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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXI.      MARCH, 1854.      Vol. LXXV.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET,

AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON;

To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXI.      MARCH, 1854.      Vol. LXXV.

DISRAELI: A BIOGRAPHY.[^[1]]

Compliments are of various kinds. It is not always necessary that they should assume a laudatory form—they may be conveyed quite as powerfully through the medium of abuse. Some men there are whose eulogy is in itself a disgrace. Few would have cared to see their characters upheld in the columns of the Age or the Satirist—fewer still would like to hear a panegyric on their morals delivered from a hustings by the lips of Mr Reynolds. If we had to choose between total obscurity, and a reputation founded only upon the testimony of Mr Cobden, we should not, for one moment, hesitate to embrace the first alternative. To be designated in the polite circle of a sporting tavern as a “nobby cove,” or a “real swell,” is not, according to our ideas, a high object of ambition; and we should feel somewhat dubious of the real character of the individual whose praise was in the mouths of all the cabmen.

On the contrary, there can be no doubt that abuse proceeding from certain quarters is in itself a considerable recommendation, and may even be matter of pride to the party who is made the subject of it. The just Aristides never experienced a thrill of more agreeable complacency than when, at the request of the illiterate Athenian, he wrote his own name on the ostracising shell. We may rely upon it that Coriolanus felt far more gratified than incensed when the howling and hooting of the plebeians enabled him to deliver his stinging diatribe, and to express the intensity of his scorn. Virgil regarded the low ribaldry of Mævius as a direct acknowledgment of his literary accomplishments; and Cicero in one of his speeches expresses himself as being under obligations to a notorious blackguard, who had selected him as the object of his attacks.

Mr Disraeli, we think, lies under similar obligations, though the author of the book before us is simply an ineffable blockhead. Mean, however, as are his abilities, he has certainly contrived to strike out a literary novelty; though it may be doubted whether his example, if followed by men of average intellect, would tend to the improvement or increase the delights of society. In the pages of a review or the columns of a magazine, considerable freedom is used in discussing the merits of eminent living literary or political characters. Such criticisms or sketches are, no doubt, often tinted with party colours—are sometimes rather severe—but are rarely, if ever, scurrilous. But we do not remember any instance parallel to this, where a writer has selected for his subject an eminent living character, and has proceeded with deliberate, though most dull malignity, to rake up every particular of his life which he dared to touch upon, to gather every scrap which he either has or is supposed to have written from the years of his nonage upwards, and then to lay before the public, under the title of a biography, a ponderous volume of no fewer than 646 pages. Should this example be followed, and the practice become general, it appears to us that there will be strong necessity for revising the law of libel. We have grave doubts whether, under any circumstances, one man is entitled to take so gross a liberty with another. If each of us were to sit down and compile biographies of his living neighbours, this would be no world to live in. Either there would be an enormous increase of actions for defamation, or the cudgel, horse-whip, and pistol, would be brought into immediate requisition. Let us, however, concede that party animosity, personal antipathy, or private hatred may, either singly or collectively, be held to justify the perpetration of such an outrage—let us suppose that there is such an accumulation of black bile and venom in the interior of the unhappy human reptile that he must either give vent to it or be suffocated—he is at least bound to put his name on the title-page, so that the world may know what manner of man the deliberate accuser is. For aught we are told to the contrary, this volume may have been written by Jack Ketch or one of his subordinate assistants. Evidently it is not written by one who possesses the ordinary feelings of a gentleman, though it is possible that he may move in good society, bear a respectable name, and be regarded by veteran red-tapists as a young man of considerable promise. He is the counterpart of Randal Leslie in My Novel—cold, selfish, and malignant, without a spark of enthusiasm or a generous thought in his whole composition. Envy is the grand passion of his mind; and, in this case, hatred co-operates with envy. The object of this book is to run down Mr Disraeli on all points; to exhibit him as an impostor in politics, a quack in literature, a Maw-worm in religion, and a hypocrite in morals. We defy any one to peruse twenty pages of the work without being convinced that such was the intention of the author of Disraeli, a Biography; and yet the skulking creature has not courage enough to show himself openly. He even tries to assume a disguise so as to deceive those who might otherwise have traced him to his hole. “Conscious,” says the cockatrice, “of no motive but the public good, with little to hope or fear from any political party, strongly attached to principles, but indulgent to mere opinions, neither Whig nor Tory, but a respecter both of the sincere Conservative and the sincere Liberal, I have no dread of the partisan’s malice.” Mercy on us! who can this very mysterious person be? “No motive but the public good!”—“little to hope or fear from any political party!”—“neither Whig nor Tory!”—what sort of a politician is this? He butters Mr Gladstone, he butters Lord John Russell, he butters Lord Palmerston, he butters Mr Hume—his benevolence to every one except Mr Disraeli is quite marvellous—but more especially doth he laud and magnify the men who are now in power. “One of the humblest individuals of this great empire has thought it necessary to enter his protest against this new system of morality, which threatens to become generally prevalent!” Humility!—morality!—Brave words, Mr Randal Leslie—but it really was not worth while to add such hypocrisy to your other sins. We know you a great deal better than you suppose; and your own past history, insignificant though you are, has been too politically profligate to escape reprobation. You say you are neither Whig nor Tory, and, for once in your life, you speak the truth. But you were a Tory, and you became a Whig, and you are now a placeman; and you would hold that place of yours as readily under Mr Cobden as under Lord Aberdeen. You were once a Peelite, but you had not even the decency to wait for the fortunes of your chiefs. You lusted after office, and took the bribe the instant it was tendered by the Whigs; and in consequence you are universally looked upon and distrusted as the most venal, selfish, and unprincipled young man of your generation. It would indeed be absurd in you to entertain any “dread of the partisan’s malice.” You have placed yourself in such a position that you may defy malice of any kind. Your career, though obscure, has been so contemptible that your bitterest enemy could not make you seem worse than you were. It must, however, be allowed that you have materially added to your infamy by the present publication.

We have thought it our duty, at the outset, to make these stringent remarks, not because this writer has selected Mr Disraeli as the object of his attack, but because we altogether disapprove of, and abominate, this style of literary warfare. It is, thank heaven, as yet uncommon among us; and the best way of preventing its occurrence is to make an example of the caitiff who has introduced it. The idea, however, is not altogether original. It was engendered in Holywell Street; from which Paphian locality, as we are given to understand, various works, professing to be “Private Histories,” and “Secret Memoirs” of eminent living characters, were formerly issued; and this writer, being no doubt familiar with that sort of literature, has thought proper to extend the range of his license. We have, all of us, a decided interest in maintaining the respectability of controversy. A public career does indeed render men very amenable to criticism and comment; and it hardly can be said that there is anything unfair in contrasting public professions and public acts. A statesman, or even a less distinguished politician, must be prepared to hear his former opinions set against those which he now enunciates, and he may even consider it his duty elaborately to vindicate the change. But to compile biographies of living men—mixing up, as in this case, their mere literary effusions with their political lives, and attempting, by distortion and base inuendo, to render them contemptible in the eyes of the public—is an outrage on common decency, and must excite universal scorn and disgust.

The moral perceptions of the man who could write a book like this must, of course, be very weak; nevertheless, it is evident that even his conscience gave him an occasional twinge, by way of reminding him of the extreme dastardliness of his conduct. He could not but be aware that no honourable or chivalrous opponent of Mr Disraeli could read this tissue of malignity without experiencing a sensation of loathing; and, therefore, he has attempted, at the very outset, to vindicate himself, by representing Mr Disraeli as entitled to no quarter or courtesy, on account of his addiction to personality and satire. It may be as well to take down his own words, because we shall presently have occasion to make a few observations connected with this charge.

“I admit fully that, if any man be entirely destitute of all claim to indulgence, it is the subject of this biography. Personality is his mighty weapon, which he has used like a gladiator whose only object is, at all events, to inflict a deadly wound upon his adversary, and not like a chivalrous knight, who will at any risk obey the laws of the tournament. Mr Disraeli has been a true political Ishmael. His hand has been raised against every one. He has even run amuck, like the wild Indian.

“Who can answer a political novel? Libels the most scandalous may be insinuated, the best and wisest men may be represented as odious, the purest intentions and most devoted patriotism may be maligned, under the outline of a fictitious character. The personal satirist is truly the pest of society, and any method might be considered justifiable by which he could be hunted down. It would, therefore, seem only a kind of justice to mete out to Mr Disraeli the same measure which he has meted out to others. As he has ever used the dagger and the bowl, why, it may be asked, should not the deadly chalice be presented back to him, and enforced by the same pointed weapon? This may be unanswerable; yet I hold that no generous man would encounter an ungenerous one with his own malice.”

Why not, Randal? If what you say regarding Mr Disraeli be true, you are perfectly entitled to encounter him with his own weapons. You complain of his having written political novels, in which certain characters, whom you regard as sublime and pure, are represented in a different light. Well, then, do you write a novel of the same kind, showing up Mr Disraeli under a fictitious name, and we shall review it with all the pleasure in the world. If it is clever, sparkling, and original, you shall not want laudation. But you know very well that you could as soon swim the Hellespont as compose two readable chapters of a novel—that you have not enough of invention to devise a plot, or of imagination to shadow forth a character; and, therefore, you are pleased to assume the magnanimous, and to drivel about the dagger and the bowl. No one who reads your book will believe that you would abstain from the use of any weapon which you could wield against Mr Disraeli—(how should he, when you glide before us as a masked assassin?)—but he will be at no loss to divine the reason why you decline an encounter of wit. We are perfectly sincere when we say that your intense dulness ought in some measure to be accepted as an extenuation for your malevolence, for you have not art enough to disguise or conceal the hatred which is rankling in your breast.

But let us examine a little more narrowly into the charge preferred against Mr Disraeli. It is said that personality is his weapon, which he has used like a gladiator; and we understand the averment to be that both his political speeches and his literary works display this tendency. In considering this matter, it will be proper to separate the two characters, and look first to the politician, and afterwards to the novelist.

We shall at once admit that, in the House of Commons, Mr Disraeli is feared as an antagonist. He possesses vast power of satire, a ready wit, and has a thorough confidence and reliance in his own resources. He has besides an intense contempt for that kind of cant in which it formerly was the fashion to indulge—for the solemn airs of pompous mediocrity, and for the official jargon and conventional hypocrisies of the Treasury bench. When, in 1846, the late Sir Robert Peel abandoned the cause of that party of which he was the accredited leader, he naturally became the object of unsparing criticism and attack. But his offence was a very grave one. It fully justified the taunt of Mr Disraeli, which this writer affects to consider as remarkably offensive, that, “like the Turkish admiral who, during the war in the Levant, had steered his fleet into the port of the enemy, Sir Robert Peel had undertaken to fight for this cause, and now assumed the right of following his own judgment.” The comparison was certainly not a flattering one to the Prime Minister; but it had this recommendation that it was strictly apposite, and that no man could gainsay it. It is the height of absurdity to maintain that personality could be, or ought to have been, excluded from the discussions and debates that followed. Why, it was Sir Robert Peel himself who, by his extraordinary change of policy, made this a personal question, and brought it to a direct issue between the betrayer and the betrayed. Are we really to be told at the present day that measures alone should be discussed in the Houses of Parliament, and that all commentary on the conduct and previous career of statesmen ought to be avoided? Are we to be allowed no latitude of reference to former speeches—no allusion to former protestations? Ought tergiversation to be permitted to pass without notice or censure—ought duplicity to escape exposure? If not, we boldly ask in what respect Mr Disraeli has sinned so grievously as to merit the reproach of this Tartuffe? It may be said, indeed, that he pushed his resentment of the unparalleled betrayal too far; and we daresay, now that years have intervened, he may himself regret the occasional acrimony of his remarks. That is the natural feeling of every generous-minded man who has been compelled to take an active share in public discussion; for it is impossible to restrain at all times the excited passions, and sometimes the hour for calm retrospection does not arrive, until the occasion of the original offence has passed into matter of history. Mr Macaulay, in the preface to the collected edition of his speeches, says with reference to this very point: “I should not willingly have revived, in the quiet times in which we are so happy as to live, the memory of those fierce contentions in which so many years of my public life were passed. Many expressions which, when society was convulsed by political dissension, and when the foundations of government were shaking, were heard by an excited audience with sympathy and applause, may, now that the passions of all parties have subsided, be thought intemperate and acrimonious. It was especially painful to me to find myself under the necessity of recalling to my own recollection, and to the recollection of others, the keen encounters which took place between the late Sir Robert Peel and myself.” So it will ever be with the generous and high-spirited; but it does not follow therefrom that the attacks were not deserved. Of course such cold toads as Mr Randal Leslie cannot be expected to understand or appreciate the feeling either of indignation or of regret. Having no sympathy but for self, and possessing no clear discernment of the difference between right and wrong, between candour and duplicity—having been trained from their boyhood upwards to believe that falsehood, trickery, and deceit, are component and necessary qualities of statesmanship—they, naturally enough, stand aghast at the audacity which tore the veil from organised hypocrisies, and hate the exposer with a hatred more enduring than the love of woman. Hence this cant about personality, which they talk of as if it were a new element in political discussion. Now, the fact is, that no political discussion ever was conducted, or ever will be conducted, without personality. You cannot separate the idea from the man, the argument from him who uses it. The first orator of antiquity, Demosthenes, was personal to a degree never yet paralleled, as every one who has read his Philippics must allow. In this he was imitated by Cicero, whose stinging invectives, as witness the speeches against Catiline and Verres, have commanded the admiration of the world. Chatham’s first speech in the House of Commons was a purely personal one, no doubt provoked by his antagonist, but almost witheringly severe. Canning and Brougham dealt largely both in satire and personality—indeed, it would hardly be possible to find a speech of the latter orator free from a strong infusion of that quality which the moral Randal deplores. In our own time no great question has been discussed without personality; and for this reason, that it would be impossible to discuss it otherwise. No doubt personality may sometimes be carried greatly too far. When Lord John Russell taunted Lord George Bentinck with his former addiction to the turf, intending to convey thereby an unworthy inuendo, he committed a serious fault, because he violated gentlemanly decorum. When the late Sir Robert Peel accused Mr Cobden of a desire to have him assassinated, he was not only ultra-personal, but outrageously and unpardonably unjust. When the same statesman could find no better answer to Mr Disraeli, than a charge that the latter had at one time been willing to hold office under him, he was, besides being directly personal, guilty of a breach of confidence. We are aware it is the fashion among the present Ministry to protest against personalities. Let us ask whether it was his administrative talent or his practice in personal warfare that elevated Mr Bernal Osborne to the post of Secretary to the Admiralty? Ministers are far from objecting to a Spartacus, when they know they may reckon on his assistance—it is only when a keen weapon is flashing on the other side that they think it necessary to make an outcry. Party warfare we cannot expect to see an end of; but, in the name of common sense, let us at least eschew humbug. The House of Commons is, even now, a queer assembly, and Lord John Russell may make it worse; still, let us believe that the members collectively entertain that ordinary sense of propriety that they will not permit anything to be uttered within the walls of St Stephens, which calls for direct reprobation, without immediate challenge, and without censure, if an apology is not made for the intemperance. One of the principal duties of the Speaker is to repress and check the use of unparliamentary language. If any accusation, not falling under that restriction, is preferred, the members of the House are the judges of its propriety, and may be expected, in the aggregate, to enforce the rules which govern the conduct of gentlemen. It is, therefore, most gross impertinence in Mr Randal Leslie to challenge what Parliament has not challenged. Mr Disraeli’s present position, as the leader of the largest independent, and most influential section of the House of Commons, is the best answer to the insinuations of this contemptible little snake, who, we apprehend, will not receive, from his political superiors, the meed of gratitude which he expected for his present unfortunate attempt. It is the misfortune of your Randal Leslies, that they never can, even by blundering, stumble on the right path. Set them to defend in writing some particular line of policy, and the first six pages of their lucubrations will convince the impartial reader that they are advocating something unsound or untrue, by dint of their unnecessary affectation of candour. Set them to attack an opponent, and they fail; because they cannot descry the points upon which he is really vulnerable, and because they think indiscriminate abuse is more effective than artistic criticism, of which latter branch of accomplishment they are wholly incapable. This lad has not even the talent to malign with plausibility. He calls Mr Disraeli “a true political Ishmael.” What does the blockhead mean? Does he not know that the individual whom he denominates Ishmael, is at this moment at the head of the most powerful separate party in the British House of Commons?

In justice to the leading members of the Coalition Cabinet, we shall state our opinion, (not altogether unfortified by certain rumours which have reached us), that they were unaware of this singularly silly attempt, on the part of one of their subordinates, to attack an eminent character in opposition, until the fool launched it from the press before a disgusted public. Ill-judging Randal Leslie conceived that his work would make a grand political sensation; so, after the manner of his kind, he kept his secret to himself, and worked like a perfect galley-slave, or like a thorough scavenger, at his vocation. Whatever Mr Disraeli had said or written on politics, or any subject trenching upon politics, from the period of his first publication down to his last parliamentary speech, Randal had read and noted; and the poor knave at last concluded that he had a good case to lay before the public. And what does his political case, by his own account, amount to? Simply this: That Mr Disraeli, from his very earliest years, has detested and denounced the tenets of the Whig party; and that he has always supported the cause of the people—not in the democratic, but in the real and truthful sense of the word—against the villanies of organised oppression, and the rapacity of manufacturing domination. But these things belong rather to his literary than to his political character. Randal thought he had made a great hit in bringing them forward. He must have been very much amazed when an elder and more sagacious colleague explained to him that, instead of throwing dirt upon the object of his enmity, he had unconsciously been passing upon him a high encomium, such as any statesman might be proud of for his panegyric; and that his work, if generally read, would greatly tend to sap the faith in present political combinations. After all, how stand the facts? Ten years ago Mr Disraeli, a member of the Tory party, but not then greatly distinguished as a politician, nor possessing that influence which hereditary rank and high connection give to others, had the sagacity to discern that Sir Robert Peel was not a safe leader, and the courage to make the avowal. Randal quotes his language in 1844. “He had always acknowledged that he was a party man. It was the duty of a member of the House of Commons to be a party man. He, however, would only follow a leader who was prepared to lead.” No doubt the lips of many a Tadpole and Taper curled with derision at this audacious declaration of contempt for constituted authority, on the part of a young man, the tenor of whose speeches they could not rightly understand. He professed himself to be a Tory, but he often uttered sentiments which seemed to them strongly to savour of Radicalism. He did not scruple to avow his sympathy with the labouring classes, his desire to see them elevated and protected, and his wish for the adoption of a more genial, considerate, and paternal course of legislation. He traced the agitation for the Charter to the establishment of the supremacy of a middle-class government in the country; and boldly announced his opinion that this monarchy of the middle classes might one day shake our institutions and endanger the throne. In particular he denounced centralisation—a great and growing evil, to which he attributed much of the existing discontent. Such views were of course unintelligible to the Tadpoles and Tapers—men who considered statesmanship a science only in so far as it could insure ascendancy to their party, and places to themselves. There were then a good many veteran Tadpoles and Tapers; and Sir Robert Peel was doing his best to educate a new generation of them to supply inevitable vacancies. Naturally enough they regarded Mr Disraeli as a pure visionary; but there were others upon whom his argument and example were not lost. Young men began to consider whether, after all, they were doing their duty by blindly submitting themselves to party domination, as rigid and exacting as the most autocratic rule. They were desired, under very severe penalties for rising politicians, not to venture to think for themselves, but to do as the minister ordered. They were not to take up their time in unravelling social questions—if they wanted mental exercise, let them serve on a railway committee. There might be, and doubtless was, a cry of distress and a wailing from without—but the minister would see to that, settle everything by an increase of the police force, or perhaps a coercion bill; and the Treasury whip would give them due notice when they were expected to vote. In short, young members of Parliament were then treated exactly as if they had been children, incapable of forming an opinion; and they were told, in almost as many words, that if they did not choose to submit themselves to this dictation, the doors of the Treasury would remain closed against them for ever. The effect of this insolence—for we can give it no other name—was that a considerable portion of the young aristocracy rebelled. They would not submit to such preposterous tyranny, and they cared not a rush for any of the Ministerial threats. They saw that, in the country, there was distress—that discontent and disaffection were very rife—and that, in the very heart of England, a large body of the working population were absolutely in a state of bondage. They could not find it in their hearts to greet, with exultation, the announcement of increased exports, whilst every year the condition of the producers seemed to be becoming worse. Looking to the state, they saw two great parties under autocratic chiefs, bidding against each other for popularity—that is, power—and for office to their respective staffs, without any real regard for the interest or improvement of the masses. That was not a spectacle likely to find favour in the eyes of a young, ardent, and generous-minded man; and accordingly from that time we may date the formation of another party, still on the increase, and rapidly augmenting, which, rejecting what was bad in the old Toryism, but maintaining its better principle—resolute to preserve the constitution, but cordially sympathising with the people—is preparing to encounter, and will encounter with success, the cold-blooded democracy of Manchester, which would destroy everything that is venerable, noble, or dear to England, and establish on the ruins a serfdom of Labour, with Capital as the inexorable tyrant. We do not say that Mr Disraeli is to be regarded as the founder of that party. Young men professing conservative opinions were beginning about that time to think independently for themselves, and to doubt the authenticity and soundness of tradition. The young Whigs, who were kept in much better order by their seniors, stuck by their old political breviary; but the young Tories would not. They were ready, if occasion required, to maintain to the death the Monarchy, the House of Peers, and the Church; but they could not, for the lives of them, understand that it was not their duty to investigate, and if possible improve, the condition of the working-classes. On the contrary, they regarded that as a distinct moral duty, in which they were resolved to persevere, notwithstanding the advice of their own political Gallios, or the example of their opponents who were always ready, when the people asked for relief, to tender them a stone. Mr Disraeli, however, has this credit, that he was the first, in the House of Commons, to free himself from a debasing domination, and to assert his absolute independence of the minister in thought and deed. Of course he was never forgiven by the autocrat, nor will he be forgiven by the men who still swear by their idol. But he went on undauntedly, never fearing to say his thought; and barely two years had elapsed before the great bulk of the Tory party—the Tapers and Tadpoles excepted—had acknowledged the justness of his estimate as to the trustworthiness of their former chief, and ranged themselves in opposition to the late Sir Robert Peel.

