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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXII.       APRIL, 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.

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXII. APRIL, 1854. Vol. LXXV.

THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA.

After the enjoyment of nearly forty years of peace, during which two generations of men, whose fate it was to live in more troublous times, have passed to their account, we are entering upon a war which will inevitably tax all the energies of the country to conduct it to a successful and honourable conclusion. The enemy against whom our arms are directed is not one whose prowess and power can with safety be slighted. A colossal empire possessed of vast resources, wielded by a sovereign of indomitable character and vast ambition, who has for years been collecting strength for a gigantic effort to sweep away every barrier by which the realisation of that ambition has been impeded, is our opponent. The issue to him is most momentous. It is to decide whether he is hereafter to be a controlling power in Europe and Asia, to rule absolutely in the Baltic, to hold the keys of the Euxine and the Mediterranean, and to push his conquests eastwards, until he clutches Hindostan,—or to be driven back and confined within the limits of the original empire which Peter the Great bequeathed to his successors. Such a struggle will not be conducted by Russia, without calling forth all the vigour of her arm. An issue so far beyond her contemplation as defeat and extinction as a first-rate power in the world, will not be yielded until she has drained her last resources, and exhausted every available means of defence and procrastination. Russia possesses too in this, the climax of her fate and testing-point in her aggressive career, a mighty source of strength in the enthusiasm of her people, whom she has taught to regard the question at issue between herself and Europe as a religious one, and the war into which she has entered as a crusade against “the infidel” and his abettors. The result may be seen in the personal popularity which the Emperor enjoys, and the ready devotion with which his efforts are aided by the Christian portion of the population of his empire.

On the other hand, Great Britain enters into the struggle with every recognised prestige of success in her favour. She has, as her active ally, the greatest military nation in the world, whose soldiers and sailors are about, for the first time for many centuries, to fight side by side against a common enemy. Little as we are disposed to decry the strength of that navy which Russia, by her wonderful energy, has succeeded in creating during the past few years, it would be absurd to compare it with the magnificent fleets which England and France combined have at present floating in the waters of the Black Sea, and about to sail for the Baltic. A comparison of our monetary resources with those of our opponent would be still more absurd. Another feature in our position as a maritime country at present, is the vast facilities which we possess, by means of our mercantile ocean steamers, of transporting any required number of troops to the locality where their services are required, with a rapidity and comfort never dreamt of during the last European war. A veteran of our Peninsular Campaigns, witnessing the splendid accommodation provided in such noble vessels as the Oriental Company’s steamer Himalaya at Southampton, the Cunard Company’s steamer Cambria at Kingston Harbour, Dublin, and the same Company’s steamer Niagara at Liverpool, and acquainted with the fact that each of these vessels was capable of disembarking their freight of armed men within five or six days of their departure hence in any port of the Mediterranean, must have been struck by the marked difference between such conveyances and the old troop ships employed in former days. Moreover, there is scarcely a limit to the extent of this new element of our power as a military nation. We enter, too, upon the approaching struggle with Russia backed by the enthusiastic support of all classes of our population. It is not regarded with us as a religious war, or one into the incentives to which religion enters at all. It is scarcely regarded by the mass as a war of interest. With that sordid motive we cannot as a nation be reproached. It is felt only that an unjust aggression has been committed by a powerful state upon a weak one; that the tyranny of the act has been aggravated by the gross breaches of faith, the glaring hypocrisy, amounting to blasphemy, and the unparalleled atrocity, by which it has been followed up; and that we should prove ourselves recreant, and devoid of all manhood, were we to stand tamely by and see a gallant people, differing though they do from us in religion, overwhelmed by brute force, and exterminated from the face of Europe by such butcheries as Russia has shown us, in the memorable example of Sinope, that she is not ashamed to perpetrate in the face of the civilised world, and in the name of Christianity.

There is one consideration, however, connected with the present warlike temper of our population, which cannot with safety be permitted to escape remark. We have already stated that two generations of men have passed away since this country was in actual war with an enemy in Europe. The bulk of the present race of Englishmen have never experienced the inconveniences, and occasional privations, which attend upon war even in countries, like ours, which are happily free from the affliction of having an armed enemy to combat upon its own soil. We believe most firmly that we are not a degenerate people. We see evidence of this in the ready zeal with which large numbers of our hardy and enterprising youth are everywhere flocking to be enrolled under the flag of their country, both for land and sea service. We trust that this feeling will endure, and that we shall be found willing to bear up cheerfully under any temporary sacrifices which we shall be called upon to make; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that a great change has taken place in our social condition, in our traditionary instincts, in our pursuits, and in our institutions, during the forty years of peace which we have enjoyed. We have become more essentially a manufacturing and commercial people. A larger number of our population than formerly are dependent for their daily bread upon the profitable employment of capital in our foreign trade. The more extensive adaptation of machinery to manufacturing processes of every kind has led to the aggregation of large masses of our population in particular districts; and such masses, ignorant as we have unfortunately allowed them to grow up, are notoriously subject to the incendiary persuasions of unprincipled and bad men, and have been sedulously taught that cheapness of all the necessaries of life can only be secured by unrestricted communication with foreign countries. Moreover, we have had a large infusion of the democratic element into our constitution. Our House of Commons no longer represents the yeomanry and the property classes of the country; but, instead, must obey the dictates of the shopkeeping and artisan classes of our large towns. It is no longer the same body of educated English gentlemen, whose enduring patriotism, during the last war, stood firm against the clamours of the mobs of London, Manchester, and other large centres of population, and turned a deaf ear to the persuasions of faction within its own walls; but a mixed assemblage of a totally opposite, or, at all events, a materially changed character, so far as regards a considerable number of its members. We have in it now a larger proportion of the capitalist class—men suspected of being rather more sensitively alive to a rise or fall in the prices of funds, stock, railway shares, &c., than to any gain or loss of national honour; more wealthy manufacturers, who would be disposed to regard the loss of a fleet as a minor calamity, compared with the loss of a profitable market for their cottons, woollens, or hardwares; and, lastly, more Irish representatives of the Maynooth priesthood, ready to sell their country, or themselves, for a concession to Rome, or a Government appointment. The honourable member for the West Riding—Mr Cobden—showed a thorough appreciation of the character and position of a portion of the House, and of his own constituents, when he wound up his speech on the adjourned debate upon the question of our relations with Russia and Turkey, on the 20th ult., with these words, which deserve to be remembered:—“He would take upon himself all the unpopularity of opposing this war; and, more than that, he would not give six months’ purchase for the popularity of those who advocated it on its present basis.”

Under such circumstances it is material to examine what is the amount of interruption to the commerce of the country, which may be assumed as likely to occur, as the result of a state of war with Russia. What, in other words, is the amount and the nature of the pressure, to which the masses of our population may be called upon to submit, to prepare them for the purposes of those persons—happily few in number at present—whose voice is for peace at any sacrifice of the national honour, and any sacrifice of the sacred duties of humanity? We shall perhaps be excused if we examine first the nature of the pressure which is relied upon by such persons; and we cannot exemplify this better than by a quotation from the speech already referred to by the same Mr Cobden—their first volunteer champion in the expected agitation. The honourable gentleman remarked:—

“He could not ignore the arguments by which they were called upon by honourable and right honourable gentlemen to enter into a war with Russia. The first argument was one which had been a dozen times repeated, relative to the comparative value of the trade of the two countries. We were to go to war to prevent Russia from possessing countries from which she would exclude our commerce, as she did from her own territory. That argument was repeated by a noble lord, who told the House how insignificant our trade with Russia was, compared with that with Turkey. Now, that opinion was erroneous as well as dangerous, for we had no pecuniary interest in going to war. Our interests were all on the other side, as he was prepared to show. The official returns did not give him the means of measuring the extent of our exports to Russia, but he had applied to some of the most eminent merchants in the City, and he confessed he had been astonished by the extent of our trade with Russia. He used to be told that our exports to Russia amounted to less than £2,000,000. Now, Russia was still under the Protectionist delusion, which had also prevailed in this country in his recollection. (A laugh.) Russia still kept up her protective duties upon her manufactures, but he would tell the House what we imported from Russia, and they might depend on it that whatever we imported we paid for. (Hear, hear.) He had estimated the imports from Russia as of much greater value than most people thought, and he was under the impression that they might amount to from £5,000,000 to £6,000,000 per annum. Now, here was a calculation of our imports from Russia which he had obtained from sources that might be relied upon,—

Now, last year our imports from Russia were larger than usual, and another house, taking an average year, had made them £11,000,000. In that calculation, the imports of wheat were taken at £2,000,000 instead of £4,000,000, and that made the difference. He was also credibly informed that Russian produce to the value of about £1,000,000 came down the Vistula to the Prussian ports of the Baltic, and was shipped thence to this country; so that our imports from Russia averaged about £12,000,000 sterling per annum, and included among them articles of primary importance to our manufactures. How was machinery to work, and how were locomotives to travel, without tallow to grease their wheels? (A laugh.) Look, too, at the imports of linseed to the value of £1,300,000. No persons were more interested than honourable gentlemen opposite in the reduction of the price of the food of cattle. Then take the articles of flax and hemp. There were districts in the West Riding which would suffer very serious injury and great distress if we should go to war and cut off our intercourse with Russia. (Hear.) Even with regard to the article of Russian iron, which entered into consumption at Sheffield, he was told it would be hardly possible to manufacture some of the finer descriptions of cutlery if the supply of Russian iron were interfered with.”

We shall not here take the trouble of criticising Mr Cobden’s figures, but take them as they stand, although they are exaggerated enough. His argument is obviously, that we must submit to any amount of aggression which Russia may choose to make upon neutral countries, and even upon our own Indian possessions, because that country supplies us yearly with thirteen millions’ worth of raw materials and food! The same was the humiliating position which the men of Tyre and Sidon, as recorded in Scripture, occupied towards Herod, when “they came of one accord to him, and having made Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, their friend, desired peace, because their country was nourished by the king’s country.” How, asks Mr Cobden, is machinery to work without tallow to grease the wheels? We are to have an anti-war cry from the farmers for the lack of Russian linseed; the West Riding of Yorkshire is to be stirred up into insurrection by the want of flax and hemp; and the fine cutlers of Sheffield cannot get on without the £70,000 worth of iron which they import from Russia! The main reliance of the peace-at-any-price party, we have no doubt, rests upon the probability of high prices of food, and their hope of producing in the minds of the masses the impression that the cause of those high prices is mainly the interruption of our usual imports of grain from the Russian ports of the Baltic and the Black Sea.

It is rather singular that it should not have struck so astute a man as Mr Cobden, that Russia is very likely to feel the loss of so excellent a customer as England appears to have been to her, quite as much as we are likely to feel the want of her tallow, her flax and hemp, her linseed, or even her wheat. The vendor of an article is generally the party who feels most aggrieved when his stock is permitted to accumulate upon his shelves. The Russian landowners cannot very conveniently dispense with the annual thirteen millions sterling which they draw from this country. Mr Cobden may depend upon it that, if we want it, a portion of their growth of staple articles will find its way to this country, through intermediate channels, although Russian ships no longer gain the advantages derived from its transport. The fact, however, of our absolute dependence upon Russia for these articles is too palpably a bugbear, either of Mr Cobden’s own creation, or palmed upon him by his friends, the “eminent merchants of the City,” to be worthy of serious notice, did it not betray the direction in which we are to look for the agitation, by which that gentleman and his friends hope to paralyse the hands of Government during the coming crisis of the country.

In the effort to form a correct estimate of the extent of interruption to our commerce to be anticipated from the existence of a state of war between this country and Russia, we must have, in the first place, reliable facts to depend upon, instead of the loose statements of Russian merchants, who are, as a class, so peculiarly connected with her as almost to be liable to the imputation of having Russian rather than British interests nearest to their hearts. We have a right also to look at the fact that, so far at least as present appearances go, Russia is likely to be isolated on every side during the approaching struggle, her principal seaports, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be commanded by the united British and French fleets; whilst that produce, by the withholding of which she could doubtless for a time, and to a certain extent, inconvenience our manufacturers and consumers, may find its way to us either direct from Russian ports in neutral vessels, or through those neighbouring countries which are likely to occupy a neutral position in the quarrel. We have also to bear in mind that, with respect to many of the articles which we have lately been taking so largely from Russia, other sources of supply are open to us. It is remarkable to observe the effect produced by even temporarily enhanced prices in this country in extending the area on every side from which foreign produce reaches us. A few shillings per quarter on wheat, for example, will attract it from the far west States of America, from which otherwise it would never have come, owing to the inability of the grower to afford the extra cost of transport. All these considerations have to be borne in mind; and although it will perhaps have to be conceded that somewhat enhanced prices may have to be paid for some of the articles with which Russia at present supplies us, we think we shall be enabled to show that the enhancement is not at all likely to be such as to amount to a calamity, or cause serious pressure upon our people.

Before proceeding further, it may be desirable to explain the mode in which our trade with Russia, both import and export, is carried on. Russia is, commercially, a poor country. The description of her given by M‘Culloch, in an early edition of his Dictionary of Commerce, published two-and-twenty years ago, is as appropriate and correct as if it had been written yesterday, notwithstanding the vast territorial aggrandisement which has taken place in the interim. Her nobles and great landowners hold their property burdened by the pressure of many mortgages; and they are utterly unable to bring their produce to market, or to raise their crops at all, without the advances of European capitalists. These consist chiefly of a few English Houses, who have branch establishments at St Petersburg, Riga, and Memel on the Baltic, and Odessa on the Black Sea. The mode of operation is the following. About the month of October the cultivators and factors from the interior visit those ports, and receive advances on the produce and crops to be delivered by them ready for shipment at the opening of the navigation; and it is stated that the engagements made between these parties and British capitalists have rarely been broken. This process of drawing advances goes on until May, by which month there are large stocks ready for shipment at all the ports, the winter in many districts being the most favourable for their transport. The import trade is carried on in a similar manner by foreign capital; long credits, in many instances extending to twelve months, being given to the factors in the interior. A well-known statistical writer, the editor of the Economist, Mr John Wilson, in his publication of the 25th ult., says, upon the subject of the amount of British capital thus embarked in Russia at the period when her battalions crossed the Pruth: “The most accurate calculations which we have been able to make, with the assistance of persons largely engaged in the trade, shows that at that moment the British capital in Russia, and advanced to Russian subjects, was at least £7,000,000, including the sums for which Houses in this country were under acceptance to Russia.” We can perfectly believe this to have been the fact, under such a system of trading as that which we have described. We can believe, too, that a considerable number of British ships and sailors were at the same time in Russian ports, and would, in case we had treated the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Russian troops as a casus belli, very probably have been laid under embargo. We could sympathise with those “persons largely engaged in the trade,” in rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider it decent in a gentleman holding an important office in the Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity, which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however, as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to ourselves to discuss.

Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for reasons which we shall hereafter explain.

We have taken for the above estimate the prices which prevailed in the first six months of 1852, after which they were raised above an average by peculiar circumstances. The year selected, moreover, was one of larger imports than usual of many articles. For example, our imports of Russian grain in 1852 amounted, in round numbers, to £2,235,300 sterling, against only £952,924 in 1850. Yet we have less than nine millions as the amount of this vaunted import trade from Russia, the interruption of which is to be fraught with such serious consequences to our internal peace, and to the “popularity” of the liberal representatives of our large towns.

But fortunately for the country, and rather mal apropos for those who would fain convert any diminution of our supplies of produce from Russia into the ground of an anti-war agitation, we have succeeded in procuring from that country during the past year supplies unprecedented in quantity. The following have been our imports from Russia in 1853, as compared with the previous year:—

If mercantile opinions are at all to be relied upon, these extra supplies ought to have a tendency to bring down prices, which the prospect of war has enhanced beyond what existing circumstances seem to warrant, even presuming that we had no other dependence than upon Russia for the articles with which she has heretofore supplied us. For example, we have paid during the past year, if we take present prices, for our imports of wheat alone from Russia, about £6,470,000 sterling, whereas, at the prices of the early part of 1852, we should have paid for the same quantity of wheat just half the money. And at the present moment, and since war has been regarded as inevitable, we have had a downward tendency in all our principal markets. It has been discovered that we hold more home-grown wheat than was anticipated; and, with a favourable seed-time and a propitious spring, hopes are entertained that we shall not in the present year be so dependent upon the foreigner as we have been during that which has passed. Tallow also is an article for which we have been lately paying the extravagant prices of 62s. to 63s. per cwt. In the early part of 1852, the article was worth about 37s. 6d. for the St Petersburg quality. No English grazier, however, ever knew butcher’s meat or fat at their present prices; and a propitious year for the agriculturist will most probably bring matters to a more favourable state for the consumer.

It is not, however, true that a state of war with Russia can shut us out from our supply of the produce of that country. It will come to us from her ports, unless we avail ourselves of our right to blockade them strictly, in the ships of neutral countries. A portion of it—and no inconsiderable portion—will reach us overland, Russia herself being the greatest sufferer, from the extra cost of transit. There can be no doubt of every effort being made by her great landowners to make market of their produce, and convert it at any sacrifice into money; for it must be borne in mind that they are at the present moment minus some seven or eight millions sterling of British and other money, usually advanced upon the forthcoming crops. We need scarcely point at the difficulty in which this want must place Russia in such a struggle as that in which she is at present engaged. The paper issues of her government may for a time be forced upon her slavish population as money. But that population requires large imports of tea, coffee, sugar, spices, fruits, wines, and other foreign products; and it is not difficult to predict that there will be found few capitalists in Europe or Asia, willing to accommodate her with a loan wherewith to pay even for these necessaries, much less to feed her grasping ambition by an advance of money for the purchase of additional arms and military stores. Moreover, we are not by any means so absolutely dependent upon Russia for many of the principal articles with which she has heretofore supplied us, as certain parties would wish us to believe. We could have an almost unlimited supply of flax and hemp from our own colonies, if we chose to encourage the cultivation of them there. In the mean time, Egypt furnishes us with the former article; and Manilla supplies us with a very superior quality of both. Belgium and Prussia are also producers, and with a little encouragement would no doubt extend their cultivation. Our own colonies, however, are our surest dependence for a supply of these and similar articles. An advance of seeds and money to the extent of less than one quarter of the sums which we have been in the habit of advancing to the Russian cultivator, would bring forward to this country a supply of the raw materials of flax and hemp, which would be quite in time, with our present stock, to relieve us from any danger of deficiency for at least a season to come. With respect to tallow, we have a right to depend upon America, both North and South, for a supply. Australia can send us an aid, at all events, to such supply; and we may probably have next year a larger quantity within our own resources. With respect to seeds, we shall be able to derive these from the countries whence flax and hemp are cultivated for our markets; and our timber, derived at present from Russia, we can certainly dispense with. There is nothing valuable in Russian timber except its applicability for the masting and sparring of ships requiring large growth; and, with our modern method of splicing yards and masts, we can do perfectly well with the less tall timber of Norway and Sweden.

The real fact is, that the alleged short supply of the raw materials to be expected from Russia is a perfect bugbear. We could dispense with Russia as a country of supply, were we to employ British capital to assist our own colonists, and other countries, to provide us with such supply. There was once, however, a Russian Company; and the trade seems to have been conducted as a monopoly ever since.

But we must get rid of this strange argument, that the value of the trade with a country consists in the large amount of indebtedness which we contract with its dealers. We have now to consider the relative value of Russia and Turkey as consumers of British manufactured goods and produce. The following we find to have been the value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported to the two countries for the five years from 1846 to 1850:—

Turkey thus took from us in 1850 £1,658,908 in excess of Russia’s purchases, having increased that excess from £416,719 in 1846. The increased imports of the former country amounted in the five years to nearly a million sterling, or 50 per cent, whilst the imports of Russia fell off by £370,377, or above 20 per cent. There is this great difference, too, in the imports from this country of Russia and Turkey—The former takes from us raw materials, which we do not produce ourselves, deriving merely a mercantile or brokerage profit upon the supply; manufactured articles which contain the smallest amount of British labour; and machinery to aid the progress of her population as our rivals in manufacturing pursuits. The latter takes our fully manufactured and perfected fabrics. So far as our cotton and woollen manufacturers are concerned, Russia took in 1850—

The remainder of her imports from us consisted of foreign produce. Turkey took from us, however, a large amount of labour and skill, or its reward, as will be seen from the following table:—

Our exports to Russia have certainly increased in amount within the last two years, although our customs’ reports do not convey to us the full truth as to their character. We have been feeding that country with materials of mischief. She has had not only mill machinery, but the machinery of war-steamers from us; but most likely either Sir Charles Napier, or Admiral Dundas, will be enabled to render us a profitable account of the property thus invested.

But a comparison of our exports to Russia and Turkey respectively does not by any means meet the true facts of our position. Within the past few years we have been carrying on a vast and increasing trade with those Asiatic countries which draw their supplies of merchandise from the various ports of the Levant, and from the Adriatic. Smyrna has become a commercial station so important that we have at this moment three lines of powerful steamers running to it from the port of Liverpool alone; and a very valuable trade is also carried on by English houses in the port of Trieste. Egypt, too, is largely tributary to us commercially. There is, in fact, no portion of the world whose transactions with Great Britain have expanded so greatly in amount and value within the past few years as those very countries which Russia is seeking to grasp and bring within her own control. Our “Greek houses,” through whose agency the bulk of this trade is carried on, are now regarded throughout the manufacturing districts as second to none in the extent and importance of their business; and, what is more, that business must rapidly extend, as increased facilities of communication are provided from the shores of the Levant and the Black Sea with the interior countries of Asia. Notwithstanding all the faults of the Turkish character and rule, we are inclined to believe that from the reign of the present Sultan, Abdul Medjid, a vast amelioration of the condition of her people, and the cultivation by them of increased dealings and friendships with the more civilised communities of Western Europe will take place. Be these expectations, however, fulfilled or not, we cannot afford to lose such a trade as the following figures, which we take from Mr Burns’ Commercial Glance, show that we are at present carrying on with Turkey in the article of cotton goods alone:—

These markets, in fact, have taken, during the past year, one-sixteenth of our entire exports of plain calicoes, and one-eleventh of our exports of printed and dyed calicoes, whilst her imports of yarn—the article upon the production of which in this country the least amount of labour is expended—have been comparatively insignificant. The imports of cotton goods into Russia are, on the contrary, almost entirely confined to yarn for the consumption of the Russian manufacturer.

So far, therefore, as our export trade is likely to be affected during the coming struggle, we have manifestly got by the hands a more valuable customer than we are likely to lose in Russia; and we cannot discover in what way, with the means at present at her disposal, she can interrupt, or limit, that trade further than by destroying for a time the consuming power of those provinces of Turkey east of the river Pruth, which she has occupied with her troops. Our shipowners and manufacturers may lose for a time some portion of the valuable trade with the population of Wallachia and Moldavia which is carried on through the ports of Galatz and Ibrail upon the Danube. It will probably, however, be one of the earliest aims of the combined powers of England and France to clear that portion of Turkey of the presence of the invader, and to maintain the long-established inviolability of the two eastern mouths of the Danube—the St George’s and Sulina—as outlets for her commerce with neutral countries. The remainder of our trade with Turkey must remain impervious to the efforts of Russia, unless her fleet, at present shut up in Sebastopol, first achieve the exploit of destroying, or capturing, the magnificent navies which England and France have assembled in the Black Sea, or her Baltic fleet succeeds in forcing its passage through the Cattegat or the Sound, and in making its way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Neither of these contingencies can be regarded as very likely to be realised by Russia in the face of the superior power which will shortly be arrayed against her.

There is certainly the possibility that our commerce with Turkey may suffer to some extent through the drain upon the resources of her population, created by a necessarily large war-expenditure. No material symptoms of such suffering have occurred thus far, notwithstanding she has been for months past actually engaged in hostilities, the preparation for which must have been very costly. Her imports of textile fabrics fell off very little in 1853 from their amount in former years; and even this may in part be accounted for by the unsettled prices, in this country, which have resulted from strikes throughout our manufacturing districts, and other causes of an accidental or a purely domestic character. Moreover, to balance any such falling off in her ordinary imports, Turkey will most probably require from us large supplies of stores, munitions of war, arms, &c., as well as of produce of various kinds, to fill up the vacuum created by the partial interruption of her own foreign trade.

