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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXIII.      MAY, 1854.      Vol. LXXV.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET,

AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON;

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXIII. MAY, 1854. Vol. LXXV.

THE OXFORD REFORM BILL.

On Friday night, April 2, 1854—or rather at half-past one on the Saturday morning—there passed to its second reading in the House of Commons, represented at that time by twenty-four members, a Bill “to make further provision for the good government and extension of the University of Oxford.” A measure, declared by her Majesty’s Government so important as to demand their careful deliberation—heralded by its promoters as a new charter of intellectual liberty for England—denounced by its opponents as unconstitutional and illegal—appears to have commanded, at this crisis of its parliamentary existence, as little of the attention of the House as if it had been a Welsh highway act or an Irish grievance. True, the debate occupied its fair share of the time of the Commons, and filled its due number of columns in the morning papers. If the reporters as well as the speakers found themselves occasionally upon rather difficult ground—making some trifling confusion between “Students” and “Tutors,” and leaving out here and there a negative which must have rather confused their non-academical readers—such little inaccuracies are neither surprising nor important in a debate in which almost every speaker seems to have been anxious to assure his hearers, such as he had, that he meant nothing—at all events, that he did not mean what he said, still less what he might have said on some previous occasion; where the reputed parents of the bill, Lord John Russell and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were rather its apologists than its advocates, promising amendments even before they were proposed; while Mr Blackett, as the organ of the “root-and-branch” men, puzzling himself how to deal with the sop thrown to him and his party—sweet to the taste but far from satisfying—tendered his best thanks for a measure which he concluded by saying “the Liberal members of that House could never adopt.”

The truth is, that there is an apathy in the public mind upon this great question which has reacted upon its representatives. The University Commission, as a political speculation, has been a failure, and the game of Academical Reform has lost much of its piquancy by a change in the players. Setting aside the question of the legality of parliamentary interference, it was found, somewhat to the surprise of a large section of those who had swelled the cry for a commission—well-meaning, but ill-informed on such subjects—that the most active, as they were the most able university reformers, were to be found within the walls of the University itself. That there was also a section to whom such a discovery was a disappointment, we have little doubt. At all events, from that time the public interest in the subject appears to have gradually died away. Visible excitement of men’s minds, since the issuing of the Commission, there has been none. And since the presentation of the Report, when even the warmest imagination could no longer picture the goodly revenues of Oxford transferred to the London University, or handed over to a Whig minister of education, the extremes of both parties, obstructive and destructive, must have felt their occupation gone;—moderate non-academical politicians began to vote the whole thing rather a bore—and the Oxford Blue Book, of which more copies were sold we believe than of any similar publication, went the way of all blue books, and was seen no more except on Tutors’ tables. In no circles, political or social, in town or country, did University Reform become the topic of the day. If you heard three people together in conversation on the subject, two at least were Oxford men. They, indeed, with that propensity charged against them, with some truth, of “talking shop,” as it is called—and which, with deference be it said in this large-minded and Catholic generation, is better at all events than talking nonsense—they “ventilated” the subject sufficiently, each having usually some pet scheme of his own for the regeneration of Alma Mater, under which, if you were to believe the author, she was to come forth in the renewed beauty of her youth, without losing aught of the reverend features of age.

But while the country at large has been taking things so quietly, Oxford herself has been neither unmoved nor silent. Her bitterest enemies cannot have charged her, during the last few months, with inactivity. Schemes of reform and extension, which a few years ago would have startled the most zealous of the progressistas, have been poured into the Home Office, since this year began, at a rate which would seem to have disconcerted even the impassable Palmerston. There is not wanting both external and internal evidence of Lord John’s present bill having been ushered into the world somewhat in a hurry; in fact, there was some risk of his being outbid in the improvement market. Even our old friends of the Hebdomadal Board had made wonderful progress since we last wrote of them, and, as an undutiful boating undergraduate of our acquaintance phrased it to us, “put on an awful spurt at the end.” College Visitors have been called on to discharge unwonted duties; Heads and Fellows have been closeted in their respective common-rooms for days together; statutes that were before as the Eleusinian mysteries are recklessly published, with their owners’ new interpretations thereof, “by command of her Majesty,” and may be bought, together with the select epistles of Palmerston to his new familiares in Oxford, for the small charge of one shilling and threepence; and Mr Parker’s well-known counter teems with pamphlets. Many a College dignitary appears to have had Job’s wish realised; his enemy has written a book, and he, as in duty bound, has been down upon him, in another, immediately. The brother Professors of Modern History and Hebrew, besides a stout pamphlet each, have had a little private (published) correspondence, in the latter part of which the professorial tone predominates over the brotherly. The Professor of Poetry has a letter—more poetical than anything else—to the Warden of Wadham, who has not replied; not having, possibly, a poetical taste. Of minor and anonymous brochures there are more than we care to number. From this category we must carefully exempt the clever argument in defence of the private tenure of College property by Mr Neate of Oriel—himself a staunch university reformer, and a supporter of the Commission; and the unanswerable appeal of Mr Woodgate of St John’s to the “National Faith,” as pledged to founders by the acceptance of their endowments.

The introducers of the bill congratulate themselves, with some complacency, on the satisfaction with which it has been received in Oxford. True, when Mr Blackett expressed his disgust at the fact as an evident proof of its utter inefficiency, the Chancellor of the Exchequer hastened to contradict himself, and to assure his friends of that party, that the remonstrances against it had been many and vehement, and that it was by no means such an innocent measure as they feared. The truth is, the feeling of the University on this great question has been much misunderstood, and, we believe not intentionally, misrepresented. This is in itself unfortunate, and adds to the difficulties which the world without suddenly finds besetting what seemed at one time an easy and a popular question: but more unfortunate than all will it be, if the comparative apathy of the public mind arises from a delusive notion that the bill now before Parliament is the advance of a government of progress against an antiquated corporation, fortified with prejudices, and tenacious of vested interests; that the two great parties in the struggle are, a growing nation, clamorous for intellectual food, and a rich and covetous university, like an unnatural stepmother, proffering them stones for bread, and keeping her rich gifts for some few favoured children. For such is the view carefully set before men’s minds by those whose designs against the universities of England would accept Lord John Russell’s bill, or even the bolder scheme of the Commissioners, as a very small instalment of what they deem justice. Unless the people of England can be disabused of this false notion,—and by the people, we beg here to be understood to mean especially those classes to whom some political authorities restrict the term, “the masses”—unless they can learn somewhat more truly what their rightful claims upon their national universities are, and who are perilling, and who defending them, and how far they are likely to be secured or lost by the measures now in contemplation,—they may only find out too late that they were led to confound friends with foes, and to cast recklessly from them the solid advantages which wise and good men in days gone by had bequeathed them, for the sake of a glittering dream.

Even in Oxford itself, it seems to have been too much assumed that a broad line of distinction could be drawn, placing on the one side the advocates of progress, who were desirous of remodelling the constitution of the University, and re-distributing its revenues, at whatever cost; and, on the other, those who thought they saw in every change a dangerous innovation. Whereas, in fact, both these extreme sections would at any time have made but a very poor show in the Convocation-house, the former especially having been always inconsiderable in numbers, and more noisy than influential; while the ranks of the latter, more open to argument and conviction, were thinning day by day. That the first were represented in Her Majesty’s Commission was a mistake in its composition, of which the present Government at all events have begun to feel the consequences embarrassing; it has furnished weapons against them to the hands of both supporters and opponents: either too much was intended, or too little has been done. The two great points on which a vast majority of members of Convocation, resident and non-resident, found themselves united in a hostile attitude against the government of the day, were, first, the constitutional right of Parliament to interfere at all; and, secondly, the animus of the Commission. As to the necessity for practical reforms, for rearranging some of the machinery of university education, and extending its basis,—this had for years impressed itself upon most thinking minds,—had at least received a formal acknowledgment at the hands of a committee of the Hebdomadal Board so long ago as 1846, and had been elaborately, if not wisely, dealt with in the new Examination Statute of 1850; a measure which, whatever may have been its tendencies, could not be charged with narrowness or prejudice, and showed, at least, much zeal and pains-taking in its compilers, and an honest wish to meet the educational wants of the age. The real difficulties—not the faults—of Oxford were, that she was fettered by a code of Caroline Statutes which checked her attempts to take a freer attitude, and a form of local government which was the very reverse of representative. Had some friendly ministry given her the power, as she had the will, to rid herself of these incumbrances, we should have had a measure of reform and extension—we are not afraid of the words—not perhaps so showy and sweeping as the present, but much better considered, and therefore more really effectual. No one can have read the evidence laid before the Hebdomadal Committee, and the Tutors’ Association, and considered the various suggestions there embodied, from men of very different minds, sometimes widely at variance with each other, but almost always thoughtful and fairly argued, without feeling that we have there the only materials out of which any wholesome scheme for the “good government” of Oxford is to be built, and can there trace the hands best fitted to combine them. And the strongest argument in favour of the bill now before Parliament is, that its authors have borrowed from this legitimate source their best enactments.

To the Tutors’ Association indeed, especially, Oxford will hereafter in any event confess herself much indebted. Numbering some fifty or sixty of the most able and active college and private tutors—men of all shades of party—practically acquainted with the real wants and difficulties both of College authorities and undergraduates, and conscientiously desirous of remedying them—they took upon themselves, not without some obloquy, an anomalous and quite unrecognised position in the University,—that of a voluntary and independent legislative body, and supplied for a time, in this irregular manner, the defects of the academical constitution. By this gentle pressure from without, the Hebdomadal Board were made aware of the state of public feeling, and were brought to act somewhat more in harmony with it. To them we owe the changes of 1850—changes which, we say again, in many important features we cannot think improvements, and which we quote only in evidence of a progressive tendency. To them we shall owe almost all that is valuable in the Government measure of 1854.

For let no one suppose that the bill now introduced by Government is the scheme of her Majesty’s Commissioners. The spirit which dictated their Report peeps out, indeed, here and there, in some of its most objectionable enactments; but, on the whole, their ponderous blue folio has contributed much less than the four modest pamphlets issued by the Tutors’ Association; and when those important modifications shall have been made in it, either in committee or in the Upper House—without which this measure can never become the law of England—it will be difficult for the late commissioners to recognise, in its altered features, the rickety and unpleasant-looking offspring of their own incubations. Their sole representative in the newly-proposed Commission, if he ever takes his seat in the altered company in which he must be rather surprised to find himself, will be called upon to administer an act of a character widely different from the recommendations which received his signature in April 1852. And before we briefly discuss the objections, both of principle and detail, against the bill as it stands, we would first of all draw our readers’ attention to these points of difference.

The leading idea of the Commissioners’ scheme was, as every one knows, the Professoriate. The multiplication of professors was to be the remedy for all shortcomings in the way of education; a government by professors was to close all mouths which were complaining of the powers that be, and demanding representation; college revenues, applied to the liberal support of professors, could no longer excite the envy, or awake the rapacity of reformers, but must be held to have been at last applied to their rightful uses; examiners, appointed by professors, were at last to achieve the difficult task of satisfying every candidate; to be a professor was to be all that man ought to be—a guarantee amply sufficient for religion, learning, and energy—an office which could teach independently of vulgar details of actual instruction, diffusing scholarship through the University by its mere presence—

“Dives, et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et est rex.”

