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BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXVI.      AUGUST, 1854.      Vol. LXXVI.

CONTENTS.

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EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXVI.      AUGUST, 1854.      Vol. LXXVI.

TRICOUPI AND ALISON ON THE GREEK REVOLUTION.[^[1]][^[2]]

We certainly owe an apology to our Greek ambassador. The nine hundred and ninety-ninth edition of a declamatory old play of Euripides, cut and slashed into the most newfangled propriety by some J. A. Hartung, or other critical German, with a tomahawk, is a phenomenon in the literary world that can excite no attention; but when a regularly built living Greek comes forward in the middle of this nineteenth century, exactly four hundred years after the last Byzantine chronicler had been blown into the air by our brave allies the Turks—and within the precincts of the Red Lion Court, London—ἐν τῇ ἀυλῇ τοῦ ἐρυθροῦ λέοντος—puts forth a regularly built history of the Greek Revolution of 1821, thereby claiming—not without impudence, as some think—a place on our classical shelves alongside of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and a great way above Diodorus Siculus, and other such retailers of venerable hearsay: this truly is an event in the Greek world that claims notice from the general reviewer even more than from the professed classical scholar. At the present moment, particularly, one likes to see what a living Greek, with a pen in his hand, has to say for himself; his language and his power of utterance is an element in the great Turko-Russian question that cannot be lost sight of. Doubly welcome, therefore, is this first instalment of Mr Tricoupi’s long-expected history; and as it happens opportunely that the most interesting portion of Sir A. Alison’s third volume is occupied with the same theme, we eagerly seize the present opportunity at once to acquit ourselves of an old debt to our Hellenic ambassador, and to thank Sir A. Alison for the spirited, graphic, and thoroughly sympathetic style in which he has presented to the general English reader the history of a bright period of Greek history, which recent events have somewhat tended to becloud. It is not our intention on the present occasion to attempt a sketch of the strategetical movements of the Greek war, 1821–6. A criticism of these will be more opportune when Mr Tricoupi shall have finished his great work.[^[3]] We shall rather confine ourselves to bringing out a few salient points of that great movement, which may serve, by way of contrast or similitude, to throw light on the very significant struggle in which we are now engaged. A single word, however, in the first place, with regard to the dialect in which Mr Tricoupi’s work is written; as that is a point on which all persons are not well informed, and a point also by no means unimportant in the decision of the question,—What are the hopes, prospects, and capabilities of the living race of Greeks?

Now, with regard to this point, Mr Tricoupi’s book furnishes the most decided and convincing evidence that the language of Aristotle and Plato yet survives in a state of the most perfect purity, the materials of which it is composed being genuine Greek, and the main difference between the style of Tricoupi and that of Xenophon consisting in the loss of a few superfluous verbal flexions, and the adoption of one or two new syntactical forms to compensate for the loss—the merest points of grammar, indeed, which to a schoolmaster great in Attic forms may appear mighty, but to the general scholar, and the practical linguist, are of no moment. A few such words of Turkish extraction, as ζάμιον, a mosque; φιρμάνιον, a firman; βεζιρης, a vizier; γενίτσαρος, a janizary; ραγιάδης, a rajah, so far from being any blot on the purity of Mr Tricoupi’s Greek, do in fact only prove his good sense; for even the ancient Greeks, ultra-national as they were in all their habits, never scrupled to adopt a foreign word—such as γάζα, παράδεισος, ἄγγαρος—when it came in their way, just as we have κοδράντης, κηνσος, σουδάριον, and a few other Latinisms in the New Testament. The fact is, that the modern Greeks are rather to be blamed for the affectation of extreme purity in their style, than for any undue admixture of foreign words, such as we find by scores in every German newspaper. But this is their affair. It is a vice that leans to virtue’s side, and springs manifestly from that strong and obstinate vitality of race which has survived the political revolutions of nearly two thousand years; and a vice, moreover, that may prove of the utmost use to our young scholars, who may have the sense and the enterprise to turn it to practical account. For, as the pure Greek of Mr Tricoupi’s book is no private invention of his own, but the very same dialect which is at present used as an organ of intellectual utterance by a large phalanx of talented professors in the University of Athens, and is in fact the language of polite intercourse over the whole of Greece, it follows that Greek, which is at present almost universally studied as a dead language, and that by a most laborious and tedious process of grammatical indoctrination, may be more readily picked up, like German or French, in the course of the living practice of a few months. It is worthy of serious consideration, indeed, how far the progress of our young men in an available knowledge of the finest language of the world may have been impeded by the perverse methods of teachers who could not speak, and who gave themselves no concern to speak, the language which they were teaching; who invented, also, an arbitrary system of pronouncing the language, which completely separated them from the nation who speak it. But this is a philological matter on which we have no vocation to enter here: we only drop a hint for the wise, who are able to inquire and to conclude for themselves.

We now proceed to business. There are five points connected with the late Greek Revolution which stand out with a prominent interest at the present moment.

First,—The character, conduct, and position of Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution.

Second,—The character and conduct of the Turks and the Turkish government, as displayed by the manner in which the revolt was met.

Third,—The character, conduct, and political significance of the Greek people, as exhibited during the five years’ struggle.

Fourth,—The character, conduct, and position of Russia, as more fully developed at the conclusion of the struggle.

Fifth,—The character, conduct, and political significance of the Greek people, as exhibited since the battle of Navarino and the establishment of the existing Bavarian dynasty.

On all these points we shall offer a few remarks in the order in which they are set down.

First,—As to the conduct of Russia. It is a remarkable fact, and very significant of the nature of Russian influence in Turkey, that the Greek Revolution did not commence where one might have expected it to commence, in Greece proper—i.e., the mountainous strongholds of Acarnania and the Peloponnesus—but in those very Principalities where we are now fighting, and where the Muscovites are always intriguing. How was this? Plainly because all those Greeks who had for years been brewing revolt in their ἑταιριαι, or secret conspiracies, took it for granted that on that nominally Turkish but really Russian ground, Russia would at once come forward and help them to kill—we use the Imperial simile—the sick old Infidel, who had been so long lying with his diseased lumpish body on the back of the Christian population; and accordingly the man whom they set up to raise the flag of Christian insurrection on the banks of the Pruth and the Sereth, was an officer in the Russian service, Alexander Ypsilanti by name; and the first thing he did when he came forward as military head of the revolt in the Principalities, was to put forth a proclamation, in which the Christian tribes of Turkey were told that “a great European power” might be depended on as “patronising the insurrection”—ὁτι μιά μεγάλη δύναμις τοῦς προστατευει. Now, here was a lie to begin with, to which perhaps the old Græcia mendax may seem not inapplicable: but in fact it was a most probable lie; and if lies were at all justifiable, either on principle or policy, at the opening scene of a great war, certainly this was the lie which at that time and place looked most like the truth. But it is a dangerous thing to raise warlike enthusiasm at any time, especially when an emperor is concerned, by sounding statements not founded on truth. Had the Czar been ever so willing to assist the movement of the Wallachian Greeks, and to lead his victorious Cossacks, scarcely returned from fair Paris, to magnificent Stamboul, he could not but feel offended at the unceremonious manner in which his decision had been taken out of his own mouth, and the absolute spontaneity of an imperial ukase been forestalled by a vagabond Greek captain. But the Greeks were, from the beginning, out of their reckoning in supposing that the then Czar would, as a matter of course, patronise their insurrectionary movement against the Turks. Alexander, though not naturally a very bellicose person, had already done as much for the territorial aggrandisement of Russia as would have contented the most warlike of his predecessors. He had rounded off the north-west corner of his vast domain in the most neat and dexterous way by the appropriation of Finland in 1808; and he had profited alike in the upshot by the friendship of Napoleon at Tilsit in 1807, and by his enmity at Moscow in 1812. That he should enter upon a new, and in all probability a severe contest with another enemy, and put himself at the head of a great insurrectionary movement, disturbing all the peaceful relations so recently established, and in such friendly amity with the great conservative powers at Paris and Vienna, was a proceeding not to be looked for from a moderate and a prudent man. This the Greeks might have known, had they not been befooled by patriotic passion. A “holy alliance” no doubt it was which, in 1815, the pious soul of the good Czar had made with his brother kings; but this “holiness” was either a mere fraternisation of sentiment, too vague to be of any practical force, or at best a religious stamp placed upon a document, the contents of which were essentially political, and did not at all warrant the expectation that the most Christian crowned Allies should be called upon to interfere in supporting every revolt which Christian subjects in any land might feel themselves called upon to make against their traditional lords. Then as to politics: Though Alexander was a most kind-hearted, truly popular, and very liberal sovereign, and had made speeches at Paris, Warsaw, and elsewhere, equal to anything ever spouted by the present Majesty of Prussia in his most liberal fits, yet he was very little of a constitutionalist, and not at all a democrat. From Laybach, therefore, where he was when the revolution broke out in March 1821, he gave his decision in the matter of the Greek insurrection in the following very remarkable words:—

“The motives of the Emperor are now known, from the best of all sources, his own words, in confidential conversation with Mons. de Chateaubriand. ‘The time is past,’ said he, ‘when there can be a French, Russian, Prussian, or Austrian policy. One only policy for the safety of all can be admitted in common by all people and all kings. It devolves on me to show myself the first to be convinced of the principles on which the Holy Alliance is founded. An opportunity presented itself on occasion of the insurrection of the Greeks. Nothing certainly could have been more for my interests, those of my people, and the opinion of my country, than a religious war against the Turks; but I discerned in the troubles of the Peloponnesus the revolutionary mark. From that moment I kept aloof from them. Nothing has been spared to turn me aside from the Alliance; but in vain. My self-love has been assailed, my prejudices appealed to; but in vain. What need have I for an extension of my empire? Providence has not put under my orders 800,000 soldiers to satisfy my ambition, but to protect religion, morality, and justice, and to establish the principles of order on which human society reposes.’ In pursuance of these principles, Count Nesselrode declared officially that ‘his Imperial Majesty could not regard the enterprise of Ypsilanti as anything but the effect of the exaltation which characterises the present epoch, as well as of the inexperience and levity of that young man, whose name is ordered to be erased from the Russian service.’ Orders were at the same time sent to the imperial forces on the Pruth and in the Black Sea to observe the strictest neutrality.”

The publication of this resolution on the part of the Imperial government effectually quashed the movement in the Principalities; and poor Ypsilanti, after a few awkward and ill-managed plunges, was obliged to back out of his position, and, leaving “Olympian George,” and other sturdy Greek mountaineers, in the lurch, seek for refuge, and find a prison in Austria. In this whole affair, however, though the Greeks had shown themselves very vain and foolish, no man can deny that the Czar behaved with great moderation—like a gentleman, in fact, and a Christian, as he was—and moreover, we must add, like a wise politician. For we can scarcely agree with some strong indications of feeling, both in Tricoupi and in Sir Archibald Alison,[^[4]] that any Christian power would have been justified in supporting a revolt of Christian subjects against their lawful sovereign, being an Infidel, till these Christians had first shown, by their own exertions, that they were worthy of the intervention which afterwards took place in their favour. We see, also, that Lord Aberdeen, in some late remarks in the House of Lords, was quite correct historically when he called attention to the comparative “moderation” of Russian counsels in some of her dealings with Turkey. Russia, in fact, never has displayed any very flagrant rapacity in her dealings with Turkey, for the best of all possible reasons,—because, having as much of the fox as of the bear in her nature, she does not wish to alarm the European powers on a point where she knows they are peculiarly sensitive. Her policy has been to poison the sick old man, not to kill him; and in this very moderation, as all the world now knows, lies the peculiar danger of her encroachments. Like a deep swirling river, she rolls beneath the fat mud-banks of your political STATUS QUO, and you suspect no harm, and can walk on the green bank with delectation; but when the flood comes, there will be a shaking and a precipitation; and then God help the sleepers!

So much for Russia. Our next question relates to the Turks. How did they behave at the outbreak of the insurrection? The answer is given in two words—like butchers, and like blunderers. Like butchers in the first place. Their way of crushing an insurrection was truly a brutal one—πολιτική θηριώδης as Mr Tricoupi says; or shall we not rather say devilish. Certainly Sylla, in his most sanguinary humours, never enacted anything more inhuman and more diabolical than the wholesale massacre of the prosperous Greeks in Scios, April 1822, which, next to certain scenes when the Furies were let loose in France, forms the most bloody page of modern history.[^[5]] When a Turk suspects a Greek of treason, he makes short work of it: no forms of law, no investigation, no trial, no proof; but right on with the instinct of a tiger, in the very simple and effective old Oriental style,—“Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head.” So an old Jew once said to King David; but Sultan Mahmoud did not require that a word of cursing should have been spoken. Sufficient that the individual marked for butchery stood in a prominent situation, and was of the same brotherhood as those who had spoken or acted treason: if he was not guilty in his own person, he was bound to be cognisant of the guilt of others; and for not revealing this guilt he must die. Such is the simple theory on which proceeded the wholesale murders which took place at Constantinople so soon as word was brought of the insurrectionary movement in the Principalities. As a specimen of these infamous proceedings, we shall select from Mr Tricoupi’s book the account of the death of the Patriarch Gregory, a murder committed with the most flagrant disregard of all the forms of justice (if there be such forms in Turkey), and under circumstances calculated to rouse to the utmost pitch the spirit of the people whom it was intended to crush; a murder, therefore, not merely cruel and barbarous, but stupid and impolitic. The account given by our author of this most characteristic event is somewhat circumstantial, as might be expected from the piety of a true Greek writing on such a subject. We curtail it, however, as little as possible,—especially as the closing scene, in which Russia appears a chief actor, affords a vivid glimpse of the very natural manner in which, unassisted by any evil arts of diplomacy, that power can continually earn for itself golden opinions among the Christian nations of the south.

“On the evening of Easter Saturday, or great Saturday—το μέγα σάββατον, as the Greeks call it—being the 9th of March, there were seen dispersed in the neighbourhood of the Patriarch’s palace, within and without the Fanar, about five thousand armed Janizaries, without any person knowing why. The Janizaries perambulated the streets of the Fanar the whole night, but did no harm to any one. At midnight, as is the use in our Church, the church-crier made proclamation, and the Christian people, though under great apprehensions, immediately obeyed the sacred summons, and assembled without hindrance or disturbance in the church of the Patriarchate. The Patriarch himself officiated as usual, with twelve other priests; and after the service was finished, the people were dismissed, and retired quietly to their own homes. The Patriarch went to his palace, when the first streaks of day were beginning to appear; but scarcely had he entered, when word was brought that Staurakis Aristarches, the great Interpreter, wished to speak with him. The Patriarch proposed to go with him to his private room, but the Interpreter replied that he preferred being taken immediately to the great Hall of the Synod. There he came with one of the Secretaries of State, and forthwith produced a firman, which he declared he had orders to read aloud without a moment’s delay in the presence of the Patriarch, the chief priests, the heads of the Greek people, and the deacons of corporations. These parties were sent for, and the firman instantly read as follows: ‘Forasmuch as the Patriarch Gregory has shown himself unworthy of the patriarchal throne, ungrateful to the Porte, and a deviser of plots,—for these reasons he is deposed from his office.’ The Patriarch, accompanied by his faithful archdeacon, was immediately led off to prison; and as soon as he had left the hall, a second firman was read out in the following terms: ‘Forasmuch as the Sublime Porte does not desire to deprive his faithful subjects of their spiritual superintendence, he hereby commands them to elect a patriarch according to their ancient custom.’ A consultation immediately took place among the clergy; and they agreed that they should call to the patriarchal throne Cyril, who had been formerly patriarch, and was now in Adrianople; but the secretary replied that this could not be allowed, as the proposed patriarch was absent, and under present circumstances the Porte could not allow the throne to be vacant for a single hour; wherefore he commanded them instantly to make election of a new patriarch from the number of the clergy then present. Another consultation immediately took place; and after considerable difficulty the vote fell upon Peisidias Eugenios, who, according to usage, was immediately sent to the Porte, the rest remaining till he should return. After three hours he appeared, environed with a pomp and circumstance more magnificent than usual.

“This ceremony of electing the new pontiff was still going on, when Gregory was led out of prison, where he had been preparing himself by constant prayer for the death which he had too good reason for supposing was prepared for him. After taking him from the prison, they put him into a boat, and disembarked him on the strand of the Fanar. There the venerable old man, looking up steadfastly to heaven,[^[6]] made the sign of the cross, and knelt down, and inclined his hoary head to the executioner’s axe; but the headsman ordered him to rise, saying that here was not the place where he was to be executed. They accordingly led him into his own palace, and there the executioner hung him as he was praying on the threshold of the principal entrance at the hour of noon on Easter Sunday—so that at the very moment when the wretched Christians above were singing the hymn of welcome to their new Patriarch, with the accustomed words εις πολλᾶ ἔτη δέσποτα, his predecessor was hung on the ground-floor like a thief and a malefactor; the very holy person who only a few hours before had offered the bloodless sacrifice for the sins of the people, and had blessed his faithful flock, who, with devoutness and contrition of heart, had kissed the hand that had been hallowed by the handling of the holiest elements. The last moments of Gregory were moments of pure faith and resignation, springing from an unspotted conscience, a heart the fountain of good deeds, a calm contempt of this ephemeral life, and a bright expectation of futurity. The writing of condemnation, by virtue of which he died, called, in Turkish, Yiaftás, was fixed upon the dead body, and set forth the causes of his death as follows.”

Here Mr Tricoupi gives the Turkish act of condemnation at full length; but the substance of it is contained in two points: first, “that the Patriarch did not use his spiritual weapons of excommunication, &c., against the revolters; and, second, that he was personally privy to the conspiracy.” To which two charges the historian answers shortly that the first is directly contrary to the fact (for the revolters were excommunicated by the Greek hierarchy in the capital); and with regard to the second, he avers, that though it was quite impossible for the head of the Greek Church to be ignorant of the existence of a conspiracy of which thousands of the most notable Greeks in Europe were members, yet he was never a member of the secret societies, and had, on the contrary, like many other influential persons of his nation, considered the movement premature,[^[7]] and warned his countrymen against it as likely to lead to the most pernicious consequences. But it is vain, as we already remarked, to look for reasons that would satisfy any European ideas of justice in proceedings between Turks in authority and rebellious Giaours. The calm and solemn gentleman, enveloped in smoke and coffee fumes, whose bland dignity we so much admired in time of peace, becomes suddenly seized with a preternatural fury when the scent of Greek blood is in the gale. It is a primary law of his religion, inherited from the oldest Oriental theocracies, that no infidel is entitled to live; and if the head seems more serviceable for the nonce than the capitation-tax, which is its substitute, the law of the Prophet is satisfied, and no man has a right to complain. Mr Tricoupi now proceeds with his narrative.

“The execution being over, the great interpreter, the secretary, and their attendants, left the palace of the Patriarch. In the evening of the same day, Beterli Ali Pasha, who had recently been appointed Grand Vizier, went through the Fanar with only one attendant, and, asking for a chair, sat down for five or six minutes on the street opposite the suspended body of the Patriarch, looking at him, and speaking to his attendant. After an hour the Sultan himself passed the same way, and cast his eye on the Patriarch. The body remained suspended three days; but on the fourth the hangman took it down to throw it into the sea, it being contrary to law in Turkey that persons hung or beheaded should receive burial. Then there came to the hangman certain Jews, and having received his permission (some say that they bribed him), bound together the feet of the corpse, and dragged it away to the extreme end of the quay of the Fanar, with mockery and blasphemous words. Then they threw it into the sea, and gave the end of the rope with which they had bound the feet to the hangman, who, having gone before, was waiting them in a little boat. He immediately, seizing the rope and dragging the body after him, came to the middle of the bay,[^[8]] and there attached to the body a stone which he had brought with him in order to sink it: but it proved not weighty enough for this purpose; so he left the corpse floating on the water, and, making for the strand, came back with two other stones, which he attached to the body; and then, giving it two or three stabs with his knife, to let out the water, he immediately sunk it. After some days, however, it came to the surface at Galata between two ships lying at the point where a great many boats are always stationed, for passing over to the city. One of these ships was a Slavonian, and the other a Greek, from Cephalonia. The captain of the Slavonian saw the body first, and threw some straw matting over it, with the view of concealing it till the night, when he meant to bury it, like a good Christian. But when the evening came, the Cephalonian captain anticipated him, and perceiving from the unshaven chin that it was the body of a priest, brought into his ship secretly some Christians, who assured him that it was the body of the Patriarch. The pious Cephaliote immediately swathed the body in a winding-sheet, and, transporting it to Odessa, deposited it in the Lazaretto there.[^[9]] There the body was examined by the order of the governor, and was recognised by certain signs as that of the Patriarch.

“Information of this being sent to St Petersburg, orders were given to bury the body with all appropriate honours. The sacred Russian synod came to assist in the funeral ceremony; and on the 17th of June there were assembled in the Lazaretto all the local authorities, political and military, the two metropolitan bishops, Cyril of Silistria, and Gregory of Hieropolis; also Demetrius, bishop of Bender and Akerman, all the clergy of the province, a great number of Greek refugees, who had fled from the butchery at Constantinople. Then the church bells were rung, the funeral psalms were sung, a salute of cannons was given, and, with the accompaniment of military music and the prayers of the congregated faithful, the remains of the venerated Patriarch were carried to the metropolitan church of Odessa. Here they remained three days, till the 19th, when the burial-service was again sung, and a funeral oration was pronounced by Constantine Œconomos, preacher to the Œcomenic Patriarchate, who happened to be in Odessa; after which the body was removed with great pomp to the church of the Greeks, and deposited in a new sepulchre within the railing of the holy altar, at the north side of the holy table, as being the body of a martyr. And thus—to use the very words of the semi-official journal of St Petersburg—by the command of the most pious Autocrat of all the Russians, Alexander I., were rendered due honours of faith and love to Gregory, the holy Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Greeks, who suffered a martyr’s death.”

Next to the butchery—which, by the way, the Greeks, as opportunity offered, were not ashamed to retaliate—the most noticeable thing in the Turkish conduct of the war was their extraordinary slowness, fickleness, inefficiency, and bungling of every sort. The insurrection, though attempted in Thessaly and Macedonia, did, in fact, never extend with any permanent force beyond the narrow boundaries of the present kingdom of Greece, with the addition of Crete, and one or two of the Ægean islands, now in the possession of the Turks; but to suppress this petty revolt of an ill-peopled and divided district, occupying a small corner of a vast empire, all the strength of Turkey, both Asiatic and European, proved in vain; for it was not till Ibrahim Pasha, in 1825, was sent by his father, Mehemet Ali, with a large Egyptian armament that the Morea was recovered to the Sultan, and the insurrection virtually quashed. Now, when we consider that the Greeks of the Morea were stamped with the servitude of nearly four hundred years—that they were, in fact, so awed by the hereditary authority of their haughty masters, that in the beginning of the war, as Gordon expressly testifies, three hundred of them could not be made to stand against thirty Turks; that their only effective leaders were a few brigand chiefs from the wild regions of Acarnania, Ætolia, and Epirus; that the land was of such a nature as to be kept in subjection by fortresses, all of which were in the possession of the lords of the soil; that the sea was open to the men of Stamboul as much as to those of Hydra and to Mehemet Ali’s Egyptians, we shall see plainly that nothing but a wonderful combination of slowness, stupidity, and cowardice on the part of the Turks could have allowed the Greek revolt to protract its existence during the space of those first four years, when—not without large aids from English gold—it continued to present a prosperous front to the world. What strikes us most in the account of the war given by Gordon—who will always be a main authority—is the great want of capacity and enterprise in the Turkish commanders both by sea and land—the very same weakness, in fact, which is remarked at the present hour as afflicting the Turkish armies—a want of good officers. There is in Turkey a want of a high-minded, independent, and energetic middle class, without which an army never can be well officered. Only one efficient Turkish captain appeared in the whole course of the Greek war; and he took Missolonghi.

We have been anxious to bring forward this sad account of the conduct of the Turks in the insurrection distinctly, as there is a danger, at the present moment, of the Turkish military virtue being overrated. No man who knew that nation ever doubted that they could defend a fort well in the present war, as they have ever done where they happened to have a good commander, and acted under encouraging circumstances. This is the secret of the recent successful defence of Silistria, for which we feel all respect. With the English and French fleet to guard their flank, and all Europe as spectators of their mettle, with the very existence of their empire perhaps at stake, and with the choice of their own battlefield—that is, the defence of forts—the Turks would have been dull truly, never to be roused, if the old heroism had not flamed out with more than wonted fierceness. But the successful defence of this fort affords no proof that the people who made it possess a spirit and an organisation able to cope in a continued campaign with some Paskiewitch or Diebitch of the next generation. Let us look to the history of the Greek Revolution, and not believe that the Turks are great masters in the art of war till they have successfully conducted a great campaign. Above all things, matters must be so arranged at the next pacification that the preservation of the peace of Europe may not be left to depend on them.

Our third question has reference to the Greeks. Their conduct in the great revolt by which their independence was ultimately achieved, deserves to be noted with the greater care at the present moment, because there are not a few persons in this country who are only too ready, in the unhappy blunder of 1854, to forget the glorious heroism of 1821–26. Sir A. Alison, we are happy to say, with that large spirit of appreciation for which he is remarkable, has shown no tendency to chime in with this vulgar cry. He is not surprised that the brigands of Thessaly and Epirus should not possess all the virtues of Pericles and Aristides; and therefore he is not offended. The Greeks, in fact, in 1821, were the authors of their own liberty, as much as the Turks now are the authors of the retreat of the Russians from Silistria. Most true it is, that without the intervention of the Allied Powers, notwithstanding their utmost efforts, their cause was lost; so also will the defence of Silistria have proved in vain, if England and France, in the proceedings that are yet waited for, show weakness or vacillation. But the Greeks, in 1821, had this decided moral vantage-ground over the Turks of the present day, that the intervention would never have taken place had it not been forced upon the great Powers by the popular sympathy which the heroism of the Greeks had excited. We may say, upon a review of the whole five years’ struggle, that the Greeks displayed on that occasion all the weakness, and indeed all the vices, that belonged to a people just rising from under the weight of centuries of oppression—but virtues also of the highest order, which it is of the very nature of oppression to make a people forget. Oppression, in fact, had never done its perfect work with this noble-spirited people; it had made intriguers of those who remained in the Fanar, and mere money-changers and money-makers of those who peopled the cities; the base stamp of slavery also might be found on the plains: but freedom remained among the mountains; and in Maina and Souli every brigand chief was a hero. In fact, under such a military despotism as that of Turkey, brigandage, which is outlawed by a good government, becomes the very church militant of liberty. Whatsoever virtues, therefore, belong to the indomitable spirit of nationality when forced to create its own law, and redeem itself from destruction by the desperate efforts of individual self-assertion, belonged to the Greek people, and those Albanian tribes who were identified with them in the highest degree. But there was more than that. The Greeks, as the whole spirit and tendency of Corai’s writings show, were intellectually an advancing people. They had scholars, and thinkers, and poets among them, who were fighting not merely for the rude privilege of freedom—which a brute can understand as well as a man—but for the vindication of an intellectual heritage of which they were proud. To these men the possession of the uncorrupted Greek tongue was not a mere pretty plaything, as it may be to many of our academical men; but it was the badge which publicly proclaimed their brotherhood with that great hierarchy of intellect which had conquered ancient Rome, and inspired modern Europe. These men did not fight with the mere impatient spirit of vulgar insurrection: they came, like banished kings, claiming a long-lost throne; and Europe felt that there was a dignity in their work not belonging to every exile. But there was another element of strength in the Greek revolt, without which it never could have succeeded, and an element which, like their zeal for intellectual culture, proved that the modern Greeks are the true sons of Themistocles and Pericles. This element was their use of the sea. The Turks, though they had possessed the finest harbour in the world for four centuries, though they governed a country where arms of the sea serve the same purpose that railroads do elsewhere, had not only made no progress in the nautical art, but had allowed their enterprising slaves to create for themselves a navy by which they were to succeed in driving their masters out of the field. When Ibrahim Pasha, in his march across the Morea in 1825, had arrived at that high ground between Tripolizza and Argos where the island of Hydra becomes visible, pointing with his hand to that little nest of daring adventurers, he exclaimed, “Thou little England, when shall I hold thee!” This little England it was which saved Greece. There is nothing in the records of modern history more interesting than the dashing exploits of the gallant Ipsariote Canaris with his fire-ships in the Greek war; and wherever Miaulis the Hydriote appeared with his squadron, there everything that could be done was done. But great as were the exploits of the islanders, Europe, perhaps, knew more, and was justly more astonished at the gallant conduct of the land army in the two sieges of Missolonghi—a fortress protected only by shallow lagoons and a mud rampart, and utterly unprovided with those long lines of fire-spouting barricades that make Cronstadt and Sevastopol so difficult of approach. Yet Missolonghi was maintained against the whole force of the Turks for two years; and when it did fall, the resolute garrison made no capitulation, but after having exhausted the last scraps of raw hides and sea-weeds which served them for food, cut their way with gallant desperation, men and women together, through the sabred ranks of their enemies. Nor were they without their reward. Let Mr Alison speak:—

“Thus fell Missolonghi; but its heroic resistance had not been made in vain. It laid the foundation of Greek independence; for it preserved that blessing during a period of despondence and doubt, when its very existence had come to be endangered. By drawing the whole forces of the Ottoman empire upon themselves, its heroic garrison allowed the nation to remain undisturbed in other quarters, and prevented the entire reduction of the Morea, which was threatened during the first moments of consternation consequent on Ibrahim’s success. By holding out so long, and with such resolute perseverance, they not only inflicted a loss upon the enemy greater than they themselves experienced, but superior to the whole garrison of the place put together. The Western nations watched the struggle with breathless interest; and when at last it terminated in the daring sally, and the cutting through of the enemy’s lines by a body of intrepid men, fighting for themselves, their wives, and children, the public enthusiasm knew no bounds. It will appear immediately that it was this warm sympathy which mainly contributed to the success of the Philhellenic societies which had sprung up in every country of Europe, and ultimately rendered public opinion so strong as to lead to the treaty of July, the battle of Navarino, and the establishment of Greek independence.”

On the other hand, we must not shut our eyes to the faults of the Greek people—which were, in fact, just the faults of their ancestors made more large and more prominent by the long-continued action of circumstances favourable to their development. Will it be believed?—during the time that this heroic struggle was going on, by a people manifestly unable, even with their strongest combined exertions, to withstand their gigantic adversary—even in the mid-heat and the critical turning-point of this grapple for free existence, the Greek captains were quarrelling among themselves! There were actually at one time, as Gordon assures us, seven civil wars among a people who could only collect hundreds to plant against the thousands of their masters! Such a self-divided people, one might almost say, was unworthy of liberty. Certainly if they could not agree to fight for themselves, it did not seem the business either of France or England to force them to be patriotic. But, after all, what was this but the natural result of the geography of the country, and of the circumstances under which its latent liberty had been maintained? What was it else but the same thing, on a small scale, which the Peloponnesian war exhibited on a large scale? Division is the weak point of Greece, and always was; and as for other vices which stank so strongly in the nostrils of some of our sentimental Philhellenes—cunning, falsehood, selfishness, rapacity, and blushless impudence of all kinds—such rank weeds grow from a neglected moral soil, not only in Greece, but in the streets of London and Edinburgh, and elsewhere; the only difference being that in our case a wicked or neglectful parent brings up corrupt individuals, while in the case of the modern Greeks, a wicked and neglectful government had brought up a corrupt people. There is, no doubt, some truth in the doctrine of races and hereditary propensities; and the Greek may probably be more subtle in speculation, and more cunning in practice, than the other families of the Indo-European stock. Nevertheless, we are inclined to believe that the proverbial falsehood of the Greeks, which is the worst vice now continually thrown in their teeth, is as much the result of circumstances as of blood, and that, under the same influences, any Teutonic race whose honesty is now most loudly bepraised, would exhibit a large development of the same vice. When a people is not allowed to play the lion, it must either learn to play the fox or perish.