We have a further guarantee of commercial safety during this struggle, unless it should assume new features, in the fact that the commercial marine of Russia is blocked up, like her fleets, in the Baltic and the Black Sea. There is not at this moment a single Russian merchantman in the ports of Great Britain or France—the few vessels which were shut out from their usual winter quarters having been sold some time ago, to escape the risk of seizure. She is thus without the materials for inflicting the annoyance upon our colonial and foreign trade which she might have possessed, could she have armed any considerable portion of her mercantile navy for privateering purposes. It has been reported, indeed, that two of her cruisers have been met with somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Pacific, and suggested that their object may be to waylay and capture some of our gold ships. But that the report in question is not believed—and that any serious interference with our vessels engaged in the carrying trade, to and from the various ports of the world, is not feared by our best informed capitalists—is evident from the fact, that there has as yet been no marked advance in the rates of insurance upon such property. It has been reported, too, that Russian agents have been lately engaged in the United States of America in negotiating for the purchase, or building, of large ships capable of being converted into vessels of war. Be this so, although we greatly doubt the fact. We cannot be taken off our guard, in the event of any such purchase being made, or such conversion taking place. Our fast-sailing ocean steamers will bring us the necessary information quite in time to enable us to take the steps most proper for the occasion; and whilst mentioning those noble vessels, we must remark upon the important change which the application of steam to navigation will effect in all future struggles between maritime countries. We do not refer here to the power which it gives of taking fleets into action, or of making more rapid sail to the localities where their services are required, although the effect of this power is incalculable in value. We allude merely to the advantage which we shall derive in such struggles from the vastly increased rapidity and regularity with which we are at present supplied with information of an enemy’s movements, from all quarters of the world. We shall no longer have to witness the spectacle of rival fleets seeking each other in vain—proceeding from sea to sea only to discover that they have missed each other on the way. Traversed as the ocean is now in every direction by fast-sailing steamers, there can be little fear of such fleets, if their commanders are really anxious for an engagement, being unable to procure tolerably accurate information of each other’s whereabouts. We shall no longer require the aid of powerful fleets as convoys of our merchantmen, in seas where it can be so readily known that an enemy is not to be met with; and, as another result, we shall probably see an end put to the injurious system of privateering. Few parties will be found to risk life and property in assaults upon the commerce of a powerful maritime country, with the certainty before them that every movement which they make must be so promptly made known, and every offence which they commit must bring down upon them such speedy punishment.

There is, however, one element of commercial mischief which may make itself felt during the coming struggle, although such mischief, if it unfortunately should occur, could not be attributed properly to the mere fact of the existence of a state of war. It may, and very probably will, be proved that we cannot carry on a free-trade system, which involves the necessity of providing for enlarged imports concurrently with expensive military and naval operations both in the north and south of Europe, and possibly in Asia as well, with a currency restricted as ours is by the mistaken legislation of 1844. Already the note of alarm of this danger has been sounded from a quarter whose authority cannot be treated lightly on such a subject. Mr William Brown, the eminent American merchant, and member for South Lancashire, emphatically warned her Majesty’s Government, during the recent debate on the Budget, of the probability, and almost certainty, of a severe monetary crisis as the consequence of persistence in carrying out in their full stringency the measures passed, at the instigation of Sir Robert Peel, in that and the following year. But for the operation of those measures, Mr Brown contended that the calamity of 1847 would never have occurred. The country, he says, was paralysed by the effect which they produced; and the seven or eight millions sterling in bullion, held at the time in the coffers of the Bank, “might as well have been thrown into the sea,” as retained there unproductive during a period of pressure. Should the same state of things occur again, therefore, during the approaching struggle—should the commerce and industry of the country be prostrated, and the government be rendered incapable of prosecuting with the required energy a just war, to which we are bound alike by every consideration of national honour, sound policy, and good faith towards an oppressed ally—we must not be told that the suffering and degradation which will be brought down upon our heads are the results of a war expenditure merely, or have been caused by any natural interruption of our ordinary trading pursuits. The true cause of the calamity, it must become obvious to all the world, will be our dogged maintenance of an impracticable crotchet; and should the nation submit to be thus thwarted and fettered in its determination to maintain its high prestige—should it submit to sink down from its position as a leading power,—we may with reason be asked the question, “Of what avail is your possession of the noblest fleet which ever rode the seas in ancient or in modern days—of what avail is the possession of the best-disciplined and bravest soldiers which ever marched to battle—of what avail is your vast mercantile marine, your vast accumulations of capital, your almost limitless command over all the improved appliances which modern science and ingenuity have constructed for the purposes of war, if you cannot resent a national insult, or oppose the aggressions of an enemy, without commercial ruin, suspended industry, and popular disaffection and outrage being spread over the face of your whole empire?” We hope, however, for better things. We feel confident that a high-minded and honourable people will not submit to be thus stultified and degraded in the eyes of the world. We entertain, too, a reasonable hope that the unpatriotic faction, who would gladly involve the country in that degradation, will not be favoured in their unworthy efforts by the possession of the instrumentality—a suffering and dissatisfied working population—upon which they calculate to insure success. By the blessing of a bountiful Providence, clothing our fields and those of Western Europe and America with luxuriant harvests, we may this year be snatched from our position of dependence upon the growth of an enemy’s soil for the food of our people, and be enabled to enter upon a period of plenty and cheapness, instead of that scarcity and high prices of all the necessaries of life from which we have been suffering during the past twelve months—certainly without such suffering being attributable to a state of war, or to any but ordinary causes.

THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[^[1]]

The history of Puppets and their shows may at first appear but a trivial subject to fix the attention and occupy the pen of a learned academician and elegant writer. The very word history may seem misapplied to a chronicle of the pranks of Punchinello, and of the contortions of fantoccini. Puppet-shows! it may be said; troops of tawdry figures, paraded from fair to fair, to provoke the laughter of children and the grin of rustics—is that a theme for a bulky octavo at the hands of so erudite and spirituel an author as M. Charles Magnin? Had M. Magnin chosen to reply otherwise than with perfect candour to anticipated comments of this kind—the comments of the superficial and hastily-judging—he might easily have done so by saying that, whilst studying with a more important aim—for that history of the stage of which he has already published portions—he found the wooden actors so constantly thrusting themselves into the society of their flesh-and-blood betters, so continually intruding themselves, with timber joints, invisible strings, and piping voices, upon stages where human players strutted, that, to be quit of their importunity, he was fain to shelve them in a volume. This, however, is not the motive he alleges. He boldly breasts the difficulty, and stands up for the merits of his marionettes, quite deserving, he maintains, of a separate study and a special historian. He denies that time can be considered lost or lightly expended which is passed in tracing the vicissitudes of an amusement that, for three thousand years, has been in favour with two-thirds of the human race. And he summons to his support an imposing phalanx of great men—poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians—who have interested themselves in puppets, taken pleasure in their performances, and even written for their mimic theatre. He reminds his readers how many pointed remarks and precious lessons, apt comparisons and graceful ideas, have been suggested by such shows to the greatest writers of all countries and ages, and heads the list of his puppets’ patrons with the names of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Petronius, in ancient times; and with those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Molière, Swift, Voltaire, and Goethe, amongst the moderns; to say nothing of Charles Nodier, Punchinello’s laureate, the assiduous frequenter of Parisian puppet-shows, who has devoted so many playful and sparkling pages to that favourite study of his literary leisure. M. Magnin begins to be alarmed at the shadows he has evoked. Is it not presumption, he asks himself, to enter a path upon which his predecessors have been so numerous and eminent? The subject, for whose frivolity he lately almost apologised, appears too elevated for his range when he reviews the list of illustrious names more or less connected with it, when he recalls the innumerable flowers of wit with which their fancy has wreathed it. So he marks out for himself a different track. Others have played with the theme; he approaches it in a graver spirit. “I am not so impertinent,” he exclaims, “as to seek to put (as the Greeks would have said) my foot in the dance of those great geniuses. Too well do I see the folly of attempting to jingle, after them, the bells of that bauble.” Following the example of the learned Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi—who wrote a valuable although a brief dissertation on the Puppets of the Ancients—but allotting to himself a much broader canvass, M. Magnin purposes to write, in all seriousness, sincerity, and simplicity, a history of the “wooden comedians,” not only of antiquity, but of the middle ages, and of modern times.

A subject of far less intrinsic interest than the one in question could not fail to become attractive in the hands of so agreeable and skilful a savant as M. Magnin. But it were a mistake to suppose that the history of the Puppet family, from Euripides’ days to ours, has not a real and strong interest of its own. The members of that distinguished house have been mixed up in innumerable matters into which one would hardly have anticipated their poking their wooden noses and permanently blushing countenances. They have been alternately the tools of priestcraft and the mouthpiece of popular feeling. Daring improvisatori, in certain times and countries, theirs was the only liberty of speech, their voice the sole organ of the people’s opposition to its rulers. Their diminutive stature, the narrow dimensions of their stage, the smallness of their powers of speech, did not always secure impunity to their free discourse, which sometimes, as their best friends must confess, degenerated into license. So that we occasionally, in the course of their history, find the audacious dolls driven into their boxes—with cords cut and heads hanging—or at least compelled to revise and chasten their dramatic repertory. Sometimes decency and morality rendered such rigour incumbent upon the authorities; but its motive was quite as frequently political. It is curious to note with what important events the Puppet family have meddled, and what mighty personages they have managed to offend. At the present day, when the press spreads far and wide the gist and most salient points of a successful play, in whatever European capital it may be performed, allusions insulting or irritating to friendly nations and governments may be fair subject for the censor’s scissors. It was only the other day that a Russian official journal expressed, in no measured terms, its high indignation at the performance, at a fourth-rate theatre on the Paris boulevards, of a drama entitled “The Cossacks,” in which those warriors of the steppes are displayed to great disadvantage. The circumstances of the moment not being such as to make the French government solicitous to spare the feelings of the Czar, the piece continued to be nightly played, to the delight of shouting audiences, and to the no small benefit of the treasury of the Gaieté. One hundred and twenty-three years ago, Russian susceptibility, it appears, was held quite as easy to ruffle as at the present day. In 1731, the disgrace of Menschikoff was made the subject of a sort of melodrama, performed in several German towns by the large English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of Baden-Durlach. The curious playbill of this performance ran as follows: “With permission, &c., there will be performed on an entirely new theatre, and with good instrumental music, a Haupt-und-Staatsaction, recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title—The extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis Danielowitz, prince Menzicoff, great favourite, cabinet minister, and generalissimo of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I., of glorious memory, to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jack-pudding, a pieman, a pastrycook’s boy, and amusing Siberian poachers.” Titus Maas obtained leave to perform this wonderful piece at Berlin, but it was quickly stopped by order of Frederick-William I.’s government, for fear of offending Russia. In 1794 a number of puppet-shows were closed in Berlin—for offences against morality, was the reason given, but more probably, M. Magnin believes, because the tone of their performances was opposed to the views of the government. In what way he does not mention, but we may suppose it possible that the Puppenspieler had got infected with the revolutionary doctrines then rampant in France. The Prussian police still keeps a sharp eye on exhibitions of this kind, which at Berlin are restricted to the suburbs. In France we find traces of a regular censorship of the marionette theatres. Thus, in the Soleinne collection of manuscript plays is one entitled: The capture of a company of players by a Tunis rover, in the month of September 1840. This piece, whose name, as M. Magnin remarks, reads more like the heading of a newspaper paragraph than the title of a play, was performed in 1741 at the fair of St Germains, by the puppets of the celebrated Nicolet, and annexed to it is a permit of performance, bearing no less a signature than that of Crébillon. It is not improbable that the puppet-show had fairly earned its subjection to a censorship by the irreverence and boldness with which it took the most serious, important, and painful events as subjects for its performances. In 1686, D’Harlay, then attorney-general at the parliament of Paris, wrote as follows to La Reynie, the lieutenant of police:—“To M. de la Reynie, councillor of the king in his council, &c. It is said this morning at the palace, that the marionettes which play at the fair of St Germain represent the discomfiture of the Huguenots, and as you will probably consider this a very serious matter for marionettes, I have thought it right, sir, to advise you of it, that you may so act as in your prudence shall seem fit.” It does not appear what result this advice had; but as the date of the note is little more than three months later than that of the edict of revocation, when Louis XIV. was exulting in the downfall of heresy in France, and when those who still clung to Protestantism were looked upon as hardened sinners, no better than common malefactors, it is quite probable La Reynie thought it needless to interfere with the puppet-scoffers at the Huguenots. D’Harlay, it will be remembered, was intimate with some of the chiefs of the proscribed party, and a particular friend of the Marquis de Ruvigny, although he some years afterwards betrayed, according to St Simon, the trust that friend had reposed in him. But we are wandering from our wooden play-actors.

The first two sections of M. Magnin’s work, devoted to the puppets of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, are far briefer, and upon the whole, less interesting than the portion of his volume allotted to those of modern times. All those parts display extensive reading and patient research. The author commences by defining and classing his marionettes. “Everybody knows that marionettes are small figures of wood, bone, ivory, baked earth, or merely of linen, representing real or fantastical beings, and whose flexible joints obey the impulse given to them by strings, wires, or catgut, pulled by a skilful and invisible hand.” He divides them into three classes: hierarchical, aristocratic, and popular. In ancient times and in the middle ages, the first of these classes was decidedly the most important and influential. Auguries were obtained and miracles wrought by its aid, indispensable to priestly ambition and to idolatrous or erroneous creeds, dependent upon prodigies for support. Even at the present day, and in highly civilised countries, puppets of this kind are not wholly in disrepute, nor are the services of bleeding saints and nodding madonnas uniformly declined by the pastors of credulous flocks. The practice is very ancient—if that can give it respectability. The statue of Jupiter Ammon, when carried in procession on the shoulders of priests, previously to uttering its oracles, indicated to its bearers, by a motion of its head, the road it wished them to take. The golden statue of Apollo, in the temple of Heliopolis, moved when it had an oracle to deliver; and if the priests delayed to raise it upon their shoulders, it sweated and moved again. When the high-priest consulted it, it recoiled if it disapproved of the proposed enterprise; but if it approved, it pushed its bearers forward, and drove them, as with reins. M. Magnin quotes, from the writers of antiquity, a host of instances of this kind, in which machinery, quicksilver, and the loadstone were evidently the means employed. “In Etruria and in Latium, where the sacerdotal genius has at all times exercised such a powerful influence, hierarchical art has not failed to employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.” The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured, richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident, from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome, feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of the Convidado de Piedra. Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca, crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times, notwithstanding canonical prohibitions. “In a synod held at Orihuela, a little Valencian bishopric, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, it was found necessary to renew the orders against the admission into churches of small images (statuettes) of the Virgin and female saints, curled, painted, covered with jewels, and dressed in silks, and resembling courtezans.” The abuse, nevertheless, continued; and we believe there would be little difficulty in authenticating instances of it in Spain within the present century. That it was an actual puppet-show which the ecclesiastical authorities thus strove to suppress, or at least to expel from churches, is clearly proved by a passage M. Magnin quotes from the proceedings of the synod: “We forbid the representation, in churches or elsewhere, of the actions of Christ, of those of the most holy Virgin, and of the lives of the saints, by means of those little movable figures vulgarly called titeres.” This last word is the exact Spanish equivalent to the French marionettes and the English puppet-show. It was a titerero who fell in with Don Quixote at a Manchegan hostelry, and exhibited before him “the manner in which Señor Don Gayferos accomplished the deliverance of his spouse, Melisendra,” and whose figures of paste were so grievously mishandled by the chivalrous defender of dames. And it may further be remarked, as a sign of the ancient alliance in Spain between the church and the theatre, that an altarpiece and the stage or theatre upon which a puppet-show is exhibited are both expressed, to the present day, by the word retablo. To the titeres, by no means the least diverting and original of the European marionette family, we shall hereafter come. The precedence must be given to Italy, the cradle and the paradise of puppets.

The eccentric and learned physician and mathematician, Jerome Cardan, was the first modern writer who paid serious and scientific attention to the mechanism of marionettes. He refers to them in two different works, and in one of these, a sort of encyclopedia, entitled de Varietate Rerum, when speaking of the humbler branches of mechanics, he expresses his surprise at the marvels performed by two Sicilians, by means of two wooden figures which they worked between them. “There was no sort of dance,” he says, “that these figures were not able to imitate, making the most surprising gestures with feet and legs, arms and head, the whole with such variety of attitude, that I cannot, I confess, understand the nature of the ingenious mechanism, for there were not several strings, sometimes slack and sometimes tight, but only one to each figure, and that was always at full stretch. I have seen many other figures set in motion by several strings, alternately tight and slack, which is nothing marvellous. I must further say that it was a truly agreeable spectacle to behold how the steps and gestures of these dolls kept time with the music.” Such variety and precision of movement prevent the possibility of confounding this exhibition with that puppet-show of the lowest class common in the streets at the present day, where a Savoyard boy makes a doll dance upon a board by means of a string fastened to his knee.[^[2]] M. Magnin supposes that the single string, always at full stretch, was a little tube, through which passed a number of small strings connected with the interior of the puppet. A similar plan is general in Italy at the present day amongst the aristocracy of the marionettes—those whose performances are in regular theatres, and not in wandering show-boxes. The theatre and the mode of working of out-of-door puppet-shows is the same in most countries, and it appears more than probable, from the authorities adduced by M. Magnin, that the marionettes of Greece and ancient Italy had much the same sort of stage as that on which the pupazzi of Italian towns, the London Punch, and the Guignol and Gringalet of Paris, are to the present day exhibited; namely, a sort of large sentry-box or little fortress, called castello in Italy, castillo in Spain, and castellet in France. In Persia, in Constantinople, in Cairo, the same form prevails. In modern times the extent of the stage has been diminished, and the apparatus lightened, so as to admit of theatre, scenery, actors, and orchestra being carried long distances by two men. Formerly, in Spain, as we gather from Cervantes and other authorities, a cart was necessary to convey the theatrical baggage of a titerero, which was on a larger scale than at the present day, many more figures appearing on the stage, and the mode of working them being different from that now in use in strolling puppet-shows, where the usual and very simple process is for the showman to insert his fingers in the sleeves of the actors, only half of whose body is visible. Master Peter’s show was of a much more elevated style, and seems to have possessed all the newest improvements; as for instance, when the Moor steals softly behind Melisendra and prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, we are told that “she spits, and wipes them with the sleeves of her shift, lamenting aloud, and tearing for anger her beautiful hair.” If the Lady Melisendra really did spit—and that the word was not a figure of speech of Master Peter’s boy, whose flippancy his master and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance had more than once to reprove—the civilisation of Spanish puppets must have been in a very forward state, for we find M. Magnin recording, as a novel triumph of puppet-mechanism, similar achievements in Germany in the present century. When Goethe’s Faust gave a fresh vogue to the marionette exhibition, from which he had derived his first idea of the subject, Geisselbrecht, a Viennese mechanician, got up the piece with those docile performers, under the title of Doctor Faust, the great Necromancer, in Five Acts, with songs, and performed it at Frankfort, Vienna, and at Weimar, Goethe’s residence. “He strove to excel Dreher and Schütz (other proprietors of marionettes) by the mechanical perfection of his little actors, whom he made raise and cast down their eyes. He even made them cough and spit very naturally, feats which Casperle,[^[3]] as may be supposed, performed as often as possible. M. Von der Hagen, scoffing at this puerile marvel, applied Schiller’s lines, from Wallenstein’s Camp, to the Austrian mechanician:—

‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt

Das habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;

Aber sein Genie....’”[^[4]]

As regards his puppets’ expectorating accomplishments, Geisselbrecht appears merely to have revived the traditions handed down from the days of Gines de Passamonte. But we are again losing the thread of our discourse amongst those of the countless marionettes that glide, skip, and dance over the pages of M. Magnin. Having spoken in this paragraph of the general form and fashion of the ambulant puppet-show, and having in so doing strayed from Italy into Germany and Spain, we will go somewhat farther, to look at the most compact and portable of all exhibitions of the kind. This is to be found in China. There the peripatetic showman elevates himself upon a small platform, and puts on a sort of case or sheath of blue cotton, tight at the ankles, and widening as it approaches the shoulders. Thus accoutred, he looks like a statue in a bag. He then places upon his shoulders a box in the form of a theatre, which encloses his head. His hands, concealed under the dress of the puppets, present these to the spectators, and make them act at his will. The performance over, he shuts up actors and sheath in the box, and carries it away under his arm.

The higher class of marionettes, that have permanent establishments in all the towns of Italy and in various other Continental countries, and a colony of whom lately settled in London, would surely feel a thrill of indignation through every fibre and atom of their composite bodies, were they to hear themselves assimilated to the hardy plebeian puppets that pitch their tent in the gutter or by the road-side, and jest for all comers on the chance of coppers. Here you have him at the street corner—Punch, the ribald and the profligate, maltreating his wife, teasing his dog, hanging the hangman, and beating the devil himself. Or, open this portfolio, containing Pinelli’s charming collection of Italian picturesque costumes. Here is Pulcinella, with his black half-mask, his tight white jerkin, his mitre-shaped cap. What a group he has gathered around him:—idle monks, stately and beautiful Roman women, swarthy and vigorous Trasteverini, children on tiptoe with delight, a lingering peasant, who has stopped his ass to enjoy for a moment the fascinating spectacle and pungent jokes. Nor is the audience always of so humble a description. Persons of rank and education have frequently been known to mingle with it; and tradition relates that the celebrated Leone Allacci, librarian of the Vatican under Alexander VII., author of many great theological works, and of the Dramaturgia, went nightly for recreation to the puppet-show. In social position, however, the al fresco performers are necessarily far inferior to the more elegant and tender puppets who have a settled habitation, a smart and spacious stage, a fixed price, and who, instead of having their master’s hands rudely thrust under their petticoats, are decorously and genteelly manœuvred by means of springs and wires. The difference is manifest: it is Richardson’s booth to the Italian Opera; the Funambules to the Comédie Française. Moreover, the materials of the marionette aristocracy are very superior indeed to those of the common out-of-door jokers. They are by no means of the same clay or from the same mould. They are not cut out of a block, daubed with gaudy paint, and dressed in coarse and tawdry rags. M. Magnin lets us into the secret of their structure and motions. “Their head is usually of card-board; their body and thighs are wooden, their arms of cord; their extremities (that is to say, their hands and their legs) are of lead, or partially so, which enables them to obey the slightest impulse given them, without losing their centre of gravity.” From the top of their head issues a little iron rod, by means of which they are easily transported from one part of the stage to another. To conceal this rod and the movement of the threads from the spectators, the plan was devised of placing in front of the stage a sort of screen, composed of very fine perpendicular threads, drawn very tight, which, blending with those that move the puppets, deceive the most attentive eye. By another still more ingenious invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician. It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatre delle Vigne, and witnessed the performance of a grand military drama, The Siege of Antwerp, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of the Fiando theatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of the Globe newspaper spoke of them thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu. Besides Nebuchadnezzar, a classic tragedy, they performed an anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published, nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at the Fiando. The grand romantic drama in six tableaux, Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of Temeswar, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance, astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera, are to be seen at the Fiando theatre; and when the doll has danced her dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart, and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers and the proud dancers of La Scala.” But doubtless the greatest compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M. Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material illusion. Speaking of the Roman burattini, “These,” he says, “are little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.” Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle (Stendhal),[^[5]] tells of the realisation of this last ingenious supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo Fiano at Rome) of Cassandrino allievo di un pittore (Cassandrino pupil of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange trees, which are called the Café Rospoli. The Fiano palace is just opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming, ‘Entrate, ô signori! it is about to begin!’ For the sum of twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre. Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle, “that the character is not badly devised in a country governed by an oligarchical court composed of bachelors, and where the power is in the hands of old age.” I need hardly say that Cassandrino, although a churchman, is not bound by monastic rules—is in fact a layman—but I would wager that there is not a spectator who does not invest him in imagination with a cardinal’s red cap, or at least with the violet stockings of a monsignore. The monsignori are, it is well known, the young men of the papal court; it is the place that leads to all others. Rome is full of monsignori of Cassandrino’s age, who have their fortune still to make, and who seek amusement whilst waiting for the cardinal’s hat. Cassandrino is the hero of innumerable little plays. His susceptible heart continually leads him into scrapes. Disguised as a young man, he goes to take lessons of a painter, with whose sister he is in love, is detected by the lady’s aunt whom he had formerly courted, escapes from her into the studio, is roughly treated by the pupils, threatened with a dagger’s point by the painter, and at last, to avoid scandal, which he fears more than the poniard, abandons all hope of the red hat, and consents to marry the aunt. In another piece, tired of the monotony of his solitary home, he makes a journey to Civita Vecchia, and meets with all manner of ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled Cassandrino dilettante e impresario, his too great love of music and the fair sex gets him into quarrels with tenori and bassi, and especially with the prima donna whom he courts, and with the maestro who is his rival. This maestro is in the prime of youth; he has light hair and blue eyes, he loves pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet more seductive than his person. All these qualities, and the very style of his dress, remind the audience of one of the few great men modern Italy has produced. There is a burst of applause; they recognise and greet Rossini.

Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian nobility and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain details than of those given in public. It is generally understood, however, that the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow themselves tolerable license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the house of a rich merchant, a party was assembled to witness the performance of a company of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The theatre was a charming toy, only five feet wide, and which, nevertheless, was an exact model of a large theatre. Before the play began, the lights in the apartment were extinguished. A company of twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in height, with leaden legs, and which had cost a sequin apiece, performed a rather free comedy, abridged from Machiavelli’s Mandragora.” At Naples the performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state. In pieces of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet; and as it often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with the voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the performance.