Where this new race of more than mortal teachers was to spring from, was a point for which, it will be remembered, the Commissioners made no provision; but as to their mode of appointment there was no difficulty whatever. All newly-created chairs (pretty comfortable berths too) were to be filled with nominees of the Crown—in plainer words, of a future minister of public education,—for we should have soon found that office even more necessary than a secretary at war,—and these, with such as were already subject to the same appointment, would have had an absolute majority in the remodelled House of Congregation. But this is by no means the only mode in which, if the Commissioners should have had their will, Oxford would have been gradually converted into a national gymnasium under Government superintendence, and at the same time a gigantic field of patronage. They did not, indeed, go so far as to recommend, because in their delicate consideration for the feelings of others they thought it might be “distasteful” to the societies themselves, but they evidently entertained with favour Mr Senior’s cool proposition,[^[1]] that “the power of selection of Heads of Houses should be given to the Crown, under the advice of the prime-minister.” And in Recommendation 44 we have the first step made towards it—that the election to these offices should, if possible, be left to the Fellows of Colleges; but that in case abuses in these elections should continue, provision to abate them should be made by an alteration in the mode of election. To what this subtle proviso might have led, and was intended to lead, it requires no peculiar spirit of divination to foresee. Again, the staff of professors and the “Crown,” indirectly through these its nominees, was, by the Commissioners’ scheme, to have the control of the studies, and the sole appointment of the public examiners, although on this latter head not a tittle of evidence went to show that the present mode of nomination (by the vice-chancellor, as representing the governing body, and by the two proctors, as representing the Masters of Arts collectively) had in any instance been abused; it being a truth so notorious, both in and out of the University, that we have rather taken it for granted than given it its due weight as the highest of all testimonies in favour of the existing system, that whatever disappointment there may have often been amongst the candidates for honours, the honesty and integrity of the award has never been questioned for a moment.

These features, then, at all events, are not reproduced in the bill of 1854. Another pet idea of the Commissioners, which they may claim exclusively as their own—for very few of their own chosen witnesses in Oxford approved it, and those somewhat hesitatingly, and with awkward apologies—was that of unattached students, who were to be the great means of increasing the numbers, and new-leavening the morality of Oxford. Whether this wild project fell before the grave and loving Christian arguments of Dr Pusey,[^[2]] the quiet irony of Mr Gordon,[^[3]] or the bitter but amusing sarcasms of the Quarterly Review, it is certain that it has found no favour in the eyes of our present university reformers. The “independent monads” have vanished.

So it has fared again, with that sweeping clause in the Commissioners’ Recommendations (32), that “all persons elected to Fellowships should be released from all restrictions on the tenure of their Fellowships arising from the obligation to enter into holy orders,” which, when viewed in connection with the abolition of all religious tests in the appointment of teachers, and the last-named provision for a large class of students who would have been as far as possible removed from religious influences, with their confessed longing to tread the forbidden ground of the admission of Dissenters, clearly showed their object to be the severance of the University as much as possible from the Church; the gradual withdrawal of the whole education of the place out of the Church’s hands—for the theological as well as other studies were to be “supervised” by the professors;[^[4]]—and the future admission, not only to degrees, be it remembered, which is the only right openly claimed at present, but to the emoluments and the dignities of our old religious foundations, of men of any religion, or of no religion at all. It is true that even the small amount of change proposed in this direction by clause xxxiv. of the present measure, forces upon us unpleasant suspicions, and seems founded upon no better reason than that some Fellows of colleges in Oxford are impatient of the restrictions, or forgetful of the professed objects, under which and for which they were elected; still, practically, it is admitted it would not tend materially to secularise the tone of the colleges, or weaken the clerical element in the University generally.

These disagreeably prominent features of the report of 1852 will not be found in the bill of 1854. Other minor points there are, in which the views of the Commissioners have been set aside, in deference, as we may hope, to the deliberately-expressed opinions of the University. The abolition of the distinctive ranks of nobleman and gentleman-commoner, odious in the eyes of the popular reformer, but proved to be at least harmless, and probably beneficial in practice, has not been insisted on; a light straw, perhaps, yet serving as some indication of the setting of the reform current just at present. The general matriculation examination, from which such benefit was hoped to the general standard of scholarship at entrance—often it must be confessed very low—a point in which we are not sure but that the Commissioners were in the right by accident, this too we hear no more of, it would seem in deference to the opinion of the University.[^[5]] And even in the great question of the throwing open the foundations, the clauses of the proposed act, though, as we shall be prepared to show presently, utterly indefensible, whether on the ground of justice or expediency, are yet not so sweepingly destructive as Recommendation 40 of the Commissioners’ Report.

There is another point too, the great difficulty and the great evil, as we think, not of the Oxford system, for the system itself does not recognise it, but of Oxford practice, which, as the bill would surely have been powerless to deal with effectually, its promoters have perhaps done wisely in not dealing with at all. Of private tuition, with the expenses which it involves, the idleness which it encourages, the specious pretexts under which it has gradually wormed its way into a sort of quasi-official existence, and is fast sapping all university and collegiate education as such, and substituting the flimsy trickery of “cram” for the sound and wholesome scholarship of other days,—we have expressed our opinion elsewhere in no measured terms.[^[6]] And we are thankful to my Lord John, or Palmerston, or our own clever and, as he assures us, affectionate representative,—whichever we are to thank for such benefits, for none of these gentlemen seem over anxious to take the credit of their good deeds,—that they have left this question, at all events, for the University to deal with it at its own discretion. The private Tutors, we rejoice to say, are not recognised as yet, even in name, by act of Parliament. If we have no “enabling powers” to get rid of them, they are at least not forced upon us by “extraneous authority.” The Commissioners themselves found them a ticklish subject to handle; they took them up unwillingly, apologised for them in a deprecating manner, as being ugly but useful, and were glad to let them go. It was not the only point upon which, for excellent reasons, they were compelled to differ from their own witnesses. Clause xxxvi. 1, is, we hope, specially intended to ignore them as lawfully “engaged in the tuition or discipline of the said University.” And assuredly a “heavy blow and a great discouragement” is dealt out to their present occupation in the wide powers given to open private halls; whilst, at the same time, we are glad to think it opens a legitimate field of usefulness, and, we hope, emolument, to the many talented and excellent men so employed; for it is against the whole system of private tuition that our strictures are directed, and not the individuals who are forced to take a false position by its general prevalence. It is the more necessary to draw public attention to this prudent omission in the bill, because already voices are raised in complaint against it. This body is too numerous and too influential not to have its organs both in and out of the House. The fluent Mr Byng, representing one phase of young Oxford, takes the earliest opportunity of claiming for them their share in the new representation;[^[7]] and it would be very hard if they had not their champion among the pamphleteers. We only trust that no parliamentary friend, by some ingenious insertion of words, will be allowed to establish a new reading of the aforesaid clause in their favour. So much for the evil which this bill might have proposed to do, and which it has happily left undone. These are its virtues of omission; it has also its sins. If it has sometimes firmly resisted the mischievous proposals of the Commissioners, it has in no case had the courage to take a bold line of its own. One measure of practical reform which would have trenched upon no rights, and violated no principle, and therefore, perhaps, was not sufficiently telling to recommend itself to the Commissioners—but which the public would have thankfully acknowledged, and which the University could hardly have objected to—was the removal of the inconvenient fiction, which demands four years for the first degree, whilst, in the thirteenth term, the beginning of the fourth year, the final examination may be, and often is, passed, not only with success, but with honour. We are not arguing, it must be remembered, for an actual shortening (unless it were by the odd thirteenth term) the academical course, which we agree with Mr Justice Coleridge in regarding as an evil; but merely for insisting, in the case of all pass-men, that the period which is now the minimum should also be the maximum of their university course, and that the absurd and expensive anomaly of “grace terms” should be altogether done away with. We will not trouble our readers again with the arguments on this subject which we have used before;[^[8]] but we must confess the disappointment with which we have looked in vain through the Reports, both of the Hebdomadal and of the Tutors’ Committee, and find this most simple and convenient re-arrangement,—change it can hardly be called—either wholly overlooked, or only noticed to be dismissed without consideration. It is totally distinct in principle from the 12th Recommendation of the Commissioners, “that, during the latter part of their course, students should be left free to devote themselves to some special branch or branches of study”—which of course is neither more nor less than a postponement of classical literature, to what is popularly called “Useful Knowledge,” against which we should assuredly protest as strongly as any of the Oxford witnesses; three clear years of four terms each, all strictly kept, would save undergraduates some expense, much indecision and confusion as to when they shall go up, would be easier understood by the public generally, and would not involve the sacrifice of a single hour of classical training,—nay, in connection with one little improvement to be mentioned presently, might allow more time to be really devoted to it than at present. We are glad to recognise the “consent, though with great doubts of its expediency,”[^[9]] to this view of one of the most real, because one of the most cautious and moderate reformers in the University. And we still entertain some confidence that it is a principle which must find its way into a well-digested scheme of collegiate reform, whenever we have one.

Another measure which we had hoped to have seen suggested by the bill, important as it certainly is to the “good government” of Oxford—but on which we are sorry to find both the Oxford committees rigidly silent—is the shortening of the long vacation. On this subject, necessarily a distasteful one to college Tutors, we have already, in a previous article, spoken at some length, and nothing has been written or said to shake in the slightest degree our strong opinion of its desirability. In all the evidence which has been sought or volunteered by the Tutors, this point has been studiously, as it seems, avoided. Only Sir F. Rogers, (who is not a Tutor) follows us in pressing this, as he also confesses, “unpalatable suggestion.”[^[10]] He sees in it, as we do, the simplest means of shortening the time of a general university education, without in the least impairing its efficiency. Exeter College also, in the abstract of proposed changes in its statutes, forwarded to the Home Office, Feb. 1, 1854, has set a solitary example of endeavouring to reclaim to collegiate study some portion of that pleasant but not very profitable four months during which Alma Mater usually turns her children out of doors: “It is proposed that a Tutor or Fellow reside during the greater part of the long vacation, to enable undergraduates to reside there for the purpose of study.” In these few lines we gladly hail one of those just and sensible reforms in which Exeter does not now for the first time take the lead,—which are overlooked because they are so simple in themselves, and so plainly within the reach of every college, but which, when once seen in action, cannot fail to be generally adopted.

Such are the negative tendencies of the Government measure, both for good and evil: it remains to consider its positive enactments. And to begin with the beginning,—that is to say, the heads, who here for the last time take the initiative. The Hebdomadal Board, it seems, is doomed. They are not to await, like other subjects of reform, the action of the University itself; on the 10th day of October next, if this act becomes law, their corporate existence ceases. Of all the sufferers by Government legislation, they, we fear, will find the fewest champions, and meet with the least commiseration. The Tutors, whom they unwisely neglected to conciliate, have been their bitter enemies from the first. They fall a sacrifice not to any cry from without, but to domestic unpopularity. The Commissioners would have mercifully retained them as an upper house of legislature, only placing by their side another body, with equal powers and greater influence—the “remodelled Congregation.” But the Tutors’ Committee would not hear of it. “Half shares” was the formal demand of the majority of this body, just beginning to feel their own power. And as this consciousness of strength increased, the hopelessness of the struggle on the side of the existing authorities became more and more apparent. A third party, however—but weakly represented, and jealously looked upon in the Tutors’ Association, made their claim for a share in the directory; and the Professorial interest, addressing themselves directly to the ear of the Government, succeeded in making the proposed Hebdomadal Council what it is in the bill as at present—one-third Heads of Houses, one-third Professors, and one-third Masters of Arts. We have no particular objection to the proposed partition—we believe that any tolerably fair form of representation would work sufficiently well—nor have we ever been the apologists of the Hebdomadal dignitaries. We have admitted their policy to have been at once weak and obstinate; slow to move at all, and undecided in action. With a hostile commission hanging over their heads, they at first affected to ignore the danger, and then wasted, in the most unaccountable manner, the time which might, wisely used, have in great measure averted it. They appointed a committee “to consider and report upon” the recommendations of the Commissioners on 16th June 1852; that report was presented on 1st December 1853. The Tutors’ Committee, appointed five months later, presented its first report in January 1853, its second in April, its third in November, and its fourth and last in March 1854. The Tutors had large demands upon their time besides legislation—the Heads should have made it their first and most earnest duty. Yet it was not until the 24th February, after the terms of the proposed bill must have been known in the University, that a new statute was proposed in Convocation, which must have been felt at the time to be mere waste paper. Nor do we think it was wise to summon Convocation again, at four days’ notice, to divide upon a petition which the previous voting must have told them could only be carried by a narrow majority, and would therefore lose the only weight which could have attached to it as a collective protest. Nor do they seem to us to have well consulted their own dignity in the terms of that petition, after having questioned the authority of Parliament to interfere at all. Yet, in spite of all this, we confess we think the Heads have been harshly treated in this measure. There seemed to be no valid objection to a more numerous Board, in which, while the Heads retained their seats, a fair proportion of the popular element might have been infused by election. The scheme of the Commissioners was less offensive, and would have been quite as effectual. We could never see the force of the objections raised to their separate existence as an honoured estate, whose years and experience, together with the large stake which they would always hold in the prosperity of the University, would perhaps often have tempered the rash enthusiasm of younger, more energetic, but not always abler men, and whose deliberate opinion would perhaps have carried more weight, when it had ceased to be the only source of academical legislation. The very antagonistic position of two chambers, constituted on different principles, to which the Tutors object, has ere this been found conducive to good government. At all events, we can never cordially agree with any act which disfranchises—except for proved abuse, which in this case cannot be urged—any individual, or any body of individuals; and we think the present Heads might have retained their seats at the Board for life, even had it been thought expedient to diminish those seats in number for the future. We shall part from our old governors, if we must part from them, with regret; not the less because we have not implicit confidence in those who may succeed them.