It is not our intention to pronounce a panegyric upon Mr Disraeli. We see no occasion for doing so, and we doubt if he would care to hear one. But we confess that the impudence of this young whipper-snapper has somewhat roused our bile. He reminds us of a wretched curtailed messan whom we once saw introduced into a drawing-room. The creature, which, in mercy to the future canine breed, ought to have been drowned in the days of its puppydom, went sniffing about at the furniture, thrusting its odious nose everywhere, and at last committed sacrilege by lifting its leg against a magnificent china jar. Of course Nemesis was speedy. We had the satisfaction of kicking the cur from the upper landing to the lobby, by a single pedal application; and, beyond the hint gathered from a dolorous howl, have no cognizance of its after fate. Mr Disraeli’s present position in the House of Commons is the best possible answer to “one of the humblest”—for which, read, meanest—“individuals of this great empire.”

Randal, however, does not confine himself to a review of Mr Disraeli’s political career. He must needs—though of all men the most unfitted for the task, for he has no more notion of literature than a Hottentot—attempt to criticise him as an author. Here he evidently thinks that he can make out a strong case; and accordingly he goes over, seriatim, the whole of the publications to which Mr Disraeli has set his name, and one or two others which were not so authenticated. At first sight it is not easy to understand why he should have given himself so much trouble. Mr Disraeli’s earliest novel, Vivian Grey, was written when the author was about the age of two-and-twenty, and, no doubt, to the critical eye, it has many faults. But so have the early productions of every master—not only in language, but in painting and all other branches of art,—yet we forgive them all for the unmistakable traces of real genius which are displayed. That early novel of Mr Disraeli, though produced so far back as 1826, has never been forgotten. It took its place at once as a decided work of genius; and, as such, continued to be read before the author became a political character or celebrity. And so it was, even in larger measure, with his next work, Contarini Fleming. Now, it is of some importance to ask, why these books were popular? They certainly could not recommend themselves to the old, as elaborate compositions, for they showed a lack of worldly experience, and sometimes bordered on extravagance. But they recommended themselves to the young, because they were brimful of a youthful spirit; because they expressed, better perhaps than ever had been done before, the daring, recklessness, and utter exuberance of youth; and because even older men recognised in them the distinct image of passions which they had once entertained, but from which they were divorced for ever. Poor pitiful Randal, who even in his boyhood does not seem to have experienced a single generous impulse, thinks that in these juvenile pictures he can identify the future politician. He says, “It is impossible, in perusing the book, not to connect Mr Disraeli with Contarini Fleming;” and he then goes on gravely to argue that many of the positions in the romance are objectionable. Because Mr Disraeli makes his leading character talk extravagantly when in love—as what boy under such circumstances does not talk extravagantly?—we are asked to believe that the author is habitually addicted to fustian! Because Contarini Fleming is represented at the head of a band of reckless collegians, who, inspired by the “Robbers” of Schiller, betake themselves to the woods, Randal politely insinuates that Mr Disraeli was intended by nature for a bandit! He might just as well tell us that Miss Jane Porter was intended for a Scottish chief! Such absolute trash as this is really below contempt; nor would we have noticed it at all except to show the animus of this singularly paltry critic. We shall make no further allusion to his commentary on the early novels, beyond remarking, that he crawls over every page of Venetia and Henrietta Temple, in the hope to leave upon them traces of his ugly slime.

It is, however, against the political novels that Mr Randal Leslie chooses principally to inveigh. That he regards them as heterodox in doctrine is not to be wondered at—that he cannot discriminate between the sportive and the real is the result of his own narrow powers of comprehension. But his chief cry, as we have remarked before, is against personality, and he thus favours us with his ideas: “All men must execrate the midnight stabber. And a midnight stabber is a man who, in a work of fiction, endeavours to make a fictitious character stand for a real one, and attributes to it any vices he pleases. Nothing can be more unfair; nothing can be more reprehensible. Against such a system of attack even the virtues of a Socrates are no protection,” &c. We see no occasion for dragging Socrates into the discussion. Those twin sons of Sophroniscus, Tadpole and Taper, are quite sufficient for our purpose in discussing this point of literary personality. We are therefore given to understand by Mr Leslie, that it is utterly unjustifiable to display, in a work of fiction, any character corresponding to a real one. That, certainly, is a broad enough proposition. According to this view, Virgil was a midnight stabber, because it is notorious that the characters in the Eneid were intended to represent eminent personages of Rome; and all of them were not flatteringly portrayed—as, for instance, Drances, who stands for Cicero. Spenser was a midnight stabber, in respect of Duessa, intended for Mary Queen of Scots. Shakespeare was a midnight stabber, in respect of Justice Shallow, the eidolon of Sir Thomas Lucy. Dryden was an irreclaimable bravo; witness his Absalom and Achitophel. We are afraid that even Pope must wear the badge of the poniard. Very few of our deceased, and scarce one of our living novelists, can escape the charge of satire and personality. If a man is writing about things of the present day, he must, perforce, take his characters from the men who move around him, else he will produce no true picture. Both Dickens and Thackeray draw from life, and their sketches are easily recognisable. There are certain characters in Mr Warren’s Ten Thousand A-Year, which we apprehend nobody can mistake. In depicting, for example, the House of Commons, would it be correct to paint that assembly, not as it is, but as what it might be, if a total change were made in its members? If a literary man has occasion, in a work of fiction, to sketch the Treasury Bench, must he necessarily leave out the principal figures which give interest to that Elysian locality? But is it really true that Mr Disraeli has been so excessively licentious in his personality? Tadpoles he has drawn, no doubt, and Tapers; but there are at least two dozen gentlemen who have equal right to appropriate those designations to themselves. He has given us two perfect types of a narrow-minded class, but the class itself is numerous. The originals of Coningsby and Millbank, if there were any such, are not likely to complain of their treatment; and positively the only objectionable instance of personality which we can remember as occurring in Mr Disraeli’s political novels, is the character of Rigby. It is quite possible that Mr Disraeli might, if he chose, give a satisfactory explanation of this departure from decorum; for we are not of the number of those who profess, like Mr Randal Leslie, to think that it is unlawful to retaliate with the same weapon which has been used in assault. But the truth is, we care very little about the matter. Let us grant that this one character of Rigby is objectionable—does that justify this outrageous howl about perpetual personalities? Where are the personalities in Sybil and Tancred? We may be very dull, but we really cannot find them; and yet we have perused both works more than once with great pleasure. Who are the leading political characters whom Mr Disraeli is said to have sketched for the purpose of misrepresenting their motives? Has he given us in his novels a sketch of Wellington, of Peel, of Brougham, of Lord John Russell, of Sir James Graham, of O’Connell, of Cobden, or of Hume? We never heard that alleged; and yet we are told that his novels are full of outrageous political libels! Why, if he had intended to be politically personal, he could not by possibility have avoided introducing some of these men, under feigned names, seeing that they have all played a conspicuous part in the great drama of public life. He might, we think, have introduced them, had he so pleased, without any breach of propriety; but it is enough, in dealing with Mr Randal Leslie, to remark that he has not done so, and consequently the whole elaborate structure of hypocrisy falls to the ground.

It may be said that it was not worth our while to waste powder and shot upon a jackdaw; nor, in all probability, should we have done so, were this the sole chatterer of his species. But the splendid abilities and political success of Mr Disraeli have created for him a host of enemies, who seem determined, at all hazards, to run him down, and whose attacks are not only malignant, but unintermitting. Some of these may be regarded simply as the ebullitions of envy—the mutterings of discontent against success. The feeling which prompts such attacks is anything but commendable; but we are inclined to draw a distinction between that class of writers, and another, whose enmity to Mr Disraeli may be traced to more personal motives. The former may, perhaps, have no absolute dislike to the man whom they are endeavouring to decry. They assail him because he has risen so much and so swiftly above their social level; and if he were to experience a reverse, their feeling towards him would probably change. Theirs is just the sentiment of vulgar radicalism—that which stimulates demagogues to attack the Church and the aristocracy. Men of the literary profession are very liable to such influences, more especially when one of their number passes into another sphere of distinction. So long as Mr Disraeli confined himself to literary pursuits, he might be regarded and dealt with as one of themselves: it was his political career, and his accession to office as a Cabinet Minister, which made the gap between him and the literary multitude. It is much to be regretted, for the sake of literature itself, that any such demonstrations of jealousy should be exhibited, but we fear there is no remedy for it. Other times, besides our own, furnish us with examples in abundance of this kind of unworthy detraction, which, however, may not be tinged with absolute personal malice.

The author of this volume has nothing in common with the writers to whom we have just alluded. In the first place, he has no pretensions whatever to be considered as a literary man. His style is bald and bad; he is wholly unpractised in criticism; and he commits the egregious blunder of dealing in indiscriminate abuse. Notwithstanding all our admiration for Mr Disraeli, we are bound to admit that some of his novels afford ample scope for criticism; and that a witty and competent reviewer could easily, and with perfect fairness, write an amusing article on the subject. More than one excellent imitation of Mr Disraeli’s peculiar style has appeared in the periodicals; and we have no doubt that even the author of Coningsby enjoyed a hearty laugh over the facetious parodies of Punch. There is no kind of malice in the preparation or issuing of squibs like these. We should all of us become a great deal too dull and solemn without them; and they contribute to the public amusement without giving annoyance to any one. But Randal Leslie is such an absolute bungler that he is not contented with selecting the weak points in Mr Disraeli’s works, but tries to depreciate those very excellencies and beauties which have elevated him in the eyes of the public. He cannot bear to think that Mr Disraeli should have credit for having written even a single interesting chapter, and therefore he keeps battering at the fabric of his fame, like a billy-goat butting at a wall. Had Mr Randal Leslie possessed a little more real knowledge of the world, or had his conceit been but one degree less than it is, he would have paused before entering the literary and critical arena. He can talk glibly enough about gladiators—was he not aware that a certain degree of training is required, before a literary man becomes used to the practice of his art? Apparently not; for anything so utterly contemptible, in the shape of criticism, it never was our fortune to peruse. We conclude, therefore, that whatever may have been the nature of the other “private griefs” which stimulated this wretched onslaught on Mr Disraeli, literary jealousy was not among the number. The frog may wish to emulate the dimensions of the ox; but not even Esop has ventured to represent it as emulous of the caroling of the lark.

We have no hesitation in stating our belief, that a certain party in the State, to whom Mr Disraeli is peculiarly obnoxious, has addressed itself deliberately to the task, through its organs, of running him down. The Whigs, of course, regard him with no favour, for he has always been their determined opponent; but we have no reason whatever to suppose that their hostility would be carried so far as to induce them to join in so very unworthy a conspiracy. But to the Peelites he has given mortal umbrage. They cannot forget that he was the man who first challenged the despotic authority of their chief in the House of Commons, and set an example of independence in thought and action to others of the Tory party. They cannot forget the conflicts in which he was personally engaged with their leader; and they cannot forgive him for the havoc which he made in the ranks of the pseudo-Conservatives. If he and others had chosen to stifle their convictions, to lay aside all considerations of honour and consistency, to submit to mysterious but imperative dictation, and to become the passive tools of an autocratic minister, the Conservatives might still have been in power, and the red-tapists in possession of their offices. Not one of the latter class but feels himself personally injured. The Tapers and Tadpoles had been so long accustomed to the advent of quarter-day, that they regarded their places almost in the light of patrimonial possessions; and bitter indeed was their hatred of the man who had assisted to eject them from their Goshen. Besides this, their vanity, of which they were not without a large share, was sorely wounded by the manner in which they were exhibited to the public view, and more so by the intense relish with which the sketches were received. Mr Disraeli never made so happy a hit as in his portraiture of these small, bustling, self-sufficient, and narrow-minded officials, with their ridiculous notions about party watchwords, political combinations, backstairs influence, and so forth; nor was there ever a more terse or felicitous description of the then existing Government, than that which he has put into the mouth of Taper:—“A sound Conservative government—I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.” These things belong to the past. They are, however, intelligible reasons for the rancour which the remnants of the Peel party, even when allied with the Whigs in power, exhibit towards Mr Disraeli; and nothing since has occurred to mitigate the acerbity of that feeling. But there are weighty considerations applicable to the future. The Aberdeen Cabinet is composed of such heterogeneous materials that it cannot be expected to hold long together. Even now there is dissension within it; and, but for the expectation of an immediate and inveterate war, which renders the idea of a change of government distasteful to every one, men would consider it as doomed. In fact, the alliance has never been other than a hollow one, and there is no real cordiality or confidence among the chiefs. The Whigs are already looking in the direction of the Radicals; the Peelites would very gladly gain the confidence of the country gentlemen. They believe it not impossible even yet, by making certain sacrifices and concessions, to reconstruct the Conservative party; but Mr Disraeli is the obstacle, and their hatred of him is even greater than their love of office. They would, in 1852, have opened a negotiation, provided he had been excluded; and they entertain the same views in 1854. It is evident that Lord Aberdeen cannot long remain as Premier. He is anything but personally popular; he is now well advanced in years; and his conduct in the Eastern question has not raised him in the estimation of the country. But then, failing him, who is to be the leader of the Peelites in the House of Lords? Not certainly the Duke of Newcastle, who has neither temper nor ability for that duty; and they have no one else to put forward. Gladly would they serve under Lord Derby; but the same Cabinet cannot hold Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone.

Let them do their worst. It is not by publications of this kind, or unscrupulous newspaper invectives, that they will accomplish their object. Even the critic who has taken this book as a text for his commentary in the Times, is constrained to acknowledge that the author has sate down “to accumulate upon the head of his living victim all the dislike, malevolence, and disgust he can get together in 650 octavo pages.” We must say that it never was our lot to peruse a more extraordinary article than that which we now refer to. The critic does not even think it necessary to affect that he cares for public morality. He dislikes the Protectionists, whose general ability he doubts, as much as he abhors their tenets; and he thinks that Mr Disraeli ought to have left their camp in 1848, immediately after the death of Lord George Bentinck. We confess that we were at first a good deal startled at this proposition, inasmuch as the course of conduct which is here indicated would have laid Mr Disraeli open to such charges of perfidy as no honourable man could endure; but, on looking a little further, we began to see the drift of these observations. There are two detachments of mischief-makers at work—the object of the one being to disgust the Tory party with Mr Disraeli; that of the other being to disgust Mr Disraeli with his party. We think it right, out of sheer regard for ethics, to quote a sentence or two from the critical article in the Times:—

“For weeks,” says the critic, referring to the position of Mr Disraeli in 1848, “did he suffer mortification, insult, and ingratitude from the Protectionist party, with Lord Derby at its head; such as must have roused a nobler soul to self-respect, and stung it with a consciousness of intolerable wrong. What if, at that period of consummate baseness and unblushing insolence, Mr Disraeli had stood apart from the conspirators, and taken an independent place in the arena which he had already made his own! Does he believe that the good-will of his countrymen would have been wanting to him at that trying hour, and that the sympathies of Whig and Tory would not have sustained him in the crisis? He will never recover the consequences of the fault then committed. He stooped low as the ground to conquer, and he failed. He might have vanquished nobly, and held his head erect. By consenting to act with men who did not hesitate to let him feel how much they despised him, he has, indeed, tasted the sweets of office, and for a season held the reins of power. But where is he now? Where might he have been, had he proudly taken his seat in 1848, aloof from the false allies who had no belief in his earnestness, no satisfaction in his company, and who hurled their contempt in his teeth?”

It requires more than one perusal before the full meaning of this passage can be comprehended. The critic first informs us, with a most suspicious degree of circumstantiality as to details, that, after the death of Lord George Bentinck, there was some indisposition to intrust the leadership of the Protectionist party in the House of Commons to Mr Disraeli, and then argues that he ought to have left them at once and for ever! Beautiful, indeed, are the notions of morality and honour which are here inculcated!

But how comes the writer in the Times to be so intimately acquainted with the secret councils of the Protectionist party, whom in the aggregate he sneers at, terms “conspirators,” and accuses of “consummate baseness and unblushing insolence?” What does he know, more than other determined supporters of Sir Robert Peel, of what was passing in the opposite camp? He tells us, speaking of 1845, that “in England the injustice of the Corn Laws is felt at every hearth. Sir Robert Peel seizes the opportunity to repair some of the errors of his former life, and to establish his name for ever in the grateful recollection of his countrymen.” The man who wrote these words never could have had any trafficking with the Protectionists; he must have abhorred them throughout; and yet the curious thing is, that he knows, or pretends to know, a great deal more about them than an enemy could possibly have done. For example, he says, in reference to the alleged unwillingness, on the part of the Protectionists, to be led by Mr Disraeli, that “almost in as many words Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, condescended to convey the intelligence to the gifted subaltern, and to inform him that, notwithstanding the transcendent services he had rendered, he had not respectability enough for the place of honour he had earned.” This is either false or true. If false, it is the most unblushing fiction we ever remember to have met with; if true, we should like very much to know how the writer came by his information.

Not less remarkable is the intimate knowledge which the critic affects of Mr Disraeli’s private character. That he dislikes him is very evident. He describes him as “Genius without Conscience;” says “he has not a bad heart—he has no heart at all;” that he “will stand before posterity as the great political infidel of his age, as one who believed in nothing but himself;” and a great deal to the same purpose. He denounces him as inconsistent; and yet, in the same breath, blames him for not having abandoned his party on the impulse of a sudden pique. If Iago were alive and a critic, we should expect from him just such an article as that which appeared in the Times.

We end as we began. In this wicked and envious little world of ours, no man of any note can hope to escape without abuse, which may be formidable or not, according to the quarter from which it comes, and the motives which called it forth. If more than the share commonly set apart for public men has fallen upon Mr Disraeli, he may comfort himself with the reflection that there is but one feeling on the part of the public with regard to the conduct of his assailants; and we are greatly mistaken if, by this time, the author of the Literary and Political Biography does not wish, in his secret heart, that he had never addressed himself to his dirty task. As for other attacks, he is certainly liable to these, both as a party leader and as an ex-minister. No one knows better than Mr Disraeli that enmities may sometimes arise from peculiar causes. Of this, indeed, he has given us, in one of his earlier fictions, a very apt illustration, when he makes Ixion say: “I remember we had a confounded poet at Larissa, who proved my family lived before the Deluge, and asked me for a pension. I refused him, and then he wrote an epigram asserting that I sprang from the veritable stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha at the repeopling of the earth, and retained all the properties of my ancestors!”

THE QUIET HEART.

PART IV.—CHAPTER XVIII.

“Eh, Menie, are you sure yon’s London?”

So asked little July Home standing under the shadow of the elm-trees, and looking out upon the sea of city smoke, with great St Paul’s looming through its dimness. July did not quite understand how she could be said to be near London, so long as she stood upon the green sod, and saw above her the kindly sky. “There’s no very mony houses hereaway,” said the innocent July; “there’s mair in Dumfries, Menie—and this is just a fine green park, and here’s trees—are you sure yon’s London?”

“Yes, it’s London.” Very differently they looked at it;—the one with the marvelling eyes of a child, ready to believe all wonders of that mysterious place, supreme among the nations, which was rather a superb individual personage from among the Arabian genii than a collection of human streets and houses, full of the usual weaknesses of humankind; the other with the dreamy gaze of a woman, pondering in her heart over the scene of her fate.

“And Randall’s yonder, and Johnnie Lithgow?” said July. “I would just like to ken where; Menie, you’ve been down yonder in the town—where will Johnnie and our Randall be? Mrs Wellwood down in Kirklands bade me ask Randall if he knew a cousin of hers, Peter Scott, that lives in London; but nobody could ken a’ the folk, Menie, in such a muckle town.”

“My dear Miss July, muckle is an ugly word,” said Miss Annie Laurie, “and you must observe how nicely your brother and his friend speak—quite marvellous for self-educated young men—and even Menie here is very well. You must not say muckle, my love.”

“It was because I meant to say very big,” said July with a great blush, holding down her head and speaking in a whisper. July had thrown many a wandering glance already at Miss Annie, speculating whether to call her the old lady or the young lady, and listening with reverential curiosity to all she said; for July thought “She—the lady,” was very kind to call her my dear and my love so soon, and to kiss her when she went away wearied, on her first evening at Heathbank, to rest; though July could never be sure about Miss Annie, and marvelled much that Menie Laurie should dare to call any one in such ringlets and such gowns, aunt.

“You will soon learn better, my dear little girl,” said the gracious Miss Annie, “and you must just be content to continue a little girl while you are here, and take a lesson now and then, you know; and above all, my darling, you must take care not to fall in love with this young man whom you speak of so familiarly. He must not be Johnnie any more, but only Mr Lithgow, your brother’s friend and ours—for I cannot have both my young ladies falling in love.”

“Me!” July’s light little frame trembled all over, her soft hair fell down upon her neck. “It never will stay up,” murmured July, with eager deprecation, as Miss Annie’s eye fell upon the silky uncurled locks; but it was only shamefacedness and embarrassment which made July notice the descent of her hair—for July was trembling with a little thrill of fear and wonder and curiosity. Was it possible, then, that little July had come to sufficient years to be capable of falling in love?—and, in spite of herself, July thought again upon Johnnie Lithgow, and marvelled innocently, though with a blush, whether he “minded” her as she minded him.

But July could not understand the strange abstraction which had fallen upon her friend—the dreamy eye, the vacant look, the long intervals of silence. Menie Laurie of Burnside had known nothing of all this new-come gravity, and July’s wistful look had already begun to follow those wandering eyes of hers—to follow them away through the daylight, and into the dark, wondering—wondering—what it was that Menie sought to see.