When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress, improvement, and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of this minor branch of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages, in most things so original and self-relying, was under some obligations to Italy in this respect. The first name of any mark which presents itself to the student of the history of Spanish puppet-shows is that of a skilful mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani, surnamed Gianello, of whom the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as “a second Archimedes;” adding, that this illustrious foreigner brought titeres to great perfection. That so distinguished a man should have wasted his time on such frivolities requires some explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of curious mechanism induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and Italy to apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons. Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on his entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented to him by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described circles in the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science which other authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the emperor’s favour by the construction of an admirable clock, followed him to Spain, and passed two years with him in his monastic retreat, striving, by ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his melancholy patron, depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,” says Flaminio Strada, historian of the war in Flanders, “busied himself, in the solitude of the cloisters of St Just, with the construction of clocks. He had for his master in that art Gianello Torriani, the Archimedes of that time, who daily invented new mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager and curious of all those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed upon the prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There were some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some were seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious mechanician let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in all directions, and which were constructed with such marvellous artifice that one day the superior of the convent, chancing to be present, appeared to fear that there was magic in the matter.” The attention of Charles V., even in the decline of his genius, was not, however, wholly engrossed by such toys as these. He and Torriani discussed and solved more useful and more serious problems—one, amongst others, which Gianello realised after the prince’s death, and which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus to the heights of Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful mechanician of Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon adopted by the titereros. Puppets were already a common amusement in Spain, and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs, and entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters and the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national, notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century down to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at the present day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally foreigners, including many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting naturalised under the name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does not appear ever to have played a prominent part, and probably was rather a sort of supernumerary to the show, like Master Peter’s ape. Occupation was perhaps hard to find for him in the class of pieces preferred by Spanish taste. The nature of these it is not difficult to conjecture. Spain, superstitious, chivalrous, and semi-Moorish, hastened to equip its puppets in knightly harness and priestly robes. “Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the conquerors of the Indies, the characters of the Old and the New Testament, and especially saints and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the usual actors in these shows. The titeres so frequently wear monkish garb, especially in Portugal, that the circumstance has had an influence on their name in this country, where they are more often called bonifrates than titeres. The composition of bonifrate (although the word is old, perhaps older than titere) indicates an Italian origin.” Legends of saints and the book of ballads (Romancero) supplied most of the subjects of the plays performed by Spanish puppets. Of this we have an example in the drama selected by Cervantes for performance by Master Peter’s titeres before Don Quixote. In the course of his researches, M. Magnin was surprised to find (although he ought, perhaps, to have expected it) that bull-fights have had their turn of popularity on the boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces this in a curious old picaresque romance, the memoirs of the picara Justina. This adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life of her great-grandfather, who had kept a theatre of titeres at Seville, and who put such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors that, to hear him, the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and turrones (cakes of almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods and their customers, leaving their hat or their brasero (pan of hot embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of irregular habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His money went, his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre were sold, and his health left him with his worldly goods, so that he became the inmate of an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up the ghost, his granddaughter relates, he lost his senses, and became subject to such furious fits of madness, that one day he imagined himself to be a puppet-show bull (un toro de titeres), and that he was to fight a stone cross which stood in the court of the hospital. Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “Ah perra! que te ageno!” (words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of charity, a good simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice happy man! he has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking it!” At a recent date (1808), a French savant, travelling in Spain, went to the puppet theatre at Valencia. The Death of Seneca was the title of the piece performed. In presence of the audience, the celebrated philosopher, the pride of Cordova, ended historically by opening his veins in a bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his arms were simulated cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An unexpected miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the drama. Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into heaven in a glory, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted by an anachronism.

Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and motley family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their habits may be on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become a reflex of the peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its people. Thus in Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical censors, and despotic governments, we find the burattini dealing in sharp but polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the ballet, and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or curtailment, with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers behind the scenes. The Spanish titere couches his lance and rides forth to meet the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with Cortes to the conquest of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more or less decorum, a moving incident from Holy Writ. In the Jokken and Puppen of Germany we recognise the metaphysical and fantastical tendencies of that country, its broad and rather heavy humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic sprites, and enchanted bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were early cherished, and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the people, we need not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and frivolous—modelling themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin dwells long upon the puppets of his native land, which possess, however, less character and strongly marked originality than those of some of the other countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the etymology of the word marionette—unmistakably French, although it has been of late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie, which crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon came to be applied to those little images of the Virgin that were exhibited, gaily dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the devout. In a pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty name of Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called Marion. “Several streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed images of the Virgin and saints, were called, some Rues des Marmouzets (there are still two streets of this name in Paris), others Rues des Mariettes, and somewhat later, Rues des Marionettes. As irony makes its way everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the words Marotte, Mariotte, and Marionette, was soon exchanged for a jesting and profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the streets and taverns, an unchaste ditty called the Chant Marionnette. The bauble of a licensed fool was called, and is still called, marotte; ‘by reason,’ says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say, of a little girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks irreverently called their wooden actors and actresses marmouzets and mariottes. At the end of the 16th century and commencement of the 17th, several Protestant or sceptical writers were well pleased to confound, with an intention of mockery, the religious and the profane sense of the words marmouzets and marionettes. Henry Estienne, inveighing, in his Apologie pour Herodote, against the chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the mutilation of madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some marmouzet or marionette.’” It is curious here again to trace the connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show. The marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled robe and burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a jester’s bauble and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is only of a name, soon abandoned by the sacred images to its disreputable usurpers. But we have already seen, especially in the case of Spain, what a scandalous confusion came to pass between religious ceremonies and popular entertainments, until at times these could hardly be distinguished from those; and, as far as what occurred within them went, spectators might often be perplexed to decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a showman’s booth. With respect to the French term marionette, it had yet to undergo, after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane application, a still deeper degradation, before its final confinement to the class of puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th century it came to be applied not only to mechanical images of all kinds, sacred and profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning, to the supposed supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that sorcerers were accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From a huge quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of trials for magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin extracts a passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of “having kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses, marionettes, which are little devils, having usually the form of toads, sometimes of apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows, and the faggot were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors of these unwholesome puppets.

There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the French Polichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the Italian Pulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach, although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature, Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was called the hunchback of Arras, not that he was deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.

On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.

The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[^[6]] The very hat of Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hat à la Henri IV. Finally, certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French fancy.”

The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitled Letter from Polichinelle to Jules Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of signature:—

“Je suis Polichinelle,

Qui fait la sentinelle

A la porte de Nesle.”

It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi (who was perhaps a countryman and protégé of the cardinal’s), written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone through several editions), entitled, Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey. “He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author of the Combat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a frill à la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises Fagotin’s tricks in his fable of The Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall have, in carnival time,

“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,

Et parfois Fagotin et les marionnettes.”

Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts by his witticisms.” We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence in such matters for more than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair share of license in the pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the jests introduced by their invisible readers; and as regards their actions, M. Magnin himself tells us of the houzarde, an extremely gaillarde dance, resembling that called the antiquaile mentioned in Rabelais. Notwithstanding which, the marionettes were in great favour with very honest people, and Charles Perrault, one of the most distinguished members of the old French Academy, praised them in verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes Brioché put into the mouths of his actors were greatly to the taste of the Parisians; so much so that when an English mechanician exhibited other puppets which he had contrived to move by springs instead of strings, the public still preferred Brioché, “on account of the drolleries he made them say.” That he was not always and everywhere so successful, we learn by a quaint extract from the Combat de Cirano, already mentioned. Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it into his head to ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop, twisting, turning, dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite marmouzet, or, better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called Polichinelle. His comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M. Magnin, the voisin, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After visiting several towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a canton where marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his phiz, as well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn sorcerers, they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared that they had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must be devils. Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of sense they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented themselves with stripping the marionettes naked. O poveretta!” The same story is told by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at Soleure, and says that Brioché owed his release to a captain of the French-Swiss regiment then recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that time had powerful protectors. Brioché’s son and successor, Francis, whom the Parisians familiarly called Fanchon, having been offensively interfered with, wrote at once to the king. It would seem that, without quitting the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, he desired to transfer his standing to the Faubourg St Germains end, and that the commissaire of that district prohibited his exhibition. On the 16th October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the lieutenant-general of police, communicating his majesty’s commands that Brioché should be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a proper place assigned to him where he might do so.

The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s reign, and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have thundered against them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards the middle of the century, a great change took place in the character of their performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of court and city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and surprises; the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French stage has long been and still is famous, were replaced by showy dramas and pièces à spectacle, in which the military element seems to have predominated, judging from the titles of some of them—The Bombardment of Antwerp, The Taking of Charleroi, The General Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the commencement of the decline of puppet performances in France; the public taste underwent a change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire were in great measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the flute-player, the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran in crowds to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in 1744, a Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical theatre, which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous show. ‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements, without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still more surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels perishing, sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these were announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild animals.” Bull and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France, just a century ago, for all the world as in England in the days of buxom Queen Bess. M. Magnin copies an advertisement of one of these savage exhibitions, which might pass for a translated placard of the beast-fighting establishment that complained of the opposition made to them by Will Shakespeare and his players. Martin was the name of the man who kept the pit at the barrière de Sèvres; and after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the tenacity of his dogs, and the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he informs the public that he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran after such coarse diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves of the puppet-show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a corner. Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years later we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united comic and Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and quitted the theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called bamboches, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he called the Ambigu Comique, to indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitled Le Testament de Polichinelle. It was quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them in his Ombres Chinoises. Few persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “Prrrrenez vos billets”—a rattle on the r, and the word billets dying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “Spectacle des Enfans de France,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable sculpture, but movable painting—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their intangible nature, have passed unscathed through the countless political changes and convulsions that have occurred during the three quarters of a century that they have inhabited a nook in the palace which has been alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial—all things by turn, and nothing long. They have lasted and thriven, as far as bodiless shades can thrive, under Republic and Empire, Directory and Consulate, Restoration and Citizen Monarchy, Republic, and Empire again. We fear it must be admitted that time-serving is at the bottom of this long impunity and prosperity. In the feverish days of the first Revolution, marionettes had sans-culotte tendencies, with the exception of Polichinelle, who, mindful doubtless of his descent from Henry IV., played the aristocrat, and carried his head so high, that at last he lost it. M. Magnin passes hastily over this affecting phase in the career of his puppet friends, merely quoting a few lines from Camille Desmoulins, which bear upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,” exclaims the Vieux Cordelier, indignant at the apathetic indifference of the Parisians in presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to follow blindly the impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the Carrousel and the Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its shepherdesses and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose keen edge fell crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time, they also guillotined Polichinelle, who divided the attention of the eager crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose he was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed up, and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign shore, where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former jollity of character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is not dead, but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken him here in France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to tell us? Above all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. You doubt it? You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes, Polichinelle will laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains vices, follies, and things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”

To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own country, and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language, literature, and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he says, had the playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been made less welcome by the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-Roman origin. The grave and more earnest temper generally attributed to the former would have accounted for their disregard of a pastime they might deem frivolous, and fail to appreciate. He was well pleased, then, to find his wooden clients, his well-beloved marionettes, as popular and as well understood on the banks of the Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples, Paris, or Seville. “In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this kind of spectacle has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly name a single poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single prose-writer, from Sir Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not to be found abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from this singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he places in the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most pathetic moments. I can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this occurs.” (The list follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this great poet—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also borrowed many moral or satirical sallies from this popular diversion. Thanks to this singular tendency of the English dramatists to busy themselves with the proceedings of their little street-corner rivals, I have found in their writings much assistance—as agreeable as unexpected—in the task I have undertaken. Deprived, as one necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources and original pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works of great writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every library, I have found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the passages so abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a collection of documents concerning English puppets more circumstantial and more complete, I venture to think, than any that have hitherto been got together by the best-informed native critics.” Others, if they please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we shall content ourselves with saying that the amount of research manifested in M. Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as much credit to his industry as the manner of the compilation does to his judgment, acumen, and literary talent. It must be observed, however, that he has not altogether limited himself, when seeking materials and authorities, to the chosen corps of English dramatists, poets, and essayists, but has consulted sundry antiquarian authorities, tracts of the time of the commonwealth, the works of Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas Wright, and other modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this portion of his book contains much that will be novel to most English readers, and abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old English character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length, it is because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention that M. Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of the origin of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from 1688, and brings him over from Holland in the same ship with William of Orange. M. Magnin takes a different view, and makes out a very fair case. He begins by remarking that several false derivations have been assigned to the name of Punch. “Some have imagined I know not what secret and fantastical connection between Punch’s name, and even between the fire of Punch’s wit, and the ardent beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us from Persia. It is going a great deal too far in search of an error. Punch is simply the name of our friend Pulchinello, a little altered and contracted by the monosyllabic genius of the English language. In the early period of his career in England we find the names Punch and Punchinello used indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that Punch came to London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I have doubts of it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces of his presence in England previous to the abdication of James II.... Certain passages of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows (Machinæ Gesticulantes) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great progress on the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch, certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it not be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country with the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution of 1688 had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question with all diffidence, and without the slightest intention of pronouncing judgment on so important a matter. And as we have no intention or desire to take up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of that Punch, who, as the unfortunate and much-battered Judy can testify, himself handles those weapons so efficiently, we refer the reader to M. Magnin for the pros and cons of the argument, and start upon a rapid tour through Germany and northern Europe. M. Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the close of his journey, and pauses there only where his attention is arrested by some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention of which would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to write.

Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We mean not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may truly say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for which we are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of Baden and Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high degree, the mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but to look at the ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions, moving figures, crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in all parts of Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double aptitude brought about an early development of anatomical sculpture in Germany, applied, as usual, to various purposes, religious and civil, serious and recreative, wonderful images of saints, figures borne in municipal processions, and dramatic puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin as far back as the 12th century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th century he finds the word Tocha or Docha used in the sense of doll or puppet (puppa), and also in that of mime (mima, mimula). Somewhat later the word Tokke-spil (puppet-show) occurs in the poems of the Minnesingers. One of these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the Pope’s abuse of his influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—

“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”

“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”

There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating from the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number of curious miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of Ludus Monstrorum, represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed cap-à-pie, are made to move and fight by means of a string, whose ends two showmen hold. The painting proves not only the existence of marionettes at that period, but also that they were sufficiently common to supply a symbol intelligible to all, since it is put as an illustration to a moral reflection on the vanity of human things. From the equipment of the figures it may also be inferred that military subjects were then in favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show. And M. Magnin, zealous to track his fox to its very earth, risks the word Niebelungen, but brings no evidence to support his surmise. In the 14th and 15th centuries we obtain more positive data as to the nature of the puppenspiel, and of its performances. Romantic subjects, historical fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of Aymon, Genevieve of Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her lover’s heart was given to eat, and who killed herself in her despair. The history of Joan of Arc was also a favourite subject. That heroine had an episodical part in a piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430. “There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a precious testimony to a performance of marionettes at that period. In a fragment of the poem of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century, after a Flemish translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy Oriande de Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her beloved pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle of Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for a table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male and female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell her history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der Hagen has published this fragment from the MS. preserved at Heidelberg, in Germania, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is not to be found either in the French poem or the French prose romance.” The 16th century was an epoch in the annals of German puppets. Scepticism and sorcery were the order of the day. Faust stepped upon the stage and held it long.

It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by his jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd or startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great personage—emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached to his household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first given to this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name which in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the name of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner, and that it is applied to the devil in the Breviarium Historicum of Sebald. This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or Hämmerling (the latter is now the usual orthography) has three very distinct meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer (bird). The German headsman, in former days, combined with his terrible duties the occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to remove dead horses and other carrion; hence he was commonly spoken of as Master Hämmerlein.[^[7]]

It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation his name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have little information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who appears to have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the famous Hanswurst, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared Duke Henry of Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin addresses himself to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature Henry, you know, as well as all your poets and writers, that the name of Hanswurst is not of my invention; others have employed it before me, to designate those rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to exhibit finesse, commit but clumsiness and impropriety.” And that there might be no mistake as to his application of the word, he adds: “Many persons compare my very gracious lord, Duke Henry of Brunswick, to Hanswurst, because the said lord is replete and corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of Luther’s preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of his disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then very numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to dramatic church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the new doctrine, but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the performances were of the most grotesque description. They were particularly frequent in Poland, where, at Christmas time, in many churches, and especially in those of monasteries, the people were amused between mass and vespers, by the play of the Szopka or stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin, “lalki (little dolls of wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees, with their offerings of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox, the ass, and St. John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the innocents, in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed horns, and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his pitchfork, and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange performance was continued in the Polish churches until the middle of the 18th century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled from consecrated edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present day, as a popular diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct kingdom of Poland. From Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is welcomed by both the rural and the urban population, by the peasantry, the middle classes, and even in the dwellings of the nobility.

In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it should rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the former, which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant rigour of the consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A clergyman refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players. An ardent controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the Protestant clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement spread over all Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to by the comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the innocence of their profession, of which the actors themselves published sensible and judicious defences; in vain did several princes endeavour to counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration, the exaggerated severity of the theologians; the majority of the public sided with its pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds; and although, whilst condemning the performers, people did not cease to frequent the performances, a great many comedians, feeling themselves humiliated, abandoned the stage to foreigners and to marionettes. The regular theatres rapidly decreased in number, and puppet-shows augmented in a like ratio. “At the end of the 17th century,” says Flögel, “the Haupt-und-Staatsactionen usurped the place of the real drama. These pieces were played sometimes by mechanical dolls, sometimes by actors.” The meaning of the term Haupt-und-Staatsaction is rather obscure, but it was in fact applied to almost every kind of piece performed by puppets. It was bound to include a great deal of incident and show, to be supported by occasional instrumental music, and to have a comic personage or buffoon amongst its characters. The tenth chapter of M. Magnin’s fifth and final section shows us a strange variety in the subjects selected for these plays—in which, it is to be noted, each puppet had its own separate speaker behind the scenes. Weltheim, the manager of a company of marionettes in the last twenty years of the 17th century, and the beginning of the 18th, usually recruited interpreters for his puppets amongst the students of Leipzig and Jena. He was the first who performed a translation of Molière’s comedies in Germany. In 1688, we find him giving at Hamburg, a piece founded on the fall of Adam and Eve, followed by a buffoonery called Jack-pudding in Punch’s Shop. Then we come to such pieces as The Lapidation of Naboth; Asphalides, King of Arabia; The Fall of Jerusalem, and The Death of Wallenstein—a strange medley of ancient, modern, sacred and profane history. The following performance, at which M. Schütze, the historian of the Hamburg theatre, declares that he was present in his youth, must have been as curious as any we have named. “A little musical drama on the fall of Adam and Eve (performed at Hamburg rather more than a century ago), the characters in which, including that of the serpent, were filled by puppets. The reptile was seen coiled round the tree, darting out his pernicious tongue. After the fall of our first parents, Hanswurst addressed them in a strain of coarse pleasantry that greatly diverted the audience. Two bears danced a ballet, and at the end, an angel appeared, as in Genesis, drew a sword of gilt paper, and cut at a single blow the knot of the piece.” Later than this a tailor named Reibehand, who kept a puppet theatre, contrived to burlesque the touching parable of the Prodigal Son. His playbill ran thus: “The arch-prodigal, chastised by the four elements, with Harlequin, the joyous companion of a great criminal.” The merit of this most irreverent Haupt-Action consisted in the transformations it contained. Thus the fruit the young prodigal was about to eat changed itself into death’s heads, the water he was about to drink, into flames; rocks split open and revealed a gallows with a man hanging from it. The limbs of this corpse swinging in the wind, fell off one by one, then assembled upon the ground and reconnected themselves, and then the dead man arose and pursued the prodigal. A very German and not very pleasing device. When Charles XII. of Sweden fell dead in the trenches at Friedrichshall, slain, according to popular superstition, by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately taken advantage of by the indefatigable marionettes. A great historical piece was brought out at Hamburg, in which Friedrichshall was twice bombarded. In it a soldier excited great admiration as a prodigy of mechanism, by lighting his pipe and puffing smoke from his mouth. This feat was soon imported into France, and may be seen at the present day executed in great perfection at Seraphin’s theatre in the Palais Royal.

The triviality, absurdity, and profanity that tarnished the German stage during the first half of the eighteenth century, were followed by a reaction in favour of better taste and common sense. Gottsched and Lessing gave the signal of the revival of art and poetry. The theatre resumed its importance; actors their proper place, from which they had been ousted by the intolerance of the consistories; puppets returned to the modest sphere which circumstances had permitted and encouraged them temporarily to quit, and resumed their old stock pieces, consisting of Biblical dramas and popular legends. Faust was exceedingly popular, and novelties were occasionally introduced. Lewis’s Bravo of Venice was taken for the subject of a grand drama, performed by the Augsburg marionettes, which also played, with great success, a drama founded on the well-known story of Don Juan and his marble guest. And this brings us to the time when a boy, Wolfgang Goethe by name—kept at home by his parents during certain gloomy episodes of the Seven Years’ War, when Frankfort was occupied by the French—delighted his leisure with a marionette theatre, a Christmas gift from his grandfather, and so fostered his inborn dramatic taste and genius. In his memoirs, and in Wilhelm Meister, he tells us, in some charming passages, what pleasure he took in the management of his mimic comedians.

“We are indebted,” says M. Magnin, “for what follows, to a confidential communication made by the illustrious composer Haydn, at Vienna, in 1805, to M. Charles Bertuch, one of his fervent admirers.” And he relates that when Hadyn was mâitre de chapelle to Prince Nicholas-Joseph Esterhazy, that enlightened and generous patron of art, and especially of music, he composed four little operas for a marionette theatre, which existed in the Esterhazys’ magnificent Castle of Eisenstadt in Hungary. They were written between 1773 and 1780. “In the list of all his musical works, which the illustrious old man signed and gave to M. Charles Bertuch, during the residence of the latter at Vienna, occur the following lines, which I exactly transcribe:—Operette composed for the marionettes: Philémon and Baucis, 1773; Geniêvre, 1777; Didon, parody, 1778; La Vengeance accomplie ou la Maison Brulie (no date). In the same list the Diable Boiteux is set down, probably because it was played by Prince Esterhazy’s marionettes, but it was composed at Vienna, in the author’s early youth, for Bernardone, the manager of a popular theatre at the Corinthian Gate, and twenty-four sequins were paid for it. It was thought that these curious operas, all unpublished, had been destroyed in a fire which consumed a part of the Castle of Eisenstadt, including Haydn’s apartment; but that was not the case, for they were seen in 1827 in the musical library of the Esterhazys, with a score of other pieces whose titles one would like to know.”

Goethe has told us, in an interesting passage of his memoirs, that the idea of his great work of Faust was suggested to him by the puppet-show. M. Magnin, who takes an affectionate interest in the triumphs of the marionettes with whom he has so long associated, and whose career he has traced from their cradle, exults in the claim they have thus acquired to the world’s gratitude—not always, it must be owned, shown to those who best deserve it. He concludes his history with a double recapitulation—first, of the celebrated persons who have taken pleasure in this class of dramatic performances; and, secondly, of the most distinguished of those who have wielded pen in its service. And he calls upon his readers to applaud, and upon the ladies especially to wave kerchief and throw bouquet at the graceful Fantasia, the pretty fairy, the sprightly muse of the marionettes. We doubt not but that the appeal will be responded to; although her fairyship may fairly be considered to be already sufficiently rewarded by meeting with a biographer in every way so competent.

THE QUIET HEART.

PART V.—CHAPTER XXV.

But this Menie Laurie, rising up from her bed of unrest, when the morning light breaks, cold and real, upon a changed world, has wept out all her child’s tears, and is a woman once again. No one knows yet a whisper of what has befallen her, not even poor Jenny, who sobbed over her last night, and implored her not to weep.

Now, how to tell this—how to signify, in the fewest and calmest words, the change that has come upon her. Sitting, with her cheek leant on her hand, by the window where she heard it, before any other eyes are awake, Menie ponders this in her heart. Always before in little difficulties counsel and help have been within her reach; few troublous things have been to do in Menie’s experience; and no one ever dreamt that she should do them, when they chanced to come to her mother’s door.

But now her mother’s honour is involved—she must not be consulted—she must not know. With a proud flush Menie draws up herself—herself who must work in this alone. Ah, sweet dependence, dear humility of the old times! we must lay them by out of our heart, to wait for a happier dawn. This day it is independence—self-support—a strength that stands alone; and no one who has not felt such an abrupt transition can know how hard it is to take these unused weapons up.

“Will you let me speak to you, aunt?” Menie’s heart falters within her, as she remembers poor Miss Annie’s unaccepted sympathy. Has she indeed been driven to seek refuge here at last?

“My love! how can you ask such a question, darling, when I am always ready to speak to you?” exclaimed Miss Annie, with enthusiasm.

“But not here—out of doors, if you will permit me,” said Menie in a half whisper. “I—I want to be out of my mother’s sight—she must not know.”

“You delightful creature,” said Miss Annie, “are you going to give me your confidence at last?”

Poor Menie, sadly dismayed, was very ill able to support this strain of sympathy. She hastened out, not quite observing how it tasked her companion to follow her—out to the same green overgrown corner, where once before she had spoken of this same subject to Randall himself. With a slight shudder she paused there before the little rustic seat, from which she had risen at his approach; but Menie knew that she must harden herself against the power of associations; enough of real ill was before her.

“I want to tell you, aunt, if you will please to listen to me, that the engagement of which you were told when we came here is dissolved—broken. I do not know if there is any stronger word,” said Menie, a bewildered look growing on her face. “I mean to say, that it is all over, as if it had never been.”

And Menie folded her hands upon her breast, and stood patiently to listen, expecting a burst of lamentation and condolence; but Menie was not prepared for the laugh which rung shrilly on her ears—the words that followed it.