It is indeed very possible, as Mr Burgon says,[^[11]] “to conceive something worse than even the inactivity of the Hebdomadal Board.” As things stand now, at least we know our rulers—they represent twenty-four separate and independent interests, and are, from their very isolation, at least above all suspicion of clique or party. Will it as surely be so in the dynasty to come? Are the smaller societies as sure to be represented? We shrewdly suspect that hereafter many a small college Tutor may rue the day when, in the associated committee, he took up the pleasant trade of tinkering a constitution. He may find out, when too late, that when his hand helped to close the door of the delegates’ room against the legitimate representative of his own college, he shut out the voice of that college for ever from the great council of the University. We may live to see an “initiative,” composed of eight Heads of powerful colleges, plus eight Professors of the same colleges—plus eight Tutors or M.A.’s of the same colleges again; for their influence in the new Congregation, if exerted, will entirely neutralise the votes of the smaller colleges and halls. And if it be said that this is an illiberal view, and that such influence will not be put in motion, the answer is, that there is every reason to believe that the leading colleges have foreseen this advantage, and are prepared to use it. A far-sighted tutor of the most powerful society in Oxford objects to the constitution of the Commissioners’ congregation, on the significant ground that “it gives exactly the same influence to the largest college and the smallest hall;”[^[12]] and unless these smaller societies unite in protesting against this part of the scheme, their share in the government of the University, unless in rare exceptional instances, is forfeited for ever. An amendment to clause v., by way of proviso, that not more than two members of the council shall be of the same college, might tend to secure something like a fair distribution of power.[^[13]]

From the Hebdomadal Council we descend to Congregation—the Commissioners’ idea, clumsily expanded. The framers of the fourteen not very clear provisions of clause xvi., which provides for the composition of the said council, have found themselves in the position not unknown to those who, with a somewhat miscellaneous visiting list, have to give a very large party: anxious to issue as many invitations as possible, they have contrived to make exclusion very invidious, whilst no one considers his invitation a compliment. “We must draw the line somewhere, you know,” says Mr Dickens’ friend of the cheap and fashionable shaving-shop—“we don’t go below journeyman bakers.” And the coal-heaver turns away, an aggrieved and angry man. The bill is here quite as arbitrary, but hardly so distinct. Journeyman professors are included; journeyman tutors we believe not. Masters of private halls—which might contain two students—have a seat there; senior bursars, transacting the business of large colleges, have not. But of all unintelligible qualifications—“all who shall have a certificate of being habitually engaged in the study of some branch of learning or science” are to be members of this privileged body. (“Earnest” study, Lord Palmerston would have had it,[^[14]] but the others would not bite.) And the authority which is to grant these “certificates of study” is, by clause xxxviii. 5, left to “any college” to “declare.” This, we think, must have been a mere successful joke of Palmerston’s inserting. Plainly the triumvirate were wise in not declaring it themselves. A certificate of study in some branch of learning or science!—how many hours a day? how are the results to be ascertained? is the candidate to be examined? If not, how is the “authority” to know? and what is to be the definition of learning and science? Would an accurate knowledge of “Bradshaw” reckon? It is a science which has never yet, we believe, been fully investigated. Would a man be allowed to “take up” the Times, including the foreign intelligence, with dates?—just at present, what with the Turkish names, and contradictory correspondence, it is much the hardest reading we know. Or the new and fashionable science of “common things,” hitherto much neglected in Oxford? It is idle to argue seriously upon such an enactment as this; it is legislation carried into its dotage. That such a crotchet could have been calmly entertained by any three sensible English statesmen, is one of those unaccountable instances in which fact is more improbable than fiction. If there is to be a remodelled Congregation, we suppose some such simple qualification as all M.A.’s bonâ fide resident, or all engaged in collegiate tuition, discipline, or administration, would fully suffice, and be at least intelligible. On the question of allowing such a large and heterogeneous body, however composed, to debate in English, we think the Tutors’ objections entitled to every consideration; they have had full opportunity of practically judging of its tendencies; and it is quite clear that it would thus become a perpetual field for loud and unprofitable discussion, subversive of the dignity and quiet of the University, and wasteful of its time.

Of the numerous petty and vexatious restrictions on the tenure of Fellowships, it is not necessary for us to dwell at length; because this portion of the bill, by an ingenious complication of difficulties, has secured the opposition of all parties, and cannot by any possibility pass as it stands. If its object was to make residence compulsory, it would have been better to have done it by a few plain words. This would have had at least the merit of being in accordance with the original intention of the founders, although few would have been found to advocate such an enactment on the ground of utility. But clause xxxvi. assumes to treat a body of men who are to be, if the other bold aspirations of this measure are carried out, the intellectual flower of England, as a set of schoolboys; establishing an inquisition into their private pursuits, which we will venture to say was never yet proposed, and which no government will be allowed to exercise, over any society of Englishmen. In this inquisitorial process, their pet invention of the “certificate of study” is again to do them yeoman’s service. This is to make sure that the intellectual genius, which their whole system is invented to foster, shall not be turned—as we are glad to find them recognise that even intellect may be—to purposes of mischief. The difficulty here, as in the other case, is in the providing the “authority” from which these certificates are to issue; for here the bill gives us no help whatever. If Fellows of colleges, chosen solely for their “superior fitness in character and attainments,” cannot be trusted to take care of themselves, who is to take care of them? “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”? Who is this unknown “authority,” thus mysteriously veiled, whom all are to worship? Can it be Lord John?

The term of five years, the maximum allowed by the previous clause to a non-resident Fellow to prepare for a profession, is justly felt to be an arbitrary limitation; as is also the three-mile boundary, outside which no Fellow, under the provisions of the Act, is to hold a cure of souls, retaining his fellowship; and it will scarcely be believed that the Bursars, who have the entire administration of college business and estates, and who are usually some of their most valuable resident members, are, under the famous clause xxxvi., classed implicitly with the idlers, and would not be allowed to retain their fellowships at all.

We beg our readers also to remark the miserable economy, which holds out, in the shape of a boon to the Fellow who shall have spent twenty-one years in the faithful discharge of college duties, permission to retain his fellowship, exempt from such active employment, “subject to the payment of one-third of the profits thereof.” So that the Tutor who, for a third of a human life, has by his energy and ability sustained or made the reputation of his college, may find himself with failing health, or failing powers, pensioned off upon a stipend of some £100 or £150 per annum; for the case, indeed, of ill health incapacitating for an active share of college duties, or even for “earnest study”—not uncommon, alas! in men overstrained in the race for honours—has never entered into the calculations of our modern university reformers. “Work, work!” is their cry—“what else are you paid for?”

One ground of complaint, too, which we think the University has, as a body, against the general tone of this bill, independently of any injustice in its enactments, is the distrust which is implied in these and other instances where free agency is curtailed, as well as in the attempt to guard jealously all exercise of power which is necessarily, but grudgingly, preserved. Perhaps this strict surveillance is held necessary in the present corrupt state of Oxford, but is to be removed when a regenerated University has grown to the full stature, and becomes entitled to the rights, of intellectual manhood. From Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston such treatment might have been expected; in them it might have been the expression of an honest prejudice, and a pardonable misappreciation. To have assumed, as is done in clauses xxxiii. and xxxviii., 8, that Examiners and Electors would be found wanting in common honesty, and must be bound to the “strict performance of their duties” by declaration or otherwise—(convenient vagueness!)—might have been understood as a little ebullition of feeling, natural if not dignified; though we conclude no one would have attached much real weight to such futile precautions. The Examiner or Elector who betrays his trust by an unjust decision will not think much of supporting it by a lying declaration. An Act of Parliament, we have heard, can make a gentleman; we never yet heard that it could make an honest man. But Mr Gladstone, at least for his own credit, if not for theirs who trusted him, should have eliminated these gratuitous and unworthy passages before he allowed his name to appear on the back of this bill. He had more experience of such things, and knew the Oxford spirit better. He, for very shame, should not have put this moral bribery oath to those constituents who have thrice elected him—he knows on no selfish grounds—amidst much obloquy, and, in many instances, at much sacrifice of private interest and personal feeling.

There flashes upon us also, here and there throughout the several clauses—though made to assume as unobtrusive a form as possible—the shadow of a giant influence, as yet rather felt than seen. Any vacancy in the number of Commissioners to be appointed by Parliament for the purposes of this Act,—and with the selection of whose names, as at present understood, we are fully satisfied,—is to be filled up by the Minister of the day. A report of the “state, receipts, and expenditure, and other particulars,” of every college, is by clause liii. to be forwarded, if required, to “one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State.” There is a remarkable and mysterious article in clause xliv., forbidding the Commissioners to “appoint any person extraneous to a college to exercise any authority therein,” without the consent of a majority of the Fellows of the said college. There are no scholia on this obscure passage, but we suspect it is pregnant with possibilities, and, like some other dark sayings of old, the interpretation may come too late. It is no use, in short, to try to shut our eyes to the fact, that Government has got a hold upon the colleges, and intends, as far as possible, to keep it.

Against the diversion of college revenues to the general purposes of the University,—the founding of new professorships, &c.,—the feeling at Oxford is so nearly unanimous, and so reasonable,—while those colleges upon whom alone the University had any claims of this nature, have for some time been so fully prepared to recognise them—Magdalen proposing to devote £750 per annum “at least” to the founding of prælectorships, Corpus appropriating £600 to the endowment of a professorship of Latin, and Merton promising assistance; and when these are excepted, there remain so few colleges containing the number of fellowships (20) required, in order to justify such an appropriation,—that we may hope the justice and discretion of the Commissioners may safely be trusted not to make such a diversion in the case of any college whose authorities may be conscientiously unwilling to sanction it.

The means here proposed for the extension of the University, by the unrestricted establishment of private halls, are those which we have already advocated in a previous article. Established under due regulations, they cannot prejudice the discipline of the University. It would be ridiculous to suppose that they could interfere with the colleges, whose wealthy foundations must always enable them, if they will, to educate more cheaply and with greater advantages; whilst we still believe that they will succeed in drawing to Oxford a class of students which it does not now possess, in developing the demand of which the existence is so disputed, and in proving, in spite of Mr Gordon’s clever irony[^[15]] on so tempting a subject, that a more kindly and domestic discipline is both possible, and in some cases very desirable, without treating men as children. At any rate, if they fail, they will involve no interest but their own.

There is yet one principle boldly laid down in this bill—for one principle it is under several forms—so cruel and so unwise, involving such a deep wrong to the memory of the dead, and such contempt for the claims of the living, that it forms alone one of the most solemn questions ever submitted to the decision of the legislature. Beneath this great injustice—if once it pass into law—all the minor evils of this measure may take shelter and be forgotten. If Parliament, more faithful to Oxford than her own sons and representatives, shall deliver her from this, we know of no surrender of her liberties which would be too great a price to pay. It is proposed by this bill to take away the heritage of the poor; Oxford is to be no more what she has been for above five hundred years—“the almshouse of noble poverty.” It is by the merest rule of consequence that the same hands sweep away the rights of families, of counties, and of schools. “No preference shall, after the passing of this Act, be accorded to any candidate by reason of birthplace, kinship, education at any school, or Indigence, over any other person of superior fitness in character and attainments,” (clause xxviii). These are the words. Then follow some grudging exceptions in favour of kinship, of districts, and of schools; none in behalf of poverty. For this wholesale confiscation the Commissioners had striven hard to prepare the public mind; voices within the walls of Oxford itself had shamefully avowed it as their object; the doctrine of “open competition” and “abolition of preferences” has been preached as an intellectual gospel; and still good and wise men have been slow to realise its growth: whilst those against whose rights it is aimed are lured into a blind belief in it.