Jenny is busied in the remote regions of the kitchen at this present moment, delivering a lecture, very sharp, and marked with some excitement, to Miss Annie Laurie’s kitchen maid, who is by no means an ornamental person, and for that and many other reasons is a perpetual grief to Miss Annie’s heart—so Jenny is happily spared the provocation of beholding the new visitor who has entered the portals of Heathbank. For a portentous shawl, heavy as a thundercloud, a gown lurid as the lightning escaping from under its shade, and a new bonnet grim with gentility, are making their way round the little lawn, concealing from expectant eyes the slight person and small well-formed head, with its short matted crop of curls, which distinguish Johnnie Lithgow. Johnnie, good fellow, does not think his sister the most suitable visitor in the world to the Laurie household; but Johnnie would not, for more wealth than he can reckon, put slight upon his sister even in idea—so Miss Annie Laurie’s Maria announces Miss Panton at the door of Miss Annie Laurie’s drawing-room, and Nelly, where she failed to come as a servant, is introduced as a guest.

“Thank’ye, mem,” said Nelly. “I like London very weel so far as I’ve seen it—but it’s a muckle place, I dinna doubt, no to be lookit through in a day—and I’m aye fleyed to lose mysel in thae weary streets; but you see I didna come here ance errand to see the town, but rather came with an object, mem—and now I’m to bide on to take care of Johnnie. My mother down-by at hame has had mony thochts about him being left his lane, with naebody but himself to care about in a strange place—and it’s sure to be a comfort to her me stopping with Johnnie, for she kens I’m a weel-meaning person, whatever folk do to me; and I would be real thankful if ye could recommend me to a shop for good linen, for I have a’ his shirts to mend. To be sure, he has plenty of siller—but he’s turning the maist extravagant lad I ever saw.”

“Good soul! and you have come to do all those kind things for him,” said Miss Annie Laurie: “it is so delightful to me to find these fine homely natural feelings in operation—so primitive and unsophisticated. I can’t tell you what pleasure I have in watching the natural action of a kind heart.”

“I am much obliged to ye, mem,” said Nelly, wavering on her seat with a half intention of rising to acknowledge with a curtsey this complimentary declaration. “I was aye kent for a weel-meaning lass, though I have my faults—but I’m sure Johnnie ought to ken how weel he can depend on me.”

July Home was standing by the window—standing very timid and demure, pretending to look out, but in reality lost in conjectures concerning Johnnie Lithgow, whose image had never left her mind since Miss Annie took the pains to advise her not to think of him. July, innocent heart, would never have thought of him had this warning been withheld; but the fascination and thrill of conscious danger filled July’s mind with one continual recollection of his presence, though she did not dare to turn round frankly and own herself his old acquaintance. With a slight tremble in her little figure, July stands by the window, and July’s silky hair already begins to droop out of the braid in which she had confined it with so much care. A silk gown—the first and only one of its race belonging to July—has been put on in honour of this, her first day at Heathbank; and July, to tell the truth, is somewhat fluttered on account of it, and is a little afraid of herself and the unaccustomed splendour of her dress.

Menie Laurie, a good way apart, sits on a stool at her mother’s feet, looking round upon all those faces—from July’s innocent tremble of shy pleasure, to Johnnie Lithgow’s wellpleased recognition of his childish friend. There is something touching in the contrast when you turn to Menie Laurie, looking up, with all these new-awakened thoughts in her eyes, into her mother’s face. For dutiful and loving as Menie has always been, you can tell by a glance that she never clung before as she clings now—that never in her most trustful childish times was she so humble in her helplessness as her tender woman’s love is to-day. Deprecating, anxious, full of so many wistful beseeching ways—do you think the mother does not know why it is that Menie’s silent devotion thus pleads and kneels and clings to her very feet?

And there is a shadow on Mrs Laurie’s brow—a certain something glittering under Mrs Laurie’s eyelid. No, she needs no interpreter—and the mother hears Menie’s prayer, “Will you like him—will you try to like him?” sounding in her heart, and resolves that she will indeed try to like him for Menie’s sake.

“Mr Home, of course, will come to see us to-night,” said the sprightly Miss Annie. “My dear Mrs Laurie, how can I sufficiently thank you for bringing such a delightful circle of young people to Heathbank? It quite renews my heart again. You can’t think how soon one gets worn out and weary in this commonplace London world: but so fresh—so full of young spirits and life—I assure you, Mr Lithgow, yourself, and your friend, and my sweet girls here, are quite like a spring to me.”

Johnnie, bowing a response, gradually drew near the window. You will begin to think there is something very simply pretty and graceful in this little figure standing here within shadow of the curtain, the evening sun just missing it as it steals timidly into the shade. And this brown hair, so silky soft, has slidden down at last upon July’s shoulder, and the breath comes something fast on July’s small full nether lip, and a little changeful flush of colour hovers about, coming and going upon July’s face. Listen—for now a sweet little timid voice, fragrant with the low-spoken Border-speech, softened out of all its harshness, steals upon Johnnie Lithgow’s ear. He knows what the words are, for he draws very near to listen—but we, a little farther off, hear nothing but the voice—a very unassured, shy, girlish voice; and July casts a furtive look around her, to see if it is not possible to get Menie Laurie to whisper her answer to; but when she does trust the air with these few words of hers, July feels less afraid.

Johnnie Lithgow!—no doubt it is the same Johnnie Lithgow who carried her through the wood, half a mile about, to see the sunset from the Resting Stane—but whether this can be the Mr Lithgow who is very clever and a great writer, July is puzzled to know. For he begins to ask so kindly about the old homely Kirkland people—he “minds” every nook and corner so well, and has such a joyous recollection of all the Hogmanays and Hallowe’ens—the boyish pranks and frolics, the boyish friends. July, simple and perplexed, thinks within herself that Randall never did so, and doubts whether Johnnie Lithgow can be clever, after all.

CHAPTER XIX.

“And July, little girl—you are glad to see Menie Laurie again?”

But July makes a long pause—July is always timid of speaking to her brother.

“Menie is not Menie now,” said July thoughtfully. “She never looks like what she used to look at Burnside.”

“What has changed her?” At last Randall began to look interested.

Another long pause, and then July startled him with a burst of tears. “She never looks like what she used to look at Burnside,” repeated Menie’s little friend, with timid sobs, “but aye thinks, thinks, and has trouble in her face night and day.”

The brother and sister were in the room alone. Randall turned round with impatience. “What a foolish little creature you are, July. Menie does not cry like you for every little matter; Menie has nothing to trouble her.”

“It’s no me, Randall,” said little July, meekly. “If I cry, I just canna help it, and it’s nae matter; but, oh, I wish you would speak to Menie—for something’s vexing her.”

“I am sure you will excuse me for leaving you so long,” said the sprightly voice of Miss Annie Laurie, entering the room. “What! crying, July darling? Have we not used her well, Mr Home?—but my poor friend Mrs Laurie has just got a very unpleasant letter, and I have been sitting with her to comfort her.”

Randall made no reply, unless the smile of indifference which came to his lips, the careless turning away of his head, might be supposed to answer; for Randall did not think it necessary to pretend any interest in Mrs Laurie.

But just then he caught a momentary glimpse of some one stealing across the farthest corner of the lawn, behind a group of shrubs. Randall could not mistake the figure; and it seemed to pause there, where it was completely hidden, except to the keen eye which had watched it thither, and still saw a flutter of drapery through the leaves.

“Mem, if you please, Miss Menie’s out,” said Jenny, entering suddenly, “and the mistress sent me with word that she wasna very weel hersel, and would keep up the stair if you’ve nae objections. As I said, ‘I trow no, you would have nae objections’—no to say there’s company in the house to be a divert—and the mistress is far frae weel.”

“But, Jenny, you must tell my darling Menie to come in,” said Miss Annie. “I cannot want her, you know; and I am sure she cannot know who is here, or she would never bid you say she was out. Tell her I want her, Jenny.”

“Mem, I have told you,” said Jenny, somewhat fiercely, “if she was ane given to leasing-making she would have to get another lass to gang her errands than Jenny, and I canna tell whatfor Miss Menie should heed, or do aught but her ain pleasure, for ony company that’s here ’enow. I’m no fit mysel, an auld lass like me, to gang away after Miss Menie’s licht fit; but she’s out-by, puir bairn—and it’s little onybody kens Jenny that would blame me wi’ a lee.”

She had reached the door before Randall could prevail with himself to follow her; but at last he did hurry after Jenny, making a hasty apology as he went. Randall had by no means paid to Jenny the respect to which she held herself entitled: her quick sense had either heard his step behind, or surmised that he would follow her; and Jenny, in a violent fuff, strongly suppressing herself, but quivering all over with the effort it cost her, turned sharp round upon him, and came to a dead pause facing him, as he closed the door.

“Where is Miss Menie Laurie? I wish to see her,” said Randall. Randall did not choose to be familiar even now.

“Miss Menie Laurie takes her ain will commonly,” said Jenny, making a satirical curtsey. “She’s been used wi’t this lang while; and she hasna done what Jenny bade her this mony a weary day. Atweel, if she had, some things wouldna have been to undo that are—and mony an hour’s wark and hour’s peace the haill house micht ha’e gotten, if she had aye had the sense to advise with the like of me; but she’s young, and she takes her ain gate. Poor thing! she’ll have to do somebody else’s will soon enough if there’s nae deliverance; whatfor should I grudge her her ain the noo?”

“What do you mean? I want to see Menie,” exclaimed Randall, with considerable haste and eagerness. “Do you mean to say she does not want to see me? I have never been avoided before. What does she mean?”

“Ay, my lad, that’s right,” said Jenny; “think of yoursel just, like a man, afore ye gie a kindly thought to her, and her in trouble. It’s like you a’; it’s like the haill race and lineage of ye, father and son. No that I’m meaning ony ill to auld Crofthill; but nae doubt he’s a man like the lave.”

Randall lifted his hand impatiently, waving her away.

“I wouldna wonder!” cried Jenny. “I wouldna wonder—no me. She’s owre mony about that like her, has she?—it’ll be my turn to gang my ways, and no trouble the maister. You would like to get her, now she’s in her flower; you would like to take her up and carry her away, and put her in a cage, like a puir bit singing-burdie, to be a pleasure to you. What are you courting my bairn for? It’s a’ for your ain delight and pleasure, because ye canna help but be glad at the sight of her, a darling as she is; because ye would like to get her to yoursel, like a piece of land; because she would be something to you to be maister and lord of, to make ye the mair esteemed in ither folks’ een, and happier for yoursel. Man, I’ve carried her miles o’ gate in thae very arms of mine. I’ve watched her grow year to year, till there’s no ane like her in a’ the countryside. Is’t for mysel?—she canna be Jenny’s wife—she canna be Jenny’s ain born bairn? But Jenny would put down her neck under the darling’s foot, if it was to give her pleasure—and here’s a strange lad comes that would set away me.”

But Jenny’s vehemence was touched with such depth of higher feeling as to exalt it entirely out of the region of the “fuff.” With a hasty and trembling hand she dashed away some tears out of her eyes. “I’m no to make a fule of mysel afore him,” muttered Jenny, drawing a hard breath through her dilated nostrils.

Randall, with some passion, and much scorn in his face, had drawn back a little to listen. Now he took up his hat hurriedly.

“If you are done, you will let me pass, perhaps,” he said angrily. “This is absurd, you know—let me pass. I warn you I will not quarrel with Menie for all the old women in the world.”

“If it’s me, you’re welcome to ca’ me names,” said Jenny, fiercely. “I daur ye to say a word of the mistress—on your peril. Miss Menie pleases to be her lane. I tell you Miss Menie’s out-by; and I would like to ken what call ony mortal has to disturb the poor lassie in her distress, when she wants to keep it to hersel. He doesna hear me—he’s gane the very way she gaed,” said Jenny, softening, as he burst past her out of sight. “I’ll no say I think ony waur of him for that; but waes me, waes me—what’s to come out o’t a’, but dismay and distress to my puir bairn?”

Distress and dismay—it is not hard to see them both in Menie Laurie’s face, so pale and full of thought, as she leans upon the wall here among the wet leaves, looking out. Yes, she is looking out, fixedly and long, but not upon the misty far-away London, not upon the pleasant slope of green, the retired and quiet houses, the whispering neighbour trees. Something has brought the dreamy distant future, the unknown country, bright and far away—brought it close upon her, laid it at her feet. Her own living breath this moment stirs the atmosphere of this still unaccomplished world; her foot is stayed upon its threshold. No more vague fears—no more mere clouds upon the joyous firmament—but close before her, dark and tangible, the crisis and decision—the turning-point of heart and hope. Before her wistful eyes lie two clear paths, winding before her into the evening sky. Two; but the spectre of a third comes in upon her—a life distraught and barren of all comfort—a fate irrevocable, not to be changed or softened; and Menie’s heart is deadly sick in her poor breast, and faints for fear. Alas for Menie Laurie’s quiet heart!

She was sad yesterday. Yesterday she saw a cloudy sword, suspended in the skies, wavering and threatening above her unguarded head; to-day she looks no longer at this imaginative menace. From another unfeared quarter there has fallen a real blow.

CHAPTER XX.

With the heat and flush of excitement upon his face, Randall Home made his way across the glistening lawn, and through the wet shrubs—for there had been rain—to that corner of the garden where he had seen Menie disappear. Impatiently his foot rung upon the gravel path, and crushed the fallen branches: something of an angry glow was in his eye, and heated and passionate was the colour on his cheek.

“You are here, Menie!” he exclaimed. “I think you might have had sufficient respect for me, to do what you could to prevent this last passage of arms.”

“Respect!” Menie looked at him with doubtful apprehension. She thought the distress of her mind must have dulled and blunted her nerves; and repeated the word vacantly, scarcely knowing what it meant.

“I said respect. Is it so presumptuous an idea?” said Randall, with his cold sarcastic smile.

But Menie made no answer. Drawing back with a timid frightened motion, which did not belong to her natural character, she stood so very pale, and chill, and tearful, that you could have found nowhere a more complete and emphatic contrast than she made to her betrothed. The one so full of strength and vigour, stout independence and glowing resentment—the other with all her life gone out of her, as it seemed, quenched and subdued in her tears.

“You have avoided me in the house—you will not speak to me now,” said Randall. “Menie, Menie, what does this mean?”

For Menie had not been able to conceal from him that she was weeping.

“It is no matter, Randall,” said Menie; “it is no matter.”

Randall grew more and more excited. “What is the matter? Have you ceased to trust me, Menie? What do you mean?”

“I mean nothing to make you angry—I never did,” said Menie, sadly. “I’m not very old yet, but I never grieved anybody, of my own will, all my days. Ill never came long ago; or, if it came, nobody ever blamed it on me. I wish you would not mind me,” she said, looking up suddenly. “I came out here, because my mind was not fit to speak to anybody—because I wanted to complain to myself where nobody should hear of my unthankfulness. I would not have said a word to anybody—not a word. There was no harm in thinking within my own heart.”

“There is harm in hiding your thoughts from me,” said Randall. “Come, Menie, you are not to cheat me of my rights. I was angry—forgive me; but I am not angry now. Menie, my poor sorrowful girl, what ails you? Has something happened? Menie, you must tell me.”

“It is just you I must not tell,” said Menie, under her breath. Then she wavered a moment, as if the wind swayed her light figure, and held her in hesitating uncertainty; and then, with a sudden effort, she stood firm, apart from the wall she had been leaning on, and apart, too, from Randall’s extended arm.

“Yes, I will tell you,” said Menie, seriously. “You mind what happened a year ago, Randall; you mind what we did and what we said then—‘For ever and for ever.’”

Randall took her hand tenderly into his own, “for ever and for ever.” It was the words of their troth-plight.

“I will keep it in my heart,” said poor Menie. “I will never change in that, but keep it night and day in my heart. Randall, we are far apart already. I have a little world you do not choose to share: you are entering a greater world, where I can never have any place. God speed you, and God go with you, Randall Home. You will be a great man: you will prosper and increase; and what would you do with poor Southland Menie, who cannot help you in your race? Randall, we will be good friends: we will part now, and say farewell.”

Abrupt as her speech was Menie’s manner of speaking. She had to hurry over these disjointed words, lest her sobs should overtake and choke her utterance ere they were done.

Randall shook his head with displeased impatience. “This is mere folly, Menie. What does it mean? Cannot you tell me simply and frankly what is the matter, without such a preface as this? But indeed I know very well what it means. It means that I am to yield something—to undertake something—to reconcile myself to some necessity or other, distasteful to me. But why commence so tragically?—the threat should come at the end, not at the beginning.”

“I make no threat,” said Menie, growing colder and colder, more and more upright and rigid; “I mean to say nothing that can make you angry. Already I have been very unhappy. I dare not venture, with our changed fortunes, to make a lifelong trial—I dare not.”

“Your changed fortunes!” interrupted Randall. “Are your fortunes to-day different from what they were yesterday?”

Menie paused. “It is only a very poor pride which would conceal it from you,” she said at length. “Yes, they are different. Yesterday we had enough for all we needed—to-day we have not anything. You will see how entirely our circumstances are changed; and I hope you will see too, Randall, without giving either of us the pain of mentioning them, all the reasons which make it prudent for us, without prolonging the conflict longer, to say good-by. Good-by; I can ask nothing of you but to forget me, Randall.”

And Menie held out her hand, but could not lift her eyes. Her voice had sunk very low, and a slight shiver of extreme self-constraint passed over her—her head drooped lower and lower on her breast—her fingers played vacantly with the glistening leaves; and when he did not take it, her hand gradually dropped and fell by her side.

There was a moment’s silence—no answer—no response—no remonstrance. Perhaps, after all, the poor perverse heart had hoped to be overwhelmed with love which would take no denial: as it was, standing before him motionless, a great faintness came upon Menie. She could vaguely see the path at her feet, the trees on either hand. “I had better go, then,” she said, very low and softly; and the light had faded suddenly upon Menie’s sight into a strange ringing twilight, full of floating motes and darkness—and those few paces across the lawn filled all her mind like a life journey, so full of difficulty they seemed, so weak was she.

Go quickly, Menie—quickly, ere those growing shadows darken into a blind unguided night—swiftly, ere these faltering feet grow powerless, and refuse to obey the imperative eager will. To reach home—to reach home—home, such a one as it is, lies only half a dozen steps away; press forward, Menie—are those years or hours that pass in the journey? But the hiding-place and shelter is almost gained.

When suddenly this hand which he would not take is grasped in his vigorous hold—suddenly this violent tremble makes Menie feel how he supports her, and how she leans on him. “I am going home,” said Menie, faintly. Still he made no answer, but held her strongly, wilfully; not resisting, but unaware of her efforts to escape.

“I have wherewith to work for you, Menie,” said the man’s voice in her ear. “What are your changed fortunes to me? If you were a princess, I would receive you less joyfully, for you would have less need of me. Menie, Menie, why have you tried yourself so sorely—and why should this be a cause of separating us? I wanted only you.”

And Menie’s pride had failed her. She hid her face in her hands, and cried, “My mother, my mother!” in a passion of tears.

“Your mother, your mother? But you have a duty to me,” said Randall, more coldly. “Your mother must not bid you give me up: you have no right to obey. Ah! I see; I am dull and stupid; forgive me, Menie. You mean that your mother’s fortunes are changed. She has the more need of a son then; and my May Marion knows well, that to be her mother is enough for me—you understand me, Menie. This does not change our attachment, does not change our plans, our prospects in the slightest degree. It may make it more imperative that your mother should live with us, but you will think that no misfortune. Well, are we to have no more heroics now—nothing tragical—but only a little good sense and patience on all sides, and my Menie what she always is? Come, look up and tell me.”

“I meant nothing heroic—nothing. What I said was not false, Randall,” said Menie, looking up with some fire. “If you think it was unreal, that I did not mean it—”

“If you do not mean it now, is not that enough?” said Randall, smiling. “Let us talk of something less weighty. July says you do not look as you used to do; has this been weighing on your mind, Menie? But, indeed, you have not told me what the misfortune is.”

“We knew it only to-day,” said Menie. Menie spoke very low, and was very much saddened and humbled, quite unable to make any defence against Randall’s lordly manner of setting her emotion aside. “My father’s successors were young men, and the price they paid for entering on his practice was my mother’s annuity. But now they are both gone; one died two years ago, the other only last week—and he has died very poor, and in debt, the lawyer writes; so that there is neither hope nor chance of having anything from those he leaves behind. So we have no longer an income; nothing now but my mother’s liferent in Burnside.”

Menie Laurie did not know what poverty was. It was not any apprehension of this which drew from her eyes those few large tears.

“Well, that will be enough for your mother,” said Randall. It was impossible for Menie to say a word or make an objection, so completely had he put her aside, and taken it for granted that his will should decide all. “Or if it was not enough, what then? Provision for the future lies with me—and you need not fear for me, Menie. I am not quarrelsome. You need not look so deprecating and frightened: you will find no disappointment in me.”

Was Menie reassured? It was not easy to tell; for very new to Menie Laurie was this trembling humility of tone and look—this faltering and wavering—as if she knew not to which side to turn. But Randall began to speak, as he knew how, of her own self, and of their betrothing, “for ever and for ever;” and the time these words were said came back upon her with new power. Her mind was not satisfied, her heart was not convinced, and very trembling and insecure now was her secret response to Randall’s declaration that she should find no disappointment in him; but her heart was young, and all unwilling to give up its blithe existence. Instinctively she fled from her own pain, and accepted the returning hope and pleasantness. Bright pictures rose before Menie, of a future household harmonious and full of peace—of the new love growing greater, fuller, day by day—the old love sacred and strong, as when it stood alone. Why did she fear? why did a lurking terror in her heart cry No, no! with a sob and pang? After all, this was no vain impracticable hope; many a one had realised it—it was right and true for ever under the skies; and Menie put her hand upon the arm of her betrothed, and closed her eyes for a moment with a softening sense of relief and comfort, and gentle tears under the lids. Let him lead forward; who can tell the precious stores of love, and tenderness, and supreme regard that wait him as his guerdon? Let him lead forward—on to those bright visionary days—in to this peaceful home.

CHAPTER XXI.