“My sweet simple child, I have no doubt you quite believe it—forgive me for laughing, darling; but I know what lovers’ quarrels are. There, now, don’t look so grave and angry; my love, you will make it all up to-morrow.”

And Miss Annie Laurie patted Menie’s shrinking shoulder encouragingly. It was a harder task this than Menie had anticipated; but she went on without flinching.

“This is no lovers’ quarrel, aunt; do not think so. My mother is in some degree involved in this. I cannot consult her, or ask her to help me; it is the first time I have ever been in such a strait;” and Menie’s lip quivered as she spoke. “You are my only friend. I am serious—as serious as mind can be, which feels that here it decides its life. Aunt, I apply to you.”

Miss Annie Laurie looked up very much confused and shaken; very seldom had any one spoken to her with such a sober seriousness of tone; she could not think it unreal, for neither extravagance nor despair were in these grave sad words of Menie. The poor frivolous heart felt this voice ring into its depths, past all superficial affectations and sentiments. No exuberance of sympathy, no shower of condoling words or endearments, could answer this appeal; and poor Miss Annie faltered before this claim of real service—faltered and shrank into a very weak old woman, her self-delusions standing her in no stead in such a strait; and the only answer she could make was to cry, in a trembling and strangely altered voice, “Oh, child, do not speak so. What can I do for you?”

Most true, what can you do, indeed, poor soul! whose greatest object for all these years has been to shut out and darken the daylight truth, which mocked your vain pretences? You could give charity and gentle words—be thankful; your heart is alive in you because of these: but what can you do in such a difficulty as this? where is your wisdom to counsel, your strength to uphold? This grave girl stands before you, sadly bearing her burden, without an effort to conceal from you that she feels it hard to bear; but you, whose age is not grave, whose heart has rejected experience, whose mind has refused to learn the kindly insight of advancing years—shrink into yourself, poor aged butterfly; feel that it is presumption to call yourself her counsellor, and say again—again, with a tremble in your weakened voice, “What can I do for you?”

“Aunt, I apply to you,” said Menie Laurie; “I ask your help, when I resolve to decide my future life according to my own will and conviction of what is best. I have no one else to assist me. I apply to you.”

Miss Annie melted into a fit of feeble crying; her hands shook, her ringlets drooped down lank about her cheeks. “I will do anything—anything you like; tell me what to do, Menie—Menie, my dear child.”

It was pitiful to see her distress. Menie, whom no one comforted, felt her heart moved to comfort her.

“I will not grieve you much,” said Menie gently; “only I beg you to give me your countenance when I see Randall—Mr Home. I want you to be as my mother might have been in other circumstances; but I will not trouble you much, aunt—I will not trouble you.”

Miss Annie could not stop her tears; she was very timid and afraid, sobbing helplessly. “What will I do? what can I do? Oh, Menie, love, you will make it up to-morrow;” for poor Miss Annie knew no way of conquering grief except by flying out of its sight.

Menie led her back to the house tenderly. Menie had never known before this necessity of becoming comforter, when she had so much need to be comforted. It was best for her—it gave her all the greater command over her own heart.

And to hear poor innocent July, in her own young unclouded joy—to hear her unsuspicious mother at their breakfast-table—to have Randall’s name cross her now and then, like a sudden blow—Randall, Randall;—Menie knew nothing of all these depths, nor how such sorrows come in battalions; so, one by one, her inexperienced heart gained acquaintance with them now,—gained acquaintance with that sorest of human truths, that it is possible to love and to condemn—possible to part, and know that parting is the best—yet withal to cling and cling, and hold, with the saddest gripe of tenderness, the heart from which you part. Poor Menie! they said she looked very dark and heavy; that last night’s exertions had wearied her—it was very true.

Miss Annie sent a message that she was not well, and would breakfast in her own room. In the forenoon, when she came down stairs again, even Menie was startled at the change. Miss Annie’s ringlets were smoothed out and braided on her poor thin cheek—braided elaborately with a care and study worthy of something more important; her step tottered a little; when any one spoke to her, a little gush of tears came to her eyes; but, notwithstanding, there was a solemnity and importance in the hush of Miss Annie’s manner, which no one had ever seen in her before. Half-a-dozen times that day she asked, in a startling whisper, “Menie, when is he to come?” Poor Menie, sick at heart, could scarcely bear this slow prolonging of her pain.

CHAPTER XXVI.

“Aunt, he has come.”

No one knows; July is out on a ramble in this pleasant heath, where she cannot lose herself; Mrs Laurie has gone out for some private errands of her own. In her first day, Menie has managed well. True, they all know that Menie has been wearied last night; that her eye looks dull and heavy; that her cheek has lost its slight bloom of colour; that she says something of a headache; but nobody knows that headache has come to be with Menie Laurie as with many another, only a softer word for heartache—no one suspects that the quiet heart, which feared no evil when this spring began, is now a battle-ground, and field of contest, and that sometimes, when she sits quiet in outward seeming, she could leap up with a start and scream, and feels as if madness would come to her underneath their unsuspicious eyes.

“Aunt, he has come.”

Miss Annie Laurie is very nervous; she has to be supported on Menie’s arm as they go down stairs. “You will make it all up, Menie; yes, my darling;” but Miss Annie’s head nods spasmodically, and there is a terrified troubled expression about her face, which looks so meagre in its outline under that braided hair.

Slightly disturbed, something haughty, rather wondering what Menie has got to say for herself, Randall sits waiting in the drawing-room. It is no small surprise to him to see Miss Annie—especially to see her so moved and nervous; and Randall restrains, with visible displeasure, the words which rose to his lips on Menie’s entrance, and coldly makes his bow to the lady of the house.

“My dear Mr Home, I am very much grieved; I hope you are ready to make it all up,” murmurs Miss Annie; but she trembles so much that it is not easy to hear what she says, except the last words, which flush Randall’s cheek with a sudden disdainful anger. A lovers’ quarrel!—that he should be fancied capable of this.

“My aunt has come with me,” said Menie steadily, “to give the weight of her presence to what I say. Randall, I do not pretend that my own feelings are changed, or that I have ceased to care for you. I do not need to seem to quarrel, or to call you by a less familiar name. We know the reason both of us; there is no use for discussing it—and I have come to have it mutually understood that our engagement is broken. We will go away very soon. I came to say good-by.”

Before she concluded, Menie had bent her head, and cast down her wavering eyes upon Miss Annie’s hand, which she held firmly in her own. Her voice was very low, her words quick and hurried; she stood beside Miss Annie’s chair, holding fast, and twining in her own Miss Annie’s nervous fingers; but she did not venture to look up to meet Randall’s eyes.

“What does this mean? it is mere trifling, Menie,” said Randall impatiently. “You hear a gossip’s story of something I said; true or false, it did not affect you—it had no bearing on you; you know very well that nothing has happened to make you less precious to me—that nothing can happen which will ever change my heart. Menie, this is the second time; is this the conduct I have a right to expect from you? Deal with me frankly; I have a title to it. What do you mean?”

“My darling, he will make it up,” said Miss Annie, with a little overflow of tears.

But Menie was very steady—so strange, so strange—she grew into a startling acquaintance with herself in these few hours. Who could have thought there were so many passionate impulses in Menie Laurie’s quiet heart?

“We will not discuss it, Randall,” she said again; “let us simply conclude that it is best for both of us to withdraw. Perhaps you will be better content if I speak more strongly,” she continued, with a little trembling vehemence, born of her weakness, “if I say it is impossible—impossible—you understand the word—to restore the state of mind, the hope, the trust, and confidence that are past. No—let us have no explanation—I cannot bear it, Randall. Do we not understand each other already? Nothing but parting is possible for us—for me. I think I am saying what I mean to say—good-by.”

“Look at me, Menie.”

It is hard to do it—hard to lift up those eyes, so full of tears—hard to see his lips quiver—hard to see the love in his face; but Menie’s eyes fall when they have endured this momentary ordeal; and again she holds out her hand and says, “Good-by.”

“Good-by—I answer you,” said Randall, wringing her hand, and throwing it out of his grasp. “Good-by—you are disloyal, Menie, disloyal to Nature and to me; some time you will remember this; now I bid you farewell.”

Something crossed her like an angry breath—something rang in her ears, confused and echoing like the first drops of a thunder-shower; and Menie can see nothing in all the world but Miss Annie weeping upon her hand, and, like a culprit, steals away—steals away, not knowing where she goes—desolate, guilty, forsaken, feeling as if she had done some grievous wrong, and was for ever shut out from peace or comfort in this weary world.

Yes—there is no one to see you. Lie down upon the ground, Menie Laurie—down, down, where you can be no lower, and cover your eyes from the cheerful light. How they pour upon you, these dreadful doubts and suspicions of yourself!—wisely—wisely—what should make it wise, this thing you have done? You yourself have little wisdom, and you took no counsel. If it was not wise, what then?—it is done, and there is nothing for it now but to be content.

CHAPTER XXVII.

“It must not be—I cannot permit it,” said Mrs Laurie. “Menie, is this all that your mother deserves at your hands? to take such a step as this without even telling me—without giving me an opportunity of remonstrance? Menie! Menie!”

And with hasty steps Mrs Laurie paces backward and forward the narrow room. Beside the window, very pale, Menie stands with a half-averted face, saying nothing—very pale—and there is a sullen suffering in Menie Laurie’s darkened face.

“I cannot have it—I will not permit it”—Mrs Laurie is much excited. “My own honour is compromised; it will be said it is I who have separated you. Menie! it is strange that you should show so little regard either to Randall or to me. I must do something—I must make an effort—I cannot have this.”

“Mother, hear me,” exclaimed Menie. “No one shall do anything; I will not bear it either. In everything else you shall make of me what you will—here I am not to be swayed; I must decide this for myself—and I have decided it, mother.”

With astonished eyes Mrs Laurie looked upon her daughter’s face. Flushed with passion, full of a fierce unrespecting will—was this Menie Laurie? but her mother turned aside from her. “I am sorry, Menie—I am very sorry—to see you show such a spirit; another time I will speak of it again.”

Another time!—Menie Laurie laughed a low laugh when her mother left the room. Something like a scowl had come to Menie’s brow; a dark abiding cloud was on her face; and in her heart such bitterness and universal disappointment as killed every gentle feeling in her soul: disloyal to the one love, disrespectful and disobedient to the other—bitterly Menie’s heart turned upon itself—she had pleased no one; her life was nothing but a great blot before her. She was conscious of a host of evil feelings—evil spirits waging war with one another in her vexed and troubled mind. Sullenly she sat down once more upon the ground, not to seek if there was any comfort in the heavens above or the earth beneath, but to brood upon her grief, and make it darker, till the clouds closed over her, and swallowed her up, and not a star remained.

There is a certain obstinate gloomy satisfaction in despair. To decide that everything is hopeless—that nothing can be done for you—that you have reached to the pre-eminence of woe—no wonder Menie’s face was dark and sullen—she had come to this point now.

Like a thunder-storm this intelligence came upon little July Home—she could not comprehend it, and no one took the trouble to explain to her. Lithgow, knowing but the fact, was surprised and grieved, and prophesied their reunion; but no hope was in Menie’s sullen gravity—none in the haughty resentment of Randall Home.

And Mrs Laurie once more with a troubled brow considers of her future—will Menie be best in the Dumfriesshire cottage, where no one will see their poverty, or pursuing some feminine occupation among the other seamstresses, teachers, poor craftswomen of a less solitary place? For now that all is done that can be done, there is no hope of recovering anything of the lost income,—and Mrs Laurie will not live on Miss Annie’s bounty. She is anxious with all her heart to be away.

Miss Annie herself has not recovered her trial: autumn winds grow cold at night—autumn rains come down sadly upon the little world which has had its cheerfulness quenched out of it—and when Randall takes away his little sister to carry her home, Miss Annie looks a mournful old woman, sitting there wrapped up by the early lighted fire. These two or three mornings she has even been seen at the breakfast-table with a cap protecting the head which is so sadly apt to take cold—and Miss Annie cries a little to herself, and tells bits of her own love-story to Menie, absorbed and silent, who sits unanswering beside her—and moans to herself sadly sometimes, over this other vessel of youthful life, cast away.

But Miss Annie Laurie never wears ringlets more. Strangely upon her conscience, like a reproach for her unnatural attenuated youth, came Menie’s appeal to her for help and comfort. Feeling herself so frivolous and feeble, so unable to sustain or strengthen, Miss Annie made a holocaust of her curls, and was satisfied. So much vanity was relinquished not without a struggle; but great comfort came from the sacrifice to the heroic penitent.

And Jenny, discontented and angry with them all, furiously now takes the part of Randall Home, and wonders, in a fuff and outburst, what Miss Menie can expect that she “lightlies” a bonny lad like yon. A great change has taken place on Menie; no one can say it is for the better—and sullenly and sadly this bright year darkens over the house of Heathbank.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“You’re to bide away—you’re no to come near this place. Na, you may just fecht; but you’ve nae pith compared to Jenny, for a’ sae auld and thrawn as Jenny has been a’ her days. It’s no me just—it’s your mamma and the doctor. Bairn! will you daur struggle wi’ me?”

But Menie would dare struggle with any one—neither command nor resistance satisfies her.

“Let me in—I want to see my mother.”

“You can want your mother for a day—there’s mair than you wanting her. That puir auld haverel there—guid forgi’e me—she’s a dying woman—has sairer lack o’ her than you. Keep to your ain place, Menie Laurie—muckle made o’—muckle thocht o’—but you’re only a bairn for a’ that—you’re no a woman of judgment like your mamma or me. I tell you to gang away—I will not let you in.”

And Jenny stood firm—a jealous incorruptible sentinel in the passage which led to Miss Annie Laurie’s room. “Miss Menie, ye’ll no take it ill what I say,” said Jenny; “there’s death in the house, or fast coming. I ken what the doctor means. Gang you ben the house, like a good bairn; look in your ain glass, and see if there should be a face like that in a house where He comes.”

Menie looked silently into the countenance before her—the keen, impatient, irascible face; but it was easy to see a hasty tear dashed away from Jenny’s cheek.

And without another word, Menie Laurie turned away. Some withered leaves are lying on the window-sill—the trees are yielding up their treasures, dropping them down mournfully to the disconsolate soil—but the meagre yew-tree rustles before her, darkly green in its perennial gloom. Rather shed the leaves, the hopes—rather yield to winter meekly for the sake of spring—rather be cut down, and rooted up altogether, than grow to such a sullen misanthrope as this.

And Menie Laurie looks into her own face; this gloomy brow—these heavy eyes—are these the daylight features of Menie Laurie?—the interpretation of her heart? Earnestly and long she reads—no lesson of vanity, but a stern sermon from that truthful mirror. Hush!—listen!—what was that?—a cry!

The doctor is leaving Miss Annie Laurie’s room—the cry is over—there is only now a feeble sound of weeping; but a shadow strangely still and sombre has fallen upon the house, and the descending step rings like a knell upon the stairs. What is it?—what is coming?—and what did it mean, that melancholy cry?

Alas! a voice out of a startled soul—a cry of wild and terrified recognition—acknowledgment. Years ago, age came gently to this dwelling—gently, with light upon his face, and honour on his grey hairs. There was no entrance for him through the jealous door; but now has come another who will not be gainsaid.

Gather the children, Reaper—gather the lilies—take the corn full in the ear—go to the true souls where thought of you dwells among thoughts of other wonders, glories, solemn things to come—leave this chamber here with all its poor devices. No such presence has ever stood within its poverty-stricken walls before. Go where great love, great hope, great faith, great sorrow, sublimer angels, have made you no phantom—leave this soul to its toys and delusions—it is a poor triumph—come not here.

Hush, be still. They who have sent him have charged him with a message; hear it how it rings slow and solemn into the ear of this hushed house. “There is a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein.” Stay your weeping, poor fool—poor soul; prayers have gone up for you from the succoured hearts of some of God’s poor. Unawares, in your simplicity, you have lent to the Lord. Your gracious debtor gives you back with the grand usury of heaven—gives you back opportunity—hope—a day to be saved—lays aside those poor little vanities of yours under the cover of this, His great magnanimous divine grace—and holds open to your feeble steps the way, where wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err any more for ever.

“I’ll let you pass, Miss Menie, if you’ll bide a moment,” said Jenny, wiping her eyes; “he says it’s no the fever he thought it was, but just a natural decay. Did you hear yon? she wasna looking for Him that’s at the door, and He’ll no wait lang where ance He’s gi’en His summons—pity me! I would like to see him coming the road mysel, afore I just found him at my door-stane.”

The room is very still; through the quiet you can only hear the panting of a frightened breath, and now and then a timid feeble sob. She has to go away—knows and feels to the depth of her heart that she must go upon this solemn road alone; but, with a sad panic of terror and curiosity, she watches her own feelings, wondering if this and this be death.

And now they sit and read to her while the daylight flushes in noon—while it fades and wanes into the night—the night and dark of which she has a childish terror—read to her this gracious blessed Gospel, which does not address itself alone to the wise and noble, but is for the simple and for fools. Safe ground, poor soul, safe ground—for this is no scheme of eclecticism, no portal to the pagan heavens—and you cannot know yourself so low, so mean, as to escape the range of this great wide embracing arm.

“I have not done all that I ought to have done,” murmurs poor Miss Annie. “Don’t leave me:” for she cannot rest except some one holds her hand, and has a faint superstitious trust in it, as if it held her sure.

A little pause—again the fingers close tightly upon the hand they hold. “I never did any harm.” The words are so sad—so sad—falling out slow and feeble upon the hushed air of this darkening room.

“But I never did any good—never, never.” The voice grows stronger. “Does anybody think I did? I—I—I never was very wise. I used to try to be kind sometimes;” and in a strain of inarticulate muttering, the sound died away once more.

And then again the voice of the reader broke the silence. They scarcely thought the sufferer listened; for ever and anon she broke forth in such wavering self-justifications, self-condemnings, as these. But now there is a long silence; strange emotions come and go upon this old, old, withered face. The tears have been dried from her eyes for hours; now they come again, bedewing all her poor thin cheeks; but a strange excitement struggles with her weakness. Looking about to her right hand and to her left, the dying woman struggles with an eager defiance—struggles till, at a sudden climax, her broken voice breaks forth again.

“Who said it was me—me—it’s not me! I never could win anything in this world—nothing in this world—not a heart to care for me. Do you think I could win Heaven? I say it is not me; it’s for His sake.

“For His sake—for His sake.” If it is a prayer that ends thus—if it is a sudden assurance of which she will not loose her hold for ever—no one can know; for by-and-by her panic returns upon Miss Annie. Close in her own cold fingers she grasps the hand of Menie Laurie, and whispers, “Is it dark—is it so dark to you?” with again a thrill of terror and trembling, and awful curiosity, wondering if this, perchance, is the gloom of death.

“It is very dark—it is almost night.” The lamp is lighted on the table; let some one go to her side, and hold this other poor wandering hand. “Oh! not in the night—not in the night—I am afraid to go out in the night,” sobs poor Miss Annie; and with a dreadful suspicion in her eyes, as if of some one drawing near to murder her, she watches the falling of this fated night.

A solemn vigil—with ever that tight and rigid pressure upon their clasped hands. Mother and daughter, silent, pale, keep the watch together; and below, the servants sit awe-stricken, afraid to go to sleep. Jenny, who is not afraid, goes about the stairs, up and down, from room to room, sometimes serving the watchers, sometimes only straying near them, muttering, after her fashion, words which may be prayers, and dashing off now and then an intrusive tear.

Still, with many a frightened pause—many a waking up, and little pang of terror, this forlorn heart wanders back into the life which is ending now—wanders back to think herself once more engaged in the busier scenes of her youth, in the little occupations, the frivolities and gaiety of her later years; but howsoever her mind wanders, she never ceases to fix her eyes upon the span of sky glittering with a single star, which shines pale on her through the window from which, to please her, they have drawn the curtain. “I am afraid to go out in the dark;” again and again she says it with a shudder, and a tightened hold upon their hands—and steadfastly watches the night.

At last her eyes grow heavy—she has fallen asleep. Little reverence has Miss Annie won at any time of all her life—but the eyes that look on her are awed and reverent now. Slowly the hours pass by—slowly the gradual dawn brightens upon her face—the star has faded out of the heavens—on her brow, which is the brow of death, the daylight glows in one reviving flush. The night is over for evermore.

And now her heavy eyes are opened full—her feeble form is raised; and, with a cry of joy, she throws out her arms to meet the light. Lay her down tenderly; her chains are broken in her sleep; now she no more needs the pressure of your kindly hands. Lay her down, she is afraid no longer; for not in the night, or through the darkness, but with the morning and the sun, the traveller fares upon her way—where fools do not err. By this time they have taken her in yonder at the gate. Lay down all that remains of her to its rest.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The curtains are drawn again in Miss Annie Laurie’s house of Heathbank—drawn back from the opened windows to let the fresh air and the sunshine in once more to all the rooms. With a long breath and sigh of relief, the household throws off its compelled gloom. With all observances of honour, they have laid her in her grave, and a few natural tears have been wept—a few kindly words spoken—a reverent memento raised to name the place where she lies. Now she is passed away and forgotten, her seat empty—her house knowing her no more.

In Miss Annie’s desk, a half-written paper—intimating vaguely that, in case of “anything happening” to her at any future time, she wished all that she had to be given to Menie Laurie—was found immediately after the funeral. But some superstitious terror had prevented her from finishing it, far more from making a will. Menie was her next of kin; it pleased them to have this sanction of her willingness to the inheritance of the natural heir.

Miss Annie had been rather given to speak of her savings; but no vestige of these savings was to be found. She had practised this on herself like many another delusion; and saving the furniture of Heathbank, and a profusion of ornaments not valuable, there remained little for Menie to inherit. Miss Annie’s maid was her well-known favourite, and had been really attentive, and a good servant to her indulgent mistress. Her name was mentioned in the half-written paper, and Maria’s own report of many conversations, modestly hinted at a legacy. Miss Annie’s furniture, pretty and suitable for her house as it was, was not valuable in a sale; and Mrs Laurie, acting for her daughter, bestowed almost the whole amount received for it upon Maria, as carrying out the will of her mistress. Having done this, they had done all, Mrs Laurie thought, and would now go home to live as they could upon what remained to them. Burnside, with all its plenishing, brought in no greater revenue than fifty pounds a-year, and Mrs Laurie had two or three hundred pounds “in the bank.” This was all. She began to calculate painfully what the home-journey would cost them, and called Jenny to consult about their packing. They were now in a little lodging in the town of Hampstead. They had no inducement to stay here; and Menie’s face looked very pale—very much in want of the fresh gale on the Dumfriesshire braes. True, they knew not where they were going, but the kindly soil was home.

When her mother and Jenny began to take enumeration of the bags and boxes which must go with them, Menie entered the room. Menie looked very slight, very pale, and exhausted, almost shadowy in her mourning dress; but Menie’s now was a face which had looked on Death. The conflict and sullen warfare were gone out of it. Dead and silent within her lay her chilled heart, like a stricken field when the fight is over, with nothing but moans and sighs, and voices of misery, where the music and pomp of war has so lately been. The contest was over; there was nothing to struggle for, or struggle with, in this dull unhappiness—and a heavy peace lay upon Menie like a cloud.

“There’s a wee kistie wi’ a lock. I set it by mysel for Miss Menie; and there’s the muckle ane that held the napery at hame; but I’m no gaun owre them a’. I’ll just lay in the things as I laid them when we came. Miss Menie! gang awa your ways, like a good bairn, and read a book; your mamma’s speaking about the flitting, and I can only do ae thing at a time.”

“Are we going home, mother?”

“There is nothing else we can do, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie. “I suppose none of us have any inducement now to stay in London.”

A flush of violent colour came to Menie’s cheeks. She paused and hesitated. “I have, mother.”

“Bless me, I aye said it,” muttered Jenny quickly, under her breath, as she turned round with an eager face, and thrust herself forward towards the mother and daughter. “The bairn’s come to hersel.”

Mrs Laurie coloured scarcely less than Menie. “I cannot guess what you mean,” she said hurriedly. “You did not consult me before—I am, perhaps, an unsuitable adviser now; but I cannot stay in London without having a reason for it. This place has nothing but painful associations for me. You are not well, Menie,” continued the mother, softening; “we shall all be better away—let us go home.”

The colour wavered painfully on Menie Laurie’s cheek, and it was hard to keep down a groan out of her heart. “I am not come to myself—my mind is unchanged,” she said with sudden meekness. “I want you to stay for a month or two—as short a time as possible—and to let me have some lessons. Mother, look at these.”

Menie had brought her little portfolio. With some astonishment Mrs Laurie turned over its contents, and delicately—almost timidly too—lest Randall’s face should look out upon her as of old. But all the sketches of Randall were removed. Jenny pressed forward to see; but Jenny, as bewildered as Menie’s mother, could only look up with a puzzled face. What did she mean?

“They are not very well done,” said Menie; “but, for all that, they are portraits, and like. I want to have lessons, mother. Once before, long ago,”—poor Menie, it seemed to be years ago,—“I said this should be my trade. I will like the trade; let me only have the means of doing it better, and it will be good for me to do it. This is why I ask you to stay in London.”

Jenny, very fierce and red, grasping the back of a chair, thrust it suddenly between them at this point, with a snort of emphatic defiance.