Let the people of England look to it. If their old adage be true, that “learning is better than house and land,” a heritage is passing from them. “The nation has a claim to the national universities,” it is said. If it means anything, it means this—that rank, and wealth, and worldly position are not to hold them, to the exclusion of the poor seeker after knowledge. Will they believe us, if we tell them, that the great and good men who in other days built and endowed these colleges, said more than this; they said the poor alone should hold the seats of honour there, if they could prove that they were led by the love of learning to enter in and take possession. The sons of the rich and noble might resort there for education; but their fellowships and their scholarships, endowed by their bounty, were for the poor for ever. Is this truth disputed? Is there any moral doubt that the poor scholars of England are the true heirs of the “city of palaces,” any more than of the true purpose of the Hospital of St Cross, which has just engaged so much of the public attention? Is there one whit more iniquity in Lord Guildford’s acts, than there will be in this act, if it passes? We believe that in this case, as well as in that, the public is not awake to the fact, and needs to have the wrong set very plainly before them in order to appreciate it. Ancient statutes—even were the handwriting legible, and the Latin easy—are not popular reading. Yet there are some things in them which would open, to many a shrewd reader amongst our middle classes, a new chapter of the rights of man. It might form a novel, and not wholly unprofitable, theme for a popular lecturer to teach his hearers that the Scholars or Fellows of Oriel were, by the founder’s will, to be not only “casti et humiles” but “indigentes;” not necessarily first- or second-class men, who had spent large sums of money upon private tutors, but merely “ad studium habiles,” “proficere volentes;” that the same qualifications, nearly word for word, repeated as a sacred formula, are those for the Scholars or Fellows of the rich and noble foundations of St John’s, of Merton, of Balliol; that at Magdalen—perhaps now the most luxurious of all our colleges—they were, and are commanded by the same statutes, by which they claim to hold their rich endowments, to elect “pauperes et indigentes,” guarding the rights of the poor by a double title. And it might not be uninstructive to trace the different interpretations put, in different ages, upon those strange old Latin words—especially the last new interpretation of them; and, by the help of grammar and dictionary, impressing upon an audience, by this time somewhat interested, the rapid advance made, in this age of progress, and under a government of progress, both in the philosophy of language and the recognition of popular rights. There is many an honest Radical, hating a parson or a lord, who no doubt chuckles over reform in any shape, but especially reform of the universities—they being, as it were, hot-beds for raising parsons, and lords, and such-like. He regards this bill as a little step in the way in which we are to go,—not much, but something,—“the beginning of the end,” as our clever friend of the Examiner has it. He thinks it is to “throw open” the good things to his children which the higher classes have hitherto been giving away quietly among each other. Such men look upon Oxford as aristocrat, and the Commission as the popular champion. Never was a more complete delusion. Who will be the fortunate claimants for these “open” scholarships, which are to be wrested, as Mr Woodgate ably and eloquently shows, from country grammar-schools to which the middle classes resort, from districts which some benevolent founder, risen himself to wealth from a humble origin, wished in his grateful affection to connect with his name for ever—in some cases from orphans—who are to inherit them? They are to be rewards of “merit;” we have so much unrewarded merit going about in this generation; and merit is nothing now without reward. It will be, in nine cases out of ten, boys from the head forms of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster—

“Magnis centurionibus orti.”

The sons of parents who can afford to spend one or two hundred per annum upon their education,—who have had advantages of every kind, which the poor curate’s or the country tradesman’s son can never hope for,—who should need no such incentives to study, as they need no such help in its pursuit. Are these the classes for which founders bequeathed their wealth? Hear the good William of Wykeham, one of the most magnificent of Oxford benefactors—whose too princely foundations are, as it would appear, never to be allowed to do the noble and pious work for which he intended them—“I will have,” says he, “not those already learned, skilled in letters, wealthy, accomplished in arts.” His gifts were wisdom to those who sought after wisdom, and help to those who needed help to seek it.

It is curious to mark the poverty of argument amongst the champions—of all parties—who advocate this nefarious spoliation. “Fellowships and scholarships,” says the Edinburgh Reviewer, “have now become situations of influence and honour; it would be wrong to appoint men to these simply because they are poor.”[^[16]] Let the words go down to posterity as the expression of the sentiments of our self-styled friends of the people: because the poor man’s heritage has increased, it may be his no longer—what has he to do in situations of “honour and influence?” “Because he is poor?” No; but because, being poor, with the many disadvantages which poverty entails, he has proved himself “ad studendum habilis et idoneus”—“proficere volens”—these must be his claims besides poverty; and they may involve at least as high an order of “merit” as any mere examination-test of acquirements. Hear again, in the same strain, Professor Garbett. University emoluments, according to him, are “the intellectual property of the nation.”[^[17]] Now, if this be a mere flower of diction—a vox artis—if, being Professor of Poetry, he thought he was nothing if not poetical, we have nothing more to say—it may pass for what it is worth. But if it be put forth as a serious prosaic assertion—if he means to say that the wealth of Oxford is the property of mere intellect, then is Professor Garbett the strongest of all living arguments against professorial teaching. We are then to deify intellect; to this idol we are to sacrifice the rights of the poor, the claims of kindred and of neighbourhood. Does he know who is the impersonation of intellect unsanctified?

And, as the claim of poverty is to be extinguished within Oxford itself, so are those institutions which were to supply claimants to be robbed in their turn. Here is the sentence of disfranchisement for a multitude of provincial grammar-schools throughout England. No preference to any scholarship shall be accorded to any school except such school shall contain one hundred scholars. Is this wisdom and justice? Will the towns of Appleby, Abingdon, Ashburton, Bromsgrove, Coventry, Hereford, Marlborough, Reading, Tiverton, Worcester, call this a liberal scheme? Will you withdraw from these places the fruits of the munificence, often, of some grateful townsman, and deprive them of the only hope of a good classical education for their sons? For be it remembered, it is not merely the two or three boys here and there, who are the fortunate holders of these helps to study, who are benefited thereby—it is the many that, thus encouraged to exertion, and the still greater number who have the advantage of first-rate masters, whom these very scholarships have attracted to these schools. And is there no injustice to such men themselves?—who have given up perhaps fair prospects at Oxford, resigned fellowships, married wives, and carried their talents into remote districts of England to take charge of country schools, which two lines of this bill are to empty for ever? Then the absurd estimate of the efficiency of a school by its actual numbers—giving it a scholarship, we suppose, when it had the even hundred, and next year destroying it for lack of five. A school may be in a high state of efficiency, and yet never reach near a hundred boys. Bridgnorth, Oakham, Uppingham, when in the last generation they ranked almost as public schools, did not; Bromsgrove has not ninety, Repton just sixty, at the present time. Are these inefficient places of education?

We are estranging the middle classes from us day by day. With all our large professions, we are a narrow-minded age. It has been well remarked, how, in olden times, many of our great divines were sons of tradesmen.[^[18]] This enactment would close in great measure the avenues by which the Church was meant to draw into its ranks those who now, partly in ignorance, shrink from her teaching.

Here then, or never, the Universities must take their stand. This is no struggle for privileges. It cannot be said that colleges have any interest in keeping up a preference for the poor. Rather, most unhappily, their tendency has been to pass over these claims, not being fonder of poor connections than the world in general is—preferring the scholar and the gentleman, and merging the preference into a poor “cæteris paribus.” Perhaps—not unnaturally—corporations, like individuals, require to be often recalled to homely duties. In this, as in other points, Oxford has not been immaculate. Let her make amends. Let us hear no more of “poor halls,” when almost every one of her proudest buildings should be an “Hospitium Pauperum Scholarium.” Much of what she holds to be her legal rights may be given up for the sake of peace—obedience to lawful, though arbitrary authority; some things indifferent may even be sacrificed as popular concessions; but in this there must be no compromise—in this she is a steward for God.

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORTRESSES.

Having been moved to put together some ideas on ancient fortresses, with a slight unprofessional glance at modern fortifications, we feel at a loss to say whether the subject was suggested by the prospect of a European war, or by finding, on turning up page 52 of the second volume of Edward King’s Munimenta Antiqua, the curious statement about famous Conisborough Castle, “that, if a person chances to stand in the least degree nearly opposite to any one of the buttresses, the whole building appears, notwithstanding its perfect rotundity, to be a square tower instead of a round one.”

If we led the reader to suppose, that anything he finds in this article will indicate the probable result of the coming European Struggle, we should grossly deceive him; and it is but fair to say, that if the opening sentences have induced him to expect a succinct digest of the history of fortified places from the era of the Flood, he will have to complain that his anticipations are by no means fulfilled. We intend to take advantage of that happy vagrant eclecticism, which nothing in this world but a magazine admits of, and which, in truth, is a blessing too often forgotten and betrayed by its proper guardian, when he consents to be nothing but the expounder of opinion for a polemical or a civic conclave, or the recorder of the pother of local antiquaries. Our remarks on fortresses will follow no specific line, logical, or otherwise—will supply no desideratum—prove no problem, and exhaust no subject of inquiry; and, with these preliminary indications, we now offer them.

Be it a question which, among ancient nations, was most illustrious in deed and thought—the Jewish, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Hellenic, or the Roman—there can be no doubt that the most illustrious race acting within the sphere of modern history is the Norman. And when we give them this local name, we do not mean to confine its comprehension to the descendants of the Rollo who bullied the King of France out of a province, or to those of the band of adventurous men who “came over” with the Conqueror. The real Norman who founded the institutions which still live to attest his greatness, was a mixed being, possessed of the hardy, enduring energy of the North, and the fire and versatility of the South. Most European countries have enjoyed his presence. France has largely partaken of it, so has Spain—though the spirit of the old greatness it produced has died, and the faded lustre of its memory only remains. Italy, Sicily, and portions of Germany, have had their share of these high-spirited wanderers; and indeed often, in the history of European states, might it be traced that, as if by an injection of fresh blood, the Norman element has saved them from immediate dissolution, if it has failed to confer on them a prolonged and invigorated existence.

Greatest, however, of all the obligations to this race are those which we of the British empire owe; for the illustrious adventurers—whose spirit and energy sometimes seemed to consume and destroy the feebler qualities of the people on whom they were ingrafted—found among their Saxon brethren only a reinforcement of those steady and enduring powers, which had not yet acquired a sufficient preponderance in the composition of the Norman. To the character and tendencies of this race we owe the centralising influence which has given power to our democratic institutions. We owe to them the principle of honour, courtesy to women, social disinterestedness, and the many virtues which have grown out of the system of chivalry. In art, we owe to them the great system of ecclesiastical architecture, which, after slumbering for a couple of centuries, is now flourishing in so remarkable a revival, that every genuine vestige of it is preserved with pious care; and even a worshipful municipality, if it design to destroy a remnant of the art, as it would have almost been thanked for doing fifty years ago, is restrained from the act by a feeling of public indignation.

The magnificent system which goes commonly by the name of Gothic architecture, is essentially the work of the Norman race, taking both the character of the architecture and the name of the race in a comprehensive sense.

If it be an inferior achievement, yet it is something to say that to the same race we owe the fortalice of the middle ages—the parent of the modern fortress. The castle, as we know it in romance and history, is essentially a Norman creation. The symmetrical external strength, and the gloomy mysteries of the interior, necessary to make a castle be a castle in poetry or romance, are features entirely belonging to the Norman edifice. The vaulted form of internal roofing, with all its grandeur and gloom—the dungeons beneath—the battlements above—the secret passages—and other mysteries which are necessarily connected with these in architectural arrangement, are all peculiarities of the Norman fortalice. To find what there is in this, inquire how The Old English Baron—The Castle of Otranto—Mrs Radcliffe’s or Victor Hugo’s novels could have been written without this element of poetic romance. Go higher up, and see how much of the glorious interest of Scott’s novels has been created out of this element; and whether it is presented at Torquelstone or Tillytudlem, all comes of Norman origin. But go still higher, and see how such a tragedy as Macbeth could have existed, if Shakespeare had been a contemporary of the Scottish monarch, and had been bound to describe him living in an extensive craal of wicker or turf huts, instead of placing the whole tragic history in one of those mysterious Norman castles which did not exist until centuries after Macbeth’s day, and were beginning to add to their other interest that of a mellow age in Shakespeare’s.

