
grateful, however inaccurately observed
and sketched, his innate love of old,
traditional, wholesome things, our
peace, our fearful innocence, and pure
religion breathing household laws
all these make Keble a true Words-
worth ian.
The qualities of style to which I
propose to call attention in Keble are:
(1) simplicity ; (2) propriety ; (3) grav-
ity all three unpopular qualities
enough nowadays, and, therefore, per-
haps all the more worthy of study.
(1) Simplicity, artistic simplicity, is a
noble thing, and as rare as it is noble;
it must be beyond and above ornate-
ness ; anciently, indeed, before liter-
ature had begun to knit her infinite
combinations, it was more attainable
but now to be unstudied is to be thin.
Art must now be careless with art-
ful care, affecting to be unaffected.
Modern simplicity must show the spare-
ness of asceticism, not the leanness of
an~mia. It must arise from the re-
pression of luxuriance, not poverty of
spirit ; strict simplicity implies the
rejection of all startling and glittering
tricks of style, and consequently it
implies a lordly patience in pursuit,
with an indefatigable zeal for the selec-
tion of the precise, the majestic, the
supreme.
I do not say that Keble was always
successful in the pursuit of simplicity.
But it was his object nIl through. Out-
side the Christian Year, indeed, in
the Lyra Innocentium, the studied
avoidance of the ornamental and the
attractive degenerated into vapid de-
bility. But in the Morning~ and
Evening poems
Only, 0 Lord, in thy dear love,
Fit us for perfect rest above,
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray,
and
If some poor wandering child of Thine
Have spurned to-day the Voice Divine,
Now, Lord, the gracious work begin:
Let him no more lie down in sin,
have the true note of pure directness
[like Poetry of Kelile.
how, in the middle of so sweet and low
a strain, such a stanza as
The Rulers of this Christian laud,
Twixt Thee and us ordained to stand;
Guide Thou their course, 0 Lord, aright,.
Let all do all as in Thy sight
could be intruded, shows us how un-
critical, how helpless Keble could be.
Again, such a poem as that for the
Second Sunday after Easter
above, , quoted.
0 for a sculptors hand, etc.,
and some of the stanzas on St. Mat-
thews Day
There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime,
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart~
Plying their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls a holy strain re
peat;
and again for Septuagesima :
There is a book who runs may read, etc.;
and what is perhaps the finest of all his
lyrics, that for Whitsunday
When God of old came down from Heaven
In power and wrath he came;
Before his feet the clouds were riven,
Half darkness and half flame.
Around the trembling mountains base
The prostrate people lay,
A day of wrath and not of grace,
A dim and dreadful day.
These have the authentic note of gran-
deur. They are lines that take the
heart and imagination captive and
linger in the memory unbidden. It
may be, of course, that some of them
are consecrated by familiar use, by be-
ing conn ecte(l with moments of emotion
and resolution. What an immense,
what a sacred l)Ower, these writers of
liturgical poems wield ! but, on the
other hand, such familiarity is apt to
blind us also to excellence of style.
No. the claim of genuine, severe sim-
plicity may be sustaine(l for Keble.
(2) Propriety. Jam using the word,
of course, in the extended sense of del-
icate appositeness, not as the reverse of
impropriety. Keble has a wonderful
The Poetry of Keble.
105
power, without trIcks of rhetoric, of not the secret and refreshing twinkle
touching in some natural, homely feel- of the humorist. Indeed, the spirit
ing with exquisite grace. How could sickens to recall the pieces resolutely
the instinctive dislike of change in labelled humorous, which have been
familiar surroundings be more pathet- shamefully made public among his
ically described than in the poem for miscellaneous poems. If these were
Whit Monday ? specimens of the wit in which his talk
Since all that is not Heaven must fade, is said to have abounded, it is a matter
Light be the hand of Ruin laid for deep thankfulness that so few remi-
Upon the home I love. niscences of his conversation have sur-
With lulling spell let soft decay vived.
Steal on, and spare the giant sway, Life was far too serious and momen-
The crash of tower and grove. tons to Keble for him to have enjoyed
In such a mood it is so easy to be its pitiful contrasts. The only conso
jealous, to be vindictive, to lose the lations indeed that can prevent a spirit,
central thought in invective or uncon- bounded by so petty a horizon, from
vincing particularization, becoming sullen or bitter, are perennial
Again, in a frame of mind that so humor or intense seriousness. And
easily drifts into morbidity and de- Keble was as serious as Shelley or
spondency, with what pure patience Wordsworth. It is not a quality that
he delineates the vague languors, the needs defining by quotation, for every
unutterable discontents of the soft days single poem in the Christian Year
of early spring, in the poem for the is penetrated with it from the first line
third Sunday after Easter to the last. But in these days, when
Well, may I guess and feel the issues of life and death, the intri-
Why Autumn should be sad, cacies of character, the logical truth of
But vernal airs should sorrow heal, fatalism, are matters of after-dinner
Spring should be gay and glad. conversation, it is well to live a little
Yet as along this violet bank I rove, with a mind to whom they were ab-
The languid sweetness seems to choke sorbing and fearful realities, too (leep
my breath, for laughter or tears. Kebles inmost
I sit me down beside the hazel grove, instinct was not love, or the sense of
And sigh, and half could wish my wean- beauty, but a resolute and puritanical
ness were death. sternness. He made the mistake, so
common to religious spirits, of suppos-
ing that the religious instinct is uni-
versally implanted, and that whatever
the varying quantities of intellect and
capacity in an individual, the spiritual
faculties are evenly distributed.
And what could be more supremely
delicate, more touched with a loving
humiliation, than the exquisite line (in
the poem on Gunpowder Treason, of
all places !),
Speak gently of our sisters fall.
(3) Gravity. This may be held
perhaps to be almost a defect of qual-
itv ; but in Keble it has a positive
value. He, a clerical Wordsworth, so
to speak, moved through the world,
not indeed without some simple merri-
meat, but without a suspicion of the
existence of that deeper and larger
mood that we name humor. He never
cared to note the odd, bewildering con-
tradictions of humanity, its reckless
absurdities, its profound an(l intimate
mirth. Kebles smile, and he is said
to have had one, was the grave, bright
smile of the contented and joyous spirit,
Well, such an attitude, if unsympa-
thetic and statuesque, is noble and ad-
mirable. It is the temper in which
great deeds are done and heroic resolu-
tions formed. It seals Keble one of
that honorable minority who clearly
see the force of a moral ideal, maintain
it in themselves, and (lemand it from
others ; and if it is difficult to sym-
pathize with it, it is impossible not to
admire it.
It may be urged, then, that on these
three grounds Keble may be reckoned
among English poets. It will not be
on these grounds that he will be most
106 The Disappearance of the Smaller Gentry (16601800).
read, but for his pure and sober re-
ligious spirit, about which indeed much
might be said that would be foreign to
the purpose of this essay. But it may
be granted that he had a strong per-
ception of beauty, moral and physical,
in spite of a certain rigidity of tone
an(l that he had style, the gift of ex-
pression, an artistic ideal, without
which no purity of outlook, no exult-
ant sense of beauty, can make a poet.
But even if his claim cannot be sus-
tained, even if his writings were not
l)oetry, we may be thankful that for
more than half a century there have
been spirits so high, 50 refined, so
devoted, as to have been misled by his
sl)iritual ardor, the lofty sublimity of
his ideal, as to mistake his refined and
enthusiastic utterance for the voice of
the genuine bard.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.
From Macmillans Magazine.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SMALLER
GENTRY (1660-1800).
THE old Hall is now converted into
a farmhouse The Grange has
now been unoccupied for many years
In dry summers the foundations
of tile Manor-house can be clearly
trace(l upon the turf The estate
in 1795 l)assed with other neighboring
l)rol)erties into the hands of Alderman
Indigo, the celebrated East India mer-
chant By a series of judicious
purchases, Ilis lordship has now be-
come tlle owner of almost the whole
parish. And so on, chapter after
chapter, runs tile guide-book. In them-
selves there is nothing very striking in
such phrases. Yet we wonder how
many who read them realize that in
these commonplaces lies the record of
one of the most serious revolutions hI
English social history, of the silent
destruction and disappearance from
English society of a whole class, a
class, moreover, which for at least two
cemlturies had played no small part in
the making of England.
At the close of the seventeenth cen-
tury the little squire with his patri-
mony of two or three hundred a year
was a familiar figure in English coun-
try life. Within a hundred years he
was practically extinct, a character
now quite worn out and gone, says a
writer in 1792. To-day, with the mod-
em squire and his surroundings before
ones eyes, tile broad estates swollen
with the wreckage of tile agrarian
revolution, the trim lawns and rebuilt
country-seats and town-houses, it is
difficult to recall even in outline the
figure of one of tile smaller gentry of
the seventeenth century. He stood
apart from tile yeoman ill all the obsti-
nate pride of the owner of a coat-of-
arms, the representative of an honor-
able line, a member, albeit often a
tllreadbare member, of the governing
class. In social standing, in habits, in
ideas, there was no barrier between
him and his wealthier neighbors. He
dined with them, rode to market with
them, and cursed the Whigs with them
on a footing of perfect equality. Poor
as he might be, he was of gentle blood,
and they could be no more. His house
with its one keeping-room, and possibly
a withdrawing-room for the womenfolk,
its sleeping accommodation of the
roughest, and tile farm-midden hard
upon the kitchen door, was certainly
no better than, often by no means so
good as a second-rate modern farm-
house, and its comfort was infinitely
less. His furniture and belongings,
tile settle-forms and stools of his par-
lor, his chests and clothes-presses and
Ilis half-dozen chairs, tile pewter flag-
ons and dishes, and the row of old
books, were sucil as a decent estate-
bailiff of our own day might legiti-
mately aspire to own. He himself was
untravelled, ignorant, bigoted, coarse,
with less knowledge of the world than
tile drover to whom he sold his bul-
locks, and no ideas of pleasure or
recreation beyond a drinking-bout or a
coursing-match. Yet such as he was,
lIe filled an important place in rural
society.