“Ye’ll no let on ye hear her!” exclaimed Jenny; “you’ll let her get her whimsey out like ony ither wean!—ye’ll pay nae attention to her maggots and her vanities! Trade! My patience! to think I should live to hear a bairn of ours speak of a trade, and Jenny’s twa hands to the fore!”

And a petulant reluctant sob burst out of Jenny’s breast—an angry tear glittered in her eye. She drew a long breath to recover herself—

“Jenny’s twa hands to the fore, I say, and the bere a’ to shear yet, and the ’taties to gather—no to say the mistress is to buy me twa kye, to take butter to the market! I would just like to ken where’s the pleasure in working, if it’s no to gi’e ease to folk’s ain? I’ve a’ my ain plans putten down, if folk would just let me be; and we’ll can keep a young lass to wait upon Miss Menie,” cried Jenny, with a shrill tone in her voice, “and the first o’ the cream and the sweetest o’ the milk, and nae occasion to wet her finger. You’re no gaun to pay ony heed to her—you’re no gaun to let on you hear what she says!”

Reaching this point, Jenny broke down, and permitted, much against her will, a little shower of violent hot tears to rain down upon the arms which she folded resolutely into her apron. But Jenny shook off, with indignation, the caressing hand which Menie laid upon her shoulder. Jenny knew by experience that it was better to be angry than to be sad.

“I would think with you too, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie, slowly. “I could do anything myself; but a bairn of mine doing work for money—Menie, we will not need it—we will try first—”

“Mother,” said Menie, interrupting her hastily, “I will need it—I will never be wilful again—let me have my pleasure now.”

It was a thing unknown in the household that Menie should not have her pleasure. Even Jenny yielded to this imperative claim. The boxes were piled up again in Jenny’s little bedchamber. Jenny herself, able to do nothing else, set to knitting stockings with great devotion. “I’ll ha’e plenty to do when we get hame, without ever taking wires in my hand,” said Jenny. “Nae doubt it’s just a providence to let me lay up as mony as will serve.”

Their parlour was in the first floor, over one of the trim little ladies’ shops, which have their particular abode in little towns of competence and gentility. Toys and Berlin wool—a prim, neat, gentle Miss Middleton sitting at work on some pretty bit of many-coloured industry behind the orderly counter—gay patterns and specimens about—little carts and carriages, and locomotive animals upon the floor—bats, balls, drums, shining tin breastplates, and glorious swords hanging by the door, and a linen awning without, throwing the little shop into pleasant shade. This was the ground floor; above it was a very orderly parlour, and the sun came glistening in upon the little stand of flowers through the bright small panes of the old-fashioned window, and fell upon Mrs Laurie, always at work upon some making or mending—upon Jenny’s abrupt exits and entrances—her keen grey eyes and shining ‘wires,’ the latter of which were so nobly independent of any guidance from the former—and upon Menie’s heavy meditations, and Menie’s daily toil.

For toil it came to be, exalted from the young lady’s accomplishment to the artist’s labour. She worked at this which she harshly called her trade with great zeal and perseverance. Even herself did not know how deficient she was till now; but Menie worked bravely in her apprenticeship, and with good hope.

CHAPTER XXX.

“I wouldna ha’e come hame as I gaed away, if I had been you, Jenny.” The speaker stands at the door of Jenny’s little byre, looking on, while Jenny milks her favourite cow. “Ye see what Nelly Panton’s done for hersel; there’s naething like making up folk’s mind to gang through wi’ a’ thing; and you see Nelly’s gotten a man away in yon weary London.”

“I wouldna gang to seek a misfortune—no me,” said Jenny; “ill enough when it comes; and I wonder how a woman like you, with twelve bairns for a handsel, could gie such an advice to ony decent lass; and weel I wat Nelly Panton’s gotten a man. Puir laddie! it’s the greatest mercy ever was laid to his hands to make him a packman—he’ll no be so muckle at hame; but you’ll make nae divert of Jenny. If naebody ever speered my price, I’m no to hang my head for that. I’ve aye keepit my fancy free, and nae man can say that Jenny ever lookit owre her shouther after him. A’ the house is fu’ ’enow, Marget; we’ve scarcely done with our flitting; I canna ask you to come in.”

So saying, Jenny rose with her pail, and closed the byre-door upon Brockie and her black companion. The wind came down keen from the hills; the frosty wintry heavens had not quite lost the glow of sunset, though the pale East began to glitter with stars. Sullen Criffel has a purple glory upon his cap of cloud, and securely, shoulder to shoulder, this band of mountain marshals keep the border; but the shadows are dark about their feet, and night falls, clear and cold, upon the darkened grass, and trees that stir their branches faintly in the wind.

The scene is strangely changed. Heaths of other nature than the peaceful heath of Hampstead lie dark under the paling skies, not very far away; and the heather is brown on the low-lying pasture hills, standing out in patches from the close-cropped grass. Yonder glow upon the road is the glow of fire-light from an open cottage door, and on the window ledge within stand basins of comfortable Dumfriesshire “parritch,” cooling for the use of those eager urchins, with their fair exuberant locks and merry faces, and waiting the milk which their loitering girl sister brings slowly in from the byre. It is cold, and she breathes upon her fingers as she shifts her pail from one hand to the other; yet bareheaded Jeanie lingers, wondering vaguely at the “bonnie” sky and deep evening calm.

Another cottage here is close at hand, faintly throwing out from this back-window a little light into the gathering gloom. Brockie and Blackie are comfortable for the night; good homely sages, they make no account of the key turned upon them in the byre-door; and Jenny, in her original dress, her beloved shortgown and warm striped skirts, stands a moment, drawing in, with keen relish, the sweep of cold air which comes full upon us over the free countryside.

“I’m waiting for Nelly’s mother,” says Jenny’s companion, who is Marget Panton from Kirklands, Nelly’s aunt; “she’s gane in to speak to your mistress. You’ll no be for ca’ing her mistress now, Jenny, and her sae muckle come down in the world. I’m sure you’re real kind to them; they’ll no be able now to pay you your fee.”

“Me kind to them! My patience! But it’s because ye dinna ken ony better,” said Jenny, with a little snort. “I just wish, for my part, folk would haud by what concerns themsels, and let me abee. I would like to ken what’s a’ the world’s business if Jenny has a good mistress, and nae need to seek anither service frae ae year’s end to the ither—and it canna advantage the like o’ you grudging at Jenny’s fee. It’s gey dark, and the road’s lanesome; if I was you, I would think o’ gaun hame.”

“I wouldna be sae crabbit if I got a pension for’t,” returned Marget, sharply; “and ye needna think to gar folk believe lees; it’s weel kent your house is awfu’ come down. ‘Pride gangs before a fa’,’ the Scripture says. Ye’ll no ca’ that a lee; and I hear that Miss Menie’s joe just heard it, and broke off in time.”

“I’m like to be driven daft wi’ ane and anither,” exclaimed Jenny furiously. “If Miss Menie hadna been a thrawart creature hersel, I wouldna have had to listen to the like o’ this. Na, that micht ha’e been a reason—but it was nane of the siller; she kens best hersel what it was. I’m sure I wouldna have cast away a bonnie lad like yon if it had been me; but the like of her, a young lady, behooves to ha’e her ain way.”

“Weel, it’s aye best to put a guid face on’t,” said Jenny’s tormentor. “I’m no saying onything at my ain hand; it’s a’ Nelly’s story, and Johnnie being to marry July Home—it’s a grand marriage for auld Crofthill’s daughter, such a bit wee useless thing—we’re the likest to ken. Ye needna take it ill, Jenny. I’m meaning nae reproach to you.”

“I’m no canny when I’m angered,” said Jenny, setting down her pail in the road; “ye’ll gang your ways hame, if you take my counsel; there’s naething for you here. Pity me for Kirklands parish, grit and sma’! with Nelly at the Brokenrig, and you at the Brigend; but I canna thole a lee—it makes my heart sick; and I tell ye I’m no canny when I’m angered. Guid nicht to you, Marget Panton; when I want to see you I’ll send you word. You can wait here, if you maun get yon puir decent woman hame wi’ you. I reckon I would get mony thanks if I set her free; but I dinna meddle wi’ ither folks’ business; you can wait for her here.”

And, taking up her pail again rapidly, Jenny pattered away, leaving Marget somewhat astonished, standing in the middle of the road, where this energetic speech had been addressed to her. With many mutterings Jenny pursued her wrathful way.

“Ye’ve your ainsel to thank, no anither creature, Menie Laurie; and now this painting business is begun, they’ll be waur and waur. Whatfor could she no have keepit in wi’ him? A bonnie ane, to ha’e a’ her ain way, and slaving and working a’ day on her feet, as if Jenny wasna worth the bread she eats; and the next thing I’ll hear is sure to be that she’s painting for siller. Pity me!”

Full of her afflictions, very petulant and resentful, Jenny entered the cottage door. It was a but and a ben—that is to say, it had two apartments, one on each side of the entrance. The larger of the two was boarded—Mrs Laurie had ventured to do this at her own expense—and had been furnished in an extremely moderate and simple fashion. It was a very humble room; but still it was a kind of parlour, and, with the ruddy fire-light reddening its farther corners, and blinking on the uncovered window, it looked comfortable, and even cheerful, both from without and within. Mrs Laurie, with her never-failing work, sat by a little table; Menie, whose day’s labour was done, bent over the fire, with her flushed cheeks supported in her hands; the conflict and the sullen glow had gone out of Menie’s face, but a heavy cloud oppressed it still.

Conscious that she is an intruder, divided between her old habitual deference and her new sense of equality, as Johnnie Lithgow’s mother, with any Mrs Laurie under the sun, Mrs Lithgow sits upon the edge of a chair, talking of Nelly, and Nelly’s marriage.

“Nelly says you were real kind. I’m sure naething could be kinder than the like of you taking notice of her, when she was in a strange place her lane, though, nae doubt, being Johnnie’s sister made a great difference. I can scarcely believe my ainsel whiles, the awfu’ odds it’s made on me. I have naething ado but look out the best house in Kirklands, and I can get it bought for me, and an income regular, and nae need to do a thing, but be thankful to Providence and Johnnie. It’s a great blessing a good son.”

As there was only a murmur of assent in answer to this, Mrs Lithgow proceeded:—

“I’m sure it’s naething but neighbourlike—you’ll no take it amiss, being in a kindly spirit—to say if there’s onything ane can do—There’s Nelly gotten her ain house noo, and wonderful weel off in the world; and for me, I’m just a miracle. If there was ought you wanted, no being used to a sma’ house, or ony help in ae way or anither, from a day’s darg wi’ Jenny, to——”

But Mrs Lithgow did not dare to go any further. The slight elevation of Mrs Laurie’s head, the sudden erectness of that stooping figure by the fireside, warned the good woman in time; so, after a hurried breathless pause, she resumed:—

“I would be real glad—it would be naething but a pleasure; and I’ll ne’er forget how guid you were to me when I was in trouble about Johnnie, and aye gied me hope. Poor laddie! next month he’s coming down to be married—and I’m sure I hope he’ll be weel off in a guid wife, for he canna but be a guid man, considering what a son he’s been to me.”

“He will be very well off,” said Mrs Laurie; “and poor little July goes away next month, does she? Has Jenny come in yet, Menie? We have scarcely had time to settle in our new house, Mrs Lithgow; but I will remember your kind offer, and thank you. How dark the night grows—and it looks like snow.”

“I’ll have to be gaun my ways,” said the visitor, rising; “it’s a lanesome road, and I’m no heeding about leaving my house, and a’ the grand new things Johnnie’s sent me, their lane in the dark. I’ll bid you good night, ladies, kindly, and I’m real blithe to see you in the countryside again.”

She was gone, and the room fell into a sudden hush of silence, broken by nothing but the faint rustling of a moved hand, or the fall, now and then, of ashes on the hearth. The bustle and excitement of the “flitting” were over—the first pleasure of being home in their own country was past. Grey and calm their changed fate came down upon them, with no ideal softening of its everyday realities. This sliding pannel here opens upon their bed; this little table serves all purposes of living; these four dim walls, and heavy raftered roof, shut in their existence. Now, through the clear frosty air without, a merry din breaks into the stillness. It is little Davie from the cothouse over the way, who has just escaped from the hands which were preparing him for rest, and dares brothers and sisters in a most willing race after him, their heavy shoes ringing upon the beaten way. Now you hear them coming back again, leading the truant home, and by-and-by all the urchins are asleep, and the mother closes the ever open door. So good night to life and human fellowship. Now—none within sight or hearing of us, save Jenny humming a broken song, on the other side of the wooden partition, which, sooth to say, is Jenny’s bed—we are left alone.

Menie, bending, in her despondent attitude, over the fire, which throws down, now and then, these ashy flakes upon the hearth—our mother, pausing from her work, to bend her weary brow upon her hand. So very still, so chill and forsaken. Not one heart in all the world, except the three which beat under this thatched roof, to give anything but a passing thought to us or our fate; and nothing to look to but this even path, winding away over the desolate lands of poverty into the skies.

Into the skies!—woe for us, and our dreary human ways, if it were not for that blessed continual horizon line; so we do what we have not been used to do before—we read a sad devout chapter together, and have a faltering prayer; and then for silence and darkness and rest.

Say nothing to your child, good mother, of the bitter thoughts that crowd upon you, as you close your eyes upon the wavering fire-light, and listen, in this stillness, to all the stealthy steps and touches of the wakeful night. Say nothing to your mother, Menie, of the tears which steal down between your cheek and your pillow, as you turn your face to the wall. What might have been—what might have been; is it not possible to keep from thinking of that? for even Jenny mutters to herself, as she lies wakefully contemplating the glow of her gathered fire—mutters to herself, with an indignant fuff, and hard-drawn breath, “I wish her muckle pleasure of her will: she’s gotten her will: and I wadna say but she minds him now—a bonnie lad like yon!”

CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT?

Is knowledge, like Saturn, destined to devour her own masculine offspring, and leave only the weak to live to propagate follies? If Common Sense, the strong born, has escaped, it is because Knowledge has been deceived, like Saturn, with a stone, not very easy of digestion, nor promising to add much to her substance. But this survivor, Common Sense, has the effeminate yet numerous progeny to contend with, who, with a busy impertinence, multiply absurdities, and put them forth under the glorifying name of their parent, Knowledge. We rejoice, therefore, to see a laudable attempt being made to rescue knowledge from the cramming in of uncommon and worthless things, and to substitute for the people’s use a knowledge of “common things.” And we hope an aggregate addition of the bone and muscle of a little more common honesty, and true genuine natural feeling, will be the result of the wholesomer food. The people have been long enough imposed on by false titles; or the “Useful Knowledge,” the pretence of the age, has been exhausted, and resort had to a very useless substitute.

It is not long since that we read the question and answer scheme of an examination of a retired village school, consisting of labourers’ children; one of the questions being, “What is chronology?” “What is its derivation?” Answer, “Derived from two Greek words,” &c. Will any one think that children so taught become wiser or better? This may not be an isolated instance. It seems possible that chronology may become rather too fashionable a study, and engage a host of collectors of valueless nothings. The neglected science has certainly some arrears to make up. Some few years ago we were authoritatively told that “History” is nothing but an “old Almanac.” Since which time, History and her sister, Chronology, have been discarded servants—out of place, and glad to pick up a few pence here and there as charwomen, in all sorts of odds and ends of corners, to sweep away time-collected dust and rubbish. Their industry seems likely to be rewarded at last. A few of the old worshippers, taking advantage of this exhaustion of “useful knowledge,” benevolently lend them a helping hand, and are trying to persuade the public that the dust was gold dust, or better than gold dust, and the rubbish a treasure, and advising that it should all be swept in again—and where?—into our National Gallery! and doubtless their next step will be to appoint a Parliamentary Commission, not so much for the purpose of sifting it, as of issuing treatises and lectures upon the value and national importance of this new-old treasure trove. So that the public may look to this, that, instead of having their eyes gratified by the beauties of art, they will be disgusted with its deformities; while their heads will be so stuffed with its history, as to leave no room for a thought of its excellence, or a sentiment to be derived from it.

Let not the reader be alarmed at the very mention of the National Gallery. We are not about to inflict upon him the evidence in the Blue Book respecting the picture-cleaning, the doings and misdoings of trustees, the “discrepancies” of opinions and statement of facts, the faults of a system which is inconsistently at once condemned and recommended for continuance, the labyrinth of question and answer leading to no conclusion, the blame here and the flattery there, the unwilling admissions and unreserved condemnations: most people we see are perhaps inclined to believe, in this instance at least, that a “big book is a big evil.” We do not, therefore, intend in this place to reopen the discussion which made the subject of our former papers.

The difficulty under which the Commission laboured was visible from the beginning. The trustees had approved of the cleaning. The task of very decidedly condemning this approval was naturally distasteful; therefore, what is too evidently wrong is charged upon a “system,” while the honourable personages are praised and flattered as if they had never had anything to do with it.

The case must for a while rest where it is, and we should have waited with patience the leisure of our now busy Parliament for its resumption, were it not that a very grievous mischief is left in the Blue Book, where it meets with much favour, to be taken up and made the key-note, the first and last principle of every future discussion respecting a national gallery. It might be thought that, after thirty years of its establishment, we should not have now to come to the question, what a national gallery should be. But so it is. There has been as yet no “fixed principle,” we are told, upon which a national collection is to be formed. We have no charge to bring against the trustees on that account; indeed, we rejoice that they had no fixed principle, if by fixed principle is meant such scheme and system as we see pertinaciously and insinuatingly urged upon the public notice in parts of the evidence, and more particularly in the appendix of this voluminous Report.

We give our reader credit for good taste and common sense, and doubt not he will think it sufficient that a national gallery should consist of good pictures—the best that are to be had. But no: common sense is too unrefined for this knowledge-age, and good taste is of private purveyorship, and of very little importance in forming a public collection. However absurd this may seem to be, we assure the reader that it is an idea put forth with a good deal of authority, and perhaps no little presumption, on the part of some of its advocates; we see its dressing up into a substantial image of magnitude, and mean to take up the sling and the stone, and do battle with it. There are always a multitude of dilettanti who, loading their memories with names, love to talk with apparent learning about art, and yet have little feeling for its real excellences. To such, a history of art is better than art itself. They would make a national gallery a lumber-house of chronological curiosities. They have a perverse love for system and arrangement: very good things in their proper places, and with moderation, keeping a very subordinate position, not without value in a national gallery; but the value is little indeed, if put in any degree in competition with what should be the great primary aim—to gather together the finest works of the best painters. The chronological arrangement should be the after-thought, arising out of what we possess, not directing the first choice. This whim of the dilettanti school is not new with us. It may be seen in the Report of the Commission of 1836—and is repeated in the present Report.

“The intelligent public of this country are daily becoming more alive to the truth, which has long been recognised by other enlightened nations, that the arts of design cannot be properly studied or rightly appreciated by means of insulated specimens alone; that, in order to understand or profit by the great works, either of ancient or modern schools of art, it is necessary to contemplate the genius which produced them, not merely in its final results, but in the mode of its operation—in its rise and progress, as well as in its perfection. A just appreciation of Italian painting can as little be obtained from an exclusive study of the works of Raphael, Titian, or Correggio, as a critical knowledge of English poetry from the perusal of a few of its masterpieces. What Chaucer and Spenser are to Shakespeare and Milton, Giotto and Massaccio are to the great masters of the Florentine school: and a national gallery would be as defective without adequate specimens of both styles of painting, as a national library without specimens of both styles of poetry. In order, therefore, to render the British National Gallery worthy the name it bears, your committee think that the funds appropriated to the enlargement of the collection should be expended with a view not merely of exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art, but of instructing the people in the history of that art, and of the age in which, and the men by whom, those works were produced.”

There is but little said here in many words, and that little based upon an erroneous presumption. We do not believe that the “intelligent public” are becoming alive to “the truth,” which is a fallacy, that they cannot profit by great works without having before them the previous failures, experiments, and imbecilities of the earlier practitioners in art. If the public have any intelligence at all, they will appreciate the “Madonna de Sisto,” for instance, without disgusting their eyes with such Byzantine “specimens” as that shown to Mr Curzon in the monastery, where the monk in his strange ignorance inquired if “all women were like that?” Nor is the parallelism between poetry and painting here fortunate. For, besides that books may sleep on shelves and not offend, and pictures (for the purpose intended) must obtrude themselves on the eye, we do not see that Chaucer and Spenser at all bear the relation to Shakespeare and Milton that Giotto and Massaccio do to the great masters of the Florentine school. All these were men of great, mostly independent genius, worthy of galleries and libraries for their own sakes. But they are here placed as screens to hide the chronological deformities behind them. The “not merely exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art” would seem to infer, to give any force to the passage, that not only the painters Giotto and Massaccio had no “beautiful works,” but that Chaucer and Spenser were poor poets, having no beauties, and no other or little merit but that of being the warning precursors to Shakespeare and Milton, to enable them to eschew their faults.

The committee very cautiously abstained from defining any chronological limits, for we are not to infer that they are to begin with Giotto. However they may consider him the founder of the Italian school, the appendix shows that the Byzantine and very early Italian art (if to be obtained) are desired specimens. “The specimens more especially fitted for a gallery of paintings commence with movable paintings on wood, by the Byzantines, representing the Madonna and child, single figures of saints, and sometimes extensive compositions on a minute scale,” going back even to the ninth century, and so to the earlier Italian “influenced by Byzantine art.” And more decidedly to show the mere chronological object, it is added, “In the case of works without names, or inscribed with names before unknown, the test of artistic merit must chiefly determine the question of eligibility.” Artistic merit only in these cases, and then “chiefly” so that in other cases names are everything.

And all this is for the purpose of instructing the people, not in art, but in the history of art, which may be quite well enough learnt from books by the curious, or in some museum of curiosities, better than in a national gallery, where the real and proper instruction would only be hindered by the sight of things antagonistic to any beauty. We do not doubt that this idea, carried out, would lead to a pictorial chronological mania, if it does not commence with it, not unlike the Bibliomania, ever in search of works, only rare because worthless. Such a national gallery as this scheme contemplates would be the exhibition of a pictorial Dunciad, in which we hope the veræ effigies of the first schemers and promoters would not be omitted, that some future satirist may give them also their merited immortality. Why cannot a committee upon a national gallery confine themselves to the objects for the consideration of which they are appointed, and not run needlessly into the duties of an educational committee, and talk of instruction, when the preservation and advantageous exhibition of the monuments of antiquity and fine art “possessed by the nation” are what they are required to give their attention to? There is enough to be done in the line pointed out to them, and no need of bewildering themselves or the public, led astray by this ignis fatuus of a chronological whim. We are weary of the daily cant; everything is to be instruction, works of art are to be “specimens.” Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, are to be known only by and as “specimens.” The “people” must be ever in a worry of knowledge, flying about from specimen to specimen: it is for knowledge alone they are to come to a national gallery—we hear nothing of enjoyment, of an indulgence in the repose of taste; and we do sometimes smile, in turning over the leaves of the Blue Book, when meeting with much talk about instructing the people, and turn our thoughts for a moment to the happy “specimens” of instruction the walls of our or any National Gallery exhibit. Is moral instruction or art instruction to be gathered in by the people’s eyes, with their astonishment at “Susanna and the Elders,” and that other Guido purposely purchased as a companion to it, the “Lot and his Daughters?” very costly specimens of instruction, the one amounting to £1680, the other £1260, and neither thought very good specimens for instruction in art—not that the severe criticism upon Guido in the evidence is quite to be depended upon. The great flustering “Rape of the Sabines” is not of very nice instruction, perhaps, either in morals or art. There are the “Three naked Goddesses” by Rubens, to whom the caterers of public instruction took the part of Paris, and threw the golden apple, and a very large one too;—what are their Flemish nudities to teach? A stern moralist showed his insulted purity by dashing one offending specimen to atoms.

We do not, however, profess to be such purists as to desire an irruption into the Gallery of a mob of mad Savonarolas, not easily gathered together in these Latter-day-Saints’ times, knowing as we do the real why and wherefore of collecting; yet we cannot but smile at the pretence of instruction, which is sometimes put upon moral, and sometimes shifted to pictorial, grounds. But there is a class of pictures we could wish to see more sought after—pictures of a pure sentiment. It is true they are rare, in comparison to those of a far other character; but they are the most precious, and the really improving. Nevertheless, at once to get rid of this pretence and sham of instruction, we would ask, to whom are such works of sentiment precious, and whom are they likely to improve?—Certainly not the multitude, who would look at them with indifference, and pass them by. They are precious to cultivated minds and pure tastes: minds which, either from natural dulness or evil habits, cannot receive, or even admit, the perception of common virtues, will be altogether untouched by their pictorial representations. Fortunately, there are enough works of a simply pleasing character, that excite little emotion, and none of a high caste, so that, to a certain degree, those may be gratified, and receive a pleasure, who will neither receive instruction nor improvement from a national gallery. And it is this modicum of pleasure to all which justifies expenditure for a national gallery. The real, solid benefit, delight, and improvement are very great, but they are the luxury of the few.