Besides these elements of associative interest, there is the external beauty involved in a marvellous development of strength and symmetry. Take the Norman castle in its most perfect development—the stern square mass in the centre—the flanking round towers at the angles, widening with a graceful sweep towards the earth, after the manner in which the oak stem widens to its root—the varied crest of battlements, turrets, and machicolations which crown all, adjusting their outline to the graceful variations of the square and circular works below,—all make a combination, the grandeur and beauty of which has been attested by its eternal repetition in landscape-painting, since landscape-painting began.

Nor were the beauty and grandeur all that the Norman fortalice could boast of. It was a great achievement in science. Of all the steps taken onwards in fortification, from the primitive earthwork on the steppes of Tartary down to the fortification of Paris, the greatest was taken by that one which combined together the dwelling-house and the fortress, and made that organisation of main edifice and flanking protections of which the great works of Vauban were but a further development, as we shall have occasion more fully to show.

But we must stop here.—External beauty and grandeur, engineering skill, we attribute to the Norman castle; but we cannot award the same praise to its moral objects, which were ever those of subjugation and regal or lordly despotism. In fact, the castle was the embodiment of the feudal system, and ripened into the Parisian Bastille, the largest and most perfect Norman fortress ever built. As one of our kings said of a border keep, the man who built that was a thief in his heart; and they who reared the stately dwellings of the Norman kings and nobles had subjugation and tyranny in their hearts, and indeed embodied these qualities in mason-work; for, after all, these gloomy edifices owe a mighty portion of their influence to that overawing quality which Burke made out to be the source of sublimity. If all admiration of artistic achievement in architecture must depend on the honourableness, the faithfulness, the humaneness of those who were the designers, we fear we would need to abandon our favourite edifices as structural lies, and architectural shams, only fit to be cast into oblivion, and there obtain Christian burial. But so callous are we in the matter of the faith and morality of designers, that we can even confess that the exterior structure so well fitted for defence against an oppressed peasantry, and the dreary dungeons so well fitted for feudal vengeance, when these were driven desperate, only raise our interest by a contemplation of their objects; while the assurance that some murder has been committed within the gloomy recesses—the baser and more brutal the better—simply affords additional zest to the tragic interest of the whole.

Let us cast a glance back to the condition of the art of fortification, at the time when it was taken up by these Normans. The most truly primitive forts are naturally decided by antiquaries to be those which are found constructed solely out of the native materials which the site may have afforded. In this matter time has been by no means impartial to the handiwork of man; since, in some places it remains, and is likely to remain, so long as the crust of the earth keeps together: while in others, the stronghold of the dwellers in vast watery wastes and swamps has melted away with the mud of which it may have been originally formed. So, in the swamps of Friesland, defended in the dawn of history as they were in the seventeenth century, and in the flats of Lincoln, defended against the Normans, many a place of strength has departed; but on the tops of barren hills the rude stone circles remain, the relics of some utterly unknown antiquity.

There is scarcely to be named that part of the world where there are hills, and no hill-forts. They occur in the Holy Land; and Jeremiah speaks of the people being hunted “from every mountain, and from every hill.” On the approach of the Assyrians, we hear that the Israelites possessed themselves of all the tops of the high mountains. They are found all over the East—on the steppes of the Russian provinces—on the German and Scandinavian hills—in all parts of the British empire: while those which have been discovered in the valley of the Mississippi, and other parts of America, are said to have a precise resemblance to the specimens in the county of Angus. Often, of course, efforts have been made to connect them with early historical events—as when the fortified camp of Caractacus has been found in England, and that of Galgacus, in fifty different places of Scotland: while the Germans are naturally anxious to find the circle within which their national hero, Arminius, or Hermann, assembled the tribes who punished the presumption of Varus. But these are all vain speculations; and when or how these forts were made, we shall probably find out when we get the working plans and the engineers’ contract for Stonehenge.

Among the English hill-forts, there is the Herefordshire beacon, on the highest point of the Malvern hills, commanding the main pass through the chain. It is an irregular oblong, one hundred and seventy-five feet by one hundred and ten; and the inner wall is a strong work of stones and turf. Three exterior walls encompass it, and an eccentric work lops out at either side, on some engineering principle, which, doubtless, was highly approved of in its day, but is sunk in as deep oblivion as the name of the people who awaited anxiously within the inner ring to see the heads of the enemy, as they strove to mount the steep acclivity, in the year of the world in which the defence was completed. Wales claims the chief specimens in England, for the reason we have already stated—that Wales has hills. Hence we have Moel y Gaer in Flintshire, and a great work close to the Castle of Montgomery, where, King says, it was certainly needless, “unless it had been long prior to the erection of that castle.” There are, besides these, Carn Madryn, Trer Caeri in Carnarvonshire, and Caer Caradoc, which tradition associates with Caractacus. One of the oddest of these forts is Penman Mawr, of which Pennant says, “After climbing for some space among the loose stones, the fronts of three, if not four walls presented themselves very distinctly, one above the other. In most places the facings appeared very perfect, but all dry work. I measured the height of one wall, which was at the time nine feet; the thickness seven feet and a half. Between these walls, in all parts, were innumerable small buildings, mostly circular, and regularly faced within and without, but not disposed in any certain order. These had been much higher, as is evident from the fall of stones which lie scattered at their bottoms. Their diameter, in general, is from twelve to eighteen feet; but some were far less, not exceeding five feet. On the small area of the top had been a group of towers or cells, like the former—one in the centre, and five others surrounding it.”[^[19]]

Some of our northern forts have been, however, on a greater scale. Of the White Caterthun in Strathmore, General Roy says, “The most extraordinary thing that occurs in this British fort is the astonishing dimensions of the rampart, composed entirely of large loose stones, being at least twenty-five feet thick at top, and upwards of one hundred at bottom, reckoning quite to the ditch, which seems, indeed, to be greatly filled up by the tumbling down of the stones. The vast labour that it must have cost to amass so incredible a quantity, and carry them to such a height, surpasses all description. A simple earthen breastwork surrounds the ditch; and beyond this, at the distance of about fifty yards on the two sides, but seventy on each end, there is another double intrenchment, of the same sort, running round the slope of the hill. The intermediate space probably served as a camp for the troops, which the interior post, from its smallness, could only contain a part of. The entrance into this is by a single gate on the east end; but opposite to it there are two leading through the outward intrenchment, between which a work projects, no doubt for containing some men posted there, as an additional security to that quarter.”[^[20]]

The author who is found thus to speak of the rude hill-fort was an experienced officer of engineers, on service in Scotland. The tone of professional respect with which he treats the effort of the primitive engineer is remarkable; one might suppose him discussing the merits of Sebastopol or Cronstadt. In the unprofessional, such works create perhaps all the more astonishment from their unexpected magnitude; for when you are desired to ascend a desolate, uninteresting-looking secondary hill, in a remote district of Scotland, apart from any of the tourist circuits, you do not expect to find its brows covered with some triumph of industrial development. The height necessarily ascended before these works can be seen—a matter which must have made the raising of them all the more formidable—keeps them away from observation. Were they on flat ground, and near watering-places, they would be among the wonders of the world. In the vastness of the mass of collected stones, they are more like the great breakwaters of harbours of refuge than any other works we can name. Even more remarkable than General Roy’s Caterthun, appears to us to be the Barmkyn of Echt, a few miles farther north. The etymologist may call Barmkyn a corruption of Barbican if he likes. The lonely hill is so steep and circular that it seems as if it must have been artificially scarped. Scarcely from below can any curve be seen to interrupt the straight line of the ascent, and one is utterly unprepared for the mighty ramparts of stone—five of them—of which the innermost encloses a space of about an acre, quite flat, and seeming to be levelled, as the sides of the hill seem to be scarped, by art.

It may be a question if these stone masses were ever built, either so as to represent external courses, like the Roman wall in Northumberland, or even in the fashion called cyclopean. They bear, in their heaped character, and the regularity of their course, more resemblance to the moraines on the edge of the glacier, than to any other object, natural or artificial, with which we happen to be acquainted. So ancient, indeed, must they be supposed to be, that in the war with the elements all minuter structural characteristics seem to have been lost, and the stones lie, not as they were placed, but virtually in a heap of ruins.

In these stormy hills, indeed, it is difficult to suppose that anything less imperishable than the gneiss, or granite, of which the blocks forming the circular forts are composed, would have preserved the original plan. In flatter and more turfy districts of Scotland, as well as in England, there are mounds seeming to be artificial, and cast in circular terraces, as if they had been put on a turning lathe and bevelled down. There is one of these—perhaps the most remarkable in Britain—at Old Sarum, and it was generally supposed to have some connection with the franchise of that scheduled corporation. How these could have been very available for forts it is difficult to imagine; and to devise any other purpose to which they can have been applicable would be still more difficult. But when it was reported in England, as it was about seventy years ago, that there were some ancient hill-forts in Scotland made of glass, the antiquaries, not having a prescience of the Crystal Palace before their eyes, turned from puzzling themselves about the earthen mounds in England, to burst forth in scornful laughter about the glass fortresses of Scotland. But people who have had much experience in the ways of this world, learn how the same word may, without the slightest misapplication, be used for very different things. The dingy slag-like lumps, with a vitreous fraction, found in the heather of some Scottish fortified hills, has undoubtedly a claim to the vitreous character, perhaps as strong as the glittering diaphanous squares which are to let in all the sun, and exclude the wind and rain, at Sydenham. That they were the creation of fire is certain; and though the geologists sought at first to make out a case of volcano, yet it became evident that it was administered by the hand of man; for the materials, which had been calcined and vitrified so as to resemble in a considerable degree the scoriæ of a glass-house, were built into walls round the summits of steep circular hills;—those with which we are acquainted have much the appearance, from their extreme steepness and regularity, of having been scarped. And then come the questions—were the vitrified masses produced by some accident, such as the burning of a stronghold? or were they a deliberate method of cementing stones together by fusion? or, perchance, were they the wide circuits within which might be consumed some whole forest of trees, cut down and piled together within a ring of stone, whether as a vast beacon, reddening the sky from the Tweed to Cape Wrath, or a sacrifice to the ancient God of fire?—Questions these which we respectfully decline taking the responsibility of answering.

The step from such rude Titanic works as these to the Norman fortress is great—and perhaps a word or two on other forms of places of strength may be suitable, as showing distinctly that the feudal castles were the combination of the rude strength of the primitive fortress with domiciliary comfort—that they brought the defensive strength, supposed to reside only in inaccessible mountain regions or swamps, into the midst of rich agriculture and smiling abundance—that they no longer rendered necessary a retreat to the place of strength, as one may suppose the whole community of a district to have retreated to a hill-fort, but were themselves alike the abode of luxurious ease in time of peace, and of resistance and fierce contest in time of war. Perhaps we may best comprehend how original was the idea of the union of fortress and house or palace in one, by observing how few are the vestiges of such a combination having existed elsewhere before the establishment of the feudal system. Towns undoubtedly seem to have been fortified from the beginning of town life; and of the extent to which the system was carried, let us take once for all the account which honest old Herodotus gives of Babylon, with its walls two hundred cubits high, on which a chariot could be driven with four horses abreast, and its hundred gates of brass. But, of anything of the nature of a domestic fortress in which people lived in their ordinary manner during peace, and defended themselves in war, we remember but few vestiges.