One does not, indeed, readily realize
without figures the tremendous gaps
which have been made ill the ranks of
the country gentry (luring the last two
centuries by the disappearance of the
The Disappearance of the Smaller Gentry (16601800). 107
small squires. Speaking roughly (and gentle blood entered on the visitation
all estimates upon the subject must of 16~2O, one hundred and thirteen are
necessarily be rough, owing to absence extinct in the male line ; a few are
of precise statistics), two hundred years represented through a daughters de-
ago there were at least four times as scendants. One hundred and ninety-
many gentry residing in the country as five families were entered in Ashmoles
there are to-day. Allowing for the in- visitation of Berkshire in 1664; but
crease of population there ought to few survive, writes Mr. Cooper King,
have been four times as many resident the latest historian of that county. Of
gentry to-day as there were two hun- the list of knights, gentlemen, and
dred years ago. Villages which now freeholders in the county of Chester
have their one or two country-houses, drawn up in 1579, eight alone of the
could then count their dozen or score eighty-one from East Cheshire are still
of bonnet lairds. The very monn- represented on their old estates. In
ments of the village church, above all 1601, there were ninety gentlemen on
its registers, are eloquent witnesses to the Commission of the Peace for Berk-
the extent of the disaster, for a disaster shire ; by 1824 eighty-seven out of the
it assuredly is. In the sixteenth ninety houses were extinct or had
century, writes Mr. Baring Gould, in parted with their lands.2 Of forty-
his Old Country Life, of the parish three estates in the valley of the Ribble
of Ugborough in South Devon, we in Lancashire and Yorkshire, six and
find in them [the parish registers] the no more are still owned by the families
names of the following families all of who held them under Elizabeth. Fifty
gentle blood, occupying good houses years ago, in his Rural Rides, Cob-
The Spealts, the Prideaux, the Stures, bett noted the same phenomena in
the Fowels, the Drakes, the Glass fain- southern England. On the road from
ily, the Wolcombes, the Fountaynes, Warminster to Devizes within a hun-
the Heles, the Crokers, the Percivals. dred years of the time he wrote there
In the seventeenth century occur the were twenty-two mansion-houses of
Edgcumbes, the Spoores, the Stures, sufficient note to be marked on the
the Glass family again, the Hillerdens, county map ; in 1826 there were only
Crokers, Coolings, Heles, Collings, seven. Upon his map of thirty miles
Kempthornes, the Fowells, Williams, of the valley of the Avon above Sahis-
Strodes, Fords, Prideaux, Stures, Fur- bury lie marks the sites of fifty man-
longs, Reynolds, Hurrells, Fownes, sion-houses; forty-two of them were,
Copplestones, and Saverys. In the when lie wrote, mansion-houses no
eighteenth century there are only the longer. A host of similar instances
Saverys and Prideaux; by the middle confront one in any county history.
of the nineteenth these are gone. The The evidence indeed is overwhelm-
grand old mansion of the Fowells, that ing, not only as to the strange way in
passed to the Savery family, is in which the number of the country gen-
Chancery, deserted save by a caretaker, try has crumbled and mouldered away,
falling to ruins. What other mansions but that it was at the latter eiid of the
there were in the place are now farm- seventeenth and during the eighteenth
houses. At the present day indeed centuries that the change took place.
the vicar writes that there is not a The causes are no doubt complex. In
single family of resident gentlefolk in part they were economical. The Civil
the parish; and Ugborough is, in the War was responsible for much. Apart
opinion of Mr. Baring Gould, only an from its direct losses, the slighted
example, though perhaps a striking ex- houses, the destroyed woods, the bare
ample, of a universal change. farms, hundreds of squires had to face
The records of the heralds visita- the fact, when the shouting was over
tions, according to the same authority, for the return of his most Sacred
tell the same tale. Of one hundred 1 Earwakers East Cheshire, i. 17.
and twenty-four Devonshire families of 2 Clarkes Hundred of Wanting, p. 14.
108 The Disappearance of the Smaller Gentry (16601800).
Majesty, that their estates were sad-
dled with legacies of the struggle in
the shape of debts, the payment of
which was hopeless, or which at best
woul(I cripple the family fortunes for a
generation. What with the free gifts
and loans to the king, and the exac-
tiolls of the Parliament, many an
honest gentleman, who had fought
hard for the one and been correspond-
ingly fined by the other, fouud himself
in the position of Colonel Kirkby of
Kirkby Ireleth, who so encumbered
his estate that neither he nor his de-
scendants ever succeeded in clearing it
of debt ; ~ ~ or like Sir John Danvers
of Danby found himself forced to sell
his estate to his own tenants. And it
must be remembered that with a land-
tax of four shillings in the pound on
the gross value, and mortgage-interest
at seven or eight per cent., he who
went borrowing in Restoration days
had a fair chance of fulfilling the old
adage. Redress from the king was
hopeless. The low prices of corn from
1666 to 1671 must have been the last
straw to many an ancient house,
already tottering on the verge of dis-
aster. They did talk much, noted
Pepys on New Years Day, 166k,
of tile present cheapness of corn,
even to a miracle; so as their farmers
can pay no rent but (10 fling up their
lands. Many estates went staggering
on under the load of debt until the end
of tile century. The list of private
acts for the sale of lands, one hun-
dred and twenty-four in tile thirty-one
years of Charles the Second, two ilun-
(Ire(l and ten in the twelve years of
William and Mary, two Ilundred and
fifty-one in tile short reigil of Anne
is an instructive commentary. Well
might Evelyll remark in 1795 that
tilere were never so many private
bills passed for the sale of estates,
showing tile wonderful prodigality and
decay of families.
There was always, too, before the
eyes of the needy squire, who was
naturally reluctant to part witil his bat-
tered house and starved patrimony,
1 Annals of cartmel, p. 77.
the prospect, almost the certainty, that
his family acres or their proceeds
would yield him a far better return in
trade than he could ever expect from
farming. To trade indeed tile smaller
gentry Ilad notlling of the modern
aversion. The courtly mind of Chain-
berlayne was shocked to see the sons
of baronets, knights, and gentlemen
sitting in 51bps and sometimes of ped-
ling trades ; 2 no such scruples
troubled the poorer squires. They
married traders daughters ; it was
notllin~ strange for their sons
younger
to become clothiers or merchants.
Many a one, even of those who had
no need to turn trader, was like Squire
Blundell of Crosby not above going
40 witll Ibis sister an(l cousin in an
adventure to the Barbadoes. ~ And
the profits were enormous. Squire
Blundell in Ibis adventure cleared a
hundred per cent. ; something better
tibis tlban trying to find a purchaser for
a granary of unsalable wheat.
If the squire did desire to sell, there
were a host of purchasers ready to
lland. The same influences which in-
duce men now to invest in broad acres
tile fortunes made in the city or at the
bar were at work, but witil tenfold
force. Tile political value of land was
far higller than it is to-day. To pur-
chase land was not only to obtain a
safe investment in days when trustees
stocks, government securities, and rail-
way debentures were still in the far
future, nor only, thanks to Orlando
Bridgman, the surest method of secur-
ing tile stability of a family against the
caprices of fortune or the wastefulness
of ones descendants ; it was the sole
method by which in politics the weight
of ones money could be felt. And as
tIle eighteenth century wore on and
the profits to be derived from the new
agriculture became apparent, the habit
of buying up the snlaller estates
became a settled policy. Wealthier
squires wIbo had saved money, noble
houses that had repaired tibeir fortunes
by a marriage into tile city, East
India nabobs, soldiers, chancellors,
2 Present State of England, 1695, p. 261.
A cavaliers Notebook, p. 248.
The Disappearance of the Smaller Gentry 16601800). 109
merchants, bankers, sinecurists, all
were jostling each other in their
anxiety to help the little squire out of
his difficulties by taking over his acres.
The Scotts, the Addingtons, the
Finches, the Duncombes, the Clives,
the Somers, the Pratts, the Yorkes,
the Churchills, are a few and only a
few of the great fortunes which during
the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies were turned into land.
Social causes hastened the downfall.
A drinking-bout was looked upon as
the fitting close to a days pleasure, and
(irunkenness as the most venal of pec-
cadilloes. One of Mr. Spectators cor-
respondents in his four hundred and
seventy-fourth number found himself
compelled to protest against the forced
tippling at these gatherings. Nor was
drinking the only form of extrav-
agance. Sir Jeffrey Notch, the gentle-
man of an ancient family that came
to a great estate some years before he
had discretion, and run it out in
hounds, horses, and cockfighting, was
not without his imitators among the
smaller squires. There had come over
country life a new scale and a new ex-
travagance, which was viewed with
undisguised dislike by such old-fash-
ioned Cavaliers as Squire Blundell.
The habits of visits to London or a
watering-place grew rapidly in the clos-
ing years of the seventeenth century.
By 1710 the London season and the
town-house were an accomplished fact,
and Hanover and Grosvenor Squares,
New Bond Street, the upper part of
Piccadilly, and a host of adjoining
streets, had sprung into being within
seventy years of the death of Charles
the Second for the housing of the gen-
try during the season.
The earthen pot comes off worst in
the race down stream. In the struggle
for survival it was naturally the
smaller squires who went to the wall.
Their position tended to grow more
and more untenable. With the greater
gentry who could afford a town-house,
who were versed in the affairs of the
day, wore the latest fashion in per-
ruques, and could quote the new plays,
the smaller squires must have fallen
further and further out of touch ; the
pressure to sell must have proved
stronger and stronger. Once the ranks
were broken the process of destruction
went on with increased and increasing
speed, for the survivors found them-
selves more and more isolated. Some
of them, we know, by judicious mar-
riages, or by thrift and consequent pur-
chasing out their neighbors, rose into
the higher ranks of the squirearchy.
Many without doubt simply dropped
back into the yeomanry, and shared in
the yeomanrys destruction. The great
bulk were bought out; and upon the
ruins of their order grew up the modern
squire, with ten times their acreage
and twenty times their rental.
It may be doubted whether any of
the great agrarian changes of the eigh-
teenth century was a more serious dis-
aster to rural society. No doubt the
bonnet laird in his habits and ideas
resembled, as Macaulay puts it, the
village miller or ale-house keeper of our
own day. Probably, as Cobbett says,
he was a bigoted Tory, an obstinate
opponent of all improvement, and a
hard master. But his function in rural
society was not a trivial one. He was
a link, and a link the need of ~vhich we
are sorely feeling to-day, between the
great proprietor and his tenants, at-
tached to the one by the ties of tra-
dition and status, to the other by
community of interest. Uncourtly,
rough, almost brutal as he was, his in-
fluence was a factor to be considered,
and must have made the rule of one
man impossible in rural society. He
made for rural independence, even if
that independence were only of a
stolid and limited character. With all
his faults and shortcomings, his de-
struction blotted an important feature
out of country life. And occurring, as
it did, as part and parcel, with the de-
struction of the yeoman and the
peasant-farmer, of the agrarian revo-
lution of the eighteenth century, it was
the leading incident in a process which
drained the rural districts of the very
elements of rural life.