We shall now make a few remarks on the fourth point stated—viz., the circumstances attending the conclusion of the war, as illustrative of the policy of Russia. Here a very interesting contrast immediately presents itself. Alexander, as we have seen, occupied with various benevolent projects and perambulations, fearing also not a little everything in the shape of rebellion and revolution, refused to have anything to do with the Greek insurrection. In this he behaved like a man, a gentleman, and a king, but not like a Russian. As a Russian he would have followed the footsteps of Catherine, who twice, in the latter half of the last century, raised a rebellion in the Morea, and assisted Greece not from any classical enthusiasm, we may be sure, (such as helped not a little to fan the Greek fire of ourselves and the Germans), but that she might cripple Turkey by inflicting such a deep wound on her left leg as would render amputation necessary. All this became plain in a few years. Alexander died. In the year 1826 Nicholas succeeded; and matters were at that period, by the fall of Missolonghi, and Ibrahim Pasha’s occupation of the Morea, brought to such a pass that the bloody five years’ struggle, with all its heroism, must have gone for nothing, had not the tide of popular sympathy begun to move so strongly in favour of intervention among the great European nations, that the governments were forced to take the matter up. England, as the most classical, and, may we not say also, the most generous, country in matters of international feeling, was the first to make overtures for a European demonstration in favour of Greek independence; and of the consulted Powers none came forward with greater alacrity than the new Emperor of the North. On the invitation of the Duke of Wellington, Nicholas was invited to send ships into the Mediterranean to co-operate with the fleets of France and England in coercing the Porte. Here was an opportunity thrown in his way, by pure accident, to achieve in a few days results more favourable to the most cherished projects of Russian aggrandisement than might have been brought about by the tortuous diplomacy and bloody encounters of long years; and this not only without exciting suspicion of ambitious views, but amid acclamations, and cheers, and philanthropic hurrahs innumerable. By joining England and France in establishing the independence of Greece, the Czar felt that not only would Turkey be reft of one of her limbs, but a new field would be opened for diplomatic intrigue in regions hitherto preserved, by the blessings of barbarism, from such refinements. A little tinselled court at Athens, with some German princeling on the throne, was no doubt even then seen in near vista, as the best possible theatre for the display of those arts of political falsehood and finesse in which the Russian Nesselrodes and Pozzo di Borgos excel. But more. Might not the Turk, who is by no means a milksop, and who can deal heavy blows, as we have just seen, even from his sick-bed—might not the Turk oppose the armed intervention of the Powers, and might not some untoward collision be the result, and might not the Turkish navy be annihilated; and then—O! then, might not the way to Constantinople be more open, and the Balkan more easily crossed? Such were the cogitations that might naturally begin to move in the brain of a thoroughly Russian energetic and enterprising young Czar, when the proposal was made to coerce the Sultan into the recognition of the total or partial independence of one of his revolted provinces. And the result, as we all know, was exactly such as the most brilliant imagination of a brisk young emperor could have conceived. In the course of a few months the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Navarino; in two years Kustendji and Varna, and the whole sea-road to Stamboul, were in the hands of the Russian fleet; and in three years General Diebitch had made himself immortal by surmounting the unsurmountable Balkan, and was resting with twenty thousand men (supposed, however, to be sixty thousand!) on the banks of the Hebrus at Adrianople. Never was game better played. The Turko-Russian campaign of 1828–9, which we can now study to such advantage, was, we may say, impossible, but for the battle of Navarino, which was only the natural result of the armed intervention of the three Powers in favour of Greece. Add to this the disorganisation of the Turkish army, caused by the massacre of the Janizaries in 1826, and the consequent disaffection among the old Turkish conservatives; and we shall see at once how the campaign of 1828–9 ended so gloriously for Russia, while that of 1854 has proved so shameful. The cause of the difference lies obviously in the command of the Black Sea, which Russia, by the disaster of Navarino, then had, and which, by the Anglo-French alliance, she now has not. This, and this only, has on the present occasion made the gallant defence of a single fortress by the Turks equivalent to the loss of a whole campaign by the Russians.

The last of our five points only remains—How has the establishment of Greek independence, by the treaty of 1827, answered the expectations of its founders?—What is the actual state of Greece, material, moral, and intellectual?—Are the Greeks under German Otho substantially more prosperous than they were under the Turkish Mahmouds? We cannot, of course, hope to answer these questions satisfactorily within the limits at present prescribed to us; but one or two observations we are compelled to make, for the sake of taming down to somewhat of a more sober temper the glowing observations with which Sir Archibald Alison concludes his fourteenth chapter. There is a class of wise men in the world who show their wisdom only in the negative way of seeing difficulties and making objections. Sir Archibald Alison certainly does not belong to this class. Once possessed by a grand idea, he marches on fearlessly to its realisation, and lets difficulties shift for themselves. He gives you a project for a marble palace and a granite bridge; but seems to forget sometimes that there are only bricks to build with. We like this error, which leans to virtue’s side, and has a savour of something positive and productive; nevertheless the truth must be spoken—for in politics the best intentions are often the mother of the greatest blunders. The remarks of Sir Archibald Alison, which we think require a little chastening, are as follows:—

“In truth, so far from the treaty of 6th July 1827 having been an unjustifiable interference with the rights of the Ottoman Government as an independent power, it was just the reverse; and the only thing to be regretted is that the Christian powers did not interfere earlier in the contest, and with far more extensive views for the restoration of the Greek empire. After the massacre of Chios, the Turks had thrown themselves out of the pale of civilisation: they had proved themselves to be pirates, enemies of the human race, and no longer entitled to toleration from the European family. Expulsion from Europe was the natural and legitimate consequence of their flagrant violation of its usages in war. Had this been done in 1822—had the Congress of Verona acceded to the prayers of the Greeks, and restored the Christian empire of the East under the guarantee of the Allied Powers—what an ocean of blood would have been dried up, what boundless misery prevented, what prospects of felicity to the human race opened! A Christian monarchy often millions of souls, with Constantinople for its capital, would, ere this, have added a half to its population, wealth, and all the elements of national strength. The rapid growth, since the Crescent was expelled from their territories, of Servia, Greece, the Isles of the Archipelago, Wallachia, and Moldavia, and of the Christian inhabitants in all parts of the country, proves what might have been expected had all Turkey in Europe been blessed by a similar liberation. The fairest portion of Europe would have been restored to the rule of religion, liberty, and civilisation, and a barrier erected by European freedom against Asiatic despotism in the regions where it was first successfully combated.

“What is the grand difficulty that now surrounds the Eastern question, which has rendered it all but insoluble even to the most far-seeing statesman, and has compelled the Western Powers, for their own sake, to ally themselves with a state which they would all gladly, were it practicable without general danger, see expelled from Europe? Is it not that the Ottoman empire is the only barrier which exists against the encroachments of Russia, and that if it is destroyed the independence of every European state is endangered by the extension of the Muscovite power from the Baltic to the Mediterranean? All see the necessity of this barrier, yet all are sensible of its weakness, and feel that it is one which is daily becoming more feeble, and must in the progress of time be swept away. This difficulty is entirely of our own creation; it might have been obviated, and a firm bulwark erected in the East, against which all the surges of Muscovite ambition would have beat in vain. Had the dictates of humanity, justice, and policy been listened to in 1822, and a Christian monarchy been erected in European Turkey, under the guarantee of Austria, France, and England, the whole difficulties of the Eastern Question would have been obviated, and European independence would have found an additional security in the very quarter where it is now most seriously menaced. Instead of the living being allied to the dead, they would have been linked to the living; and a barrier against Eastern conquest erected on the shores of the Hellespont, not with the worn-out materials of Mahommedan despotism, but with the rising energy of Christian civilisation.

“But modern Turkey, it is said, is divided by race, religion, and situation; three-fourths of it are Christian, one-fourth Mahommedan: there are six millions of Slavonians, four millions of Bulgarians, two millions and a half of Turks, and only one million of Greeks;—how can a united and powerful empire be formed of such materials? Most true; and in what state was Greece anterior to the Persian invasion; Italy before the Punic wars; England during the Heptarchy; Spain in the time of the Moors; France during its civil wars? Has the existence of such apparently fatal elements of division prevented these countries from becoming the most renowned, the most powerful, the most prosperous communities upon earth? In truth, diversity of race, so far from being an element of weakness, is, when duly coerced, the most prolific source of strength; it is to the body politic what the intermixture of soils is to the richness of the earth. It is the meagreness of unmingled race which is the real source of weakness; for it leaves hereditary maladies unchanged, hereditary defects unsupplied. Witness the unchanging ferocity in every age of the Ishmaelite, the irremediable indolence of the Irish, the incurable arrogance of the Turk; while the mingled blood of the Briton, the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane, and the Norman, has produced the race to which is destined the sceptre of half the globe.

“Such was the resurrection of Greece; thus did old Hellas rise from the grave of nations. Scorched by fire, riddled by shot, baptised in blood, she emerged victorious from the contest; she achieved her independence because she proved herself worthy of it; she was trained to manhood in the only school of real improvement, the school of suffering. Twenty-five years have elapsed since her independence was sealed by the battle of Navarino, and already the warmest hopes of her friends have been realised. Her capital, Athens, now contains thirty thousand inhabitants, quadruple what it did when the contest terminated; its commerce has doubled, and all the signs of rapidly advancing prosperity are to be seen on the land. The inhabitants have increased fifty per cent; they are now above seven hundred thousand, but the fatal chasms produced by the war, especially in the male population, are still in a great measure unsupplied, and vast tracts of fertile land, spread with the bones of its defenders, await in every part of the country the robust arm of industry for their cultivation. The Greeks, indeed, have not all the virtues of freemen; perhaps they are never destined to exhibit them. Like the Muscovites, and from the same cause, they are often cunning, fraudulent, deceitful; slaves always are such; and a nation is not crushed by a thousand years of Byzantine despotism, and four hundred of Mahommedan oppression, without having some of the features of the servile character impressed upon it. But they exhibit also the cheering symptoms of social improvement; they have proved they still possess the qualities to which their ancestors’ greatness was owing. They are lively, ardent, and persevering, passionately desirous of knowledge, and indefatigable in the pursuit of it. The whole life which yet animates the Ottoman Empire is owing to their intelligence and activity. The stagnation of despotism is unknown among them; if the union of civilisation is unhappily equally unknown, that is a virtue of the manhood, and not to be looked for in the infancy of nations. The consciousness of deficiencies is the first step to their removal; the pride of barbarism, the self-sufficiency of ignorance, is the real bar to improvement; and a nation which is capable of making the efforts for improvement which the Greeks are doing, if not in possession of political greatness, is on the road to it.”

Now, to the first proposition contained in the above remarks, that the Great Powers were perfectly justified in their intervention to save the Greeks from the lawless ferocity of the Turks, we have no objections to offer. It is a gladdening thing to believe and to see that the strong cry of human sympathy will sometimes be listened to even by politicians, and that heartless diplomacy in the public intercourse between people and people is not all in all. But the summary expulsion of the Turks from European Turkey, even supposing it were not too great a punishment for the offence, would, when achieved, leave the most difficult part of the Greek problem unsolved. Sir Archibald assumes that the discordant and crude elements of which European Turkey, less the Turks, is composed, would, in 1827, have readily coalesced, or is ready now, in 1854, to coalesce, into a great Greek empire, of which Constantinople shall be the capital. That the Greeks themselves should believe this is natural; that Sir Archibald Alison should believe it, carried away by a noble sympathy with a heroic theme, is but the radiation of that fire with which the noblest minds burn most intensely; but we have never conversed with an individual practically conversant with the elements of which Christian Turkey is composed, who looked upon such a consummation, in the present age at least, as possible. A very intelligent and patriotic Greek gentleman once remarked in our hearing, that the Greek kingdom could never prosper in its present tiny dimensions; that the Greek Islands—except Corcyra, which the English must keep as a naval station—with Thessaly, and part of Thrace and Macedonia, must be added to it before it could be free from that spirit of petty intrigue which is the great vice of small governments. This is intelligible; because the population included under such an extended Greek kingdom would, by a great predominance both of numbers and moral forces, be essentially Greek. But when it is proposed seriously to revive a Byzantine empire, Greek merely in name, and comprising such large sections of a non-Hellenic population as Servia, for instance, and Bulgaria, then, we confess, we feel staggered; and all the historic analogies which Sir Archibald Alison so skilfully presses into his service will not give wings to our drooping faith. The best-instructed man with whom we ever conversed on the subject—Dr George Finlay, who has lived among the Greeks all his life—declares that such a combination is impossible: the principle of cohesion is too weak, that of repulsion too strong: the splendid aggregate would fall to pieces in a few years; and out of the confused elements a new compulsory crystallisation take place under the influence—very likely—of Russian polarity. Sir Archibald Alison himself, in one of the phrases which he accidentally drops, seems to admit the truth of this view. “Diversity of race,” he says, “so far from being an element of weakness, is, when duly coerced, the most prolific source of strength.” Very true, when duly coerced; but it is this very principle of coercion that would not exist in the supposed Byzantine empire; and could exist only, according to one of Sir A. Alison’s own analogies, through the violent subjection of all the other races by the one that happened to be strongest; for so it was, as Livy shows in bloody detail, that the different races of Italy were coerced into a grand national unity by the Roman Latins. But even after all that bloody cementing, the aggregate of the Italian States, as no one knows better than Sir Archibald Alison, was kept together by the loosest possible cohesion; as the terrible outburst of the Marsic or Social war testifies, which well-nigh split Italy into two, at a time when Julius Cæsar, its future master, had not yet begun to trim his beard. He certainly, the lion, and his nephew Augustus, the fox after him, did use the bloody cement successfully, and exercised a strong coercion, the effect of which is visible even now among the again-divided possessors of the Italian soil; such a coercion as the present Czar of Russia might perhaps at the present moment be in the fair way of exercising for the sake of the Orthodox Church, had Sir Archibald Alison’s Byzantine empire been patched together with a few purple rags in the year 1828. Or again, to take another of his analogies, has Sir Archibald Alison forgotten what was the state of Greece, not anterior to, but immediately after the Persian invasion?—did it not plunge at once into all the pettiness of provincial rivalry? and was not the great Peloponnesian war a speaking proof, that there were no elements of cohesion even among pure Greeks, and in the best days of Greece, strong enough to keep that unfortunate country from consuming its own vitals in civil war, and becoming, by voluntary self-betrayal, first the scoff of the Persian, and then the prey of the Macedonian?—With these examples before us, we cannot but consider ourselves more near the truth in following the practical statesmen who declared that the new Greek kingdom should be confined within the limits where the insurrection had chiefly raged, and where the battle had been fought. Sober politicians could not but look upon the whole affair as experimental; and whatever arguments may in the course of events be advanced for an expansion of the limits of the existing monarchy, no person practically acquainted with the events of Greek government, or rather misgovernment, since the creation of Otho’s kingdom in 1832, can imagine that the evils under which the country has groaned would have been less, had Thessaly and Macedonia been at that time included within the Hellenic border. We should still have had German bureaucracy, French constitutionalism, Fanariete intrigue, Ætolian brigandage, and modern diplomacy, thrown together to brew a devil’s soup of jobbery, and falsehood, and feebleness, over which the wisest man can only hold up his hands, and with a hopeless wonderment exclaim—

“Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”

In conclusion, we need hardly say that we cannot agree with Sir A. Alison when he states, so strongly as he does in the last paragraph, that “already the warmest hopes of the friends of Greece have been realised; and all the signs of advancing prosperity are to be seen in the land.” It is a great mistake to imagine that the country is really in a prosperous state because Athens has trebled its population in thirty years. Athens has a well-furnished and rather a flourishing appearance, for the same reason that Nauplia looks out upon the beautiful Bay of Argos in such a state of woeful dismantlement and dilapidation: the court has left the Argive city, and travelled to the Attic; and all the gilded gingerbread, which you call prosperity, has gone with it. Let no man be hasty to draw sanguine promises of Greek prosperity from anything good or glittering that may delight his eyes in the streets of Athens. That splendid palace of the little German prince, now called King of Greece, with its fine well-watered gardens without, and its fine pictures within, and its large dancing-saloon, the wonder even of London beauties—this palace was a mere toy of the boy’s poetical papa, and has no more to do with the progress of real prosperity in Greece than a wax-doll has to do with life and organisation. Nay, it may be most certainly affirmed, that not a small part of that sudden growth of the capital of Greece is, with reference to the country at large, a positive evil, a brilliant excrescence, which owes its existence altogether to the artificial attraction of the nutritive fluids of the body politic to one prominent point, while the largest and most useful limbs are left without their natural supply. If there are shining white palaces, and green Venetian blinds, in one Greek city, there is desolation and dreariness, stagnation and every sort of barbarism, in the fields. But “commerce flourishes;” it has doubled, says Sir A. Alison, since the battle of Navarino. Be it so. Patras is a goodly city, preferable, in some points, to Athens, we think; but were there not rich merchants at Hydra before the Revolution? and are the Greeks at Patras more prosperous than at Salonica, at Odessa, at Trieste, at Leghorn, at Manchester? There were always clever merchants among the Greeks, just as generally as there are sharp bankers and money-changers among Jews and Armenians. We would by no means despair of Young Greece; there is much to admire in her, especially her schools, university, and the wonderful culture of her deathless language in its most recent shape; and only in a fit of foolish pettishness would any Englishman entertain the thought of blotting her again out of the map of nations, for any of the many sins she has committed, whether by her own fault, or—what we suspect to be the real truth—by the ignorant and officious agency of German bureaucratists, Anglo-French constitutionalists, and Muscovite diplomatists. Nevertheless, in so slippery a science as politics, and with creatures so difficult to manage as human beings, it is always better to avoid the temptation of drawing panoramic pictures in rose colour; and with regard to Greece, a country to which humanity owes so much, our first duty, in the present very critical state of Europe, is to look soberly at a reality full of perilous problems, and to possess our souls in patience.

STUDENT LIFE IN SCOTLAND.

If the latest lingering summer tourist in Scotland should perchance delay his departure until he is driven southward by the chill evenings of November, he may chance to see arising around him, in some considerable town, a race of young men, whose loose robes, varying from the brightest of fresh scarlet to the sombrest hue which years of bad usage can bestow on that gay colour, attract him as peculiar and funny, and as, on the whole, a phenomenon provocative of inquiry. He is told that the session has begun, and these are the students of the university. The information will perhaps be surprising to him, whoever he be: if he be an Oxonian or Cantab, a sneer of derision will perhaps curve his lips when he remembers the gentleman commoners, and tufted noblemen, who crowd the streets of his Alma Mater in haughty exclusiveness and unmeasured contempt of the citizen class, who evidently have no respect whatever for the scarlet gown men of poor Scotland. Indeed, the luxurious academic ease, the placid repose of dignified scholarship, are strangers to these wearers of the flowing toga. It is evident that many of them have felt the pinch of poverty. No pliant gyp attends the toilet, or lays forth the table for the jovial “night-cap.” Hard work and hard fare are their portion, and their raiment shows that they have been rubbed roughly against the world, instead of being set apart from its toils and cares and vulgar turmoil in aristocratic isolation. Some of the gowns are bright and new, indeed, and the faces in which they culminate are ruddy, fresh, and warm. Yet the youths endowed in these blushing honours seem not to exult therein, but rather to give place to the hard-featured brethren, whose threadbare togas bear the grim marks of mud and soot, or hang in tatters like a beggar’s cloak. The truth is, that the wear and tear of the gown is held indicative of advancement in the academic curriculum, and is rather encouraged than avoided. And of those who wear it, many, though they may have been sufficiently tutored in the economy of their more serviceable clothing, have not made acquisitions in the school of finery, or acquired a weakness for decorative vanity. We remember an instance of a hard-featured mountaineer, who afterwards rose to distinction in an abstruse department of science, being charged by his fellow-students with having so far desecrated the gown as to have perambulated the streets with a barrow hawking potatoes, by the cry of “Taties—taties!” He admitted the commercial part of the charge, but denied the admixture of potato-vender and student by the desecration of the robes. He was careful to put off his gown while he cried “taties.”

With all these and other indications of poverty, there is something to our eyes extremely interesting in the Scottish universities, as relics preserved through all changes in dynasties, constitutions, and ecclesiastical polities, through poverty, neglect, and enmity, of the original characteristics of the university system, as it existed in all its grandeur of design in the middle ages.

A collection of remarkable papers, now before us, opens up and presents, in valuable and full light, the progress of a portion of our Scottish universities. They consist of two works of that class commonly called “Club Books.” The one is a collection of records and other documents connected with the University of Glasgow, printed under the auspices of the Maitland Club; the other a “Fasti Aberdonenses,” appropriately collected by that northern association which, in honour of the Cavalier annalist of “The Troubles,” is called the “Spalding Club.” Both works are edited with that peculiar archæological strictness which has been applied to this class of documents, through the special skill of Mr Cosmo Innes. They are both edited by him, with some partial aid, in the case of the Glasgow documents, from his ablest coadjutor in Scottish archæology, Mr Joseph Robertson. These volumes form a very apt supplement to that collection of ecclesiastical records which, arranged and printed under the same able management, are an honour to our country. With the exception of their curious and agreeable prefaces, neither the chartularies nor the volumes before us profess to be readable books. They are collections of records, and must have all the substantial dryness of records. But then they contain in themselves the materials of the social and incidental history of the classes of persons to which they refer, and contain imbedded within them the materials of instruction, both valuable and curious. With some labour we have driven shafts through their strata, and we may have occasion to lay before our readers a few of the specimens we have excavated—confining ourselves, in the mean time, to the characteristics developed by the collection of documents.

The direction of these is chiefly to show how thoroughly these remote institutions partook in the great system of the European universities, and how many of its vestiges they still retain. The forms, the nomenclature, and the usages of the middle ages are still preserved, though some of them have naturally changed their character with the shifting of the times. Each university has still its chancellor, and sometimes a high State dignitary accepts of the office. It was of old a very peculiar one, for it was the link which allied the semi-republican institutions of the universities to the hierarchy of St Peter. The bishop was almost invariably the chancellor, unless the university were subordinated to some great monastic institution, when its head was the chancellor—as in Paris the Prior of St Genevieve exercised the high office. In the Scottish universities the usual Continental arrangement seems to have been adopted prior to the Reformation—as a matter of course, the bishop was the chancellor.

But while the institution was thus connected through a high dignitary with the Romish hierarchy, it possessed, as a great literary community with peculiar privileges, its own great officer electively chosen for the preservation of those privileges. It had its rector, who, like the chief magistrate of a municipal corporation, but infinitely above him in the more illustrious character of the functions for which his constituents were incorporated, stood forth as the head of his republic, and its protector from the invasions either of the subtle churchmen or the grasping barons. The rector, indeed, was the concentration of that peculiar commonwealth which the constitution of the ancient university prescribed. Sir William Hamilton has shown pretty clearly that, in its original acceptation, the word Universitas was applied, not to the comprehensiveness of the studies, but to that of the local and personal expansion of the institution. The university despised the bounds of provinces, and even nations, and was a place where ardent minds from all parts of the world met to study together, and impart to each other the influence of collective intellect working in combination and competition. The constitution of the rectorship was calculated to provide for the protection of this universality, for the election was managed by the procurators or proctors of the nations or local bodies into which the students were divided, generally for the purpose of neutralising the naturally superior influence of the home students, and keeping up the cosmopolitan character imparted to the system by its enlightened founders. Hence in Paris the nations were France, Picardy, and England, afterwards changed to Germany, in which Scotland was included. Glasgow is still divided into four nations: the Natio Glottiana, or Clydesdale, taken from the name given to the river by Tacitus. In the Natio Laudoniana were originally included the rest of Scotland, but it was found expedient to place the English and the colonists within it; while Albania, intended to include Britain south of the Forth, has been made rather inaptly the nation of the foreigners. Rothesay, the fourth nation, includes the extreme west of Scotland and Ireland. In Aberdeen there is a like division into Marenses, or inhabitants of Mar, Angusiani or men of Angus, which we believe includes the whole world south of the Grampians as the Angusiani, while the northern districts are partitioned into Buchanenses and Moravienses.

The procurators of the nations were, in the University of Paris, those high authorities to whom, as far separated from all sublunary influences, King Henry of England proposed, in the twelfth century, to refer his disputes with the Papal power. In England they are represented at the present day by the formidable proctor, who is a terror to evil-doers without being any praise or protection to them that do well. But it may safely be said that the chubby youths who in Glasgow and Aberdeen go through the annual ceremony, as procuratores nationum, of representing the votes of the nations in the election of a rector, more legitimately represent those procurators of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, who maintained the rights of their respective nations in the great intellectual republic called a Universitas. The discovery, indeed, of this latent power, long hidden, like some palæontological fossil, under the pedagogical innovations of modern days—which tended to make the self-governing institution a school ruled by masters—created astonishment in all quarters, even in those who found themselves in possession of the privilege. In Aberdeen especially, when some mischievous antiquary maintained that by the charter the election of a lord rector lay with the students themselves, the announcement was received with derision by a discerning public, and with a severe frown, as a sort of seditious libel, enticing the youth to rebellion, by the indignant professors. But it turned out to be absolutely true, however astounding it might be to those who are unacquainted with the early history of universities, and think that everything ancient must have been tyrannical and hierarchical. The young ones made a sort of saturnalia of their fugitive power, while the professors looked on as one may see a solemn mastiff contemplate the gambols of a litter of privileged spaniel pups. The privilege was, however, used effectively, we may say nobly. There has been no fogyism, or adherence to any settled routine of humdrum respectability, in the selection of the rectors. From Burke to Bulwer Lytton and Macaulay, they have, with a few exceptions, been men of the first intellectual rank. What is a still more remarkable result than that they should often have been men of genius, there is scarcely an instance of a lord rector having been a clamorous quack or a canting fanatic.

In Edinburgh there is no such relic of the ancient university commonwealth, and the students have instinctively supplied the want by affiliating their voluntary societies, and choosing a distinguished man to be the president of the aggregate group. The constitution of the College of Edinburgh, indeed, was not matured until after the old constitution of the universities had suffered a reaction, and, far from any new ones being constructed on the old model, the earlier universities with difficulty preserved their constitution. Some person called a College Bailie is the dignitary who presides over the interests of the University of Edinburgh as one of the appendages of the Town Council. By that body the greater part of the patronage of the institution is administered, and now it is decided that they have the sole and absolute right of making bye-laws for the regulation of this, the leading educational institution of Scotland. There is something transcendently ludicrous in a civic corporation—a conclave of demure tradesmen, intensely respectable—extending those functions of administration which are appropriately applicable to marketing and street-cleaning to the direction and adjustment of the highest ranges of human instruction. Yet somehow it has worked well, on account of the very anomaly involved in it. The town-councillors, in selecting a professor, like the students in choosing a rector, are afraid of their own powers, and never venture to use their own discretion. Absolutely ignorant of the branches of knowledge to which the rules they frame apply, they become a medium through which these rules are moulded by others, and a certain commercial sagacity enables them to divine who are the most sagacious advisers. So also in the exercise of their patronage, being utterly unable to test the capacity of a candidate, they dare not give way to any partiality founded at least on this ground, and they are generally acute enough to find out who is most highly estimated by those who are competent to judge.

That principle of internal self-action and independence of the contemporary constituted powers, of which the rectorship and some other relics remain to us at this day, is one of the most remarkable, and in many respects admirable, features in the history of the middle ages. It is involved in mysteries and contradictions which one would be glad to see unravelled by skilful and full inquirers. Adapted to the service of pure knowledge, and investing her with absolute prerogatives, the system was yet one of the creatures of that Romish hierarchy, which at the same time thought by other efforts to circumscribe human inquiry, and make it the servant of her own ambitious efforts.

It may help us in some measure to the solution of the phenomenon to remember that, however dim the light of the Church may have shone, it was yet the representative of the intellectual system, and was in that capacity carrying on a war with brute force. Catholicism was the great rival and controller of the feudal strength and tyranny of the age—informe ingens cui lumen ademptum. As intellect and knowledge were the weapons with which they encountered the sightless colossus, it was believed that the intellectual arsenals could not be too extensive or complete—that intellect could not be too richly cultivated. Like many combatants, they perhaps forgot future results in the desire of immediate victory, and were for the moment blind to the effect so nervously apprehended by their successors, that the light thus brought in by them would illuminate the dark corners of their own ecclesiastical system, and lead the way to its fall. Perhaps such hardy intellects as Abelard or Aquinas may have anticipated such a result from the stimulus given by them to intellectual inquiry, and may not have deeply lamented the process.

But however it came about—whether in the blindness of all, or the far-sightedness of some—the Church, from the thirteenth to pretty far on in the fifteenth century, encouraged learning with a noble reliance and a zealous energy which it would ill become the present age to despise or forget. And even if it should all have proceeded from a blind confidence that the Church placed on a rock was unassailable, and that mere human wisdom, even trained to the utmost of its powers, was, after all, to be nothing but her handmaiden, let us respect this unconscious simplicity which enabled the educational institutions to be placed in so high and trusted a position. The Church supplied something then, indeed, which we search after in vain in the present day, and which we shall only achieve by some great strides in academic organisation, capable of supplying from within what was then supplied from without: and the quality thus supplied was no less than that cosmopolitan nature, which made the university not merely parochial, or merely national, but universal, as its name denoted. The temporal prince might endow the academy with lands and riches, and might confer upon its members honourable and lucrative privileges, but it was to the head of the one indivisible Church that the power belonged of franking it all over Christendom, and establishing throughout the civilised world a free-masonry of intellect, which made all the universities, as it were, one great corporation of the learned men of the world.

It must be admitted that we have here one of those practical difficulties which form the necessary price of the freedom of Protestantism. When a great portion of Europe was no longer attached to Rome, the peculiar centralisation of the educational systems was broken up. The old universities, indeed, retained their ancient privileges in a traditional, if not a practically legal shape, through Lutheranism and Calvinism carrying the characteristics of the abjured Romanism, yet carrying them unscathed, since they were protected from injury and insult by the enlightened object for which they were established and endowed. When, however, in Protestant countries, the old universities became poor, or when a change of condition demanded the foundation of a new university, it was difficult to restore anything so simple and grand as that old community of privileges which made the member of one university a citizen of all others, according to his rank, whether he were laureated in Paris or distant Upsala—in the gorgeous academies close to the fostering influence of the Pope, or in that humble edifice endowed after the model of the University of Bologna, in an obscure Scottish town named Glasgow.

The English universities, by their great wealth and political influence, were able to stand alone, neither giving nor taking. Their Scottish contemporaries, unable to fight a like battle, have had reason to complain of their ungenerous isolation; and as children of the same parentage, and differing only with their southern neighbours in not having so much worldly prosperity, it is natural that they should look back with a sigh, which even orthodox Presbyterianism cannot suppress, to the time when the universal mental sway of Rome, however offensive it might be in its own insolent supremacy, yet exercised that high privilege of supereminent greatness to level secondary inequalities, and place those whom it favoured beyond the reach of conventional humiliations.

To keep up that characteristic which the Popedom only offered, the monarchs of the larger Protestant states have endeavoured to apply the incorporation principle to universities. In small states and republics the difficulty of obtaining a general sanction to frank their honours to any distance from the place where they are given is still greater; yet it is in such places that, through fortunate coincidents, an academy sometimes acquires a widespread reputation and influence. To what eminence the universities in the United States are destined who shall predict? yet, in the estimate of many, they have no right to be called universities at all; and of the doctors’ degrees which they freely distribute in this country, much doubt is entertained of the genuineness. Yet if it would be difficult to lay down how it is that these American institutions have acquired any power to grant degrees—that is to say, the power not only to confer prizes and rewards among their own alumni, but to invest them with insignia of literary rank current for their value over the world—it would be equally difficult for any of the ancient universities in Protestant states to claim an exclusive right to such a power, since this could only be done through Papal authority. It will be said that there is just the same practical difficulty in this as in all other departments of human institutions, and especially those which, like rank, are transferable from country to country, so as to require and obtain an estimate of their value in each. It will be said that the exclusiveness which denies the Heidelberg Doctor of Philosophy a parallel with the LL.D. of Oxford is just the same as that which will by no means admit the count or baron who is deputy-assistant highways controller, as on a par with an earl or baron in the peerage of England. The Kammer Junker of Denmark is not looked on as a privy-councillor. The Sheriff of Mecca, the Sheriff of London, and the Sheriff of Edinburgh, are three totally different personages, and would feel very much puzzled how to act if they were to change places for a while. Some Eastern dignitaries—Baboo, Fudky, and the like, must occasionally puzzle even the adepts of Leadenhall. Nor are we without our instances near at hand. What is the Knight of Kerry, what the Captain of Clanranald, what The Chisholm—and how do the authorities at the Herald’s Office deal with them? Has not an Archbishop of York been suspected of imposture in a Scottish bank when he signed with the surname of Eborac; and have not our Scottish judges, with their strange-sounding peerage-titles, made mighty confusion in respectable English hotels, when my Lord Kames is so intimate with Mrs Home, and my Lord Auchinleck retires with Mrs Boswell? But admitting the confusion to be irremediable in the department of political and decorative rank, the absence of a uniform intellectual hierarchy is not the less to be regretted, while the great effort made to secure it in an early and imperfect condition of society should be contemplated with a respectful awe. There is just one man who professes to be able effectually to restore it—the sage of positivism, M. Comte; and he is to do it when he has established absolute science in everything, and put down freedom of opinion by the application of sure scientific deduction in every department of the world’s intellectual pursuits; when it shall be as impossible to question the most abstruse propositions in chemistry, geology, or social organisation, as to question the multiplication table or the succession of the tides—then, indeed, may absolute laws be laid down to govern the world in its appreciation of intellectual rank. But it is long yet ere that day of certain knowledge—if it is ever destined to dawn on that poor, blundering, unfortunate fellow, man. We have got but a very, very little way yet, and we know not how much farther it is permitted us to penetrate. Terrible are the chaotic heaps that have to be cleared away or set in order by the pioneers of intellect, and it is still a question whether our race can provide those who are strong-headed enough for the task.