Perhaps next to the pleasure of doing all for those we love best, the joy of receiving all ranks highest. With her heart elate, Menie went in again to the house she had left so sadly—went in again, looking up to Randall, rejoicing in the thought that from him every daily gift—all that lay in the future—should henceforth come. And if it were well to be Menie’s mother—chief over one child’s heart which could but love—how much greater joy to be Randall’s mother, high in the reverent thought of such a mind as his! Now there remained but one difficulty—to bring the mother and the son lovingly together—to let no misconception, no false understanding blind the one’s sight of the other—to clear away all evil judgment of the past—to show each how worthy of esteem and high appreciation the other was. She thought so in her own simple soul, poor heart! Through her own great affection she looked at both—to either of them she would have yielded without a murmur her own little prides and resentments; and the light of her eyes suffused them with a circle of mingling radiance; and sweet was the fellowship and kindness, pure the love and good offices, harmonious and noble the life of home and every day, which blossomed out of Menie Laurie’s heart and fancy, in the reaction of her hopeless grief.

Mrs Laurie sits very thoughtful and still by the window. Menie’s mother, in her undisturbed and quiet life, had never found out before how proud she was. Now she feels it in her nervous shrinking from speech of her misfortune—in the involuntary haughtiness with which she starts and recoils from sympathy. Without a word of comment or lamentation, the mere bare facts, and nothing more, she has communicated to Miss Annie; and Mrs Laurie had much difficulty in restraining outward evidence of the burst of indignant impatience with which, in her heart, she received Miss Annie’s effusive pity and real kindness. Miss Annie, thinking it best not to trouble her kinswoman in the present mood of her mind, has very discreetly carried her pity to some one who will receive it better, and waits till “poor dear Mrs Laurie” shall recover her composure; while even July, repelled by the absorbed look, and indeed by an abrupt short answer, too, withdraws, and hangs about the other end of the room, like a little shadow, ever and anon gliding across the window with her noiseless step, and her stream of falling hair.

Mrs Laurie’s face is full of thought—what is she to do? But, harder far than that, what is Menie to do?—Menie, who vows never to leave her—who will not permit her to meet the chill fellowship of poverty alone. A little earthen-floored Dumfriesshire cottage, with its kailyard and its one apartment, is not a very pleasant anticipation to Mrs Laurie herself, who has lived the most part of her life, and had her share of the gifts of fortune; but what will it be to Menie, whose life has to be made yet, and whose noontide and prime must all be influenced by such a cloud upon her dawning day? The mother’s brow is knitted with heavy thought—the mother’s heart is pondering with strong anxiety. Herself must suffer largely from this change of fortune, but she cannot see herself for Menie—Menie: what is Menie to do?

Will it be better to see her married to Randall Home, and then to go away solitary to the cothouse in Kirklands, to spend out this weary life—these lingering days? But Mrs Laurie’s heart swells at the thought. Perhaps it will be best; perhaps it is what we must make up our mind to, and even urge upon her; but alas and alas! how heavily the words, the very thought, rings in to Mrs Laurie’s heart.

And now here they are coming, their youth upon them like a mantle and a crown—coming, but not with downcast looks; not despondent, nor afraid, nor touched at all with the heaviness which bows down the mother’s spirit to the very dust. Menie will go, then. Close your eyes, mother, from the light; try to think you are glad; try to rejoice that she will be content to part from you. It is “for her good”—is there anything you would not do “for her good,” mother? It has come to the decision now; and look how she comes with her hand upon his arm, her eyes turning to his, her heart elate. She will be his wife, then—his Menie first, and not her mother’s; but have we not schooled our mind to be content?

Yes, she is coming, poor heart! coming with her new hope glorious in her eyes; coming to bring the son to his mother; coming herself with such a great embracing love as is indeed enough of its own might and strength to unite them for ever; and Menie thinks that now she cannot fail.

And now they are seated all of them about the window, July venturing forward to join the party; and as nothing better can be done, there commences an indifferent conversation, as far removed as possible from the real subject of their thoughts. There sits Mrs Laurie, sick with her heavy musings, believing that she now stands alone, that her dearest child has made up her mind to forsake her, and that in solitude and meagre poverty she will have to wait for slow-coming age and death. Here is Randall, looking for once out of himself, with a real will and anxiety to soften, by every means in his power, the misfortunes of Menie’s mother, and rousing himself withal to the joy of carrying Menie home—to the sterner necessity of doing a man’s work to provide for her, and for the new household; and all the wonder you can summon—no small portion in those days—flutters about the same subject, little July Home; and you think in your heart if you but could, what marvellous things you would do for Menie Laurie, and Menie Laurie’s mother; while Menie herself, with a wistful new-grown habit of observation, reads everybody’s face, and knows not whether to be most afraid of the obstinate gloom upon her mother’s brow, or exultant in the delicate attention, the sudden respectfulness and regard, of Randall’s bearing. But this little company, all so earnestly engrossed—all surrounding a matter of the vitallest importance to each—turn aside to talk of Miss Annie Laurie’s toys—Miss Annie Laurie’s party—and only when they divide and separate dare speak of what lies at their heart.

And Mrs Laurie is something hard to be conciliated. Mrs Laurie is much inclined to resent this softening of manner as half an insult to her change of fortune. Patience, Menie! though your mother rebuffs him, he bears it nobly. The cloud will not lighten upon her brow—cannot lighten—for you do not know how heavily this wistful look of yours, this very anxiety to please her—and all your transparent wiles and artifices—your suppressed and trembling hope, strikes upon your mother’s heart. “She will go away—she will leave me.” Your mother says so, Menie, within herself; and it is so hard, so very hard, to persuade the unwilling content with that sad argument, “It is for her good.” Now, draw your breath softly lest she hear how your heart beats, for Randall has asked her to go to the garden with him, to speak of this; and Mrs Laurie rises with a sort of desolate stateliness—rises—accepts his offered arm, and turns away—poor Menie! with an averted face, and without a glance at you.

And now there follows a heavy time—a little space of curious restless suspense. Wandering from window to window, from table to table; striking a few notes on the ever-open piano; opening a book now, taking up a piece of work then, Menie strays about, in an excitement of anxiety which she can neither suppress nor conceal. Will they be friends? such friends—such loving friends as they might be, being as they are in Menie’s regard so noble and generous both? Will they join heartily and cordially? will they clasp hands upon a kindly bargain? But Menie shrinks, and closes her eyes—she dares not look upon the alternative.

“Menie, will you not sit down?” Little July Home follows Menie with her eyes almost as wistfully as Menie follows Randall and her mother. There is no answer, for Menie is so fully occupied that the little timid voice fails to break through the trance of intense abstraction in which her heart is separated from this present scene. “Menie!” Speak louder, little girl: Menie cannot hear you, for other voices speaking in her heart.

So July steals across the room with her noiseless step, and has her arm twined through Menie’s before she is aware. “Come and sit down—what are they speaking about, Menie? Do you no hear me? Oh, Menie, is it our Randall?—is it his blame?”

July is so near crying that she must be answered. “Nobody is to blame; there is no harm,” said Menie, quickly, leading her back to her seat—quickly with an imperative hush and haste, which throws July back into timid silence, and sets all her faculties astir to listen, too. But there comes no sound into this quiet room—not even the footsteps which have passed out of hearing upon the garden path, nor so much as an echo of the voices which Menie knows to be engaged in converse which must decide her fate. But this restless and visible solicitude will not do; it is best to take up her work resolutely, and sit down with her intent face turned towards the window, from which at least the first glance of them may be seen as they return.

No,—no need to start and blush and tremble; this step, ringing light upon the path, is not the stately step of Randall—not our mother’s sober tread. “It’s no them, Menie—it’s just Miss Laurie,” whispers little startled July from the corner of the window. So long away—so long away—and Menie cannot tell whether it is a good or evil omen—but still they do not come.

“My sweet children, are you here alone?” said Miss Annie, setting down her little basket. “Menie, love, I have just surprised your mamma and Mr Randall, looking very wise, I assure you; you ought to be quite thankful that you are too young to share such deliberations. July, dear, you must come and have your lesson; but I cannot teach you to play that favourite tune; oh no, it would be quite improper—though he has very good taste, has he not, darling? But somebody will say I have designs upon Mr Lithgow, if I always play his favourite tune.”

So saying, Miss Annie sat down before the piano, and began to sing, “For bonnie Annie Laurie I’ll lay down my head and dee.” Poor Johnnie Lithgow had no idea, when he praised the pretty little graceful melody and delicate verses, that he was paying a compliment to the lady of Heathbank.

And July, with a blush, and a little timid eagerness, stole away to Miss Annie’s side. July had never before touched any instrument except Menie Laurie’s old piano at Burnside, and with a good deal of awe had submitted to Miss Annie’s lessons. It did seem a very delightful prospect to be able to play this favourite tune, though July would have thought very little of it, but for Miss Annie’s constant warnings. Thanks to these, however, and thanks to his own kindly half-shy regards, Johnnie Lithgow’s favourite tunes, favourite books, favourite things and places, began to grow of great interest to little July Home. She thought it was very foolish to remember them all, and blushed in secret when Johnnie Lithgow’s name came into her mind as an authority; but nevertheless, in spite of shame and blushing, a great authority Johnnie Lithgow had grown, and July stood by the piano, eager and afraid, longing very much to be as accomplished as Miss Annie, to be able to play his favourite tune.

While Menie Laurie still sits by the window, intent and silent, hearing nothing of song or music, but only aware of a hum of inarticulate voices, which her heart longs and strains to understand, but cannot hear.

CHAPTER XXII.

The music is over, the lesson concluded, and July sits timidly before the piano, striking faint notes with one finger, and marvelling greatly how it is possible to extract anything like an intelligible strain from this waste of unknown chords. Miss Annie is about in the room once more, giving dainty touches to its somewhat defective arrangement—throwing down a book here, and there altering an ornament. Patience, Menie Laurie! many another one before you has sat in resolute outward calm, with a heart all a-throb and trembling, even as yours is. Patience; though it is hard to bear the rustling of Miss Annie’s dress—the faint discords of July’s music. It must have been one time or another, this most momentous interview—all will be over when it is over. Patience, we must wait.

But it is a strange piece of provocation on Miss Annie’s part, that she should choose this time and no other for looking over that little heap of Menie’s drawings upon the table. Menie is not ambitious as an artist—few ideas or romances are in these little works of hers; they are only some faces—not very well executed—the faces of those two or three people whom Menie calls her own.

“Come and show them to me, my love.” Menie must not disobey, though her first impulse is to spring out of the low opened window, and rush away somewhere out of reach of all interruption till this long suspense is done. But Menie does not rush away; she only rises slowly—comes to Miss Annie’s side—feels the pressure of Miss Annie’s embracing arm round her—and turns over the drawings; strangely aware of every line in them, yet all the while in a maze of abstraction, listening for their return.

Here is Menie’s mother—and here again another, and yet another, sketch of her; and this is Randall Home.

“Do you know, I think they are very like,” said Miss Annie: “you must do my portrait, Menie, darling—you must indeed. I shall take no denial; you shall do me in my white muslin, among my flowers; and we will put Mr Home’s sweet book on the table, and open it at that scene—that scene, you know, I pointed out to you the other day. I know what inspired him when he wrote that. Come, my love, it will divert you from thinking of this trouble—your mamma should not have told you—shall we begin now? But Menie, dear, don’t you think you have put a strange look in this face of Mr Randall? It is like him—but I would not choose you to do me with such an expression as that.”

Half wild with her suspense, Menie by this time scarcely heard the words that rang into her ears, scarcely saw the face she looked upon; but suddenly, as Miss Annie spoke, a new light seemed to burst upon this picture, and there before her, looking into her eyes, with the smile of cold supervision which she always feared to see, with the incipient curl of contempt upon his lip—the pride of self-estimation in his eye—was Randall’s face, glowing with contradiction to all her sudden hopes. Her own work, and she has never had any will to look at him in this aspect; but the little picture blazes out upon her like a sudden enlightenment. Here is another one, done by the loving hand of memory a year ago; but, alas! there is no enchantment to bring back this ideal glory, this glow of genial love and life that makes it bright—a face of the imagination, taking all its wealth of expression from the heart which suffused these well-remembered features with a radiance of its own; but the reality looks out on Menie darkly; the face of a man not to be moved by womanish influences—not to be changed by a burst of strong emotion—not to be softened, mellowed, won, by any tenderness—a heart that can love, indeed, but never can forget itself; a mind sufficient for its own rule, a soul which knows no generous abandon, which holds its own will and manner firm and strong above all other earthly things. This is the face which looks on Menie Laurie out of her own picture, startling her heart, half distraught with fond hopes and dreams into the chill daylight again—full awake.

“I will make portraits,” said Menie, hastily, in a flood of sudden bitterness, “when we go away, when we go home—I can do it—this shall be my trade.”

And Menie closed the little portfolio abruptly, and went back to her seat without another word; went back with the blood tingling through her veins, with all her pride and all her strength astir; with a vague impetuous excitement about her—an impulse of defiance. So long—so long: what keeps them abroad lingering among these glistening trees?—perhaps because they are afraid to tell her that her fate is sealed; and, starting to her feet, the thought is strong on Menie to go forth and meet them, to bid them have no fear for her, to tell them her delusion is gone for ever, and that there is no more light remaining under the skies.

Hush! there are footsteps on the path. Who are these that come together, leaning, the elder on the younger, the mother on the son! With such a grace this lofty head stoops to our mother; with such a kindly glance she lifts her eyes to him; and they are busy still with the consultation which has occupied so long a time. While she stands arrested, looking at them as they draw near—growing aware of their full amity and union—a shiver of great emotion comes upon Menie—then, or ever she is conscious, a burst of tears. In another moment all her sudden enlightenment is gone, quenched out of her eyes, out of her heart—and Menie puts the tears away with a faltering hand, and stands still to meet them in a quiet tremor of joy, the same loving Menie as of old.

“My bairn!” Mrs Laurie says nothing more as she draws her daughter close to her, and puts her lips softly to Menie’s brow. It is the seal of the new bond. The mother and the son have been brought together; the past is gone for ever like a dream of the night; and into the blessed daylight, full of the peaceful rays God sends us out of heaven, we open our eyes as to another life. Peace and sweet harmony to Menie Laurie’s heart!

Put away the picture; lay it by where no one again shall believe its slander true; put away this false-reporting face; put away the strange clear-sightedness which came upon us like a curse. No need to inquire how much was false—it is past, and we begin anew.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“Yes, Menie, I am quite satisfied.” It is Mrs Laurie herself who volunteers this declaration, while Menie, on the little stool at her feet, looks up wistfully, eager to hear, but not venturing to ask what her conversation with Randall was. “We said a great many things, my dear—a great deal about you, Menie, and something about our circumstances too. The rent of Burnside will be a sufficient income for me. I took it kind of Randall to say so, for it shows that he knew I would not be dependent; and as for you, Menie, I fancy you will be very well and comfortable, according to what he says. So you will have to prepare, my dear—to prepare for your new life.”

Menie hid her face in her mother’s lap. Prepare—not the bridal garments, the household supplies—something more momentous, and of greater delicacy—the mind and the heart; and if this must always be something solemn and important, whatever the circumstances, how much more so to Menie, whose path had been crossed already by such a spectre? She sat there, her eyes covered with her hands, her head bowing down upon her mother’s knee; but the heavy doubt had flown from her, leaving nothing but lighter cloudy shadows—maidenly fears and tremblings—in her way. Few hearts were more honest than Menie’s, few more wistfully desirous of doing well; and now it is with no serious anticipations of evil, but only with the natural thrill and tremor, the natural excitement of so great an epoch drawing close at hand, that Menie’s fingers close with a startled pressure on her mother’s hand, as she is bidden prepare.

What is this that has befallen little July Home? There never were such throngs of unaccountable blushes, such a suffusion of simple surprise. Something is on her lips perpetually, which she does not venture to speak—some rare piece of intelligence, which July cannot but marvel at herself in silent wonder, and which she trembles to think Menie and “a’body else” will marvel at still more. Withdrawing silently into dark corners, sitting there doing nothing, in long fits of reverie, quite unusual with July; coming forward so conscious and guilty, when called upon; and now, at this earliest opportunity, throwing her arms round Menie Laurie’s neck, and hiding her little flushed and agitated face upon Menie’s shoulder. What has befallen July Home?

“Do you think it’s a’ true, Menie? He wouldna say what he didna mean; but I think it’s for our Randall’s sake—it canna be for me!”

For July has not the faintest idea, as she lets this soft silken hair of hers fall down on her cheek without an effort to restrain it, that Johnnie Lithgow would not barter one smile upon that trembling child’s lip of hers for all the Randalls in the world.

“He says he’ll go to the Hill, and tell them a’ at hame,” said July. “Eh, Menie, what will they say? And he’s to tell Randall first of all. I wish I was away, no to see Randall, Menie; he’ll just laugh, and think it’s no true—for I see mysel it canna be for me!”

“It is for you, July; you must not think anything else; there is nobody in the world like you to Johnnie Lithgow.” And slowly July’s head is raised—a bright shy look of wonder gradually growing into conviction, a sudden waking of higher thought and deeper feeling in the open simple face; a sudden flush of crimson—the woman’s blush—and July withdrew herself from her friend’s embrace, and stole a little apart into the shadow, and wept a few tears. Was it true? For her, and not for another! But it is a long time before this grand discovery can look a truth and real, to July’s humble eyes.

But, nevertheless, it is very true. Randall’s little sister, Menie’s child-friend, the little July of Crofthill, has suddenly been startled into womanhood by this unexpected voice. After a severer fashion than has ever confined it before, July hastily fastens up her silky hair, hastily wipes off all traces of the tears upon her cheek, and is composed and calm, after a sweet shy manner of composure, lifting up her little gentle head with a newborn pride, eager to bring no discredit on her wooer’s choice. And already July objects to be laughed at, and feels a slight offence when she is treated as a child—not for herself, but for him, whom now she does not quite care to have called Johnnie Lithgow, but is covetous of respect and honour for, as she never was for Randall, though secretly in her own heart July still doubts of his genius, and cannot choose but think Randall must be cleverer than his less assuming friend.

And in this singular little company, where all these feelings are astir, it is hardly possible to preserve equanimity of manners. Miss Annie herself, the lady of the house, sits at her little work-table, in great delight, running over now and then in little outbursts of enthusiasm, discoursing of Mr Home’s sweet book, of Mr Lithgow’s charming articles, and occasionally making a demonstration of joy and sympathy in the happiness of her darling girls, which throws Menie—Menie, always conscious of Randall’s eye upon her, the eye of a lover, it is true, but something critical withal—into grave and painful embarrassment, and covers July’s stooping face with blushes. Mrs Laurie, busy with her work, does what she can to keep the conversation “sensible,” but with no great success. The younger portion of the company are too completely occupied, all of them, to think of ordinary intercourse. Miss Annie’s room was never so bright, never so rich with youthful hopes and interests before. Look at them, so full of individual character, unconscious as they are of any observation—though Nelly Panton, very grim in the stiff coat armour of her new assumed gentility, sits at the table sternly upright, watching them all askance, with vigilant unloving eye.

Lithgow, good fellow, sits by Miss Annie. Though he laughs now and then, he still does not scorn the natural goodness, the natural tenderness of heart, which make their appearance under these habitual affectations—the juvenile tricks and levities of her unreverent age. Poor Miss Annie Laurie has been content to resign the reverence, in a vain attempt at equality; but Lithgow, who is no critic by nature, remembers gratefully her true kindness, and smiles only as little as possible at the fictitious youthfulness which Miss Annie herself has come to believe in. So he sits and bears with her, her little follies and weaknesses, and, in his unconscious humility, is magnanimous, and does honour to his manhood. Within reach of his kindly eye, July bends her head over her work, glancing up now and then furtively to see who is looking at him—to see, in the second place, who is noticing or laughing at her; and July, with all her innocent heart, is grateful to Miss Annie. So many kind things she says—and in July’s guileless apprehension they are all so true.

Graver, but not less happy, Menie Laurie pursues her occupation by July’s side, rarely looking up at all, pondering in her own heart the many weighty things that are to come, with her tremor of fear, her joy of deliverance scarcely yet quieted, and all her heart and all her mind engaged—in dreams no longer, but in sober thought; sober thought—thoughts of great devotion, of lifelong love and service, of something nobler than the common life. Very serious are these ponderings, coming down to common labours, the course of every day; and Menie does not know the nature of her dreamings—they look to her so real, so sober, and so true—and would scorn your warning, if you told her that not the wildest story of Arabian genii was more romance than those, her sober plans and thoughts.

Apart, and watching all, stands Randall Home. There is love in his eye—you cannot doubt it—love, and the impulse of protection, the strong appropriating grasp. There is something more. Look how his head rises in the dimmer background above the table and the lights, above the little company assembled there. With something like laughter, his eye turns upon July—upon July’s wooer, his own friend—kindly, yet with a sense of superiority, an involuntary elevation of himself above them both. And this glance upon Miss Annie is mere scorn, nothing higher; and his eye has scarcely had time to recover itself, when its look falls, bright and softened, upon his betrothed; a look of love—question it not, simple Menie—but it is calm, superior, above you still.

CHAPTER XXIV.

“They tell me it’s a haill month since it was a’ settled, but I hear naething of the house or the plenishing, and no a word of what Jenny’s to do. If they’re no wanting me, I’m no wanting them—ne’er a bit. It’s aye the way guid service is rewarded; and whatfor should there be ony odds with Jenny? I might have kent that muckle, if I had regarded counsel, or thought of my ainsel; but aye Jenny’s foremost thought was of them, for a’ such an ill body as she is now.”

And a tear was in Jenny’s eye, as she smoothed down the folds of Menie’s dress—Menie’s finest dress, her own present, which Menie was to wear to-night. And Menie’s ornaments are all laid out carefully upon the table, everything she is likely to need, before Jenny’s lingering step leaves the room. “I canna weel tell, for my pairt, what like life’ll be without her,” muttered Jenny, as she went away. “I reckon no very muckle worth the minding about; but I’m no gaun to burden onybody that doesna want me—no, if I should never hae anither hour’s comfort a’ my days.”

And slowly, with many a backward glance and pause, Jenny withdrew. Neglect is always hard to bear. Jenny believed herself to be left out of their calculations—forgotten of those to whom she had devoted so many years of her life; and Jenny, though she tried to be angry, could not manage it, but felt her indignant eyes startled with strange tears. It made a singular cloud upon her face this unusual emotion; the native impatience only struggled through it fitfully in angry glimpses, though Jenny was furious at herself for feeling so desolate, and very fain would have thrown off her discomfort in a fuff—but far past the region of the fuff was this her new-come solitude of heart. Her friends were dead or scattered, her life was all bound up in her mistress and her mistress’s child, and it was no small trial for Jenny to find herself thus cast off and thrown aside.