See on the whole subject Toynbees Lectures
on the Industrial Revolution in England.
110 The After-Careers of University-Educated Women.
From The Nineteenth Century.
THE AFTER-CAREERS OF UNIVERSITY-
EDUCATED WOMEN.
Head Assistant
Mistresses. Mistresses.
14 23
October, 1871, to June, 1893, was seven
hundred and twenty. leaving out
sixteen who have died, and thirty
MANY mothers among the upper seven foreigners who have gone back
middle classes are in these days anx- to their own countries, we find that
iously puzzling over the j)roblem how three hundred and seventy-four are at
best to educate their daughters. The the present time engaged in teaching
old order of home-training by private as a profession. Forty-seven have
governess education is passing away, married, including nine or ten of the
an(l many harassed parents are now lecturers and teachers. Of the rest
asking whether the new schemes for two hundred and thirty are living at
the higher education of women are home, of whom one hundred and eight
entirely satisfactory. The alert mother are married, five are engaged in med-
and the practical father of daughters ical work, two as missionaries, one as a
want to know, What future does a market-gardener, one as a bookbinder,
university education open out for two or three are working a~t charity
women ? and how much or how little organization, and the remainder are for
do girls benefit by devoting some of the most part engaged in secretarial
the brightest years of their young lives work. Of the three hundred and sev-
to acquiring a higher education than enty-four who are engaged in teaching
was attained by their mothers and as a profession the following table gives
grandmothers? Some valuable infor- particulars
mation about the after - careers of
university-educated women may be ob-
taine(l by studying the various reports
recently published by the principal
womens colleges of Great Britain and 6 36
Ireland. 29
Any parent entering upon the exam- 24 32
ination of these reports should endeavor
to do so with an unbiassed mind, and
without prejudice for or against the
so-called higher education of women.
Preconceived ideas should as far as
possible be laid aside, and the inquirer
try to gain some practical knowledge as
to what a university training leads to
for women, and how far it is worth
while for girls to spend some years and
some money in acquiring a solid
knowledge of the higher branches of
learning, such as math ematics, classics,
moral science, etc., and whether this
course of training does really, ulti-
mately, make womens lives freer and
happier, and if the honors they gain at
college enable them to earn their own
living by newer and more interesting
means than by the old-fashioned meth-
ods of teaching, companionship, and
needle-work.
Mrs. Sidgwicks report of Newuham
College gives us the following int~rest-
ing particulars: The total number of
students who have left the college from
13
l7O=24~
12
10
1
23
4
27
23
14
7
8
374
At Girton the number of students
who had been in residence since the
foundation of the college up to the
time when the report was published in
June, 1893, was four hundred and
sixty-seven. Of these seventy-five had
not yet completed their course of train-
Endowed schools
Schools of the Public
Day Schools Co.
Other proprietary and
high schools
Private schools.
Elementary schools
and training colleges
2
75
Lecturers at Newuham College
Lecturers elsewhere .
Principal of the Cambridge Train
ing College . . .
Visiting teachers . .
Teachers under county or borough
councils
Teachers in the Colonies and in
America
Private governesses . .
Teachers taking an interval of rest
or study
Teachers looking for posts .
Teachers from whom no return has
been lately received . .
The After-Careers of University-Educated Women. 111
ing; but of the three hundred and sixty-four in the historical tripos, nine
thirty-five who obtained degree certiti- married; and of the thirty-eight in
eates one hundred and twenty-three the medi~val and modern language
were engaged in teaching, forty-five tripos, one married. The only student
were married, two were missionaries, who passed the law tripos has not yet
six were in government employment, married.
four were engaged in medical work, It appears, therefore, that about one
and six were dead. in ten of those who take honors at
Judging from the reports issued Girton marries, as against oiie in nine
by these two Cambridge colleges, the who take honors at Newuham ; while
larger proportion of university-edu- about two in every five marry of those
cated women do not seem to make who take an ordinary degree at Girton.
marriage their career in life. Of the Leaving out theology and law, as to
ex-Stu(lents of Newnham only one which the data are insufficient, the
hundred and twenty out of seven hun- order of precedence (matrimonially)
dred and twenty have married, and at of the various studies is as follows:
Girton forty-six out of three hundred At Girtoa: Elementary studies, natural
and thirty-five, science, moral science, history, classics,
From the report of Girton College mathematics, and last of all inedi~val
we may deduce the following interest- and modern languages. At Newnharn:
lug, and, if I may venture to say so, moral science, history, natural science,
amusing particulars. classics, mathematics, and again last
Of the seventy-nine students who medi~val and modern languages.
have obtained the certificate for the I am well aware that a large number
mathematical tripos, six have married; of readers will consider these details
of the ninety-seven who passed the viz., the percentages of marriages, etc.
classical tripos, ten have married ; of puerile and foolish ; nevertheless
the forty-seven who passed the natural many men, and, I venture to think,
science tripos, seven have married, some mothers, will consider them sug-
The only student who passed the theo- gestive.
logical tripos has married. Out of the Turning to the reports furnished for
thirty who passed the historical tripos, our information by the womens col-
four have married. Of the twenty-one leges at Oxford, we find that of the
who passed the moral science tripos one hundred and seventy-three students.
three have married. But of the forty who left Somerville College between the
lady students who have taken the ordi- years 1879 and 1892 seventy-three are
nary pass degree, fifteen have married, engaged in teaching, twenty-nine are
a much larger proportion, as will be married, and one is an assistant libra-
seen, than among the students who nan of the Royal Society. Miss Cor-
have obtained the honors degree cer- nelia Sorabji, a Parsee lady who was
tificate. educated in England, after taking her
From the Newuham College report I B.A. degree at Oxford, returned to her
have not been able to ascertain the native country, and is now a partner in
percentages of marriages among the ex- a solicitors firm in Bombay, and she
students who have taken merely the comes over to London this year in
ordinary degree; but an examination charge of a case that has been unre-
of the tripos lists gives very much the servedly placed in her hands by one of
same result as those of Girton the ranees of India. Miss Marshall,
namely, out of eighty-five who passed another ex-student of Somerville Col-
the mathematical tripos, five married; lege, is on the staff of the Natioriat
of the sixty-five in the classical tripos, Observer.
eight married; of the thirty-three in The report printed by the principal
the moral science tripos, six married; of Lady Margarets Hall gives fewer
of the seventy-four in the natural statistics, but one gathers that the
science tripos, ten married ; of the larger proportion of the ex-students
112 The 4fter-Careers of University-Educated Women.
now at work are engaged in teaching.
The number of students in residence
at Lady Margarets Hall averages
thirty-eight. Holloway College has
only been at work for seven years, and
there has not been time for much de-
velopment in the after-careers of stu-
dents, but of the one hundred and
ninety-seven who have left seven are
married, about sixty-nine are teaching
or l)reparing to teach two are
nurses,
two are studying at the School of Med-
icine for Women, and about forty-seven
are residing at home.
From Victoria College, Belfast, Mrs.
Byers sends the following particulars
In addition to over fifteen hundred
students of Victoria College certificated
by the Queens University, Ireland
Trinity College, Dublin ; Cambridge,
Edinburgh, and London Universities;
the College of Preceptors, London ,and
the Intermediate Education Board, Ire-
land, there are fifty-one graduates of
the Royal University, Ireland. These
include graduates in arts and medicine.
Eight former Victorians are at present
medical undergraduates, with a view to
becoming medical missionaries.
Many have become wives of mis-
sionaries, and sixteen unmarried ladies,
former Victorians, are at present en-
gaged in zenana medical and educa-
tional work among the women of Syria,
India, and China. Twenty-one former
students are now principals of flourish-
ing middle-class girls schools in Ire-
land, in most cases of schools founded
by themselves, while a large number
who were engaged as private or other
teachers have since married.
Twelve are at present head mis-
tresses or assistant mistresses in high
schools and other middle-class schools
in England and the colonies.
Many of our students have suc-
cessfully taken up sick-nursing as a
vocation. Some of these hold impor-
tant posts as the heads of hospitals and
other similar institutions at home and
in the colonies.
The entire certificated staff of ladies
at Victoria College, with the exception
of four, has been educated at Victoria
College.
A kind of university settlement
from Victoria College instructs and
trains for domestic service destitute
girls at Victoria Homes, Belfast.
These are detached homes, in which
there is now room and appliances for
training eighty-eight girls in every kind
of household work.
Alexandra College, Dublin, is a large
day-school where girls come up to study
painting, music, and various other sub-
jects that are not taught at Newnham
but of the sixty-one ex-students of the
college who have taken the University
of Ireland B.A. degree from the col-
lege,and who would, therefore, be of
the same standing as those who have
left Newuham and Girton, forty-one
are engaged in teaching, six have mar-
rie(l, one is a medical doctor, one is
assistant to Sir C. Cameron, city ana-
lyst, and the remaining eleven are ap-
parently living at home.
The total number of ex-students from
Girton, Newn ham, Somerville Hall,
Halloway College, and Alexandra
College, whose after-careers we have
mentioned above amounts to fourteen
hundred and eighty-six ; of these six
hundred and eighty are engaged in
teaching, two hundred and eight have
married, eleven are doctors or prepar-
ing to be doctors and medical mission-
aries, two are nurses, eight or nine are
in government employment, one is a
bookbinder, one is a market-gardener,
and one is a lawyer. Besides these
regular employments, which are enu-
merated and duly scheduled in these
rel)orts, there must be, without doubt,
a great deal of unpaid work done by
those ex-students who live at home
which it is difficult, indeed impossible,
to l)ut into any list. For instance,
some university-educated women are
engaged in literary work, while others
employ themselves with various useful
works connected with philanthropic
and charitable undertakings around
their homes, and are doubtless doing
their business all the better and more
practically for their university train-
ing; but these diverse occul)ations are
hardly of a kind to be called a definite
career.
The After-Careers of University-Educated Women. 113
The ladies settlements in Soutliwark less highly educated women is greater
and Bethual Green furnish an impor- than among university-trained maid-
taut career for highly educated ladies, ens.
In 1887 a womens university settle- It is, of course, in these days of prog-
meat was established at 44 Nelson ress an open question, that must be
Square, South London, and in 1889 a decided according to each womans in-
guild of ladies from Cheltenham Col- dividuality, whether marriage is to be
lege followed their example, and took a considered an achievement or a come
house in the Old Ford Road, Bethnal down; but mothers will be prudent
Green. In Mansfield the Congregation- if they realize that, on the whole, the
alist College also started a settlement; statistics, so far as we can judge at
and the influence of the Church settle- present, do not lead one to the concin-
meat of the Oxford House, Bethual
Green, established a ladies branch in
St. Margarets House, Victoria Square,
E. American ladies have promptly
taken up the same type of charitable
xvork in the United States, for educa-
tion on university lines has taught
many women the need for organiza-
tion and co-operation in all their char-
itable undertakings, for few professions
in this world need more careful and
correct training than the difficult and
complicated one of philanthropy.