There is much truth, however, at the foundation of the French sage’s audacious speculations, that intellect must achieve for herself her own conquests and take her own position. In the greatness of the acquirements of which they are the nursery, must we look hereafter to the greatness of our seminaries of learning. If the university is but a grammar school or a collection of popular lecture-rooms, no royal decrees or republican ordinances will give it rank—if it be a great centre of literary and scientific illumination, the pride or enmity of its rivals will not tarnish its lustre. But apart from, the question between catholicity and positivity, it is, we think, very interesting to notice in our universities—humble as we admit them to be—the relics of the nomenclature and customs which, in the fifteenth century, marked their rank in the great European cluster of universities. The most eminent of their characteristics is that high officer, the Rector, already spoken of. There is a Censor too—but for all the grandeur of his etymological ancestry in Roman history, he is but a small officer—in stature sometimes, as well as dignity. He calls over the catalogue or roll of names, marking those absent—a duty quite in keeping with that enumerating function of the Roman officer which has left to us the word census as a numbering of the people.

So lately as the eighteenth century, when the monastic or collegiate system which has now so totally disappeared from the Scottish universities yet lingered about them, the censor was a more important, or at least more laborious officer, and, oddly enough, he corresponded in some measure with the character into which, in England, the Proctor had been so strangely diverted. In a regulation adopted in Glasgow, in 1725, it is provided “that all students be obliged, after the bells ring, immediately to repair to their classes, and to keep within them, and a censor be appointed to every class, to attend from the ringing of the bells till the several masters come to their classes, and observe any, either of his own class or of any other, who shall be found walking in the courts during the above time, or standing on the stairs, or looking out at the windows, or making noise.”—Munimenta Univ. Glasguensis, ii. 429. This has something of the mere schoolroom characteristic of our modern university discipline, but this other paragraph, from the same set of regulations, is indicative both of more mature vices among the precocious youth of Glasgow, and a more inquisitorial corrective organisation:—

“That for keeping order without the College, a censor be appointed to observe any who shall be in the streets before the bells ring, and to go now and then to the billiard-tables, and to the other gaming-places, to observe if any be playing at the times when they ought to be in their chambers; and that this censor be taken from the poor scholars of the several classes alternately, as they shall be thought most fit for that office, and that some reward be thought of for their pains.” (Ibid., 425). In the fierce street-conflicts, to which we may have occasion to refer, the poor censors had a more perilous service.

In the universities of Central Europe, and that of Paris, their parent, the censor was a very important person; yet he was the subordinate of one far greater in power and influence. In the words of the writers of the Trevaux, so full of knowledge about such matters, “Un Régent est dans sa classe comme un Souverain; il crée des charges de Censeurs comme il lui plait, il les donne à qui il veut, et il les abolit quand il le judge à propos.” The regents still exist in more than their original potency; for they are that essential invigorating element of the university of the present day, without which it would not exist. Of old, when every magister was entitled to teach in the university, the regents were persons selected from among them, with the powers of government as separate from the capacity and function of instructing; at present, in so far as the university is a school, the regent is a schoolmaster—and therefore, as we have just said, he is an essential element of the establishment. The term regent, like most of the other university distinctions, was originally of Parisian nomenclature, and there might be adduced a good deal of learning bearing on its signification as distinct from that of the word professor—now so desecrated in its use that we are most familiar with it in connection with dancing-schools, jugglers’ booths, and veterinary surgeries. The regency, as a university distinction conferred as a reward of capacities shown within the arena of the university, and judged of according to its republican principles, seems to have lingered in a rather confused shape in our Scottish universities, and to have gradually ingrafted itself on the patronage of the professorships. So in reference to Glasgow, immediately after the Revolution, when there was a vacancy or two from Episcopalians declining to take the obligation to acknowledge the new Church Establishment, there appears the following notice:—

“January 2, 1691.—There had never been so solemn and numerous an appearance of disputants for a regent’s place as was for fourteen days before this, nine candidates disputing; and in all their disputes and other exercises they all behaved themselves so well, as that the Faculty judged there was not one of them but gave such specimens of their learning as might deserve the place, which occasioned so great difficulty in the choice that the Faculty, choosing a leet of some of them who seemed most to excel and be fittest, did determine the same by lot, which the Faculty did solemnly go about, and the lot fell upon Mr John Law, who thereupon was this day established regent.”—Ibid., vol. iii. p. 596.

Sir William Hamilton explains the position of the regents with a lucid precision which makes his statement correspond precisely with the documentary stores before us. “In the original constitution of Oxford,” he says, “as in that of all the older universities of the Parisian model, the business of instruction was not confided to a special body of privileged professors. The University was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, master, doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty and to the rank of his degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty—for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself. The bachelor, or imperfect graduate, partly as an exercise towards the higher honour, and useful to himself, partly as a performance due for the degree obtained, and of advantage to others, was bound to read under a master or doctor in his faculty a course of lectures; and the master, doctor, or perfect graduate, was in like manner, after his promotion, obliged immediately to commence (incipere), and to continue for a certain period publicly to teach (regere), some at least of the subjects appertaining to his faculty. As, however, it was only necessary for the University to enforce this obligation of public teaching, compulsory on all graduates during the term of their necessary regency, if there did not come forward a competent number of voluntary regents to execute this function; and as the schools belonging to the several faculties, and in which alone all public or ordinary instruction could be delivered, were frequently inadequate to accommodate the multitude of the inceptors, it came to pass that in these universities the original period of necessary regency was once and again abbreviated, and even a dispensation from actual teaching during its continuance commonly allowed. At the same time, as the University only accomplished the end of its existence through its regents, they alone were allowed to enjoy full privileges in its legislature and government; they alone partook of its beneficia and sportulæ. In Paris the non-regent graduates were only assembled on rare and extraordinary occasions: in Oxford the regents constituted the house of congregation, which, among other exclusive prerogatives, was anciently the initiatory assembly through which it behoved that every measure should pass before it could be admitted to the house of convocation, composed indifferently of all regents and non-regents resident in the University.”—Dissertations, p. 391–2.

But the term Regent became afterwards obsolete in the southern universities, while it continued by usage to be applied to a certain class of professors in our own. Along with other purely academic titles and functions, it fell in England before the rising ascendancy of the heads and other functionaries of the collegiate institutions—colleges, halls, inns, and entries. So, in the same way, evaporated the faculties and their deans, still conspicuous in Scottish academic nomenclature. In both quarters they were derived from the all-fruitful nursery of the Parisian University. But Scotland kept and cherished what she obtained from a friend and ally; England despised and forgot the example of an alien and hostile people. The Decanus seems to have been a captain or leader of ten—a sort of tything-man; and Ducange speaks of him as a superintendent of ten monks. He afterwards came into general employment as a sort of chairman and leader. The Doyens of all sorts, lay and ecclesiastical, were a marked feature of ancient France, as they still are of Scotland, where there is a large body of lay deans, from the eminent lawyer who presides over the Faculty of Advocates down to “my feyther the deacon,” who gathers behind a half-door the gear that is to make his son a capitalist and a magistrate. Among the Scottish universities the deans of faculty are still nearly as familiar a title as they were at Paris or Bologna.

The employment in the universities of a dead language as the means of communication was not only a natural arrangement for teaching the familiar use of that language, but it was also evidently courted as one of the tokens of learned isolation from the common illiterate world. In Scotland, as perhaps in some other small countries, such as Holland, the Latin remained as the language of literature after the great nations England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, were making a vernacular literature for themselves. In the seventeenth century the Scot had not been reconciled to the acceptance of the English tongue as his own; nor, indeed, could he employ it either gracefully or accurately. On the other hand, he felt the provincialism of the Lowland Scottish tongue, the ridicule attached to its use in books which happened to cross the Border, and the narrowness of the field it afforded to literary ambition.

Hence every man who looked to be a worker in literature or science, threw himself into the academic practice of cultivating the familiar use of the Latin language. To the Scottish scholars it was almost a revived language, and they possessed as great a command over it as can ever be obtained of a language confined to a class, and not universally used by the lowest as well as the highest of the people. Hence, when he had the pen in hand, the educated Scotsman felt the Latin come more naturally to his call than the vernacular; and people accustomed to rummage among old letters by Scotsmen will have sometimes noticed that the writer, beginning with his native tongue, slips gradually into the employment of Latin as a relief, just as we may find a foreigner abandon the arduous labour of breaking English, to repose himself in the easy fluency of his natural speech. We believe that no language, employed only by a class, is capable of the same copiousness and flexibility as that which is necessarily applicable to all purposes, from the meanest to the highest. But such as a class-language could become, the Latin was among the Scots; and it is to their peculiar position and academic practices that, among a host of distinguished humanists, we possess in George Buchanan the most illustrious writer in the Roman tongue, both in poetry and prose, since the best days of Rome.

The records before us afford some amusing instances of the anxious zeal with which any lapse into the vernacular tongue was prevented, and conversation among the students was rendered as uneasy and unpleasant as possible. In the visitorial regulations of King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1546, it is provided that the attendant boys—the gyps, if we may so call them—shall be expert in the use of Latin, lest they should give occasion to the masters or students to have recourse to the vernacular speech: “Ne dent occasionem magistris et Studentibus lingua vernacula uti.” If Aberdeen supplied a considerable number of waiting-boys thus accomplished, the stranger wandering to that far northern region, in the seventeenth century, might have been as much astonished as the man in Ignoramus, who tested the state of education in Paris by finding that even the dirty boys in the streets were taught French. It would, after all, have perhaps been more difficult to find waiting-boys who could speak English. The term by which they are described is a curious indication of the French habits and traditions of the northern universities: they are spoken of as garciones—a word of obvious origin to any one who has been in a French hotel.

In Glasgow, in a law passed in 1667, it is provided that “all who are delated by the public censor for speaking of English shall be fined in an halfpenny toties quoties.” The sum is not large, but the imposition of the penalty at that particular juncture looks rather unreasonable, since the Senate and the Faculty of Arts had just abandoned the use of Latin in their public documents, and had adopted what, if not strictly English, was the vernacular tongue—a change which was doubtless as much to their own ease as it is to the satisfaction of the reader, who becomes painfully alive to the continued and progressive barbarisation of the academic Latin.

In a great measure, however, it seems to have been less the object in view to inculcate Latin than to discountenance the vernacular language of the country. In some instances the language of France is admitted; and, from the number of Scotsmen who carved out their fortunes in that hospitable and affluent country, this acquisition must have been one of peculiar value. In a set of statutes and laws of the Grammar School of Aberdeen, adopted in 1553, there is a very singular liberty of choice—the pupils might speak in Greek, Hebrew, or even in Gaelic, rather than in Lowland Scots: “Loquantur omnes Latinè, Græcè, Hebraicè, Gallicè, Hybernicè—nunquam vernaculè, saltem cum his qui Latinè noscunt.” This is by no means to be held as an indication of the familiar acquaintance of the Aberdonian students with the language of the Gael; on the contrary, it shows how entirely this was placed within the category of foreign tongues. We know no other instances in which the tongue of the Highlander is spoken of in connection with the earlier educational institutions of the country; but we think it not improbable that any encouragement it received was for much the same reason that Hindostanee and the African dialects are now sometimes taught to young divines—that they may work as missionaries among the heathen. A few students from this wild region, to which Christianity had scarcely penetrated, were indeed a peculiar feature of the educational institutions of Aberdeen, and in a modified shape so remain to this day, since some wild men from the hills, spending a brief period at school or college to acquire a fragment of education, are yet known by the term extranni, of old applied to them. There is a prevailing, but utterly false impression, that Aberdeen is in the Highlands. It lingers chiefly, in the present century, with Cockneys beginning their first northern tour; but in the seventeenth century it may, perhaps, have been entertained even in the metropolis of Scotland. Hence the educational institutions there, though at the extremity of a long tract of agricultural lowland, inhabited by a Teutonic people, and farther separated from the actual Celtic line than Edinburgh itself, are generally talked of in old documents as those which are peculiarly available for the civilisation of the Highlanders. Glasgow was nearer and more accessible to the great body of the western Celts; but in this town the prejudices against them were greater, and the alienation, especially in religion, was more emphatic. It was to Aberdeen then, generally, that the son of a predatory chief would be sent, to fit him in some measure for converse with the civilised world, such as it then was; and the fierce owner of a despotic power over his clansmen would appear among the sober burgesses of the northern metropolis much as an American chief may among the inhabitants of some distant city in the Union. Lovat studied at King’s College, in Aberdeen, and there acquired a portion of those accomplishments which made him act the subtle courtier in Paris or London, and reserve his sanguinary ruffianism for Castle Dunie. Not unmindful of the benefits of the institution, some of the Celtic princes bestowed endowments on it. Thus, the Laird of Macintosh, who begins in the true regal style, “We, Lachlan Macintosh of that ilk,” and who calls himself the Chief and Principall of the Clan Chattan—probably using the term which he thought would be the most likely to make his supremacy intelligible to university dignitaries—dispenses to the King’s College two thousand marks, “for maintaining hopeful students thereat.” He reserves, however, a dynastic control over the endowment, making it conducive to the clan discipline and the support of the hierarchy surrounding the chief. It was a condition that the beneficiary should be presented “by the lairds of Macintosh successively in all time coming; that a youth of the name of Macintosh or of Clan Chattan shall be preferred to those of any other name,” &c.—Fasti, 206. This document is titled in the records, “Macintosh’s Mortification,” according to a peculiar technical application of that expression in Scotland, to the perpetuity of possession which in England is termed mortmain. Later in the eighteenth century, M‘Lean of Coll causes another mortification to be “applied towards the maintenance and education of such young man or boy of the name of M‘Lean as shall be recommended by me, or my heirs or successors on the estate of Coll.” This is probably the same Highland potentate who frowned so savagely on young Colman, when he, seeing an old gentleman familiarly called Coll by his contemporaries, addressed him as Mr Coll. Such a solecism would never be permitted to pass as an accidental mistake, since it would be utterly impossible to convince the mighty chief of Coll that there existed in this world a person ignorant enough to be unacquainted with his style and title. At a still later date, a bequest is more gracefully made by Sir John M‘Pherson: “In testimony of my gratitude to the University of Old Aberdeen, I bequeath to ditto, so as to afford an annual bursary to any Highland student who may be selected to receive the said bursary, two thousand five hundred pounds of my Carnatic stock.”

Here there is a wider range of application, but still the endowment is to a Highland student. Nor, after all, when the social state of the Highlanders is considered, can we wonder that their gentry should seek to preserve the wealth which they are constrained to deposit in the hands of the stranger for their own people. Occasionally, at the present day, some wild wiry M‘Lean or M‘Dougal makes his appearance, by command of the chief, at the proper time and place, to claim investment in the clan bursary. Other of these endowments are of restricted application, being exclusively appropriated to students of a special name, such as Smith or Thomson, or born in a special parish, or descended from members of some corporation. In general, however, these endowments—some of them of very ancient date—are open to free universal competition, and are in this shape one of the most interesting and remarkable specimens of the ancient literary republics, in which each man fought with his brains, and held what his brains could achieve for him. Annually, at the competition for bursaries in Aberdeen, there assembles a varied group of intellectual gladiators—long red-haired Highlanders, who feel trousers and shoes an infringement of the liberty of the subject—square-built Lowland farmers—flaxen-haired Orcadians, and pale citizens’ sons, vibrating between scholarship and the tailor’s board or the shoemaker’s last. Grim and silent they sit for a day, rendering into Latin an English essay, and drop away one by one, depositing with the judges the evidence of success or failure as the case may be. The thing is very fairly and impartially managed, and honourable to all the parties concerned.

It is indeed, as we have hinted, a relic of the old competitive spirit which distinguished the universities as literal republics of letters, where each man fought his own battle, and gained and wore his own laurels. Nor was his arena confined to his own college. The free-masonry we have already alluded to opened every honour and emolument to all, and the Scotsman might suddenly enter the lists at Paris, Bologna, or Upsala, or the Spaniard might compete in Glasgow or Aberdeen. The records before us contain many forms in which the ancient spirit has now ceased to breathe. Already has been mentioned the competition for the regentship. The old form of the Impugnment of Theses, so renowned in literary histories, has died away as a portion of the ordinary laureation. The comprehensive challenges and corresponding victories attributed to the Admirable Crichton give this practice a peculiar interest in the eyes of Scotsmen; and it has a great place in the annals of the Reformation, since one of its main stages was the posting the twenty-five theses on the door of the church of Würtemberg by Luther. But in reading these remarkable events people are apt to forget the commonness of the practice; and Crichton has the aspect of a preposterous intellectual bully going out of his proper way to attract notice, instead of doing what was in its time and circumstances as ordinary and common sense an act as running a tilt, joining a crusade, or burning a witch. Goldsmith, in that account of the intellectual vagabond which so evidently describes himself, has noticed some relics of the practice as he found it on the Continent. “In all the universities and convents there are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my way towards England.” A collection of German pamphlets, amounting, it is said, to upwards of a hundred thousand, and called the Dietrich Collection, was some years ago purchased by the Faculty of Advocates, and was found to consist chiefly of the academic theses in which the scholars of Germany—illustrious and obscure—had been disputing for centuries. In the same place, by the way, where this vast collection reposes, may be found the most complete living illustration of the old form of impugnment. The anxious litigant or busy agent entering the main door of the Parliament House at 9 o’clock of a morning, may find, by an affiche to the door-post, that there is to be a disputatio juridica under the auspices of the inclytus Diaconus facultatis. Since the year 1693 it has been the practice of each intrant to undergo public impugnment, or, as the act of Faculty says, “the publict tryall of candidates, by printing and publishing theses on the subject assigned with corollaries, as it is observed amongst other nations.” A title of the Pandects is assigned on each occasion. Thus the Faculty possesses more than one running commentary upon that celebrated collection; and it has always been deemed remarkable that, considering the number and varied talent of the authors of these theses, they should be so uniform in their Latinity and structure. A great innovation has lately taken place in sparing the cost of printing the theses, and applying the amount so saved to the Faculty’s magnificent library.

Many of the old university theses are very interesting as the youthful efforts of men who have subsequently become eminent. Those connected with Aberdeen are apparently the most numerous. It is very noticeable, indeed, that in the remote rival institutions there established, the spirit and practice of the Continental universities, in almost every department, had their most tenacious existence. As in England, the Church of Rome was succeeded there, not by Presbyterianism but Episcopacy, and there were fewer changes in all old habits and institutions. The celebrated “Aberdeen doctors,” who carried on a controversy with the Covenanters, met their zealous religionists with something like the old pedantic formality of the academic system of disputation. They resolved the Covenant into a thesis, and impugned it. Of this remarkable group of scholars we have the following notice in Professor Innes’s Preface:—

“Their names are now little known, except to the local antiquary; but no one who has even slightly studied the history of that disturbed time is unacquainted with the collective designation of ‘the Aberdeen Doctors’ bestowed upon the learned ‘querists’ of the ultra-Presbyterian Assembly of 1638, and the most formidable opponents of the Solemn League and Covenant.

“Of these learned divines, Dr Robert Barron had succeeded Bishop Forbes in his parish of Keith, and from thence was brought on the first opportunity to be made Minister of Aberdeen, and afterwards Professor of Divinity in Marischal College. He is best judged by the estimation of his own time, which placed him foremost in philosophy and theology. Bishop Sydserf characterises him as ‘vir in omni scholastica theologia et omni literatura versatissimus:’ ‘A person of incomparable worth and learning,’ says Middleton, ‘he had a clear apprehension of things, and a rare facultie of making the hardest things to be easily understood.’[^[10]] Gordon of Rothiemay says, ‘He was one of those who maintained the unanswerable dispute (in 1638) against the Covenante, which drew upon him both ther envye, hate, and calumneyes; yet so innocently lived and dyed hee, that such as then hated him doo now reverence his memorye, and admire his works.’ Principal Baillie, of the opposite party, speaks of him as ‘a meek and learned person,’ and always with great respect: and Bishop Jeremy Taylor, when writing in 1659 to a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, recommending the choice of books for ‘the beginning of a theological library,’ named two treatises of Barron’s especially, and recommended generally ‘everything of his.’[^[11]] That a man so honoured for his learning and his life should receive the indignities inflicted on Barron after his death, is rather to be held as a mark of the general coarseness of the time, than attributed to the persecuting spirit of any one sect.[^[12]]

“Another of the Aberdeen doctors, William Leslie, was successively Sub-principal and Principal of King’s College. The visitors of 1638 found him worthie of censure, as defective and negligent in his office, but recorded their knowledge that he was ‘ane man of gude literature, lyff, and conversatioun.’[^[13]] ‘He was a man,’ says James Gordon, ‘grave, and austere, and exemplar. The University was happy in having such a light as he, who was eminent in all the sciences above the most of his age.’[^[14]]

“Dr James Sibbald, Minister of St Nicholas, and a Regent in the University, is recorded by the same contemporary: ‘It will not be affirmed by his very enemyes, but that Dr James Sibbald was ane eloquent and painefull preacher, a man godly, and grave, and modest, not tainted with any vice unbeseeming a minister, to whom nothing could in reason be objected, if you call not his ante-covenanting a cryme.’[^[15]] Principal Baillie, while condemning his Arminian doctrines, says—‘The man was, there, of great fame.’

“Dr Alexander Scroggy, minister in the Cathedral Church, first known to the world as thought worthy to contribute to the ‘Funerals’ of his patron and friend, Bishop Forbes,[^[16]] is described in 1640 by Gordon as ‘a man sober, grave, and painefull in his calling;’[^[17]] and by Baillie as ‘ane old man, not verie corrupt, yet perverse in the Covenant and Service-book.’ His obstinacy yielded under the weight of old age and the need of rest, but he is not the more respected for the questionable recantation of all his early opinions.[^[18]]

“Foremost, by common consent, among that body of divines and scholars, was John Forbes, the good bishop’s son. He had studied at King’s College, and, after completing his education in the approved manner by a round of foreign universities, returned to Scotland to take his doctor’s degree, and to be the first professor in the chair of theology, founded and endowed in our University by his father and the clergy of the diocese. Dr John Forbes’s theological works have been appreciated by all critics and students, and have gone some way to remove the reproach of want of learning from the divines of Scotland. His greatest undertaking, the Instructiones historico-theologicæ, which he left unfinished, Bishop Burnett pronounces to be ‘a work which, if he had finished it, and had been suffered to enjoy the privacies of his retirement and study to give us the second volume, had been the greatest treasure of theological learning that perhaps the world has yet received.[^[19]]

“These were the men whom the bishop drew into the centre and heart of the sphere which he had set himself to illuminate; and in a short space of time, by their united endeavours, there grew up around their Cathedral and University a society more learned and accomplished than Scotland had hitherto known, which spread a taste for literature and art beyond the academic circle, and gave a tone of refinement to the great commercial city and its neighbourhood.

“It must be confessed cultivation was not without bias. It would seem that, in proportion as the Presbyterian and Puritan party receded from the learning of some of their first teachers, literature became here, as afterwards in England, the peculiar badge of Episcopacy. With Episcopacy went, hand in hand, the high assertion of royal authority; and influenced as it had been by Bishop Patrick Forbes and his followers, Aberdeen became, and continued for a century to be, not only a centre of northern academic learning, but a little stronghold of loyalty and Episcopacy—the marked seat of high Cavalier politics and anti-Puritan sentiments of religion and church government.

“That there was a dash of pedantry in the learning of that Augustan age of our University, was the misfortune of the age, rather than peculiar to Aberdeen. The literature of Britain and all Europe, except Italy, was still for the most part scholastic, and still to a great degree shrouded in the scholastic dress of a dead language; and we must not wonder that the northern University exacted from her divines and philosophers, even from her historians and poets, that they should use the language of the learned. After all, we owe too much to classical learning to grudge that it should for a time have overshadowed and kept down its legitimate offspring of native literature. ‘We never ought to forget,’ writes one worthy to record the life and learning of Andrew Melville, ‘that the refinement and the science, secular and sacred, with which modern Europe is enriched, must be traced to the revival of ancient literature, and that the hid treasures could not have been laid open and rendered available but for that enthusiasm with which the languages of Greece and Rome were cultivated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.’[^[20]]

“It is not to be questioned that in the literature of that age, and in all departments of it, Aberdeen stood pre-eminent. Clarendon commemorates the ‘many excellent scholars and very learned men under whom the Scotch universities, and especially Aberdeen, flourished.’[^[21]] ‘Bishop Patrick Forbes,’ says Burnet, ‘took such care of the two colleges in his diocese, that they became quickly distinguished from all the rest of Scotland.... They were an honour to the Church, both by their lives and by their learning; and with that excellent temper they seasoned that whole diocese, both clergy and laity, that it continues to this very day very much distinguished from all the rest of Scotland, both for learning, loyalty, and peaceableness.’[^[22]]

“That this was no unfounded boast, as regards one department of learning, has been already shown, in enumerating the learned divines who drew upon Aberdeen the general attention soon after the death of their bishop and master. In secular learning it was no less distinguished. No one excelled Robert Gordon of Straloch in all the accomplishments that honour the country gentleman. Without the common desire of fame or any more sordid motive, he devoted his life and talents to illustrate the history and literature of his country. He was the prime assistant to Scotstarvet in his two great undertakings, the Atlas and the collections of Scotch poetry.[^[23]] The maps of Scotland in the Great Atlas (many of them drawn by himself, and the whole ‘revised’ by him at the earnest entreaty of Charles I.), with the topographical descriptions that accompany them, are among the most valuable contributions ever made by an individual to the physical history of his country. His son, James Gordon, parson of Rothiemay, followed out his father’s great objects with admirable skill, and in two particulars he merits our gratitude even more. He was one of the earliest of our countrymen to study drawing, and to apply it to plans and views of places; and, while he could wield Latin easily, he condescended to write the history of his time in excellent Scotch.

“While these writers were illustrating the history of their country in prose, a crowd of scholars were writing poetry, or, at least, pouring forth innumerable copies of elegant Latin verses. While the two Johnstons were the most distinguished of those poets of Aberdeen, John Leech, once Rector of our University,[^[24]] David Wedderburn, rector of the Grammar School, and many others, wrote and published pleasing Latin verse, which stands the test of criticism. While it cannot be said that such compositions produce on the reader the higher effects of real poetry, they are not without value, if we view them as tests of the cultivation of the society among which they were produced. Arthur Johnston not only addresses elegiacs to the bishop and his doctors, throwing a charming classical air over their abstruser learning, but puts up a petition to the magistrates of the city, or celebrates the charms of Mistress Abernethy, or the embroideries of the Lady Lauderdale—all in choice Latin verse, quite as if the persons whom he addressed appreciated the language of the poet.[^[25]]

“Intelligent and educated strangers, both foreigners and the gentry of the north, were attracted to Aberdeen; and its colleges became the place of education for a higher class of students than had hitherto been accustomed to draw their philosophy from a native source.[^[26]]

“If it was altogether chance, it was a very fortunate accident, which placed in the midst of a society so worthy of commemoration a painter like George Jamiesone, the pupil of Rubens, the first, and, till Raeburn, the only great painter whom Scotland had produced. Though he was a native of Aberdeen, it is not likely that anything but the little court of the bishop could have induced such an artist to prosecute his art in a provincial town. An academic orator in 1630, while boasting of the crowd of distinguished men, natives and strangers, either produced by the University, or brought to Aberdeen by the bishop, was able to point to their pictures ornamenting the hall where his audience were assembled. Knowing by whom these portraits were painted, we cannot but regret that so few are preserved.”[^[27]]

Keeping, however, to the matter of academic impugnment, we shall now turn to an instance of its incidental occurrence in that University, which, from its late origin, was least imbued with the spirit of the Continental system.

The visit of King James to his ancient kingdom in 1617, afforded the half-formed collegiate institution in Edinburgh an opportunity for a rhetorical display, which ended in substantial advantages. Tired with business at Holyrood, and in the enjoyment of full eating and drinking, and “driving our” at his quieter palace of Stirling, he bethought himself of a rhetorical pastime with the professors of the new University, wherein he could not fail to luxuriate in the scholastic quibbling with which his mind was so well crammed, and he was pretty certain of enjoying an ample banquet of success and applause. Hence, as Thomas Crawford the annalist of the institution informs us, “It pleased his majesty to appoint the maisters of the college to attend him at Sterling the 29th day of July, where, in the royal chapel, his majesty, with the flower of the nobility, and many of the most learned men of both nations, were present, a little before five of the clock, and continued with much chearfulness above three hours.”

The display was calculated to be rather appalling to any man who had much diffidence or reserve in his disposition, and hence Charteris, the principal, “being naturally averse from public show, and professor of divinity,” transferred the duty of leading the discussion to Professor Adamson. The form adopted was the good old method of the impugnment of theses, so many being appointed to defend, and so many to impugn; “but they insisted only upon such purposes as were conceived would be most acceptable to the king’s majesty and the auditory.”

The first thesis was better suited for the legislature than an academic body, and there must have been some peculiar reason for bringing it on. It was, “that sheriffs and other inferior magistrates should not be hereditary,” which was oppugned by Professor Lands “with many pretty arguments.” The king was so pleased with the oppugnation, that he turned to the Marquis of Hamilton, hereditary sheriff of Clydesdale, and said, “James, you see your cause lost—and all that can be said for it clearly satisfied and answered.” N.—B. It is just worth noticing that the College and the Marquis were then at feud. There was a question about the possession of the old lodging of the Hamilton family, then constituting a considerable portion of the University edifices. The “gud old nobleman,” his father, had been easily satisfied, but the young man was determined to stand upon his rights, and, though he could not recover possession, get something in the shape of rent or damages; nor would he take the judicious hint that “so honourable a personage would never admit into his thoughts to impoverish the patrimony of the young University, which had been so great an ornament, and so fruitful an instrument of so much good to the whole nation, but rather accept of some honourable acknowledgment of his munificence in bestowing upon the College an honest residence for the muses.” But to return to the impugnment. The next thesis was on local motion, “pressing many things by clear testimonies of Aristotle’s text;” and this passage of literary arms called out one of James’s sallies of pawky persiflage. “These men,” he said, “know Aristotle’s mind as well as himself did while he lived.” The next thesis was on the “Original of Fountains;” and the discussion, much to the purpose, no doubt, was so interesting that it was allowed to go on far beyond the prescribed period, “his majesty himself sometimes speaking for the impugner, and sometimes for the defender, in good Latin, and with much knowledge of the secrets of philosophy.”