It must be that the multitudes go to such an exhibition more from curiosity than from any love of art. Nor is love of art likely, in the first place, to be there implanted; for, in most cases, a certain love of art, commencing, perhaps, with a mere love of imitation, precedes taste—that perception of what is good. If we were to collect only for the masses, we should have a very worthless gallery. Nor would “the people” ever even learn, from a chronological collection, that history of art, which it seems, in the opinion of the Commissioners, so desirable to teach them. Art, which is not valued for itself, will not, in general, be valued for its history; and without the love for itself, a knowledge of its history is nothing but pedantry. High art is a common prate; it is in every one’s mouth, but in very few hearts. It is not difficult to find the “reason why.” High art treats of high and noble sentiments, of generous actions, fortitude, patience, sublime endurance—all that is great, and good, and pure—all tending to a real “elevated taste.” If it be true that “Similis simili gaudet,” the recipients of delight from this High art should, in some degree at least, be recipients of these high virtues themselves. It must be a large nature for High art. Such a nature may not always be good; but if it be large, even if it be viciously great, it may be possible that it will have a perception of what is great in art, though it may lose its finer qualities. But narrow and utterly selfish minds are altogether out of art’s pale. There are degrees of narrow-mindedness and of selfishness, and there is a condition which may be free from these vices, yet of no very elevated virtue. We do not wish to put all our fellow-men in the worst category, but we do maintain that there is a general lack of moral training—of moral habit—and not confined to one branch of society, which operates as a bar to the acquirement of a real taste for art. We live in too mercenary an age. There is too great a worship of mere money—there is cold calculation where there should be feeling. The romance of life is a term of contempt. What is useful supersedes what is good. Take classes with their characteristics, and see if they be fit for the enjoyment of the Fine Arts. The Parliamentary class have established new maxims. Expediency has taken the place of honour, and perhaps of integrity. To say one thing and mean another not only meets with no reprobation, but is justified and applauded. Statesmen make sham speeches and false promises; politicians bribe and are bribed. Is it likely that High art, whose essential being is good, great, and noble, and, beyond all, truth, should find a real love among such? We deny not exceptions, we speak of that which prevails. View the large and important class, the manufacturing, the great fabricators of wealth—they are encouragers of art, but of what quality? Shall they who thicken their cotton goods with flour, to give them a deceitful substance; shall the common traders, who adulterate everything, whether it be what we put in our mouths or on our backs—nay, to a fearful extent, even the drugs, for lack of whose genuineness miserable sufferers die—shall these, we say, stand with delight before the grand dignity wherewith Michael Angelo has embodied our common nature; or before the pure “Spozalitio” of Raffaelle; or, to come to a “specimen” in our National Gallery, before the lovely countenance of the pure-minded St Catharine, beaming with every grace of truth, of love, of faith, and of fortitude, that appears too much natural instinct to have the effort of strength? Will they, whose pursuits are the material things of a material world, stand for a moment to receive one impression that shall produce an unusual awful thought, before the solemn miracle, the “Raising of Lazarus” of Sebastian del Piombo? No one will deny that there is but little feeling for works of this kind; and that there is so little, characterises our utilitarian times.

It may be as well here to notice what is said in the body of the evidence with regard to this chronological principle. The questioning is not very extensive, and was, perhaps, purposely limited. J. Dennistoun, Esq., is examined, and says: “The only further observation I would venture to make is the extreme desirableness of something like an arrangement of the pictures. I believe that is a matter felt to be so important that it is hardly necessary for me to speak upon it. I think a chronological arrangement in schools is desirable; but, in the meanwhile, as that would be totally impossible in the present building, I think, as far as possible, an arrangement of the pictures might be made chronologically, without reference to schools,—even that would be a step.” We observe that Mr Dennistoun subsequently, as if alarmed at the chronological prospect, very much qualifies this his opinion. To Question 5901, he says: “I have already stated that I think they should omit no favourable opportunity of obtaining any monument illustrative of the progress of art in any school, such as pictures authenticated by signature or date, and of sufficient interest to be specimens of art of that period. But I think it is desirable that they should, in the first place, bestow their attention and dedicate their funds to that more particularly interesting and valuable period of Italian art, which I have already considered in the course of my evidence.” This puts the chronological arrangement happily a little more in the background. As might have been expected from the accomplished and learned author of the Dukes of Urbino, we find in Mr Dennistoun a nice appreciation of the immediate predecessors of Raffaelle, but he has no very long list; he only mentions twenty whose works should be collected, not merely on account of their historical relation to Raffaelle, but for their merit.

No one is more thoroughly acquainted with the Italian schools than Sir Charles Eastlake, both as an artistic critic and historical scholar. He is (Q. 6512) consulted with regard to chronological arrangement. He evidently fears the subdivisions of the whimsical process. Q. 6515: “Would you then propose to arrange the Italian school in a chronological series as a whole, or would you subdivide it into separate schools?”—“I would certainly not separate the schools needlessly; but I would not take out the finest works and put them apart.” Q. 6015: “Then you do not approve of having separate apartments for paintings of the Venetian, Florentine, and other schools?”—“I see no objections to a separation, but I do not see that there would be anything gained by having a mere historical series independent of merit.”

We rejoice to find that the influence of Sir Charles, deservedly great, will not tend to turning our National Gallery into an hospital of invalids and imbeciles. We now come to Mr Dyce’s evidence. Q. 7471: “You have also, in your published work, made suggestions as to the mode of carrying into effect the historical and chronological principle in the arrangement of the collection?”—“I have touched on the subject very slightly, though I have laid it down as a primary rule in the formation of the National Gallery, that the historical arrangement of the works should be had regard to.” Q. 7472: “You insisted that an endeavour should be made, as far as possible, to show the origin and progress of a school of art, independently of showing the excellence of its highest and most perfect works?”—“Yes.” As Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, a Letter, addressed, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert, K.G., may be considered the first, and perhaps authorised, movement towards the fully setting up the chronological system, we shall make it the subject of our comments more at large; preliminary to which it may be useful to show the reader the number of painters in the several lists furnished in the Appendix, which, we are yet told, is imperfect—in fact, deficient, by many omissions; so that the actual lists—as the mania of making fresh acquisitions would become very restless and busy—would be possibly doubled and trebled. Sir Charles Eastlake, in his suggestions in the Appendix, not very strenuously, we think, notices the object, keeping it somewhat subordinate; and we discover here why Mr Dyce has dedicated his letter, by permission, to H.R.H. the Prince Albert. “The idea of a catalogue of the masters, who might sooner or later be represented in a national gallery, has occurred to many; but the actual formation of such a list has only been recently undertaken, according to a plan suggested by His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and for His Royal Highness’ use. With reference to that list, I may add, that the catalogue of the Italian masters was prepared by myself, and that relating to the other schools by Mr Wornum. The series cannot be considered complete; there are probably both omissions and redundancies; but it may, at least, be taken as the ground-work for such a guide.” We find the lists for this chronological collection to contain (the Byzantine curiosities not included) one thousand five hundred and fifty-five names, and it is probable that as many more might be collected. So that these specimens, if even confined to one for each name, would very soon exhaust the public purse, and possibly so disgust the nation, by their exhibition, as to cause a stoppage of supply for a national gallery. Seeing this array of names, Mr Dyce may well add, when he asks, “What ought a national collection of pictures to be?”—“extensiveness will, I think, suggest itself as one of those characteristics.”

We are not denying that catalogues of this kind are of value—far from it; they are parts of the history of Art; but surely a dictionary of painters is one thing and a collection of pictures another. An army and navy list are valuable documents, but would be rather unwieldy national incumbrances if accompanied by each individual’s portrait at full length—especially viewing the collection, as is the case with this gallery scheme, “independently of merit.” It may be well said, that it is absurd to think of such a scheme with our present building; and it would be difficult to find a site of sufficient area for these specimens by thousands, and at the same time provide for the increase at the present ratio of art propagation.

We proceed to consider Mr Dyce’s pamphlet, or letter—happily not very long—for we have seldom met with so much serious nonsense in so few pages. He blunders on the very threshold of his work; for, as shown, he makes extensiveness a characteristic, whereas it must be but the accident of finding good things to collect. He considers it as a museum, having evidently in view a collection of curiosities, the thing above all others a National Gallery should not be. “Then, again, as every collection has in view some definite purpose, the systematic fulfilment of that purpose on the most enlarged basis—in other words, systematic arrangement, and a wholeness or completeness in relation to its particular purpose, seem necessary to the idea of a national collection.” Words, words, words! all to envelop a commonplace truth that no one need be told. Of course, every man, woman, and child, having a “purpose,” should suit the matter in hand to it. If the man had been destined to manufacture small-clothes instead of writing about art, he wouldn’t begin at the wrong end, and stitch on the buttons before he had cut out his shapes. Of course, he would have had his arrangement and his “chronological” measure too, and not put the boy’s fit on the aged father. There is no end to writing in this style; there may be, if a writer pleases, miles of verbiage before reaching a place of rest or tolerable entertainment, without any prospect of the journey’s end. Then he goes on thinking, and “thinks” what nobody ever doubted: “I think we may assume that a public museum ought to fulfil its purpose” (so ought a pipkin)—but more—“and, secondly, that the objects contained in it ought not merely to be coextensive with that purpose, but illustrate it with the greatest possible fulness and variety; that is to say, the collection ought to be at once extensive and complete.” Extensive and complete—or we would put it plainly, as with regard to the pipkin, that care should be taken that as much be put into it as it will hold without boiling over, preserving in the simmering every variety in the broth—the meat, the bone, the fat, and the vegetables. Notwithstanding this his very clear explanation, he immediately again gravely asks, “But what are we to understand by the completeness of a collection of pictures?” The reply to this question (a reply which may well astonish any inquirer) “depends upon the view we take of its purpose;” that is, to pursue our illustrations, whether the small-clothes be to be made for grandson or grandfather; whether the pipkin is to hold porridge for breakfast, or broth for supper. “Now all, I imagine, will agree, that the object of our National Gallery is, to afford instruction and enjoyment” (a discovery which he very shortly annihilates, by taking out the enjoyment, and making the instruction doubtful); “that it is, or ought to be, an institution where the learned study art, and the unlearned enjoy it, where docti artis rationem intelligunt, indocti sentiunt voluptatem; so that we have to consider how that instruction and enjoyment which the gallery is calculated to afford ought to be provided for.” Not a doubt of it. But why, Mr Dyce, ride your poor hobby-horse round this circle? Don’t you see you haven’t advanced ten paces beyond the stable door. In fact, you have said but the same thing over and over again; but you have taken out of the pack-saddle a scrap of Latin, which, however well it may sound, and your own hobby may prick up his ears at it, is really a piece of arrant nonsense; indeed the reverse of it is the truth; for it is the unlearned, of course, who come to your lecture, that they may understand, “intelligunt;” and the learned, the “docti,” they who know something about the matter, only who can perceive, “sentiunt,” the “voluptatem,” the pleasure of art. But we said Mr Dyce would annihilate enjoyment, and see if he does not do the thing, and most astonishingly. After the passage last quoted, follows: “Now, if there be any, and at this time of day it is to be hoped there are very few, who think that the purpose of the National Gallery will be served by what in popular phrase is termed ‘a selection of the best works of the best masters’” (we rejoice to find so sensible a phrase is popular), “I will simply beg them to apply their opinion to the case of any section of a national library to convince themselves how utterly untenable it is.”

Now the Curiosity Museum is a Library, and a Museum of Curiosities and a library are, ergo, moulded into one—a National Gallery; whereas the materials will not amalgamate,—not one is a bit like the other. To go on is really to get deeper and deeper into the quagmire of nonsense, the only kind of depth to be met with in the whole pamphlet. It must sadly have tired the patience of his Royal Highness, if he did read it; and if Mr Dyce wrote it with any view of giving his Royal Highness a lesson in the English language, which was not needed, he has furnished as bad a “specimen” as could be well met with. But to the matter and the argument:—“the best works of the best masters” is as silly an idea, he thinks, as to supply a library with the best dramatists, Shakespeare, of course, included. He is an advocate for the worst, such as no one would read—and why?—the very sound of it is truly asinine. “Would such a proceeding be tolerated for a single moment? Would it be endured that they, that any body of men, however eminent, should possess the right to withhold from the public any attainable materials for literary knowledge and criticism?”—for which purpose Mr Dyce does not withhold this pamphlet. His materials it is not difficult to decide. It certainly could never have been intended for knowledge but under the greatest mistake; supposing it then to be for criticism, we take him at his word, and indulge him accordingly, or, as he says, “in relation to its particular purpose.” But he is not satisfied yet; having nothing more to say, he must say that nothing in more words. He continues—“that, in fact, they should have it in their power” (that is, the any men, however eminent) “actually or virtually to pronounce a judgment on the comparative merits of authors, the accuracy of which could only be tested by the very comparison which the judgment has the effect of preventing. Yet there is no difference between such a proceeding and the restriction of the national collection of pictures to such works as might happen to be considered the best.” What a circular jumble of words is here!—“a judgment on comparative merits” not to be pronounced, not to be endured to be pronounced, because such judgment has the effect of preventing the said judgment, which is here made at once both desirable and undesirable.

The reader sees how much nonsense may be comprised in less than two pages, for we have not advanced further in the pamphlet. A library, to be a good library, ought to contain the veriest rubbish, even Mr Dyce’s letter, because without comparison therewith we shall never be able to appreciate the styles of Swift, and Addison, and Milton, nor Shakespeare’s dramas, without ransacking the “condemned cells” of Drury Lane. And when at length, by these forbidden comparisons, we have discovered the best works of the best masters, it is not to be endured that “any men, however eminent,” should prefer them to the worst, or at least not give the worst equal honour. Our letter-writer thinks he strengthens his argument by quotations from the evidence, which, if there be anything in them, are quite against him, for they tend to show that selection should be of the best: thus Mr Solly is asked, Q. 1855—“Is it your opinion the study of these earlier masters is likely to lead to a purer style on the part of our own painters, than of the later and more effeminate school?”—“Certainly. I perfectly agree with the questions that have just been put to me, and I am not aware that I could add anything to them, as I think they comprehend all that I should have thought of suggesting myself upon the subject.”

It would have been surprising if Mr Solly had not agreed with questions so manufactured by epithets—for “purer” and “effeminate” make an undeniable difference. The questioner might as well have said, Don’t you think good better than bad? Don’t you think virtue better than vice? This is a specimen of the art of dressing up a false fact, to knock down with it a true one; but even here, according to the Dycian theory, the only earthly reason for preferring the purer is that it is the earlier; if the effeminate had by chance changed places with it, it would have had his chronological post of honour.

In his next quotation the pamphleteer is intent on giving a blow to his compeers of the English school. Mr Leigh confirms Mr Solly’s view—is questioned, Q. 1913: “You say the more chaste works of the Italian school—do you refer to an earlier era?”—“I allude to that particular period so justly referred to in the questions put to Mr Solly.” Q. 1914: “Do you mean the historical painters who were contemporaneous or prior to Raffaelle?”—“Yes.” Q. 1915: “You prefer these to the schools of Bologna?”—“Yes; it is a school whose works we are exceedingly in want of, to enable us to correct the tendency of the English style towards weakness of design, effeminacy of composition, and flauntiness of colouring.” But Mr Dyce has altogether forgotten his own rule, that it is not to be endured to give a judgment, &c.—that is, to pronounce what is good, what is “best” and “of the best,” and that if proved best, we have nothing whatever to do with that accident. We have just warned the public, by showing the probable number of specimens for this new “Old Curiosity Shop,” to be called our National Gallery. Page 18, Mr Dyce says, “Still, if it be remembered that only fifteen years after the commencement of the Royal Gallery of Berlin it possessed works of all classes, from the rude Byzantine down to productions of the last century, to the number of nearly twelve hundred, we need entertain no great misgiving as to the possibility of forming even a very considerable collection within a moderate period.” The public, we hope, do entertain a very great misgiving of the consequences of so frightful an inundation, especially as it is to begin with the rude Byzantine. But as the “rude Byzantine” may stand as high art, or fine art, in comparison with still more rude beginnings; and as antiquity lore is ever increased as it looks backward, and is not confined to country, there may be cause for misgiving whether there may not be an attempt to ransack China and Japan for new old schools—to discover picture mines in Peru, for monstrosities in paint and design; for all become legitimate sources under the ever-growing chronological mania, this outrageous pedantry of the “The history of Art.” And here the writer of the pamphlet, having perhaps momentary misgivings himself as to the quality of the stuff to be collected, goes backwards and forwards in oscillating contradictions, from best to any specimens, and from any specimens to best, ending in such wise conclusion as he generally comes to, that it is “best” to get the “best” specimens we can, but no matter whether we get them or not, provided we get any. For he insists that the one object is to have “a collection illustrative of the history of the art, and “(in italics)” the formation of it must be undertaken expressly with that view.” Moreover, “secondly, that though it be desirable that all works collected should be of the highest order—that is to say” (he loves to explain himself thus by duplicate) “that every master should be represented by one or more of his best works, yet as such works are not essential to the completeness of the collection, considered as an historical series, but serve rather to enrich it as a mere assemblage of beautiful works,” &c. &c. Can anything show more his contempt of mere beautiful works, as in no way being an object in collecting? In fact, the whole pamphlet is to recommend, if not to enforce, the gathering together an enormous mass of curiosity lumber, and building a labyrinth of “Chambers of Horrors” to hold them. And it must be taken into account that this absurd, this tasteless scheme, is not confined to pictures. It is proposed, in most views of our future gallery, that statues are to be added, and architecture is to claim its due share as one of the Fine Arts; and where are we to begin, and where end? Is statuary to find its rude commencement in the “Cannibal Islands,” its progress in Tartary, its rise and deification in joss-houses, Burmah furnishing “specimens,” even the wheels of Juggernaut moving slowly and majestically to a new enthronement in Kensington Gardens, or wherever our grand, national, amalgamated museum is to be? Pagodas will yield up their deformities to the new idolatry of chronological worshippers; the old monsters of Nineveh will be revived; and to prove Lord Jeffrey to be right, that there is no principle of beauty, many a hideous image will in arrangement claim affinity to the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere. Really, all this is but a natural consequence of the first step in the system. It is to be, not art, but a history of art, to be shown by “specimens;” nor will it do to bring a brick even from Babylon as a specimen of its architecture. The public may rejoice in its ruin, or it would have to be brought in bodily, and a hundred or two crystal palaces added to our wonder of the world; as it is, there must be an “hiatus maxime deflendus.” We should have architecture, and “specimens” of architects of all the several countries and schools, as of pictures and painters. The English progress would be delightful to see. Holingshed says, that within the memory of many in his days, chimneys were rare; of course we must have “specimens.” We might go on indeed to weary the reader with absurdities, and it would only be following out Mr Dyce’s chronological idea in all its collateral branches; for, getting warm in riding his hobby, his heated imagination looks out for inconceivable vanishing points, which recede as fast as he finds them, till he sees in the unbounded space of art, which he thinks he has himself created, arts and sciences flying about in every direction, and crossing each other like so many dancing comets. The reader must look for a little incomprehensible language and confused utterance when Mr Dyce descends, having breathed the bewildering gas of his extraordinary sphere, to put his thoughts on paper, and thus he writes: “What I was going to say was in substance this—that if the idea of a complete museum of the fine arts involved the illustration of decorative art, and of physical science in its relation to art, to an extent which, though not unlimited, is nevertheless indefinite, if the vanishing point” (the italics of Mr Dyce), “so to speak, of such a museum lies somewhere in the region of practical science, one is immediately led to consider whether, as the reverse is true—viz., that practical science finds its vanishing point in the region of fine art—the true idea of a museum of arts would not be that which embraced the whole development of the artistic faculty, and commenced, therefore, on the one hand, with those arts which are solely, or almost solely, dependant on æsthetical science, and terminated on the other with those which are solely or chiefly dependant on physical science. Such an institution would start at the one extreme from physical science, and at the other from fine art; and these two would meet and cross one another, the influence of each vanishing and disappearing towards the opposite extremes.” So that, if there is anything to be understood and unriddled from this confusion of wordy ideas, it is this, that these arts and sciences, æsthetical and physical, do not meet to kiss and be friends, but to cross each other, and, having simply blazed awhile in each other’s faces, to fly off to their own vanishing points, more distant than ever, disappearing beyond the hope of that happy junction which, nevertheless, it had been the whole purpose of Mr Dyce’s pamphlet to bring about, and which, perhaps, he thinks he has brought about, or intends to bring about, unconscious of the impossibility which he has set in their way.

Lest the reader think we have needlessly brought in this body of architecture, we must again quote Mr Dyce. He certainly, to do him justice, does admit that specimens of architecture may be too big; but if he enumerates and measures his “fragmentary remains” from the British Museum and elsewhere, “models of whole structures, or models and casts of details,” “adequate to the great purpose of exhibiting the development of architecture, both as it is a science and a fine art, in all the various stages of its history,” and if some genii could bring them all together and throw the brick and plaster down before him, we doubt if his, or any known human agility, would enable him to escape the being buried under the dust that would be made by the deposit.

“But secondly, there is a peculiarity in the case of architecture which deserves to be specially noticed. It is this:—that the examples required to illustrate the history of architectural construction and decoration lead us at once into the province of practical science and of decorative art; and thus the door is opened to a more extended view of the contents of a National Gallery of Art.” When he told us in the commencement that extensiveness was one of the characteristics of a National Gallery, we never thought of an extensiveness that should have no termination. The opening of this, his one door, shows a wearying vista—but there are so many doors to open to “complete” his scheme, that it is past all comprehension where he will find door-keepers, or the nation means to pay them.

Let us imagine these ten thousand chronological galleries built, and inhabited by all the arts and sciences. Who could preside over such a seraglio of beauties and uglinesses?—who could possibly know anything about one-half of them? We should doubt even Mr Dyce’s powers to interpret their languages, which would be wanted, considering that the object in view is instruction in their history. And yet Mr Dyce, in his scheme of government for the National Gallery, looks to some one “coming man.” “Some officer should be appointed to take charge of all business relating to the National Gallery, to be responsible for the immediate management, and to whom the public should look for the success or failure of the undertaking.” He must be a very wonderful man indeed: if Mr Dyce has any such in his eye, he ought to have named him; for no one besides ever saw a man on earth equal to so much; and if he is to be general instructor too, he would be wondered at, as when

“——still the wonder grew

That one small head should carry all he knew.”

Yet upon the appointment of this one officer Mr Dyce again insists in the conclusion of his letter, and under the idea of his duty embracing sculpture and architecture, as well as painting, under which heads also are included unlimited and undefined æsthetical and practical arts and sciences.

In our former articles on the National Gallery, we advocated the appointment of one responsible person; in what then, it may be asked, do we differ from Mr Dyce? Simply, that we would confine his attention to one thing which he might be able to know—to the collection of pictures. Even if it were thought desirable to place statues under the same building, we would put them under the direction of a person specially acquainted with sculpture.

The interest of the nation has been now awakened with regard to the National Gallery, to the pictures only, to their collection and preservation. A national museum, such as Mr Dyce and others propose, is far too large a subject, to discuss which seriously would be only drawing away the public mind from that which is a pressing necessity. As the system holds at present, we are neither able to buy pictures properly, nor to preserve them when we have them. Mr Dyce’s own experience in the art qualifies him to speak upon this point, and in justice to him we add, that, excepting the times when the chronological mania is upon him, he writes fairly and sensibly; and we willingly add his modicum of assent to the general opinion, upon the matters which the blue-book has brought before the public. Indeed, in this pamphlet he has two styles of writing: the pages might be well thought the work of two hands. Whatever relates to his chronological scheme is redundant, confused, and ambitiously laboured. He does not appear very clearly to know what he has to say. He is, we suppose, in the midst of his theoretic arrangements, as a painter of eminence visited with some misgivings as to the worthless trash the fulfilment of his scheme would introduce. He writes like one under an adopted whim, against his first instincts, with the verbosity of an untutored and awkward advocate. When he knows clearly what he is writing about, he writes like other people.