In former days marriage, teaching,
and philanthropy were the principal
professions that were open to women.
The careful study of the reports pub-
lished by the womens universities
xviii, I thinl~, incline parents to ques-
tion if a university training has yet
succeeded in opening the doors of any
other profession. A few exceptionally
gifted women have entered the medical
profession, and a very few (as we can
gather from the statistics published)
have become workers in other fields,
such as book-binding, market-gardening,
etc. But with these very few excep-
tions nearly all ex-students are engaged
in teaching or are preparing to teach,
and therefore it would seem that unless
a girl has some special capabilities of
mind and brain which, combined with
a power of organization, will place her
at the head of the teaching profession
after her training at the university is
completed, she cannot, at present, hope average man who proposes marriage to
that the years and the money devoted the ax~erage girl can at best offer her no
to her higher education xvill do very wider prospect than a round of careful
much for her in enabling her to enter housekeeping, motherhood, and thrift;
upon a money-earning career in the and it must be doubted if, taking all
future. things into consideration, a university
The percentage of marriages among training is adapted for developing
LIVING AGE. VOL. vii. 320
sion that marriage is either desired or
attained by the majority of very highly
educated women. There are some
notable exceptions, which will readily
suggest themselves, and doubtless many
of the other students whose names are
upon the list of those who are still in
maiden meditation fancy free will
marry eventually. But it must be re-
membered that education has, in most
cases, this very valuable result it
does make women more fastidious in
their choice, and as university training,
at any rate, enables many of them to
earn their living more or less by teach-
ing, it obviates the necessity of their
having to rely on matrimony as a
means of support, and therefore pre-
vents many early, uncongenial, and
improvident marriages.
But whereas six hundred and eighty
of the ex-students are engaged in teach-
ing only two hundred and eight can be
traced as having yet married ; there-
fore, according to the law of averages,
if a mother sends her daughter to one
of the universities she is more likely to
become a teacher than a wife. More.
over, it is a question if the kind of
training that girls receive at these uni-
versities does not, on the whole, make
them inclined to look upon the pros-
pect of married life as a rather dull
and unintellectual career. All women
would be glad to marry their ideal
hero ; but heroes are scarce, and the
114 ~Atyot of Provins, the First French Pamphleteer.
these homely and prosaic virtues. But and a shrillness in their voices, which~
though the development of the higher in any place but a monastery, would
education of women has not opened have betokened excitement. They
any new profession for women, it has clustered around the open door, and
most un(loubtedly succeeded in enlarg- scanned with eager glances the bridge
ing the sphere of the old ones, and over the stream that formed the boun-
teaching, secretarial, and charitable darv of their domains. They cast, too,
work must benefit greatly by being un- from time to time, anxious looks at the
dertaken by well-educated, instead of carefully guarded entrance of the re
su~)erficially accomplished, women ; and fectory. Well might their pulses heat
there is food for reflection in these wise with unusual vigor, for the fates had in
words of the principal of Somerville store for them that night a feast kings.
College, Oxford might have envied. Kings ? No king
The widei interests, the larger out in Europe had a cook who could vie
look on life which students gain in with Brother Laurence, when he chose
their college life, and the trained in- to throw off the sloth that sometimes
telligence which they can bring to bear l)ossessed him and gave his genius full
on their work, whatever it is, are of play. And there was no fear of find
unspeakable value in any sphere, small ing him napping when a guest wa~
or large. expected, and that guest Guyot of
ALICE M. GORDON. Provins. Gnyot ~vill know well
cooked food when he tastes it, he had
remarked that morning. Its foul
work casting pearls before swine, he
From The National Review, added a moment later, with a witherino-
GIJYOT OF PROVINS, THE FIRST FRENCH glance at the monks who stood around.
PAMPHLETEER. Brother Laurence was a privileged
IF printing had been invented in personage at Clairvaux; the abbot
Guyot of Provinss day, his writli ings himself, thongh arrayed in full canon
would have won for him no doubt great icals, never dared to address him save
rel)utation ; would have won for him, with deprecative courtesy. As he had
too, a heap of l)aPal fagots, or the use learned to his cost, a word of rebuke
of a royal gibbet ; for, when he was meant a lost day a day without a
alive, a matadors calling was less well-cooked dinner is not a day. Foi-
fraught with danger than a critics. Satan and the Angel Gabriel, though
But copying by hand is a slow process, working in concert, would have failed
and years had passed before his readers to induce Brother Laurence to cook
equalled in number his fingers and when his temper was ruffled. There
his toes. There never were but foul was high rejoicing among the monks
copies of his l)amphlets, a fact that when the news came that Guyot of
accounts for his dying in his bed. if Provins was on his way to take up his
instead of four there had been four abode with them ; for, sooth to say,
thousand, one of them could hardly time hung somewhat heavily on their
linave failed to make its way into the hands. TIne best of feasts is a sorry af-
Vatican ; and then Maitre Guyot would fair unless savored with piquant stories
soon linave taken rank, in the minds of alind brains had not been dealt out to
tine faithful, as a scarecrow. Clairvaux too lavislinly. The monks
could relish jokes but not make them.
One evening in tIne autumn of tine But Guyot was tIne wittiest of the tron-
year 1192, some twenty monks were badours, tlne raconteur sans pareil.
standing in tine entrance linall of tine How tlneir old refectory would ring
fine 01(1 Abbey of Clairvaux. For tlne with mirth and lauginter, now tlnat he
once they had cast off tlneir wonted Inad joined their order.
expression of drowsy indifference. This Guyot was a noted man bin his
Tlinere was a briglintuess in tlneir eyes day. He was born about time middle of
Guyot of Provins, the First French Pamphleteer.
the twelfth century at Provins, the
quaint little Champenois town which
Michelet dignifies with the title of
Yule de libert~ an moyen age
Yule de licence would be perhaps
a shade more appropriate. His talents
as a musician and poet attracted the at-
tention of the Countess of Champagne,
and he passed his childhood in her hus-
bands castle, receiving instruction at
her hands. He was a bright, hand-
some lad, bold and dauntless in his
bearing, with a keen eye even then for
the follies of others. The countess
seems to have been a remarkable
woman ; she had been a friend of Ab&
lards in her youth, and had perhaps
in)bibed some of his notions ; at least
the training she gave to Guyot was of a
milder order than was then in fashion.
The count was often shocked at the
lack of reverence of his wifes young
favorite Saucy wits such as thine,
my lad, lead to the gallows, lie was
wont to say. But that was in early
(lays, for Guyot was no mere serf con-
demned to spend his life in his lords
castle ; he was the son of a knight, of
one, however, whose pedigree was
longer than his purse.
When sixteen, he left Provins to
make his way in the world; and for
years we have no record of his doings
l)eyond a few brief notes which tell
how a certain Guyot was much sought
after for court festivities, there being
no minstrel of equal renown, no not
in all Europe. He travelled through
Italy, Austria, Hungary, and north
Germany ; arid wherever he went he
was welcomed as an honored guest.
He was present, as he tells us in his
Bible, at the Diet of Mayence which
old Barbarossa summoned in 1181 to
assist at the coronation of his son
Henry. At Mayence he received
many marks of favor from the emperor,
who never wearied of listening to the
yarns he could spin. Guyot was
in fact quite the fashion at that time,
and mingled upon terms of perfect
equality with princes and great nobles,
who applauded to the echo his love-
songs, and sought in vain to imitate the
grace of his boms mots. He seems to
115
have thoroughly enjoyed his position,
and to have seized eagerly, greedily,
the goods the gods gave him. So far
as the world could judge, at that time
he was a mere courtier, with as little
care or thought for others as the rest
of his kind. When next we hear of
him he is starting, in company with
Thibault, Count of Champagne, for the
Holy Land ; though whether he went
as pilgrim, minstrel, or warrior, it
would be hard to decide. From this
time he vanishes from view until that
autumn evening, when he made his
way slowly and wearily up the stately
avenue to Clairvaux.
As he crossed the threshold the
monks shrank back. The Guyot they
were there to welcome they knew
him well by report was a man in the
prime of life, with a loud, ringing
laugh, and bold, undaunted bearing
oi~e, too, renowned for the richness of
his raiment. But this Guyot might
have been a hundred, so gaunt was his
form, so haggard his face, so other-
worldish his whole appearance. His
long white hair fell on his shoulders in
an unkempt mass, and his dark eyes
burned with a strange, unearth lyfire.
He replied to the abbots greeting with
a somewhat surly air; and there was a
decided touch of mockery in the keen,
sharp glance he gave in turn at each of
the portly monks.
All the silver vessels were on the
table that night in honor of the new
arrival ; hinge sahvers covered with
delicate tracery, graceful tankards wi tli
nymphs and dolphins twining around,
diminutive cups, each one of which
showed the work of a lifetime. This
silver had been the cause of endless
strife with heirs-at-law, who denied
the rights of fathers to purchase pardon
for sins with family plate. Even thus
early the spirit of scepticism was
abroad ; so long as men were strong
and well they refused to believe that
giving to an abbot was giving to the
Lord ; when in the throes of death,
however, they were more amenable to
priestly influence. Suppers at Chair-
vaux were things to dream of; the
man who had once been feasted there
116 Guyot of Provins, the First ]~ench Pamphleteer.
was spoiled for all other entertain-
ments. I was thinking of that supper
at Clairvaux, he would say forever
after, if chidden for his silence ; and
no matter where he was, his host would
hang his head and sigh. It was no
fault of Laurences if the feast to xvel-
come Guyot proved a failure. But
dainty food counts as naught when a
deaths head is at the board ; and the
guest of the evening was worse than a
(leaths head. I-Ic examined the choic-
est (lishes with a critical air ; and when
the precious old golden liqueur was
passed round, he put it aside with
a scornful gesture, crying roughly,
Water for me. A water-drinker at
Clairvaux ! A chilling silence fell
upon the monks ; they could not even
eat, for they felt as if those keen,
bright eyes were noting every bite they
took. Nor were Guyots words pleas-
anter than his manners. He cut short
his hosts gentle, purring platitudes
most ruthlessly and when they asked
him what holy pilgrims he had met in
Palestine, his only answer was a cruel,
sneering laugh. The very stories he
told, witty though they were, had an
unsavory ring in monkish ears ; for
they were all in ridicule of drunken-
ness, gluttony, and sloth. His eyes
became more fierce, his laugh more
mocking, as the night advanced.