Talking is, however, at the best, dry work. His majesty went at last to supper, and no doubt would have what is termed “a wet night.” When up to the proper mark, he sent for the professors, and delivered himself of the following brilliant address:—

“Methinks these gentlemen, by their very names, have been destined for the acts which they have had in hand to-day. Adam was father of all; and, very fitly, Adamson had the first part of this act. The defender is justly called Fairly—his thesis had some fair lies, and he defended them very fairly, and with many fair lies given to the oppugners. And why should not Mr Lands be the first to enter the lands? but now I clearly see that all lands are not barren, for certainly he hath shown a fertile wit. Mr Young is very old in Aristotle. Mr Reed needs not be red with blushing for his acting to-day. Mr King disputed very kingly, and of a kingly purpose, anent the royal supremacy of reason over anger and all passions.” And here his majesty was going to close the encomiums, when some one nudged his elbow, and hinted that he had omitted to notice the modest Charteris; but the royal wit was not abashed, and his concluding impromptu was by no means the least successful of his puns. “Well, his name agreeth very well to his nature; for charters contain much matter, yet say nothing, but put great purposes in men’s mouths.”

Few natures would be churlish enough to resist a genial glow of satisfaction on receiving such pearls of rhetoric scattered among them by a royal hand, and we may believe that the professors were greatly gratified. But, pleased more probably by his own success, the king gave a more substantial mark of his satisfaction, and said, “I am so well satisfied with this day’s exercise, that I will be godfather to the College of Edinburgh, and have it called the College of King James; for after the founding of it had been stopped for sundry years in my minority, so soon as I came to any knowledge, I zealously held hand to it, and caused it to be established; and although I see many look upon it with an evil eye, yet I will have them to know that, having given it this name, I have espoused its quarrel.” And further on in the night, he promised, “that as he had given the College a name, he would also, in time convenient, give it a royal godbairn gift for enlarging the patrimony thereof.”

In the course of the multifarious talk of the evening, a curious and delicate matter was opened up—the difference between the English pronunciation of Latin and the Scottish, which corresponds with that of Europe in general. An English doctor, who must have enjoyed exceptional opinions, or been a master of hypocrisy, praised the readiness and elegancy of his majesty’s Latinity; on which he said, “All the world knows that my maister, Mr George Buchanan, was a great maister in that faculty. I follow his pronunciation both of Latin and Greek, and am sorry that my people of England do not the like, for certainly their pronunciation utterly spoils the grace of these two learned languages; but you see all the university and learned men of Scotland express the true and native pronunciation of both.”[^[28]]

THE INSURRECTION IN SPAIN.

Madrid, July 1854.

Dear Ebony.—Had I known that you would treacherously publish my private communications, and that Maga comes to Madrid, I certainly would have waited until I had quitted this capital, before imparting to you my impressions of it, its inhabitants, and its institutions. I admit that I have but myself to blame for my ignorance of the fact that Maga, whose fame extends to the uttermost parts of the earth, has her regular readers even in Madrid. But you, who must be aware of that fact, are not the less culpable for risking the valuable life of your old ally and contributor. You might have had a little more consideration for your outpost than to expose him to the thrust of an Albacete dagger or Catalan knife, whether dealt under the fifth rib, or treacherously in the back. You should have reflected that my olive-green uniform, with a golden thistle on the black-facings, would naturally betray my quality of Maga’s vedette. Since the 10th of June, date of the Magazine’s arrival in Madrid, my existence has not been worth an hour’s purchase. I have been obliged to strike my tent, pitched in the Puerta del Sol, as the best place for observation, and to picket my charger in the recesses of the Retiro, whose cool shades, I confess, are not altogether to be despised now that the thermometer ranges from 90 to 100 in the shade, and that the streets of this capital resemble nothing so much as limekilns, thanks to dust from demolitions, and to the rays of a sun compared to which the Phœbus of the British Isles is a very feeble impostor. You are, of course, aware of the pleasant peculiarities of the Madrid climate—Siberia in winter and in the wind; the Sahara in summer and in the sun. We are just now in all the delights of the dogdays; a wet brick is sunburned red in half an hour; eggs, placed for ten minutes on the tiles, open for the exit of lively chickens; and Madrid, to avoid calcination, flies to the woods and waves. As I hope soon to follow its example, and shall consequently not be here when your August number arrives, I will venture to send you another epistle, notwithstanding that I have received sundry mysterious warnings that a repetition of my first offence would lead to prompt blood-letting. This time, however, I shall have less to say of the follies and failings of the natives, and more of what has occurred since last I troubled you with my prose. Then I did but glance at politics en passant; now, I propose devoting my whole letter to them. Just one fortnight ago there occurred at Madrid an event so important that I think it best to confine myself to an account of it, and to reserve lighter matters for a future communication. I need hardly say that the event in question is the military insurrection of the 28th of June.

Things had been in rather a queer state here for some time past. As you may possibly, amidst the excitement of the Eastern question, have neglected to follow up the minute intricacies of Spanish politics, I must step back a pace or two, in order to put you au fait. Autumn of last year witnessed the arrival at power of the present ministry, which speedily became far more unpopular than, for some time past, any administration had been. Headed by an unprincipled and unscrupulous adventurer, it recoiled from no illegality or tyranny that might conduce to its own advantage. Defeated in the senate by a large majority, on the memorable railway question, it suspended the session, and began to indulge its hatred of those who assisted in its rebuff. In January of the present year, about a month after the closing of the legislative chambers, some of the most formidable of its opponents, on that occasion and on most others, were ordered into exile. It is customary and legal in Spain for the minister to assign a residence to unemployed officers, whither they are bound to proceed. In those dispositions, the convenience of the officers is usually to a certain extent consulted, but sometimes, especially for political reasons, the contrary is the case, and such assignment of quarters becomes little less than a sentence of banishment. A military man may be authorised to reside in Madrid (the Spaniard’s paradise), or transported to the Philippines, which he would consider purgatory. As most military men of high rank in this country are more or less political characters, either having held office, or hoping some day to find a place in one of the ephemeral Spanish governments (whose existence rarely exceeds a year, and is sometimes limited to a day), and constantly manœuvring to obtain it, they hold it a cruel destiny that consigns them to a colonial abode, or to vegetation in a remote town, far from the capital, that centre of every kind of intrigue. It may be imagined, therefore, with what extreme disgust some of the military chiefs of the Moderado opposition suddenly found themselves ordered to places where they would be at full liberty to study strategy, or play the Cincinnatus in their cabbage gardens, but where they would be forgotten by the world, and powerless to annoy the ministers or to forward their own ambitious views. Generals Leopold O’Donnell, Manuel Concha, José Concha, and Infante (a deserter from the Progresista or liberal party), were the men whose influence and intrigues the Sartorius ministry thus attempted to annul. The two former were ordered to the Canary Islands, the two latter to the Balearics. Manuel Concha and Infante obeyed orders and departed for their destinations; José Concha, by far the cleverer of the brothers, went into France; O’Donnell disappeared, and it was not until some time afterwards that it became known where he was concealed. From the time of these banishments (the latter part of January) may be dated the commencement of the conspiracy which has just broken out in the shape of a military insurrection.

On the 20th of February, the regiment of Cordova, quartered at Saragossa, rose in revolt, headed by its colonel, Brigadier Hore, an officer of merit, who had served in the royal guards during the civil war. Nearly the whole of the garrison, and several officers of high rank, were pledged to support the movement; but some of the latter played the traitor, others hesitated at the very moment when promptness and decision were most necessary; José Concha, who was then concealed in Spain, and expected to start up at Saragossa to head the revolt, did not appear, but soon afterwards presented himself to the authorities of Bordeaux. In short, the whole thing failed. The Cordova regiment was broken up; changes were made in one or two garrisons; a number of arrests, especially of military men and newspaper editors, were made in Madrid; promotions and decorations were lavished upon certain officers, amongst whom were some who had betrayed to death the friends and confederates they had promised to support; the last of the insurgents were driven across the frontier; the government emerged from the brief struggle with renewed strength, and became daily more unconstitutional, arbitrary, and tyrannical.

Within a short time after the incidents I have thus briefly sketched, it was generally reported that the place where the Moderado opposition (noway discouraged by the disaster in Arragon) intended to make their next attempt, was Madrid itself. The conduct of the government in the mean time had certainly been such as to irritate its enemies, and rouse public indignation. No one was safe from the despotic system introduced. Illegal arrests were of frequent occurrence, made without a shadow of a pretext, and whose victims, conscious of no crime, were left to languish in prison, transported to the colonies, or escorted out of Spain. The opposition journals were daily seized, not only for the articles they published, but for the mere news they gave, as there were many things which ministers did not choose to have communicated to the nation except in the falsified version given by their own journals. The Clamor Publico, ably conducted by a staunch and well-known liberal, Don Fernando Corradi; the Nacion, also a Progresista paper, whose editor, Rua Figueroa, still contrived to write in it from the concealment to which an order for his arrest had compelled him; the Diario Español and the Epoca, representing the Moderado opposition, were the chief objects of ministerial oppression and vindictiveness, and day after day their columns were headed with the announcement, that their first edition had been seized by order of the censor. In spite of this persecution, they steadily persevered, opposing the government as well as they might, but prevented from exposing, otherwise than by inference and in a most guarded manner, the scandalous corruption and jobbing of the ministers and the court. Discontent was general, and daily increased. It was asked when the Cortes were to assemble, for only in their discussions did there seem a chance of such expression of public opinion as might alarm and check the men in power. These, however, had no intention of calling together the legislative chambers. They continued to make laws by decree, and to sanction, for the benefit of their friends and adherents, railways and other national works, for which the approval of the Cortes was to be asked at some future day. But that day has not yet come, nor will it come, so long as the present ministry is in office and the Queen-mother supports them, for she dreads, as much as they do, the exposure of the countless iniquitous speculations at the country’s expense, in which she and her husband have been concerned, with the connivance and aid of the government, who thus repaid her for the countenance that often stood them in good stead against the intrigues of the camarilla headed by the Queen’s favourite. Then there were frequent rumours of an approaching coup d’état, on the plan of that of December 1851 in France, or of that, nearly resembling it, which the bravo-Murillo ministry had actually published, but had been unable to carry out. All this time (ever since the outbreak at Saragossa) the whole country was under martial law; no coup d’état could confer upon the government more arbitrary powers than those it already exercised—it could but legalise illegality. The case was vastly different in France and in Spain. In France, after a period of anarchy, succeeded by a conflict of political factions which rendered all government impossible, a man long depreciated, but now generally admitted to be of commanding talent, and, we are justified in believing, of far more patriotic mind than he ever had credit for, cut the knot of the difficulty, at the cost, certainly, of constitutional forms, but, as many now think, for the real benefit of the nation. In Spain, the situation of affairs was quite otherwise. Where was here the vigorous intellect whose judgment, and firmness and foresight were to guide, without assistance and through many perils, the ship of the state. Was it that of the unfortunate, uneducated Queen, who detests business, and passes her life sunk in sloth and sensuality? Was it to be the upstart unscrupulous minister who, by sheer audacity (the most valuable quality for a Spanish politician who seeks but his own aggrandisement), had first crawled and afterwards pushed his way to the head of the royal council-board? Or would the arch-intriguer, Maria Christina, sketch the course her daughter should adopt when converted into an absolute sovereign? No, for her time was too much taken up in adding, at the expense of Spain, to her already incalculable wealth, and in planning marriages for her numerous daughters. In short, to carry into the higher sphere of politics the general and servile imitation of France now observable in Spain, was an idea repugnant to the Spanish nation, and which increased, if possible, the universal discontent that already prevailed—excited by the closing of the chambers, the violence used towards the independent press (which it was evidently intended to crush), the notorious corruption of the administration; the unsatisfactory state of the finances, tending inevitably to some extraordinary exactions from the already over-taxed people; and last, but not least, by the scandalous concessions daily made to the friends and adherents of the ministry, and to those influential persons, the Rianzares, Señor Arana, Mr Salamanca, and others, whose enmity the Sartorius cabinet dared not encounter, and whose support they were compelled to purchase.

It was understood that a military insurrection was contemplated, with O’Donnell at its head. The government affected to make light of the affair, but in reality they were not without uneasiness, for they could not but feel—although they daily had it proclaimed by the hireling Heraldo that they were the saviours of the nation, and the most popular and prosperous of ministries—that they were execrated, and that all classes would rejoice in their downfall. It is difficult to convey to Englishmen—except to those who may be personally acquainted with this singular country and people—a clear idea of the state of political affairs in Madrid during the second quarter of the present year. I must content myself with supplying a few detached facts and details, from which you may, perhaps, form a notion of the whole. For three months conspiracy may be said to have walked the streets of Madrid openly and in broad daylight. Almost every one knew that something was plotting, and a considerable number of persons could have told the names of the chief conspirators, and given some sort of general outline of their plans. O’Donnell, disobeying the orders of the Queen’s government, remained hidden in Madrid, seeing numerous friends, but undiscoverable by the police. He had frequent meetings with his fellow-conspirators; his wife often saw him; for some time, during which he was seriously ill, he was daily visited by one of the first physicians in Madrid; still the government, although most anxious to apprehend him, failed in every attempt to discover his hiding-place, which was known to many. It is rare that the secrets of a conspiracy, when they have been confided to so large a number of persons, have been kept so well and for so long a time as in the present case; but this caution and discretion are easily explicable by the universal hatred felt for the present government and by the strong desire for its fall. The superior police authorities were bitterly blamed by the minister; large sums were placed at their disposal, numerous agents had assigned to them the sole duty of seeking O’Donnell. All was in vain. The government paid these agents well, but O’Donnell, as it afterwards appeared, paid them better. A portion, at least, of the men employed to detect him, watched over his safety. The government, ashamed of its impotence to capture, spread reports that he they sought had left Madrid; and, afterwards, that they knew where he was, but preferred leaving him there and watching his movements to seizing him and sending him out of the country, to prepare, on a foreign soil, revolutionary movements in the provinces of Spain. These ridiculous pretences imposed upon very few. Could the government have apprehended O’Donnell, they might not have dared to shoot him, and might have hesitated permanently to imprison him; but they would not have scrupled to ship him to the Philippines, where he would have done little mischief. The truth was, that they employed every means to discover his hiding-place, and every means proved ineffectual. O’Donnell, I am informed, was concealed in a house that communicated with the one next to it, which had back and front entrances. His friends and the friendly police kept strict watch. Of a night, when he sometimes went out to walk, his safety was cared for by the very men whom the authorities had commissioned to look for him, and who went away with him when he left Madrid to assume the command of the insurgents. A gentleman who, during a certain period, was in the habit of frequently seeing him, was one morning on his way to his place of concealment, and had entered the street in which it was situated, when a police agent, making him a sign, slipped a scrap of paper into his hand. On it were the words “Beware, you are watched.” Taking the hint, the person warned passed the house to which he was going, and entered another, in the same street, where he had friends. From the window he observed a policeman, who had been loitering about as if in the ordinary discharge of his duty, hastily depart. When he had made sure that the coast was clear, he left the house, entered that in which O’Donnell was, saw him, passed into the next house, and departed by the back door. There was soon a cordon of police agents round the house into which he first had gone, but their vigilance was fruitless. I had this anecdote from one of the most intimate friends of the person who visited O’Donnell, and who was named to me at the same time.

During the period of suspense that preceded the insurrection, attempts were made to bring about a union between the Liberal party and the Moderado opposition. The former, although divided into sections which differ on certain points, is unanimous in its desire to see Spain governed constitutionally. Overtures were made to some of its chiefs. It was proposed that it should co-operate in the overthrow of the set of men who had detached themselves from all parties, and were marching on the high road to absolutism. These men, known as the Polacos or Poles—a word which seems to have had its origin in an electioneering joke—were odious alike to Progresistas and Moderados. But there were great difficulties in the way of a sincere and cordial junction between the two principal parties into which Spaniards are divided. The Moderados would gladly have availed themselves of the aid of the Liberals to upset their common enemy; but they would give them no guarantees that they should be, in any way, gainers by the revolution. The Liberals, on the other hand, mistrusted the Moderados, and would not assist men whose aims they believed to be purely personal. When the Moderados asked what guarantees they required, they were quickly ready with an answer. “Arm the national guard of Madrid,” they said; or, “March your troops, as soon as you have induced them to revolt, at once into Arragon, with one of our most influential and determined chiefs.” The Moderados could not be induced to listen to such terms. They found themselves exactly in the position in which the Progresistas were in 1843. Divided amongst themselves, the probabilities were that the insurrection they proposed would turn to the advantage of the Liberals; and the risk of this was doubled if they accepted even the most favourable of the conditions offered to them. They knew that the feeling of a large majority of the nation was in favour of the Progresistas; that Espartero, although for seven years he had led the life of a country gentleman at Logroño, and had steadily resisted all temptations to mingle again in political affairs, was in reality the most popular man in Spain, and that he was idolised by the people of Madrid. Some amongst them (O’Donnell himself, it has been said), whose views were more patriotic and less selfish than those of the majority, were not unwilling to blend with the Progresistas, to whom a few, including Rios Rosas, a distinguished lawyer and senator, frankly proclaimed their adherence, declaring that the parties which for so many years had divided Spain were virtually defunct, and that there were but two parties in the country,—the national one, which desired the welfare of Spain, and to see it governed according to the constitution, and the retrograde or absolutist, which trampled on the rights of the people. But although a few men were found ready to waive personal considerations and to forget old animosities, the great majority of the Moderados were less disinterested, and the decision finally come to was to do without the aid of the Liberals, and to accomplish an insurrection which, although its success was likely to be of some advantage to the country, at least for a time, had for its object a change of men rather than of measures.

One of the most important persons concerned in the conspiracy was the Director of Cavalry, Major-General Domingo Dulce, reputed one of the best and bravest officers in the Spanish army, and who had won his high rank and many honours, not by political intrigue, as is so frequently the case in this country, but at the point of his good sword. He passed for a Progresista, and most of his friends were of that party; but in fact he had never mixed much in politics, and, as a military man, had served under governments of various principles. It is evident, however, that whilst confining himself to the duties of his profession—which is rarely the case with Spanish general officers—he cherished in his heart the love of liberty, and a strong detestation of the tyranny under which Spain has for some time groaned. An intimate friend of his, a well-known and distinguished Liberal, was the immediate means of his joining the conspiracy. It was an immense acquisition to the cause he agreed to assist. Chief of the whole of the Spanish cavalry, respected and beloved by the men and officers under his command, he could bring a large force to the insurgent banner, and his own presence beneath it was of itself of great value, for he is a daring and decided officer. He it was who, by his obstinate resistance in the palace, at the head of a handful of halberdiers, defeated the designs of the conspirators in the year 1841. Dulce is a slightly-made, active, wiry man, rather below the middle height, of bilious temperament, and taciturn mood, extremely reserved, even with his friends, not calculated to cut a great figure in the council, but a man of action, precious in the field. The other principal conspirators were General Messina, a man of education and talent, who had been under-secretary of the war department, and is an intimate friend of Narvaez; Ros de Olano, a general officer of some repute; and Brigadier Echague, colonel of the Principe regiment, a Basque officer who served with high distinction throughout the whole of the civil War.

Several false starts were made before the insurrection really broke out. On the 13th of June, especially, it had been fixed to take place. The garrison of Madrid had been ordered to parade before daybreak for a military promenade and review outside the town. Such parades had been unusually frequent for a short time past; and it was thought the government ordered them, owing to information it received, not sufficiently definite to compromise the conspirators personally, but which yet enabled it to defeat their designs. On that morning, however, all was ready. The Principe regiment, instead of marching directly to the parade ground, lingered, and finally halted at a place where it could easily join the cavalry. O’Donnell left the town, disguised, and stationed himself in a house whence he could observe all that passed. Persons were placed in the vicinity to watch over his safety. The proclamations that had been prepared were got ready for distribution. Late on the eve of the intended outbreak, about four or five hours before it was to occur, its approach was known to several persons who, without being implicated in the plot, sincerely wished it success. There seemed no doubt of the event. But, at the very moment, a portion of the artillery of the garrison, which had pledged itself to take part in the movement, failed to make its appearance at the place of rendezvous. General Dulce considered their absence so important that he abandoned, for that day, his intention of marching off his cavalry, and declaring against the government. The combat of the 30th of June, in the fields of Vicálvaro, showed that he did not overrate the importance of including all arms in the composition of the insurrectionary force. At the time, however, a storm of censure burst over his head. He was taxed with treachery, with a deficiency in moral courage; his best friends looked mistrustfully and coldly upon him; more than one general officer, presuming on seniority of rank and age, took him severely to task. General O’Donnell was not backward in reproaching him. “Never was a white man” (these were the very words of the ex-governor of Cuba) “sold as you have sold me.” Dulce, although deeply sensitive to all this blame, took it meekly, acknowledged that appearances were against him, but declared that he had acted for the best, and steadily affirmed that his future conduct would prove his fidelity to the cause he had espoused. Not all believed him.

Some days passed over, and there was no word of an insurrection. The conspirators were discouraged. Rumour spoke of dissensions among them. It was thought that nothing would occur. It was known to many that Dulce was of the conspiracy, and that, by his fault or will, a good opportunity had been lost; and they said that if he were not playing a double game, the government would certainly have heard of his complicity with O’Donnell, and would at least have removed him from his command. It was fact that, for some time past, anonymous letters had been received by the ministers, warning them that he was plotting against them. But they disbelieved this information, and some of the letters were even shown to Dulce. The Duke of Rianzares, calling one day on a minister, found Dulce there. “What is this that I hear, general?” said Queen Christina’s husband; “is it true that you intend to shoot us all?” The question was awkward, but easily parried. A few days before the insurrection occurred, Dulce went over to Alcala, five leagues from Madrid, under pretence of inspecting the recruits stationed there. Seven squadrons of cavalry were in that town. Doubtless his object was to see if he could still reckon upon their following him whithersoever he chose to lead. I met him in the street after his return; I think it was on the 26th of June. He looked anxious and careworn. His position was certainly critical, and it is not presuming too much to suppose that a severe struggle was going on within him between a long habit of military discipline and duty, and what we must in justice believe to have been, in his opinion, a paramount duty to his oppressed country. For he was at the top of the tree. His position was splendid; his emoluments were large; he had but to persevere in his adherence to the government of the day to attain to the very highest rank in his profession—although that did not afford a more desirable place than the one he already occupied. Under these circumstances, even his enemies must admit—however guilty they may deem him—that he was not actuated by the selfish desire of personal advantage or aggrandisement.

Madrid, incredulous of an insurrection, was taken completely by surprise by the news that greeted its uprising on the morning of the 28th June. Some hours previously, it was informed, the director-general of cavalry, after mustering for review, in a field just outside the walls, the eleven squadrons that formed part of the garrison of the capital, had been joined by a battalion of the regiment of Principe, by a few companies from other regiments, and by General O’Donnell himself, and had marched to Alcala to incorporate in his insurrectionary force the troops there stationed. Other generals, it was stated, were with him, but for many hours—indeed for the whole of that day—truth was hard to be got at, and Rumour had it all her own way. The aspect of Madrid was curious. The Queen and Court had left two days previously for the Escurial; all but two of the ministers were absent; those two were paralysed by the sudden event, and seemingly helpless. No measures were taken, no troops brought out; for a time it might have been thought that, as was reported, all but some fifteen hundred of these had left with the insurgent generals; for several hours the town was at the mercy of the people, and had they then risen it would probably have been their own, for many of the troops remaining in Madrid were disaffected and would have joined them. There was great excitement; the general expression was one of joy at the prospect of getting rid of a ministry than which none could be more odious; the Puerta del Sol and the principal streets were full of groups eagerly discussing the events of the hour; friends met each other with joyous countenances, and shook hands as if in congratulation—Liberals and Moderados alike well pleased at the event that threatened to prove fatal to the common enemy. I need not repeat the countless reports current on that day. The most important fact that became known was that the cavalry at Alcala had joined the insurgents, and that two thousand horsemen, some of the best dragoons in the Spanish army, were in hostile attitude close to Madrid, accompanied by a small but most efficient body of infantry. Towards evening the authorities began to awake from their lethargy of alarm. Ignorant of the fact that a line of telegraphic wires had been concluded on the previous day between Madrid and the Escurial, the insurgents had neglected to cut off this means of rapid communication; news of the insurrection had been transmitted to the Queen, and her return to the capital was announced. The streets were quickly filled with troops, illuminations were ordered (there was no hope of their being volunteered), and at about ten o’clock her Majesty made her entrance, passing completely through the town, having previously been to perform her devotions in the church of Atocha, whose presiding virgin is the special patroness of the royal family of Spain—the gracious protectress for whom princes embroider petticoats, and whose shrine queens enrich with jewels, whose cost would found an hospital or comfort many poor. A young Queen, entering her capital in haste and anxiety, a few hours after a revolt against her authority, ought, one might suppose, to command, by her mere presence, some demonstration of loyalty and affection from her subjects. But the present Queen of Spain has so completely weaned from her the affections of her people, has so well earned their contempt, and even their hatred, that neither on that night nor on any other occasion that I have witnessed was a voice uplifted or a viva heard. A body of gendarmes, drawn up opposite to the ministry of the interior, cheered as she passed, and possibly the same may have been the case on the part of civil and military functionaries at other points of the line of her progress, but the attitude of the people and soldiers was one of perfect indifference. The same was the case on the following day, when she reviewed the garrison in the Prado, and conferred decorations and promotion on sergeants and privates who had distinguished themselves by their fidelity in refusing to be led away by the insurgents. Surrounded by a numerous staff of officers, and having the troops formed in such wise that as many as possible of them might hear her, she addressed to them a short speech, was profuse of smiles, and held up to them her infant daughter as if confiding it to their defence. Now was the time, if ever, for the old Castilian loyalty to burst forth in acclamation. But its spirit is dead, crushed by royal misconduct and misrule. Not a cheer was uttered, either by officer or soldier. The ominous silence was remarked by all present. It was equally profound as the Queen returned to her palace through the most populous streets of her capital, crowded on the warm summer night. It is said and believed here that, on reaching the palace, she was so affected and disheartened by the chilling reception she had on all sides met, that she burst into a passion of tears. Pity it is for the poor woman, who is not without some natural good qualities, but whom evil influences and a neglected education have brought to sorrow and contempt.

I cannot pretend to relate all the incidents of the last fortnight, which has been crowded with them to an extent that baffles memory. The most important you will find in this letter—many of the minor ones have doubtless escaped me. I must devote a few more lines to the first day. An unsigned proclamation was circulated, of a tenor by no means unacceptable to the Liberals, whose chiefs consulted as to the propriety of rising in arms, or at least of making some demonstration of hostility to the government. Another proclamation, of greater length, signed by three generals, O’Donnell, Dulce, and Messina, disappointed them, for it contained not a word that guaranteed benefit to the nation, and spoke merely of the knavery of the ministers and of the necessity of getting rid of them. Moreover, a request was sent in by the insurgents that Madrid would remain quiet, and leave them to settle matters militarily. Between deliberation and delays the day passed away, and towards night the altered attitude of the authorities, who had received telegraphic orders from Mr Sartorius to act with the utmost vigour, the large bodies of troops in the streets convincing those who had previously doubted that there was still a sufficient force in the town to repress any popular attempt, caused half-formed plans to fall to the ground, and even the most ardent and bellicose resolved to wait the events of the morrow before shouldering musket and throwing up barricades.

The morrow was the festival of St Peter, a great holiday, kept quiet as a Sunday, with much mass and bull-fights. I presume the churches were attended, but the bull-fights did not take place. Some arrests were made, but not many, for some of the persons sought after had concealed themselves. Madrid was still excited, but quite tranquil. On that and the following day every sort of rumour was current. The insurgents were near the town, and there were frequent reports that they were coming to attack it. Circulation was prohibited in the lower part of the street of Alcala, leading to the gate near to which the enemy were supposed to be. The residence of the Captain-general and the officers of the staff is in the lower part of that street, and the constant passage to and fro of orderlies and aides-de-camp interested the people: so that on the line of demarcation, beyond which there was no passage, there was a throng from morning till night, watching—they knew not exactly for what. From time to time there was a rush and panic—when the mob encroached on the limit, and the military were ordered to make them recede. The Café Suizo, at the summit of the street—which rises and again sinks over a small eminence—was a great point of rendezvous, and was crowded with eager politicians. Towards evening, on the 30th, the garrison (almost the whole) being out of the town, it became known that a fight was imminent, or already begun. This was in the neighbourhood; but as none were allowed to pass, or even to approach the gates, news were scanty, and little to be relied upon. Cannon and musketry were heard, and wounded men were seen straggling in. The fever of expectation was at its height. Public opinion was decidedly in favour of the insurgents. They would beat the government troops, it was said, and enter the town pell-mell with them. All the male population of Madrid was in the streets, a few troops were stationed here and there; there was no disorder, but it was easy to see that a trifle would produce it. I was in the Café Suizo, which was crowded in every part, a short time after nightfall, when one of the alarms I have referred to was given. There was a violent rush in the street outside, cries and shouts; those without crowded into the café, most of those within made for the open doors. The effect was really startling; it was exactly that produced by a charge of troops upon a mob; and I saw more than one cheek blanch amongst the consumers of ices and lemonade (the evening was extremely hot) who filled the café. But it was a groundless alarm, produced, as before, merely by the troops compelling the crowd to recede. Armed police circulated in the throng, dispersing groups, and urging them to go home. Soon the streets were comparatively clear, but the clubs and coffee-houses were filled until past midnight with persons discussing what had occurred, and giving fifty different versions. There had been a fight, it was certain, at about a league from Madrid, but who had won and who had lost was a matter of doubt until the next day.

The Madrid Gazette, the order of the day, published by General O’Donnell, and conversation with officers present in the short but sharp action, enable me to give you a sketch, which you may rely upon as correct, of its principal incidents. The garrison of Madrid, consisting of about eight battalions of infantry, four batteries of artillery, and some three hundred cavalry, took position on a ridge of ground at about a league from Madrid. The enemy, strong in cavalry, but weak in infantry, sought to draw them farther from the town, and into a more favourable position for horse to act against them. As the result proved, the wisest plan would have been to persevere in these tactics, and, if the garrison refused to advance further, to let the day pass without an action. But General O’Donnell had assurances that a large portion of the troops opposed to him only waited an opportunity to pass over to his banner. A part of the artillery, especially, was pledged to do so. After some preliminary skirmishing, he ordered a charge, which was made in gallant style by two squadrons of the Principe regiment. In spite of a severe fire of shot and shell, reserved, until they were within a very short distance of the battery they attacked, they got amongst the guns, and sabred many of the artillerymen, but were prevented from carrying off the pieces, and compelled to retire, by the heavy fire of the squares of infantry formed in rear of the artillery. Having thus ascertained, beyond a doubt, that there was no chance of the artillery coming over to them, or allowing themselves to be taken, the insurgents would have perhaps acted wisely in making no farther attempts upon the hostile line, or, if they were resolved upon a contrary course, in assailing the flanks, instead of again charging up to the mouths of the cannon. But it appears from O’Donnell’s own bulletin that the troops were not well in hand, and that, enraged at finding themselves fired upon by those from whom they expected a very different reception, they made several charges under the direction of their regimental chiefs, but without the sanction of their generals. I can hardly give a better account of the latter part of the combat than is contained in two short paragraphs of the insurgent general’s order of the day, which has been copied in the government papers, and admitted by these to be a fair and true statement of what occurred. The bulletin is before me, and I translate the passages in question:—

“The retreat of the two squadrons of the Principe cavalry (those which had charged the battery) was opportunely taken advantage of by the hostile squadrons of the Villaviciosa lancers, and of the Guardia Civil, who charged after them. This cavalry, however, was driven back, when in full career, by the 3d and 4th squadrons of the Principe, who routed them, cutting down a great part of them, and receiving into their ranks a large number of the soldiers of Villaviciosa, with their standard, and four officers, who reversed their lances, proclaiming themselves friends. In a second charge made by these same squadrons, the standard-bearer of Villaviciosa, and some soldiers of the same corps, who had joined us only because they considered themselves prisoners, went over again to the enemy.

“The bloody effect of the fire of the artillery, who, well assured that they would not be encountered by the same arm (of which we had none), had deliberately studied their range, and taken the breasts of our soldiers for their mark, caused the action to become hot, and the regiment of Farnesio again charged upon the guns, with great valour and determination. At the very mouth of the cannon its colonel was wounded and taken prisoner, and several officers and soldiers were struck down, our cries of Viva la Reina y la Constitucion being drowned in the roar of the enemy’s pieces. Repeated charges of the same regiment, and of those of Bourbon, Santiago, and the School of Cavalry, must have convinced our opponents in the action of Vicálvaro, that the feelings which prompted those cries are to be extinguished in the hearts of our brave soldiers by death alone.”