The next who enters this room has a little heat about her, a certain atmosphere of annoyance and displeasure. “I will be a burden”—unawares the same words steal over Mrs Laurie’s lip, but the sound of her voice checks her. Two or three steps back and forward through the room, a long pause before the window, and then her brow is cleared. You can see the shadows gradually melting away, as clouds melt from the sky, and in another moment she has left the room, to resume her place down stairs.

This vacant room—nothing can you learn from its calm good order, its windows open to the sun, its undisturbed and home-like quiet, of what passes within its walls. There is Menie’s little Bible on the table; it is here where Menie brings her doubts and troubles, to resolve them, if they may be resolved. But there is no whisper here to tell you what happens to Menie, when, as has already chanced, some trouble comes upon her which it is not easy to put away. Hush! This time the door opens slowly, gravely—this time it is a footstep very sober, something languid, which comes in; and Menie Laurie puts up her hand to her forehead, as if a pain was there; but not a word says Menie Laurie’s reverie—not a word. If she is sad, or if she is merry, there is no way to know. She goes about her toilette like a piece of business, and gives no sign.

But this month has passed almost like age upon Menie Laurie’s face. You can see that grave thoughts are common now, everyday guests and friends in her sobered life, and that she has begun to part with her romances of joy and noble life—has begun to realise more truly what manner of future it is which lies before her. Nothing evil, perhaps—little hardship in it; no great share of labour, of poverty, or care—but no longer the grand ideal life, the dream of youthful souls.

And now she stands before the window, wearing Jenny’s gown. It is only to look out if any one is visible upon the road—but there is no passenger yet approaching Heathbank, and Menie goes calmly down stairs. As it happens, the drawing-room is quite vacant of all but Nelly Panton, who sits prim by the wall in one corner. Nelly is not an invited guest, but has come as a volunteer, in right of her brother’s invitation, and Miss Annie shows her sense of the intrusion by leaving her alone.

“Na, I’m no gaun to bide very lang in London,” said Nelly. “Ye see, Miss Menie, you’re an auld friend. I’m no so blate, but I may tell you. I didna come up here ance errand for my ain pleasure, but mostly to see Johnnie, and to try if I couldna get ony word of a very decent lad, ane Peter Drumlie, that belangs about our countryside. We were great friends, him and me, and then we had an outcast—you’ll ken by yoursel—but we’ve made it up again since I came to London, and I’m gaun hame to get my providing, and comfort my mother a wee while, afore I leave her athegither. It’s a real duty comforting folk’s mother, Miss Menie. I’m sure I wouldna forget that for a’ the lads in the world.”

“And where are you to live, Nelly?” Nelly’s moralising scarcely called for an answer.

“We havena just made up our minds; they say ae marriage aye makes mair,” said Nelly, with a grim smile. “Miss Menie, you’ve set us a’ agaun.”

Perhaps Menie did not care to be classed with Nelly Panton. “July Home will be a very young wife,” she said; “I think your brother should be very happy with her, Nelly.”

“I wouldna wonder,” said Nelly, shortly; “but you see, Miss Menie, our Johnnie’s a well-doing lad, and micht ha’e looked higher, meaning nae offence to you; though nae doubt it’s true what Randall Home said when he was speaking about this. ‘Lithgow,’ says he (for he ca’s Johnnie by his last name—it’s a kind o’ fashion hereaway), ‘if you get naething with your wife, I will take care to see you’re no cumbered with onybody but hersel;’ which nae doubt is a great comfort, seeing there micht ha’e been a haill troop of friends, now that Johnnie’s getting up in the world.”

“What was that Randall Home said?” Menie asked the question in a very clear distinct tone, cold and steady and unfaltering—“What do you say he said?—tell me again.”

“He said, Johnnie wouldna be troubled with nane of her friends,” said Nelly; “though he has her to keep, a bit wee silly thing, that can do naething in a house—and nae doubt a maid to keep to her forby—that he wouldna have ony of her friends a burden on him; and a very wise thing to say, and a great comfort. I aye said he was a sensible lad, Randall Home. Eh, preserve me!”

For Randall Home stands before her, his eyes glowing on her with haughty rage. He has heard it, every single deliberate word, and Randall is no coward—he comes in person to answer for what he has said.

Rise, Menie Laurie! Slowly they gather over us, these kind shadows of the coming night; no one can see the momentary faltering which inclines you to throw yourself down there upon the very ground, and weep your heart out. Rise; it is you who are stately now.

“This is true?”

She is so sure of it, that there needs no other form of question, and Menie lays her hand upon the table to support herself, and stands firmly before him waiting for his answer. Why is it that now, at this moment, when she should be most strong, the passing wind brings to her, as in mockery, an echo of whispering mingled voices—the timid happiness of July Home? But Menie draws up her light figure, draws herself apart from the touch of her companions, and stands, as she fancies she must do henceforth, all her life, alone.

“This is true?”

“I would disdain myself if I tried to escape by any subterfuge,” said Randall, proudly; “I might answer that I never said the words this woman attributes to me; but that I do not need to tell you. I would not deceive you, Menie. I never can deny what I have given expression to; and you are right—it is true.”

And Randall thinks he hears a voice, wavering somewhere, far off, and distant like an echo—not coming from these pale lips which move and form the words, but falling out upon the air—faint, yet distinct, not to be mistaken. “I am glad you have told me. I thank you for making no difficulty about it: this is very well.”

“Menie! you are not moved by this gossip’s story? This that I said has no effect on you? Menie! Is a woman like this to make a breach between you and me?”

In stolid malice, Nelly Panton sits still, and listens with a certain melancholy enjoyment of the mischief she has made, protesting, under her breath, that “she meant nae ill; she aye did a’thing for the best;” while Randall, forgetful of his own acknowledgment, repeats again and again his indignant remonstrance, “a woman like this!”

“No, she has no such power,” said Menie firmly—“no such power. Pardon me—I am wanted to-night. My strength is not my own to be wasted now; we can conclude this matter another time.”

Before he could say a word, the door had closed upon her. There was a bustle without, a glimmer of coming lights upon the wall. In a few minutes the room was lighted up, the lady of the house in her presiding place—and Randall started with angry pride from the place where he stood, by the side of Nelly Panton, whose gloomy unrelieved figure suddenly stood out in bold relief upon the brightened wall.

Another time! Menie Laurie has not gone to ponder upon what this other conference shall be—she is not by her own window—she is not out of doors—she has gone to no such refuge. Where she never went before, into the heart of Miss Annie’s preparations—into the bustle of Miss Annie’s hospitality—shunning even Jenny, far more shunning her mother, and waiting only till the room is full enough, to give her a chance of escaping every familiar eye. This is the first device of Menie’s mazed, bewildered mind. These many days she has lived in hourly expectation of some such blow; but it stuns her when it comes.

Forlorn! forlorn! wondering if it is possible to hide this misery from every eye—pondering plans and schemes of concealment, trying to invent—do not wonder, it is a natural impulse—some generous lie. But Menie’s nature, more truthful than her will, fails in the effort. The time goes on, the lingering moments swell into an hour. Music is in her ears, and smiling faces glide before her and about her, till she feels this dreadful pressure at her heart no longer tolerable, and bursts away in a sudden passion, craving to be alone.

Another heart, restless by reason of a gnawing unhappiness, wanders out and in of these unlighted chambers—oftenest coming back to this one, where the treasures of its life rest night by night. This wandering shadow is not a graceful one—these pattering, hasty footsteps have nothing in them of the softened lingering tread of meditation. No, poor Jenny, little of sentiment or grace embellishes your melancholy—yet it is hard to find any poem so full of pathos as a desolate heart, even such a one as beats in your homely breast to-night.

Softly—the room is not vacant now, as it was when you last entered here. Some one stands by the window, stooping forward to look at the stars; and while you linger by the door, a low cry, half a sigh, half a moan, breaks the silence faintly—not the same voice which just now bore its part so well below;—not the same, for that voice came from the lips only—this is out of the heart.

“Bairn, you’re no weel—they’ve a’ wearied you,” said Jenny, stealing upon her in the darkness: “lie down and sleep; it’s nae matter for the like of me, but when you sigh, it breaks folk’s hearts.”

The familiar voice surprised the watcher into a sudden burst of childish tears. All the woman failed in this great trial. “Oh, Jenny, dinna tell my mother!” Menie Laurie was capable of no other thought.

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE PROTECTORATE IN TURKEY.

Before many weeks shall have gone over, perhaps while these sheets are passing through the press, we shall be able to judge of the accuracy of Lord Ellenborough’s opinion, as expressed in the House of Lords on the 6th February, that we are on the eve of one of the most formidable wars that ever this country was engaged in. Yes; within a short period from the present date much will be known; the Russian problem will be near its solution. The mystery of that force, which is said to be irresistible, and of those resources said to be inexhaustible, will be laid bare to the world. We shall know if all that we have been told of that vast power which has kept Europe in awe, is real; if the colossal idol which all have gazed on with a feeling that cannot be accurately described, does not stand on feet of clay. We confess that recent events have somewhat weakened the general faith in the overwhelming strength of Russia, and people begin to have some doubt whether the world has not been imposed upon. With her vast territorial extent, including nearly one-seventh part of the terrestrial portion of the globe and one twenty-seventh of its entire surface, and her varied population, comprising nearly one-ninth of the human race, she has spoken as if she could domineer over all Europe; and until the Pruth was passed, and the Danube became once more the theatre of battle, mankind seemed, if not entirely to admit, at least unwilling to dispute the claim. The combats of Oltenitza and Citale have, we suspect, disturbed that belief. Foreign and all but hostile flags have, within the last few weeks, floated almost within sight of Sebastopol; the squadrons of England and France have swept the hitherto unapproachable Euxine, from the Thracian Bosphorus to Batoun, and from Batoun back to Beicos Bay, and her fleet has not ventured to cross their path. Should Austria, listening to her evil genius, prove false to her own interests, we believe that the anticipations of the noble Lord referred to will be realised. Should she consult her own safety, and make common cause with those whose warlike preparations are not for aggression, but defence, we still incline to the opinion that hostilities may be limited to their original theatre—to be temporarily arrested, if not closed, by diplomatic intervention. The unsuccessful issue, at least to the date at which we write, of Count Orloff’s mission, gives us some hope that such will be the case; but a very short time will enable us to judge whether the advance of a corps d’armée to the Servian frontier is to aid Russian aggression, or to act, if necessary, against it.

An aggressive spirit has invariably marked the policy of Russia from the time of Peter the Great. Long harassed by internal enemies, and sometimes struggling for existence, she at length was freed from the dangers which had menaced her from abroad. By a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, the moment when her government became constituted, and began to enjoy its liberty of action, the neighbouring states, from the Baltic to the Caspian, entered into their period of weakness. The wild ambition and the mad enterprise of Charles XII. occasioned the decline of Sweden. The chivalrous monarch, the conqueror of Narva, the vanquished of Pultova, perished in the ditch of Frederickshall. Peter triumphed over his most formidable enemy; and, if he did not from that moment begin his aggression in the Ottoman territory, he was at all events no longer embarrassed by the dangerous diversions in the north. There still, however, remained an obstacle to his designs on those magnificent possessions of the Osmanlis, which have at all times possessed the fatal privilege of attracting the cupidity of the northern barbarian. There still remained Poland; but her anarchy, her internal convulsions, inseparable from her anomalous institutions, proved to be no less profitable to the Muscovite than the madness of the Scandinavian hero; and from the day of her dismemberment, Turkey became the permanent object of the ambition which, even as we write, threatens to convulse Europe.

It rarely happens that up to the close of a long war the original cause of quarrel continues the same. The first dissension disappears as war progresses, and, in the numerous complications which hostilities give rise to, the belligerents themselves either forget, or do not assign the same importance to the question which originally arrayed them in arms against each other. Though the war between Russia and Turkey has not yet a remote date, and though hostilities have not yet been formally declared between Russia and the Western Powers, notwithstanding the recall of their respective ambassadors, we still fear that the public is beginning to lose sight of the primary grounds of quarrel between the Czar and the Sultan, and which has led to the present state of things. The pretext put forward by Russia for intervention in the Ottoman empire is her desire to “protect” the ten millions of Christians of the Greek Church who are subjects of the Porte; these ten millions professing the same faith as the subjects of the Emperor of Russia, and living under the tyrannous rule of an infidel government. We admit the plausibility of that claim, and we are aware how easily the generous sympathies of a Christian people can be roused in favour of such a cause. We can appreciate the feelings of those who are persuaded that the moment has at length arrived when the Cross shall be planted on the mosques of Stamboul, and the orthodox believer take the place of the Mussulman. The claim to a Protectorate over ten millions of suffering Greeks in the European territory of the Sultan has been described as a cover, under which Russia aims at the possession of Constantinople, and, in fact, at the extension of her dominion from the Carpathian to the Danube, and from the Danube to the Sea of Marmora; but the Czar has solemnly and repeatedly declared that he had no such ambition, and that the sole motive which actuated him was to protect a population who professed the self-same religion as himself, he being the visible head of the Eastern Church, and recognised as such by the Eastern or Greek Christians; and the refusal of the Porte to grant that Protectorate is the primary cause of the war. Without examining whether any, or what conditions would justify a foreign government in imposing its protection on the subjects of an independent state, we may be permitted to say something of the nature of the religion whose champion the Czar professes to be; of the alleged homogeneity of the Eastern and Russian Churches, for on this the whole question turns; and of the advantages likely to accrue to the Greeks from Russian protection.

Among the many errors likely to be dissipated by the minute discussion which the Eastern question has undergone in the public press of this and other countries, not the least is that which has reference to the Emperor of Russia as the natural Protector of the Christian communities of the East. The hardihood with which this claim has been constantly put forward, and the silent acquiescence with which it seems to have been admitted by those who should know better, have imposed upon the world. Even now, they who resist the formal establishment of the influence of Russia over the internal affairs of Turkey, do so more by reason of the political consequences of that usurpation to the rest of Europe, than with the thought of disputing the abstract right of the head of the “Orthodox Faith” to the Protectorate he lays claim to. These pretensions, like many others we could mention, will not stand the test of examination. We do not learn, on any satisfactory evidence, that the Christian populations of the Ottoman empire have, during the last ten months, received with sympathy or encouragement the prospect of Russian protection; nor have they, so far as we know, exhibited any very earnest longing for the introduction of the knout as an element of government. The population of independent Greece may, and, we have no doubt, do, indulge in the harmless dream of a new Byzantine empire to be raised on the ruins of that which Mahomet II. won from their fathers; and they would doubtless rejoice that the domination of the Osmanlis were put an end to by Russia, or any other power, on condition of being their successors, as they were their predecessors. We believe that to this sort of revolution the aspirations of the Greeks are limited. But that people dispute the claim of the Czar to the Pontificate of the “Orthodox Faith,” and reject the idea of a temporal submission to him. The Greek Church, however, does not constitute the only Christian community of the Ottoman empire. Other congregations are to be found there, subjects also of the Porte, and who have not less claim to the protection of the various states of Europe, when protection is needed; but who still less desire that Russia should be their sole protector.

The points of difference between the Greek and Latin Churches are familiar to the world. But it may not be so generally known that, while the Russian branch of the former professes to preserve the Byzantine dogmas as its basis, the condition of its hierarchy, and the mechanism of its discipline, have become so altered with the lapse of years, that, at the present day, there exists no identity in this respect that would justify the head of the Russian Church in his pretensions to a temporal or spiritual protectorate over that church whose administrator and head is the Patriarch of Constantinople. Besides the difference of language, which is not without its importance—the one speaking Greek, the other Sclavonic—the Church of Constantinople still boasts that she has preserved her Patriarch, who is independent of secular interference in spirituals, while no such privilege belongs to Russia. A serious difference, too, exists between the Russian and Greek Churches (and one which would create new schisms and new convulsions) on the important question of baptism. Converts are admitted into the pale of the former from other communities, when they have been already baptized, without the obligation of again receiving the sacrament; while the Church of Constantinople makes the repetition of the sacrament indispensable in similar cases. The difference of church government is of the greatest importance: the Greeks have never admitted that the Holy Synod of St Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, represents in any sense the spiritual authority which he forcibly overthrew. The substitution of the chief of the state for it was never pretended to be otherwise than for political purposes, and as a means of realising the ambitious and aggressive designs of the Czar; and, while we do not deny the success it has met with, we believe that, since that event, the Russian clergy, as a body, has become the most ignorant and the most servile of any ecclesiastical corporation that now exists. The edict of Peter the Great admits the merely temporal object he had in view. “A spiritual authority,” it states, “which is represented by a corporation, or college, will never excite in the nation so much agitation and effervescence as a single chief of the ecclesiastical order. The lower classes of the people are incapable of comprehending the difference between the spiritual and secular authority. When they witness the extraordinary respect and honour which encompass a supreme pontiff, their admiration and wonder are so excited, that they look upon the chief of the Church as a second sovereign, whose dignity is equal, or even superior, to that of the monarch himself; and they are disposed to attach to the ecclesiastical rank a character of power superior to the other. Now, as it is incontestable that the common people indulge in such reflections, what, we ask, would be the case if the unjust disputes of an arbitrary clergy were added to light up a conflagration?” At the time this edict was issued, the Russian Church had already lost its patriarch. Full twenty years had elapsed since that event; and if ever the mitre of a prelate rivalled the diadem of an emperor, it was not in the reign of Peter that such an instance was to be found. No serious antagonism of the kind did or could exist in Russia; and the real object of the abolition of the patriarchate was, to combine with the absolutism of the sovereign the prestige of spiritual supremacy—that the Czar might not only say, with Louis XIV., “The State! I am the State;” but also, “The Church! I am the Church.”

The Holy Synod of St Petersburg is, it is true, composed of some of the highest dignitaries of the Russian Church, (taken from the monastic order); but these are appointed by the secular authority; are presided over by a layman who represents the Czar, and whose veto can suspend, or even annul, the most solemn resolutions of the Synod, even when unanimously adopted. The person who occupied for years, and who, we believe, still occupies the important post of President of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, which regulates and decides on all matters concerning the discipline and administration of the Church of Russia, is a general of cavalry—General Protuson! The body thus controlled by a military chief, may be increased in numbers, or reduced, according to the pleasure of the Czar; but those who ordinarily constitute that Ecclesiastical Board are the metropolitan of St Petersburg, the archbishops, a bishop, the Emperor’s confessor, an archimandrite (one degree lower than a bishop), the chaplain-general of the naval and military forces, and an arch-priest. But, whatever be the rank, the learning, or the piety of the Synod, one thing must be well understood by them;—they must never dare to express an opinion, or give utterance to a thought, in opposition to the Czar. The edicts of the Synod bear the imperial impress; they are invariably headed with this formula, “By the most high will, command, and conformably to the sublime wishes of his Majesty, &c. &c.” If it be alleged that the authority of the Holy Synod, with its bearded, booted, and sabred president, relates merely to the temporal administration of the Church, and that should a question of dogma arise recourse would be had to an Œcumenical Council, composed of all the churches of the Oriental rite, we reply that the superintendence of the Synod is not confined to points of mere administration or discipline. The canonisation of a saint, for instance, is not a matter of mere administration. When a subject is proposed for that distinction—and the Russian Hagiology is more scandalously filled than the Roman in the worst times of the Papacy—it is the Synod, that is, the Emperor, who decides on the claims to worship of the unknown candidate, whose remains may have been previously sanctified by the gross superstition of a barbarous peasantry. It is true that, in consequence of some notorious criminals having, not many years ago, been added to the list of orthodox saints, the Emperor, since the discovery of this, has manifested considerable repugnance to exercising this important part of his pontifical functions. He has, on recent occasions, refused his fiat of canonisation. A few years ago, some human bones were dug up on the banks of a stream in the government of Kazan, which, for some reason or other, were supposed to possess miraculous powers. A cunning speculator thought it a regular godsend; and petitions were forthwith sent to St Petersburg claiming divine honours for the unknown. The petitions were repeatedly rejected, but as often pressed on the Emperor. His Pontifical Majesty, who was assured, on high authority, that the claims of the present candidate were quite as well founded as those of many in the Hagiology, at last consented to issue his order of canonisation, but roundly swore that he would not grant another saintship as long as he lived. Yet it is not doubted that the opportunity offered by the present “holy war” of continuing the sacred list will be made use of unsparingly.

In other Churches the sacerdotal character is indelible; it is conferred by the ecclesiastical authority, and whether by the imposition of hands, or any other formality, cannot be destroyed even where the party is suspended from his sacred functions, or prohibited altogether from performing them. But neither suspension, nor degradation, can be considered as a matter of mere administration, or ordinary discipline; and the Emperor’s military representative has it in his power to decide on the degradation of any clergyman, and to completely efface the sacerdotal character acquired by ordination.

But, supposing the improbable event of an Œcumenical Council, in which the various Churches of the East should enter as component parts, in what manner, we may be permitted to ask, would the Russians claim to be represented? Would the Patriarch of Constantinople, or those of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, who are under his spiritual jurisdiction, and who pronounce the Muscovite Church as, if not heretical, at least schismatical, submit to be presided over by an aide-de-camp of the Czar; or would they recognise, in favour of his Majesty, the quality of impeccability, or infallibility, which they refuse to the head of the Latin Church?