The abbot sat with a frown on his
brow. He loved fat, sleek-headed
men, and such as sleep o ni0 hts ;
but Guyot had a lean and hungry
look, a thing his soul abhorred.
There was a lack of reverence, too, in
the strangers manner, an open scorn
for the powers that be, which sorely
chafed the courtly dignitary. What
did this wolf want in his sheepfold ?
Clairvaux was not built for such as he.
If it had not been for the fear that
Guvot would betake himself to the
rival house at Cluny, he would soon
have shown him to the door. As it
was he decided that, for the time at
least, the traveller must be humored.
To the astonishment of his fellows,
Brother Laurence openly espoused the
cause of the new arrival, and soon be-
caine his friend and constant compan
ion. The monks were puzzled to know
what the two talked about when they
walked up and down to~ether by the
side of the stream, for they noticed
that when alone with Laurence the
fierce, gibing look died out of Guyots
face, and that there was almost a ring
of tenderness in his voice. They xvon-
dered, too, what he wrote on the tiny
sheets of parchment he had so often in
his hand. They swore they did not
care a whit for his scribblings, but
then they lied ; for there was hardly
one amongst them but would have given
the tip of his little finger for Guyots
good word in a neatly rounded coup-
let, of course.
These Benedictine monks, with all
their faults, were of a kindly, sociable
nature ; and when once they had be-
come accustomed to Guyots rough
ways, they began to entertain for him
quite a friendly feeling. His temper
was uncertain, of that there could be
no doubt, but then, as a compensation,
he had a perfect genius for talking.
Just from time to time, as if to whet
their appetite, he would give them a
taste of his skill as a raconteur. One
might have heard their laughter miles
away that night he first (lescribed how
St. Peter won the jugglers, a story he
had heard from a friend, he said.
There was a smack of profanity as a
rule about his tales, but the monks for
that did not laugh the less heartily. A
queer, hard look always came into his
eyes when Crusaders were mentioned;
and the accounts he gave of their
doings in Palestine would hardly have
edified the faithful. He jeered at him-
self, however, more than at his fellow
Crusaders. He had a taste, lie used to
say, for dying in his bed, and that was
why he had always taken to his heels
as soon as a Saracen appeared. We
have had enough of crusades against
the Saracens, he cried one night.
Its one nearer home we want now,
one against lie paused and
smiled.
So long as he only gibed and flouted
Guyot was humored to the top of his
bent; but when his sneer was changed
for a grave rebuke, his mockery for
Guyot of Provins, the First French Pamphleteer. 117
stern indignation, when his innuendoes welcome relief after the noisy revelry
and dainty narratives gave place to in which he had been living. He
fierce denunciations and solemn ser- passed many pleasant hours in the
mons, the abbot decided that life with library, which was well stocked with
hini in the house was not worth hay- manuscripts, for the abbot, a man of
mo; he must go, yes, even though he no common learning, would have bar-
went to Cluny. It was the flutter of a tered his soul away, it was said, for a
petticoat a pink one if tradition may rare book. The busiest place in the
be relied upon that brought matters monastery was the writing-room, for
to a crisis. Now, to the last day of the monks of Cluny were justly proud
his life, the abbot held a theory that of their skill as scribes and illutnina-
a woman was at the bottom of the tors. At the supperboard the talk
strange transformation Guyot had un- was all of new designs and quaint de-
dergone ; and the story of why lie left vices, of the number of twiils that
Clairvaux points in the same direc- might be given to an H, and how the
tion. Nothing, surely, but (leep-seated gauntness of an I could be concealed.
hatied of the sex could make a man They seemed to think that the very
refuse to live where the shadow of a raison d~tre of their monastery was
woman had fallen, this manufacturing of iiiissahs. At first
One night, some four months after the abbot treated Guyot with marked
his arrival, returning from the chapel attention, and sho~ved a kindly interest
somewhat later than usual, lie was the in his concerns. He shared to the full
victim of a strange hallucination. In his views with regard to the doings of
the long, dark corridor, chose to the Crusaders, and listened with an ap
abbots room, lie seemed to see a proving smile when Guyot railed
woman. He had but tinie to note her against gluttony and license It is a
large blue eyes, and her golden hair, scandal that the Mother-Church toher
and thien she vanished. A vision of ates such abuses, he would cxclaim.
Our Lady ! What an honor for Chair- You are right, Brother Guyot, ~ve
vaux! the monks exclaimed when he must make a clean sweep of such
tol(l them ; and one of ~hiem began at svine.
once a poem in commemoration of the But ~vhen Brother G-uyot attacked
event. Guyot listened to their chatter- other abuses worldliness, avarice,
ing for a moment with an odd smile, and the hike the abbot changed his
and then strode away to pay the abbot tone. This Guyot is a meddling fel-
a visit. What passed between the two low, lie confided to his scribe. I
was never known ; but Gnyot left the should be well content if lie would
monastery that day ; whilst the abbot go. And Guyot weiit, niuttering as
went about for months with a scared, lie did so, Dry bones. From that
anxious expression ; and turned pale day to the day lie died, lie wandered
and crossed himself whenever Guyots from abbey to monastery, from mon-
name was mentioned. astery to hei~mitage ; in some of thiem
When Guyot quitted Clairvaux, lie he stayed but a day, in others months.
was bound by a solemn promise to re- Sometimes lie thought hie had found
turn for Brother Laurence as soon as the resting-place lie was seeking, so
lie had found a house where the monks carefully were all signs of evil hidden
were God-fearing and honest. There away ; but no matter how fair the
must have been such in France, one seeming, the canker was always there.
might think ; but, although the old In one house the monks were lewd and
cordon-blen waited for years, Guyot gluttonous ; in another grasping and
never returned to fetch him. mean ; in another again, spiteful and
Fromu Clairvaux Guyot went to worldly; whilst hypocrisy was a vice
Cluny, where lie met with a cordial they seemiied all to share in common,
welcome. There was a dignified re- and mnost of them, gross ignorance as
pose about the abbey which canie as a well. Oh, God, is there not one?
118 Onyot of Provins, the First French Pamphleteer.
Not one ? Guyot was heard to mut-
ter from time to time. As he wan-
dered on year after year, his face
became so gaunt, his eyes. so fierce,
that strangers shrank back in fear at
his approach. Meanwhile the leather
case, in which he kept his parchments,
steadily increased in bulk ; an(l when
things went ill with him, he used to
clutch it and glare around in a way that
gave his enemies bad dreams. He
named his book The Bible, and if
questioned why, would answer, Be-
cause all that it contains is true.
Whether true or not, Guyots Bible
is a terrible book, or rather a series of
terrible pamphlets, for there is but
little doubt that it was an after-thought
to weave it into one long poem. It was
finished in 1204, just twelve years after
he entered Clairvaux.
In spite of its roughness, there is a
certain charm about the quaint, rugged
verse in which this twelfth - century
Bible is written. It makes one think
instinctively of a great barren rock from
which storm waves have torn away
every loose stone. The dominant note
of Guyots style is strength, of his
matter, ruthlessness ; mere prettiness
is as repulsive to him as hypocrisy.
He seems to have been somewhat Ish-
maelitish in his feelings, for he deals
out hard blows all round. Perhaps in
his earlier l)O~~5 no copy of these
is now extant he had tried gentler
arguments, an(l had found his contem-
poraries did not understand them. Let
us hope so at least, for the cruel invec-
tives in his later writings need some
extenuation. Not that he ever in-
dulges in mere vulgar personal abuse
with the exception of the pope and the
king, it is not individuals lie attacks
but classes, professions, nations, nay,
the whole world Piiant et horrible
are amongst the epithets he hurls at
his century; and lie mourns aloud for
the grand old heroic age that has gone
be fore.
Li si~cle fu ja biauz et granz,
Or est de gar~ons et d enfanz.
But, although lie rages against hu-
manity at large, the vials of his fiercest
wrath are reserved for Rome, this
vivier p1cm de vermine, as he styles
it. Still, as he asks with a sneer, what
better could be expected of a city of
which the founder was a fratricide,
and his nobles felons ? The pope,
he says in a passage that reveals his
own lofty ideals, should be perfect in
steadfastness, in holiness ; the great
ensample, the Polar star by which all
Christendom should regulate its do-
ings. And instead of that
Rome nous suce et nous englout,
Rome d6truit et occit tout.
And Rome is only another name for
the pope. History justifies to the full
Guyots judgment of his spiritual chief:
Celestine III. was then reigning in the
Vatican. When lie has done with the
pope, Guyot gives his attention to the
monks. In his opinion Il font mont
peu de ce quil doivent, Il surmangent
et ii surboivent. What he had learnt
whilst living in their midst, now
stands him in good stead ; and the pic-
tures lie draws of priests and their
ways are lively reading. In his de-
scriptions of the Holy Orders, his
verve gauloise carries him sonietinies,
it must he confessed, beyond the limits
of strict decorum ; but lie is too thor-
oughily in earnest to be ever really
coarse.
Then conies the turn of kings and
princes. With regard to the treatment
to be meted out to these, Guyots
wishes are clear and well defined ; lie
would like to burn the lot. As popes
destroy the immortal part of men, he
says, by distortiiig the deity, kings
destroy the mortal by ignoring human-
ity. They who should be the fathers
of their people, are their cruellest task-
masters ; and rob them, not of gold
alone, but of those they love, of free-
dom, and all that makes life worth
living. There is an impassioned dig-
nity in his language as lie speaks of
these royal scourges : Scourges, yes,
but not the scourges of God : He would
scorn to use such instruments. As
Elijah of old, Guyot in his I3ible stands
alone, one against a countless multi-
tude, and calls down vengeance on the
& uyat of Provins, the First French Pamphleteer.
Ahab of his day. But the age of mira-
eles was past; no consuming fire came
in answer to his summons. Philip
Augustus lived and prospered.
In this our day, when railing against
the powers that be is the fashion, it is
hard to realize all Guyot risked by giv-
ing thus free rein to his tongue. The
French king was not the man to toler-
ate joking at his expense ; in his eyes
hanging, drawing, and quartering would
have been a woefully inadequate pun-
ishment for the audacity of questioning
his right to work his will. The fact
of Guyots dying with his head on his
shoulders is a conclusive proof that
Philip Augustus never read a line of
his poem.