The upshot of the action was this: The insurgents accepted battle when there was little to be gained by them in so doing, unless, indeed, the contest had been conducted very differently, and a more judicious plan had been adopted than that of charging headlong up to the muzzles of artillery supported by squares of infantry. But this mistake had its origin, as I have already observed, in the expectation that the artillery would not fire. The insurgents were repulsed, not, however, without inflicting considerable loss upon their enemies. The garrison returned into Madrid in some haste and confusion, and near the gate a singular incident occurred. It was dark, and some lancers appeared on their flank—insurgents, according to some accounts—a part of their own cavalry, as it is reported by others. The exact truth will probably never be known. But a panic seized the infantry; some of the battalions were composed in great part of recruits; young soldiers, retiring hastily and in the dark after their first fight, are easily alarmed; the confusion that ensued was as great as that of a rout; the men fired at random killing and wounding their own friends, and a great number, especially of the battalion of engineers, were thus injured. The government papers passed this unlucky mistake almost sub silentio; but the fact is certain, the troops returned into the town in disorder, and it was not until the next day that all the wounded were brought in.

Some prisoners had been taken from the insurgents, including three or four wounded officers, the chief of whom, Colonel Garrigó, was captured amongst the guns, where his horse fell, killed by grape-shot. The gallant manner in which Garrigó had led his men again and again to the charge, encountering each time a storm of bullets, had excited a strong interest in his fate, and measures were taken to move the queen’s clemency on his behalf. Before the result of these were known, and when it was thought probable that at any hour he might be judged, condemned, and shot, I went to the ward of the military hospital where he lay under arrest, to see another officer of cavalry who had been wounded when with the insurgents. This officer had gone out of Madrid to see some friends who were with O’Donnell; he was in plain clothes and without arms, but, venturing too far forward during the action, he got struck from his horse, and received, as he lay on the ground, a lance-thrust in the neck, of which, however, he complained less than of blows received from the lance-poles, when the men struck at him as they rode rapidly past. He had afterwards been taken prisoner by an officer, and brought into Madrid. In the next bed to him was Garrigó, a swarthy, soldierly-looking man of about fifty-five; he had been hit in the leg, but not severely, by a grape-shot, and was sitting up in bed, fanning away the flies which entered in unpleasant numbers through the open windows. He looked gloomy, but firm. There were some other wounded officers in the ward, one of whom subsequently died after undergoing amputation of a leg, and a number of soldiers in an adjoining one. Amongst the insurgents, I heard there were as many killed as wounded; and many horses dead, the artillery having pointed their guns low. Grape and round shot, at fifty paces, the distance to which the cavalry were allowed to come before the gunners got the word, were quite as likely, perhaps, to kill as only to wound. An officer received two grape-shot in his face—one at each angle of the nostrils; another, Captain Letamendi, the English son of a Spanish father, who served during the civil war in the British Legion, was met by a round shot, which carried away the greater part of his head. But you will find nothing attractive in such details.

The combat of Vicálvaro, insignificant in its material results, had little effect upon the morale of either party. The government troops were assured by the gazette that they had achieved a glorious victory, of which they themselves were not very sure, especially when they saw the numerous carts of wounded that came into the town, and remembered their own disorderly return from the field and final panic. The insurgents, conscious that they had fought gallantly, and lost no ground, although they had failed in their chief object, which was to capture the artillery, were well satisfied with themselves, and in no way disheartened by the event. It was clear that the insurgent generals must not reckon on the support of the garrison of Madrid, and they consequently changed their plans, retiring to Aranjuez, a pleasant spot, eight leagues from Madrid, with abundant shade, water, and forage, where for two or three days they gave their men and horses rest, organised their staff and commissariat, and took other measures necessary for the welfare of the division. There they received several reinforcements, both of infantry and cavalry, and were joined by a number of civilians from Madrid, many of them belonging to the better classes. These received caps, muskets, and belts, and were formed into a battalion called the Cazadores di Madrid.

Meanwhile, the capital anxiously awaited news from the provinces, where insurrections were expected to occur. Madrid itself continued perfectly tranquil, although occasional rumours of an intended popular rising alarmed the government. The excitement of the first three days subsided into a strong interest. There was great eagerness for news from the insurgents, and much difficulty in learning anything authentic, especially when once they had left Aranjuez. Save the government and its hangers-on and personal adherents, all Madrid was for the insurrection, and heartily wished it well. The recent compulsory advance of half a year’s taxes, extorted from the people by a notoriously corrupt and grasping government, had greatly incensed the Madrileños, who did not scruple openly to express their good wishes for Generals O’Donnell and Dulce, the most prominent personages of the day and of the movement. Although the insurrection deprived Madrid of two things which it can ill do without, bull-fights and strawberries, not a murmur was heard on this account. Aranjuez is the strawberry garden of Madrid, and from it daily comes an abundant supply of that fruit, particularly grateful in this hot climate. I suppose that the insurgents, who had been for three days roasting in the shadeless desert that surrounds this capital, needed refreshment, and eat up all the strawberries, or else that the want of a railway—that to Aranjuez being partly in the hands of the government, and partly in those of O’Donnell, and cut in the middle—precluded their being sent. As for bull-fights, it was no time for them when man-fights were going on; and moreover, the gates of Madrid were for several days shut—besides which, some of the bull-fighters are said to have joined the insurgents. The dramatic season being at an end, and all the theatres closed, Madrid has now for sole amusement the insurrection, which every day seems taking farther from its walls, but which not impossibly may break out again within them. If a decided advantage were gained by O’Donnell’s division, or if news came that Saragossa or some other large town had pronounced against the government, there would very likely be a rising in this capital. I am assured that attempts are now making to work upon the troops of the garrison, and if only a few companies could be won over and relied upon, the government might speedily be upset. There are in Madrid plenty of ex-national guards, and of men who have served in the army, who would quickly produce their hidden arms and rush out into the streets, with cries of “Down with the ministry.” It is matter of considerable doubt whether these would be coupled with vivas for the Queen. As for the Queen-mother, I am convinced that her life would be in danger in the event of such an outbreak. She is deeply detested here; the more so as she is known to support the present government with all the influence she possesses over her daughter. A Madrid revolutionary mob is dangerous, vindictive, and bloody-minded. In proof of this many incidents recur to my memory, and doubtless will to yours—amongst others, the fate of Quesada, whose son is now military governor here, and who was almost torn to pieces at the country house in the environs, whither he had fled for shelter. His murderers returned to Madrid, singing the dreaded Tragala! and drank in the public cafés bowls of coffee stirred with his severed fingers. The revolutionary spirit is calmer now, but it may again revive upon occasion. No person in Spain, not even Sartorius himself, who certainly is sufficiently hated, is so much under public ban as Maria Christina. She doubtless knows it: her conscience can hardly be easy, and her fears are probably roused; for her approaching departure for France is much spoken of, and likely to take place.

Since O’Donnell’s division left the neighbourhood of Madrid, we have heard comparatively little concerning him. We know his route; also that his strength has somewhat increased, that his troops are well-disciplined and confident of success, and that he is at this date in Andalusia. Where he may be, and what may have occurred by the time you receive this letter, it is of course impossible to foretell; but, although ministerial bulletins daily scatter his men to the winds, representing them as deserting, weary, exterminated, and, if possible, even in worse plight, the truth is that they are in as good order, and as ready for service, as if they held themselves subject to the government of the Queen. Every possible means have been taken by the authorities to throw discredit upon the insurgents and upon their leaders, by representing them as robbers and oppressors, paying for nothing, ill-treating the people, and exacting forced contributions at the bayonet’s point. “To lie like a bulletin,” is an old saying, but it would be at least as apt to say—“like the Madrid Gazette or the Heraldo newspaper.” I can well imagine how difficult it must be in other countries to get at the truth about Spanish affairs, when I see the systematic efforts made to suppress it here. Letters are seized by wholesale in their passage through the post-office, some newspapers are suppressed, and others are permitted to publish no news but those they copy from the government journals, which are for the most part ingeniously embellished to suit the purpose of the ministers; whilst sometimes they are pure fabrications. One of the great occupations of the official papers, for the first few days after the insurrection broke out, was to blacken the character of its leaders. Dulce, especially—who, in common with the other generals engaged in the outbreak, had been stripped by royal decree of all rank, titles, and honours—was the object of abuse which bordered upon billingsgate.

The virtuous Heraldo daily came out with fierce philippics upon the “rebel and traitor,” who had deserted his Queen because he deemed that she had deserted the country and broken her oath, and who, by so doing, had exchanged large emoluments, high rank, and one of the best positions his profession affords in Spain, for the uncertain fate of an insurgent leader—perhaps, in the end, for a short shrift and a firing party. The men of the Heraldo could not understand this; they felt that they were incapable of such conduct; in their heart of hearts they must have thought Dulce more remarkable as a fool than as a rebel, but in their paper they contented themselves with abusing him as the latter. Inexpert with the pen, Dulce nevertheless took it up to reply. On the 1st of July, the day after the drawn fight of Vicálvaro, and in a village close to the scene of action, he wrote a letter, whose faulty style and soldierly abruptness are the best evidence of its being his own unassisted production. As a characteristic production, and in justice to its writer, who will doubtless be blamed by many in foreign countries, where the facts of the case and the extent of the sacrifices he has made are imperfectly known and appreciated, I give you a translation of the letter. It is addressed to the editors of the Heraldo, and runs as follows:—

“Since you have allowed the publication in your periodical of an article referring to me personally, and to my conduct, and as I consider that an insult is not a reason, I trust you will be pleased to publish my protest against the whole of your accusation, by doing which you will fulfil your duty as public writers.

“I do not wish to prejudge the issue of our enterprise; whatever that may be it will not surprise me, or make me repent what I have done. That I may not be disappointed, the worst that I expect is to die in the field of battle or in the Campo de Guardias (the place of military executions at Madrid). Whatever occurs, I shall have acted according to my conscience.

“I seek neither places nor honours, for I have them in abundance. No desire of revenge of any kind has moved me, for I cherish neither dislike nor resentment against the persons composing the present government, and much less against the Queen. The cause of my insurrection is entirely the memory that I have of the oath taken by the King of Castile when he ascends the throne. He swears upon the Holy Scriptures to observe and enforce the law of the State—‘and if I should not do so, I desire not to be obeyed.’

“My conviction is, that the Queen has violated her oath, and, in this case, I prefer being guilty of leze-majesty to being guilty of leze-nation.

“I well know that the sentiments I have expressed will not convince you, because they must be felt and not explained. For my justification I appeal to the inexorable tribunal of posterity, and to the secret police of the consciences of yourselves in the first place, of the Queen herself, and of this unhappy country.

“A copy of this document is already on the road, and will be published, as you will see, in foreign countries. I also send it to other Madrid newspapers, although I believe that a miserable fear will prevent their publishing it.

“That you may never be able to deny that I have sent you this letter, I have had formal registry made of it, and it perhaps will one day be published. I trust then that you will be sufficiently generous and gentlemanly[^[29]] to insert it in your periodical, by doing which you will highly oblige me. (Signed) El General Dulce.

“Vallecas, 1st July 1854.

“The original is to be found duly stamped in the register of this corporation, where it has been inserted against the will of the individuals composing it, who are exempt from all blame.”

I need hardly say that the Heraldo has not published this letter, of which numerous copies have been distributed in Madrid by friends of its writer, and by persons who believe that, as he himself says, he has “acted according to his conscience (dado una satisfaccion à mi conciencia), and who admire his disinterestedness—the rarest quality amongst public men in Spain.

It is not easy to foretell the result of this insurrection, which has now lasted for fifteen days without any decisive or even important event. The country, taken by surprise, and ignorant of the objects of the outbreak—which it suspected to have been made merely to bring about a change of men, but not of system—looked on at first with apathy. O’Donnell’s greatest error was the first proclamation he issued, which, in many words, said nothing and held out no prospect of advantage to the people. Another has just appeared, short, pithy, explicit, and calculated to satisfy the liberal party. It promises the Spanish nation the benefits of the representative system, for which it has shed so much of its blood and made so many sacrifices, as yet without result.

“It is time,” it continues, “to say what we propose doing on the day of victory. We desire the preservation of the throne, but without the camarilla that dishonours it; the rigorous enforcement of the fundamental laws, improving them, especially those of elections and of the press; a diminution of taxation, founded on strict economy; respect to seniority and merit in the civil and military services. We desire to relieve the towns from the centralising system that consumes them, giving them the local independence necessary to preserve and increase their own interests; and, as a guarantee of all these things, we desire the National Militia, and will plant it on a solid basis. Such are our intentions, which we frankly express, but without imposing them upon the nation. The juntas of government that are to be constituted in the free provinces, the general Cortes that are soon to be assembled, the nation itself, in short, shall fix the definitive bases of the liberal regeneration to which we aspire. We devote our swords to the national will, and sheathe them only when it is fulfilled.”

This proclamation is dated from Manzanaris, the 7th July, and is signed by O’Donnell. You will observe that no mention is made in it of the Queen. It is monarchical, because it desires to “preserve the throne;” but it by no means pledges those who publish it to retain Isabella II. The promise to arm the national guard is the most important that it contains, since that is the only guarantee the Liberals can have for the fulfilment of the other pledges. It may possibly induce the Progresistas, who hitherto have scarcely stirred in the business, to take active measures. Meanwhile we hear of risings and armed bands in various parts of the country, and persons familiar with Spanish revolutions, and who have witnessed many of them, notice signs of fermentation, which prove the insurrectionary spirit to be spreading—a bubble here and there on water, indicating that it will presently boil. When O’Donnell’s proclamation gets spread abroad, and its purport known, it is quite possible that large towns or districts may declare for the insurgents. In Spain, however, it is most difficult to speculate on coming events, for it is the land of the unforeseen—le pays de l’imprévu—and I shall not attempt to play the prophet, for, if I did, perhaps, before my letter reached you, the electric telegraph would have proved me a false one. Moreover, I have no time to add much more, for I well know that you, Ebony, will grumble, if this letter does not reach you somewhere about the twentieth of the month. Moreover, the horses of Maga’s foreign-service messenger neigh with impatience, and the escort which is to accompany him on the first stage of his journey is already formed up. For the roads are far from safe just now, thanks to the concentration of the gendarmes, (who usually keep excellent order upon them), to do duty in the capital, or pursue the insurgents. We hear of various bands appearing—north, south, and east—some calling themselves Carlists, others Republicans, but in either case probably not pleasant to meet on the road; and besides those there are smaller parties who do not aspire to a political character, and are abroad simply for their own behoof and advantage, and, I need not say, for the disadvantage of the travellers they may chance to encounter. As for sending letters of the nature and importance of this one by the ordinary channel of Her Catholic Majesty’s mails, one would do better to abstain from writing them, as the chances would be fifty to one against their ever reaching their destination. One might almost as well throw them into the fire as into the marble lion’s mouth that yawns at the casa de correos,—as if to warn people of the dangers their correspondence runs. Were I to consign this epistle to leo’s jaws, I should not expect it ever to go farther than to the Graham-department of the Madrid post-office.

Although you will have gathered from the newspapers the principal events, and some of the minor particulars of the insurrection of 1854—as far as it has as yet gone—this sketch of it, however imperfect, from an eyewitness, will, I trust, interest you. Spanish revolutions and insurrections rarely resemble each other; every successive outbreak has a character of its own, distinct from that of its predecessors. And that of the 28th of last month has peculiar features, which I have endeavoured to portray. If my letter has no other merit, it will, I think, bring its readers, concisely, without much detail, but with perfect truth, up to the present point of Spanish politics. Should aught worth relating occur whilst I am within the boundaries of Queen Isabel’s dominions, rely upon my keeping you duly informed. Meanwhile, may Providence preserve you, in your happy Land of Cakes, alike from military revolts, and from popular pronunciamientos. So prays, from his exile in partibus, your faithful

Vedette.

THE ETHNOLOGY OF EUROPE.

“There were brave men before Agamemnon,”—heroes before there was a Homer to sing them, says that prince of sensible poets, Horace. It is not less true that there were nations before history—communities, races, of which the eye of civilisation never caught a glimpse. In some cases, before the light of history broke in upon their seclusion, these old types of mankind, losing their individuality, had become merged in a succeeding and mightier wave of population; in others they had wholly disappeared,—they had lived and fought and died in perfect isolation from every focus of civilisation, and left not even a floating legend behind them in the world. Man’s mortality—the destiny of the individual to pass away from earth like a vapour, making room for others, heirs of his wisdom and unimbued with his prejudices—is the most familiar of truths; but the mortality of nations, the death of races, is a conception which at first staggers us. That a family should grow into a nation,—that from the loins of one man should descend a seed like unto the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, appears to our everyday senses as a natural consequence; but that nations should dwindle down to families, and families into solitary individuals, until death gets all, and earth has swallowed up a whole phase of humanity, is a thought the grandeur of which is felt to be solemn, if not appalling. The conception, however, need not be a strange one. Facts, which reconcile us to everything, are testifying to its truth even at the present day. It is not long since the Guanches in the Canary Islands, that last specimen of what may once have been a race, and the Guarras in Brazil, dwindled out of existence in their last asylum,—expiring at the feet of the more lordly race which the fulness of time brought to their dwellings.

Not to mention the Miaou-tse in China, and other relics of Asiatic races, the same phenomenon is more impressively presented to us among the Red Men of America, where the old race is seen dying out beneath our very eyes. Year by year they are melting away. Of the millions which once peopled the vast regions on this side of the Mississippi River, all have vanished, but a few scattered families; and it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that in a few generations more, the last of the Red Men will be numbered with the dead. Why, is it asked, are they thus doomed? In the suburbs of Mobile, or wandering through its streets, you will see the remnant of the Choctaw tribe, covered with nothing but blankets, and living in bark tents, scarcely a degree advanced above the beasts of the field. No philanthropy can civilise them,—no ingenuity can induce them to do an honest day’s work. The life of the woods is struck from them,—the white man has taken their hunting-grounds; and they live on helpless as in a dream, quietly abiding their time. They are stationary, they will not advance; and, like everything stationary, the world is sweeping away. They sufficed for the first phase of humanity in the New World. As long as there was only need for man to be lord of the woods and of the animal creation, the Red Man did well; but no sooner did the call come for him to perfect himself, and change the primeval forest into gardens, than the Red Man knew, by mysterious instinct, that his mission was over,—and either allowed himself, in sheer apathy, to sink out of existence among the pitiless feet of the new-comers, or died fighting fiercely with the apostle of a civilisation which he hated but could not comprehend.

Far back in the history of Europe and of our own country—or rather, we should say, in periods entirely pre-historic—it is now known that a similar disappearance of a human race has taken place. Celt and Teuton, we fancy, were the first occupiers of Europe,—but the case is not so. A wave or waves of population had preceded even them; and as we dig down into the soil beneath us, ever and anon we come upon strange and startling traces of those primeval occupants of the land. In those natural museums of the past, the caves and peat-bogs of Europe, the keen-witted archæologists of present times are finding abundant relics of a race dissimilar from all the human varieties of which written history takes cognisance. The researches of Wilson among the peat-bogs of the British Isles have brought to light traces of no less than two distinct pre-Celtic races inhabiting the land,—one of which had the skull of a singularly broad and short, square and compact form, while the head of the other race was long and very narrow, or “boat-shaped.” The exhumations of Retzius show that precisely similar races once inhabited Scandinavia. The caves and ossuaries of Franconia and Upper Saxony prove that in Central Europe, also, there were races before the advent of the Celts; and the researches of Boucher de Perthes, amid the alluvial stratifications of the river Somme, indicate a not less ancient epoch for the cinerary urns, bones, and instruments of a primordial people in France.

“Here,” says M. de Perthes, “we naturally inquire, who were these mysterious primitive inhabitants of Gaul? We are told that this part of Europe is of modern origin, or at least of recent population. Its annals scarcely reach to twenty centuries, and even its traditions do not exceed two thousand five hundred years. The various people who are known to history as having occupied it—the Gauls, the Celts, the Veneti, Ligurians, Iberians, Cimbrians, and Scythians have left no vestiges to which we can assign that date. The traces of those [originally] nomadic tribes who ravaged Gaul scarcely precede the Christian era by a few centuries. Was Gaul, then, a desert, a solitude, before this period? Was its sun less genial, or its soil less fertile? Were not its hills as pleasant, and its plains and valleys as ready for the harvest? Or, if men had not yet learned to plough and sow, were not its rivers filled with fish, and its forests with game? And, if the land abounded with everything calculated to attract and support a population, why should it not have been inhabited? The absence of great ruins, indeed, indicates that Gaul at this period, and even much later, had not attained a great degree of civilisation, nor been the seat of powerful kingdoms; but why should it not have had its towns and villages?—or rather, why should it not, like the steppes of Russia, the prairies and virgin forests of America, and the fertile plains of Africa, have been overrun from time immemorial by tribes of men—savages, perhaps, but nevertheless united in families if not in nations?”

We shall not dwell at present upon the relics of these races who have thus preceded all history, and vanished into their graves before a civilised age could behold them. We shall not accompany M. de Perthes in his various excavations, nor, after passing through the first stratum of soil, and coming to the relics of the middle ages, see him meet subsequently, in regular order, with traces of the Roman and Celtic periods, until at last he comes upon weapons, utensils, figures, signs and symbols, which must have been the work of a surpassingly ancient people. We need not describe his discovery of successive beds of bones and ashes, separated from each other by strata of turf and tufa, with no less than five different stages of cinerary urns, belonging to distinct generations, of which the oldest were deposited below the woody or diluvian turf,—nor the coarse structure of these vases (made by hand and dried in the sun), nor the rude utensils of bone, or roughly-carved stone, by which they were surrounded.[^[30]] Neither need we do more than allude to the remains of a fossil whale recently exhumed in Blair Drummond moss, (twenty miles from the nearest point of the river Forth where, by any possibility, a whale could nowadays be stranded), having beside it a rude harpoon of deer’s horn—speaking plainly of the coexistence, in these remote pre-Celtic times, of human inhabitants. Even above ground there are striking relics scattered over Europe which it would be hazardous to assign to any race known to history. Those circles of upright stones, of which Stonehenge is the most familiar example, date back to an unknown antiquity. They are found throughout Europe, from Norway to the Mediterranean; and manifestly they must have been erected by a numerous people, and faithful exponents of a general sentiment, since we find them in so many countries. They are commonly called Celtic or Druidic; not because they were raised originally by Druids, but because they had been used in the Druidical worship, though erected, it may be, for other uses, or dedicated to other divinities,—even as the temples of Paganism afterwards served for the solemnities of Christianity. All that we know is, that, having neither date nor inscription, they must be older than written language,—for a people who can write never leave their own names or exploits unchronicled. The ancients were as ignorant on this matter as ourselves; even tradition is silent; and, at the period of the Roman invasion, the origin of those monuments was already shrouded in obscurity. A revolution, therefore, must have intervened between the time of their erection and the advent of the Legions; and what revolution could it be in those days save a revolution of race? “The Celtæ,” says Dr Wilson, “are by no means to be regarded as the primal heirs of the land, but are, on the contrary, comparatively recent intruders. Ages before their migration into Europe, an unknown Allophylian race had wandered to this remote island of the sea, and in its turn gave place to later Allophylian nomades, also destined to occupy it only for a time. Of these ante-historical nations, archæology alone reveals any traces.”

Passing from this strange and solemn spectacle of the death and utter extinction of human races, once living and enjoying themselves amidst those very scenes where we ourselves now pant and revel in the drama of existence,—let us look upon the face of Europe as it appears when first the light of history broke upon it. Since then, there have been remarkable declines, but no extinction of races. As if war and rivalry were a permanent attribute of the species, when the curtain first rises upon Europe, it is a struggle of races that is discernible through the gloom. A dark-skinned race, long settled in the land, are fighting doggedly with a fair-skinned race of invaders from the East. The dark-skins were worsted, but still survive—definitely in detached groups, and indefinitely as a leaven to entire populations. That dark-skinned race have been called Iberians,—the fair-skinned new-comers were the Indo-Germans, headed by the Gaels or Celts. When the two races first met in Europe—the blond from the south-east, meeting the dark in the west—they encountered each other as natural enemies, and a severe struggle ensued. The Celts finally forced their way into Spain, and established themselves there,—became more or less amalgamated with the darker occupants, and were called Celt-Iberians. Ever since, these two opposite types have been commingling throughout Western Europe; but a complete fusion has not even yet taken place, and the types of each are still traceable in certain localities.

There was thus an Iberian world before there was a Celtic world. One of the pre-Celtic populations of the British Isles was probably Iberian; and their type, besides leavening indefinitely a portion of the present population, is still distinctly traceable in many of the dark-haired, dark-eyed, and dark-skinned Irish, as well as occasionally in Great Britain itself. The Basques, protected by their Pyrenean fastnesses, are a still existent group of nearly pure Iberians; and of their tongue, termed Euskaldune by its speakers, Duponceau long ago said:—“This language, preserved in a corner of Europe, by a few thousand mountaineers, is the sole remaining fragment of perhaps a hundred dialects, constructed on the same plan, which probably existed and were universally spoken, at a remote period, in that quarter of the world. Like the bones of the mammoth, and the relics of unknown races which have perished, it remains a monument of the destruction brought by a succession of ages. It stands single and alone of its kind, surrounded by idioms whose modern construction bears no analogy to it.”

The Bretons form another isolated but less distinct group of still existent Iberians. To this day they present a striking contrast to the population around them, who are of tall stature, with blue eyes, white skins, and blond hair—communicative, impetuous, versatile—passing rapidly from courage to timidity, and from audacity to despair;—in other words, presenting the distinctive character of the Celtic race, now, as in the ancient Gauls. The Bretons are entirely different. They are taciturn—hold strongly to their ideas and usages—are persevering and of melancholic temperament;—in a word, both in morale and physique, they present the type of a southern race. And this brings us to the question—whence came these Iberians? M. Bodichon, a surgeon distinguished for fifteen years in the French army of Algeria, observes that persons who have lived in Brittany, and then go to Algeria, are struck with the resemblance which they discover between the ancient Armoricans (the Bretons) and the Cabyles of northern Africa. “In fact, the moral and physical character of the two races is identical. The Breton of pure blood has a bony head, light-yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers. In both, the same perverseness and obstinacy, the same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same inflexion of voice, same expression of feelings. Listen to a Cabyle speaking his native tongue, and you will think you hear a Breton talking Celtic.” Impressed with this resemblance, M. Bodichon was induced to reflect on the subject, and at last came to the conclusion that the Berbers who primally peopled Northern Africa, and the dark-skinned Iberians of Western Europe, belonged to the same race. He thinks that, as Europe and Africa were once united at their western extremities, previous to the convulsion which produced the Straits of Gibraltar, this Iberian population passed into Spain by this primeval isthmus, and thence diffused themselves over Western Europe and its isles. Whether this were actually the case, it is hard to say; but it is important to note that Sallust, quoting “the Punic books which were ascribed to King Hiempsal,” exactly reverses the course of migration, and states that the progenitors of the African Moors were Medians and Persians who had marched through Europe into Spain, and thence into Mauritania—though whether overland by the isthmus, or by boats across the strait, is still left to conjecture. Prichard thinks the Libyans and Iberians were distinct races, but owns that they were found intermingling in the islands and along the western shores of the Mediterranean. Of course it may be taken for granted that among these Iberians thus spread over Africa, Spain, France, and the British Isles, local differences would exist—just as there is a perceptible difference between the Anglo-Saxons of the Old World and those of the New; but there is little doubt that the Scoti of Ireland, the Iberians of Spain, and the Berbers of Africa, belonged to a fundamentally identical race.

How any race first came into a country, is a matter of little moment, especially when the epoch of their arrival so far transcends the dawn of history as does that of the Iberians. Even the first wave of the Celtic migration had reached the West before any scrutiny of their progress was possible; for when tradition first dimly opens upon Gaul, about 1500 B. C., its territory was occupied by these two primitive and distinctly-marked Caucasian races—the Celts and Iberians: the one fair-skinned and light-haired, the other a dark race; and each speaking a language bearing no affinity to that of the other—precisely as the Euskaldune of the present Basques is unintelligible to Gaelic tribes of Lower Brittany. Some of the subsequent waves of Celtic or Scythic migration come within the ken of history; and it is remarkable that the line of march which these followed, after passing the shores of the Black Sea, seems to have been along the “Riphæan Valley,” which lay to the north of the Carpathian mountains, and stretched to the Baltic. Now, if we look at the contour map of Europe in Johnston’s Physical Atlas, we see a narrow strip of the lowest elevation extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic—nowhere rising to the second line of elevation, i.e. more than 150 and less than 300 feet above the level of the sea,—and turning to the geological map, we find that this same tract is overlaid with recent diluvial deposits. We know that the Scandinavian region is rising, and it is probable that all the plain of Sarmatia has partaken of the elevation,—and before the barriers of the Thracian Bosphorus burst, it is quite certain that the waters of the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic were united by that “ocean-river” of which Homer, Hesiod, and all the old bards sing, and by sailing along which, both the Argonauts and Ulysses are reported to have passed northwards into the western ocean. The existence of this vast belt of water, stretching from the southmost point of the Baltic to the Caucasus, is probably one reason why the Slavonians were late of appearing in southern Europe, and why no sprinkling of them or of the Mongols is to be found among the early settlers of South-western Europe. All the early migrations into Europe proceeded from Caucasian or sub-Caucasian regions—a circumstance which, considering the known simultaneous existence of roving hordes and a great population on the Mongolian plains, can hardly be accounted for on the supposition that the face of Eastern Europe has since then undergone no change. But on the supposition we make, the chain of the Ural Mountains and this large Mediterranean basin would for long act as restraints upon any tendency of the Mongolian population to move westward, or of the Slavonians to move southwards.[^[31]]

The next wave of population which flowed westwards was the Cimbri or Cimmerians,—a people cognate to the Celts or Gaels, yet by no means closely related. About the seventh century B.C., as may be inferred from Herodotus, a clan of this race abandoned the Tauric Chersonese, and marched westwards,—this Cimbrian migration, however, like most others, not being conducted in one mass, but by successive and sometimes widely-severed movements. Three centuries afterwards we find the Cimbri on the shores of the Northern Ocean in Jutland; and between the years 113 and 101 B.C., we find the race all on the move, and setting out on that southward career of devastation which eventually brought them into Gaul, Spain, and Italy. The Belgians seem to have been a Cimbrian tribe which had preceded the main body; for when, in this invasion, the Cimbri reached Northern Gaul, the Belgæ immediately joined them as allies against the Celts,—and it seems also proven that the Cimbri and Belgæ spoke dialects of the same language. The Celts, routed by the invaders, were impelled to the south and east, doubtless trespassing in turn upon the dark-skinned Iberians. It was immediately after this inroad that Cæsar and his Romans entered Gaul, and commenced his Commentaries with the well-known statement:—“All Gaul is divided into three parts, of which one is inhabited by the Belgians, [or Cimbri, in the north]—another by the Aquitanians [or Iberians, in the south-west],—and the third [or eastern], by those who in their own language, call themselves Celts, and who in our tongue are called Gael (Galli). These races differ among themselves by their language, their manners, and their laws.” Previous to this time the Teutons had settled in central Europe, and in alliance with Celtic tribes made incursions into Italy.

We have now reached a period at which the population of Europe becomes greatly mixed, in consequence of the constant rovings and incursions of the various races and tribes of which it was composed. It is interesting to note the effect of such a state of things upon the physical characteristics of the people. And first it is to be observed, that, with extremely rare exceptions, conquest is not attended by extermination. When one people, even in semi-barbarous times, conquers another, it does not annihilate and rarely displaces, but for the most part only overlays it. The annihilating process, of which a sample may be seen in America, only takes place in the rare case of the meeting of two nations, in such widely different states of civilisation as to render amalgamation impossible,—and even in this case only when the inferior race is so intractable as to resist all obedience to the superior. Displacement—which is obsolete now, since advancing civilisation has rendered conquest political only—was pretty common two thousand years ago, when Europe was thinly and nomadically peopled, and tribes migrated en masse. In this way, for example, the Cimbri wedged themselves in among the Celts in Northern Gaul, and took possession of a large tract in Northern Italy. But soon after the Christian era—chiefly in consequence of the increasing density and settled habits of the population—conquest ceased to produce either extermination or displacement, and consisted merely in the overlaying of one population by another much less numerous but more powerful. Thus the Normans in England and the Franks in Gaul were but a handful compared to the conquered population; and consequently, though they might give their laws and even their name to the country, they could not materially alter the physical character of the people.