He successfully exonerates the keepers of the National Gallery, those appointed subsequently to Mr Seguier, from much of the blame that had been cast upon them. He shows that the responsibility had been, for the most part, taken out of their hands, with regard to the purchase of pictures; that the trustees superseded the keepers, and were afterwards themselves superseded by the Treasury as to active operations. The Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, from the nature of their appointment, are sure to be more incompetent than the trustees themselves. It is in evidence that the Lords of the Treasury had no confidence in the trustees; nor, perhaps, much in themselves. Therefore, in 1845, when the trustees recommended the purchase of the Guido from Mr Buchanan, the Treasury do not comply with the request unconditionally—they require Mr Seguier to be consulted as to the condition of the picture; and also “two other eminent judges of the merit and pecuniary value of Italian pictures.” They even point out the individuals for selection: “Mr Woodburn and Mr Farrer might probably be selected with advantage for the purpose, or any others whom Mr Eastlake might consider preferable.” The Lords of the Treasury then preferred the opinion of two dealers in pictures to that of the trustees or Mr Eastlake; the latter being more competent than all the others put together to decide upon the subject. The only surprising thing is, that the trustees, upon this slight put upon them, did not resign their appointments, which, if honourable in other respects, were now marked with the character of incompetency. We have already strongly insisted that picture-dealers should in no case be consulted. They are too much interested, and wish to keep up the value (artificial) of pictures; and the world knows too well the nature of their trafficking, to place implicit confidence in their decisions. We say not that a judicious choice might not be made of skilful and honourable men; but looking to all times, and with some knowledge of the temptations of trade, we should be sorry to see the practice of consulting dealers become a habit or a rule. Take the case which has occurred—the Treasury nominate judges; at a subsequent meeting of the trustees these very judges have pictures to be recommended—are other trading judges to be called in? In that case decisions will have to go the round of these dealer judges. They will either be shy of pronouncing against the interests of each other, or be under the temptation to give each other a good turn, or, at any rate, keep up the market, which they themselves supply. The public have of late been let a little too much into the secrets of picture trafficking, and of picture manufacturing. Is there truth in the exposure that an overbaked would-be Raffaelle was spoiled for that master, but would make an admirable Correggio? With all the respect we owe to individuals, we confess that there is a strong resemblance between picture-dealing and horse-dealing. The habit of appointing dealers as judges would certainly end in a council of dealers, who would, in actual operation, supersede all others. The fiat of the Treasury transferred to the fiat of Wardour Street. We are glad to quote Mr Dyce on this subject:—“This, then, is the present state of matters. The right to entertain a proposal to purchase any picture rests with the trustees; the ultimate opinion of its merits, on which the purchase depends, is not theirs, but that of certain ‘eminent judges’ of such points. The trustees decide what may be and shall be purchased, if it be worth purchasing; the eminent judges decide whether it be worth purchasing, and worth the money asked for it. It may be said that this is an extreme and exaggerated case; that the Treasury, though reposing confidence in the recommendation of the trustees, might nevertheless think it desirable, on several accounts, to have this recommendation fortified by the opinions of eminent judges. True: but as it cannot be supposed that the trustees would press a recommendation, in any case, in the face of an adverse opinion given by the judges they had summoned to their assistance—in other words, since they cannot make a recommendation at all without both summoning such assistance, and obtaining a favourable opinion—it is perfectly clear that the favourableness of opinion they have obtained, not their concurrence in it, must be looked upon by the Treasury as the real warrant for adopting their recommendation. Nor, on the other hand, is it refining too much to say that the ex officio trusteeship of the heads of the financial department of the Government, not only annihilates the responsibility of the trustees, but prevents the due exercise of the control which that department ought to have over their proceedings.”... “If the trustees were to be superseded in a matter of such importance, they surely ought to have been consulted, not only as to the manner in which they might, with the greatest advantage, avail themselves of professional assistance, but as to the class of persons who were to afford it. But no discretion was left to them; and who, let me ask, were the ‘eminent judges’ fixed upon by the Treasury? Will it be believed that not only the class of persons, but the very individuals chosen to give an opinion, on which the purchase of pictures was to depend, were those who were in the habit of offering, and actually at the time were offering pictures to the trustees for sale? At the very meeting (held February 2, 1846) at which the communication from the Treasury was read, I find the trustees considering a proposal for the sale of a collection of pictures by Mr Woodburn, one of the judges nominated by the Treasury. At the next meeting (held March 2, 1846), I find that “the trustees again took into consideration the offer of a picture, by Spagnoletti, for sale by Mr Farrer,” the other “eminent judge” recommended by the Treasury. So that, in fact, the “eminent judges” were by turns competitors for the patronage of the trustees, and by turns sat in judgment on one another’s wares.”

Constitutions grow—they are not made. We never knew one from any manufactory, paper-made, that could hold together; yet we go on with the conceit that we have consummate skill in that line; we make ourselves, as it were, sole patentees for all people and nations, and wonder at the folly of those who reject the commodity, and yet we never attempt the thing on a small scale at home, or a large one abroad, but the result is a failure. The School of Design is a parallel case with the National Gallery. The committee of management of that school was in the same relation with the Board of Trade as the National Gallery with the Treasury. The action of the body was stopped if no official representative of the Board of Trade was present; and if present, the council felt themselves to be a nullity. Yet the council could not at once be easily dismissed, for the Parliamentary grant was voted for the council of the School of Design. In 1842, therefore, this constitution is remodelled. The School is put “under the management of a director and of a council, subject to the control of the Board of Trade.” But here again is a failure. The council and director cannot arrange responsibilities. The director resigns, another succeeds: as before, there is no working together. The constitution has to be remodelled again. The Board of Trade takes the management, assisted by the artist members of the old council. This fails also; and at last that is done which should have been done at the beginning—an officer is appointed, “under the authority of the Board of Trade, to superintend and be responsible for the business of the schools.”

In our democratic tendencies we are jealous of one responsible director; and, on the other hand, with our aristocratic tastes and habits, we devolve upon men of rank and wealth, solely on account of their rank and wealth, duties which they are not qualified to perform (and, we think, the greater honour would consist in their declining such positions), and which, if in other respects qualified to perform, they will not, simply because it is not their distinct personal business, and of a paid responsibility. And thus it is that the really qualified persons, eminent for their knowledge in art, science, and habits of business, are ever excluded. Can we be surprised if there be perpetual failures?

The best boon the trustees of the National Gallery can confer upon the nation, is to resign in a body. Surely there is now little to induce them to remain where they are, and as they are. This step would compel the Government to do what they have found it necessary to do in other cases—appoint a paid and responsible minister; and, if it be thought worth while to have a National Gallery at all, to provide liberally the means of obtaining it. It will never do, on every trifling occasion, to have to go to Parliament, and to be met in a huckstering spirit. We must break some of the shackles which the modern utilitarian school is ever imposing; we must learn to view the fine arts as a constitutional part of the liberal arts, which must be treated liberally, if we would have them permanently established.

We must now return for a little space to the subject which, in the commencement of this paper, we proposed to discuss: “What are we to collect?” We shall make a great mistake indeed, if we are led by Mr Dyce as an authority, to pass contempt upon either the works of, or the admiration felt for, the genius of the greatest men in art—if we put chronological series in competition with excellence. He overdoes his part, and can gain nothing by such language as this:—“Turgid, unmeaning panegyrics of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, Titian, Correggio, and the rest.” These “and the rest” are such pre-eminently great masters, that, in some shape or other, we would have their works ever before the public. Where we cannot have originals, we would have copies, and the best that either have been made and can be acquired, or that can now be made. We cannot think a gallery perfect without them. We would have a portion set apart especially for copies of the best works, and also for prints. In them we might have the designs, and the light and shade, the great and beautiful ideas represented: and here we cannot but lament, that the perfection to which the art of engraving has been brought should in this country be given up to inferior and almost to worthless things. Our engravings indicate the public taste, the causes of the low state of which we have already remarked upon. If there be really a desire to instruct the public—and without instruction there will not be an encouragement for a better devotion of that beautiful art—let the collecting the best engravings, whether old or new, be a great object with the purveyors of a National Gallery. Nor would we have the grand works to which we allude put away in portfolios, but glazed, and hung upon walls specially appropriated to them. Let us have, at least, good things—the best originals we can procure, and the next best, copies, and engravings of the best; and not waste time and squander means in searching out for chronological histories, the attenuated deformities of the Byzantine schools, the hideous performances of those predecessors in art, who had not yet acquired the knowledge of drawing with any tolerable correctness.

We are earnest to make this protest against the chronological scheme, and we hope it will be dissipated by the general voice, because Mr Dyce’s pamphlet seems to have found favour in the eyes of the commissioners. They almost adopt his language—or at least, with little variation of phrase, his argument, and his illustration. They too speak of an “intelligent public,” which has no existence as to art, and is but the translation of Mr Dyce’s Latin quotation, “docti artis rationem intelligunt.” With him, they snub the admirers of “Raffaelle, Titian, and Correggio,” and adopt his literary illustration, and a very bad illustration it is, for the rubbish of books in the world is even greater in bulk than the picture rubbish. Some of the book rubbish may indeed bear affinity to art, and come within the scope of the scheme’s arrangement. The woodcuts of our earliest spelling-books, of Jack the Giant-killer, of Pilgrim’s Progress, and the “specimens” heading last dying speeches and confessions, may yet be discovered with some pains, and no very large cost, if a Parliamentary commission would bespeak Mr Dyce’s acceptable labours. How gratifying to such collectors would it be to trace the rise and progress of that particular branch of the art now so much in fashion, from the earliest “specimens” of designs in popular editions of Æsop’s Fables, to Mr Landseer’s last costly print. Nor should the old glazed picture tiles, that used to amuse our early childhood, when the glow of fire-light illuminated the “animali parlanti,” warmed our young affections, and heated our incipient imaginings, be omitted. The “intelligent public” might perhaps hence learn not only a little in the history of art and its progress, but somewhat also of the history and progress of cruelty, when they see how much artistic labour has been bestowed, and what a large price is given, in our modern improvement days, in getting up and in the sale of that “perfect specimen,” Mr Landseer’s “Otter Hunt,” where the poor creature is writhing upon the spear of the huntsman, and the howling brute dogs are in sympathetic delight with the human bigger brute than themselves. It will be then not uncreditable if the “intelligent public” retrograde in their taste, and for once agree with Mr Dyce in rather admiring the attenuated and ill-drawn deformities, which, after all that can be said against them, were a less libel upon man and brute than some later and more perfect “specimens.” To this extent the chronological idea must go for completion, for Mr Dyce, the favourite of connoisseurs and dilettanti, will not allow them to stop short of it. “Notwithstanding appearances,” he says, “I do not imagine the trustees of the National Gallery ever seriously contemplated the establishment of an index expurgatorius of pictures.” Such opinions he considers obsolete. We must have all “specimens,” however bad; for he says, in emphatic italics—“The collection can aim at no lower object than to exhibit the whole development of the art of painting; the examples of which it consists must therefore range over its whole history!” The “ςηματα λυγρα” of Zellerophon were not of a more deadly character than would the contemplated collection be to all true notions of the Beautiful in art—the collection of inhumanities, the doleful horrors of saints and demons, and worse and more awful representations which preceded perceptions of the Beautiful.

We ought to be glad to learn from any who know better than ourselves, but we very much question if our perpetual appeal to the practice of foreign galleries, in the way in which it is made, is at all a healthy sign. We are not sure that some of the examples we seek may not rather be warnings. It is a confession of imbecility and mistrust in themselves of trustees and commissioners. Foreign architects, foreign directors, and foreign galleries, bear too prominent a part in our blue-books and our pamphlets. We are confident in our own men, if not in the “intelligent public.” We have men quite able to devise galleries, and to know how to fill them. The misfortune has been, not that we lack men of ability, but we do not employ them. And why? Our governments have no better taste, no better knowledge, no better desires, with regard to the arts, than the “intelligent public.” They have never entertained serious views upon the subject. In conclusion, we would ask if the series of Hogarth’s pictures have been removed from our National Gallery, on which they conferred an honour and importance of a kind that no other gallery in Europe can boast of possessing, with the object of forming a chronological series of the British school. We hope to see them transferred to their old places. Our National Gallery should not be deteriorated, to give a grace to Marlborough House, however much it may want it.

THE REFORM BILLS OF 1852 AND 1854.

The postponement of the second reading of Lord John Russell’s new Reform Bill, until a later, and it may be a protracted period of the Session, is suggestive of some important considerations. It shows, in the first place, that even the author of the bill is by no means confident in his power of carrying it through the House of Commons, else we may be perfectly certain that no departure from the original arrangements would have taken place. It shows, moreover, that other members of the Cabinet—or, we should rather say, the members of the Cabinet collectively—do not consider the provisions of this measure of so much importance as to justify them in allowing it to interfere with the more immediate exigencies of the state. In one sense of the word, Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues are thoroughly conservative. They want to keep their places; and they have no idea whatever of sacrificing themselves through the impulse of Quixotic gallantry, or of allowing Lord John Russell’s pledges to imperil their tenure of office. But they have an obstinate and pragmatical man to deal with, and cannot afford to affront him. Without Lord John Russell, the Coalition could not stand, and therefore, in some matters, they are compelled to allow him more license than is agreeable to their own inclination, or in accordance with the interests of the country. Thus, they not only permitted him to prepare his measure during the recess, but they gave it real importance, by introducing it as a material part of the ministerial programme, as announced by her Majesty from the throne. At that time there was no more probability of a pacific settlement of the Eastern question than exists just now; so that every objection to the measure, founded on the impropriety of exciting internal agitation at such a crisis, must have been foreseen. There was still time before the development of the measure, and the publication of its intended details, to have postponed it without any loss of credit. No one would have blamed the Ministry had they done so—even the most ardent reformer could scarcely have maintained that they were bound to force it through Parliament, just as if no war were expected, or as if the country emphatically demanded it. But Lord John Russell would not consent to that. He was determined that the whole details of his project should be laid before the public; and he accordingly did so in a speech which fell flat on the ear alike of the House and of the country. He fixed a day for the second reading; but before that day arrived, postponed his bill until a later period of the Session, with a statement that, even then, it would depend upon circumstances whether he should proceed with it or not.

This is not such conduct as the country has a right to expect from the ministers of the Crown. They were entreated, both by friends and opponents, not to bring forward their measure in the midst of warlike preparations, and in the total absence of any demand on the part of the country for an immediate change in the representation. Those entreaties were met by silly, bombastical, and vapouring speeches about the sublime spectacle which Great Britain would afford to the world, if, while waging war abroad, she applied her energies to the remodelment of the constitution at home! We need not pause now to demolish that most pitiful pretext. It has virtually been given up by the Ministry; for they now acknowledge, that the time originally fixed for the second reading of the English bill was not seasonable; and they indicate, that if we should be actively engaged in war on the 27th of April, the bill will not be proceeded with; so that the notion of the “sublime spectacle” is thrown aside, whilst the cause of the irritation, made worse by the divulgence of the scheme in detail, is still continued.

No really united cabinet would have ventured to act in such a manner. It is in vain to tell us of concert and cordiality, when the public measures of one week belie the bragging language used in that which immediately preceded it—when bluster is followed by postponement, and extreme recklessness by an affectation of patriotic caution. The prevalent opinion is, that the bill will not be proceeded with; and if the Ministry had said even so much as that, there would have been no occasion for any further discussion; but they will not say it. Lord Aberdeen, on the 9th of March, when urged by Earl Grey to withdraw the bill altogether, is reported to have replied, that “the second reading of the bill had been postponed by Lord John Russell till the 27th of April, in sincerity and good faith. Whether it would then be proceeded with, depended upon the state of Europe; for no one could tell what a day or an hour would bring forth. Government, however, would act consistently with the interests of the country, and with a due regard to their own honour.”

We cannot predict what the Government may do hereafter, but we know what they have already done with respect to this matter; and it is our humble but deliberate opinion, that they have neither consulted the interests of the country nor their own collective credit. We should have been very glad, indeed, had they allowed the subject to drop; for we should then have been spared the necessity of criticising their conduct. But, threatened as we are, though by no means agitated or alarmed by the suspension of a most clumsy weapon over our heads, we must take the liberty of reviewing the proceedings of these Dionysians.

Let us assume, which we really believe and devoutly hope to be the case, that, notwithstanding the professions about sincerity and good faith, this bill has been absolutely sent to limbo. Let us look upon it in the light of a scheme abandoned. That, however, cannot acquit Ministers from the serious charge of having played fast and loose with the country, by embodying in the Queen’s speech, at the opening of Parliament, a distinct recommendation of internal organic change, when war was staring us in the face. They knew then perfectly well that there existed no probability of the settlement of the Eastern dispute without a direct appeal to arms; and it was their bounden duty to have interdicted the mooting of such a question at such a time. We maintain, that no cabinet has a right to countenance this species of deception. No specific measure should be announced by a Ministry, much less recommended by the Crown, unless it is seriously intended that it shall be carried through, not at some indefinite future period, but in the course of the existing session. This is not the first time that the country has been annoyed by this indecent and reprehensible practice, introduced, we believe, by Lord John Russell, of rash ministerial pledges. We do not think that even a premier is entitled, towards the close of one session, to announce distinctly the ministerial policy of the next, or to bind himself by a specific pledge; for even a premier is not allowed by our constitutional custom to act autocratically—he must carry along with him at least the majority of the Cabinet. He cannot accurately predict who may be his colleagues at the opening of the ensuing session—he cannot foresee what events may occur or causes arise to render a change of the intended policy not only expedient, but necessary. If a premier is not entitled to do this, still less is a subordinate like Lord John Russell; and yet we see him, session after session, blabbing about future schemes, and pledging himself unconditionally to their introduction. This is really intolerable, and it is full time that the nuisance should be abated. If the noble lord is of opinion that, notwithstanding all which we have heard and seen, he has still power and reputation enough to head an independent party—let him leave the Cabinet, and then, as a plain member of Parliament, he may pledge himself to his heart’s content. But while he remains a minister and servant of the Crown, he is bound to maintain the dignity of his position, and preserve a due decorum, instead of acting like a popularity-hunter and a partisan. Of late he has let himself down woefully. We are not accustomed, in this country, to see ministers, while in office, engaging in literary squabbles—and exposing themselves to damaging rejoinders by petulant paragraphs and absolutely deplorable sneers. Their duty is, not to write or edit gossip and scandal, but to devote themselves, heart and soul, to the affairs of the nation and the service of their sovereign; and, if they are not willing to abandon their favourite pursuits, they ought at once to withdraw. With less than this the nation will not be satisfied; and we really think we are acting a friendly part to Lord John Russell to tell him so, in as many words. If he doubts our sincerity, let him ask the opinion of his colleagues upon the point; and we are ready to stake our existence that they will be unanimous in their agreement with us. We believe also, that, if the question were fairly put them, they would be unanimous in recommending him, for the future, so long as he is a member of the Cabinet and acting along with them, to abstain from that system of specific pledging, the result of which, in the present instance, has by no means tended to raise them in the estimation of the country.

But it may be asked, why, when the Ministry have postponed for the present, and may abandon, the Reform Bill, we should harp upon a string not intended, for some time at least, to vibrate in the ear of the country? To that we reply that we have many good reasons for doing so. The vibration has already been made. If a man is told that it was intended, by virtue of a parliamentary act for which Ministers were to be responsible, to make some decided change in his property or condition, but that, in respect of certain external circumstances, it was deemed expedient to allow him a respite—surely he is entitled to use the interval in examining into the nature of the proposed change; and, if need be, in preparing his defence. It would perhaps be too strong a phrase to say that we know what is to come—for Lord John Russell is such an experimentalist, so entirely dependent upon suggestions from others, and so utterly devoid of any fixed principles to guide his own judgment, that no one can venture to predict what his views may be six months from the present moment. As a constitution-monger, the Abbé Sièyes was, in reality, less erratic. But we know this—that his lordship in 1852 brought forward a bill for amending the representation, which bill, owing to certain circumstances which we need not recapitulate, went to limbo; and that in 1854 he has brought forward another, bearing in no respect any likeness to the former one. Indeed the issue of Banquo and of Macbeth could not have been more dissimilar. No. 3, however, is a great deal more sweeping in its innovations than No. 2 (for we must recollect that more than twenty years ago the noble lord carried No. 1); and No. 4 may be still more progressive. Heaven only knows what we shall have proposed, when the number of his Reform Bills equals that of his Jew Bills, or the volumes of his Biography of Moore! He seems to think that the story of the Sybilline books was written expressly for his guidance and conduct, and that he is entitled, after each successive failure and rebuff, to charge the constitution with an additional per centage of radicalism by way of penalty. He becomes louder and broader in his demands whenever they are negatived or postponed, and seems in the fair way to adopt some of the views of the Chartists.

We do not say this lightly—by way of banter—or in regard of general political disagreement. We never, at any time, reposed much faith in the judgment or sagacity of Lord John Russell; and, of late years, our opinion of him, in these respects, has, we confess, materially declined. We have been, in our own sphere of action, engaged in most of the political struggles which have taken place within the memory of the present generation; and we trust that these have not passed by without some wholesome lessons. To change of opinion, where honestly induced and through conviction, every one is bound to be fair and lenient; because, undeniably, in our own day there has been a great unravelment of social questions, and mere party prejudice is no longer allowed to be paramount. Perhaps the only living statesman of eminence, who cleaves to the old system, and is inveterate in his addiction to party intrigue, and what he calls “tradition,” is Lord John Russell. Put him into Utopia, and his first thought would be how he might establish the exclusive supremacy of the Whigs. He is so much and so inveterately a party man, that he seems to care little what becomes of the country, provided only that he, and his, sit at the receipt of customs. He showed that long ago—not in the days of his hot youth, but in those of his pragmatic manhood. He—the Whig Constitutionalist—characterised the opinion of the Upper House as “the whisper of a faction;” and did not disdain the violent and frantic sympathy of mobs when such demonstrations tended to his own particular purpose, or aided the ascendancy of his party. Ever since he has pursued the same course. No man can tell when he is in thorough earnest, or when he is not. He invited, by word and deed, Papal aggression; and, when the aggression came, he started up at once, as an indignant Protestant champion, and flung down his diminutive gauntlet, in name of Great Britain, to the Pope! And yet, at the bidding of the Irish Roman Catholic phalanx, we find this second Luther a strenuous supporter of Maynooth, and of the nunneries! Had his ancestor John, the first Lord Russell—who in 1540, and 1550, obtained grants from the Crown of the possessions of the Abbey of Tavistock and the Monastery of Woburn—been equally zealous for the protection of convents, he probably would have remained, as he was born, an utterly unacred gentleman.

The proposed Reform Bill of 1852 did not attract a large share of the public attention, and that for two reasons. In the first place, the country was quite apathetic on the subject; and in the second place, it was introduced at a time when the Whigs were tottering to their fall. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable document, inasmuch as we may conclude it to embody the experiences and observation of Lord John Russell upon the working of our representative system during a period of exactly twenty years. That there should have been some defects in the machinery of the engine which he invented in 1832, is not wonderful; nor can we call him rash for essaying, after so long an interval, to remedy these defects according to the best of his judgment. His position in 1852 was this:—He told the House, that he, the mechanist of 1832, was now prepared, from the results of twenty years’ observation, to introduce certain improvements which would have the effect, for a long time coming, of preventing the necessity of any further change. The improvements he proposed were these:—The qualification in towns was to be reduced from £10 to £5; and in counties from £50 to £20. Every man paying 40s. a-year of direct taxes was to be entitled to vote. There was to be no disfranchisement of boroughs, but the smaller ones were to receive an infusion of fresh blood by the incorporation of adjoining villages. No property qualification was to be required for members, and the parliamentary oaths were to be modified, so as to allow the admission of Jews and other unbelievers in the Christian faith. Such were the chief features of the proposed measure of 1852, as laid before the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister. Wise or unwise, they were the conclusions which he had formed as to the change necessary to be made in the English representative system; and we must assume that he had not formed them without due thought and matured investigation. That both the necessity for, and the nature of the change were seriously considered by him and his colleagues in the Cabinet, it would be unfair and irrational to doubt; and we must therefore hold that the provisions of the bill were regarded by them not only as wise and salutary, but as the very best which their collective wisdom could devise.

If, in 1852, this bill had been rejected by a majority of the House of Commons, Lord John might either have remodelled it, so as to meet the more obvious objections, or have again introduced it, without alteration, for the consideration of another parliament. But it was not rejected by the House, and its merits were never thoroughly discussed throughout the country. It was, as we have said, introduced at a time when the Whig ministry were obviously in the death throes, and in February of that year they tendered their resignation. The bill accordingly fell to the ground before judgment could be pronounced upon it. The public at large seemed to care nothing about it. There was no enthusiasm manifested at its introduction, and no disappointment expressed at its withdrawal.

The scheme, therefore, of 1852, was not only untried but uncondemned. Nothing had occurred that could reasonably shake the confidence of the deviser in its prudence, correctness, or aptitude for the necessities of the country; unless we are to suppose that he felt somewhat disappointed by the exceedingly cold and indifferent nature of its reception. That, however, could not be taken as any distinct criterion of its merits. We are not to suppose that Lord John Russell, in framing that bill, merely looked to the popularity which he and his party might attain thereby, or the future advantages which it might secure to them. We are bound, on the contrary, to assume that he, being then Premier, and in the very highest responsible position, was acting in perfectly good faith, and had embodied in the bill the results of his long experience and observation.

Now, mark what follows. In 1853, he again pledges himself to introduce a measure for the amendment of the Parliamentary representation; and redeems his pledge by bringing out, early in 1854, a measure totally different from that which he recommended in 1852! The great points of difference are these: By the one, the boroughs were to be preserved, and in some cases enlarged; by the other, they are to be disfranchised to the amount of sixty-six members. The bill of 1852 maintained the distinction between town and county qualification—that of 1854 abolishes such distinction. The first proceeded upon the plain principle that majorities alone were to be represented—the second, in special cases, assigns a member to minorities. In short, the two bills have no kind of family resemblance. They are not parallel, but entirely antagonistic schemes; and it is almost impossible, after perusing them both, to believe that they are the productions of the same statesman.