Having said his worst of dignitaries,
spiritual and temporal, Guyot proceeds
to administer chastisement to more
lowly mortals. Here he gives proof of
~a spirit of moderation, which does credit
to his artistic instincts. In the cen-
sures he deals out with a lavish hand
to knights, squires, doctors, and trad-
ers, there is little of the fiery indigna-
tion he hurls with such keen delight at
their betters. They are foolish an(1
perverse rather than vile silly sheep,
rather than wolves. He gibes at them,
scolds them, threatens them, and tries
to force them to renounce their petty
meanness and hypocrisy ; but he never
despairs of them. For them a whip-
ping-post is enough ; but for the great
ones of this world a fiery furnace is
needed.
When he comes to speak of the poor,
Guvot is as one transformed. He who,
as the abbot of Clairvaux had told him,
knew not the meaning of the word rev-
erence, (lescribes, with the truest and
humblest reverence, the sufferings of
the lo~vly. A charter granted by Henry
the Liberal, Count of Champagne, to
the monks of St. Quiriace at Provins,
gives a curious picture of the condition
of the laboring classes in Guyot~s time.
This Henry the Liberal was counted
quite a reformer in his day, and was
held to be miles in advance of his con-
temporaries. Yet we find him arrang-
in g for le portage des enfants qoi
.naitront de marictges entre les seifs di
119
Comte.et ceux de St. Quiriace, in pre-
cisely the same terms as he arranges
for the division of calves and lambs.
Evidently in his mind, serfs and cattle
were synonymous terms. In this, how-
ever, he was wrong, for the latter had
an advantage over the former. A
horse when no longer of use to his
master was put out of his misery, but a
man was left to linger on and die in a
ditch. Guyot is keenly touched by the
spectacle of these men who have no
pleasure in the present, no hope in the
future, no joyful memories of the past,
but who yet work on sturdily, bravely,
convinced that in this way alone God
is to be reconciled. Guyot is at war
with his century ; it is a mean, despi-
cable century, he declares ; its Chris-
tianity is a lie, its chivalry, a sham
the one thing he finds in it worthy
of admiration is the infinite patience
of the poor. Popes, kings, monks,
barons, knightsyea, troubadours, are
all contemptible ; serfs alone merit
honor.
Yes, Guyots Bible is in truth a ter-
rible book ; a more scathing denuncia-
tion of all sorts and conditions of men
was perhaps never written. The halo
of romance, which some few feats of
noble heroism have east around this
twelfth century, is toni aside with ruth-
less hands ; and it stands before us in
all its selfishness, its sordidness, its
bigotry, and its vice. Well might
Guyot sneer and gibe at it, sing
Tekel over it, for he had sifted it as
wheat, and found in it no good thing.
No ~ood thing? Nay, not quite so bad
as that, for even the ferocious Guyot
before he died was forced to confess
J al veu delez 1 ortier
Florir et croistre le rosier
Se les orties sont poignanz
Les roses sont beles et chi~res.
We have no record of Guyots death
there is proof, however, that he lived
for some years after his Bible was
fin i shed.
Guyot was an iconoclast by instinct
for him whatever is, is wrong; but he
was no reformei~. He had the eyes of
a lynx for detecting abuses, but no
A Bird Lyric.
power of devising schemes for their love-loin poets, Philomel, and perhaps
redress. The only programme be ever the best illustrations of songs (ledicated
advanced was for the regeneration of to them are the verses of Shelley and
princes, and this was to be effected by Wordsworth addressed to the skylark,
roasting them. Perhaps his impotence and the odes of Milton and Keats to
helped to secure his impunity. Fierce, the nightingale.
vigorous, and telling as were his de- Each poet perceived some, until then
nunciations of those around him, he undiscovered, trait in the bird in xvhose
was merely a preacher, and a preacher honor he wrote; to Wordsworth the
becomes formidable only when he has skylark was
found a man of action to reduce his
preaching to practice. There is some-
thing strangely pathetic in the thought
of this gaunt, lonely, old man eating
out his heart with rage because men
will not listen to his warnings. He
knows so thoroughly, feels so intensely,
what is wrong; knows too, feels too,
none more keenly, that he is not the
man to set it right.
EDITH SELLERS.
From The Argosy.
A BIRD LYRIC.
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen, then, as I am listening
now.
So sang Shelley in his great bird-
song, and such in substance has been
the homage which the race of feathered
singers has ever received from the pen
of the worlds song-birds.
From the day when the Saxon min-
strel-poet saw in a sparrows flight
through the lighted banqueting-hall an
emblem of mans journey through time,
even to the present day, poets have
universally recognized an inner mean-
ing in a birds life and song, and have
striven to translate it to their fellow
men.
This appreciation of birds and their
songs is common to the poets of all
nations who possess singing-birds; yet
perhaps no country can rival England
in the number and beauty of her bird-
lyrics.
The songsters which have appealed
most strongly to our poets are those two
unequalled warblers, hesperus, the sky-
lark, and the nightingale, Sister of
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam
True to the kindred points of heaven and
home,
while in the same bird Shelley recog-
nizes a spirit akin to his own
A poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heed-
eth not.
Again, to Milton the nightingales
liquid notes,
First heard before the shallow cuckoos
bill,
Portend success in love;
while the self-same song wafts Keats
to a dream-clad life in which his own
and mankinds sorrows are left far be-
hind.
It might be interesting to pursue still
further tile analysis of those four lyrics,
and, in so doing, we should probably
find in eacil case that not only does the
l)oet, by dint of his capacity for sym-
pathy, recognize In ucIl of his own indi-
viduality in the bird of whom he writes,
but that his very temperament absorbs
so much from the melody to which he
listens as to make him, and him alone,
the fittest channel to convey that phase
of the melody to mankind.
But our attention must mainly be
dire.cted to the last-mentioned, and per-
haps the most perfect and unapproach-
able, of this quartette of bird-lyrics,
Keatss Ode to a Nightingale. And
first, then, as to the actual history of
the poem.
In his friends garden at Hampstead
Keats would hear in tile spring even-
ings
those wakeful birds
Burst forth in choral minstrelsy.
Coleridge.
120
A Bird Lyric.
and on an April morning in 1819, be-
neath the blossom-laden branches of a
plum-tree, he wrote down in one of his
most lovely odes the thoughts which
their voices had stirred within him.
As he listened for the first time to
the song of nights sweet bird, the
poet, whose short life had been spent
ami(lst town sights and sounds, might
have recalled Coleridges lines to the
ni~,htingale
How many bards, in city garret pent,
While at their window they with downward
eye
Mark the faint lamp-beam on the kennelld
mud,
And listen to the drowsy cry of watchmen,
(Those hoarse, unfeathered nightingales of
time!)
How many wretched bards address thy
name;
and with Coleridge he might have ex-
ultantly exclaimed
But I do hear thee, and the high bough
mark
Within whose mild, moon-mellowd foliage
hid
Thou warbiest sad thy pity-pleading strains.
As I write, my fancy wings me back to
an April night ~vhen, for the first time,
I too heard the song of the bird who
feeds the heart of the night with
fire, and a ViVi(l picture is presented
to my mind.
It is a lovely evening of an almost
perfect spring day ; the young moon is
gazing tenderly on an old-fashioned
south-country garden,
And not a cloud her beauty mars,
For she has kissed them all to stars.
Garmett.
tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music. Coleridge.
Once I had dared to think that a tonch
of romance in the circumstances of
those listening to the bird had given to
the nightingale its fame ; but this, and
all similar theories, were now forever
dispelled, and I could realize that in
the surpassing sweetness of his song,
in the immense compass of his voice
an(l the number of distinct notes, lay
the nightingales appeal to so many and
such varied emotions.
As I listened, the song, which singly
seemed indeed to Satiate the hungry
dark with melody, was re-echoed from
neighboring wood and thicket, and a
veritable chorus of nightingales took
up the strain.
They answer and provoke each others
songs
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, and swift jug-jug,
And one lone piping sound more sweet
than all. Coleridge.
With the melody came a flood of old-
world thoughts, for I was standing on
a spot aliVe with historic associations
the immediate neighborhood told of
Roman times. Athelney, the refuge of
Saxon Alfred, was near ; below, like
an inland sea, the vast plain of Sedge
moor stretched its level course, while
far in the distance loomed the Tor of
legend-famous Glastonbury.
Amidst such surroundings the wealth
of melody could not fail to awaken a
corresponding wealth of thought ; but
even now
All nature seemed at peace and asleep;
the peacocks had hushed their unmn-
sical voices and now their dark forms, the plaintive anthem fades
as they roosted in the trees, stood out Past the near meadows, over the still
in striking contrast against the sky, stream,
while only the faintest breeze, laden Up the hillside; and nov tis buried deep
with the scent of hawthorn and lilac, In the next valley-glades;
rustled amidst the tender leaves. Was it a vision or a waking-dream?
I had been standing in the porch en- To return to the ode whose subject
joying the peacefulness of the night, caused this digression.
and was just re-entering the house The poem opens with a description
when a slight sound was heard. My of that mood which comes over most of
attention was riveted at once, for us in moments of intense enjoyment
121
122
an unintelligible mood, as of pain lulled
by some powerful narcotic to the bor-
derland of forgetfulness.
George Eliot says in Romola:
While we are still in our youth, there
can always come in our early waking,
moments when mere passive existence
is itself a Lethe, when the exquisite-
ness of subtle, indefinite sensation
creates a bliss which is without mem-
ory and without desire. Some mood
akin to this seems to steal over the
poet as he opens the ode with the
lines :
iMy heart aches, and a drowsy numbness
pains
My sense as though of hemlock I had
drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethewards had
sunk.
But note, it is only Lethewards,
only to the brink of Lethe, the river of
oblivion, that the poet wanders ; an-
other moment and he has plunged into
its companion stream, Eunod, the river
of remembrance, and now, more than
ever, is he keenly alive to his sur-
roundings.
He immediately disclaims all idea of
envy of the nightingales happy lot
nay, rather he enters so completely
into the feelings of the light-winged
Drvad of the trees that he seems
almost too happy in its happiness.
To Keats, as to Coleridge, the night-
ingale was no bird of sadness
A melancholy bird? he too would have
exclaimed,
Oh, idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose
heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous
wrong.
(And so, poor wretch ! filled all things with
himself)
First named these notes a melancholy
strain.
We may not so profane
Natures sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance I Tis the merry nightingale.
The poet longs to follow his bird to its
A Bird Lyric.
leafy home, and in a stanza breathing
all the luxuriance of the southern vine-
yards which he had never seen, he calls
for a draught of magic nectar, for wine
from the sacred fountain of Pegasus,
which shall bear him away beneath its
spell and merge his identity in that of
the songster.