The chief influence which, in the case of two races mingling, determines the preservation or extinction of types or national features, is simply the numerical proportion existing between the two races thus amalgamating. When races meet and mix on equal terms, and with no natural repugnance to each other (in other words, cæteris paribus), the relative number of the two races decides the question—the type of the smaller number, in this hypothetical case, inevitably disappearing in the long run. Take, for example, a thousand white families and fifty black ones—place them on an island, and let them regularly intermarry; and the result would be, that in the course of time the black type would disappear, although there is reason to believe that traces of it would “crop out” during a very long period. And if two fair-skinned races were brought into contact in a similar manner, and in similar proportions, the extermination of the less numerous one would be even sooner effected. The operation of this law is well illustrated in the lower animals. Cross two domestic animals of different breeds—take the offspring and cross it with one of the parent stocks, and continue this process for a few generations, and the result is that the one becomes swallowed up in the other. This is the theory; but in the actual world races never intermarry with such theoretical regularity and indifference. Each community of mankind has, as its conservative element, a tendency to form unions within its own limits; and if a foreign element is once introduced into a population, the operation of this predilection tends to preserve the type of the lesser number for a much longer period than mere theory would assign to it. The stranger-hating and obstinate-tempered Bretons and Basques, for instance, by intermarrying among themselves, have thus preserved the type of the old Iberians through three thousand years, although surrounded on all sides by the fair-haired Celts. In the case of a conquering race like the Franks and Normans, there is generally less isolation than this; but then, the way in which the amalgamation between the conquerors and the conquered takes place, is such as to give a great advantage to the former. The sons of the conquerors may wed the daughters of the conquered, for the sake of their lands; but it is comparatively seldom that the daughters of the invaders will condescend to tarnish their scutcheon by becoming wedded to and merged in the class of the vanquished. The principle of caste is all-pervading, even when nominally repudiated; and thus, as the male ever influences most directly the type of the offspring, a small number of conquerors may for long perpetuate their line in comparative purity, even though surrounded by myriads of a different race.

From all this it results, that when a small body of foreigners is shot into the middle of a large population, as it were in virtue of a mere casual impetus, and not owing to higher qualities and organisation on the part of the aliens, the new-comers are quickly absorbed into the general mass of the population, and their type, in course of time, wholly disappears. The history of Italy throws important light upon this subject. Successive hordes of barbarians broke into and overran that country, powerful from their rude energy, but numerically weak, and inferior in mental condition to the conquered race. Again and again did human waves of Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, Herules, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Normans roll in succession over the Italian plains; and even the Saracens for a time held possession of some of its fairest provinces; yet what vestiges remain in Italy of these barbarian surges? The first three passed over it like tornados; the two next, after contending with the Goths, were expelled from the land; and of the whole conglomerate mass but small fragments were left, too insignificant to materially influence the native Italic types. The Lombards, indeed, remained, and implanted their name on a portion of the peninsula; but, with this fragmentary exception, the aboriginal population of Italy has remained unaltered in blood and features since the early times when the Celts and Cimbri made settlements in its northern provinces. And thus the normal law is fulfilled, in the invaders being swallowed up in the mass of the native population,—leavening it, of course, more or less, but ever tending towards ultimate extinction.

When a really conquering race, however—one superior alike in physical and mental power to the subjugated population—invades a country, and, instead of being expelled, or passing onwards like a transient whirlwind, continues to hold the realm in virtue of superior power, such a race, as we have said, may long and almost indelibly perpetuate their features in the land. In such a case they in reality, if not in name, form a caste; each one of the invaders becomes a noble; and when they make exceptions to the practice of intermarrying among themselves, it is only that they may more widely diffuse their lineaments, by forming matrimonial or other unions with the female portion of the native race.[^[32]] Thus the feudalism of the all-conquering Normans was a system of caste, by means of which they long maintained the purity and pre-eminence of their race in the countries which they conquered; as may best be seen in French history, where the vieux noblesse, even in 1789, were the lineal descendants of the soldiers of Clovis; and where the distinction between noble and roturier was kept up with such rigid and antiquated pertinacity, that at length the Celtic population, becoming more and more developed alike in intellect and resources, threw off the whole foreign system like an incubus, and returned to those principles of equality and volatility in government which distinguished their ancestors of old Gaul.

We may remark in conclusion, on this topic, that the ascendancy of certain families of mankind is due not only to their superior physical, but even more to their superior mental organisation, which ever keeps them uppermost, and enables them to mate themselves with whom they please. It is a remarkable fact, as illustrative of the native vigour of some races, that there is not a head in Christendom which legitimately wears a crown—not a single family in Europe whose blood is acknowledged to be royal, but traces its genealogy to that Norman colossus, William the Conqueror. This has been well shown by M. Paulmier;[^[33]] but we may add, as a curiosity which lately attracted our own notice, when looking at the portrait of the Conqueror—namely, that a strong resemblance exists between his fine and massive features and those of the present Czar of Russia. Both are distinguished by the same broad brow and arched eyebrows (not each forming a semicircle, as seems to be the meaning of the term “arched” when applied to eyebrows nowadays, but both combining to form an oval curve, vaulting over the under part of the face, as was the meaning among the Greeks), the same thick straight nose, and the same massive and beautiful conformation in the bones of the jaw and chin. The face of the Czar, however, we must add, is not equal in solid strength and intellect to that of his great progenitor.

The operation of these physiological laws upon the population of Europe has been interestingly illustrated by the recent researches of a French naturalist of high reputation, M. Edwards. This gentleman, after perusing Thierry’s History of the Gauls, made a tour through France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, engaged in careful study of the present population in relation to the ancient settlers; and he asserts that now, after the lapse of two thousand years, the types of the Cimbri, the Celts, and Iberians are still distinctly traceable among their living descendants, in the very localities where history first descries these early families. Of the inland eastern parts of France, tenanted of old by the Gauls proper, and which were never penetrated into by the Cimbri, who took quiet possession of their outskirts, M. Edwards thus speaks:—“In traversing, from north to south, the part of France which corresponds to Oriental Gaul—viz., Burgundy, Lyons, Dauphiny, and Savoy—I have distinguished that type, so well marked, which ethnographers have assigned to the Gauls.” That is to say, “the head is so round as to approach the spherical form; the forehead is moderate, slightly protuberant, and receding towards the temples; eyes large and open; the nose, from its depression at its commencement to its termination, almost straight—that is to say, without any marked curve; its extremity is rounded, as well as the chin; the stature medium;—the features thus being quite in harmony with the form of the head.” Of the northern part of ancient Gaul, the principal seat of the Belgæ or Cimbri, he says:—“I traversed a great part of the Gallia Belgica of Cæsar, from the mouth of the Somme to that of the Seine; and here I distinguished for the first time the assemblage of features which constitutes the other type, and often to such an exaggerated degree that I was very forcibly struck,—the long head, the broad high forehead, the curved nose, with the point below, and the wings tucked up; the chin boldly developed; and the stature tall.” In the other parts of France (exclusive of the south and west, anciently occupied by the Iberians), M. Edwards found that the Cimbrian type had been overcome by the round heads and straight noses of the Gauls, who were the more numerous because the more ancient race in those parts, and had covered the whole country before the arrival of the Cimbrians.

Passing into Italy, he continues his examinations. “Whatever may have been the anterior state of matters,” he says, “it is certain, from Thierry’s researches and the unanimous accord of all historians, that the Peuples Gaulois have predominated in the north of Italy, between the Alps and the Apennines. We find them established there at the first dawn of history; and the most authentic testimony represents them with all the character of a great nation, from this remote period down to a very advanced point of Roman history. This is all I need to trouble myself about. I know the features of their compatriots in Transalpine Gaul—I find them again in Cisalpine Gaul.” The old “Gallic” settlers in northern Italy appear to have been Cimbrian. After describing the well-known head of Dante—which is long and narrow, with a high and developed forehead, nose long and curved, with sharp point and elevated wings—M. Edwards says that he was struck by the great frequency of this type in Tuscany (although a mixed Roman type is there the prevailing one) among the peasantry; in the statues and busts of the Medici family; and also amongst the effigies and bas-reliefs of the illustrious men of the republic of Florence. This type is well marked since the time of Dante, as doubtless long before. It extends to Venice; and in the ducal palace, M. Edwards had occasion to observe that it is common among the doges. The type became more predominant as he approached Milan, and thence he traced it as to its fountain into Transalpine Gaul. The physical characteristics of the present population, therefore, correspond with the statements of history, and show that the ancient type of this widespread people, the Cimbri, has survived the lapse and vicissitudes of two thousand years.

In passing through Florence, M. Edwards took occasion to visit the Ducal Gallery, to study the ancient Roman type,—selecting, by preference, the busts of the early Roman emperors, because they were descendants of ancient families. Augustus, Tiberius, Germanicus, Claudius, Nero, Titus, &c., exemplify this type in the Florentine collections; and the family resemblance is so close, and the style of features so remarkable, that they cannot be mistaken. The following is his description:—“The vertical diameter of the head is short, and, consequently, the face broad. As the summit of the cranium is flattened, and the lower margin of the jaw-bone almost horizontal, the contour of the head, when viewed in front, approaches a square. The lateral parts, above the ears, are protuberant; the forehead low; the nose truly aquiline—that is to say, the curve commences near the top and ends before it reaches the point, so that the base is horizontal; the chin is round; and the stature short.” This is the characteristic type of a Roman; but we cannot expect now to meet with absolute uniformity in any race, however seemingly pure. Such a type M. Edwards subsequently found to predominate in Rome, and certain parts of Italy, at the present day. It is the original type of the central portions of the peninsula, and, however overlayed at times, has swallowed up all intruders. As a singular corroboration of the French ethnographer’s observations, Mr J. C. Nott, an American surgeon and naturalist, says:—“A sailor came to my office, a few months ago, to have a dislocated arm set. When stripped and standing before me, he presented the type described by M. Edwards so perfectly, and moreover combined with such extraordinary development of bone and muscle, that there occurred to my mind at once the beau-ideal of a Roman soldier. Though the man had been an American sailor for twenty years, and spoke English without foreign accent, I could not help asking where he was born. He replied in a deep strong voice, ‘In Rome, sir!’”[^[34]]

In Greece the Hellenes and Pelasgi are two races identified with the earliest traditions of the country; but when we appeal to history for their origin, or seek for the part that each has played in the majestic drama of antiquity, there is little more than conjecture to guide us. Greece did not come fairly within the scope of M. Edwards’ researches, yet he has ventured a few note-worthy observations in connection with this point. He thinks the same principles that governed his examination of Gaul may be applied to Greece; and that the Hellenes and Pelasgi might be followed ethnologically like the Celts and Cimbri. Perhaps the most important remark which he makes is that which refers to the differences between what he calls the heroic and historic—or what is generally termed the ideal and real types of the Greek countenance. The ancient monuments of art in Greece exhibit a wide diversity of types, and this at every period of their history. Of the two great classes into which these may be divided, M. Edwards says:—

“Most of the divinities and personages of the heroic times are formed on that well-known model which constitutes what we term the beau-ideal. The forms and proportions of the head and countenance are so regular that we may describe them with mathematical precision. A perfectly oval contour, forehead and nose straight, without depression between them, would suffice to distinguish this type. The harmony is such that the presence of these traits implies the others. But such is not the character of the personages of truly historic times. The philosophers, orators, warriors, and poets almost all differ from it, and form a group apart. It cannot be confounded with the rest: it is sufficient to point it out, for one to recognise at once how far it is separated. It greatly resembles, on the contrary, the type which is seen in other countries of Europe, while the former is scarcely met with there.”

This observation is just. The head of Alexander the Great is nearly allied to the pure classical or heroic type; but this case is an exception—and the lineaments of Lycurgus, Eratosthenes, and most other specimens of old Greek portrait-sculpture, are, with the exception of the beard (if indeed such an exception is now requisite), very much like those which one meets with daily in our streets. “Were we to judge solely by the monuments of Greece,” continues M. Edwards, “on account of this contrast, we should be tempted to regard the type of the fabulous or heroic personages as ideal. But imagination more readily creates monsters than models of beauty; and this principle alone will suffice to convince us that such a type has existed in Greece, and the countries where its population has spread, if it does not still exist there.”

In corroboration of this conjecture, it may be stated that the learned travellers, M.M. de Stackelberg and de Bronsted, who have journeyed through the Morea and closely examined the population, assert that the heroic type is still extant in certain localities. M. Poqueville likewise assures us that the models which inspired Phidias and Apelles are still to be found among the inhabitants of the Morea. “They are generally tall, and finely formed; their eyes are full of fire, and they have a beautiful mouth, ornamented with the finest teeth. There are, however, degrees in their beauty, though all may be generally termed handsome. The Spartan woman is fair, of a slender make, but with a noble air. The women of Taÿgetus have the carriage of a Pallas when she wielded her formidable ægis in the midst of a battle. The Messenian woman is low of stature, and distinguished for her embonpoint,” (this may be owing to a mixture with the primitive race of the Morea, who, as Helots, long existed as a distinct caste in Messenia); “she has regular features, large blue eyes, and long black hair. The Arcadian, in her coarse woollen garments, scarcely suffers the symmetry of her form to appear; but her countenance is expressive of innocence and purity of mind.” In the time of Poqueville the Greek women were extremely ignorant and uneducated; but, he says, “music and dancing seem to have been taught them by nature.” He speaks of the long flaxen hair of the women of Sparta, their majestic air and carriage, their elegant forms, the symmetry of their features, lighted up by large blue eyes, fringed and shaded with long eye-lashes. “The men,” he says, “among whom some are ‘blonds,’ or fair, have noble countenances; are of tall stature, with masculine and regular features.” They have preserved something of the Dorians of ancient Sparta.

It would be erroneous, however, to conclude from this that Greek art owed everything to the actual. The type existed more or less imperfectly in the population, but Phidias and the Greek artists took and developed it, by the aid of the imagination, into that perfect phase of physical beauty which we justly term the beau-ideal. A nation’s beau-ideal is always the perfectionment of its own type. It is easy to see how this happens. In nations, as in individuals, the soul moulds the body, so far as extrinsic circumstances permit, into a form in accordance with its own ideas and desire; and accordingly, whenever a marked difference exists in the physical aspect of two nations, there, also, we may expect to find a variance in their beau-ideals. Not, as is generally supposed, from the eye of each race becoming accustomed to the national features, but because these features, are themselves an incarnation and embodiment of the national mind. It is the soul which shapes the national features, not the national features that mould the æsthetic judgment of the soul. It is not association, therefore, that is the cause of the different beau-ideals we behold in the world, but a psychical difference in the nations which produce them,—a circumstance no more remarkable than those moral and intellectual diversities in virtue of which we see one race excelling in the exact sciences, another in the fine arts, a third in military renown, and a fourth in pacific industry. We may adduce, in curious illustration of this point, the well-known fact that Raphael and many other eminent artists have repeatedly given their own likeness to the imaginary offspring of their art,—not real, but idealised likenesses. How was this? From vanity? No, certainly; but because the ideal most congenial to them, which they could most easily hold in their mind, and which it gave them most pleasure to linger over and beautify, was the ideal constituted by the perfectionment of their own features. There is something more than mere vanity in the pleasure usually derived from looking into a mirror; for when the features are in exact or nearly exact accordance with the desires of the framing Spirit within, there must always be a pleasure in the soul looking upon its own likeness: even as it experiences a similar delight when meeting with a being of perfectly congenial nature—in other words, its spiritual (as the other is its physical) likeness. It is to be expected, cæteris paribus, that this pleasure will be most felt by those who are gifted with much personal beauty, and whose features are most perfect of their kind; for in their case there is more than ordinary harmony between the soul and its fleshly envelope. Accordingly, no artist ever painted himself more than the beautiful Raphael. And we could name an eminent individual, now no more, as rarely gifted with physical beauty as with mental powers, to whom the contemplation of his portrait was almost a passion. Some of our readers may recognise the distinguished man of whom we speak. No one less vain or more noble-hearted than he, yet his painted likeness had always a fascination for him. “It is a curious thing,” he used to say, “how I like to look at my own portrait.” Was it not because, in that beautifully developed form and countenance, the spirit within had most successfully embodied its ideal, with little or no hindrance from extrinsic circumstances, and accordingly rejoiced, though it knew not why, in the presence of its own likeness?

But to return to ethnography, and trace out the successive changes which have taken place in the population of Europe. As we have already observed, the great ebb and flow of nations was over by the Christian era. The population had become comparatively dense, so that room could no more be made for tribes of new-comers—and settled in their habits and occupations, so as no longer to admit of their shifting or being driven to and fro like waves over the land, as was the case while they were in the nomadic state. And as the nations became consolidated, they began, however feebly at first, to live a national existence, and to put forth national efforts of self-defence against those who assailed them. On these various accounts, the system of conquest by displacement, which marked the pre-historic and in a faint degree the early historic times, was brought to an end,—the conquests of the Northmen being the last examples of the kind; and these being hardly worthy of the name, as they were marked rather by the political predominance of the new-comers, and by an overlaying rather than by any displacement of the native population. For all useful purposes, therefore, we may conceive that at the Christian era the various nations of Europe were arranged on the map very much as they are now,—the only exceptions worth mentioning being the influx of the Magyars and Turks, and the southward progress of several of the Slavonian tribes through the old Byzantine provinces into Greece.

“Had a Roman geographer of the days of the Empire,” it has been well observed, “advanced in a straight line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he would have traversed the exact succession of races that is to be met in the same route now. First, he would have found the Celts occupying as far as the Rhine; thence, eastward to the Vistula and Carpathian mountains, he would have found Germans; beyond them, and stretching away into Central Asia, he would have found the so-called Scythians,—a race which, had he possessed our information, he would have divided into the two great branches of the Slavonians or European Scythians, and the Tartars and Turks, or Asiatic Scythians; and finally, beyond these, he would have found Mongolian hordes overspreading Eastern Asia to the shores of the Pacific. These successive races or populations he would have found shading off into each other at their points of junction. He would have remarked, also, a general westward pressure of the whole mass, tending toward mutual rupture and invasion,—the Mongolian pressing against the Tartars, the Tartars against the Slavonians, the Slavonians against the Germans, and the Germans against the Celts.”

Although the early history and migrations of the Slavonians are involved in greater obscurity than that of either of the other two great branches of the European population, it is erroneous to suppose that they are a recent accession out of the depths of Asia. It was evidently a branch of them that Herodotus describes as peaceful, pastoral, and agricultural tribes located near the shores of the Black Sea. Instead of entering Europe via Asia Minor and the southern borders of the Euxine, as many of the Celtic and Teutonic tribes did, they appear to have taken the route by the north of the Caspian and Black Seas, and probably advanced southwards into Europe on the gradual and ultimately sudden subsidence of the waters of the inland sea which primevally stretched from the Baltic eastwards to the Sea of Aral.

This race, which now constitutes the largest ethnographical unit of population in Europe, numbering nearly eighty millions, has never yet been examined in rigorous detail. The earliest and best developed of its tribes is the Polish, which, though it has in recent times been subjected by the Russo-Slavons aided by the German powers, has not yet lost its nationality; and it is probable that, in the course of the future, the mighty Slavonic race will yet give rise to several distinct states. Both in features and complexion there is much diversity to be found in the various tribes which it comprises; but, if we consider the immense numbers of the race, and the different climes and temperatures under which they are located, it must be allowed that they are more homogeneous in character than any other people in Europe. The general type of the Slavonians is thus described by M. Edwards:—

“The contour of the head, viewed in front, approaches nearly to a square; the height surpasses a little the breadth; the summit is sensibly flattened; and the direction of the jaw is horizontal. The length of the nose is less than the distance from its base to the chin; it is almost straight from the depression at its root—that is to say, without any decided curvature; but, if appreciable, it is slightly concave, so that the end has a tendency to turn up; the lower part is rather large, and the extremity rounded. The eyes, which are rather deep-set, are [unlike those of the Tartars] perfectly on the same line; and when they have any particular character, they are smaller than the proportion of the head ought to indicate. The eyebrows are thin, and very near the eyes, particularly at the internal angle; and from this point are often [like those of the Tartars] directed obliquely outwards. The mouth, which is not salient, has thin lips, and is much nearer to the nose than to the tip of the chin. Another singular characteristic may be added, and which is very general, viz., their small beard, except on the upper lip

Having thus briefly and imperfectly glanced at the ethnographical features of Europe prior to the Christian era, we come now to note, equally briefly, the accession of foreign elements which the Continent has received subsequently to that period. The first of these is the memorable one of the Jews. Unlike the other incomers, they came not as conquerors, nor in a mass—but as isolated exiles, seeking new homes where they might be suffered to preserve their religion and gain a livelihood. A military race when in the land of their fathers, in Europe they developed only that other feature of their nation, the passion for moneymaking. In pursuit of this object they have settled in every country of Europe; and, in spite of persecutions innumerable, continue to preserve to this day their religion and their national features. Despite the warm passions of the Hebrews, which, even when in their own land, repeatedly led both the people and their princes into the contraction of sexual alliances with other nations, the Jewish blood on the whole is still much purer than that of any other race—the foreign elements from time to time mingled with it being gradually thrown off by innumerable crossings and re-crossings with the native stock. At present there are about two millions of Jews in Europe, and in the rest of the world about a million and a half. The modern Jews, while preserving the national features, present every variety of complexion save black—for the black Jews of Malabar are not Jews at all, but the descendants of apostate Hindoos. In regard to the matter of complexion, which varies so much with the climate and condition of the people, we shall say something by-and-by; but we shall here give some remarks of Mr Leeser, a learned Jew of Philadelphia, on the curious diversities of complexion so remarkably observable among the Hebrew race:—

“In respect to the true Jewish complexion, it is fair; which is proved by the variety of the people I have seen, from Persia, Russia, Palestine, and Africa, not to mention those of Europe and America, the latter of whom are identical with the Europeans, like all other white inhabitants of this continent. All Jews that ever I have beheld are identical in features; though the colour of their skin and eyes differs materially, inasmuch as the Southern are nearly all black-eyed, and somewhat sallow, while the Northern are blue-eyed, in a great measure, and of a fair and clear complexion. In this they assimilate to all Caucasians, when transported for a number of generations into various climates. Though I am free to admit that the dark and hazel eye and tawny skin are oftener met with among the Germanic Jews than among the German natives proper. There are also red-haired and white-haired Jews, as well as other people, and perhaps of as great a proportion. I speak now of the Jews north—I am myself a native of Germany, and among my own family I know of none without blue eyes, brown hair (though mine is black), and very fair skin—still I recollect, when a boy, seeing many who had not these characteristics, and had, on the contrary, eyes, hair, and skin of a more southern complexion. In America, you will see all varieties of complexion, from the very fair Canadian down to the almost yellow of the West Indian—the latter, however, is solely the effect of exposure to a deleterious climate for several generations, which changes, I should judge, the texture of the hair and skin, and thus leaves its mark on the constitution—otherwise the Caucasian type is strongly developed; but this is the case more emphatically among those sprung from a German than a Portuguese stock. The latter was an original inhabitant of the Iberian Peninsula, and whether it was preserved pure, or became mixed with Moorish blood in the process of centuries, or whether the Germans contracted an intimacy with Teutonic nations, and thus acquired a part of their national characteristics, it is impossible to be told now. But one thing is certain, that, both in Spain and Germany, conversions to Judaism during the early ages, say from the eighth to the thirteenth century, were by no means rare, or else the governments would not have so energetically prohibited Jews from making proselytes of their servants and others. I know not, indeed, whether there is any greater physical discrepancy between northern and southern Jews than between English families who continue in England or emigrate to Alabama—I rather judge there is not.”—Types of Mankind, p. 121.

The Huns and Magyars were the next tribes who made their way into Europe; and their advent, fierce, rapid, and exterminating, was conducted like a charge of cavalry. They hewed their way with the sword through the Slavonian and other tribes who impeded their march; and after being for a brief season the terror of Europe, they settled en permanence on the plains of Hungary, where for upwards of a thousand years they dominated, like a ruling caste, over the surrounding Slavonic tribes. The influx of this warlike race took place by two migrations,—firstly, of the Huns, under Attila, in the fifth century; and, secondly, of the Magyars, under Arpad, in the ninth. The type of the two races was identical; it is peculiarly exotic, and unlike any other in Europe. It belongs to the great Uralian-Tatar stem of Asia; but, strangely enough, though they differ in type from the Fins, the Magyars speak a dialect of the Finnish language,—which shows that the two races must have been associated in some way at a remote epoch, and before either of them emerged from the depths of Asia. M. Edwards thus describes the Magyar type:—“Head nearly round; forehead little developed, low, and bending; the eyes placed obliquely, so that the external angle is elevated; the nose short and flat; mouth prominent, and lips thick; neck very strong, so that the back of the head appears flat, forming almost a straight line with the nape; beard weak and scattering; stature short.” The Magyars did not belong to the Caucasian stock; and their long-continued supremacy over tribes decidedly Caucasian, is a nut to crack for those ethnographers who deduce everything from race, irrespective of the habits and state of development of particular nations.

The next alien race which entered Europe was the Gypseys, the history and peculiarities of which strange people present many curious analogies with those of the Israelites. “Both have had an exodus; both are exiles, and dispersed among the Gentiles, by whom they are hated and despised, and whom they hate and despise under the names of Busnees and Goyim; both, though speaking the language of the Gentiles, possess a peculiar language which the latter do not understand; and both possess a peculiar cast of countenance by which they may without difficulty be distinguished from all other nations. But with these points the similarity terminates. The Israelites have a peculiar religion, to which they are fanatically attached; the Romas (gypseys) have none. The Israelites have an authentic history; the Gypseys have no history,—they do not even know the name of their original country.” Everything connected with the Gypsey race is involved in mystery; though, from their physical type, language, &c., it is conjectured that they came from some part of India. It has been supposed that they fled from the exterminating sword of the great Tartar conqueror, Tamerlane, who ravaged India in 1408–9 A.D.; but Borrow’s work furnishes good ground for believing that they may have migrated at a much earlier period northwards, amongst the Slavonians, before they entered Germany and the other countries where we first catch sight of them. All that we know with certainty is, that in the beginning of the fifteenth century they appeared in Germany, and were soon scattered over Europe, as far as Spain. The precise day upon which these strange beings first entered France has been recorded,—namely, the 17th of August 1427. The entire number of the race at present is estimated at about 700,000,—thus constituting them the smallest as well as the most singular and distinctly marked of races. But if their numbers be small, their range of habitat is one of the widest. They are scattered over most countries of the habitable globe—Europe, Asia, Africa, and both the Americas, containing specimens of these roving tribes. “Their tents,” says Borrow, “are pitched on the heaths of Brazil and the ridges of the Himalaya hills; and their language is heard in Moscow and Madrid, in London and Stamboul. Their power of resisting cold is truly wonderful, as it is not uncommon to find them encamped in the midst of the snow, in slight canvass tents, where the temperature is 25° or 30° below the freezing-point according to Reaumur;” while, on the other hand, they withstand without difficulty the sultry climes of Africa and India.

The last accession which the population of Europe received was accomplished by an irruption similar to that of the Huns, but on a grander scale. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Osmanli Turks swept across the Hellespont and Bosphorus, and in 1453 established their empire in Europe by the capture of Byzantium. In proportion to its numbers, no race ever gave such a shock to the Western world as this; and, by its very antagonism, it helped to quicken into life the population and kingdoms of central and eastern Europe. It is semi-Caucasian by extraction, but, coming from the northern side of the Caucasus, and pretty far to the east, the original features of the race had a strong dash of the Tartar in them. The portrait of Mahomed II., the conqueror of Byzantium, may be taken as a fair sample of the primitive Turkish type,—indeed a more than average specimen, for among all nations the nobles and princes, as a class, are ever found to possess the most perfect forms and features. The Turkish tribes who still follow their ancient nomadic life, and wander in the cold and dry deserts of Turkistan, still exhibit the Tartar physiognomy—even the Nogays of the Crimea, and some of the roving tribes of Asia Minor, present much of this character. The European Turks, and the upper classes of the race generally, exhibit a greatly superior style of countenance, in consequence of the elevating influences of civilisation, and of their harems having been replenished for four centuries by fair ones from Georgia and Circassia,—a region which, as Chardin long ago remarked, “is assuredly the one where nature produces the most beautiful persons, and a people brave and valiant, as well as lively, galant, and loving.” There is hardly a man of quality in Turkey who is not born of a Georgian or Circassian mother,—counting downwards from the Sultan, who is generally Georgian or Circassian by the female side. As this crossing of the two races has been carried on for several centuries, the modern Ottomans in Europe are in truth a new nation—and, on the whole, a very handsome one. The general proportion of the face is symmetrical, and the facial angle nearly vertical,—the features thus approaching to the Circassian mould; while the head is remarkable for its excellent globular form, with the forehead broad and the glabella prominent.

The natural destiny of the Turks in Europe, like that of ruling castes everywhere when holding in subjection a population greatly more numerous than themselves, is either to gradually relax their sway and share the government with the subject races, as the Normans in England did,—or, if obstinately maintaining their class-despotism, to be violently deposed from the supremacy. The increasing development of the Greek and other sections of the population of European Turkey has of late years made one or other of these alternatives imminent; but the extensive reforms and liberalisation of the government simultaneously undertaken by the Ottoman rulers, and the remarkable abeyance in which they have begun to place the distinctive tenets of the Mahommedan faith, promised, if unthwarted by foreign influences, to keep the various races in amity, and admit Christians to offices in the state. The history of the last fifteen years has shown this system of governmental relaxation growing gradually stronger—so that Lord Palmerston was justified in saying that no country in the world could show so many reforms accomplished in so short a time as Turkey. And after the recent exploits of the Ottomans in defeating simultaneously the attacks of Russia and of the Greek and Montenegrin insurgents, and the Turkish predilections even of those provinces which were entered by the Christian forces of the Czar, it cannot be doubted that the Turkish rule was on the whole giving satisfaction, and that, if unaided by foreign Powers, no insurrection against the supremacy of the bold-hearted Osmanlis had the slightest chance of success. It was this state of matters which alarmed the ambitious Czar into his present aggression; for he felt that now or never was the time to interfere, if he did not wish to see a Turko-Greek state establish itself in such strength as to bid defiance to his power. We may add, that, whatever be the issue of the present contest, it must tend to a further and higher development of the Turkish character. The contagion of Western ideas, disseminated in the most imposing of ways by the presence of the armies of England and France, cannot fail to impress itself on the slumbrous but awakening Ottomans, and not only expand their stereotyped civilisation into a wider and freer form, but possibly to strike also from their religion the more faulty and obstructive of its tenets.

Such are the elements of the present population of Europe,—a population which, in its western and southern portions, no longer presents distinct masses of diverse tribes, and whose various sections every century is drawing into closer contact. The progress of commerce and civilisation produces not only an interchange of products of various climes, and of ideas between the various races of mankind, but also a commingling of blood; and as the most nobly developed races are always the great wanderers and conquerors, it will be seen that the progress of the world ever tends to improve the types of mankind by infusing the blood of the superior races into the veins of the inferior. The settlements of the Normans are an instance of this. And a still more remarkable, though exceptional, exemplification of the same thing may at present be witnessed in America—where the Negroes, transported from their native clime, have already become a mixed race, owing to the relation in which all female slaves stand to their masters, and the consequent frequent crossing of the European blood with the blood of Africa. In point of fact, there are slaves to be found in the Southern States, who, like “George” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, are as Caucasian in their features and intellect as their masters,—a circumstance fraught with considerable danger to the White caste in these States, because producing the extremest irritation in these nearly full-blood “white slaves,” and at the same time providing able and fiery leaders for the oppressed Negro race in the event of an insurrection and servile war.