Separate buildings like towers there probably have been in many times and places, and they may have been used as fortresses. Along the Roman Wall were the square towers called mile-castles, which are interesting, not only as the best remains of the arrangements made by the great aggressors for the protection of their frontier, but as the models on which the ancient inhabitants would probably build their castles—if they built any. It is singular enough that the Border peel towers—built a thousand years after the Romans had abandoned Britain to her fate—have, in their compact squareness, more resemblance to these castella, than any type of earlier British castellated architecture possesses. Since the publication of Mr Bruce’s book on the Roman Wall, to which we lately had occasion to refer, no one need remain ignorant of any feature, however minute, which, now existing, attests what these mile-castles originally were. Mr Bruce tells us, in a summary description, that “they derive their modern name from the circumstance of their being usually placed at the distance of a Roman mile from each other. They were quadrangular buildings, differing somewhat in size, but usually measuring from sixty to seventy feet in each direction. With two exceptions, they have been placed against the southern face of the wall: the castle of Portgate, every trace of which is now obliterated, and another near Æsica, the foundations of which may with some difficulty still be traced, seem to have projected equally to the north and south of the wall. Though generally placed about seven furlongs from each other, the nature of the ground, independently of distance, has frequently determined the spot of their location. Whenever the wall has had occasion to traverse a river or a mountain pass, a mile-castle has uniformly been placed on the one side or other to guard the defile. The mile-towers have generally had but one gate of entrance, which was of very substantial masonry, and was uniformly placed in the centre of the south wall: the most perfect specimen now remaining, however, has a northern as well as a southern gateway. It is not easy to conjecture what were the internal arrangements of these buildings—probably they afforded little accommodation, beyond what their four strong walls and well-barred gates gave.”[^[21]]

They were evidently mere barracks or stations, nor can much more be said for any of the Roman works in the lands of their conquests. Roman troops were taught, in the conflict with the barbarian, to look solely to discipline; and the places called forts, apart from these square towers along the wall, were merely intrenched camps.

Investigation is, in this country, ever apt to strip our stone edifices of their hoar antiquity. Mr Petrie has “taken the shine,” as the Cockneys say, out of the round towers of Ireland, by showing that they have the ordinary details of the Romanesque ecclesiastical work, and has rendered it unnecessary to decide whether they are anchorite hermitages for a multitude of rivals to St Simeon Stylites, or temples for Photic or for Phalic worship. Criticism has gone in the same way back upon our castles, proving, in truth, that very few of them are so old as they were supposed to be. Yet there is a particular class of buildings of a systematically castellated type, which the scythe of the archæological iconoclast has not yet swept—on the age of which no particle of authentic light has been cast, and which we are thus entitled to count as old as we like.

These are the circular towers called sometimes Dunes, Burghs, Danish forts, Pictish forts, &c., scattered hither and thither in the far northwest of Scotland. They are supposed to be of Scandinavian origin—to have been the fortresses built by the Seakings, but nothing in the least degree resembling them has been found elsewhere within Scandinavian land. Their mysterious builders have carefully avoided every particle of incidental evidence that might lead to a betrayal of their origin. Graceful and symmetrical as they are in their outline—perfectly circular, and rising without a bulge in a decreasing sweep from the broad base—there is not a single ornament or moulding to let the antiquary detect them, as the Romanesque work proved the betrayal of the Irish round towers. Nay, there is not the mark of chiselling on the stones to show that human hands have touched them. That can be inferred from the structure alone; and the unhewn lumps of mica schist or gneiss are laid in distinct courses perfectly parallel and round, by the selection of rough stones of equal size, and the insertion of minute splinters to make up deficiencies—for, as there is no stone hewing, there is also no cement.

It is the most puzzling of the peculiarity of these perplexing buildings, that they have tiers of galleries running round them within the thickness of the wall. To form the roofs of these tiny serpentine chambers, large slabs have been necessary, but, in some marvellous manner, they have been obtained without being wrought; for, on the largest, it is vain to look for the mark of a chisel, or even artificial squaring or smoothing. It would seem, at least in such of them as we have seen, that the thinnest large slabs of schist had been collected in the mountains, and brought probably from great distances to fulfil the object of the builder.

It seems to have been ever taken for granted that these round towers must have been fortresses, and the only remaining question seemed to be—by what people, nation, or language were they so used? Was it by the Phœnicians? A great antiquary showed that in Tyre and Sidon there must have been edifices precisely of the same character, though no vestige of them now remains. Did they belong to the Caledonians of the days of Tacitus, or to the Atacotti, or to the Dalriads, or to the Albanich, or to the Siol Torquil, or the Fion Gall, or the Dubh Gall? Or, were they erected especially by some individual Aulaf or Maccus, or Sigurd, or Thorfin, or Godred M‘Sitric, or Diarmid M‘Maelnambo—all gentlemen having their own peculiar claims on the architectural merit? It occurred to us one day to ask internally the question, whether they were fortresses or strongholds at all? It arose as we looked down from the broken edge of the galleried wall of one of those towers in solitary Glen-Elg Beg. It stands, a hoar ruin on the edge of a precipice, where a torrent takes a sudden turn; and nothing could be better conceived for the landscape ideal of the remains of some robber stronghold of the middle ages, than the remnant of circular masonry rising flush from the edge of the precipice. But it was precisely the force with which these apparent conditions of a fortified character were conveyed, that showed the utter want of them in the others scattered throughout the valley. What could they have defended? Whom could they have resisted?

Primitive fortresses are places where considerable armies or large numbers of people go for protection from besieging enemies. Now, though the outside circle of these burghs is considerable, yet, from the thickness of the galleried wall, they only contain an inner area of from twenty to thirty feet—the size of a moderate dining-room. And, while the numbers they could have held were thus few, they possessed no means like the medieval castles for assault, and could have been easily pulled to pieces by an enemy. Nor, if they were places of strength, can it be easily conceived why there should be a whole cluster of them in a place like Glen Beg, and no others in the neighbouring districts.

The notion, indeed, of their being strongholds, seems to have been grasped at once by their striking resemblance in structure and dimensions to the Norman flanking round towers. But the Norman towers were only outworks, to aid in defence of the central keep, and could have been of small service as detached forts. There are many things which have a warlike resemblance to this part of a feudal castle;—a windmill, as Don Quixote’s chivalrous eye at once told him, possesses the character very decidedly—so does a modern blast-furnace. The columbarium lingering on the grounds of some old mansion is often mistaken for a tower; and the prototype of the columbarium, the Roman tomb, eminently anticipated the form of the Norman tower. Of one of these Byron says,—

“There is a stern old tower of other days,

Firm as a fortress with its fence of stone;

Such as an army’s baffled strength delays,

Standing with half its battlements alone.”

One of these tombs is the nucleus of the castle of St Angelo, others were incrusted into the fortified mansions of the quarrelsome Colonna—so like were they, though built as the quiet mansions of the dead, to the towers of feudal fortresses.

Shall we venture a theory about these Highland round towers? We have not yet found one to our own satisfaction; but the reader, if he likes, may take the following, which we guarantee to be of the average quality of such theories. It is well known that, when the Scots under Kenneth M‘Alpine conquered the Picts, they saved from death just two inhabitants of that devoted race, a father and son; their disinterested object in this clemency was, to find out how the Picts got their beer. It seems that they possessed a precious and much-coveted secret, in the means of brewing heather-ale. The Scots offered to spare the lives of the captives, if they would reveal the secret. The father promised to do so if they would, in the first place, comply with his request,—a very odd one for a father to make in such circumstances—to put to death his son. They did so; and then the father uttered a loud yell of triumph—the secret of the beer would be for ever hidden in his bloody grave. He could not trust to the firmness of his son; he could entirely rely on his own, and he was ready to bear all tortures rather than make the revelation. Now, why not suppose that these mysterious buildings were just breweries of heather-ale, and that, in the various galleries, decreasing as they ascend until they become mere pigeon-holes, the brewsts of the different years were binned for the use of hospitable dinner-giving Picts? No one can disprove the theory, and this is more than can be said for many another.

The more they are examined, the more are the actual fortresses of Britain stripped of any pretensions to extreme antiquity, and brought within the Norman period. There are two leading objects of fortification—the protective and the aggressive; and, according to the view we have been supporting, it has been the function of the Norman, in the development of European history, to have been the inventor and propagator of the kind of works adapted to the latter object. Fortresses of mere refuge are on the tops of hills, or in other inaccessible places. It does not suit the aggressor to go to the wilds—he must have his elements of strength in the very middle of the people whom he is to rule over. If a rock happens to be found bulging out of a fine alluvial district—as the plutonic upheavings of trap have supplied in Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton—it is well; but, where there are no natural strengths, they must be artificially constructed—and art has in this department far outstripped nature, or has rather found in her own resources better means of defence against her instruments of destruction than nature provides.

The Saxons did not raise strongholds of this kind, nor did the northern races, in their native districts; and, indeed, it is rather curious to observe that there is scarcely a feudal castle to be found in the Scandinavian territories, whence issued the race who strewed all Europe with fortresses. Scott speaks of Bamborough as “Ida’s castle, huge and square;” but there can now be little doubt that it is a Norman edifice. If the tall gaunt tower of Conisborough retain its Saxon antiquity, yet it is evident that it must have been a rude and feeble strength, standing alone without the outworks, which were the great achievement of Norman engineering. Some other bare towers of this character are supposed to be of ante-Norman origin, as the round tower of Trematon, in Cornwall, and that of Launceston, on the apex of a conical rock, round the base of which Norman works have been raised.

Scott is historically correct, as he almost ever is, when he thus describes the abode of Cedric the Saxon:—“A low irregular building, containing several courtyards or enclosures, extending over a considerable space of ground; and which, though its size argued the inhabitant to be a person of wealth, differed entirely from the tall, turreted, and castellated buildings in which the Norman nobility resided, and which had become the universal style of architecture throughout England.”

William the Norman found no castles to resist him. He resolved that any one who came after him should complain of no such omission. England proper immediately bristled with strongholds. They were afterwards extended to Wales and Ireland; and it is perhaps the most remarkable episode in the history of Norman fortification, as indicative of the systematic zeal with which the system was conducted, that during the brief tenure of Scotland, the opportunity was taken for dispersing throughout the country Edwardian castles.

The earliest Norman form was the vast square keep, such as Bamborough New Castle, or the Tower of London. The value of projecting angles seems soon to have been felt, but it does not appear that the noble flanking round towers, which make a perfect Norman fortress, were devised until the days of the Edwards. The central strength then consisted of a square work, with a round tower at each angle. When the work was very large, demi-towers might project here and there from its face. This was the leading principle of modern fortification—the protection of the face. It is understood that no plain wall-plate, however strong, can be defended from an enemy ready to sacrifice a sufficient number of men to batter it open and rush in by the breach. The object, then, is by outworks to keep the assailants at a distance. The flanking towers accomplished this for the Norman fortress, and the work of a siege was not in those days utterly unlike what it now is in general character, though the less destructive character of the weapons on either side made it a much closer affair.

There is room for considerable classification, and even for abundant technical nomenclature, among the besieging engines used before the invention of gunpowder. The term mangona, or mangonel, was generally applicable to ballistic engines, moved by springs, or quick descending weights. The trebuchet, the matafunda, the ribaudequin, and the petrary, were special machines for discharging what the Americans call rocks. There were the robinet, the espringal, and the bricole, which discharged huge iron bolts and other miscellaneous mischievous articles. The oddest of all names to find among these wicked and destructive agents is conveyed in a sentence by Grose, who says that “Beugles, or bibles, were also engines for throwing large stones, as we learn from an ancient poem;” and he quotes as his authority the Romance of Claris, in the Royal library of Paris (No. 7534).

“Et pierres grans, et les perrieres,

Fit les bibles qui sont trop fieres,

Gétent trop manuement.”

Besides the ram and the testudo, with which every boy becomes acquainted in the plates to his Roman Antiquities, there were the instruments bearing the quadrupedal names of the war-wolf, the cat, and the sow. “The cattus or cat-house, gattus or cat,” says the instructive Grose, “was a covered shed, occasionally fixed on wheels, and used for covering of soldiers employed in filling up the ditch, preparing the way for the movable tower, or mining the wall. It was called a cat because under it soldiers lay in watch like a cat for its prey. Some of these cats had crenelles and chinks, from whence the archers could discharge their arrows. These were called castellated cats. Sometimes under this machine the besiegers worked a small kind of ram.”[^[22]] The sow reminds all true Scotsmen of Black Agnes of Dunbar jeering Salisbury with the farrowing of his sow, when she toppled on its wooden roof a mass of rock, and beheld the mutilated sappers crawling from beneath their shattered protector, like so many pigs. But the chief of all besieging works was the movable tower, brought up face to face with the defenders, and containing battering-rams below, with the various instruments already mentioned, employed in its several upper storeys. To oppose such a formidable engine, which could only be applied by some commander of vast resources, the flanking round towers were of invaluable service, as the bastions and outworks are at the present day. The main difference in the projectile direction of the operations in the two is, that while the fire of a fort is chiefly horizontal, the assaults made by the Norman keep were vertical, and hence came the crest of machicolations and turrets which has given so picturesque a character to the whole school of baronial architecture.