And what will he gain by thus losing
his human personality and accompany-
ing the nightingale into the forest
dim
In imagination his eye rests upon the
mighty city, so near and yet so far
away ; he sees,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here where men sit and hear each other
groan.
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.
Worse than all, he realizes that here
Love and Beauty are but transient, and
in the fullness of his sympathy he
recognizes that the secret of the night-
ingales joy lies in his unconsciousness
of sorrow and his ignorance of the
future, and therefore it is that he longs
to lull to slumber his own knowledge of
pain and grief :
With thy clear, keen joyance
Languor cannot be;
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee;
Thou lovest, but neer knew Loves sad
satiety.
Waking or asleep
Thou of death must dream
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a
crystal stream ? Shelley.
If in this prosaic world the nectar-spell
be denied him, to the poet there is
always open another and a swifter
course to the realms of fancy
I will fly to thee, he cries,
Not charioted by Bacehus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy.
And no sooner is the determination
taken than the poet is in imagination
with
The nightingale, up-perched high
And cloister d among cool and bunched
leaves.
A Bird Lyric.
Swinburne says, Keats has indeed a
divine magic of language applied to
nature ; here he is unapproachable
this is his throne, and he may bid all
kings of song come bow to it, and in
no passage is this claim more fully
established than in the next few lines
of the ode.
Let us pause for a moment to look
on the scene which is there so vividly
painted.
The night is as yet young; the moon,
whose beauty Keats so often and so ex-
quisitely describes, Clusterd around
by all her starry fays, now, as he says
in another poem,
Unobserved, steals unto her throne,
And there she sits, most meek and most
alone,
with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life.
But though her light does not pene-
trate the embalmed darkness of the
thicket in which the poet imagines
himself, yet he can guess how she is
shining on the flowers below, illumin-
ing the hawthorn, the dewy eglan-
tine, and the budding musk-rose with
a weird radiance and clothing with
new beauty the Fast-fading violets
cover d up in leaves. He strains his
ear and seems to catch a faint accom-
paniment to the nightingales song in
the murmur of flies in the still night-
ai~r.
All,allis at peace and beautiful;
and closely allied with this view of
nature comes to the poet the thought
of death
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful death.
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul
abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Doubly welcome as the solution of all
lifes riddles is the idea of death, but
to Keats it is no morbid shrinking
f.roin lifes duties and responsibilities,
an4 linked on to the thought of death
comes that of immortality.
No longer does the poet listen to the
song of one particular nightingale; its
123
individuality is lost in the idea of the
bird as typical of its race, and in this
connection it is addressed as Iminor-
tal Bird.
To contrast the permanence of the
song-birds existence, regarded in this
light as a race with the transitori-
ness of the individual human life is but
a step, though perhaps not a logically
faultless one, and thus viewed the
nightingales song becomes to Keats
The self-same song that found a path
Thro the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for
home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn
The same that oft-times hath
Charmd magic casements, opening on the
foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn ! the word strikes a dull,
cold knell upon the poets heart ; he
catches up the expression abruptly, as
in stanza three he had caught up and
accentuated the fade away of the
verse, and the sudden change
previous
of tone and mood recalls what I can-
not help thinking must have prompted
itthe change of note in the nightin-
gales song from the trill of exuberant
joy to the long, low, questioning note,
the one lone piping sound more
sweet than all. But the spell is
broken ; something has disturbed the
song, and though fancy may paint a
landscape with glowing colors, she can-
not conjure up a bird who,
sitting far apart,
Tells to his listening mate within the
nest
The wonder of his star-entranc~d heart
Till all the wakened woodlands laugh
and thrill. Charles Kingsley.
Yes, the spell is broken ; the plain-
.tive anthem dies away in the distance
and with the cessation of the song the
poet returns to the consciousness of
daily life, to the reality of the problems
and difficulties to be faced stronger
to combat them for the hopes with
which. the song has inspired him
richer in the undying memory of that
wondrous melody,
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music; does he wake or sleep?
124
Such, in faint outline, are some of the
thoughts which the Ode to a Nightin-
gale seems to suggest.
From The Cornhull Magazine.
A COLONY FOR LUNATICS.
THERE is nothing in the appearance
of Gheel to distinguish it from other
Flemish towns. It has the same
quaint, Rip van Winklish air as its
neighbors, and is just as trim and well-
or(lered as they are. In its one long
street, snug little white houses stand
facing each other, each in its own
garden, all aglow in summer with tu-
lips and roses. Evidently the people
who live there are a prosperous com-
munity, for there is not a sign of pov-
erty about the place; one may walk
through the whole district without
meeting a single beggar. If there are
no beggars, there are, however, no
loafers either; every one is hard at
~vork, and with his hands too as a rule.
Men, women, and children alike, seem
to have regular duties to do, and to be
bent on doing them. They go about
thcir work in such an orderly, business-
like fashion that, while watching them,
it is hard to realize that Gheel is the
headquarters of a colony for lunatics.
Yet such it is, and has been for more
than a thousand years.
In very early days Gheel seems to
have been a kind of Lourdes. A cer-
tain Saint Dympna who lies buried
there an Irishwoman by the way
was supposed to have tes faibles
desprit under her special protection.
It was the custom, therefore, through-
out the Netherlands, for persons who
had insane relatives to take them to
her tomb, and there offer speciaP
prayers to her for their recovery. If
tradition is to be relied upon, the saint
was by no means loth to give proof of
her beneficent power; and wonderful
stories are told of the way in which she
used to restore reason to those who
had lost it. Still, even in those times,
miracles were not wrought every day.
Some of the sufferers who went to
Gheel had to wait for months, nay
A Colony for Lunatics.
ycars, before they were healed ; while
others were never healed at all. And
while waiting they had to be taken
care of. At first the innocents, as
Saint Dympnas prot~g~s aie called,
were all lodged in little huts, or caves,
around the church ; but, as the fame
of Gheel spread abroad, they increased
in number, and it became necessary to
make other arrangements. They were
then boarded out with the peasants
living in the village ; and there were
so many of them, at length, that every
family had its innocent.
As time passe(l, people lost their
faith in Saint Dympna ; none the less
they still continued to send patients to
Gheel ; for the natives of that district
had developed a marvellous skill in
dealing with the insane. The Gheelois
are as a rule a singularly simple-
minded, matter-of-fact race, not bur-
dened with too much intellect, perhaps,
but with plenty of sound common
sense. They have placid, easy-going
tempers, too, that nothing seems able
to disturb, and a patience that knows
neither bound nor limit. They are
simply peasants, many of them, un-
educated and somewhat rough in their
ways ; yet their tact, in all that con-
cerns their patients, is exquisite. They
have quite a store of quaintly worded
precepts and warnings, which have
been handed down to them from time
immemorial, to guide them in their
treatment of these sufferers ; not that
they stand in need of any such aid, for
they seem to know instinctively what
to say an(l do. From generation to
generation they have passed their lives
with lunatics around them ; insanity,
therefore, appears to them the most
natural thing in the world ; and no
matter what freaks their charges may
indulge in, they never express sur-
prise. As for fear, they would be
infinitely amused at the idea of being
afraid of an innocent.
Up to 1858 Gheel was managed in
a very primitive fashion, and the
Gheelois had practically a free hand in
dealing with their charges. But in
that year the colony was completely re-
ort~anized and placed under the direc
A Colony for Lunatics.
125
tion of a commission, on which the I of the doctors, who see that they do
State and the medical faculty are rep- their duty to their charges, and that
rCsCL)ted. No change was made, they give them proper food and treat
however, in the system of treatment them with kindness. They are care-
practised there ; that is very much fully classified, for most of them are
the same to-day as it was hundreds specialists, with particular skill in deal-
of years ago. The Gheelois system is in g with some one form of insanity.
siml)le in the extreme ; the peculiarity Some of them are persons in qnite
of it consists in allowing the patients comfortable circumstances, who pro-
the greatest possible amount of free- yide their pensionnaires with a certain
doni compatible with their safety, and amount of luxury ; while others have
in talking to them and treating them in nothing much to offer theirs beyond a
all respects as if they were sane. The seat by a kitchen fire and plain, whole-
colony, which is now about thirty some fare. The charges for board,
miles in circumference, is divided into lodging, etc., range from about six
some half-dozen districts, each of thousand francs a year to six hundred
which is under the care of a special francs ; but a certain number of pa-
(loctor and a keeper, who are responsi- tients are there on nominal terms. A
ble for it to the chief physician. The nourricier, as a rule, receives only one
keeper must every day see and report innocent into his family ; some of
on each patient living in his district, them, however, have two or three. If,
So far as possible, sufferers from the as happens sometimes, though not very
same form of mania are placed in the often, a patient does not take to his
same district. For instance, there is nourricier if he does not seem to feel
one reserved exclusively for epileptics. at home in his house and to be on
Only patients who are quiet and per- friendly terms with all the members of
feetly harmless are lodged in 0-heel the family he is at once removed
itself ; the more violent are sent to the elsewhere.
outlying hamlets. It is the custom in 0-heel, when an
When a patient arrives in Gheel he innocent takes up his abode with his
is lodged, in the first instance, at the nourricier, to welcome him as if he were
Asyl Patronal, a harge building which a near relative, and to arrange some
was erected in 1858, and serves as the little festivity in his honor. lie is at
headquarters of the colony. There his once installed in the most comfortable
condition is carefully studied by the seat, and takes his place as a member
resident doctors. If he is found to be of the family. He passes all his tune
suffering from suicidal or homicidal with them, eating with them, and xvork-
mania, he is promptly sent back to his ing with them too, digging, oardening,
friends ; for these are forms of mad- or doing whatever they do. Strong
ness with which the Gheelois do not pressure is brought to bear on him to
attempt to cope. The length of time induce him to work, not by fits and
the innocents stay in the Asyl depends starts, but regularly, for a fixed num-
entirely on their condition; for they ber of hours every day ; for in steady
are always boarded out as soon as ever, industry lies his best chance of recov-
in the opinion of the doctors, this can ering his reason. It is found in the
be done with safety. It is rarely found majority of cases that the harder he
necessary to detain them there more works, the quieter and saner he be-
than a few weeks. The greatest care comes. Some of the patients receive
is taken to insure that each one of them regular wages for their labor, in money
is placed in a family where his sur- sometimes, though more often in
roundings will be congenial to his tobacco and kindred luxuries if they
tastes. are men, and, if women, in articles of
The nourriciers, as the Gheelois who dress which, to their intense delight,
take charge of the innocents are called, they themselves are allowed to choose
are now all under the direct supervision and pay for.