But the great variety of countenance and temperament in Western and Southern Europe is not due merely to actual crossings of the commingling races. Civilisation itself is the parent of variety. The progress of humanity produces physical effects upon the race, which may be classed under two heads, one of these being a general physical improvement, and the other increasing variety. Take an undeveloped race like the Tartars or Negroes, and you will find the aspect and mental character of the nation nearly homogeneous,—the differences existing amongst its individual members being comparatively trivial. Pass to the Slavonians, and you will perceive this uniformity lessened; and when you reach the nations of Western Europe, you will find the transition accomplished, and homogeneity exchanged for variety. The explanation of this is obvious. Just as all plants of the same species, when in embryo, are nearly alike, undeveloped races of mankind present but few signs of spiritual life; and therefore their individual members greatly resemble one another,—because the fewer the characteristics, the less room is there for variety, and the more radical and therefore more universal must be the characteristics themselves. Pebbles, as they lie rough upon the sea-shore, may present a great uniformity of appearance; but take and polish them, and a hundred diversities of colour and marking forthwith show themselves;—even so does civilisation and growth develop the rich varieties of human nature. As these mental varieties spring up within, they ever seek to develop themselves by corresponding varieties in the outer life,—placing men now in riches, now in poverty, now under the sway of the intellect, now of the passions, now of good principles, now of bad, and moreover leading to an infinite diversity of external occupation. The joint influence of the feelings within, and of the corresponding circumstances without, in course of time comes to affect the physical frame, often in a very marked manner; and, indeed, it is well known that even so subtle a thing as the predominant thoughts and sentiments of an individual are almost always reflected in the aspect of his countenance. Nations, when in a primitive uncultured state, differ as widely from those at the apex of civilisation, as the monotonous countenance and one-phased mind of a peasant contrasts with the rich variety of expression in the face of genius, whose nature is quickly responsive to every influence, though often steadied into a masculine calm. Let any one inspect the various classes of our metropolitan population, and he will perceive an amount of physical, mental, and occupational variety such as he will meet with nowhere else in the world—presenting countenances deformed now by this form of brutal passion, now by that, ranging upwards to the noblest types of the human face, the joint product of easy circumstances and high mental and spiritual culture. It is all the result of civilisation, which ever tends to break up the uniformity of a population, and allows of its members rising to the highest heights or sinking to the lowest depths,—thus breaking the primitive monotony of life into its manifold prismatic hues.

Not the least remarkable of the physical changes thus produced by civilisation, is the diversity of complexion which it gradually affects. It appears certain, for example, that the races who peopled the northern and western parts of Europe, subsequent to the dark-skinned Iberians, were all of the fair or xanthous style of complexion; but this is by no means the case with the great mass of people who are supposed to have descended from them. “It seems unquestionable,” says Prichard, “that the complexion prevalent through the British Isles has greatly varied from that of all [?] the original tribes who are known to have jointly constituted the population. We have seen that the ancient Celtic tribes were a xanthous race; such, likewise, were the Saxons, Danes, and Normans; the Caledonians also, and the Gael, were fair and yellow-haired. Not so the mixed descendants of all these blue-eyed tribes. The Britons had already deviated from the colour of the Celts in the time of Strabo, who declares that the Britons are taller than the Gauls, and less yellow-haired, and more infirm and relaxed in their bodies.” The Germans have also varied in their complexion. The ancient Germans are said to have had universally yellow or red hair and blue eyes,—in short, a strongly marked xanthous constitution. This, says Niebuhr, “has now, in most parts of Germany, become uncommon. I can assert, from my own observation, that the Germans are now, in many parts of their country, far from a light-haired race. I have seen a considerable number of persons assembled in a large room at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and observed that, except one or two Englishmen, there was not an individual among them who had not dark hair. The Chevalier Bunsen has assured me that he has often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and the light cerulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the picture given by the ancients of his countrymen till he visited Scandinavia,—there he found himself surrounded by the Germans of Tacitus.” In the towns of Germany, especially, the people are far from being a red-haired, or even a xanthous race; and, from the fact that this change has been developed chiefly in towns, we may infer that it depends in part on habits, and the way of living, and on food. Towns are much warmer and drier than the country; but even the open country is much warmer and drier than the forests and morasses with which Germany was formerly covered. The climate of Germany has, in fact, changed since the country was cleared of its vast forests; and we must attribute the altered physical character of the Germans to the altered condition under which the present inhabitants live.

It was the conquests of Rome that first scattered the seeds of civilisation in Western Europe. There it has grown up into a stately and nearly perfect fabric on the shores of the Atlantic, gradually losing its perfection as it proceeds eastwards, until it reaches the semi-barbarism of Russia, and the still deeper barbarism of Upper Asia. Our limits hardly allow of our inquiring what influence this civilisation is calculated to exert in future upon the ethnological condition of the Continent, although it is a question of great importance, as foreshadowing the chief changes which may be expected to result from the state of chronic strife upon which Europe has now entered. We can only remark that the grand action of progress and civilisation is to develop the mind, and so convert the units of society from a mass of automatons into thinking and self-directing agents,—conscious of, and able to attain, alike their own rights and those of their nation. Hence follows the growth of liberty within; and, without, the gradual establishment of union between scattered sections of the same race. Supposing, then, that the progress of civilisation in Europe be unobstructed, we may calculate that wherever we now see internal despotism, there will be liberty,—wherever we see foreign domination, there will be national freedom,—and that, after a little more training in the stern school of suffering, the Continental nations, grown wiser, will make an end of the present arbitrary and unnatural territorial system of Europe, and arrange themselves in the more natural, grander, and permanent communities of race.

It was doubtless a perception of this truth that caused the French Emperor recently to declare that “the age of conquests is past.” We regret to think, however, that the statement is somewhat premature,—for Europe is still far from that happy climax of civilisation which in the preceding sentences we have indicated. Moreover, there are two very opposite periods in the life of nations when the race-principle reigns supreme, their first and their last;—just as, in the case of individuals, men often adopt in old age, from the dictates of experience, principles which in youth they had acted upon from instinct. Now, Europe at this day presents both of these phases of national life existing simultaneously, at its eastern and western extremities; and it seems probable that the development of the race-principle in its early form among the Slavonians, will take precedence of its development in maturity among the civilised races of the Continent. There is every indication that the Panslavism of Russia will precede the coalescing of the Teutonic tribes into a united Germany—or of the Romano-Gallic races of France, Spain, and Italy, into that trinity of confederate states which Lamartine so stoutly predicts. Nay, may not this Panslavism of Russia, by a short-lived political domination, be destined to prove the very means of exciting the ethnological affinities of the rest of Europe, and of thereby raising up an insuperable barrier to its own progress, as well as involuntarily launching the other nations on their true line of progress?

The fag-end of an article is little suitable for the discussion of such really momentous topics, and we especially regret that we cannot proceed to consider the effects which the progress of civilisation is likely to exert upon Russia itself. Any one, however, who is disposed to supply for himself the deductions from the above principles, will feel that his labour in so doing is not without its recompense, by establishing the consolatory truth that, so far as human eye can discern, “a good time coming” is yet in store for Europe,—though, alas, what turmoil must there be between this and then!

THE GANGETIC PROVINCES OF BRITISH INDIA.[^[35]]

Disguise it as we may, conquest to the conquered must ever be a bitter draught.

It is impossible for nations to be entirely disinterested. The rewards of the victors cannot be reaped without trenching upon the rights of the vanquished.

Three centuries have gone by since Machiavelli wrote, yet still does the Italian mutter his words, “Ad ognuno puzza questo barbaro dominio;” and all the material benefits which the peasantry of Lombardy often admit that they enjoy under their present masters, cannot abate the aversion of the people of that province to the Austrian rule.

There are more points of resemblance than we may like to confess between the position of Austria towards Italy, and that of England towards India. In both cases, the bulk of the conquered, especially the agricultural classes, have little to complain of, and are on the whole passively contented and reconciled to a yoke which, as far as they are concerned, presses, perhaps, but does not gall; in both cases, all of a higher order, all upon whom ambition can have any influence, must feel more or less discontented with a condition necessarily attended with a diminished chance of advancement, and a mortifying stagnation of hope. Both of the dominant powers ought to regard this frame of mind not as a fault, but as a moral malady, and to direct their best efforts to the cure of an affection naturally resulting from the depressed position of those brought by conquest under their sway.

What the sanative measures of Austria may have been, and into the causes of their failure, we need not stop to inquire, but may proceed at once to consider in how far we have, in this respect, acquitted ourselves of our obligations to those over whom we also rule mainly by the right of conquest and superior strength.

Not being gifted, like many of our contemporaries, with power to take in the totality of the gorgeous East at one comprehensive glance, we must examine our Indian empire in detail, and for the present confine our remarks to the Presidency of Bengal, with its appendage the Lieutenant-Governorship of Agra.

The guides whom we propose to follow in the prosecution of our inquiries into the state of these Gangetic provinces, their past and present condition, and their future prospects, are the authors enumerated at the foot of the page, each of whom may be regarded as a representative of one or other of the schools into which those interested in the work of Indian administration may now be said to be divided.

The history of our civil administration of the Gangetic portion of our Eastern territory divides itself into three distinct periods. The first, extending from the victories of Clive in 1757, to the commencement of Lord Cornwallis’s system in 1793, may be called the heroic and irregular; the second, dating from the year last mentioned, and continuing till the accession of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, may be designated the judicial and regular; and the third, stretching from that time to the present day, the anti-judicial and progressive period.

During the first of these periods, it is in vain to deny that gross abuses prevailed, and that many acts of oppression were committed by those very individuals among our own countrymen, whose heroism in the field and sagacity in council were the subjects of admiration to such natives as were brought into communication and contact with them.

A degree of intimacy thus subsisted between the European rulers and natives of higher rank, such as, in these days, is only to be found where the native has been by education assimilated in some degree to the Englishman.

It is stated by Mr F. H. Robinson, that men who had left India at that early period, could not believe those who, in after years, told them of the social estrangement prevailing in that country, and of the reluctance evinced, even by Mahommedans, to share a repast with a Christian.

Engaged, as the English of those early days were, in a struggle for political existence, their deportment towards natives of rank was influenced by the often-felt necessity of winning them over to their interests; and thus our national disposition to be contemptuously churlish towards those who differ from ourselves in language, complexion, and manner, was kept for a while in abeyance. At that period, therefore, we find traces of friendly personal feeling subsisting between Englishmen and natives, and expressed by the latter, even in the same breath with the most earnest protestations against the mal-administration of the country then in our hands. Striking instances of these conflicting feelings are exhibited in that most curious work entitled Syar-ul Mootekherin, which may be translated into a “Review of Modern Times,” or more literally, “Manners of the Moderns.” This history of the events attending the downfall of the Moghul and the rise of our own power in India, was written by a Mahommedan gentleman, of the name of Mir Gholan Hussein, whose descendants, if we are not misinformed, continued under our rule to hold possession of certain lands in the province of Behar, since lost to them in a manner likely to be chronicled among the events of the third of the three historic periods to which we have alluded.

If even at this distance of time it is painful to read the reproaches bestowed by the author on our internal administration, it is still consolatory to find one, to whom neither partiality nor flattery can be imputed, recording his unfeigned admiration of the personal conduct of many of our countrymen in those early days.

Of Warren Hastings the author writes with enthusiasm. He records all of that great man’s troubles with his council; and gives, if we remember right—for we have not been able to find a complete translation of the work in London—a circumstantial account of the duel with Francis, fought, according to English custom, with tummunchas (pistols), in a bugishea (garden); and then after narrating the complete dispersion of the factious opposition by which he had been thwarted, he breaks out in a triumphant tone, with an exclamation like the following: “Now did the genius of Mr Hastings, like the sun bursting through a cloud, beam forth in all its splendour.” In describing an action fought in the vicinity of the city of Patna, in the year 1760, the native author dwells with delight upon the conduct of his friend Dr William Fullerton, who, in the midst of a retreat in the face of a victorious enemy, on an ammunition-cart breaking down, stopped unconcernedly, put it in order, and then bravely pursued his route, and “it must be acknowledged,” he adds, “that this nation’s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question.”

In abatement of these praises, he adds the following reflections: “If, to so many military qualifications, they knew how to join the art of government, no nation would be preferable to them, or prove worthier of command; but such is their little regard to the people of these kingdoms, and such their apathy and indifference for their welfare, that the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress.”

Though this censure is in so far unfair, that all is, in Oriental fashion, imputed to the ruling power, without allowance for the circumstances of a period of troublous transition, it is evidently penned in an honest and friendly spirit; and evinces no repugnance whatever to the domination of the English, provided they would acquire some better knowledge of “the art of government.” In another passage he recounts how gallantly a Hindoo of high rank, Rajah Shitab Roy, co-operated with Captain Knox in attacking an immensely superior force, and how heartily, on returning to Patna, the English captain expressed his admiration of his Hindoo ally, exclaiming repeatedly, “This is a real Nawab; I never saw such a Nawab in my life.”

Soon afterwards the French officer with the force opposed to the English, the Chevalier Law, having been deserted by his men, remained by himself on the field of battle, when, bestriding one of his guns, “he awaited the moment of his death.” His surrender and courteous reception are dwelt on with evident delight; and, after stating how a rude question addressed to the Chevalier by a native chief was checked and rebuked by the English officer, he makes the following observation:—“This reprimand did much honour to the English; and it must be acknowledged, to the honour of these strangers, that as their conduct in war and in battle is worthy of admiration, so, on the other hand, nothing is more modest and more becoming than their behaviour to an enemy, whether in the heat of action or in the pride of success and victory.”

These extracts, borrowed from the notes to the third volume of Mill’s History, might be supported by many other passages of a similar tendency in the native work itself; and all tend to prove that the social estrangement since prevailing between our countrymen and the native gentry has not had its origin in the religious scruples of the latter, or in any decided aversion on their part to a closer intercourse with the strangers to whom Providence has assigned the mastery over their land.

This view is confirmed, in as far as the Mahommedans are concerned, by what Mrs Colin Mackenzie tells us of the comments of the Afghan chiefs on the reluctance of their co-religionists in Hindostan to share a repast with their Christian rulers, and the absence of any fellowship between the two classes is traced by that lady to the very cause to which it is in our opinion also mainly to be ascribed; namely, to our peculiar and somewhat repulsive bearing towards all who differ from ourselves in tone of thought, in taste, or in manners.—With a scrupulous respect for the persons and property of those among whom we are thrown by the accidents of war, or trade, or travel, we too often manifest a great disregard for the feelings; and as insults rankle in the memory long after injuries are forgotten, we find that liberal expenditure and strict justice in our dealings cannot make us as popular as our rivals the French, even in countries where we paid for all, and they for nothing, that was supplied or taken. Now, it is well remarked by Mr Marshman, at p. 63 of his Reply to Mr Cobden, that “everything in and about our Eastern Empire is English, even to our imperfections;” and among them we need not be surprised to find an undue scorn of all that is foreign, heightened by the arrogance of conquest and the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to a dark complexion. This last is a more potent principle than in our present humour of theoretical philanthropy we may be disposed to admit; but it seems to be born with us, for it may be seen sometimes in English children at an age too young for prejudice, or even a perception of social distinctions.

It was said by “the Duke,” that there is no aristocracy like the aristocracy of colour; and all experience in lands where the races are brought into contact, proves the correctness of the aphorism.

During the first thirty years of our ascendancy in India, this most forbidding of our national characteristics was kept in check by the exigencies of our position; and the consequence was, that, notwithstanding all the corruption of the time, we were then individually more popular than we have ever been since. There was so little of what could be called European society then to be met with throughout the country, that Englishmen were drawn into some degree of intimacy with natives, in order to escape from the painful sense of total isolation and solitude. That this intercourse was favourable to morality in the highest sense of the term, is more than we can venture to affirm; each party too often acquired more of the faults than of the virtues of the other. But still, bad as the public and private life of Anglo-Indians was at that period, and however great the corruption that prevailed, these defects in those who ruled were perhaps more tolerable to the governed than the ill-mannered integrity of a succeeding generation.

The abuses had probably gone on increasing, and the palliating courtesy most likely diminishing, when a new era was ushered in by the arrival of the first Governor-General of superior rank, in the person of the Marquis Cornwallis.

We must refer our readers to Mr Kaye’s pages for a clear description of the state of the Bengal Presidency at the commencement of this the second of the three periods into which we have assumed that its history may be distributed. Our space will not allow of our entering into the controversy about the merits of the system then introduced by Lord Cornwallis and his coadjutors, but we gladly make room for the following picture of the state of the peasantry in Bengal, sketched as we are assured by an eyewitness, in the course of the year 1853.

“What strikes the eye most in any village, or set of villages, in a Bengal district, is the exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty surrounding the Grihasta’s (cultivator’s) abode, the rich foliage, the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like penury. Did any man ever go through a Bengalee village and find himself assailed by the cry of want or famine? Was he ever told that the Ryot and his family did not know where to turn for a meal, that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to bathe in, no employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid out like a model village in an English county; that things seem to go on, year by year, in the same slovenly fashion; that there are no local improvements, and no advances in civilisation, is all very true. But considering the wretched condition of some of the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the misery experienced by hundreds in the purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of the Ryots who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time that the outcry about the extreme unhappiness of the Bengal Ryot should cease.”—(P. 194.)

It is cheering to read in the chapter of Mr Kaye’s work, from which the above extract is taken, the proofs that the labours of Cornwallis and his able coadjutors have not been fruitless, and that the peasantry of the part of India more immediately under their care, are not, as some have asserted, to this hour suffering from their blundering humanity.

It would indeed be most mortifying to think that regulations, pronounced at the time of their promulgation by Sir Wm. Jones and the best English lawyers in India (though, in the true spirit of professional pedantry, they would not allow them to be called laws), to be such as would do credit to any legislator of ancient or modern times, should really in operation have proved productive of little or no good.

The preambles to some of the first of these regulations are worthy of notice, even on the score of literary merit; and it is impossible to peruse them without feeling that they must have proceeded from highly cultivated minds, deeply impressed with the importance of the duty on which they were engaged.

It was the recorded opinion of the late Mr Courtenay Smith, of the Bengal Civil Service (a brother of the celebrated Sidney Smith, and, like him, a man of great wit and general talent, though unfortunately his good things were mostly expressed in Persian or Hindostanee, and are thus lost to the European world), that succeeding governments have always erred as they have departed from the principles of the Cornwallis code; and that it would have been well if they had confined their legislation to such few modifications of the regulations of 1793 as the slowly progressive changes of Oriental life might have really rendered necessary.

For very nearly thirty years the government of Bengal resisted the tempting facility of legislation incident to its position of entire and absolute power, and was content to rule upon the principles, and in general adherence to the forms, prescribed by those early enactments.

The benefits resulting from this system were to be seen in a yearly extending cultivation, a growing respect for rights of property, and the gradual rise in the minds of the people of an habitual reference to certain known laws, instead of to the caprice of a ruler, for their guidance in the more serious affairs of life.

The counterbalancing evils alleged against it were, the monopoly of all high offices by the covenanted servants of the East India Company; the accumulation of suits in the courts of civil justice—a result partly of that monopoly, and partly of the check imposed by our police on all simpler and ruder modes of arbitrement; and its tendency, by humouring the Asiatic aversion to change, to keep things stationary, and discountenance that progress without which there ought, in the opinion of many of our countrymen, to be no content on earth. Indeed, the very fact of the natives of Bengal being satisfied with such a system, would, we apprehend, be advanced as a reason for its abolition—a contented frame of mind, under their circumstances, being held to indicate a moral abasement, only to be corrected by the excitement of a little discontent. But, in truth, there was nothing in the Cornwallis system to preclude the introduction of necessary amendments.

The great reproach attaching to it was the insufficient employment of natives, and the exclusive occupation by the Civil Service of the higher judicial posts. Now, we hope to make it clear, by a brief explanation, that the correction of both of these evils might more easily have been effected under the Cornwallis system, than under that by which it has been superseded. There are, as we have remarked at the outset of this article, questions of difficult solution inseparable from conquest; among which, that of the degree of trust to be reposed in the conquered is perhaps the greatest.

Where attachment can hardly be presumed to exist, some reserve in the allotment of power appears to be dictated by prudence; and to fix the amount of influence annexed to an office to be filled by one of the subjugated, so as to render its importance and respectability compatible with the supremacy of the ruling race, is far from being so easy as those imagine who, in their reliance on certain general principles of supposed universal application, leave national feelings and prejudices out of account in making up their own little nostrums for the improvement of mankind.

Under the Cornwallis system, there was an office which, though then always filled by a member of the Civil Service, seemed, in the limitation as well as the importance of its duties, to be exactly suited for natives to hold. When the civil file of a district became overloaded with arrears, the government used to appoint an officer to be assistant or deputy judge. To him the regular judge of the district was empowered to refer any cases that he thought fit, though there his power ceased, as the appeal lay direct to the provincial court from the award of the deputy.

The deputy being made merely a referee without original jurisdiction, was a wise provision for keeping the primary judicial power in the hands of the officer charged with the preservation of the peace of the district, while importance and weight were given to the office of the deputy, by making the appeals from his decisions lie to the Provincial Court, and not to his local superior. A single little law of three lines, declaring natives of India to be eligible to the office of Deputy Judge, would, by throwing a number of respectable situations open to their aspirations, have provided for their advancement, without any disturbance of institutions to which the people of the country had become accustomed and reconciled. Again, as to the monopoly of higher judicial office by members of the Civil Service, the Cornwallis system, perhaps, provided a readier means of abating even this grievance than will be found in that by which it has been supplanted.

Nothing can be more extravagant than the scheme of sending out barristers from Westminster Hall, to undertake, without any intermediate training, the management of districts in Bengal and Hindostan. Sir William Jones himself, unintelligible as he was, on his first arrival, to the natives of India, would have failed if he had undertaken such a task. This visionary proposal has happily received its coup de grace from Sir Edward Ryan, the late Chief Justice in Bengal, in his evidence before the Commons’ Committee; but it does not, in our opinion, follow that the aid of lawyers trained in England is therefore to be altogether discarded in providing for the administration of justice in India. Although the man fresh from England would be sadly bewildered if left by himself in a separate district, it does not follow that he should not, after some preparatory training, be able to co-operate vigorously with others. The horse will go well in double-harness, or in a team, who would upset a gig, and kick it to pieces.

If barristers chose to repair to Bengal, and, while there practising at the bar of the Supreme Court, would study the native languages, it appears to us that, on their proficiency being proved by an examination, they might have been advantageously admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into the now abolished Provincial Courts.

Had these experimental provisions in favour of natives of India, and barristers from England, been found to succeed, their eligibility to every grade in the judicial branch of the service might have been proclaimed, and the most plausible of all the complaints against our system of Indian government would thus have been removed. But improvement without change was not to the taste of those by whom the last of our three administrative periods was ushered in; and in further confirmation of Mr Marshman’s remark, already cited, on the parallelism of movement in England and in India, it was in the changeful years 1830 and 1831 that a revolution was effected in our system of internal administration, which has since given a colour and a bent to our whole policy in the East. In the course of those two years the magisterial power was detached from the office of the judge, and annexed to that of the collector; the Provincial Courts were abolished, their judicial duties being transferred to the district judges, and their ministerial functions of superintendence and control to commissioners, each with the police and revenue of about half a dozen districts under his charge.

Two Sudder, or courts of ultimate resort, were established, one at Calcutta, the other at Allahabad in upper India; but all real executive power centred in the magisterial revenue department, presided over by two Boards, located, like the Sudder Courts, at Calcutta and Allahabad.

One of the new provisions then introduced abolished the office of Register, or subordinate Judge, held by young civilians conjointly with that of Assistant to the Magistrate. This was a most serious change, for it abolished the very situation in which young civilians received their judicial training, and fitted themselves for the better eventual discharge of the higher duties of the judicature.

The Registers used to have the trial of civil suits for property, if not more than five hundred rupees (£50) in value. The abolitionists urged the injustice of letting raw youths experimentalise upon small suits, to the supposed detriment of poor suitors. There was a show of reason in this mode of arguing; but those who used it did not give due weight to the consideration that these youths were to become the dispensers of justice to all classes, and that it was better for the country to suffer a little from their blunders at the outset, than to have them at last advanced to the highest posts on the judgment-seat without any judicial training whatsoever. But, in fact, the whole argument was based upon a mere assumption. The young Registers certainly committed occasional blunders, as old Justices and Aldermen, if we are to believe the daily papers, constantly commit them in England; but, on the whole, their courts were generally popular and in good repute among the natives. The young civilian had often a pride in his own little court of record, liked to know that it was well thought of, and was sometimes pleased to find parties shaping their plaints so as to bring them within the limits of his cognisance.

They thus often acquired a personal regard for the people, whom it was their pride, as well as their duty, to protect—a feeling which has since, we fear, been too much weakened. The young civilians of the present day, though excellent men of business, and accomplished linguists, have seldom any individual feeling for the natives, whom they regard in a light for which no word occurs to us so happily expressive as the French term, “les administrés.” Thus it happened that the abolition of Registerships proved almost the death-blow to the Cornwallis system, and shook, not merely the framework, but the very principles of judicial administration throughout the country. It was followed up by a series of measures, all calculated to lower the judicial department of the service, and to prove to the natives that the protection of the law, promised in the still unrepealed regulations, was thenceforward to prove illusory, wherever it was required to shield them from the encroachments of any new scheme or theory finding favour for the moment with an executive government ruling avowedly upon principles of expediency, and seeking every occasion to shake off the trammels imposed upon its freedom of action by the cautious provisions of the Cornwallis code.

The people soon found in their rulers under the new system a scrupulous discharge of all positive duties, combined with a diminished consideration for native prejudices, a neglect of many punctilios of etiquette, and a stern hostility to every exceptional privilege exempting an individual in any degree from the operation of the rules of general administration. This last-mentioned tendency showed itself particularly in the case of the rent-free tenures, which had for some ten years previously been undergoing revision.

These landed tenures were held under grants from former rulers, exempting the grantee and his heirs from all payment on the score of revenue, though sometimes, as in our own feudal tenures, imposing upon him obligations of suit and service in some form or other.

When the framers of the Cornwallis code, in 1793, determined on recognising the validity of every such tenure as was held under an authentic and sufficient grant, a provision was at the same time made for their being carefully recorded and registered.

This duty of registration was, however, either totally neglected or very imperfectly performed, and the consequence was, that by collusive extensions of their limits, and other means, such as it would be tedious to explain, the rent-free tenures were gradually eating into the rent-paying lands forming the main source of the revenues of the state. Careful revision, therefore, became necessary, and was in fact commenced so far back as the year 1819. The inquiry was intrusted to the officers of the revenue department; but for some time permission was left to those discontented with their award, to bring the question at issue between them and the Government before the regular courts of justice for final decision. This process proving too tardy, in about ten years afterwards a sort of exchequer court, called a Special Commission, was erected for the trial of appeals from the decisions of the revenue authorities on the validity of rent-free grants. This commission was filled by officers of the judicial branch of the service, and their proceedings, carried on in strict conformity with the practice of the courts of civil justice, gave no offence, and created no alarm, notwithstanding that extensive tracts were brought by their decisions under the liability of paying revenue to the state. But not long after the country had entered into the third period of its administration, the revenue authorities got impatient of all restraint, and sought to break through the impediments of judicial procedure and rules. The primary proceedings, being intrusted to young deputy-collectors, were carried on with a rapidity which rendered due investigation utterly impossible, and all real inquiry must have been deemed superfluous by juniors, who saw their superiors gravely pronounce, even in official documents, that the very existence of a rent-free tenure was an abuse, and ought to be abated.

We have said that the forgeries practised by some, and the extension of their privileges by others of the holders, rendered strict investigation of rent-free tenures an immediate necessity and a duty. Still, it was to be borne in mind, that our faith was pledged to the recognition of all genuine grants, and that, in the larger of these tenures, the fallen nobility and gentry of the land found their solace for the loss of power, place, station, hope of advancement, and all that gives a zest to the life of the upper classes in every part of the globe; while the smaller tenures of the kind constituted, in many instances, the sole support of well-descended but indigent families. There was something to move the compassion even of a universal philanthropist, in the thought of the humble individuals of both sexes to whom a sweeping resumption of all such tenures was in fact the extinction of almost every earthly hope. The Indian government itself, though at that period described by Mr F. H. Robinson (p. 12) as “a despotism administered upon radical principles,” became startled at the havoc which the zeal of its subordinates was committing among this class of sufferers, and interfered to mitigate the severity of their proceedings. Many of the “soft-hearted” seniors of the Civil Service rejoiced at a resolution which relieved them from an odious and painful duty. But thus reasons a strong-minded junior on what he regards as a feeble concession:—

“Unfortunately the long delay in making the investigations had established in their seats the fraudulent appropriators of the revenue; and when it came to be taken from them, the measure caused great change and apparent hardship to individuals in comfortable circumstances; hence arose a great cry of hardship and injustice. We were still most apt to view with sympathy the misfortunes of the higher classes; many soft-hearted officers of Government exclaimed against the sudden deprivation; and some of the seditious Europeans, who find their profit in professional attacks on Government, raised the cry much louder. But the worst of the storm had expended itself; a little firmness, a little voluntary beneficence to individual cases, and it would have ceased; and the temporary inconvenience to fraudulent individuals would have resulted in great permanent addition to the means of the state; but the Bengal Government is pusillanimous. Since Warren Hastings was persecuted in doing his duty, and Lord Cornwallis praised for sacrificing the interests of Government, and of the body of the people, it has always erred on the side of abandoning its rights to any sufficiently strong interested cry. It wavered about these resumptions. It let off first one kind of holding, then another, then all holdings under one hundred beegas (about seventy acres), whether one man possessed several such or not: life-tenures were granted where no right existed. Finally, all resumed lands were settled at half rates in perpetuity, and the Board of Revenue intimated that they ‘would be happy to see all operations discontinued.’ The result therefore is, that the Government have incurred all the odium and abuse of the measure, have given the cry more colour by so much yielding, and in the end have got not half so much revenue as they ought to have had. There has been an addition of about £300,000 to the annual revenue, at an expense of £800,000.”[^[36]]

According to Mr Campbell’s calculation, a stricter enforcement of the resumption laws might have doubled the above sum; but as only the smaller tenures were let off, it is scarcely possible that more than half as much again as was actually realised could have been wrung out of the remnants to which the Government so timidly, as he asserts, abandoned its rights. An addition, therefore, of about £450,000 to our annual income would have been all that we should have gained by a measure violating the most solemn pledge given to the people that every VALID grant should be respected, reducing many families to ruin, and shaking the general confidence in our honesty and good faith. Though the passage cited is open to many objections on the score of arbitrary assumption and false reasoning, it is to its hardness of tone that we would chiefly draw our readers’ attention, as strongly confirmatory of the following remark, taken from Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet:—

“I have said enough, I think, to demonstrate that the disaffection which exists is traceable to the despotic character our administration has of late years assumed, simultaneously with its sedulous diffusion of liberal doctrines; to the unhappy dislike of natives, as natives, which has crept in among the servants of Government; to the many acts of abuse, oppression, and arbitrary misgovernment, arising as much from misguided zeal as from evil intention, which, on the part of the administrative officers, harass and vex the people.”—(P. 31).

We have already recorded our assent to Mr Marshman’s remark on the thoroughly English character of our Indian empire and its administration; but we have, moreover, to observe, that, in the application of new principles even of European growth, India often outstrips the mother country. That which in England is still theory has in India become practice. There are not wanting in England people to maintain that all grants of olden times ought to be forfeited, and their proceeds applied to the purposes of general government. If these people had their way, they would certainly resume the lands of the deans and chapters, probably those of the schools and colleges, and possibly such also as are devoted to the support of almshouses, and other charitable institutions scattered over the face of the country. These speculations in England evaporate in pamphlets, and cannot for a long time assume any more positive form than that of a speech in the House of Commons. But the following passage in Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet shows us how differently such matters are ordered in India:—

“The Government have systematically resumed, of late years, all religious endowments; an extensive inquiry has been going on into all endowments, grants, and pensions; and in almost every one in which the continuance of religious endowments has been recommended by subordinate revenue authorities, backed by the Board of Revenue, the fiat of confiscation has been issued by the Government.”—(P. 17).