With that complete dependence in spiritual as in temporal government on the chief of the State, and that debasing servitude of the Russian Church, may be compared with advantage the immunities and privileges of the Church of Constantinople even under the Mussulman government. Its Patriarch is the chief of the Greek communities, the president of their Synod, and the sovereign judge, without interference on the part of the Sultan’s authority, of all civil and religious matters relating to these communities which may be brought before it. The Patriarch, and the twelve metropolitans who, under his presidency, compose the Synod, or Grand Council of the Greek nation, are exempt from the Haratch, or personal impost. The imposts the Greek nation pays to the government are apportioned, not by the Mussulman authorities, but by its own archbishops and bishops. Those prelates are de officio members of the municipal councils, by the same right as the Turkish governors and muftis. The cadis and governors are bound to see to the execution of the decisions or judgments of the bishops, in all that relates to their dioceses respectively; and to enforce the payment of the contributions which constitute the ecclesiastical revenues. The clergy of the Greek Church receive from each family of their own communion an annual contribution, for the decent maintenance of public worship. They celebrate marriages, pronounce divorces, draw up wills, and from all these acts derive a considerable revenue; and, in certain cases, they are authorised to receive legacies bequeathed for pious objects. For every judgment pronounced by their tribunals, the Patriarch and metropolitans are entitled to a duty on the value of the property in litigation, of ten per cent. They have the power of sentencing to fine, to imprisonment, to corporal punishment, and to exile, independently of the spiritual power they possess, and which they not rarely exercise, of excommunication. The Patriarch and the prelates are paid a fixed contribution by the priests to whom the higher functions of the ministry are confided; and these, in turn, receive a proportional amount from the clergy under their immediate superintendence. The incomes of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, of the thirty-two archbishops, and the one hundred and forty bishops of the Ottoman empire, are paid out of these public contributions.

These immunities present, as we have said, a striking contrast with the condition of the orthodox Church in Russia. A Church so endowed, and with powers over the millions who belong to its communion, would naturally tempt an ambitious sovereign to become its master under the name of Protector. We discard completely any inquiry into the relative merits of the two communities; but we think it must be evident to any impartial mind, that the protectorate of the Czar, in his character of head of the orthodox faith, would make him the supreme ruler over the Ottoman empire in Europe.

We do not mean to allege that the immunities of the Christian population have been faithfully respected by the pashas, the cadis, or other agents of the Porte. We admit that most of what has been said of the intolerance and the corruption of Turkish officials is true, and that acts of oppression and cruelty have been perpetrated, which call for the severest reprehension, and require the interference of the Christian governments of Europe. But what we dispute is, the exclusive right of the Emperor of Russia to such intervention or to such protectorate.

The Church of Constantinople regards that of St Petersburg as schismatical, however nearly they approach in some respects; and so far from acknowledging a right of Protectorate, either in the Synod or the Emperor, she claims over her younger and erring sister all that superiority which is imparted by primogeniture. She would reject the claim of Russia to supremacy, and refuse to be administered by a servile Synod, with a nominee of the Czar for President. To submit to that Protectorate would be to admit foreign authority; that admission would involve the loss of her Patriarch, the evidence of her independence; and to this conviction may be traced the indifference of the Greek population to Russian influence, and the co-operation its clergy has given to the Porte.

But, scattered amid the immense population which are subject to the Sultan, may be found communions not belonging to the Confession of Photius as adopted by the Eastern Churches, and still less to the schismatical branch of it which is known as the Russian Church. These communions have no relation, affinity, or in fact anything whatever in common with the Synod of St Petersburg, or the Czar, whom they regard as a spiritual usurper, and the creed he professes as all but heretical. The Eutychian Armenians amount to no less than 2,400,000 persons, of whom nearly 80,000 are actually united to the Latin Church; but, whatever be the difference in dogma or ceremonial between them, they unite in opposition to the Synod of St Petersburg, and in submission to the Porte. There are moreover, upwards of a million of Roman Catholics and united Greeks—that is, Greeks who admit the supremacy of the Pope, while observing their own ceremonial, and who, it will not be questioned, have an equal right to protection, where protection is requisite. We can easily understand the interference of the European powers on behalf of those communities among whom are to be found persons of the same religious belief as themselves; but we cannot understand on what grounds an exclusive claim is put forward by a power which can have no sympathy with them, and which has destroyed the most important link that connected the Church of St Petersburg with that of the Patriarch. The possession of Constantinople by the Russians would, we are convinced, be followed by the destruction of the independence of the Eastern Church, the substitution of some Russian general or admiral, Prince Menschikoff perhaps, or Prince Gortschakoff, or whoever may happen to be the favourite of the day, for the venerable Patriarch; and by the most cruel persecution, not perhaps so much from religious intolerance, as for the same reasons assigned by Peter the Great for his abolition of the patriarchal dignity. The treatment of the united Greeks of the Russian empire, the Catholics of Poland and of the Muscovite provinces, is sufficient to show to those who, now at all events, live tranquilly under the rule of the Sultan, what they have to expect from the tolerance, the equity, or the mercy of such a Russian Protector. One-fourth of the Latin population ruled over by the Czar is made up of various religious sects and forms of worship—Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Mahometanism, Judaism, Lamaism, Schamaism, &c. In theory these different persuasions have a right to toleration; but in practice the case is different. The jealousy of the Czars, and their determination to reduce all that comes within their grasp to the same dead level of servitude, cannot endure a difference of any kind, religious or political; and pretexts are never wanting for persecutions, which have been compared to those of the worst days of the Roman emperors. The Baltic provinces, Lithuania and Poland, testify to the truth of these allegations. It appears clear, then, that the Christian communities of the Ottoman empire do not require the protection or domination of Russia, which would crush all alike.

We beg to point out another, and a material error into which the generality of people have fallen with reference to the Christian population of Turkey in Europe. The oppression of a Christian people by a misbelieving despotism is sufficient, of itself, to enlist the sympathies of a civilised and tolerant nation; and the fact of that oppression being practised by a small minority over a multitude composing three-fourths of the population of the Ottoman empire in Europe, is denounced as a monstrous anomaly; and the public indignation has been roused at the idea of scarcely three millions and a half of Turks grinding to the dust more than ten millions of Christians. We execrate religious oppression as much as any one can do; and whether the persecuted be numerous or few, one or one thousand, the crime is, in principle, the same. But we can show that, in the present instance, the aggravating circumstance of so great a difference in numbers does not exist. Those who speak of ten millions of Greek Christians being oppressed by three millions of Turks, forget, or may not be aware, that Moldavia and Wallachia, known as the Danubian Principalities, and now “protected” to the utmost by synods of another kind from that of St Petersburg—by military tribunals, and martial law—contain a population of above four millions, all of whom, with the exception of about fifty thousand Hungarian Catholics, are members of the Greek, though not of the Russo-Greek Church. Now, the Moldo-Wallachians are, in their domestic administration, independent of the Porte, the tie which attaches them to it—the payment of a comparatively small tribute—being of the slenderest kind. The Principalities are governed by their own princes or hospodars, formerly named for life, and, since the convention of 1849 between Russia and the Porte, for seven years; they are selected from among their own boyards, and receive investiture only from the Sultan. The Moldo-Wallachian army is recruited from the Moldo-Wallachian population, and is organised on the Russian plan, with Russian staff-officers. In neither of the three provinces is there a Turkish garrison, nor a Turkish authority of any kind, nor a single Turkish soldier; there is consequently no Turkish oppression or persecution. Servia, with a population of about a million, mostly Christians of the Greek communion, is equally independent of the Porte. The Turks have, it is true, a garrison in Belgrade, limited, by treaty with Austria, to a certain force; and Belgrade itself is the residence of a Pasha; but, beyond this trifling military occupation, the acknowledgment, as a matter of form, of the supremacy of the Sultan, and a small tribute in money, nothing else is left them. And, as in the case of the Danubian provinces, the internal government is entirely in the hands of the Servians themselves. The liberal institutions established in Servia by Prince Milosch Obrenowitsch, were not disturbed or interfered with by the Porte, to which they gave no umbrage, but were overthrown by Russian intrigue. In Servia no oppression, no persecution, is or can be practised by the Turks, who are powerless. Thus, we have about five millions of population to be deducted from the ten millions said to be mercilessly oppressed, outraged, and persecuted by Mussulman bigotry;—and also said to be eager for the religious Protectorate of Russia.

The Danubian Principalities were formerly governed by princes called waywodes, who were appointed by the Sultan. Those waywodes, it is true, exercised every species of oppression; but our readers will perhaps be surprised when they learn that these provincial tyrants were not Mussulmans: they were Christians, and Christians of the same communion as the people whom they ruled over; and they were selected because they were Christians, to administer Christian dependencies. The waywodes were Fanariote Greeks, and denizens of Constantinople. We do not deny that the Turkish government were bound to see that their provinces were properly administered; but they were powerless to repress these abuses, as they were powerless to repress the abuses in the Turkish Pashalicks.

The influence of Russia for a long time, and particularly for the last twenty-five years, has been paramount in the Danubian Principalities. We have shown that the Moldo-Wallachians, with a slight exception, prefer the Greek rite; but there is no evidence that they have any religious sympathies with the Church of which the Emperor of Russia is the head. The Moldo-Wallachians also regard the Russian dogmas as schismatic, and recognise only the religious supremacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In Paris there is a Russian chapel for the use of the Russian embassy, the residents of that nation, and the few subjects of Independent Greece who may think it proper, or useful, to attend Russian worship. The Moldo-Wallachians who also reside in the French capital have been often pressed to attend that chapel, with a view, no doubt, to establish in the eyes of the world a homogeneity which in reality does not exist. As a proof of the antipathy between the two communions, we quote a passage from a discourse delivered on the occasion of the opening of a temporary place of worship for the Moldo-Wallachians by the Archimandrite Suagoano. To those who still believe that there exists the bond of a common faith between the Church of Constantinople and that of St Petersburg, and that the Moldo-Wallachians, or the Greeks of the Ottoman empire, desire a Russian Protectorate, we recommend the perusal of the following, which was pronounced to a numerous congregation in the beginning of January last. “When we expressed a desire,” said the archimandrite, “to found a chapel of our own rite, we were told that a Russian chapel already existed in Paris, and we were asked why the Roumains (Moldo-Wallachians) do not frequent it? What! Roumains to frequent a Russian place of worship! Is it then forgotten that they can never enter its walls, and that the Wallachians who die in Paris, forbid, at their very last hour, that their bodies should be borne to a Muscovite chapel, and declare that the presence of a Russian priest would be an insult to their tomb. Whence comes this irreconcilable hatred? That hatred is perpetuated by the difference of language. The Russian tongue is Sclavonic; ours is Latin. Is there in fact a single Roumain who understands the language of the Muscovites? That hatred is just; for is not Russia our mortal enemy? Has she not closed up our schools, and debarred us from all instruction, in order to sink our people into the depths of barbarism, and to reduce them the more easily to servitude? On that hatred I pronounce a blessing; for the Russian Church is a schism which the Roumains reject; because the Russian Church has separated from the great Eastern Church; because the Russian Church does not recognise as its head the Patriarch of Constantinople; because it does not receive the Holy Unction of Byzantium; because it has constituted itself into a Synod of which the Czar is the despot; and because that Synod, in obedience to his orders, has changed its worship, has fabricated an unction which it terms holy, has suppressed or changed the fast days, and the Lents as established by our bishops; because it has canonised Sclavonians who are apocryphal saints, such as Vladimir, Olga, and so many others whose names are unknown to us; because the rite of Confession, which was instituted to ameliorate and save the penitent, has become, by the servility of the Muscovite clergy, an instrument for spies for the benefit of the Czar; in fine, because that Synod has violated the law, and that its reforms are arbitrary, and are made to further the objects of despotism. These acts of impiety being so notorious, and those truths so known, who shall now maintain that the Russian Church is not schismatic? Our Councils reject it; our canons forbid us to recognise it; our Church disavows it; and all who hold to the faith, and whom she recognises for her children, are bound to respect her decision, and to consider the Russian rite as a schismatic rite. Such are the motives which prevent the Roumains from attending the Russian chapel in Paris!” This address was received with enthusiasm by the assemblage. Letters of felicitation have been received by the archimandrite from his unhappy brethren of the Principalities, who are driven with the bayonet to the churches to chant Te Deum for Russian victories; and, impoverished as they are, the prelates and priests of Wallachia send their mites to Paris, to aid in the construction of a true Greek church.[^[2]]

It would be unjust to charge any religious community with the responsibility of the crimes or vices of individual members. The police offices and law courts in our own country occasionally disclose cases of moral depravity among members of the clerical profession; but these cases are few, we are happy to say, in comparison with the number of pious and learned men that compose the body. Nor do we pronounce a sweeping anathema on the Russo-Greek Church, because, with the exception of, as we are informed, a few of the superior dignitaries, no ecclesiastical corporation can produce more examples of gross ignorance and vicious habits. The degradation, the miserable condition of the mass of the Russian clergy, the pittance they receive from the State, being insufficient to keep body and soul together, and the almost total want of instruction, are, no doubt, the cause of this state of things. Marriage is a primary and indispensable condition for the priesthood; and the death of the wife, unless where a special exemption is accorded by the Synod or the Emperor, involves not merely the loss of his sacerdotal functions, but completely annuls the priestly character. The widowed priest returns to a lay condition from that moment; he may become a field labourer, or a valet; a quay porter, or a groom; a mechanic, or a soldier of the army of Caucasus; but his functions at the altar cease then, and for ever. The irregularities which in Russia, as elsewhere, prevailed in the monastic establishments, afforded a pretext to that rude reformer, Peter the Great, for abolishing the greater number of them. Their immense wealth, the gifts of the piety or the superstition of past ages, was a temptation which the inexorable despot could not resist; and having once acquired a taste for plunder, he appropriated not only monastic property, whilst abolishing monasteries, but filled the imperial treasury with the confiscated wealth of the secular clergy. What Peter left undone Catherine II. completed. During the reign of that Princess, whose own frailties might have taught her sympathy for human weaknesses, the whole of the remaining immovable property of the Church was seized. The correspondent and friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists filled with joy the hearts of the philosophers of Paris, by the appropriation of the resources of superstition, which she devoted to the realisation of her ambitious projects, or to recompense richly the services of her numerous favourites. Miserable pittances were allotted to the functionaries to whom that great wealth had belonged; but the distractions of love and war too often interfered with the payment of even those pittances. In Moscow, St Petersburg, and some other large cities, there are still, perhaps, a few benefices which afford a decent subsistence to the holders; but the stipends, even when augmented by the casuel, the chance and voluntary contribution paid by individuals for special masses, and certain small perquisites for funerals, &c., are insufficient to maintain, in anything approaching to comfort, a single, much less a married clergyman. There appears to be some difference of opinion among the best authorities on the exact stipends received by the higher clergy. The income of the senior metropolitan, the first dignitary of the orthodox church, including all sources of revenue, has never been estimated at more than from £600 to £700 per annum; that of the other metropolitans, at about £160; of an archbishop, £120; of a bishop, £80; of an archimandrite, the next in rank after a bishop, from £40 to £50. The wooden hut inhabited by a parish priest is not superior to that of the poorest of his parishioners, and the spot of land attached is cultivated by his own hands. The destitute condition of the inferior clergy has many times been brought under the notice of the government, and commissioners have been named to examine into the complaints, but without producing any result.

Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary that the clergy should become degraded in the eyes of the people, and be regarded, when not in the performance of their sacred functions, as objects of derision and contempt. With starvation at home, they are forced to seek in the houses of others what their own cannot supply; to satisfy the most pressing wants of nature, they submit to scoff and insult; and wherever feasting is going on, the priest is found an unbidden, and in most instances an unwelcome guest. This state of life leads to vagrant, idle, and dissolute habits, and it is declared, on what appears to be competent authority, that intemperance is the general characteristic of the lower clergy of Russia. Intemperance easily leads to other vices. According to official reports laid before the Synod, there were, in the single year 1836, 208 ecclesiastics degraded for infamous crimes, and 1985 for crimes or offences less grave. In that year the clergy comprised 102,456 members;—the number degraded and sentenced by the tribunals was therefore about two per cent. In 1839, the number of priests condemned by the tribunal was one out of twenty; and during the three years from 1836 to 1839 inclusive, the cases were 15,443, or one-sixth of the whole. A good deal of scandal, as well there might be, was occasioned by the reports of the Synod, and that body received a hint to be more discreet in exposing to the sneers of the heterodox the state of the orthodox church. It attempted, in a subsequent report, to explain away or palliate those disorders. “If such things,” says the Synodical Report of 1837, “cannot be entirely avoided by reason of the vast extent of the empire; of the want of seminaries, attendance at which has been only recently obligatory; of the little instruction received by the clergy, who in this respect are, as it were, in a state of infancy—so much so, that one old barbarism has not yet disappeared—nevertheless, the same clergy has exhibited rich examples of ancient piety and severity of morals.” Dr Pinkerton assures us that there are to be found among the families of the parochial clergy, a degree of culture and good manners peculiar to themselves. If we can rely on accounts more recent, and quite as good, these are but rare exceptions; and we fear that matters are pretty much the same as when Coxe was in Russia, and many of the parish priests were so ignorant as to be unable to read, even in their own language, the gospel they were commissioned to preach. M. de Haxthausen, whose testimony is entitled to great respect, says, “Ecclesiastics of merit are rare in the country. The greater number of the old popes are ignorant, brutal, without any instruction, and exclusively given up to their personal interests. In the performance of religious ceremonies, and in the dispensation of the sacraments, they have often no other object in view than to obtain presents. They have no care about the spiritual welfare of their flocks, and impart neither consolation nor instruction to them.” This ignorance, added to relaxed morals, accounts for their want of influence with the people, who are in the habit of treating them with the most contemptuous familiarity. The lower classes have special sarcasms and insulting proverbs applicable to their popes.

The higher ranks of the Russian clergy are principally, we believe exclusively, taken from the Tschernoi Duhovenstvo, or black clergy—monks who live in convents, and pass their lives in the practice of religious observances. Their superiority to the secular clergy is in all respects considerable, and whatever of instruction exists among the priesthood must be sought for in the retreats of the Basilians—the only order of monks, we believe, in Russia. They live, however, apart from the people; they have no direct intercourse with them; they are ignorant, or regardless, of their material or moral wants; and for them they feel no sympathy or affection. It must not be supposed that this superiority over the parochial or secular clergy, in station or morals, implies independence, separately or collectively. Their dependence on the government differs not in the least from that of the most ignorant village pope, or of the meanest serf. The high functionaries and dignitaries of the Church are, as we have already observed, taken from the monastic body; and as the Synod, or, which is all the same, the Emperor, can deprive an ecclesiastic of his functions, and degrade him to a lay condition, the metropolitan archbishop, or bishop, who cares to keep his mitre, has no other choice than to be the docile and zealous agent of the Autocrat. Since the time of Peter the Great, the whole body of the Russian clergy, from the highest to the lowest, have lain grovelling in the dust at the feet of every tyrant with the title of Czar or Czarina; and no other corporation in the world that we have any knowledge of, lay or clerical, equals it in hopeless servitude. Taught from their infancy to regard the Czar as the sole dispenser of good and evil, and firmly believing that every people on the earth trembles at his name, they scarcely make any distinction between him and the Deity; and in their public and private devotions their adoration is divided, perhaps not equally, between God and the Emperor. Those names are mingled together in the first lessons they learn, and their awe of the mortal ruler is more intense than their love for the Creator. Those ideas are transmitted by the priests to their children; and as the ranks of the clerical body are filled up almost exclusively from the families of the popes, ignorance and slavishness become as traditional and as hereditary as the office for which they are indispensable. The jealous fears of the Autocrat prevent grafting on the old stock, and he suffers no innovation of any kind to animate that torpid mass of bondage.

In alluding to the social degradation of the Russian clergy, it is but fair to admit that there are certain privileges attached to that body which are not accorded to the rest of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects. The Czar, out of his mere motion, and by special favour, the value of which is no doubt properly appreciated by the persons interested, has made a difference in the punishments inflicted on laymen and on clergymen. The Russian priest is not liable to be scourged to death by the knout; nor to be beaten to a jelly by a club, like the other members of the orthodox faith. Yet this privilege, we fear, is more specious than real. It does not survive the sacerdotal character; and as this may be suspended or annihilated at the pleasure of the Synod, or at the death of the popess, the exemption from the knout and the baten is an extremely uncertain privilege. The rule of the Russian Church, which makes the priestly character, indelible in other communions, to depend on so frail a tenure as the life of the partner, is most curious, and must perpetuate those vices which we have already noticed. The pastor who loses his wife must at once abandon his sacred functions, and set himself to some other pursuit, if he be still in the force of health and manhood; if he be aged or infirm, his lot is hard indeed. When the sacerdotal office is forfeited by some very grave offence, hard labour for life, or the distractions of a campaign in the Caucasus in one of the condemned regiments, with glimpses of the knout, form the hopeless future of the unhappy wretch who, but a few months before, was dispensing the sacraments at the altar. We may add, that the wives and widows of the priests, and their young children, enjoy, by a pious dispensation of the head of the Church of Russia, an exemption from the knout. The children, moreover, are exempt from the payment of imposts and military enlistment.