Nothing, it will be conceded on all hands, has occurred during the last two years, to justify such an extraordinary change of sentiment. We have had in the interim a general election, the result of which has been that a Coalition Ministry, numbering Lord John Russell among its members, is presently in power. Trade, we are told, is in the highest degree flourishing; and the prosperity of the country has been made a topic of distinct congratulation. Search as closely as you please, you will find no external reason to account for so prodigious a change of opinion. The potato-rot and famine were the visible reasons assigned for Sir Robert Peel’s change of opinion on the subject of protective duties—but what reasons can Lord John Russell propound for this prodigious wrench at the constitution? He cannot say that the proposals in both his bills are sound, safe, and judicious. The one belies and utterly condemns the other. If his last idea of disfranchising and reducing sixty-six English borough constituencies is a just one, he must have erred grievously in 1852 when he proposed to retain them. So with the other provisions. If he intends to maintain that he has now hit upon the true remedy, he must perforce admit that he has acquired more wisdom in 1853 than was vouchsafed him during the twenty previous years of his political career. He must admit that he was totally and egregiously wrong in 1852; and he has no loophole for apology on the ground of intervening circumstances. Really we do not believe that there is a parallel instance of a British minister having voluntarily placed himself in such a predicament. How is it possible that he can expect his friends, independent of the mere official staff, to support, in 1854, a measure diametrically opposite to that which was propounded in 1852? No wonder that Earl Grey and other influential Whigs are most desirous to have the measure withdrawn without provoking a regular discussion. Some of them may not have approved of the former bill; but those who did so, or who were at all events willing to have let it pass, can hardly, if they wish to be consistent, give their sanction to the present one. It is not Lord John Russell alone who is compromised; he is compromising the whole of his party. If they thought him right in 1852, they must think him wrong in 1854; for he cannot point to the smallest intervening fact to justify his change of principle. And if they think him wrong, how can they possibly support him? We do not believe that he can reckon on the support of the high-minded Whigs of England. They have principle and honour and character to maintain; and we think it exceedingly improbable that they will allow themselves to be swept into the howling Maëlstrom of Radicalism. Rather than that, we venture to predict that they will toss the rash little pilot, whose incapacity and want of knowledge are now self-confessed, overboard, and trust to the direction of an abler and more consistent member of the crew.

Be that as it may, we must try if possible to ascertain what cause has operated to produce this singular and rapid change in the opinions, or rather convictions, of Lord John Russell on the subject of Parliamentary Reform. As we have said already, there are no external circumstances, either apparent or alleged, to account for it. The boroughs have done nothing to subject them to the penalty of disfranchisement; the counties have done nothing to entitle them to a considerable addition of members. To use diplomatic language, the status quo has been rigidly observed. Well, then, in the absence of any such tangible reason, we must necessarily fall back upon motives, the first of which is the advice and representation of confederates.

We at once acquit Lord Aberdeen and the majority of the Cabinet of any real participation in the scheme of Lord John Russell. What may be the mind of Sir James Graham and Sir William Molesworth on the subject, we cannot tell, but we are tolerably sure that no other minister regards the bill with favour. Even the members of the Manchester party do not seem to consider it as an especial boon. Mr Bright knows well enough that a new reform bill, if carried, cannot be disturbed for a number of years to come; and as this one does not come up to his expectations, he is ready to oppose it. Indeed, it seems to satisfy none of the extreme party beyond old Joseph Hume, who, for some reason or other to us unknown, has of late years been in the habit of spreading his ægis from the back seats of the Treasury bench over the head of the noble Lord, the member for London. The voice of the ten-pounders, as a body, was not favourable in 1852 to the lowering of the franchise; and we have heard no counter-clamour from the class who were and are proposed to be admitted to that privilege. The Whig aristocracy, naturally enough, regard this bill with peculiar bitterness. Therefore we do not think that the astonishing change of opinion, or rather of principle exhibited by Lord John Russell, is to be traced either to the advice of colleagues, or the influence of more matured democrats. Our own theory is this—that he never had, as regarded improvements on the form of the constitution or the representation, anything like a fixed principle—that he was striking just as much at random in 1852 as in 1854; and that, so far from having any settled or original ideas of his own, he grasps at any which may be presented to him with extreme recklessness and avidity.

We are quite aware that it would be, to say the least of it, gross impertinence to make any such statement, or to express any such opinion, without reasonable and rational grounds. We should be very sorry to do so at any time, but more especially at the present, when we wish to see Ministers disembarrassed of all perplexing questions at home. But it is their fault, not ours, if we are forced to make the disclosure; and to show that, in reality, the grand mechanist of 1832 had so forgotten his craft, if he ever had a due knowledge of it, that after his last abortive effort, in 1852, he was fain to derive new notions from the pages of the Edinburgh Review. In saying this, we intend anything but an insinuation against the talents of the author of the articles to which we refer. We can admire the ingenuity of his arguments, even while we question their soundness. We have no right to be curious as to what section of politicians he belongs. He may represent the philosophic Liberals, or he may be the champion of Manchester in disguise. All we know is, that he has written three plausible articles, after the manner of Ignatius Loyola, the result of which has been that poor Lord John Russell has plunged into the marsh, misled by the ignis fatuus, and is at the present moment very deep in a quagmire.

Some of our readers will doubtless remember that, during the autumn of 1851, various pompous paragraphs appeared in the Whig newspapers, announcing that Lord John Russell had withdrawn himself to country retirement, for the purpose of maturing a grand and comprehensive scheme of Parliamentary Reform. The task was entirely gratuitous and self-imposed; for although the venerable Joseph Hume, Sir Joshua Walmsley, and a few other Saint Bernards of the like calibre, had attempted to preach up an itinerant crusade, their efforts met with no response, and their harangues excited no enthusiasm. Nobody wanted a new Reform Bill. The class which, of all others, was most opposed to innovation, embraced the bulk of the shopkeepers in towns, who, having attained considerable political and municipal influence, were very unwilling to share it with others, and regarded the lowering of the franchise not only with a jealous but with an absolutely hostile eye. It was upon the shoulders of that class that the Whigs had been carried into power; and it really seemed but a paltry return for their support and devotion, that a Prime Minister, upon whom they had lavished all their honours, should attempt to swamp their influence without any adequate reason. It would be absurd or unfair to charge them with selfishness. The first Reform Bill, acceded to and hailed by the great mass of the people, had established a certain property qualification for voters; and no one could allege that popular opinion was not sufficiently represented in the House of Commons. Nay, many of the Whigs began to think that popular opinion was too exclusively represented therein, and did not scruple to say so. Anyhow, the Bill had so worked that there, in 1851, was Lord John Russell, its parent and promoter, in the office of Premier of Great Britain, and in the command of a parliamentary majority. Small marvel if the ten-pounders asked themselves the question, what, in the name of gluttony, he could covet more?

They were quite entitled to ask that question, not only of themselves, but of the singular statesman whom they had been content to follow. Could he state that there was any measure, not revolutionary, but such as they and other well-disposed subjects of the realm desired, which he was prevented from introducing by the aristocratic character of the House of Commons? Certainly not. The triumph of the Free-trade policy was a distinct proof to the contrary. Was there any discontent in the country at the present distribution of the franchise? Nothing of the kind. The apathy was so great that even those entitled to enrolment would hardly prefer their claims. Even the enrolled cared little about voting—so little, indeed, that it was sometimes difficult to persuade one-half of a large constituency to come to the poll. All attempts at public meetings, for the purpose of agitating a reduction of the franchise, had been failures. The people were quite contented with things as they stood, and grumbled at the idea of a change. And yet this was the time, selected by a Prime Minister who had everything his own way, for getting up a fresh agitation!

Every one, beyond himself, saw the exceeding absurdity of his conduct. The leading Whigs became positively angry; and from that period we may date his rapid decadence in their estimation. The real nature of his scheme, consisting of an arbitrary lowering of the franchise, was quite well known; and as that could not, by any possibility, be carried even through the House of Commons, his own friends thought it advisable to put the noble Lord upon another scent.

There appeared, accordingly, in the Edinburgh Review for January 1852, an article on “The Expected Reform Bill,” which took most people by surprise on account of its apparently moderate, philosophic, and even Conservative tone. It would be difficult to analyse it—it is difficult, even after reading it, to draw any distinct conclusion from its propositions and argument. But this, at all events, was admitted, that “clearly there is no call for Parliamentary Reform on the part of any large or influential class. There is no zeal about it, one way or the other. An extension of the franchise is wished for by some, and thought proper and desirable by many; but it is not an actual want largely felt, nor is the deprivation of the franchise a practical grievance, clear enough, tangible enough, generally recognised enough, to have given rise to a genuine, spontaneous, exclusive demand for redress. There is a general languor and want of interest on the subject, manifested nowhere more plainly than in the tone and character of the meetings got up by the Reform Association for the sake of arousing public feeling. The nation, as a whole, is undeniably indifferent; the agitation is clearly artificial.” Then, again, we are told that “Quieta non movere is, in political matters, as often a maxim of wisdom as of laziness;” and a great deal more to the same effect, which could not have had a very exhilarating effect on the mind of Lord John Russell, supposing, as we do, that he was in total ignorance of the article in question before it was given to the public. Certainly, on this occasion, he had but a poor backing from his friends.

The view of the writer in question seemed to be this—that instead of arbitrarily lowering the franchise on the footing of a property qualification, it is important to discover some criterion by means of which persons morally and educationally qualified, who have not the franchise at present, may be admitted to that privilege. We are not reviewing or discussing the article—we are simply pointing out the sources from which Lord John Russell has derived most of his new ideas. Therefore we shall simply quote one passage from this article.

Source of Lord John Russell’s new idea of the Savings’ Bank Deposit qualification.—“Our present system is defective and unjust in this—that it selects two kinds or forms of property only as conferring the franchise. Let us continue to maintain a property qualification; but let us not insist that the property, so favourably and honourably distinguished, must be invested in one special mode. If a man has accumulated by diligence or frugality £50 or £100, and spends it either in the purchase of a freehold, or in removing his residence from an £8 to a £10 house, his realised property confers upon him the distinction of a vote. But if he invests the same sum, earned by similar qualities, in the savings’ bank, or in railway shares or debentures, or in the purchase of a deferred annuity—which would probably be much wiser modes of disposing of it—it carries with it no such privilege. This seems neither equitable nor wise. It might easily be rectified, and such rectification would be at once one of the safest, simplest, justest, and most desirable extensions of the franchise that could be suggested. Let the production before the registration courts of a savings’ bank book, showing a credit of £50, of at least six months’ standing, or of a bona fide certificate of shares to the same value in a valid railway, or of coupons to the same amount, be held to entitle a man to be inscribed upon the list of voters for that year.”—Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1852, p. 265.

Adhering to our original intention of not discussing the merits of the different proposals of this and the other articles in the Edinburgh Review, we shall not comment upon the unblushing impudence of such a project as this, which would place the representation of the country principally in the hands of millionaires and railway directors. It is unparalleledly impudent. But we notice it now simply as the germ of Lord John Russell’s £50 savings’ bank qualification.

By the time this article appeared, Lord John Russell’s Bill was prepared; though no one expected that it would be carried. The Whig party were conscious that the hour of their doom was approaching, but they wished to bear with them into opposition a weapon which might be available for future warfare. Lord John’s ideas had not then penetrated beyond a lowering of the franchise and the admission to the register of parties who paid 40s. a-year of direct taxes. These were his deliberate impressions before the schoolmaster of the Edinburgh Review appeared abroad.

After this, Lord John Russell went out of office; but the Review kept harping on Reform. The writer had already stated, “that a new measure of Parliamentary Reform was demanded, rather in the name of theoretical propriety than of practical advantage.” It seems to us that such an admission was nearly tantamount to an argument against the policy of making any change at all; more especially when we were told, nearly in the same page, that “there was no call for Parliamentary Reform on the part of any large or influential class.” If that were true, we should like to know who “demanded” the new measure? But we must not be too critical regarding the advances of the new Lycurgus.

In October 1852, a second article appeared, the preamble of which was very moderate—indeed, rather calculated to impress the casual reader with the idea that the author would have much preferred if “the vexed question of the franchise” could have been left alone. Nevertheless it appeared to him that there were “many reasons which make it impossible either entirely to shelve or long to postpone the question of Parliamentary Reform;” and, having stated these, he dashes again into his subject. He is, however, a great deal too knowing to commence with the proposal of innovations. He treats us to several pages of high Conservativism, condemnatory of universal suffrage; and having thus established a kind of confidence—acting on Quintilian’s advice, to frame the introduction so as “reddere auditores benevolos, attentos, dociles”—he begins to propound his new ideas. In this article we have:—

Source of Lord John Russell’s new proposal to swamp the Counties by the admission of £10 occupants.—“The other plan is to extend the £10 qualification to counties, by which means every householder (to the requisite value) throughout the land would possess a vote; if he resided in a small town or a village, or an isolated dwelling, he would be upon the county register. The only objection we can hear of to this plan is, that in the country districts and in hamlets a £10 occupancy generally includes some land, and would not, therefore, indicate the same social station as the living in a £10 house in town, and that it might lead to the creation, for the sake of augmenting landlord influence, of a numerous and dependent class of tenant voters. But in the first place, the occupier of a £10 house in villages and small towns belongs to a decidedly higher social grade than the occupier of a £10 house in cities; and, in the second place, it would not be difficult to meet the objection, by requiring that the qualifying occupancy shall be, in the county register, a house, and not a house and land, or by fixing a sum which shall, as nearly as can be ascertained, be generally an equivalent to the £10 occupancy contemplated by the present law.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 472.

That is the second instance of appropriation on the part of the wise, ripe, deliberate statesman, who for twenty years had been watching the progress of his own handiwork with the view to introducing repairs. Before this article in the Edinburgh Review appeared, it had never occurred to him how convenient it might be to swamp the counties, and how very simple were the means of doing so! Now for appropriation third:—

Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal to admit all Graduates of Universities to Town and County franchise. “It is, of course, desirable, and is admitted to be so by every party, that all educated men shall be voters; the difficulty is to name any ostensible qualifications which shall include them, and them alone. But though we cannot frame a criterion which shall include all, there is no reason why we should not accept one which will include a considerable number of whose fitness to possess the franchise there can be no question. We would propose, therefore, that the franchise be granted to all graduates of Universities,” &c.—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 473.

Another hint adopted by Sir Fretful Plagiary! Next we come to a more serious matter:—

Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal for disfranchising the lesser English boroughs.—“The great majority of them are notoriously undeserving of the franchise, and those who know them best are least disposed to undertake their defence. The plan of combining a number of them into one constituency would be futile or beneficial according to the details of each individual case. If a close or a rotten borough were amalgamated with an open or a manufacturing town, much advantage might possibly result; if two or three corrupt or manageable constituencies merely united their iniquities, the evil of the existing things would only be spread farther and rooted faster. We should propose, therefore, at once to reduce the 61 boroughs with fewer than 500 electors, and now returning 91 members, to one representative each.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 496.

We shall see presently that this proposal was amended, as not being sufficiently sweeping. Only thirty seats are here proscribed; but it was afterwards found expedient to increase the black list to the number of sixty-six. Pass we to the next instance of palpable cribbage.

Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that Members accepting office shall not be obliged to vacate their seats.—“The most desirable man cannot be appointed Colonial Minister, because his seat, if vacated, might be irrecoverable. Administrations cannot strengthen themselves by the alliance of colleagues who possess the confidence of the general public, because the place for which they sit has been offended by some unpopular vote or speech. We need add no more on this head: the peculiarity of the case is, that we have no adverse arguments to meet.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1852, p. 501.

The writer is decidedly wrong about the non-existence of adverse arguments; and we shall be happy to convince him of the fact if he will be kind enough to accord us a meeting. In the mean time, however, he has humbugged Lord John, which was evidently his special purpose. Even while we deprecate the morality of his proceeding, we can hardly forbear expressing our admiration of his skill. We know not his earthly name or habitation; but he is a clever fellow, for he has led, with equal audacity and success, the ex-Premier of Great Britain, and the father of Reform, by the nose!

But we have not yet done. The article last referred to was penned and published before the new Parliament met, towards the close of 1852, and before the balance and state of parties could be ascertained. The result of the election showed that parties were in effect almost equally balanced—so much so, that, but for the junction of the Peelites with the Liberals, Lord Derby would have obtained a majority. The election, it will be remembered, took place under circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to the Government; and never perhaps was misrepresentation of every kind more unscrupulously employed than by the Liberal press on that occasion. Still it became evident that Conservatism was gaining ground in the country; and it was a natural inference that, after the question of Protection was finally set at rest, its progress would be still more rapid. This was not exactly what the writer in the Edinburgh Review had calculated on. He now saw that it would be necessary, if the Liberal party was to be maintained in power, to go a good deal further than he at first proposed; and accordingly, when he appears again before us in October 1853, we find him armed this time, not with a pruning-hook, but with a formidable axe. We hear no more about “theoretical propriety”—he is evidently determined upon mischief. Now, then, for his developed views, as adopted by his docile pupil.

Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal that freemen shall have no votes.—“There is no doubt in the mind of any man, we imagine, that incomparably the most openly and universally venal portion of borough constituencies are the old freemen, so unhappily and weakly retained by the Reform Act of 1832.... The disfranchisement of the freemen is, perhaps, of all steps which will be urged upon Parliament, the most clearly and indisputably right and necessary, and, added to the plan already suggested for pursuing individual cases of venality, will probably sweep away the most incurably corrupt class of electors.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1853, p. 596.

We have already seen that, in Oct. 1852, the reviewer proposed to abstract thirty members from the smaller English boroughs. It became evident, however, that so paltry a massacre of the innocents would not suffice, more especially as it had become part of the scheme to swamp the English counties. Accordingly we are told, in an off-hand and easy manner: “To all that we said on a former occasion as to the theoretical propriety and justice of the small borough representation, we unreservedly adhere. But, unfortunately, it is too notorious that these boroughs are generally in a condition which, for the sake of electoral purity, imperatively demands their disfranchisement, partial or entire. Here again it is true that parliamentary statistics do not altogether bear out our conclusion. Of the seventy-two boroughs convicted of bribery between 1833 and 1853, only twenty-one can properly be called small—as having fewer than five hundred electors—while some of the more constantly and flagrantly impure places number their votes by thousands.” So, according to the admission of even this writer, there is no case established, on the ground of corruption, for the wholesale disfranchisement of the small boroughs. Nevertheless we are to assume them to be impure, because he says it is notorious that they are so; and by this short and summary process of assertion he gets rid of the trouble of investigation. The boroughs are not put upon their trial, for there is no specific charge against them; but they are condemned at once because the writer has a low opinion of their morality. This is worse than Jeddart justice, where the trial took place after the execution. In the case of the boroughs there is to be no trial at all. The following conclusion is therefore easily arrived at: “There can be no doubt in the mind of any reformer that, in some way or other, these small boroughs ought to be suppressed; that we must have, if possible, no more constituencies under one thousand electors.” So much for the disfranchisement; now for the redistribution.

Final scheme suggested to Lord John Russell for disfranchising the small boroughs and swamping the counties.—“The third method proposed is to merge all these small boroughs into the county constituencies, by depriving them of their members, and reducing the county franchise to a £10 occupancy. In this way the class would still be represented, and the individuals would still retain their votes, and the electoral lists of counties would be considerably modified and greatly enriched. This plan would, we think, be far the fairest and most desirable, inasmuch as it would give us constituencies large in number and varied in character, and, therefore, to a great extent secure against illicit and undue influences.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1853, p. 602.

The next and last point which we shall notice is the representation of minorities. We do not know to whom the credit of having invented this notable scheme is really due. There are various claimants in the field. Mr G. L. Craik, of Queen’s College, Belfast, asserts that he was the original discoverer, having propounded a plan of this nature so early as 1836. Ingenious as the idea may be, it will hardly rank in importance with the discovery of the steam-engine, nor do we think that its originator is entitled to any exorbitant share of public gratitude or applause. We shall give it as we find it in the Review.

Source of Lord John Russell’s proposal to give members in certain cases to minorities.—“The mode by which we propose to insure the constituent minorities their fair share in the representation—i. e. to make the majorities and minorities in the House of Commons correspond as nearly as may be to majorities and minorities in the country, or in the electoral bodies—is, to give (as now) to each elector as many votes as there are members to be chosen, and to allow him to divide these votes as he pleases among the candidates, or to give them all to one. But as at present most places return two members, it is obvious that, under the proposed arrangement, wherever the minority exceeded one-third of the total number of the electors, they would be able to return one member, or to obtain one-half the representation, which would be more than their fair share, and would place them on an equality with the majority, which would never do; while, if they fell short of one-third, they would be, as now, virtually unrepresented and ignored. To obviate this, it will be necessary so to arrange our electoral divisions, that as many constituencies as possible should return three members: one of these a minority, if at all respectable, could always manage to secure.”—Edin. Review, Oct. 1853, p. 622.

Here, at all events, is the notion about the representation of majorities, and the establishment of as many constituencies as possible, returning three members. Lord John Russell’s method of working this, is to restrict each elector to two votes.

Thus we see that all the leading features and peculiarities of Lord John Russell’s new Reform Bill—the disfranchisement of the boroughs, the swamping of the counties, the ten-pound occupancy clause, the qualification by deposit in the savings’ bank, the voting of graduates, the retention of their seats by members accepting office, and the representation of minorities—are contained in the articles published in the Edinburgh Review, in 1852 and 1853. This is, to say the least of it, a very singular coincidence. Of course we do not mean to maintain that Lord John Russell was debarred from availing himself of any useful hints which might be offered him, or from adopting the notions of any political sage, or harum-scarum cobbler of constitutions; we entirely admit his right to gather wisdom, or its counterfeit, from any source whatever. What we wish to impress upon the public is this, that, down to 1852, not one of these notions had occurred to our grand constitutional reformer, who for twenty years had been sedulously watching the operation of his original measure! Nay, more than that: two years ago, his ideas on the subject of Parliamentary Reform were diametrically opposite to those which he has now promulgated; and that not only in detail, but in absolute essence and form! Had he come before us this year with a scheme based upon the principle of 1852, which was a lowering of the franchise, without any farther disturbance of the constitution of the electoral bodies, it would have been but a poor criticism to have taunted him with a minor change in the details. He might have used his discretion in elevating or lowering the point where the franchise was to begin, without subjecting himself to any sneer on account of change of principle. But, wonderful as are the changes which we have seen of late years in the views of public men, this is the most astounding of them all. Never before, perhaps, did a statesman pass such a decided censure on his own judgment, or make such an admission of former recklessness and error. If he is right now, he must have been utterly wrong before. The constitution of 1852, as he would have made it, must have been a bad one. One-tenth of the members of the House of Commons would still have been returned by constituencies which he now regards as unfit to be constituencies any more. If the maintenance of the small boroughs is a blot on the constitution, how was it that Lord John Russell did not discover that blot until 1853, after the articles we have referred to were published? Did he take his ideas from those articles? If so, was there ever a more humiliating confession of entire poverty of mind? If he did not take his ideas from those articles, what was it that produced so entire a change of opinion?—what eminent political oculist has removed the film which impeded his vision but two short years ago? This is, in reality, a very grave matter. We are accustomed in this country to associate measures with men, and sometimes to accept the former on account of our belief and confidence in the sagacity of those who propose them. But what faith can we repose in a man who thus plays fast and loose upon a question with which he has been occupied all his life? This is not a case of expediency arising out of unforeseen circumstances. That the question is of the deepest import no one in his senses can deny. We know how the constitution, as framed at present, works; but we do not know how it may work if very materially altered. And yet we find the same mechanist proposing, within two years, two separate kinds of alteration! The first was simple enough, and had at least this much in its favour, that it did not require any violent displacement of the machinery. The second is so complex that the whole machinery must be re-arranged. It was our sincere hope that the country had seen the last of sudden conversions of parties—at no time edifying events, and sometimes attended by disastrous consequences—but we must, it seems, prepare ourselves for another conversion on the part of the Whigs, if this bill is to be carried through. They must, supposing them inclined to support Lord John Russell, either unsay what they said, or were prepared to have said, in 1852, or be ready to maintain that they were then greatly in advance of their leader. The dilemma, we admit, is an unpleasant and an odious one; but there is no escape from it, if the Whigs are determined, at all hazards, to follow their erratic leader.

That there is room for certain changes in the national representation we are by no means disposed to deny. It is impossible to devise any system so perfect as to preclude the idea of amendment; indeed, we suppose that there never was a constitution, or phase of a constitution, in the world, which gave entire and perfect satisfaction to all who lived under its operation. We may be told that the present system is theoretically wrong, that its principle is to exalt property and to exclude intelligence, and that in some parts it is incongruous, inconsistent, and contradictory. Possibly there may be some truth in such allegations; but then we must never lose sight of this, that the real test of a constitution is its practical working. It is undeniable that under the present system the middle classes have gained, not only power, but preponderance in the state; and accordingly we find that they are not favourable to a change which would certainly operate to their disadvantage. The ulterior aims of the men of Manchester may prompt them to desire a still further infusion of the democratic element, but neither the members nor the doctrines of that school have found favour with the British public. If public opinion generally, and the great interests of the nation, are well and effectively represented in the House of Commons, it does seem to us a very perilous experiment to disturb that state of matters. We should like very much to hear from Lord John Russell a distinct exposition of the results which he anticipates, should this scheme of his be carried. Is there any real point of interest to the nation which he is at present debarred from bringing forward by the exclusive constitution of the House of Commons? What are the existing grievances which call for so radical an alteration?

“What is there now amiss

That Cæsar and his senate must redress?”

We apprehend that the noble lord would be greatly puzzled to frame an intelligible answer to such queries. Well then, we are, perforce, compelled to fall back upon theory, and to assume that he vindicates his proposal, not because future measures will be of a better kind, or better discussed than heretofore, but because it is desirable, for symmetry’s sake, that the representation should be readjusted.