The instances of the Norman castle in its more perfect shape, still existing, are very interesting in a historical view. It may be observed, that in the settled districts of England there are specimens of the older and ruder style of Norman work; but that, in the Edwardian conquests, the fully developed form is the oldest of which vestiges are to be found.

Aberconway, or Snowdon Castle in Carnarvonshire, must have been one of the most formidable specimens, from the great extent of its curtain walls, and its numerous round towers. It was built, say authorities on which we place no reliance, except in so far as they correspond with the character of the edifice, in 1284; it served the purpose for which the strongest fortresses are required—that of a frontier defence. In Flintshire there are Hawarden and Rhudland. Beaumaris, in Anglesea, has some fine diminishing towers. Carew, in Pembrokeshire, has a sort of angular buttresses, instead of the graceful increment towards the base, in the round towers; but it is a luxuriant and noble specimen; and though Welsh tradition says it belonged to the princes of South Wales—no man can tell how many hundreds of years before William or Rollo either—and was given by Rhys ap Theodore, with his daughter, Nest, as a marriage portion to Gerrald de Carrio, yet we take the liberty of holding that it as clearly bears the mark of the invader of Wales, as any government-house in Canada or New Zealand bears evidence that it is not the work of the natives. We take Cilgarron, Haverford-west, and Mannorbeer castles, in the same county, to belong to the same category.

The same characteristics do not so frequently occur in the southern English counties, though there is Pevensey in Sussex, Goodrich in Herefordshire, and Cowling in Kent, and there may be several other instances. They reappear on the Border, where they were connected with the Scottish wars; the forms may be seen in Prudho, Twizel, the outworks of Bamborough, and in a modernised shape at Alnwick.

Ireland is rich in these quadrilateral flanked edifices. There is Enniscorthy guarding the bridge of the Slaney in Wexford, and Dunmore in Meath, one of the most entire and regular specimens, if we may judge by the representation of Grose, who, to do him justice, never idealises. It is one of the many castles attributed to De Lacey, the governor of Meath. Another of them, Kilkea, continued long to raise its flanking round towers after it had laughed at the ferocious raids of the O’Moors and O’Dempsies in the English pale. Two of the best specimens, Lea, in Queen’s county, and Ferns in Wexford, were attacked and taken in the romantic inroad of Edward Bruce, who thought that, as his brother had, by one gallant achievement, wrested a crown in Scotland from the encroaching Norman, he might as well endeavour to take one in Ireland. Grandison Castle, with two beautiful specimens of the bell-shaped round tower, is attributed to the reign of James I.; but, though it is not the peculiar defect of Irish antiquities to be post-dated, this portion must, we think, belong to the Norman period. There are fine specimens of the round tower at Ballylachan and Ballynafad, whence the M‘Donoughs were driven forth, and the utterly un-Norman names of these buildings do not exclude them from identification as the work of the courtly invaders. In Ireland, however, this sort of work never ceased. There were ever O’Shauchnessies, O’Donahues, O’Rourkes, or O’Dempsies, keeping the Norman or the Saxon at work in making fortresses; and perhaps the latest specimen of it is a relic of the ’48, which we saw the other day in an antiquarian rummage in ancient and ruiniferous Cashel, being a large iron box with loopholes projecting out from the barrack where it was placed, to rake the street into which it projected with musketry from the loopholes.

In Scotland, the Anglo-Norman origin of the earliest true baronial fortresses is attested with remarkable precision. In the first place, there is not a vestige in Scotland of the earlier kind of square keep, such as might have been raised in the days of the Conqueror, or of William Rufus, with its semicircular arches and dog-toothed decorations. The pointed architecture and the Edwardian baronial had come into use ere any of the fortresses of which we possess remains were erected. Hence, the oldest of the Scottish castles were evidently built by Edward to secure his conquest. They may be enumerated as those of Caerlaverock, Bothwell, Dirleton, Kildrummie, and Lochindorb. These names at once excite recollections of the war of independence, when these castles were taken and retaken, and were surrounded by the most interesting and enduring associations of that majestic conflict.

The architectural progeny which this style of building left in Scotland, is very different from its growth into the bastioned fortifications of other countries. The Scottish laird, or chief, when he made his house a fortress, as he had imminent necessity for doing, could not afford to erect the great flanking towers of the Normans; but he stuck little turrets on the corners of his block-house, which served his purpose admirably; and there are no better flanked fortresses, considered with a view to the form of attack to which they were subjected, than our peel-houses.

On the other hand, in the Continental castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Heidelberg, Perronne, and Plessis la Tour, as the old representations give it, we see the flanking system extending itself laterally, until it forms something between the Norman keep and the modern fortress. It was on Plessis that Philip de Comines moralises, as a large prison into which the great King Louis had virtually immured himself, becoming, by his own exertions for the enlargement of his power, and his protection from secret enemies, nothing better than the hapless immured prisoner, whose lot he forced upon so many others.

The one great leading step which modern fortification took beyond the mere flanking system, is the discovery of the glacis for covering the stone-work, and protecting it from the attacks of cannon. The whole system, it appears, is now on trial. The charge against it is, that every addition made to it in the way of protecting works, only renders a fort the more certain of ultimate capture, since these protecting works are themselves easily taken. It is said that they save the main work from a general escalade which is never likely to be attempted, but facilitate a deliberate siege, which is the proper method of taking fortified places. It is said that in fortification we must, as in other matters of war, recur to the first principle, that the best way to protect ourselves is to kill our enemy. Of old, the main defences of a vessel were to protect the deck by castles stem and stern from a boarding enemy; now the arrangement is directed to the destruction of the enemy before he can board. Our old knights in armour were a sort of moving fortresses made more for protection than destruction. In Italy, the steel encasement was brought to such perfection, that at the battle of Tornoue, under Charles VIII., we are told by Father Daniel that a number of Italian knights were overthrown, but could not be killed until the country people brought huge stones and sledge-hammers and broke their shells, like those of so many lobsters. It sounds like an odd accompaniment of civilisation that she should make the external form of warfare more destructive and less defensive—but so it is; and a reform in fortification is proposed, which, by the abandonment of the flanking system, and something like a restoration of the primitive form, is to make the fort more terrible to the invader, as a means of making it a more effective defence.

We profess not to enter on so great a question. Mere theories we have herein offered to our reader; and as they are given in all innocence and good-humour, all we pray is, that he will not, if they differ from his own, condemn us to some dire mysterious fate. Let him, if we displease him, simply content himself with the old established remedy, and mutter to himself, “Pooh! humbug!” And we on our part engage that we shall live in all charity with all men who accept not our theory; and will by no means endeavour to prove that they are sensual, lewd, dishonourable people, deserving of some dire punishment.

FIRMILIAN: A TRAGEDY.[^[23]]

We have great pleasure in announcing to our readers the fact, that we have at last discovered that long-expected phenomenon, the coming Poet, and we trust that his light will very soon become visible in the literary horizon. We cannot, however, arrogate to ourselves any large share of merit in this discovery—indeed, we must confess, with a feeling akin to shame, that we ought to have made it at a much earlier date. Firmilian is not altogether new to us. We have an indistinct recollection of having seen the tragedy in manuscript well-nigh two years ago; and, if we remember aright, a rather animated correspondence took place on the subject of the return of the papers. We had, by some untoward accident, allowed them to find their way into the Balaam-box, which girnel of genius was at that particular time full up to the very hinges. We felt confident that Firmilian lay under the weight of some twenty solid layers of miscellaneous literature; and we should as soon have thought of attempting to disinter an ichthyosaurus from a slate-quarry, as of ransacking the bowels of the chest for that treasury of rare delights. However, we took care, on the occasion of the next incremation, to make search for the missing article, and had the pleasure of returning it to Mr Percy Jones, from whom we heard nothing further until we received his tragedy in print. Our first perusal having been rather of a cursory nature, we are not able to state with certainty whether the author has applied himself during the intervening period to the work of emendation; but we think it exceedingly probable that he has done so, as we now remark a degree of vivacity and force of expression, however extravagant many of the ideas may be, which had escaped our previous notice. We hope that, by a tardy act of justice, we shall offer no violence to that amiable modesty which has, in the mean time, restrained him from asking the verdict of the general public.

As to the actual amount of poetic genius and accomplishment which Mr Percy Jones possesses, there may, even among the circle of his friends, be considerable difference of opinion. Those who admire spasmodic throes and writhings may possibly be inclined to exalt him to a very high pinnacle of fame; for certainly, in no modern work of poetry—and there have been several recently published which might have borne the imprimatur of Bedlam—have we found so many symptoms of unmistakable lunacy. Still there is a method in his madness—a rapidity of perception and originality of thought, which contrasts very favourably with the tedious drivellings of some other writers of the same school. His taste is not one whit better than theirs, but he brings a finer fancy and a more vivid imagination to the task; nor is he deficient in a certain rude exaggerated dramatic power, which has more than once reminded us of the early style of Marlowe and the other predecessors of Shakespeare.

It is not very easy to comprehend the exact creed and method of the new school of poets, who have set themselves to work upon a principle hitherto unknown, or at all events unproclaimed. This much we know from themselves, that they regard poetry not only as a sacred calling, but as the most sacred of any—that, in their opinion, every social relation, every mundane tie, which can interfere with the bard’s development, must be either disregarded or snapped asunder—and that they are, to the fainting race of Adam, the sole accredited bearers of the Amreeta cup of immortality. Such is the kind of nonsense regarding the nature of his mission which each fresh poetaster considers it his duty to enunciate; and as there is nothing, however absurd, which will not become credited by dint of constant repetition, we need not be surprised that some very extraordinary views regarding the “rights of genius” should of late years have been countenanced by men who ought to have known better. Poets are, like all other authors or artisans, valuable according to the quality of the article which they produce. If their handiwork be good, genuine, and true, it will pass at once into circulation and be prized—if the reverse, what title can they prefer to the name which they so proudly arrogate to themselves?

We do not, however, quarrel with a poet for having an exalted idea of his art—always supposing that he has taken any pains to acquire its rudiments. Without a high feeling of this kind, it would be difficult to maintain the struggle which must precede eminent success; nor would we have alluded to the subject but for the affectation and offensive swaggering of some who may indeed be rhymsters, but who never could be poets even if their days were to be prolonged to the extent of those of Methusaleh. When the painter of the tavern sign-post, whereon is depicted a beer-bottle voiding its cork, and spontaneously ejecting its contents right and left into a couple of convenient tumblers, talks to us of high art, Raphael, and the effects of chiaroscuro, it is utterly impossible to control the action of the risible muscles. And, in like manner, when one of our young poetical aspirants, on the strength of a trashy duodecimo filled with unintelligible ravings, asserts his claim to be considered as a prophet and a teacher, it is beyond the power of humanity to check the intolerable tickling of the midriff.

But, apart from their exaggerated notions of their calling, let us see what is the practice of the poets of the Spasmodic School. In the first place, they rarely, if ever, attempt anything like a plot. After you have finished the perusal of their verses, you find yourself just as wise as when you began. You cannot tell what they would be at. You have a confused recollection of stars, and sunbeams, and moonbeams, as if you had been staring at an orrery; but sun, moon, and stars, were intended to give light to something—and what that something is, in the poet’s page, you cannot, for the life of you, discover. In the second place, we regret to say that they are often exceedingly profane, not, we suppose, intentionally, but because they have not sense enough to see the limits which decency, as well as duty, prescribes. In the third place, they are occasionally very prurient. And, in the fourth place, they are almost always unintelligible.

Now, although we cannot by any means aver that Mr Percy Jones is entirely free from the faults which we have just enumerated, we look upon him as a decidedly favourable specimen of his tribe. There is, in Firmilian, if not a plot, at least some kind of comprehensible action; and in it he has portrayed the leading features of the poetical school to which he belongs with so much fidelity and effect, that we feel called upon to give an outline of his tragedy, with a few specimens from the more remarkable scenes.