The sects that have started into life since the seventeenth century are comprised by the established or official church of Russia in the sweeping designation of roskolnicki, or schismatical; but the term is rejected with indignation by the parties to whom it is applied. They refuse, as a base and groundless calumny, the term schismatical, and claim for their own special qualification that of Starowertzi, or Ancient believers. They have also, no less than their predecessors, been the object of the severity of the government. Every opportunity has been laid hold of to crush them; and in the revolt of the Strelitz, not only were ruinous fines imposed on them, but many of their leaders were imprisoned, exiled, hanged, or poniarded, by order of Peter I. Severity being of no avail, milder measures were resorted to. A compromise was proposed in the reign of Catherine II., and after a show of examination, several of their less objectionable doctrines were allowed to pass muster as orthodox, and the variations in their liturgy received, on condition that their priests submitted to receive orders from the prelates of the Synod. As an additional inducement, they were promised that ordination should be conferred according to the sectarian, and not the established rite; that their usages should be respected, and no interference take place in the education of their clergy. But so great was the animosity that no concession could win, no kindness soften them, and the experiment of gaining over this stray flock to the fold failed totally. At an earlier period Starowertzi convents were erected in the deep recesses of the forests in the northern provinces of Russia. These convents were soon demolished, and their prelates and abbots banished, or otherwise removed. Yet for many years their religious necessities were supplied by priests ordained by the Starowertzi bishops; and, since their death, pastors are recruited from the many seceders from the orthodox church. In spite of the difficulties the sect has to contend with, and the incessant vigilance and rigour of the authorities, it possesses a mysterious influence, which is said to be felt even in the councils of the empire. It is believed that no important reform is ever attempted, no change in the internal administration of the country takes effect, until the opinions of the chiefs of this formidable party are ascertained, and the impression likely to be made upon the mass of their followers. In all social relations, in all matters connected with everyday life and business, it is affirmed that the Starowertzi are trustworthy and honourable. They are not habitually mendacious or deceitful, like the more civilised classes of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects; and the more closely the lower orders resemble the Starowertzi the better they are. In education they are also superior to the mass of the Russians. Among them there are few who have not learned to read and write, though even in the acquisition of this elementary instruction their religious prejudices prevail. They make use only of the Sclavonic dialect, the modern Russian being regarded as heretical. They are familiar with the Bible, and commit some portions of it to memory, which they recite with what the French would term onction; neither are they despicable opponents to encounter on the field of theological controversy. One of the principal seats of Starowertzism was in the midst of those vast and dismal swamps which extend towards the Frozen Ocean, on the European side of the great Oural chain, and on the banks of the river which discharges its waters into the Caspian; in the government of Saratoff, more than four hundred miles to the south-east of Moscow; and among the Cossack tribes that wander near the Volga and the Terek, close to the military line which extends in front of the Caucasus, are to be found numerous disciples. But for many years the great centre of Starowertzism was on the Irghis. On its banks four great monasteries once rose, and their inmates found a never-failing supply from the deserters of the army, and the fugitives from the wilderness and the knout of Siberia. Priests of the official church, excited by fanaticism or degraded for their vices, and monks expelled from their convents, were received with open arms as welcome converts. Their numbers increased so rapidly as to give serious alarm to the governors, and in 1838 a razzia was proclaimed against these religious fortresses. Strong bodies of troops were sent against them; the convents were pillaged, and then given to the flames, and the inmates were either sent to the army, or driven into the impenetrable wilds of Siberia. The doctrines of the sect have chiefly spread in the rural districts, and among the lower classes of tradesmen. In the convents for females (for Starowertzism has also its nuns), the only occupation consists in multiplying copies of their liturgy, for no religious work is allowed to be printed. The Starowertzi divide the inhabitants of the earth into three great classes—the Slaves, by them termed Slovaise, or Speakers; the Nemtzi, or Mutes, whom they regard as little above heathens; and all the Orientals are, without distinction, called by the general designation of Mussulmans. The rite of baptism is performed by immersion—they admit the validity of no other; but in no case do they recognise it when administered by the orthodox Russian, and all converts must be rebaptised before admission. It is a curious fact, almost incredible, were we not assured of its exactness on good authority, that though their spiritual directors belong mostly to the scum of the Russian clergy—degraded priests or monks—the Starowertzi are the least immoral of all the sects into which the orthodox church has been broken up.

The sect which more closely approximates in fundamentals to the established church is that which terms itself the Blagosslowenni (the Blessed); and so slight is the difference between them, that in the official nomenclature they are designated as the Jedinowertzi, or the Uniform Believers. In essential points of doctrine the difference is not great, in some almost imperceptible, though the ceremonial varies notably from that which is recognised by the Holy Synod. They make the sign of the cross in a different manner from the orthodox. They denounce the shaving the beard as a sin of the greatest enormity. Some other peculiarities are worth noting: they repeat the name of Jesus in three distinct parts; walk in procession in their places of worship from right to left, and, taking their ground on the text of Scripture which says that that which enters at the mouth is not sinful, but that which issues from it, they denounce the practice of smoking as a crime. There is another point, which we fear would be unpopular among our fellow-subjects in Ireland: the Blessed attribute a diabolical origin to that useful root the potato, and, what we believe has been strenuously maintained, though in a different spirit, by some Irish antiquarian, they pretend to prove that the potato was actually the fruit with which Eve was easily seduced by the wily serpent, and which our first mother persuaded her confiding husband to partake of. This sect reprobates the reforms attempted by Peter I., and they are not to this day reconciled to the Emperor Nicholas for not wearing the costume, and bearing the title of the Belvi Tzar, or the White Czar.

The Starrobriadtzi, or the Observers of the ancient rite, are an offshoot of the Starowertzi, but are still more exclusive and intolerant, and much more hostile to the official church. The scum of the orthodox priesthood are sure to find a welcome with them, and the more degraded they are the better. Every candidate for admission must formally recant his previous heresy—for such they term the orthodox dogma.

The most numerous of all these sects is one which is termed the Bespopertchine (Without priests). They not only reject ordination as conferred by the orthodox bishop, but dispense altogether with clergy as a distinct body. The sect is subdivided into several fractions, each known by the name of its founder, such as the Philipperes, the Theodosians, the Abakounians, &c., &c. They anticipate a general conversion of the reprobates,—that is, all who are not of their sect, whether Christian or Infidel—by reason or by force; and believe that the time is at hand when the errors of Nicon, the Luther of the Russo-Greek church, will be solemnly abjured by Russia; that a regenerated order of ecclesiastical superintendents will come from the East, when their own sect, the only true church of God, will reign triumphant wherever the name of Russia is heard. The reign of Antichrist began with Nicon; it still subsists, and will endure until the advent of the Lord, who is to smite the unbelievers, and scatter the darkness that envelopes the earth. Though a regularly ordained priesthood is not recognised, yet a sort of religious organisation is admitted by the Philippon section of it. Instead of the popes of the orthodox church, they have a class of men whom they term Stariki, or Elders, and who are selected from a number of candidates. The ceremony of installation consists in a few words of prayer, and the accolade in the presence of the congregation. The elders, who are distinguished by a particular costume, have no regular stipend, but subsist entirely on alms. In case of misconduct, they are not only deprived of their office, but expelled altogether from the community. The Philippons retain the rite of confession; but the avowal of their sins is made, not to a living man, but to an image, which acts by way of conductor to the pardon which is sent down from heaven. An elder, however, stands by as a witness of the confession and forgiveness; and while the long story of offences, mortal or venial, is unfolded, his duty consists in crying out at regular intervals, “May your sins be forgiven!” The simple exclamation, in the presence of three witnesses, that a man takes a woman to wife, is the only ceremony required for marriage, nor is it indispensable that the elder should be present. The portion of the Bible translated by Saint Cyril is the only part of it they retain. Their doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost is the same as that of the Greek Church. They believe that the souls of the dead are sunk in a profound lethargy from the moment they quit the body until the general judgment, to which they will be summoned by the archangel’s trumpet. On that awful day the souls of the wicked only are to resume their bodies, and pass into eternal fire. Their fasts, which comprise a third of the year, are of the strictest. They rigorously abstain from malt liquors; and though, on certain specified occasions, wine is permitted, yet the moderate draught must be administered from the hand of one of their own sect. In the matter of oaths they are quite as rigid as the Society of Friends. They are distinguished by no family name, but only by that received at their birth. Their differences are all settled before a tribunal composed of an elder and two or three of the sect, who must, however, be fathers of families; and from this decision there is seldom an appeal. Between husband and wife a complete community of goods exists, and the surviving partner inherits all.

The Theodosians do not much differ from the Philippons. Their women, however, have a separate place of worship from the men, where the service is celebrated by ancient maidens, called Christova Neviestu, or the Betrothed of Christ. The Theodosians have a large hospital in the city of Moscow, with two magnificent churches. The former affords accommodation for more than a thousand patients. Communism has penetrated into all these sects. Among the subdivisions of the great sect of the Starowertzi marriage is not regarded as a bond which lasts for life, or which can only be severed by divorce. A man and woman agree to live together for one or more years, as it may suit their convenience. They separate on the expiry of their contract, and become free to receive a similar offer from any one else, while the issue of such temporary marriages belongs to the public, without any special notice from the parents.

The Douchobertzi, or Wrestlers in Spirit, are, like the Malakani, or Drinkers of Milk, divided into seven fractions, and are remarkable for their hostility to the official church. Their doctrines consist of the leading points of the old heresies, and they constitute a theological system more developed, though not more uniform, than any of the previous sects. Some of their doctrines are so vague, and so inconsistent, that what is regarded as fundamental in one district, or even in one village, is considered as corrupt or as unimportant in another not perhaps a league off. Different from the Starowertzi, who strictly adhere to traditional observances, they are incessantly making innovations in the fundamental doctrines of the orthodox church. The Starowertzi are particularly scrupulous about form and ceremonial; the Douchobertzi, on the contrary, reject all forms of worship, and spiritualise the church. The influence of these spiritualists is not yet felt to any considerable extent in Russia. Though offshoots of the Malakani, or Milk Drinkers, these two sects hate each other most cordially.

The use of milk preparations during Lent, and on days of rigid abstinence, explains the name by which the Malakani are known to their adversaries, but the designation by which they describe themselves is Istinie Christiane, or True Christians. They are of modern date, and first became known in the middle of the last century, when they appeared in the government of Tambon. They soon spread into neighbouring governments, and their most successful proselytism has been among the peasantry. Three large villages in the Taurida are entirely peopled by this sect. Like the Latin Church, they admit seven sacraments, but they receive them only in spirit. As with them the “church” is merely a spiritual assemblage of believers, they have no temples for the celebration of divine worship. Images they do not tolerate, and swearing on any account, or in any form, is severely interdicted. One of their leading doctrines is, that with them alone Jesus Christ will reign on the earth. A precursor of that spiritual millennium, who assumed to be the prophet Elias, appeared in 1833. He exhorted the Malakani to prepare, by rigid fasting and mortification, for the advent of the Saviour, which would take place in two years. A brother fanatic or accomplice, under the biblical appellation of Enoch, went on a similar mission, to announce the tidings to the barbarians of western Europe. When the duty of the original impostor, whose real name was Beloireor, was accomplished, he announced his approaching return to heaven in a chariot. Thousands of the Malakani assembled to witness the ascent of the prophet, who presented himself to the kneeling multitude clothed in flowing robes of white and blue, and seated in a car drawn by white steeds. The new Elias rose, spread out his arms, and waved them up and down, as a bird his wings when preparing to mount into the sky. He bounded from his chariot, but instead of soaring gracefully to the clouds, fell heavily and awkwardly in the mire, and killed a woman who stood by clinging to the wheels. The multitude had fasted, prayed, wept, and watched, and their imaginations had become excited to the highest pitch. Enraged at the disappointment, or convinced of the imposture of the prophet, they rose against him, and would have slain him, had he not contrived to escape the first burst of their fury. He was afterwards caught, and, with more judgment than could be expected from them, they contented themselves with handing him over to the tribunals to pay the penalties of imposture. He endured a long imprisonment; but neither his disgrace nor the fear of the knout prevented him from predicting to the last day of his existence the near advent of the millennium. His persistence conciliated former, and obtained him new disciples. They became more numerous after his death; but the scene of their labours was changed; they were forced to emigrate to Georgia, where they still carry on their propagandism.

It is a curious fact that, when Napoleon invaded Russia, the great captain was regarded by the Malakani as “the Lion of the Valley of Josaphat,” whose mission was to overthrow the “false emperor,” and restore to power the “White Czar.” A numerous deputation from the government of Tambon, preceded by heralds clothed in white, was sent forth to meet him. Their privilege did not protect them. Napoleon, or his marshals, had no great sympathy with fanatics; they were considered as prisoners of war: one only escaped, the others were never heard of again.

The Douchobertzi are the illuminati of Russia, and the term applied to them by the common people is Yarmacon, or Free Masons. Though this sect really dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, it affects to trace its origin to a very remote period, claiming as its founders the youths who were flung into the furnace by order of Nebuchadnezzar. The corruption and fall of the soul of man, long previous to the creation of the material world, forms the basis of their faith. The “Son of God” means the universal spirit of humanity; and the assumption of the form of man was in order that each individual member of mankind might also possess the attributes of the Son of God. The Douchobertzi admit that in the person of Christ the world has been saved; but the Christ whose death is recorded in Holy Writ was not the real Redeemer; it was not He who made atonement for man; that belongs only to the ideal Christ. Forms of worship, and, of course, temples, are rejected by them. Each member of the sect is himself a temple, where the “Eternal” loves to be glorified, and man is at once temple, priest, and victim; or, in other words, the heart is the altar, the will the offering, and the spirit of man the pontiff. They are all equal in the sight of God, and they admit the supremacy of no creature on the earth. The more rigorous of the Douchobertzi carry their severity of morals to an extreme, and with them the most innocent and most necessary recreations are heinous crimes. But the majority pass to the other extreme, and strange stories are told of the orgies practised in secret under the guise of devotional exercises. The Douchobertzi, like other fanatics, expect the triumph of their own sect over the world. Even now the fulness of time is nigh at hand; and when the awful moment comes, they will rise in their accumulated and resistless force, and spread terror over the earth. Their chief will be the only potentate who shall reign in unbounded power, and all mankind will gather round the footsteps of his throne, bow their heads to the dust, veil their eyes before the glory that flashes fiercely from his brow, and proclaim his boundless power and his reign without end. But this triumph must be preceded by a season of trial and sorrow. Their Czar must previously undertake a mighty struggle against all misbelievers. It will be terrible, but brief; the Douchobertzi shall, of course, win the victory, and, in the person of their chief, mount the throne of the world to reign for ever and for ever! The Russian authorities have repeatedly attempted to crush a sect whose tendencies are so menacing; but the task is difficult against a body who have no acknowledged leader, no priesthood, and no place of worship. Among the few puritans who take no pains to conceal their doctrines, they have to a certain extent succeeded. One of the most eminent of them was a man named Kaponstin, who was reverenced as a divinity. In consequence of some dissensions with the Malakani, to whom he originally belonged, he separated from them, preached new and still more extravagant doctrines. Numerous proselytes quitted with him their old villages, and took up their abode in the Taurida. There they founded nine villages, which a few years ago contained a population of nine thousand souls, professing the more rigid doctrines of the Douchobertzi. Kaponstin had been a sub-officer in the imperial guard, was of studious habits, and of the most scrupulous exactness in the performance of his military duties. His fanaticism came on him all of a sudden. One day, in the guardroom, he stood up among the soldiers, whom he had previously won over to his doctrine, and summoned them to fall down on the ground and adore him, as he was the Christ—a command which most of them instantly obeyed. Kaponstin was degraded from his rank, and committed to prison; but on its being found that he was totally unfitted for a military life, he was released, and he at once resumed his preachings. Kaponstin taught that the Divine soul of Christ had, from the beginning of the world, dwelt in a succession of men, who alone were, each in turn, the true heads of the church. As mankind degenerated, and became unworthy of the sacred deposit, false popes usurped the dignity and attributes of the Son of God. The Douchobertzi were now the sole and true guardians of the treasure which especially dwelt in him as the incarnation of the sect. His followers believed him at his word, and fell down and worshipped him. Kaponstin again attracted the attention of the authorities, and was again thrown into prison. A large sum of money, the produce of the contributions of hundreds of thousands, was offered as a bribe to the gaoler—and when did a Russian functionary refuse a bribe? He regained his liberty, fled to the forests, was once more hunted down, but baffled the vengeance of his pursuers. He shut himself up in a cavern in the remote districts of the Taurida, and under the vigilant eye of his followers, by none of whom his secret was revealed, passed there the remaining years of his life, preaching, believed, and adored. His retreat the police did not or would not discover; when he died is known only to a few. The mantle of Kaponstin was assumed by his son, who proved himself unworthy of wearing it. At the age of fifteen he was received by his father’s disciples as his true successor, and the Christ of the Douchobertzi. At his installation the grand council of the sect assembled, and the first resolution adopted was that ten concubines should be allotted to their youthful prophet, Hilarion Kaponstin. He did not merit the reverence paid him, nor did he inherit a particle of the intellect or the courage of his father. From the day of his installation he gave himself up to the most debasing sensuality. The father had instituted a council, composed of forty members, twelve of whom represented the apostles. This council took advantage of the incapacity of its boy-prophet, and from being merely a legislative, assumed the functions of an executive power, which it exercised most tyrannically. It soon became the scourge of the community. As the members of the council were only divine by reflection, it was no crime to shake off its usurped authority, and the sect rose in rebellion. The tyrants were seized, tried in secret conclave, and sentence of death pronounced against them, for usurpation and cruelty. A lonely isle near the mouth of the Malotschua was selected for the execution, and there they suffered the last penalty. There, also, during the two years which followed that event, more than five hundred members of the sect were put to death, suspected of having revealed the secrets of its orgies. They were drowned in the stream, or perished by the halter or the knife; at all events, they disappeared, and were never more heard of. These doings, even in that remote district, could not long be kept secret. The police bestirred themselves; the isle where so many deeds of murder had taken place was visited, and closely searched; and numerous bodies that had apparently been buried alive, carcasses strangled or hacked to pieces, and mutilated limbs, were found in abundance. Some years were spent in the inquiry, and the issue was, that at the close of 1839 the government ordered the complete expulsion of the Douchobertzi of the Malotschua. Many withered and perished amid the snows of the Caucasus. Their nominal chief, Hilarion Kaponstin, died in 1841, at Achaltisk, in Georgia, leaving behind him two infants, in whom the Douchobertzi still hope to see their Christ revived.

Those we have sketched are but a few specimens of the long catalogue of sects who disavow the dogmas of the Church of St Petersburg, and denounce its Holy Synod. There are others that work in obscurity, but with perseverance, and gradually, but steadily, sap its foundations. Most of those doctrines lead to the complete disruption of all moral bonds, and the dissolution of society; and sensuality, plunder, and cruelty seem to pervade the gloomy reveries in which the Russian peasant indulges. We have reason to believe that the stirring of that dangerous spirit which aims at the overthrow of all authority, has given serious uneasiness to the Russian government; and that the conspiracies which have more than once been found to exist in the army, are traceable to that dark and stern fanaticism! Education, of course, is the remedy for the evil. In Russia, however, the maxim of Bacon is reversed, and there ignorance, not knowledge, is believed to be power. If education once teach the Russian serf to regard the Czar as less than the Deity, how long would that despotism endure?

Such, then, is the “orthodoxy” which the Czar would extend over southern Europe, whose doctrines and whose unity he would impose on Greece; and such the religious protectorate with which the Greek Christians, the subjects of the Porte, are menaced. Those pretensions have no foundation, no justification, in civil or religious law; they are not based on the laws of any civilised community. The orthodox Church of Russia is but the erring offspring of the Church of Constantinople; and she is branded on the forehead by that Church with schism. It was from the Church of Constantinople that, down to the fifteenth century, she received her patriarchs, who never advanced pretensions to equality with the Byzantine pontiffs. What they might have attained to, it is now useless to inquire, for the link which bound that Church to her parent was, as we have shown, severed for ever by Peter the Great. By the same right as the Czar, the sovereign of France might claim a protectorate over the Catholics of Belgium or Northern Germany; or call upon the Autocrat himself to render an account of the Poles, or others of his Catholic subjects. Russia has no claim to eminence in piety, in learning, in antiquity, in superior morality, or in extent of privilege. Her Church has been for years forced to maintain a separate struggle against sects more or less hostile to her Synod, and to her temporal authority. Each prelate, each dignitary of her establishment, is, with respect to the Czar, precisely what the meanest serf is to his lord, and the mass of her priests are sunk in ignorance. The question of the Holy Shrines is invariably the mask assumed by Russia to cover her designs in the East. The right on which the nations of the West claim to protect the Cross from the Infidel dates from the Crusades. Among the hosts which the enthusiasm and eloquence of the Hermit sent forth to do battle with the Mussulman, and to liberate from the cruel yoke of the misbelievers the land which witnessed the mystery of the Redemption, the name of Russia is not to be found. These barbarians had then their necks bowed under the rule of the Tartars; they were then crowding to the tents of the Khans, kissing the hoofs of their masters’ horses, or presenting, as slaves, the draught of mares’ milk, too happy if permitted to lick from the dust the drops that fell from the bowl.

Perhaps we ought to offer an apology for the length of this paper. But we were desirous of showing, first, that the homogeneity of the Russian and Eastern Churches, on which the Czar lays his strongest claim to the protectorate he demands, has no foundation in fact, and that the Christian communities on which he would impose his protection deny the orthodoxy of his faith, and regard him as the usurper of spiritual power; second, that the doctrines of the Synod of St Petersburg are denounced by Russians themselves, and the establishment opposed by a formidable sectarianism, and that that Church is itself rather in a condition to require protection against its internal enemies than to afford it to others; third, that even supposing the Russian and Eastern Churches to be identical, the protectorate in question would, in consequence of the temporal privileges preserved by the Patriarch of Constantinople, as already noticed, be the positive introduction of a dangerous foreign influence in the domestic administration of the Ottoman empire, and that the Sultan would thereby become the vassal of the Czar; fourth, that as there are numerous Christian subjects of the Sublime Porte who do not belong to the Greek communion, their protector, where protection is needed, cannot be the Czar; and, fifth, that the semi-independent Moldo-Wallachians also disavow the doctrines of the Russian Church, and reject her protection.

We do not pretend to speak with enthusiasm of the Ottomans, but it must be admitted, that what has occurred since the commencement of the present quarrel is not to their disadvantage. Unlike the Czar, the Sultan has made no appeal to the mere fanaticism of his people, nor has he attempted to arouse the fierceness of religious hatred against the Giaour, which he might have done. His appeal has been to their feeling of nationality—such an appeal as every government would make in similar circumstances. Nor are the events which have taken place on the Danube likely to inspire the world with contempt for Ottoman valour and patriotism. If left alone to struggle with their powerful adversary, the Turks must succumb; but in the present campaign they have, at all events, proved themselves to be good soldiers.

The momentous question of a general war is, at the moment we write these lines, trembling in the balance; and the decision is with Austria. But whatever be the phase into which the great Eastern question is about to enter, we have one decided opinion on the policy of Russia. It is thus explained, not by a hostile or a foreign writer, but by a Russian historian, the eloquent Karamsin, in the following brief sentences: “The object and the character of our military policy has invariably been, to seek to be at peace with everybody, and to make conquests without war; always keeping ourselves on the defensive, placing no faith in the friendship of those whose interests do not accord with our own, and losing no opportunity of injuring them, without ostensibly breaking our treaties with them.”