A Colony foi Lanalics.
is boarded out. So far as he knows, he
is perfectly free to go where he ~vill,
and do what he chooses. He may turn
into the village mu, if he wish, and
or(ler his wine or his beer ; and, pro-
vi(iing he have money in hand, he will
be served just as any other customer.
If he ask for a second glass, some
little difficulty may arise, it is true.
The landlord will then probably appear
upon the scene, and explain, with
many courteous apologies, that his
supply of wine or beer, as the case
may be, has run short. He is expect-
ing more in, of course, but for the
moment he has not a single drop in the
place good enough to set before so hon-
ored a guest. The innocent may go to
the railway station, too, an(l take a
ticket ; but he will always find that
there is no vacant place in the trains
that are running that (lay. For the
whole population, from the highest to
the lowest, are in the secret, and do
their best to keep up the delusion
among these unfortunate people that
they are as free as their fellows. But,
little as the patients know it, a very
careful watch is kept on their proceed-
ings. They have no idea, of course,
that the man who saunters about
among them, chatting as a good com-
rade with each in turn, is a keeper who
is noting every change in their mood.
Nor do the majority of them ever sus-
pect that the persistence with which
their nourriciers seek their society is
due to anything but personal regard.
It is a very rare thing, however, for an
innocent at Gheel even to attempt to
escape ; they are much too comfortable
where they are to have any wish to go
elsewhere.
Oddly enough, although there aie
nearly two thousand lunatics living at
Gheel, it is a most unusual occurrence
for any act of violence to be committed
there. This is the more remarkable
as, with the exception of those sub-
jected to special restraint only some
two per cent. of the whole they have
as often as not knives in their posses-
In the great majority of cases no sion, and such dangerous tools as
restraint whatever is l)lace(1 on the scythes and hatchets ieady at hand.
actions of an innocent, when once he So far, however, as one can judge, the
(lesire to use them for any unlawful
purpose never enters their Inin(ls. The
air of the place seems to have a sooth-
lug effect on their nerves. Some of
those who, on their arrival at the Asyl,
are raving, become at the end of a
week or two quite amenable to the
gentle discipline that is in force there.
The fact of their being treated as if
they were sane seems to rouse their
amour prop~e; they feel as if they had
a reputation for intelligence to main-
tain. Sometimes when they think a
paroxysm is coming on, they will make
the most pathetic efforts to ward it off;
and, if they find it is too strong for
them, they will rush away to some soli-
tary place where, as they believe, they
can scream and struggle unobserved.
Then when the attack is past, they will
return home again trying hard to look
as if nothing had happene(l. This en-
listing, as it were, of the sufferers
themselves as combatants against their
(lisease, has often an important hearing
on their recovery. Every effort they
make to control themselves increases
their chances of becoming sane. A
large number of very remarkable cures
have been effected at Gheel.
Children play an important rOle in
the colony, for it is found that, in some
resl)ects, they make better keepers of
the insane than their elders. Gheelois
children, it must be remembered, are
not quite as other children ; for, as
they have grown up in the company of
innocents, they are in l)erfect svm-
pathy with them upon most points. It
is no unusual thing to see a great
strong man talking away in the most
confidential strain to a mere child
his nourriciers little son, perhaps,
who has been told off to take charge
of him. The two are hail - fellow-
well-met, and the best of friends, for
there is not enough difference between
them intellectually to raise up barriers.
Even the more violent of the lunatics
will listen quite patiently to anything a
child says to him, and will almost in-
variably do what it wishes. If a patient
126
Electricity from Rubbish.
shows signs of restlessness, and seems
on the verge of an outbreak, one of the
nourriciers favorite devices for sooth-
ing him is to place a baby in his arms
and ask him to take care of it. At
Gheel a lunatic was never known to
injure a little child.
Infinite trouble is taken to make life
run smoothly and quietly for these
innocents, and to guard them from
all forms of unwholesome excitement.
At the same time many simple pleas-
ures and amusements are provided for
their benefit. They are always present
at any entertainment their nourriciers
may give family fetes, Christmas
parties, picnics, etc. and upon such
occasions comport themselves, as a
rule, with the most edifying dignity
and propriety. A surprisingly large
number of them have a decided talent
for music, and this they are given the
opportunity of cultivating. There is a
Philharmonic Society in the colony,
and, although most of its members are
more or less insane, they practise regu-
larlv and diligently, and give concerts
from time to time and by no means
bad ones either. Then, church-~oing
is an unfailing source of delight to
many of them, especially on high cere-
mony days, when there are plenty of
lights and flowers on the altar, and
good music. There is something
strangely pathetic then in the passion-
ate fervor with which they throw
themselves into the services ; their
voices tremble with emotion as they
join in the prayers, and they seeni for
the time quite unconscious of what is
passing around them.
The great majority of the Gheel
lunatics are, in appearance, quite re-
markably sane; the only noticeable
difference between them and their fel-
iows is~hat their eyes are just a touch
brighter, and their hands more ner-
vous. In manner, too, they are on the
whole singularly calm and quiet. One
might live with many of them for days,
in fact, without ever discovering that
they were not as other men. By de-
grees, however, certain little peculiar-
ities come to the fore ; for one thing,
these people are almost without excep
tion more self-important than sane men
and women, more inclined to attach
~veight to their own opinions. Even
the gentlest and humblest among
them resent contradiction as if it were
a personal insult. This is, perhaps,
after all, but natural, for many of them
are firmly convinced that they are very
high and mighty personages person-
ages whom in real life few would ven-
ture to contradict. Never were there
so many notable individuals kings,
generals, statesmen, millionaires liv-
ing together in one little town as at
Gheel. It is startling, to say the least
of it, to hear a quiet, intelligent-looking
gentleman describing, in the calmest
tone in the world, how he won Water-
loo, delivered Italy, or outwitted Bis-
marck. One patient believed firmly
that he was the moon, and could never
be induced to go out of doors until
after sunset ; another was sure that the
responsibility for the management of
the affairs of a nation rested on his
shoulders ; while there are many who
hold firmly that they are in the posses-
sion of secrets by which, if they had
but a free hand, they could make right
all that is wrong in this world.
A chance visitor will always find in a
colony for lunatics much that is terribly
depressing ; to him even these inno-
cents at Gheel will seem but a pitiable
set. This, however, is far from being
the view they themselves take of their
condition. Some of them, it is true,
are subject from time to time to fits of
the deepest gloom, but the majority are
quite cheerful ; not only are they fairly
content with their lot, but they evi-
dently think life well worth living. At
every turn there are hearty laughs to
be heard, and bright, happy faces to be
seen, among the colonists at Gheel.
From chambers Journal.
ELECTRICITY FROM RUBBISH.
THE satisfactory disposal of the rub-
bish and refuse of our large towns has
for years occupied the close attention
of engineers and sanitarians alike, and
127
Electricity from Rubbish.
various modes of dealing with the prob-
leni have been advocated and carried
into practice; whilst the statement fur-
iAshed by reliable statistics that Lon-
don alone produces no fewer than a
million and a half tons of refuse per
annum, affords our readers some ade-
quate idea of the magnitude and im-
poitance of the difficulty to be grappled
with by local and municipal bodies.
Conveyance of the refuse to the sea
has been practised with success ; but
such mode is obviously too costly for
towns not on the seaboard ; and under
these circumstances, the adoption of
cremators, in which the rubbish is
wholly consumed by fire, has come
more and more into favor ; so that at
the present moment the majority of
the principal cities are either construct-
ing, or about to construct., the new
refuse cre mator.
Much heat is necessarily evolved in
the destruction of the refuse ; and the
idea is now oainino oTound that such
heat may be largely and advantageously
utilized in the production of steam
power and electricity, instead of being
permitted to run to waste. The pro-
duction of a furnace suitable for the
most economical combustion of all
kinds of refuse has necessarily required
much time and skill ; and it was only
after t~venty-1ive years of close appli-
cation to the problem that the late M.
Fountain de Liv~t, a French engineer,
succeeded in securing a powerful nat-
ural draught in furnaces without arti-
ficial means, and in consuming rubbish
without smoke or noxious fumes of any
kind.
Without entering into the minuti~ of
M. Liv~ts invention,it may suffice to
state that the latest and most approved
generator of steam from refuse consists
of three cylinders, two of which are
fitted with internal fire-grates and
flues ; whilst the third one, l)1~Lced cen-
trally above, is kept about half full of
water, and acts as a steam-chest. The
specialty of the furnace is the adapta-
tion of such form of flue as will utilize
the increasing density or weight of the
gases generated as they travel towards
the chimney, thus inducing a hi~h
velocity of air through the furnace
bars, and rapid combustion and intense
heat in the furnaces themselves.
A destructor erected on the Liv~t
system is now in operation at Halifax,
in Yorkshire, and produces, from the
combustion of refuse, electric current
sufficient for some two thousand candle-
power arc lamps, and a search-light of
twenty-five thousand candle-po wer.
It is, of course, unnecessary to point
out how widely diverse is the composi-
tion of town refuse ; its constituents
ashes, vegetable refuse, tins, cans, old
boots, paper, etc., and the million items
which find their way sooner or later to
the dust-heap are well known to
every one ; an(l obviously any attempt
to put a value on the heat-producing
capabilities of rubbish must be a little
vague in dealing with the subject geii-
erally. Taking, however, a rough
average of the results obtained, an
ordinary sample of town refuse is pro-
nounced by experts to be equivalent to
about onethird or onefifth its weight
in coal namely, from three to five
pounds of refuse will generate as much
heat as one l)ound of coal ; whilst the
refuse after consumption is found to be
a clean, massive, metallic clinker, well
fitted for road material ; or, after being
ground up, for making mortar.
It is, of course, hardly necessary to
add one word of caution in regard to
the invention now under consideration.
It is not to be assumed that because
rubbish is burnt, the electricity neces-
sarily costs absolutely nothing ; the
cost of plant, distribution of power,
and many other expenses, must not be
lost sight of, to say nothing of the labor
expended in collecting the refuse. Al-
lowing, however, for all this, it is quite
clear that an invention which rids the
community of a great nuisan ~, and
does so without creating a further one
in the shape of moxious fumes and
smoke, and at the same time turns to
good account the heat generated, must
confer benefits on the community at
large ; and that the keen interest
aroused in the new adaptation is amply
warranted by the sound economic prin-
ciples on which it is based.
128
<