The hero of the piece, Firmilian, is a student in the university of Badajoz, a poet, and entirely devoted to his art. He has been engaged for some time in the composition of a tragedy upon the subject of Cain, which is “to win the world by storm;” but he unfortunately discovers, after he has proceeded a certain length in his task, that he has not yet thoroughly informed himself, by experience, of the real nature of the agonies of remorse. He finds that he cannot do justice to his subject without steeping his own soul in guilt, so as to experience the pangs of the murderer; and as, according to the doctrines of the spasmodic school of poetry, such investigations are not only permitted, but highly laudable, he sets himself seriously to ponder with what victim he should begin. All our spasmodic poets introduce us to their heroes in their studies, and Mr Percy Jones follows the tradition. He does not, however, like some of them, carry his imitative admiration of Goethe’s Faust so far, as personally to evoke Lucifer or Mephistopheles—an omission for which we are really thankful. Firmilian begins by a soliloquy upon his frame of mind and feelings; and states himself to be grievously perplexed and hindered in his work by his comparative state of innocence. He then meditates whether he should commence his course of practical remorse by putting to death Mariana, a young lady to whom he is attached, or three friends and fellow-students of his, with whom he is to dine next day. After much hesitation, he decides on the latter view, and, after looking up “Raymond Lullius” for the composition of a certain powder, retires to rest after a beautiful but somewhat lengthy apostrophe to the moon. There is nothing in this scene which peculiarly challenges quotation. The next is occupied by love-making; and certainly, if Mr Percy Jones had intended to exhibit his hero throughout in the most amiable and romantic light, nothing could be better than his appearance in the bower of Mariana. If, here and there, we encounter an occasional floridness, or even warmth of expression, we attribute that in a great measure to the sunny nature of the clime; just as we feel that the raptures of Romeo and Juliet are in accordance with the temperament of the land that gave them birth. But we presently find that Firmilian, though a poet, is a hypocrite and traitor in love. The next scene is laid in a tavern, where he and his friends, Garcia Perez, Alphonzo D’Aguilar, and Alonzo Olivarez are assembled, and there is a discussion, over the winecup, on the inexhaustible subject of knightly love. Alphonzo, claiming to be descended from the purest blood of Castile, asserts the superiority of European beauty over the rest of the universe; to which Firmilian, though known to be betrothed to Mariana, makes the following reply—

FIRMILIAN.

I knew a poet once; and he was young,

And intermingled with such fierce desires

As made pale Eros veil his face with grief,

And caused his lustier brother to rejoice.

He was as amorous as a crocodile

In the spring season, when the Memphian bank,

Receiving substance from the glaring sun,

Resolves itself from mud into a shore.

And—as the scaly creature wallowing there,

In its hot fits of passion, belches forth

The steam from out its nostrils, half in love,

And half in grim defiance of its kind;

Trusting that either, from the reedy fen,

Some reptile-virgin coyly may appear,

Or that the hoary Sultan of the Nile

May make tremendous challenge with his jaws,

And, like Mark Anthony, assert his right

To all the Cleopatras of the ooze—

So fared it with the poet that I knew.

He had a soul beyond the vulgar reach,

Sun-ripened, swarthy. He was not the fool

To pluck the feeble lily from its shade

When the black hyacinth stood in fragrance by.

The lady of his love was dusk as Ind,

Her lips as plenteous as the Sphinx’s are,

And her short hair crisp with Numidian curl.

She was a negress. You have heard the strains

That Dante, Petrarch, and such puling fools

As loved the daughters of cold Japhet’s race,

Have lavished idly on their icicles.

As snow melts snow, so their unhasty fall

Fell chill and barren on a pulseless heart.

But, would you know what noontide ardour is,

Or in what mood the lion, in the waste,

All fever-maddened, and intent on cubs,

At the oasis waits the lioness—

That shall you gather from the fiery song

Which that young poet framed, before he dared

Invade the vastness of his lady’s lips.

Judging from the implied character of the ditty in question, we are not sorry that we cannot lay it before our readers—indeed it does not appear in the volume, for D’Aguilar was so disgusted with the introduction that he openly reviled Firmilian as a pupil of Mahound, and bestowed a buffet on him, whereupon there was a flashing of swords. These, however, were sheathed, and the students again sate down amicably to drink. Firmilian, being suddenly called away, entreats his friends to amuse themselves, during his absence, with a special bottle of “Ildefronso”—a vintage which we do not remember having seen in any modern list of wines. They comply—feel rather uncomfortable—and the scene concludes by the chaunt of a funeral procession beneath the window; an idea which we strongly suspect has been borrowed from Victor Hugo’s tragedy of Lucrèce Borgia.

The next scene exhibits Firmilian pacing the cloisters. His three friends have died by poison, but he is not able by any means to conjure up a feeling of adequate remorse. He does not see that he is at all responsible in the matter. If he had poured out the wine into their glasses, and looked upon their dying agonies, then, indeed, he might have experienced the desired sensation of guilt. But he did nothing of the kind. They helped themselves, of their own free will and accord, and died when he was out of the way. On the whole, then, his first experiment was a blunder. During his reverie, an old preceptor of his, the Priest of St Nicholas, passes; and certain reminiscences of stripes suggest him as the next victim. The reader will presently see by what means this scheme is carried into execution. Suffice it to say, that the mere anticipation of it sheds a balm upon Firmilian’s disappointed spirit, who, being now fully convinced that in a few days he will be able to realise the tortures of Cain, departs for an interview with Lilian, a young lady for whom he entertains a clandestine attachment. The next scene speaks for itself.

Exterior of the Cathedral of St Nicholas.

Choir heard chaunting within.

Enter Firmilian.

How darkly hangs yon cloud above the spire!

There’s thunder in the air—

What if the flash

Should rend the solid walls, and reach the vault

Where my terrestrial thunder lies prepared,

And so, without the action of my hand,

Whirl up those thousand bigots in its blaze,

And leave me guiltless, save in the intent?

That were a vile defraudment of my aim,

A petty larceny o’ the element,

An interjection of exceeding wrong!

Let the hoarse thunder rend the vault of heaven,

Yea, shake the stars by myriads from their boughs,

As autumn tempests shake the fruitage down;—

Let the red lightning shoot athwart the sky,

Entangling comets by their spooming hair,

Piercing the zodiac belt, and carrying dread

To old Orion, and his whimpering hound;—

But let the glory of this deed be mine!

Organ and Choir.

Sublimatus ad honorem

Nicholai presulis:

Pietatis ante rorem

Cunctis pluit populis:

Ut vix parem aut majorem

Habeat in seculis.

Firmilian.

Yet I could weep to hear the wretches sing!

There rolls the organ anthem down the aisle,

And thousand voices join in its acclaim.

All they are happy—they are on their knees;

Round and above them stare the images

Of antique saints and martyrs. Censers steam

With their Arabian charge of frankincense,

And every heart, with inward fingers, counts

A blissful rosary of pious prayer!

Why should they perish then? Is’t yet too late?

O shame, Firmilian, on thy coward soul!

What! thou, the poet!—thou, whose mission ’tis

To send vibration down the chord of time,

Until its junction with eternity—

Thou, who hast dared and pondered and endured,

Gathering by piecemeal all the noble thoughts

And fierce sensations of the mind—as one

Who in a garden culls the wholesome rose,

And binds it with the deadly nightshade up;

Flowers not akin, and yet, by contrast kind—

Thou, for a touch of what these mundane fools

Whine of as pity, to forego thine aim,

And never feel the gnawing of remorse,

Like the Promethean vulture on the spleen,

That shall instruct thee to give future voice

To the unuttered agonies of Cain!

Thou, to compare, with that high consequence

The breath of some poor thousand knights and knaves,

Who soaring, in the welkin, shall expire!

Shame, shame, Firmilian! on thy weakness, shame!

Organ and Choir.

Auro dato violari

Virgines prohibuit:

Far in fame, vas in mari

Servat et distribuit:

Qui timebant naufragari

Nautis opem tribuit.

Firmilian.

A right good saint he seems, this Nicholas!

And over-worked too, if the praise be just,

Which these, his votaries, quaver as his claim.

Yet it is odd he should o’erlook the fact

That underneath this church of his are stored

Some twenty barrels of the dusky grain,

The secret of whose framing, in an hour

Of diabolic jollity and mirth,

Old Roger Bacon wormed from Belzebub!

He might keep better wardship for his friends;

But that to me is nothing. Now’s the time!

Ha! as I take the matchbox in my hand,

A spasm pervades me, and a natural thrill

As though my better genius were at hand,

And strove to pluck me backwards by the hair.

I must be resolute. Lose this one chance,

Which bears me to th’ Acropolis of guilt,

And this, our age, foregoes its noblest song.

I must be speedy—

Organ and Choir.

A defunctis suscitatur

Furtum qui commiserat:

Et Judæus baptizatur

Furtum qui recuperat:

Illi vita restauratur,

Hic ad fidem properat.

Firmilian.

No more was needed to confirm my mind!

That stanza blows all thoughts of pity off,

As empty straws are scattered by the wind!

For I have been the victim of the Jews,

Who, by vile barter, have absorbed my means.

Did I not pawn—for that same flagrant stuff,

Which only waits a spark to be dissolved,

And, having done its mission, must disperse

As a thin smoke into the ambient air—

My diamond cross, my goblet, and my books?

What! would they venture to baptise the Jew?

The cause assumes a holier aspect, then;

And, as a faithful son of Rome, I dare

To merge my darling passion in the wrong

That is projected against Christendom!

Pity, avaunt! I may not longer stay.

[Exit into the vaults. A short pause, after which he reappears.

’Tis done! I vanish like the lightning bolt!

Organ and Choir.

Nicholai sacerdotum

Decus, honor, gloria:

Plebem omnem, clerum totum—

[The Cathedral is blown up].

We back that scene, for intensity, against anything which has been written for the last dozen of years. Nay, we can even see in it traces of profound psychological observation. Firmilian, like Hamlet, is liable, especially on the eve of action, to fits of constitutional irresolution; and he requires, in order to nerve him to the deed, a more direct and plausible motive than that which originally prompted him. Hence we find him wavering, and almost inclined to abandon his purpose, until a casual passage in the choral hymn jars upon an excitable nerve, and urges him irresistibly forward. We shall presently find the same trait of character even more remarkably developed in another scene.

We then come to the obsequies of the students, which, being episodical, we may as well pass over. There are two ways of depicting grief—one quiet and impressive, the other stormy and clamorous. Mr Percy Jones, as might have been expected, adopts the latter method; and we are bound to say that we have never perused anything in print so fearful as the ravings of the bereaved Countess D’Aguilar, mother of the unfortunate Alphonzo. She even forgets herself so far as to box the ears of the confessor who is officiously whispering consolation.

Meanwhile, where is the hero of the piece—the successful Guy Fawkes of the cathedral? Perched on a locality which never would have occurred to any but the most exalted imagination.

SUMMIT OF THE PILLAR OF ST SIMEON STYLITES.

Firmilian.

’Twas a grand spectacle! The solid earth

Seemed from its quaking entrails to eruct

The gathered lava of a thousand years,

Like an imposthume bursting up from hell!

In a red robe of flame, the riven towers,

Pillars and altar, organ-loft and screen,

With a singed swarm of mortals intermixed,

Were whirled in anguish to the shuddering stars,

And all creation trembled at the din.

It was my doing—mine alone! and I

Stand greater by this deed than the vain fool

That thrust his torch beneath Diana’s shrine.

For what was it inspired Erostratus

But a weak vanity to have his name

Blaze out for arson in the catalogue?

I have been wiser. No man knows the name

Of me, the pyrotechnist who have given

A new apotheosis to the saint

With lightning blast, and stunning thunder knell!

And yet—and yet—what boots the sacrifice?

I thought to take remorse unto my heart,

As the young Spartan hid the savage fox

Beneath the foldings of his boyish gown,

And let it rive his flesh. Mine is not riven—

My heart is yet unscarred. I’ve been too coarse

And general in this business. Had there been

Amongst that multitude a single man

Who loved me, cherished me—to whom I owed