Again, there are many in England who would gladly reduce the landed possessions of great proprietors, like the Duke of Buccleuch and others, to more moderate dimensions; but they hardly venture to put forth speculations upon a measure which, in India, has been carried into positive and extensive execution.

The fourth chapter of Mr Kaye’s work contains a clear and admirable account of the recent settlement of the provinces of the Upper Ganges, in the course of which the reader will meet with the following passage:—

“There was a class of large landed proprietors, known as Talookdars, the territorial aristocracy of the country. The settlement officers seem to have treated these men as usurpers and monopolists, and to have sought every opportunity of reducing their tenures. It was not denied that such reduction was, on the whole, desirable, inasmuch as these large tenures interfered with the rights of the village proprietors. But the reduction was undertaken in too precipitate and arbitrary a manner; and the Court of Directors acknowledged that it had caused great practical embarrassment to Government, against whom numerous suits were instituted in the civil courts by the ousted talookdars, and many decided in their favour.”—(P. 265).

The redress afforded by these decisions of the civil courts has not, we fear, been sufficient to avert the ruin of such members of the “territorial aristocracy” as had the hardihood to withhold their adhesion to a scheme for their own extinction. The principle of that scheme was to grant, in the form of a per-centage on the revenue realised from the village communities of what had been his domain, a pension to the talookdar who was willing, for such a consideration, to give up all the other advantages of his hereditary position. Many of these men, or their immediate predecessors, had rendered us great service in the war by which we acquired the country; but they stood in the way of a favourite scheme, and before its irresistible advance they were compelled to retire. The provision made for their future wants may have been a liberal one; but how would the Duke of Buccleuch or the Marquess of Westminster like to be thus pensioned off?

The truth had better be frankly avowed; the object aimed at is, to get rid of the old territorial aristocracy altogether,—indeed, it is so stated by Mr Campbell in the following sentences:—

“It is, I think, a remarkable distinction between the manners of the natives and ours, and one which much affects our dealings with them, that there does not exist that difference of tone between the higher and lower classes—the distinction, in fact, of a gentleman. The lower classes are to the full as good and intelligent as with us; indeed, they are much more versed in the affairs of life, plead their causes better, make more intelligent witnesses, and have many virtues.

“But these good qualities are not in the same proportion in the higher classes; they cannot bear prosperity; it causes them to degenerate, especially if they are born to greatness. The only efficient men of rank (with, of course, a few exceptions) are those who have risen to greatness. The lowest of the people, if fate raise him to be an emperor, makes himself quite at home in his new situation, and shows an aptitude of manner and conduct unknown to Europeans similarly situated; but his son is altogether degenerate. Hence the impossibility of adapting to anything useful most of the higher classes found by us, and for all fresh requirements it is necessary to create a fresh class. From the acuteness and aptness to learn of the inferior classes, this can be done as is done in other countries.”—(Pp. 63, 64).

We fully subscribe to all that is here said in commendation of the lower classes of our Indian subjects, but we demur to the author’s very disparaging estimate of the capacity of the higher orders. Doubtless there are, or rather were, many dull men of rank on the banks of the Ganges; but are there none on those of the Thames?—no squires of cramped and confused notions, no fortunate inheritors of wealth content to wallow through life in utter disregard of the duties attaching to property, while fiercely jealous of its rights? It would be a sad day for our own landed aristocracy if Mr Campbell were to obtain sway in England, and try to rule that country upon the principles of which he approves in the East. But if he could, would our peasantry be permanently bettered by a change tending towards a destruction of all the gradations of society? If the reply to this query should be in the affirmative, we may contemplate with unalloyed satisfaction the progress of a system the description and defence of which is the main object of Mr Campbell’s work; but if we feel any hesitation as to the future effects of such a change in England, then, human nature being much the same in every clime, we ought to have some misgivings as to its eventual results in the East. We say eventual, because the immediate fruits of the measures described by Mr Campbell have, we are assured by him, and have heard from other quarters, been satisfactory and cheering. But is it probable that a whole nation should rest satisfied for ever in this state of flat and tame sufficiency? and can we wonder to find alongside of Mr Campbell’s picture of what ought to be the feelings towards the English of the present day on the banks of the Ganges, Mr F. H. Robinson’s gloomy account of what, in his opinion, those feelings really are? Having been compelled, as a member of the Board of Revenue, to make a communication to an old retired officer of Gardiner’s Irregular Horse, and to a Mussulman of rank, calculated to hurt the feelings of both, Mr Robinson thus describes what followed:—

“I shall never forget the looks of mortification, anger, and at first of incredulity, with which this announcement was received by both, nor the bitter irony with which the old Russuldar remarked, that no doubt the wisdom of the new-gentlemen (Sahiblogue, so they designate the English) had shown them the folly and ignorance of the gentlemen of the old time, on whom it had pleased God, nevertheless, to bestow the government of India.”—(P. 17).

Mr Robinson goes too far when he taxes the rulers of the present day with dislike to the natives generally; but it is evident, from Mr Campbell’s own admission, that there is a strong prepossession in the minds of the young men of his school against all natives with any pretensions to rank. This feeling extending to those beyond the limits of our own dominions, has stamped on our foreign policy the character of our internal administration, and found its full development in the late Afghan war. Thirty or forty years ago, when natives, if excluded from office, were more often admitted to familiar intercourse with their European rulers, a mere regard for our own character in the eyes of our subjects would have withheld us from making an unprovoked attack upon an unoffending neighbour, and thus incurring a certain loss of reputation for a very uncertain amount of gain. This view of the case does not of course even occur to Mr Campbell as one likely to be taken by any reasonable being, and he sums up his account of the Afghan war with the following remarks, suggestive to our minds of little beyond a most earnest hope that the future advancement, doubtless in store for one of his abilities, may lead him far away from meddling with matters either political or military:—

“Such it was—a grievous military catastrophe and misfortune to us, both then and in our subsequent relations with the country; but in no way attributable to our policy, from which no such result necessarily or probably flowed. To the policy is due the expense, but not the disaster.”—(P. 136).

Mr Campbell has evidently not made very minute inquiry into the facts of the war, or he would never have hazarded the assertion contained in the following passage, that Sir George Pollock literally paid his way through the Khyber Pass:—

“Through the Western mountains only has India been invaded; for beyond them are all the great nations of Central India, and they are penetrable to enemies through one or two difficult passes. But these passes are so narrow, difficult, and easily defended, that it is believed that no army, from Alexander’s down to General Pollock’s, has ever passed without bribing the mountain tribes. In the face of regular troops and an organised defence, all the armies in the world could not force an entrance; but in the absence of such a defence, experience proves that the local tribes are always accessible to moderate bribes.”—(P. 27).

The absolute impracticability of any mountain barrier is, we believe, disputed; but, without offering any opinion on that point, we are happy to have it in our power to correct the mistake into which the author has fallen, in supposing that it was by bribing that Sir George Pollock carried his army through the Khyber Pass. It is true that, in the anxious time preceding our army’s movement from Peshawar, negotiations had been entered into with the local tribes; but we have the most unquestionable authority for asserting that, before the march towards Cabool began, the sum advanced to their chiefs, being 20,000 rupees or £2000, was demanded back from them by the political agent on the frontier, and actually repaid; so that the mountaineers had not only the clearest warning of the British general’s intention, but the strongest possible inducement to oppose him, as they did to the utmost of their power.

But our chief motive for alluding to the Afghan war is, that we may show how the spirit of the two schools, under which, according to our theory, those engaged in the work of Indian government may now be classed, showed itself even in the direction of our armies in the field. Sir George Pollock was there the representative of what would be called by us the considerate and moderate, by Mr Campbell the soft-hearted and over-cautious school; while Sir William Nott was at the head of that which, going straight to its object, tramples under foot, without compunction, every consideration that might hamper its freedom of movement. We select but a few instances in proof of our position, choosing such as, from their notoriety, can be cited without injury or offence.

As the two avenging armies, the one from Candahar on the south, the other from Peshawar on the east, drew nigh to Cabool, a powerful party, consisting chiefly of the Kuzzilbashes or Persians, who had never taken part against us, prayed earnestly that the citadel, the Bala Hissar, might be spared to serve as a place of refuge to themselves amid the troubles likely to ensue on our again evacuating the country.

This prayer General Nott would have rejected, and in so doing would have gained the applause of every member of that school by which concession to the feelings of natives in opposition to the requirements of expediency, or the sternest justice, is regarded as a proof of weakness. With this prayer General Pollock complied; and to his doing so may the safety of the ladies and other prisoners, in whose fate the whole civilised world took so deep an interest, be ascribed; for it was through the co-operation of those thus conciliated that the Afghan chief, charged with the custody of the captives, was won over to assist in their escape. General Nott was fortunately the inferior in rank; for had he commanded in chief, we have his own words for the fact, that he would have destroyed the Bala Hissar and the City of Cabool, and marched on with the least possible delay to Jellabad, of course leaving the poor captives to their fate; or, in words which, from the manner of their insertion in the pages of the historian, it is to be feared he must have used, “throwing them overboard.”—(Kaye’s History of the Afghan War, vol. i. pp. 617, 631).

Incomplete indeed, to use Mr Kaye’s words, would any victory have been, if these brave men and tender women, who had so well endured a long and fearful captivity, had been left behind; and it is well to reflect that we were saved from this reproach by the ascendancy of the milder principles of rule in the mind of the officer upon whom the chief command at this moment, we may almost say providentially, devolved.

Many more instances are recorded, in the chapter just quoted, of the influence of a contrary spirit on the closing events of the Afghan war; but we must pass on to what happened in Scinde, where the anti-judicial principle may be said to have reached its climax.

The following is Mr Campbell’s short and flippant account of that transaction, reminding us in one passage of a letter from the Empress Catherine to one of her French correspondents, wherein she congratulated herself “qu’il n’y a pas d’honneur à garder avec les Turcs”:—

“But though we withdrew from Cabool, our military experiences were not yet over. On invading Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass, Scinde became a base of our operations, and troops were there cantoned. When our misfortunes occurred, it was supposed that the Beloch chiefs would have liked to have turned against us, but dared not—did not.

“Major-General Sir C. Napier then commanded a division in Bombay; he was a good soldier, of a keen, energetic temperament, but somewhat quarrelsome disposition; had at one proud period of his life been in temporary charge of a petty island in the Mediterranean, but was, I believe, deposed by his superior—most unwisely, as he considered; and he had ever since added to his military ardour a still greater thirst for civil power—as it often happens that we prefer to the talents which nature has given us those which she has denied us. He was appointed to the command in Scinde; and Lord Ellenborough, an admirer of heroes, subsequently invested him with political powers. He soon quarrelled with the chiefs, and came to blows with them. Their followers were brave, but undisciplined, and they had no efficient artillery. An active soldier was opposed to them; he easily overcame them, declared the territory annexed, and was made Governor of Scinde.”

Now, the Beloch chiefs had no other right to the territory than the sword; and we, having the better sword, were perfectly justified in taking it from them if we chose, without reference to the particular quarrel between Sir Charles and the chiefs, the merits of which have been so keenly disputed, and on which I need not enter. But the question was one of expediency; and this premature occupation of Scinde was not so much a crime as a blunder,—for this very simple reason, that Scinde did not pay, but, on the contrary, was a very heavy burden, by which the Indian Government has been several millions sterling out of pocket.

“The Ameers had amassed, in their own way, considerable property and treasure, which the general obtained for the army. He was thus rewarded by an unprecedented prize-money, and with the government of Scinde, while Bengal paid the costs of the government he had gained. Scinde was so great a loss, for this reason—that it was not, like other acquisitions, in the midst of, or contiguous to, our territories, but was at that time altogether detached and separated by the sea, the desert, and the independent Punjab; while on the fourth side it was exposed to the predatory Beloches of the neighbouring hills. Consequently, every soldier employed there was cut off from India, and was an expense solely due to Scinde; and while a great many soldiers were required to keep it, it produced a very small revenue to pay them. It is, in truth, very like Egypt—that is, it is the fertile valley of a river running through a barren country, where no rain falls. But there is this difference—first, that while no broader, it is not so long, nor has the fine delta which constitutes the most valuable portion of Egypt; second, that while Egypt is free from external predatory invasion, Scinde is exceedingly exposed to it; and, thirdly, that while Egypt has a European market for its grain, Scinde has not. Altogether, the conquest was, at the time, as concerns India, much as if we had taken the valley of the Euphrates.

“Half a dozen years later, when we advanced over the plain of the Indus, and annexed the Punjab, we must have arranged to control Scinde too, directly or indirectly, as might be done cheapest; but during those intermediate years it was a gratuitous loss, and the chief cause of the late derangement of our Indian finances.”—(Pp. 137–139).

The better sword gives the better title! When such is the doctrine maintained, even by a man of the pen, we cannot wonder at its finding a ready expositor in the man of the sword.

But, in truth, Mr Campbell’s sword plea, having the merit of honesty and openness, is by far the best that has been advanced; and yet, as he shows, it is only available in support of the right, and not of the policy, of the measure. After-events, he observes, alluding to the conquest of the Punjab, have given a value to Scinde, which in itself it did not possess; but he has omitted to remark that the one event very probably grew out of the other. The Sikhs, who not only had refrained, like the Ameers, from molesting, but had even assisted us in our recent difficulties, had some reason for apprehending that, in due time, the policy pursued in Scinde would be extended to their own more inviting country; while, as if to remove an obstacle to an apparently desired misunderstanding, Sir George Clerk was promoted to the nominally higher post of lieutenant-governor of Agra, and an officer, his very opposite in every quality excepting earnest zeal and undaunted courage, was appointed to be his political successor at Lahore.

Though he is little disposed to state any case too favourably for the party opposed to us, this peculiarity in our relations with the Sikhs, immediately before their invasion of our territory, is frankly admitted by Mr Campbell. After mentioning various military movements calculated to give them alarm, he describes a political difficulty as to certain lands belonging to the Sikh state, lying on our side of the Sutledge, which he says had been so managed by two successive political agents, Sir Claude Wade and Sir George Clerk, that through their personal influence “it had so happened that our wishes were generally attended to.” He thus concludes:—

“Sir George Clerk having been promoted, new men were put in charge of our frontier relations, and seem to have assumed as a right what had heretofore been yielded to a good understanding. In 1845 Major Broadfoot was political agent. He was a man of great talent and immense energy, but of a rather overbearing habit. In difficult and delicate times he certainly did not conciliate the Sikhs.... Altogether, I believe the fact to be, that had Sir George Clerk remained in charge of our political relations, the Sikhs would not have attacked us at the time they did; it might have been delayed: but still it was well that they came when they did.”—(Pp. 142, 143.)

The annexation of the Punjab followed hard on the conquest of Scinde, and both events may be regarded as sequels to the Afghan expedition, and this again as but a fuller development of the anti-judicial school, which, since the downfall of the Cornwallis system, has held almost undisputed sway on the banks of the Ganges.

When a government essentially despotic, like that of British India, spontaneously engages to adhere to the rules of judicial procedure in dealing with its own subjects, a pledge is thereby given to neighbouring states that towards them also its conduct will be regulated on principles of justice and moderation.

We admit that the ruling power may thus sometimes create obstructions to its own progress along the path of improvement; but it seems probable that such self-imposed restraints should more frequently operate (to borrow a term from the railway) as “breaks” to save it from precipitately rushing into acts of rashness or injustice.

History confirms these conclusions, and shows the practical result to have been precisely what a priori reasoning would have led us to expect.

Five great wars were waged in India during the second or judicial period of its administration—that is, from 1793 to 1830. These were—the Mysore war in 1799, the Mahratta war in 1803, the Nepaul war in 1814, the Pindaree war in 1817, and the Burmese war in 1825. There is not one of these against which even a plausible charge of injustice can be maintained by our bitterest foreign foes, or most quick-sighted censorious countrymen.

The acuteness of Mr Cobden himself would be at fault if he were to try to make out a case against the authors of any one of these wars, to satisfy a single sensible man beyond the circle of the “Peace Society.”

But how is it with the wars which have occurred since, wandering from judicial ways, the rulers of Gangetic India have pursued whatever course for the moment found favour in their own eyes, with little or no reference to the feelings of their subjects, and with hardly a show of deference to the laws enacted by their predecessors?

The Afghan war of 1838, the Scinde affair of 1843, the Gwalior campaign of 1844, have each in their turn, especially the two first-named, been made the subject of comments neither captious nor fastidious, but resting on indisputable evidence, and supported by reasoning such as pre-formed prejudice alone can resist. The two wars in the Punjab come under the category of the just and necessary; and Lord Hardinge’s generous use of the privileges of victory, at the close of the first of these hard-fought conflicts, did much to re-establish our character for justice and moderation. But still these wars are, we fear, coupled in the minds of the people of India with those out of which they sprang, and share in the reproach attaching, in their estimation, to the invasion of Afghanistan and the conquest of Scinde.

We have now reached a point where we may stop to consider the several merits of the works on our list at the head of this article. Mr F. H. Robinson’s pamphlet is written in a frank conversational style, indicative of his earnest sincerity and his real sympathy with the people of the Upper Ganges, among whom his official life has been spent. We could wish occasionally that his language was a little more measured, for there are passages to startle some of his readers, and so to impair the general effect of his otherwise interesting pamphlet.

Of the style, as well as the matter, of Mr Campbell’s more elaborate work, hardness is the chief characteristic. Indeed, he seems to discard all ornament from the one, and all sentiment from the other, and to aim at nothing beyond correctness as to his facts, and positiveness as to his deductions. In this he fully succeeds. His volume is a repertory of useful facts, and his conclusions can never be misapprehended. Some of Mr Campbell’s descriptions also are amusing; and we insert, as a specimen of his lighter style, the following sketch of the day of a magistrate and collector in Upper India, that functionary whose labours are so little known to any but those of his own service, or the people among whom he lives. After enumerating many out-of-door duties despatched in the course of an early morning’s ride, the description thus proceeds:—

“At breakfast comes the post and the packet of official letters. The commissioner demands explanation on this matter, and transmits a paper of instructions on that; the judge calls for cases which have been appealed; the secretary to Government wants some statistical information; the inspector of prisons fears that the prisoners are growing too fat; the commander of the 105th regiment begs to state that his regiment will halt at certain places on certain days, and that he requires a certain quantity of flour, grain, hay, and eggs; Mr Snooks, the indigo-planter, who is in a state of chronic warfare with his next neighbour, has submitted his grievances in six folio sheets, indifferent English, and a bold hand, and demands instant redress, failing which he threatens the magistrate with Government, the supreme court, an aspersion of his character as a gentleman, a Parliamentary impeachment, a letter to the newspapers, and several other things besides. After breakfast he despatches his public letters, writes reports, examines returns, &c.

“During this time he has probably a succession of demi-officials from the neighbouring cantonments. There is a great complaint that the villagers have utterly, without provocation, broken the heads of the cavalry grass-cutters, and the grass-cutters are sent to be looked at. He goes out to look at them, but no sooner appears than a shout announces that the villagers are waiting in a body, with a slightly different version of the story, to demand justice against the grass-cutters, who have invaded their grass-preserves, despoiled their villages, and were with difficulty prevented from murdering the inhabitants. So the case is sent to the joint magistrate. But there are more notes; some want camels, some carts, and all apply to the magistrate; then there may be natives of rank and condition, who come to pay a serious formal kind of visit, and generally want something; or a chatty native official who has plenty to say for himself.

“All this despatched, he orders his carriage or umbrella, and goes to cutcherry—his regular court. Here he finds a sufficiency of business; there are police, and revenue, and miscellaneous cases of all sorts, appeals from the orders of his subordinates, charges of corruption or misconduct against native officials. All petitions from all persons are received daily in a box, read, and orders duly passed. Those setting forth good grounds of complaint are filed under proper headings; others are rejected, for written reason assigned. After sunset, comes his evening, which is probably like his morning ride, mixed up with official and demi-official affairs, and only at dark does the wearied magistrate retire to dinner and to private life.”—(Pp. 248–249).

Mr Kaye’s essay recommends itself by the same easy flow of language as made his History of the Afghan War such agreeable reading. His plan does not admit of his giving more than a series of sketches; but his outlines are so clear, and his selection of topics to fill up with is so happy, that we can safely recommend his volume to any one who, without leisure or inclination for more minute study of the subject, may still wish to obtain some general idea of the administration of our vast Eastern empire. In a note at page 661, Mr Kaye informs us, that in the summer of 1852 the Duke of Newcastle told the Haileybury students that, during a recent tour in the Tyrol, he had met an intelligent Austrian general who, in the course of conversation on our national resources, said that he could understand all the elements of our greatness except our Anglo-Indian empire, and that he could not understand. The vast amount of administrative wisdom which the good government of such an empire demanded, baffled his comprehension.

The Austrian general, perhaps, would not have readily assented to the explanation of the marvel given by the young French naturalist, Victor Jaquemont, who, in a letter dated from the confines of Tartary, in August 1830, thus writes to a relative in Paris: “The ideas entertained in France about this country are absurd; the governing talents of the English are immense; ours, on the contrary, are very mediocre; and we believe the former to be embarrassed when we see them in circumstances in which our awkwardness would be completely at a stand-still.”—(English translation of Victor Jaquemont’s Letters, vol. i. p. 169).

The lady whose three volumes come next under our notice is certainly one of the most intelligent travellers of her sex who has visited India since the days when Maria Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, amused her readers in England, and enraged many of her female acquaintances in India, by describing the latter as generally “under-bred and overdressed.”

It is curious to observe how little change the lapse of forty years seems to have made in the outward peculiarities of Anglo-Indian drawing-room life, and how much in unison the two fair authors are in their remarks on their own countrymen.

Mrs Colin Mackenzie, however, has enjoyed opportunities which her predecessor could not command, of observing the private and domestic side of Oriental life, and has evinced a wonderful aptitude in turning these opportunities to the best account. The great charm of her work is that it admits us within the Purdah, and lets us see what is hidden from all European masculine eyes,—the interior, namely, of an Asiatic household.

It is pleasing to read an English lady’s lively account of her own friendly intercourse with families of another faith, upon whom her industrious energy, quickened and regulated by a zeal for her own religion, openly avowed and studiously exhibited as her main motive of action, cannot, we imagine, have failed to produce a deep and lasting impression. We trust that Mrs Mackenzie’s example may be followed by many of our countrywomen; for the information in which, of all others, the English functionaries in the East are most deficient—that regarding natives in their private and domestic sphere—is precisely what our ladies alone have the power to acquire and impart. Mrs Mackenzie, it is true, mingled chiefly with the Afghans, who are a more attractive race than the people of India.

The Afghans, also, must have felt inclined to open their hearts to the wife of one who, both as a soldier in the field, and afterwards as a captive in their hands, had commanded the sincere respect of those among whom he was thrown. But though all cannot have her advantages, there is no lady whose husband holds office in India, who, if she makes herself acquainted with the languages of the country, will not find native women of rank and respectability ready to cultivate her acquaintance, and thus afford her the means of solving some of those problems of the native character which elude all the researches of our best-informed public functionaries. Having said thus much in praise of Mrs Mackenzie’s book, we cannot but censure most strongly the attempt at spicing her work with gossipping tales calculated to wound the feelings of private individuals among her own countrymen, and even of the officers of her husband’s own service, with whose characters she deals with a most unsparing degree of reproachful raillery, designating individuals as Colonel A., Major B., or Captain C. of the — Regiment, stationed at such a place, so that there cannot be a doubt as to whom the anecdotes, which are always to the discredit of the parties, refer.

The difficulty of commenting on a posthumous work is much enhanced when the author happens to have been, like the late Sir Charles Napier, one whose errors of the pen are more than redeemed by a career of long and glorious services. Still, though this consideration may soften, it ought not to silence criticism, for errors never more require correction than when heralded by an illustrious name. An additional reason for not passing over the last work of so distinguished a man is, that it contains many admirable remarks on the Native army, well deserving to be detached from the mass of other matter in which they are imbedded. The contents of the book may be classed under three heads: Censure of individuals; censure of public bodies; suggestive remarks on the civil and military administration of India.

On whatever comes under the first of these heads, our strictures shall be brief.

We find in the list of those censured, the names of so many of the best and ablest men who have taken part in Indian affairs, either at home or in the East, that we feel loth to give any additional publicity to what we have read with pain, and would gladly forget. Public bodies being fair targets to shoot at, the censures coming under the second head are open to no objection excepting such as may arise from their not standing the test of close examination. The Court of Directors, the Supreme Council of India, the whole body of the Civil Service (with one or two exceptions), the Political Agents, the Military Board in Calcutta, and the Board of Administration in the Punjab, follow each other like arraigned criminals in the black scroll of the author’s antipathies. To notice all that is advanced against those included in this catalogue would be impossible, for a few lines may contain assertions which it would fill a folio to discuss. Of the East India Company, the instrument through which India has been providentially preserved from the corruptions of an aristocratic and the precipitancy of a more popular rule, Sir Charles Napier’s view is not more enlarged than what we might have got from his own Sir Fiddle Faddle, of whom he has left us (at page 253) so amusing a description. Though capable, as we shall soon see, of rising above the prejudices of his profession on other points, he looks at this singular Company and its governing Court with the eyes of a Dugald Dalgetty, who, while pocketing the commercial body’s extra pay, accounts it foul scorn to be obliged to submit to such base and mechanical control.

But none are all bad, and we rejoice to see it admitted at page 210 of the unfriendly book before us, that “the Directors, generally speaking, treat their army well;” and at pages 49, 261, that the Company’s artillery, formed under the rule of these very Directors, is “superb, second to none in the world—perfect.” Yet it never seems to have occurred to the author, that those under whose rule one department has reached perfection, are not likely to blunder in every other, as in his moments of spleen he made himself believe. So able a man as Sir C. Napier could not always be blind to his own inconsistencies; and accordingly, in the midst of some declamation on what India might be under royal government, he seems to have been suddenly brought up by a thought about what the Crown Colonies really are.

From this dilemma he escapes by saddling one distinguished personage with the blame of all that is wrong in the colonies, and thus punishes Earl Grey for the speech about Scinde, made by Lord Howick, some ten years ago, in the House of Commons.

To the Supreme Council of India, though he was one of their number, the author never makes any but disparaging allusions. Discontented with being a commander-in-chief under a ruling body, of which he was himself a member, he sought to be recognised as the head of a separate military government. He wished, in short, to be, not what the Duke of York was in England, but what, under peculiar circumstances, the Duke of Wellington was in Spain during the war in the Peninsula. In this he was not singular; for we suspect that the real cause of that uneasiness in their position, stated at page 355, to have been manifested by many of Sir C. Napier’s predecessors, is to be found in a desire on their part for such an independency of military administrative power, as is totally incompatible with the necessary unity and indivisibility of a government. Yet it is admitted that, in England, “when war comes, the war-minister is the real commander,”—(p. 220.) The author evidently felt how much this admission must tell against his own complaints of undue interference with his authority; for he endeavours, by some feeble special pleading, to abate its effect, and to prove the “poor Indian general,” with his £15,000 a year, to be more unfavourably placed than his confrère in England.

One circumstance, however, is such, that while the latter is excluded from the Cabinet, the former can take his seat at the Council-Board, and his part in the guidance of the counsels of the State.

It is, we think, greatly to be regretted that Sir C. Napier did not more frequently avail himself of this privilege, for by keeping apart from the Supreme Council he lost the benefit of free personal communication with equals, and incurred the evil of having none near him but subordinates, whom he could silence by a word or a look.

The Civil Service is represented simply as a nuisance requiring immediate abatement.

We are told that “a Civil form of government is uncongenial to barbarous Eastern nations.” There is some truth in this, if a proper stress is laid on the word barbarous. In the first chapter of the fourth part of his work, Mr Kaye has shown how, in reaching the outskirts of civilisation, we are brought into contact with rude tribes like the Beloches in Scinde, “to whose feelings and habits the rough ways of Sir C. Napier were better adapted than the refined tenderness or the judicial niceties of the gentlest and wisest statesman that ever loved and toiled for a people.” But the error of such reasoners as Sir C. Napier is, that they would treat all India as barbarous, and rule it accordingly. Now, with all our respect for Sir C. Napier’s talents, we doubt much whether he would have governed the more civilised provinces of Upper India better than the late Mr Thomason, whom he condescends to praise—(p. 37); or managed the subtle and well-mannered Sikhs with more tact and skill than Sir George Clerk during the perilous period of our disasters in 1841–42.

It is true that the utter failure of the system in operation in the Punjab is confidently predicted at p. 366; but it is consolatory to find, from the very last Indian newspapers, that no progress is making towards a fulfilment of this prophecy; but that, on the contrary, a reduction of taxation has been effected by the Board, such as would be felt as a boon by the tenant-farmers of England, its influence having been counteracted by nothing but by the effects of an excessive plenty.

It is creditable to the candour of the Bengal Civil Service, that its members themselves furnish the information to be turned against their own body, and it is from a work published by the Hon. F. J. Shore, in 1837, that Sir C. Napier has borrowed his most plausible charges.

On this we can only observe, that Mr Shore, in his zeal for the improvement of his own service, forgot that what he wrote would be read by the ignorant and the unfriendly; by those who could not, and by those who would not, comprehend the real scope and meaning of his words.

The faults imputed by him to his brother civilians are mainly those of manner, already noticed by ourselves as being common to the English, generally, in their deportment towards strangers in every clime.

If we were writing only for those who know what British India is, our ungrateful task of correcting errors might here conclude; but it is upon those to whom that country is unknown that the work before us is calculated to produce an impression, and therefore we must try, in as few words as possible, to point out one of its most striking inaccuracies. On referring to the pages noted below,[^[37]] the reader will find a series of assertions, to the effect that in Bengal the army is scattered over the country for the protection of the Civil servants. From the Indian Register of this very year, it appears that, in the country below Benares, which, in extent and population, is about equal to France, there are only about ten battalions;[^[38]] the half of these being stationed at Barrackpore, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. In the provinces above Benares, under the rule of the Lieutenant-governor at Agra, with a somewhat smaller but more hardy population, it appears that there are thirteen stations occupied by regular troops; of which eight are close to large towns, such as in every country require to be watched—or else purely military posts. There are only five other places where regular troops seem to be stationed, and of these, one is on the frontier of Nepaul.

Admitting that the Civil power derives its support from the knowledge of a military force being at hand, still the exhibition of the latter is as rare on the Ganges as on the Thames; and a magistrate would sink in the opinion of his superiors, and of his own service, if he were to apply for the aid of troops in any but the extreme cases in which such an application would be warranted in England. It would be just as rational to argue that our provincial mayors and magistrates in England are hated, because troops are stationed at Manchester, Preston, or Newcastle, as to adduce the distribution of the regular Sepoys in Bengal and Upper India as a proof of the hatred borne to the Civil servants, through whose administration that vast region is made to furnish forth the funds to support the armies with which heroes win victories and gather laurels.

What is meant by “guards for civilians” it is hard to guess. The Lieutenant-governor at Agra is, we believe, the only civilian, not in political employ, who has a guard of regulars at his house. In some places in Upper India, regulars may be posted at the Treasury, for the same reason that a corresponding force is posted at the Bank of England in the heart of London; but even to the Treasuries in the lower provinces no such protection is given.

Sir C. Napier, we suspect, has confused the collector with the collections, and fancied the force occasionally posted to protect the latter to be, in fact, employed to swell the state or guard the person of the former. That regular Sepoys should be employed to escort treasure is much to be regretted; but treasure is tempting, and the mode of conveyance on carts very tedious, the ways long, the country to be traversed often very wild, and the robbers in some quarters very bold. It is not often that in England bullion belonging to the State has to be conveyed in waggons; but when this happens, it is, we think, usually accompanied by a party of soldiers.

It would be tedious to follow out all the mistakes made about Chuprassees and Burkundazes—the former being a sort of orderly, of whom two or three are attached to every office-holder, military or civil, to carry orders and messages, in a climate where Europeans cannot at all hours of the day walk about with safety; and the latter being the constabulary, employed in parties of about fifteen or twenty at the various subdivisions into which, for purposes of police, each district is laid out. To form them into battalions would be to strip the interior of all the hands wanted for the common offices of preventive and detective police.

We now gladly turn to the more pleasing duty of pointing out the brighter passages, and rejoice to draw our reader’s attention to the strain of kindly feeling towards the men and officers of the Company’s army, both European and Native, pervading the whole work.