THE TWO ARNOLDS.[^[3]]

Nature, it would seem, has fortunately provided against the simultaneous development of kindred genius and intellect amongst human families. Such, at least, is the general rule, and it is a beneficent one. For if a sudden frenzy were to seize the whole clans of Brown, or Smith, or Campbell, or Thomson—were the divine afflatus breathed at once upon the host, more numerous than that of Sennacherib, of the inheritors of the above names, undoubtedly such a confusion would ensue as has not been witnessed since the day of the downfall of Babel. Passing over three of these great divisions of the human race, as located in the British Islands, let us confine our illustration simply to the sons of Diarmid. Without estimating the number of Campbells who are scattered over the face of the earth, we have reason to believe that in Argyllshire alone there are fifty thousand of that name. Out of each fifty, at least twenty are Colins. If, then, a poetical epidemic, only half as contagious as the measles, were to visit our western county, we should behold the spectacle of a thousand Colin Campbells rushing frantically, and with a far cry towards Lochow, and simultaneously twangling on the clairshach. Fame, in the form of a Druidess, might announce, from the summit of Kilchurn Castle, the name of the one competitor who was entitled to the wreath; but twice five hundred Colins would press forward at the call, and the question of poetic superiority could only be decided by the dirk. Fortunately, as we have already observed, nature provides against such a contingency. Glancing over the cosmopolitan directory, she usually takes care that no two living bards shall bear precisely the same appellation; and if, sometimes, she seems to permit an unusual monopoly of some kind of talent in the same family or sept, we almost never find that the baptismal appellations correspond. Thus, in the days of James I., there were no less than three poetical Fletchers—John, the dramatist; Phineas, the author of the Purple Island; and Giles, the brother of Phineas. Also there were two Beaumonts—Francis, the ally of the greater Fletcher, and Sir John, his brother. In our own time, the poetic mantle seems to have fallen extensively on the shoulders of the Tennysons. Besides Prince Alfred, whom we all honour and admire, and to whom more than three-fourths of our young versifiers pay homage by slavishly imitating his style, there was Charles, whose volume, published about the same time as the firstling of his brother, was deemed by competent judges to exhibit remarkable promise; and within the last few months, another Tennyson—Frederick—has bounded like a grasshopper into the ring, and is now piping away as clearly as any cicala. And here, side by side, amidst the mass of minstrelsy which cumbers our table, lie two volumes, on the title-page of each of which is inscribed the creditable name of Arnold.

We have not for a considerable time held much communing with the rising race of poets, and we shall at once proceed to state the reason why. Even as thousands of astronomers are nightly sweeping the heavens with their telescopes, in the hope of discovering some new star or wandering comet, so of late years have shoals of small critics been watching for the advent of some grand poetical genius. These gentlemen, who could not, if their lives depended on it, elaborate a single stanza, have a kind of insane idea that they may win immortal fame by being the first to perceive and hail the appearance of the coming bard. Accordingly, scarce a week elapses without a shout being raised at the birth of a thin octavo. “Apollodorus, or the Seraph of Gehenna, a Dramatic Mystery, by John Tunks,” appears; and we are straightway told, on the authority of Mr Guffaw, the celebrated critic, that:—“It is a work more colossal in its mould than the undefined structures of the now mouldering Persepolis. Tunks may not, like Byron, possess the hypochondriacal brilliancy of a blasted firework, or pour forth his floods of radiant spume with the intensity of an artificial volcano. He does not pretend to the spontaneous combustion of our young friend Gander Rednag (who, by the way, has omitted to send us his last volume), though we almost think that he possesses a diviner share of the poet’s ennobling lunacy. He does not dive so sheer as the author of Festus into the bosom of far unintelligibility, plummet-deep beyond the range of comprehension, or the shuddering gaze of the immortals. He may not be endowed with the naked eagle-eye of Gideon Stoupie, the bard of Kirriemuir, whose works we last week noticed, and whose grand alcoholic enthusiasm shouts ha, ha, to the mutchkin, as loudly as the call of the trumpet that summons Behemoth from his lair. He may not, like the young Mactavish, to whose rising talent we have also borne testimony, be able to swathe his real meaning in the Titanic obscurity of the parti-coloured Ossianic mysticism. He may not, like Shakespeare, &c. &c.” And then, having occupied many columns in telling us whom Mr Tunks does not resemble, the gifted Guffaw concludes by an assurance that Tunks is Tunks, and that his genius is at this moment flaring over the universe, like the meteor-standard of the Andes!

Desirous, from the bottom of our heart, to do all proper justice to Tunks, we lay down this furious eulogium, and turn to the volume. We find, as we had anticipated, that poor Tunks is quite guiltless of having written a single line of what can, by any stretch of conscience, be denominated poetry—that the passages which Guffaw describes as being so ineffably grand, are either sheer nonsense or exaggerated conceits—and that a very excellent young man, who might have gained a competency by following his paternal trade, is in imminent peril of being rendered an idiot for life by the folly of an unscrupulous scribbler. Would it be right, under those circumstances, to tell Tunks our mind, and explain to him the vanity of his ways? If we were to do so, the poor lad would probably not believe us; for he has drunk to the dregs the poisoned chalice of Guffaw, and is ready, like another Homer, to beg for bread and make minstrelsy through innumerable cities. If we cannot hope to reclaim him, it would be useless cruelty to hurt his feelings, especially as Tunks is doing no harm to any one beyond himself. So we regard him much as one regards a butterfly towards the close of autumn, with the wish that the season of his enjoyment might be prolonged, but with the certainty that the long nights and frosty evenings are drawing nigh. Little, indeed, do the tribe of the Guffaws care for the mischief they are doing.

Or take another case. Let us suppose the appearance on the literary stage of a young man really endowed with poetic sensibility—one whose powers are yet little developed, but who certainly gives promise, conditionally on proper culture, of attaining decided eminence. Before we know anything about him, he is somehow or other committed to the grasp of the Guffaws. They do not praise—they idolise him. All the instances of youthful genius are dragged forth to be debased at his feet. He is told, in as many words, that Pope was a goose, Chatterton a charlatan, Kirke White a weakling, and Keats a driveller, compared with him,—at any rate, that the early effusions of those poets are not fit to be spoken of in the same breath with what he has written at a similar age. There are no bounds to the credulity of a poet of one-and-twenty. He accepts the laudation of those sons of Issachar as gospel, and, consequently, is rather surprised that a louder blast has not been blown through the trumpet of fame. His eulogists are so far from admitting that he has any faults, that they hold him up as a pattern, thereby exciting his vanity to such an extent that an honest exposition of his faults would appear to him a gross and malignant outrage. It is really very difficult to know what to do in such cases. On the one hand, it is a pity, without an effort, to allow a likely lad to be flyblown and spoiled by the buzzing blue-bottles of literature; on the other, it is impossible to avoid seeing that the mischief has been so far done, that any remedy likely to be effectual must cause serious pain. To tie up a Guffaw to the stake, and to inflict upon him condign punishment—a resolution which we intend to carry into effect some fine morning—would be far less painful to us than the task or duty of wounding the sensitiveness of a youth who may possibly be destined to be a poet.

Setting, for the present, the Guffaws, or literary Choctaws, aside, we have a word to say to a very different class of critics, or rather commentators; and we desire to do this in the utmost spirit of kindness. Whether Aristotle, who could no more have perpetrated a poem than have performed the leger-de-main of the Wizard of the North, was justified in writing his “Poetics,” we cannot exactly say. More than one of his treatises upon subjects with which he hardly could have been practically conversant, are still quoted in the schools; but we suspect that his authority—paramount, almost, during the middle ages, because there were then no other guides, and because he found his way into Western Europe chiefly through the medium of the Moors—is fast waning, and in matters of taste ought not now to be implicitly received. Aristotle, however, was a great man, far greater than Dr Johnson. The latter compiled a Dictionary; Aristotle, by his own efforts, aspired to make, and did make, a sort of Encyclopædia. But he composed several of his treatises, not because he conceived that he was the person best qualified to be the exponent of the subject, but because no one really qualified had attempted before him to expound it. We have seen, and perused with real sorrow, a recent treatise upon “Poetics,” which we cannot do otherwise, conscientiously, than condemn. The author is no doubt entitled to praise on account of his metaphysical ability, which we devoutly trust he may be able to turn to some useful purpose; but as to poetry, its forms, development, machinery, or application, he is really as ignorant as a horse. It is perfectly frightful to see the calmness with which one of these young students of metaphysics sits down to explain the principles of poetry, and the self-satisfied air with which he enunciates the results of his wonderful discoveries. Far be it from us, when “our young men dream dreams,” to rouse them rudely from their slumber; but we hold it good service to give them a friendly shake when we observe them writhing under the pressure of Ephialtes.

It is one thing to descant upon poetry, and another to compose it. After long meditation on the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that very little benefit indeed is to be derived from the perusal of treatises, and that the only proper studies for a young poet are the book of nature, and the works of the greatest masters. To that opinion, we are glad to observe, one of our Arnolds seriously inclines. Matthew—whom we shall take up first, because he is an old acquaintance—has written an elaborate preface, in which he complains of the bewildering tone of the criticism of the present day. He remarks with perfect justice, that the ceaseless babbling about art has done an incalculable deal of harm, by drawing the attention of young composers from the study and contemplation of their subjects, and leading them to squander their powers upon isolated passages. There is much truth in the observations contained in the following extract, albeit it is in direct opposition to the daily practice of the Guffaws:—

“We can hardly, at the present day, understand what Menander meant when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy, that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along. We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages; not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions,—to the language about the action, not to the action itself. I verily think that the majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet; they think the term a commonplace of metaphysical criticism. They will permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of his neglecting to gratify these there is little danger; he needs rather to be warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone; he needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellencies to develop themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his personal peculiarities—most fortunate when he most entirely succeeds in effacing himself, and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in nature.”

It would be well for the literature of the age if sound criticism of this description were more common. Mr Arnold is undoubtedly correct in holding that the first duty of the poet, after selecting his subject, is to take pains to fashion it symmetrically, and that any kind of ornament which tends to divert the attention from the subject is positively injurious to the poem. This view, however, is a great deal too refined for the comprehension of the Guffaws. They show you a hideous misshapen image, with diamonds for eyes, rubies stuck into the nostrils, and pearls inserted in place of teeth, and ask you to admire it! Admire what? Not the image certainly, for anything more clumsy and absurd it is impossible to imagine: if it is meant that we are to admire the jewels, we are ready to do so, as soon as they are properly disposed, and made the ornaments of a stately figure. The necklace which would beseem the bosom of Juno, and send lustre even to the queen of the immortals, cannot give anything but additional hideousness to the wrinkled folds of an Erichtho. Mr Arnold, who has inherited his father’s admiration for ancient literature, makes out the best case we remember to have seen, in vindication of the Greek drama. It is as follows:—

“For what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so limited a range of subjects? Because there are so few actions which unite in themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of excellence; and it was not thought that on any but an excellent subject could an excellent poem be constructed. A few actions, therefore, eminently adapted for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive possession of the Greek tragic stage; their significance appeared inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems, perpetually offered to the genius of every fresh poet. This too is the reason of what appears to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy; of the triviality with which we often reproach the remarks of the chorus, where it takes place in the dialogue; that the action itself, the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmæon, was to stand the central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no accessories were for a moment to distract the spectator’s attention from this; that the tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded, stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator’s mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the Poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke the drama proceeded; the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the rivetted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty.”

This is indeed criticism worth listening to, and the style of it is not less admirable than the matter. We do not, however, entirely go along with Mr Arnold in his decided preference for the antique drama. We never arise from the study of Greek tragedy without the impression that it is deficient in richness and flexibility. This, we think, is to be attributed in a great measure to its form, which is not natural; the members of the chorus being neither altogether actors, nor altogether disinterested spectators. They are interlopers between the audience and the actors, and detract from the interest of the latter by requiring and receiving explanation. That at least is our feeling after the perusal of Greek tragedy, but it by no means follows that the same impression was produced on the minds of a Greek audience. We agree with Professor Blackie that the grand works of the Attic three are to be regarded rather as operas than as tragedies, according to our modern acceptance of the term—that they were framed purposely for musical accompaniment and effect—and that, failing these, it is impossible for us to form an adequate estimate of their power in exciting sympathy or awakening emotion. “The man,” says the translator of Æschylus, “must certainly be strangely blinded by early classical prepossessions, if he fails to feel that, as a whole, a Greek tragedy, when set against the English composition of the same name, is exceedingly narrow in its conception, meagre in its furniture, monotonous in its character, unskilful in its execution, and not seldom feeble in its effect.” Most true—and for this reason, that the writer of English tragedy seeks no other vehicle of thought or idea than language; so that, except for scenic display, his play will give as much pleasure to, and produce nearly the same effect upon the mind, if read silently in the closet, as if brought upon the stage. It is not necessary, in order to appreciate Shakespeare, that we should have seen his dramas represented in the pomp and magnificence of the theatre. Whereas the Greek artist had to deal with the more complex material of words and music. Take away the latter, and you frustrate half his design; because he did not mean the words of the chorus to be studied as poems—he meant them to be heard with the full accompaniment of music. Those who are in the habit of frequenting the modern opera will readily understand our position. What can be finer than Norma, as represented on the stage, when Grisi or Caradori assumes the part of the prophetess, imprecates vengeance on the perfidious Pollio, and implores the forgiveness of the father? Higher tragedy than that can hardly be conceived—the effect upon the audience of the combined music and action is as powerful as though they had been listening to the greatest masterpiece of Shakespeare. But take the libretto of Norma—divest yourself of the musical association—study it in the closet—and we answer for it that no exercise of imagination on your part will enable you to endure it. And why is this? Simply because it was constructed as an opera, and because, by withdrawing the music, you destroy more than half the charm.

In dramatic compositions, where language alone can be employed as the vehicle of thought or sentiment, it is absolutely necessary that the expression should be bolder, the style more vivid, and the range of illustration larger than is requisite in the other kind where music is brought in aid of language, or rather where language is employed to assist the force of music. It seems therefore preposterous and contrary to reason, to expect that we should take as much delight or derive as high intellectual gratification from the bare perusal of a Greek skeleton play, as must have been felt by an Attic audience who witnessed its representation as a gorgeous national opera. It is even a greater artistical mistake to suppose that we should copy it implicitly. Alfieri indeed did so; but it is impossible to read one of his plays without experiencing a most chilly sensation. We entirely concur with what Mr Arnold has said regarding the importance of subject, symmetry, and design; but we differ from him as to the propriety of adhering to the nakedness of the Greeks. Let him compare—so far as that can be done with due allowance for the difference being narrative and dramatic poetry—the style of his early favourite Homer with that of Sophocles, and we think he will understand our meaning.

We confess to have been so much pleased with Mr Matthew Arnold’s preface, that we turned to his poetical performances with no slight degree of expectation. As we have already hinted, he is an old acquaintance, for we reviewed him in the Magazine some four or five years ago, when he appeared in the suspicious character of a Strayed Reveller. We then pointed out what we thought to be his faults, warned him as strongly as we could against his imitative tendencies, and, we hope, did justice to the genius which he evidently possessed and occasionally exhibited. Certainly we did not indulge in ecstasies; but we believed him capable of producing, through culture and study, something greatly superior to his early attempts, and we did not hesitate to say so. Since then, we are given to understand that he has published another volume of poems, which it was not our fortune to see; and the present is, with some additions, a collection of those poems which he considers to be his best, and which were contained in his earlier volumes. It is a hopeful sign of Mr M. Arnold that he is amenable to criticism. More than one of the poems which we noticed as absolutely bad, are omitted from the present collection; and therefore we are entitled to believe that, on mature consideration, he has assented to the propriety of our judgment. This is a good feature; for poets generally seem possessed with a tenfold share of stubbornness, and, like mothers, who always lavish their affections upon the most rickety of their offspring, are prompt to defend their worst effusions with almost superhuman pertinacity. It is because we feel a decided interest in Mr Arnold’s ultimate success that we again approach his poetry. We cannot conscientiously congratulate him on a present triumph—we cannot even say that he has improved upon his earliest effort; for the “Forsaken Merman,” which we noticed years ago, in terms of high commendation, is still the one gem of his collection; but we think that he may improve, and must improve, if he will only abandon all imitation, whether ancient or modern—identify himself with his situation—trust to natural impulse—and give art-theories to the winds. What he has to do is to follow the example of Menander, as quoted by himself. Let him, by all manner of means, be deliberate in the formation of his plan—let him fix what he is going to do, before he does anything—but let him not forget (what we fear he now forgets or does not know), that, in execution, the artist must beat on his own anvil, sweat at his own fire, and ply at his own forge. The poem of a master should bear as distinct and unmistakable marks of the hand that produced it, as a picture of Titian or Velasquez, a statue of Phidias, an altar-rail of Quentin Matsys, or a goblet of Benvenuto Cellini. Heaven only knows how many thousands of imitators have followed in the wake of these and other great original artists; but who cares for the imitations? No one, unless they are so good that they can be palmed off on purchasers under cover of the mighty names. Admit them to be imitations, and the merest tyro will hesitate to bid for them. It does seem to us that men of letters are slower than any other description of artists in perceiving the baneful effects of imitation. They do not appear to see this obvious truth, that, unless they can transcend their model, they are deliberately courting an inferior place. If they can transcend it, then of course they have won the day, but it must be by departing from, not by adhering to, the peculiarities of the model.

In so far as Mr Matthew Arnold is concerned, we do not intend these remarks to be applicable to his Greek choric imitations. We spoke of these before, and are willing to take them as classical experiments. Goethe, in his old age, was rather fond of this kind of amusement; and it came gracefully from the octogenarian, who, having won his fame as a Teuton, might in his latter days be allowed to indulge in any Hellenic exercitations. And as old age is privileged, so is extreme youth. The young student, with his head and imagination full of Sophocles and classical theories, even though he may push the latter beyond the verge of extravagance, is always an interesting object to the more experienced man of letters. Enthusiasm is never to be despised. It is the sign of a high and ardent spirit, and ought not to be met with the drenching operation of the bucket. But Mr M. Arnold is now considerably past his teens. He is before the public for the third time, and he still parades these Greek imitations, as if he were confident of their worth and power as English poems. So be it. We have nothing in regard to them to add to what we said before, except that a much higher artist than Mr M. Arnold must appear, before the British public will be convinced that such hobbling and unrhymed versification ought to supersede our own beautifully intoned and indigenous system of prosody.

Of the new poems contained in this collection, the most ambitious is entitled “Sohrab and Rustum, an Episode.” We like episodes, because they have the advantage of being short, and, moreover, if well constructed, are as symmetrical as poems of greater pretension. The story is a simple one, and yet contains in itself the elements of power. Sohrab, the son of the great Persian hero Rustum, by a princess of Koordistan, has never seen his father, but, like Telemachus, is in search of him. Being with the Tartar army during a campaign against the Persians, he conceives the idea of challenging the bravest champion of that host to single combat, in the hope that, if he is victor, Rustum may hear of and acknowledge him. If slain—

“Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin.”

The challenge is given; but Sohrab was already known far and wide as a handy lad with the scimitar, and a powerful hurler of the spear; therefore the Persians, with their usual want of pluck, were exceedingly unwilling to encounter him. We subjoin Mr Arnold’s account of the panic:—

“But as a troop of pedlars from Cabool

Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,

That vast sky-neighbouring mountain of milk snow,

Winding so high, that, as they mount, they pass

Long flocks of travelling birds dead on the snow,

Choked by the air; and scarce can they themselves

Slake their parch’d throats with sugar’d mulberries—

In single file they move, and stop their breath,

For fear they should dislodge the o’erhanging snows—

So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.

And to Ferood his brother chiefs come up

To counsel: Gudurz and Zoarrah came,

And Feraburz, who rul’d the Persian host

Second, and was the uncle of the king.”

Not one of these fellows with the jaw-breaking names could muster courage to come forth, like Goliath, against the dauntless David of the Tartars. Gudurz, however, bethinks him that Rustum had arrived in the camp the evening before, and of course he was the very man for the occasion; so he visits him immediately after breakfast. All heroes feed, or ought to feed, voraciously; and judging from appearances, Rustum was qualified to compete at a game of knife and fork with Achilles.

“And Gudurz entered Rustum’s tent, and found

Rustum: his morning meal was done, but still

The table stood beside him, charged with food;

A side of roasted sheep, and cakes of bread,

And dark-green melons.”

Possibly from the effects of repletion, Rustum for some time refuses to accept the championship, but is at last taunted into action and takes the field, but determines to fight unknown. We ought to mention here that Rustum, so far from suspecting his relationship with Sohrab, is unaware that he has any son at all. We must draw on Mr Arnold’s verse for the exordium to the combat.

“Like some young cypress, tall, and dark, and straight,

Which in a queen’s secluded garden throws

Its slight dark shadow on the moonlit turf,

By midnight, to a bubbling fountain’s sound—

So slender Sohrab seem’d, so softly rear’d.

And a deep pity entered Rustum’s soul

As he beheld him coming; and he stood,

And beckoned to him with his hand, and said:—

‘O thou young man, the air of heaven is soft,

And warm, and pleasant; but the grave is cold.

Heaven’s air is better than the dead cold grave.

Behold me: I am vast, and clad in iron,

And tried; and I have stood on many a field

Of blood, and I have fought with many a foe:

Never was that field lost, or that foe saved.

O Sohrab, wherefore wilt thou rush on death?

Be govern’d: quit the Tartar host, and come

To Irun; and be as my son to me,

And fight beneath my banner till I die.

There are no youths in Irun brave as thou.’

“So he spoke mildly: Sohrab heard his voice,

The mighty voice of Rustum; and he saw

His giant figure planted on the sand,

Sole, like some single tower, which a chief

Has builded on the waste in former years

Against the robbers; and he saw that head,

Streak’d with its first grey hairs: hope fill’d his soul;

And he ran forwards, and embrac’d his knees,

And clasp’d his hand within his own and said:—

‘Oh, by thy father’s head! by thine own soul!

Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?’

“But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth,