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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXXXIV.      FEBRUARY 1856.      Vol. LXXIX.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET,

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXXXIV.      FEBRUARY, 1856.      Vol. LXXIX.

MODERN LIGHT LITERATURE—POETRY.

“Poets,” said the ancient wisdom, “are not made, but born.” We have made miraculous progress in all the arts of manufacture since the time of this saying, but we have not been able to controvert the judgment of our forefathers. Education, refinement, taste, and talent, are great things in their way, and men do wonders with them; but we have not fallen yet upon a successful method of bringing down the divine spark into the marble, let us work it ever so curiously. The celestial gift in these new times, as in the old, comes down with divine impartiality, yet seldom into the tenement most specially built and garnished for its reception. We can make critics, connoisseurs, “an enlightened audience,” but, let us labour at it as we will, we cannot make a poet.

And indeed, to tell the truth, it is but small help we can give, with all our arts and ingenuities, even to the perfecting of the poet born. Science discusses the subject gravely—at one time troubled with apprehensions lest her severe shadow should kill the singer outright, as Reason killed Love—at another, elate with the happier thought of increasing all his conquests, and sending forth as her own esquire, bearing her ponderous lance and helmet, the glorious boy in his perennial youth. It is a vain speculation. The poet glances past this important figure with a calm eye and a far-shining smile. His vocation is beyond and beyond the range of all the sciences. The heart and soul that were in the first home, ere ever even spade and distaff were invented, when two forlorn hopeful creatures, wistfully looking back to the sunset of Eden, wistfully looking forward to the solemn nightfall of the drear world without, with all its starry promises of another morning and a higher heaven, were all the human race—are world and scope enough for the humanest and most divine of arts. That God has made of one blood all the nations and all the generations of this many-peopled earth, is the argument on which he speaks; that heart answers unto heart all the world over, is the secret of his power. The petulant passion of a child, the heroisms and exultations and agonies of that fantastical sweet youth, over whose unconscious mockery of our real conflict we graver people smile and weep, are of more import to the poet than all the secrets of the earth, and all the wonders of the sky; and he turns—it is his vocation—from the discovery of a planet, forgetting all about it, to make the whole world ring with joy over a cottage cradle, or weigh down the very wings of the winds with wailing over some uncommemorated grave.

Yes, it is a humiliating confession—but in reality we are quite as like to injure as to elevate our poet by all our educations. Perhaps the heavenly glamour in his eyne had best be left entirely unobscured by any laws save those of nature; but at all events it seems tolerably sure, that the more we labour at his training, the less satisfactory is the result of it. A school of poets is the most hopeless affair in existence; and whether it dwindle into those smallest of small rhymsters, leaden echoes of the silver chimes of Pope, in whom the eighteenth century delighted, or to the present makers of dislocated verses, whose glory it is to break stones upon the road where the Laureate’s gilded coach flashes by, we wait with equal weariness and equal impatience for the Coming Man, who knows neither school nor education—whose business it is to rout the superannuated spinsters, and make the world ring once more with the involuntary outburst of song and youth.

But we who are but the unhappy victims of the mania, why do we blame ourselves? Alas! it is not we, but our poets, foolish fraternity, who have set about this fatal task of making a school and perfecting themselves in their art. How do you suppose they are to do it, kindest reader? In other arts and professions the self-love of the student in most instances suffers a woeful downfall at his very outset. Tutors and books, dire conspirators against his innocence, startle the hapless neophyte out of all his young complacency; professors set him down calmly as a know-nothing; chums, with storms of laughter, drive him out of his last stronghold. He has to shut himself out from his college doors; seal himself up, poor boy, in his home letters, and so sit down and study other people’s wisdom, till he comes by that far away and roundabout process to some true estimate of his own.

But the poet, say the poets, needs other training. For him it is safest that we shut him up with himself. Himself, a separated creature, garlanded and crowned for the sacrifice, is, in one noble concentration, all the ethics, the humanity, and the religion with which he has to do; significances, occult and mysterious, are in every breath of wind that whispers about his dedicated head; his smallest actions are note-worthy, his sport is a mystery, his very bread and cheese symbolical. He is a poet—everywhere, and in all places, it is the destiny of this unfortunate to reverence himself, to contemplate himself, to expound and study the growth of a poet’s mind, the impulses of a poet’s affections; he is not to be permitted to be unconscious of the sweet stirrings within him of the unspoken song; he is not to be allowed to believe with that sweetest simplicity of genius that every other youthful eye beholds “the light that never was on sea or land,” as well as his own. Unhappy genius! ill-fated poet! for him alone of all men must the heavens and the earth be blurred over with a miserable I,—and so he wanders, a woeful Narcissus, seeing his own image only, and nothing better, in all the lakes and fountains; and, bound by all the canons of his art, falls at last desperately either in love or in hate with the persistent double, which, go where he will, still looks him in the face.

But we bethink us of the greater poets, sons of the elder time. There was David, prince of lyric-singers; there was Shakespeare, greatest maker among men. The lyricist was a king, a statesman, a warrior, and a prophet; the leisure of his very youth was the leisure of occupation, when the flocks were feeding safe in the green pastures, and by the quiet waters; and even then the dreaming poet-eye had need to be wary, and sometimes flashed into sudden lightning at sight of the lion which the stripling slew. He sung out of the tumult and fulness of his heart—out of the labours, wars, and tempests of his most human and most troubled life: his business in this world was to live, and not to make poems. Yet what songs he made! They are Holy Writ, inspired and sacred; yet they are human songs, the lyrics of a struggling and kingly existence—the overflow of the grand primal human emotions to which every living heart resounds. His “heart moved him,” his “soul was stirred within him”—true poet-heart—true soul of inspiration! and not what other men might endure, glassed in the mirror of his own profound poetic spirit, a study of mankind; but of what himself was bearing there and at that moment, the royal singer made his outcry, suddenly, and “in his haste,” to God. What cries of distress and agony are these! what bursts of hope amid the heartbreak! what shouts and triumphs of great joy! For David did not live to sing, but sang because he strove and fought, rejoiced and suffered, in the very heart and heat of life.

Let us say a word of King David ere we go further. Never crowned head had so many critics as this man has had in these two thousand years; and many a scorner takes occasion by his failings, and religious lips have often faltered to call him “the man after God’s own heart;” yet if we would but think of it, how touching is this name! Not the lofty and philosophic Paul, though his tranced eyes beheld the very heaven of heavens; not John, although the human love of the Lord yearned towards that vehement angel-enthusiast, whose very passion was for God’s honour; but on this sinning, struggling, repenting David, who fights and falls, and rises only to fall and fight again—who only never will be content to lie still in his overthrow, and acknowledge himself vanquished—who bears about with him every day the traces of some downfall, yet every day is up again, struggling on as he can, now discouraged, now desperate, now exultant; who has a sore fighting life of it all his days, with enemies within and without, his hands full of wars, his soul of ardours, his life of temptations. Upon this man fell the election of Heaven. And small must his knowledge be, of himself or of his race, who is not moved to the very soul to think upon God’s choice of this David, as the man after His own heart. Heaven send us all as little content with our sins as had the King of Israel! Amen.

And then there is Shakespeare: never man among men, before or after him, has made so many memorable people; yet amid all the crowding faces on his canvass, we cannot point to one as “the portrait of the painter.” He had leisure to make lives and histories for all these men and women, but not to leave a single personal token to us of himself. The chances seem to be, that this multitudinous man, having so many other things to think of, thought marvellously little of William Shakespeare; and that all that grave, noble face would have brightened into mirthfullest laughter had he ever heard, in his own manful days, of the Swan of Avon. His very magnitude, so to speak, lessens him in our eyes; we are all inclined to be apologetic when we find him going home in comfort and good estate, and ending his days neither tragically nor romantically, but in ease and honour. He is the greatest of poets, but he is not what you call a poetical personage. He writes his plays for the Globe, but, once begun upon them, thinks only of his Hamlet or his Lear, and not a whit of his audience; nor, in the flush and fulness of his genius, does a single shadow of himself cross the brilliant stage, where, truth to speak, there is no need of him. The common conception of a poet, the lofty, narrow, dreamy soul, made higher and more abstract still by the glittering crown of light upon his crested forehead, is entirely extinguished in the broad flood of sunshine wherein stands this Shakespeare, a common man, sublimed and radiant in a very deluge and overflow of genial power. Whether it be true or not that these same marvellous gifts of his would have made as great a statesman or as great a philosopher as they made a poet, it does not lie in our way to discover; but to know that the prince of English poets did his work, which no man has equalled, with as much simplicity and as little egotism as any labouring peasant of his time—to see him setting out upon it day by day, rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, but never once revealing to us those laborious tokens of difficulties overcome, which of themselves, as Mr Ruskin says, are among the admirable excellences of Art—to perceive his ease and speed of progress, and how his occupation constantly is with his story and never with himself,—what a lesson it is! But alas, and alas! we are none of us Shakespeares. Far above his motives, we would scorn to spend our genius on a Globe Theatre, or on any other vulgar manner of earning daily bread. The poet is a greater thing than his poem; let us take it solely as an evidence of his progress; and in the mean time, however he may tantalise the world with his gamut and his exercises, let all the world look on with patience, with awe, and with admiration. True, he is not making an Othello or a Hamlet; but never mind, he is making Himself.

Yet the thought will glide in upon us woefully unawares,—What the better are we? We are ever so many millions of people, and only a hundred or two of us at the utmost can be made happy in the personal acquaintanceship of Mr Tennyson or (we humbly crave the Laureate’s pardon for the conjunction) Mr Dobell. In this view of the question, it is not near so important to us that these gentlemen should perfect the poet, as that they should make the poem. We ask the Laureate for a battle-song, and he gives us a skilful fantasia upon the harp; we hush our breath and open our ears, and, listening devoutly to the “Eureka!” of here and there a sanguine critic, who has found a poet, wait, longing for the lay that is to follow. Woe is upon us!—all that we can hear in the universal twitter is, that every man is trying his notes. We are patient, but we are not a stoic; and in the wrath of our disappointment are we not tempted a hundred times to plunge these melodious pipes into the abyss of our waste-paper basket, and call aloud for Punch, and the Times?

Yes, that great poetic rebel, Wordsworth, has heavier sins upon his head than Betty Foy and Alice Fell; it is to him we owe it, that the poet in these days is to be regarded as a delicate monster, a creature who lives not life but poetry, a being withdrawn out of the common existence, and seeing its events only in the magic mirror of his own consciousness, as the Lady of Shallott saw the boats upon the river, and the city towers burning in the sun. The Poet of the Lakes had no imaginary crimes to tell the world of, nor does it seem that he regarded insanity as one of the highest and most poetic states of man; but we venture to believe there never would have been a Balder, and Maud should have had no crazy lover, had there been no Recluse, solemnly living a long life for Self and Poetry in the retired and sacred seclusion of Rydal Mount.

It is in this way that the manner which is natural and a necessity to some one great spirit, becomes an intolerable bondage and oppression to a crowd of smaller ones. The solemn egotism, self-reserved and abstract, which belonged to Wordsworth, is more easily copied than the broad, bright, manful nature of our greatest English poet, who was too mighty to be peculiar; and the delusion has still a deeper root. It is in our nature, as it seems, to scorn what is familiar and common to all the world; priesthoods, find them where you will, are bound to profess a more ethereal organisation, and seek a separated atmosphere. Wordsworth is a very good leader; but for a thorough out-and-out practical man, admitting no compromise with his theory, commend us to Anthony the Eremite, the first of all monkish deserters from this poor sinking vessel, the world. The poet is the priest of Nature; out with him from this Noah’s ark of clean and unclean,—this field of wheat and tares, growing together till the harvest,—this ignoble region of common life. Let the interpreter betake him to his monastery, his cloister, his anchorite’s cell—and when he is there? Yes, when he is there—he will sing to us poor thralls whom he has left behind, but not of our ignoble passions and rejoicings, or the sorrows that rend our hearts. Very different from our heavy-handed troubles, rough troopers in God’s army of afflictions, are the spectre shapes of this poetic world. True, their happiness is rapture, their misery of the wildest, their remorse the most refined; but the daylight shines through and through these ghostly people, and leaves nothing of them but bits of cloud. Alas, the preaching is vain and without profit! What can the poet do—when he is tired of his Mystic, sick of his Balder, weary of Assyrian bulls and lords with rabbit-mouths? Indeed, there seems little better left for him than what his predecessors did before. The monk spent his soul upon some bright-leaved missal, and left the record of his life in the illumination of an initial letter, or the border of foliage on a vellum page; the poet throws away his in some elaborate chime of words, some new inverted measure, or trick of jingling syllables. Which is the quaintest? for it is easy to say which is the saddest waste of the good gifts of God.

Also it is but an indifferent sign of us, being, as we undoubtedly are, so far as poetry is concerned, a secondary age, that there can be no dispute about the first poet of our day. There is no elder brotherhood to compete for the laurel; no trio like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; no guerilla like Byron to seize upon the contested honour, nor Irish minstrel to strike a sugared note of emulation. Should a chance arrow at this moment strike down our poetic champion, so far from comforting ourselves, like King Henry, that we have “five hundred as good as he,” we could not find for our consolation one substitute for Tennyson. Echoes of him we could indeed find by the score; but no one his entire equal in all the field. Let no one say we do not appreciate poetry; in these mechanical days there are still a goodly number of singers who could echo that unfortunate admission which cost Haverillo his life, and was the last stroke of exasperation to the redoubtable Firmilian, “I have a third edition in the press.” But in spite of Smith and Dobell, the Brownings and the Mystics, our Laureate holds his place; holding his laurel with justice and right less disputable than most of his predecessors. Yet our admiration of Tennyson is perplexed and unsatisfactory. He is the first in his generation, but out of his generation he does not bear comparison with any person of note and fame equal to his own. He is small in the presence of Wordsworth, a very inferior magician indeed by the side of Coleridge; his very music—pardon us, all poets and all critics!—does not flow. It may be melodious, but it is not winged; one stanza will not float into another. It is a rosary of golden beads, some of them gemmed and radiant, fit to be set in a king’s crown; but you must tell them one by one, and take leisure for your comment while they drop from your fingers. They are beautiful, but they leave you perfectly cool and self-possessed in the midst of your admiration. To linger over them is a necessity; it becomes them to be read with criticism; you go over the costly beadroll and choose your single favourites here and there, as you might do in a gallery of sculpture. And thus the poet chooses to make you master of his song,—it does not seize upon you.

This is a kind and manner of influence which poets have not often aimed at. Hitherto it has been the object of this fraternity to arrest and overpower their audience as the Ancient Mariner fascinated the wedding guest; and we all know how helplessly, and with what complete submission, we have followed in the train of these enchanters, wheresoever it pleased them to turn their wayward footsteps. But Mr Tennyson aims at a more refined and subtle influence than this downright enslaving. A poet who writes, or seems to write, because he cannot help it,—and a poet who writes, or seems to write, of set purpose and malice prepense, are two very different persons. A man of the first class could not have written In Memoriam. Had he been mourning, he must have mourned a closer grief, and broken his heart over it, ere he had wept the half of those melodious tears; but for the poet quietly selecting a subject for his poem, the wisest philosopher could not have suggested a better choice. A great deal has been said and written on this subject, and we are fully aware that grief does not make books, or even poems, except in very rare and brief instances, and that the voice of a great sorrow is a sharp and bitter outcry, and not a long and eloquent monologue. But Mr Tennyson does not present himself to us under the strong and violent compulsion of a great sorrow. It is not grief at his heart which makes him speak, using his gifts to give ease and utterance to its burden of weeping; but it is himself who uses his grief, fully perceiving its capabilities, and the entrance it will give him into the sacred and universal sympathy of his fellows. For, like all great works of art, this poem appeals to one of the primitive and universal emotions of human nature. The dead—the early dead, the beloved, the gifted, the young: we may discuss the appropriateness of the tribute, but we cannot refuse to be moved by its occasion. No man can look on these pages without finding here and there a verse which strikes home; for few of us are happy enough to live so much as twenty years in this weary world of ours without some In Memoriam of our own.

Yet we cannot complain of Mr Tennyson that he makes merchandise of any of the nearest and closest bereavements, the afflictions which shake the very balance of the world to those who suffer them. His sorrow is as much of the mind as of the heart; he weeps a companion beloved, yet almost more honoured and esteemed than beloved—a friend, not even a brother, still less a child or a wife;—enough of the primitive passion to claim sympathy from all of us, but not so much that our sympathy loses itself in a woe beyond consolation. Pure friendship is seldom so impassioned; but had it been a commoner tie—a relationship more usual—these gradual revelations of grief in all its successive phases must have been too much at once for the poet and his audience. This nice discrimination secures for us that we are able to read and follow him into all those solemn regions of thought and fancy which open at the touch of death; he does not fall down upon the grave, the threshold, as we are but too like to do, and we wander after him wistfully, beguiled with the echo of this thoughtful weeping, which must have overpowered us had it been as close or as personal as our own. We feel that over our own minds these same thoughts have flashed now and then—a momentary gleam—while we were wading in the bitter waters, and woefully making up our minds, a hundred times in an hour, to the will of God; but who could follow them out? The poet, more composed, does what we could not do; he makes those flashes of hope or of agony into pictures visible and true. Those glimpses of the face of the dead, of the moonlight marking out upon the marble the letters of his name, those visions of his progress now from height to height in the pure heavens, all the inconsistent lights and shadows—mingled thoughts of the silence in the grave, and of the sound and sunshine of heaven—not one of them is passed over. People say it is not one poem, but a succession of poems. It must have been so, or it would not have been true. One after another they come gleaming through the long reverie of grief—one after another, noting well their inconsistencies, their leaps from day to night, from earth to heaven, the poet has set them down. He knows that we think of the lost, in the same instant, as slumbering under the sod and as awaking above the sky; he knows that we realise them here and there, as living and yet as dead; he knows that our

“fancy fuses old and new,

And flashes into false and true,

And mingles all without a plan.”

It is the excellence of In Memoriam that it is a succession of poems—that the thread of connection runs loosely—now and then drops, and as unexpectedly comes to light again—that the sequence of these fancies knows no logic, and that they come in the strain as they come to the heart.

At the same time it is equally true that all this is done of set purpose and intention—that the act with which, glimpse by glimpse, the whole tearful chronicle is made visible, is a calm deliberate act, and not a voice out of the present passion of a heartbreaking grief. The poet has chosen the theme—it is not the theme which urges with an overpowering impulse the utterance of the poet.

And so it is with all Mr Tennyson’s verses, for—no disparagement to his poetic power—verses we must call them. It is true he is now and then moved by some sudden exclamation, and shouts it out with an unexpected force which startles his readers, for the moment, into a more eager sympathy—but for the most part this poet holds his verse in perfect subordination, and is never overcome or led away by it. His poetry is made, it is not born. When he can round a sentence into a stanza, the effect, of its kind, is perfect; but the very form of his favourite measure, the rhythm of In Memoriam, is against any real outburst of involuntary song; for the verse which falls so sweetly when it contains all that belongs to it within its perfect crystal round, like a dewdrop, makes only a most blurred and unshapely strain when it has to eke out its sense with another and another stanza. When the necessities of his subject force him to this, the poet labours like a man threading together a succession of fish-ponds in hopes of making a river. Of themselves these silvery globes are perfect, but there is no current in them, and, work as you will, they can never flow and glow into a living stream. Yes, our Laureate unhappily is always far too much “master of his subject;” would that his subject now and then could but master him!

If it should happen, by any chance, that Mr Tennyson shared in Wordsworth’s solemn conceit, and designed to make a Gothic cathedral out of his works and life, we marvel much what place in it could be given to The Princess, that prettiest of poetic extravagances. Not a Lady-chapel, though it is of a college of ladies that the story treats—not a delicate shrine, all wrought in lilies and graces of foliage, like the shrine of some sweet maiden-saint. No; the Marys, the Catherines, and the Margarets, symbolised an entirely different fashion of womankind; yet have we the greatest kindness for Ida in her girlish heroics, sincerest of all fictions—in her grand words, and her pride, her inconstant subjects, and her own self-betraying heart. For our own part, we are so entirely weary of symbols, that we do not pause to inquire whether The Princess means anything more than it professes to mean. To us it is only a pleasant picture of the phantasies of youth.

The sweet and daring folly of girlish heroics and extravagance has not done half so much service to the poet and story-teller as has the corresponding stage in the development of man. Yet there is more innocence in it, and perhaps in its full bloom its pretensions are even more sublime. The delicate temerity which dares everything, yet at its very climax starts away in a little sudden access of fear—the glorious young stoic, who could endure a martyrdom, yet has very hard ado to keep from crying when you lose her favourite book or break her favourite flower—the wild enthusiast dreamer, scorning all authorities, who yet could not sleep o’ nights if she had transgressed by ever so little the sweet obedience of home,—there is a charm about this folly almost more delightful than the magic of the bolder youth, with all its bright vagaries; and it is this which makes our tenderness for the Princess Ida and all her “girl graduates in their golden hair.”

Strange enough, however, this phase of youthfulness does not seem to have struck any woman-poet. We have heroines pensive and heroines sublime, heroines serious and heroines merry, but very few specimens of that high fantastical which embraces all these, and into which most men, and doubtless most women, on their way to soberer life, have the luck to fall. Mrs Browning is too sad, too serious, too conscious of the special pangs and calamities which press heaviest on her sisterhood, to take note of any happier peculiarity. Nor is this special eye to feminine troubles confined to Mrs Browning: a weeping and a melancholy band are the poetesses of all generations. “Woman is the lesser man,” says the Laureate; but only woman is the sadder man—the victim set apart on a platform of injury—the wronged and slighted being whose lot it is to waste her sweetness on hearts unkind and ungrateful, say all the ladies. “Her lot is on you.” The mature woman has no better thought, when she looks over the bright girl-heads, bent in their morning prayer; and wherever we have a female singer, there stands woman, deject and pensive, betrayed, forsaken, unbeloved, weeping immeasurable tears. Is a woman, then, the only creature in God’s universe whom He leaves without compensation? Out upon the thought! but there ought to be some Ida bold enough to proclaim the woman’s special happinesses—the exuberant girl-delights—the maiden meditation, fancy free—the glory of motherhood—the blessings as entirely her own as are the griefs. Bertha in the Lane is a most moving story, sweetly told; but ye are not always weeping, O gentlest sisterhood! and where are your songs of joy?

If Mr Tennyson intends the hysterical folly of Maud for a companion picture to this one, he is indeed elevating the woman to a higher pedestal than even Ida dreamed of; for the youth is a miserable conception in comparison with this sunbright girl. In the beginning of the last reign of poets—when men, disturbed by the great rustle of the coming wings, endeavoured to find out wherein the magic consisted, to which they could not choose but yield—we remember to have seen many clever speculations on the nature of poetry “One said it was the moon—another said nay”; and it was very hard to understand the unreasonable potency of this enchantment—which, indeed, clever people, unwilling to yield to an influence which they cannot measure, are perpetually accounting for by rules and principles of art. “It has always been our opinion,” says Lord Jeffrey, “that the very essence of poetry, apart from the pathos, the wit, or the brilliant description which may be embodied in it, but may exist equally in prose, consists in the fine perception and vivid expression of that subtle and mysterious analogy which exists between the physical and the moral world—which makes outward things and qualities the natural types and emblems of inward gifts and emotions, and leads us to ascribe life and sentiment to everything that interests us in the aspects of external nature.” Lord Jeffrey is a good authority, though sometimes this troublesome poetry put even the accomplished critic out of his reckoning; but we are sadly afraid that this deliverance of his, or at least the idea it contains, has had some share in the present insanity of all our poets in regard to Nature. Mr Tennyson may have a private reason of his own for making such a miserable grumbler as his last hero. Mr Dobell may hold himself justified, in the heights of self-complacence, and for the benefit of art, for his atrocious Balder, a criminal, by all poetic laws, for prosiness interminable, worse than murder; but we would crave to know what right these gentlemen may have to seize upon our genial nature, and craze her healthful looks and voices to their hysterical and ghastly fancy? We are content, if he uses his own materials, that the Laureate should dabble his hollow with blood to his heart’s content; but we will not consent, for a hundred laureates, to make the free heather of our hills, the kindly blossom sacred to home and to liberty, an image of disgust and horror. After all, this is a very poor trick and a contemptible—at its best much like that which Mr Ruskin denounces as the most ignoble thing in painting, the excitement of mind which comes from a successful deception, the consciousness that the thing we look at is not what it appears to be. When we feel Nature sympathising with us, it is well; but it is not well when we force her to echo our own mad fancies, of themselves forced and unreal enough. The “frantic rain,” the “shuddering dark,” the “maddened beach”—alas, poor poets! is force of expression not to be found by better means than by this juggle of misplaced adjectives? How widely different was the “sea change into something rich and strange” of the sweeter imagination and the greater heart!

But it is doubtless a very perturbed atmosphere in which we find ourselves when we come face to face with the last new arrival in the land of poesy, the unfortunate young gentleman whose hard fate it is to love Maud, and to shoot her brother. He has no name, this ill-fated youth; but doubtless Balder is reckoned in his roll of cousinships, and so is Mr Alexander Smith. There are three of them, ladies and gentlemen, and they are an amiable trio. Strangely as their garb and intentions are altered, there is a lingering reminiscence about them of a certain Childe Harold who once set the world aflame. Like him they are troubled with a weight of woe and misfortune mysteriously beyond the conception of common men; but unlike him—and the difference is characteristic—these unhappy lads are solemnly bent on “improving their minds,” in spite of their misery. For our own part, we are much disposed, in the first instance, to set down Maud as one of the greatest impertinences ever perpetrated by a poet; but we confess, after an hour’s trial of Balder, and the ceaseless singing of that wife of his, which of itself certainly was almost enough to drive a sober man crazy, and ought to be received as an extenuating circumstance, we return in a kinder spirit to the nameless young gentleman who wrote the Laureate’s poem. After all, he is only an idle boy, scorning other people, as idle boys are not unwont to scorn their neighbours in the world; he does not think himself a divinity; he has not a manuscript at hand to draw forth and gaze upon with delighted eyes; he is not—let us be grateful—a poet. His history is all pure playing with the reader, a wanton waste of our attention and the singer’s powers; but, after all, there is something of the breath of life in it, when we compare it with the solemn foolery of its much-pretending contemporaries, the lauds of the self-worshipping man, or the rhapsodies of the self-admiring youth.

We remember to have heard a very skilful painter of still life describe how the composition, the light and shade, and arrangement of one of his pictures, was taken from a great old picture of a scriptural scene. Instead of men and women, the story and the action of the original, our friend had only things inanimate to group upon his canvass, but he kept the arrangement, the sunshine and the shadow, the same. One can suppose that some such artistic whim had seized upon Mr Tennyson. In the wantonness of conscious power, he has been looking about him for some feat to do—when, lo! the crash of a travelling orchestra smote upon the ears of the poet. Are there German bands in the Isle of Wight? or was it the sublimer music of some provincial opera which woke the Laureate’s soul to this deed of high emprise? Yes, Maud is an overture done into words; beginning with a jar and thunder—all the breath of all the players drawn out in lengthened suspiration upon the noisy notes; then bits of humaner interlude—soft flute-voices—here and there a momentary silvery trumpet-note, or the tinkle of a harp, and then a concluding crash of all the instruments, a tumult of noises fast and furious, an assault upon our ears and our patience, only endurable because we see the end. Such is this poem—which indeed it is sad to call a poem, especially in those hard days. We mean no disparagement to Mr Tennyson’s powers. It is perhaps only when we compare this with other poems of the day that we see how prettily managed is the thread of the story, and how these morsels of verse carry us through every scene as clear as if every scene was a picture; but a man who knows only too consciously that a whole nation of people acknowledge him as their best singer—a man who also doubtless must have noted how the good public, those common people who take their ill names so tenderly, hurry his books into sixth and tenth editions, a fact which ought somewhat to counterbalance the cheating yard-wand—and one, moreover, so thoroughly acquainted with the gravity and passion of this time, and how it has been startled into a humbler estimate of itself by the fiery touch of war,—that such a man, at such an hour, should send forth this piece of trifling as his contribution to the courage and heartening of his country, is as near an insult to the audience he addresses as anything which is not personal can be.

Mr Tennyson, however, has insight and perception to keep him from the strand on which his imitators—the smaller people who endeavour to compete with him in poetry, and triumphantly excel him in extravagance—go ashore. He knows that a poet’s hero ought not to be a poet—that a man’s genius was given him, if not for the glory of God, its best aim, yet, at worst, for the glory of some other man, and not for the pitiful delight of self-laudation, meanest of human follies. A great book is a great thing, and a great poem is the most immortal of great books; yet, notwithstanding, one cannot help a smile at the “Have you read my book?” of Mr Smith’s Life Drama, or the

“O thou first last work! my early planned,

Long meditate, and slowly-written epic,”

of Mr Dobell! The poet’s glory is to celebrate other achievements than his own. His inspiration is the generous flush of sympathy which triumphs in another’s triumph: “Arms and the man I sing;” and so it becomes him to throw his heart into his subject, and leave his own reputation with a noble indifference to the coming ages, who will take care of that. But it is a perilous day for poetry when poets magnify their office through page after page of lengthy argument—not to say, besides, that it is very unjust to us, who are not poets but common people, and cannot be expected to follow into these recondite regions the soaring wing of genius. The greater can comprehend the less, but not the less the greater. He can descend to us in our working-day cares, but it is not to be expected that many of us can ascend to him in that sublime retirement of his among the visions and the shadows. To take Balder, for instance: marvellously few of us, even at our vainest, think either kings or gods of ourselves; ordinary human nature, spite of its prides and pretensions, is seldom without a consciousness at its heart of its own littleness and poverty; and when we hear a man declaring his sublime superiority, we are puzzled, and pause, and smile, and try to make it out a burlesque or an irony. If he says it in sport, we can understand him, for Firmilian is out of sight a more comprehensible person than his prototype; but if our hero is in earnest, we shake our perplexed heads and let him go by—we know him not. There may be such a person—far be it from us to limit the creative faculty; but how does anybody suppose that we—

“Creatures not too wise nor good

For human nature’s daily food,”

can be able to comprehend a being who makes no secret of his own intense superiority, his elevation over our heads? Again, we say, the greater comprehends the less, and not the less the greater. We can enter into the trials and the delights of ordinary men like ourselves; but, alas! we are not able to enter into those pleasures and poetic pains “which only poets know.” And the poet knows we cannot appreciate him—nay, glories in our wonder as we gape after him in his erratic progress—showers upon us assurances that we cannot understand, and laughs at our vain fancy if we venture humbly to suppose that we might; but in the name of everything reasonable, we crave to know, this being the case, why this infatuated singer publishes his poem? “Have you read my book?” says Walter, in the Life Drama; and being answered, “I have:” “It is enough,” says the satisfied poet,—

“The Book was only written for two souls,

And they are thine and mine.”

Very well! So be it! We did not ask Mr Smith for a poem, neither did our importunity besiege the tower of Balder; but if they were not written for us, why tantalise us with these mysterious revelations? For two souls the Life Drama might have answered exceeding well in manuscript, and within the bounds of a private circulation the exceptional men who possibly could comprehend him might have studied Balder. How does it happen that Shakespeare’s wonderful people, with all their great individualities, are never exceptional men? It is a singular evidence of the vast and wide difference between great genius and “poetic talent.” For Shakespeare, you perceive, can afford to let us all understand; thanks to his commentators, there are a great many obscure phrases in the Prince of Poets—but all the commentators in the world cannot make one character unintelligible, or throw confusion into a single scene.

Balder, we presume, has not yet been hanged, indisputable as are his claims to that apotheosis; for this is only part the first, and our dangerous hero has yet to progress through sundry other “experiences,” and to come at last “from a doubtful mind to a faithful mind,”—how about his conscience and the law, meanwhile, Mr Dobell does not say. But we have no objections to make to the story of Balder. That such a being should exist at all, or, existing, should, of all places in the world, manage to thrust himself into a poem, is the head and front of the offending, to our thought. The author of this poetic Frankenstein mentions Haydon, Keats, and David Scott as instances of the “much-observed and well-recorded characters of men,” in which “the elements of his hero exist uncombined and undeveloped.” Poor Keats’s passionate poet-vanity seems out of place beside the marvellous and unexampled egotism of the two painters; but we do not see how the poet improves his position by this reference; nay, had we demonstration that Balder himself was a living man, we do not see what better it would be. He is a monster, were he twenty people; and, worse than a monster, he is a bore; and, worse than a bore, he is an unbearable prig! One longs to thrust the man out of the window, as he sits mouthing over his long-meditated epic, and anticipating his empire of the world. Yet it really is a satisfaction to be told that this incarnate vanity represents “the predominant intellectual misfortune of the day.” Is this then the Doubt of which Mr Maurice is respectful, which Mr Kingsley admires, and Isaac Taylor lifts his lance to demolish? Alas, poor gentlemen, how they are all deceived! It is like the story we all believed till truth-telling war found out the difference for us, of the painted ramparts and wooden bullets of the Russian fortresses. If Mr Dobell is right, we want no artillery against the doubter—he will make few proselytes, and we may safely leave him to any elaborate processes he chooses for the killing of himself.

“Many things go to the making of all things,” says a quaint proverb—and we require more than a shower of similes, pelting upon us like the bonbons of a carnival—more than a peculiar measure, a characteristic cadence, to make poetry. There is our Transatlantic cousin rhyming forth his chant to all the winds. Well!—we thought we knew poetry once upon a time—once in the former days our heart leaped at sight of a poetry-book, and the flutter of the new white pages was a delight to our soul. But alas, and alas! our interest fails us as much for the Song of Hiawatha as for the musings of Balder; there is no getting through the confused crowd of Mr Browning’s Men and Women, and with reverential awe we withdraw us from The Mystic, not even daring a venturesome glance upon that globe of darkness. What are we to do with these books? They suppose a state of leisure, of ease, of quietness, unknown to us for many a day. It pleases the poet to sing of a distempered vanity brooding by itself over fictitious misfortunes, and what is it to us whether a Maud or a Balder be the issue?—or he treats of manners and customs, names and civilisations, and what care we whether it be an Indian village or a May fair? We have strayed by mistake into a delicate manufactory—an atelier of the beaux arts—and even while we look at the workmen and admire the exquisite manipulation of the precious toys before us, our minds stray away out of doors with a sigh of weariness to the labours of this fighting world of ours and the storms of our own life. There is no charm here to hold us, none to cheat us into a momentary forgetfulness of either our languors or our labours. If it is all poetry, it has lost the first heritage and birthright of the Muse: it speaks to the ear—it does not speak to the heart.

Yet in this contention of cadences, where every man’s ambition is for a new rhythm, Hiawatha has a strong claim upon the popular fancy. Possibly it is not new; but if Mr Longfellow is the first to make it popular, it matters very little who invented it; and to talk of plagiarism is absurd. But, unhappily for the poet, this is the very measure to attract the parodist. Punch has opened the assault, and we will not attempt to predict how many gleeful voices may echo his good-humoured mockery before the year is out. The jingle of this measure is irresistible, and with a good vocabulary of any savage language at one’s elbow, one feels a pleasing confidence that the strain might spin on for ever, and almost make itself. But for all that, though the trick of the weaving is admirable—though we are roused into pleasant excitement now and then by a hairbreadth escape from a rhyme, and applaud the dexterity with which this one peril is evaded, we are sadly at a loss to find any marks of a great or note-worthy poem in this chant, which is fatally “illustrative of” a certain kind of life, but contains very little in itself of any life at all. The greatest works of art,—and we say it at risk of repeating ourselves—are those which appeal to the primitive emotions of nature; and in gradual descent, as you address the secondary and less universal emotions, you fail in interest, in influence, and in greatness. Hiawatha contains a morsel of a love-story, and a glimpse of a grief; but these do not occupy more than a few pages, and are by no means important in the song. The consequence is, of course, that we listen to it entirely unmoved. It was not meant to move us. The poet intends only that we should admire him, and be attracted by the novelty of his subject; and so we do admire him—and so we are amused by the novel syllables—attracted by the chime of the rhythm, and the quaint conventionalities of the savage life. But we cannot conceal from ourselves that it is conventional, though it is savage; and that in reality we see rather less of the actual human life and nature under the war-paint of the Indian than is to be beheld every day under the English broadcloth. The Muse is absolute in her conditions; we cannot restrain her actual footsteps; from the highest ideal to the plainest matter of fact there is no forbidden ground to the wandering minstrel; but it is the very secret of her individuality, that wherever she goes she sounds upon the chords of her especial harp, the heart;—vibrations of human feeling ring about her in her wayfaring—the appeal of the broken heart and the shout of the glad one thrust in to the very pathway where her loftiest abstraction walks in profounder calm; and though it may please her to amuse herself among social vanities now and then, we are always reminded of her identity by a deeper touch, a sudden glance aside into the soul of things—a glimpse of that nature which makes the whole world kin. It is this perpetual returning, suddenly, involuntarily, and almost unawares, to the closest emotions of the human life, which distinguishes among his fellows the true poet. It is the charm of his art that he startles us in an instant, and when we least expected it, out of mere admiration into tears; but such an effect unfortunately can never be produced by customs, or improvements, or social reforms. The greatest powers of the external world are as inadequate to this as are the vanities of a village; and even a combination of both is a fruitless expedient. No, Mr Longfellow has not shot his arrow this time into the heart of the oak—the dart has glanced aside, and fallen idly among the brushwood. His Song is a quaint chant, a happy illustration of manners, but it lacks all the important elements which go to the making of a poem. We are interested, pleased, attracted, yet perfectly indifferent; the measure haunts our ear, but not the matter—and we care no more for Hiawatha, and are still as little concerned for the land of the Objibbeways, as if America’s best minstrel had never made a song. The poet was more successful in the wistfulness of his Evangeline, to which even these lengthened, desolate, inquiring hexameters lent a charm of appropriate symphony; but it is a peculiarity of this sweet singer that his best strains are always wistful, longing, true voices of the night.

It is odd to remark the entire family aspect and resemblance which our English poets bear to one another. Mr Tennyson is the eldest of the group, and they all take after him; but they are true brothers, and have quite a family standard of merit by which to judge themselves. Mr Dobell is the sulky boy—Mr Browning the boisterous one—Mr Smith the younger brother, desperately bent on being even with the firstborn, and owning no claim of birthright. There is but one sister in the melodious household, and she is quite what the one sister generally is in such a family—not untouched by even the schoolboy pranks of the surrounding brothers—falling into their ways of speaking—moved by their commotions—very feminine, yet more acquainted with masculine fancies than with the common ways of women. Another sister or two to share her womanly moderatorship in this noisy household might have made a considerable difference in Mrs Browning: but her position has a charm of its own;—she never lags behind the fraternal band, nay, sometimes stimulated by a sudden impulse, glides on first, and calls “the boys” to follow her: nor does she quite refuse now and then to join a wild expedition to the woods or the sea-shore. If she has sometimes a feminine perception that the language of the brothers is somewhat too rugged or too obscure for common comprehension, she partly adopts the same, with a graceful feminine artifice, to show how, blended with her sweeter words, this careless diction can be musical after all; and you feel quite confident that she will stand up stoutly for all the brotherhood, even when she does not quite approve of their vagaries. She has songs of her own, sweet and characteristic, such as “Little Ellie,” and leaps into the heart of a great subject once in that Lay of the Children, which everybody knows and quotes, and which has just poetic exaggeration sufficient to express the vehement indignation with which the song compelled the singer’s utterance. Altogether, Mrs Browning’s poems, rank them how you will in intellectual power, have more of the native mettle of poetry than most modern verses. She is less artificial than her brotherhood—and there is something of the spring and freedom of things born in her two earlier volumes; she is not so assiduously busy over the things which have to be made.

And Robert Browning is the wild boy of the household—the boisterous noisy shouting voice which the elder people shake their heads to hear. It is very hard to make out what he would be at with those marvellous convolutions of words; but, after all, he really seems to mean something, which is a comfort in its way. Then there is an unmistakable enjoyment in this wild sport of his—he likes it, though we are puzzled; and sometimes he works like the old primitive painters, with little command of his tools, but something genuine in his mind, which comes out in spite of the stubborn brushes and pigments, marvellous ugly, yet somehow true. Only very few of his Men and Women is it possible to make out: indeed, we fear that the Andrea and the Bishop Blougram are about the only intelligible sketches, to our poor apprehension, in the volumes; but there is a pleasant glimmer of the author himself through the rent and tortured fabric of his poetry, which commends him to a kindly judgment; and, unlike those brothers of his who use the dramatic form with an entire contravention of its principles, this writer of rugged verses has a dramatic gift, the power of contrasting character, and expressing its distinctions.

But altogether, not to go further into these characteristic differences, they are a united and affectionate family this band of poets, and chorus each other with admirable amiability; yet we confess, for poetry’s sake, we are jealous of the Laureate’s indisputable pre-eminence. It is not well for any man—unless he chance to be a man like Shakespeare, a happy chance, which has never happened but once in our race or country—to have so great a monopoly; and it is a sad misfortune for Tennyson himself, that he has no one to try his mettle, but is troubled with a shadowy crowd of competitors eagerly contending which shall reflect his peculiarities best.

For the manfuller voices are all busy with serious prose or that craft of novel-writing which is more manageable for common uses than the loftier vehicle of verse. True, there are such names as Aytoun and Macaulay, and we all know the ringing martial ballad-notes which belong to these distinguished writers; but Macaulay and Aytoun have taken to other courses, and strike the harp no more. And while the higher places stand vacant, the lower ones fill with a crowd of choral people, who only serve to show us the superiority of the reigning family, such as it is. It is a sad fact, yet we cannot dispute it—poetry is fast becoming an accomplishment, and the number of people in “polite society” who write verses is appalling. Only the other day, two happy samples of Young England came by chance across our path—one a young clergyman, high, high, unspeakably high, riding upon the very rigging of the highest roof of Anglican churchmanship, bland, smooth, and gracious, a bishop in the bud; the other, his antipodes and perfect opposite, gone far astray after the Warringtons and Pendennises—a man of mirth and daring, ready for everything. They had but one feature of resemblance—an odd illustration of what we have just been saying. Both of them had modestly ventured into print; both of them were poets.

And yet that stream of smooth and facile verse which surrounded us in former days has suffered visible diminution. It is a different kind of fare which our minor minstrels shower down upon that wonderful appetite of youth, which doubtless cracks those rough-husked nuts of words with delighted eagerness, as we once drank in the sugared milk-and-water of a less pretending Helicon. After all, we suspect it is the youthful people who are the poets’ best audience. These heirs of Time, coming leisurely to their inheritance, have space for song by the way; but in the din and contest of life we want a more potent influence. If the poet has anything to say to us, he must even seize us by the strong hand, and compel our listening; for we are very unlike to pause of our own will, or take time to hear his music on any weaker argument than this.

And he too at last has gone away to join his old long-departed contemporaries, that old old man, with his classic rose-garland, from the classic table, where generations of men and poets have come and gone, a world of changing guests. He was not a great poet certainly, and his festive, and prosperous, and lengthened life called for no particular exercise of our sympathies; yet honour and gentle recollection be with the last survivor of the last race of Anakim, though he himself was not among the giants. The day has changed since that meridian flush which left a certain splendour of reflection upon Samuel Rogers, the last of that great family of song. Ours is only a twilight kind of radiance, however much we may make of it. It differs sadly from the full unclouded shining of that Day of the Poets which is past.

A MILITARY ADVENTURE IN THE PYRENEES.
BY A PENINSULAR MEDALLIST.
CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER XIII.

On arriving at our billet, we there found the Padre, who expressed his profound regrets at the insult offered by the villagers to my companion, and repeated his assurance that nothing of the kind should happen again.

“Señor Padre,” said I, “that is hardly sufficient. I think that people who misconduct themselves as the villagers have done, should be made sensible of their error by stringent measures.”

“This time let it pass,” said M. le Tisanier. “Should the same thing happen again, I shall hold the alcalde responsible, and shall invite him” (M. le T. twists his mustache) “to a promenade outside the village.”

The Padre was in a little bit of a fidget. We had come upon him in the kitchen, with a ladle on the stove, and sleeves turned up. He was casting bullets.

“No news of this French column,” said he; “I have been waiting about here, expecting intelligence all the morning.”

“Why not send out some of the villagers?” I asked. “They might pick up information.”

“Señor Capitan,” he replied, “I have thought of a better plan than that. You and I were to have gone out shooting to-day. Suppose we go to-morrow morning.”

“With much pleasure,” said I, “but what are we to effect by that?”

“We will take a new direction,” he replied. “We will not go northwards, as hitherto; we will go southwards. This will bring us towards the point from which the enemy are approaching. We may obtain tidings; perhaps we may get a sight of them.”

“You must be guide, then,” I answered. “Of course, you know the ground.”

“Trust me for that,” said he. “I will not take you by the direct route across the open plain. We will strike off to the right, and skirt the foot of the hills.”

“Why go over rough ground, in preference to level?” I asked.

“Ah,” said he, “you are, I perceive, a novice in guerilla warfare. Regular tactics are your line. If they caught sight of us on the open plain, don’t you see they would be sure to overtake and capture us? If we have the hills on our flank, cannot we at any time escape up the rocks and gullies? They are not likely to follow us there. If they do, at any rate, I promise you some beautiful shooting.”

“Let alone a little bloodletting among the thorn-bushes,” said I; “trousers in tatters, and our beasts rolling heels over head down all sorts of places.”

“We must go on foot,” he replied.

“Very good,” said I; “you know best. Only recollect my left leg is in far better walking order for half-a-league than for half-a-dozen. Suppose I knock up?”

“Chito! then I will carry you on my back.”

“Be it so,” said I, inwardly determining to drop dead tired for the fun of the thing, and take a spell out of the Padre as long as I found it pleasant. “Then, to-morrow after breakfast——”

“We must start before breakfast,” said the Padre.

Supposing the enemy at hand, it really was desirable to know what they were about. So I ended by assenting, with one proviso, to all the Padre’s propositions. The proviso was, that in the interval we received no intelligence sufficiently conclusive of itself, and rendering our reconnaissance superfluous.

CHAPTER XIV.

No intelligence arrived, and early next morning we set out to seek the foe. M. le Tisanier was up betimes to see us off. “Expect to see me return,” said I, “in a state of absolute exhaustion and immense inanition, with heels hanging down over the Padre’s shoulders. In pity have a good dinner ready.”

“I shall be prepared for you,” said M. le Tisanier.

“Of course you feel easy,” said I to the Padre as we went along, “respecting the four Frenchmen.”

“No fear about them,” replied the Padre. “They know it is their safety to keep quiet; and if they come to any harm, it will be their own act. If they attempt to move, or even show themselves abroad, they will be shot down luego, luego.”

Our ramble proved well worth taking for its own sake; but we saw no Frenchmen, and very little game. The Padre was fortunate, and bagged a fox. My success was but scanty in respect to hares and partridges. After a long detour through a wild and very thinly inhabited district, and a few calls at scattered cottages or rather hovels, the abode of a rough and noble peasantry, all of whom received the Padre with profound veneration, and me as his companion with high Spanish courtesy, we reached at length a village which we had agreed to make the extreme limit of our excursion. Still obtaining no intelligence, we set out, after resting, on our return. We now, however, took the direct route over the plain, and found our journey homeward far more agreeable than our journey out. There was a point on which I deemed it requisite to obtain information, and the Padre being in a remarkably conversable vein, the present seemed a good opportunity.

“You mentioned,” said I, “that the proprietors of your abode were worthy people. I should be sorry, for their sakes, if the house received damage from the enemy.”

He. “It is not altogether for their sakes that I wish to preserve the house.”

I. “Of course, not altogether. Your own property—your own effects——”

He. “I have no property; I have no effects; I have nothing. It is a rule of my order. I am under a vow of poverty. No, no; my wish springs from a principle of honour.”

I. “Just what I should feel towards my own landlord. But you say it is not on your landlord’s account.”

He. “It is on account of the fraternity of which I am an unworthy member.”

I. “Oh, oh! then your fraternity have an interest in the premises?”

He. “Not exactly in the building itself, but in its contents. The fact is, our convent——but I forget. You, as a heret——pardon me; you, as an Englishman, can have no acquaintance with our regulations. I will just explain. Our poor indigent community has some trifling property in lands, principally vineyards. I am their factor. That house is one of our depôts.”

I. “Very good wine, too, the growth of your estates. Little did I imagine, while seated with you at table, or puffing a cigar, that we were sipping the property of the Church.”

He. “You may say smoking as well as sipping. The cigars also are the property of our humble fraternity.”

I. “Well, I like that idea of a vow of poverty amazingly. You don’t intend to convert me?”

He (benignantly). “One thing at a time. As to the wine we drink, you mistake, however, if you suppose that is the wine we grow. The wine grown on our lands is the ordinario sort—abundant, indeed, as to quantity, and in that respect valuable; but not of a sort fit to be drunk by my order. No, no; we exchange it for better. For example, what you have been drinking I trust you will admit is a good sound wine.”

I. “As good a Spanish red wine as I ever tasted;”—and it was no compliment.

He. “Yes, yes; and we sometimes exchange for foreign wines. Would that you had been here before the branch convent, which is now your hospital, was ransacked by the French. Have I not good reason for shooting a Frenchman whenever I can? Ah, I would have given you such a bottle of bordeaux! And port! As good port as you can drink in the Peninsula, and far better than you ever are likely to drink in your own country.”

I. “And so it is you who have the management of all this. Surely it must give you no end of trouble.”

He. “Trouble? It is my business. Besides that, it is a duty I owe my fraternity, consequently a duty of my profession. As to trouble, my only real trouble is in running foreign goods from the coast, or across the frontiers. I certainly do sometimes find a little trouble in that. But why should I complain? After all, it is exciting, and so far a pleasure. A man of my cloth ought always to be contented.”

I. “French goods?”

He. “French goods and English. French, across the Pyrenees; English, from the shores of the Mediterranean and Bay of Biscay. We sell again at a very fair profit—moderate as becomes our order, but fair nevertheless.”

I. “A heavy deduction, though, the fiscal exactions of your government, no doubt.”

“Fiscal?” he exclaimed, frowning horribly. “Fiscal? Do you think me, in managing the concerns of my venerable brotherhood, capable of such a dereliction of principle—do you consider me such an ass as to permit any deduction like that? Why, if we conducted our little business subject to fiscal obstructions, we might as well have no management at all. Señor Capitan, although this conversation was brought on by a remark on your part, the subject is one on which I have long wished to confer with you confidentially, and I thank you for the opportunity. And now let me bespeak your kind, benevolent offices on behalf of my self-denying humble brethren. As I said before, we profess poverty, we have nothing. Charitable laics, touched by our dependent and destitute condition, have from time to time bequeathed us trifles of landed property, which we frugally farm to the best advantage, taking the chance—you know it is a toss-up—of profit or loss. The produce, when realised, we turn to account as well as our poor opportunities permit; and my object is to supplicate your best offices in behalf of our little store in the village, which, as well as one or two others in different localities, is under my charge and responsibility. Some damage our store has suffered already. After the plunder of the convent by the French, your own troops, on their arrival in the village, found their way into the cellar of the house, and were beginning to make free with the wine, when you happily arrived, and order was soon restored. All I ask is, that as long as you remain here, or have influence in this neighbourhood, you will kindly give our depôt the benefit of your protection, so far as you may be able. I ask it, not only on my own account, but for the sake of my venerable brethren. Our wants are few. The French silks and English prints we sell for what we can get. We also drive a trifling business in English cutlery, and French quincaillerie. The poor must do something to live. As to the convent in Vittoria, I forward to it from time to time, as best I can, and when I have got them, only little supplies of such common necessaries as bordeaux, port, champagne, sherry, French brandy when I can get it good, sardines, gruyère cheese, caviar, vermicelli, macaroni, spicery, Dutch herrings, maraschino, Hamburg sausages, and a few other little knicknackeries not worth enumerating. Our wants are few.”

Had liberal Spain, when she laid hands on the property of the religious orders, gone through as she began, made a clean work of it, and reformed ALL that we consider the errors and abuses of Romanism, I, as an ardent Protestant, should have cordially rejoiced. But merely to confiscate endowments, and to leave other things as they are, is a different thing. There can be no doubt of it, that at the beginning of this century, when Napoleon I. attempted to make Spain a province of France, the Spanish clergy, by their influence with the nation, and by their success in maintaining the spirit of national resistance, were the saviours of their country. That these have been made the victims, and the only victims of reform, is hard indeed.

I walked on, listening to the Padre’s discourse with so much interest, that we arrived close upon our village before I recollected his promise of a lift, and my own fixed purpose of taking it out of him. We were now not a quarter of a mile from our journey’s end; and I was beginning to muse, with complacent anticipation, on the capital dinner which M. le Tisanier was to have ready on our arrival, when we noticed Francisco coming down the lane to meet us.

As he approached with hasty strides, his visage was clouded. He made an angry gesture, as if signalling us to halt.

“That endiablado doctor,” said he, “(may his soul never see the inside of purgatory!) has armed the four Frenchmen, seized all the ammunition in the village, and barricaded the house!”

CHAPTER XV.

We halted. As the tidings brought by Francisco deprived the Padre of utterance, I demanded particulars.

It appeared from Francisco’s indignant statement that, subsequently to our departure, when M. le Tisanier, having made his preliminary arrangements for our dinner, had visited the hospitals, and was returning through the village, he was again set upon by the inhabitants. The villagers, taking advantage of the Padre’s absence, surrounded and insulted him, menaced both him and the four prisoners with death, and pelted him with stones, one of which had taken effect, very much to the detriment of his physiognomy. On reaching home, however, he occupied himself as usual, without doing anything to excite suspicion; but, after a while, he sent off Francisco with a message to the “two wounded Spaniards” at the convent, and with directions to await their further instructions. After being detained a couple of hours, which he spent in the study of English, under the tuition of the convalescent soldiers, with whom Francisco was popular, the two Spaniards merely gave him directions to go home again, and he returned to the house.

On entering the kitchen, he was surprised to see what to all appearance was a dinner ready-cooked, arranged on a tray, and under covers. M. le Tisanier, pointing to the tray, bade him carry it to the Alcalde’s, with a message that he himself would be there immediately. The Alcalde was from home; and Francisco, on coming out after leaving the tray, beheld in the street a spectacle which, as he elegantly expressed himself, “revolved his interior” (revolvió-me las tripas). Close at hand appeared, all bearing their muskets and fully accoutred, the four French soldiers, headed by M. le Tisanier, who marched en militaire, with his drawn sword sloped on his shoulder. This armed party, compelling him to return with them, entered the Alcalde’s house, demanded all the arms on the premises, obtained a gun, a blunderbuss, a pair of Spanish rapiers, and a quantity of ammunition. They then, leaving behind them a basket which contained several bottles of the Padre’s wine, went back to the house, which immediately on their entering they barricaded, leaving the astonished Francisco in the street.

The villagers noticed these proceedings with consternation, but had been taken by surprise, and were overawed by the military display. After the closing of the house, they assembled tumultuously in the street, and meditated all sorts of things. But M. le Tisanier, appearing at the window of an entresuelo (a closet or small chamber half-way up-stairs), warned them to disperse if they did not wish to be fired upon; an admonition which they were the more readily induced to follow by a bullet that whistled over their heads. They then withdrew to their huts, anxiously watching the closed house, in which no movement was discernible, and expecting with much palpitation the Padre’s return.

Francisco, recovering from his first surprise, had started off, he told us, in search of the Padre and me; but not knowing which way we had taken, assuming that we had followed our usual direction towards the shooting-ground, and being too much confused to make inquiries, he had covered a great deal of ground to no purpose, and had not got back to the village till a short time before our return.

“Santiago de Compostella!” gasped the Padre, at length recovering partially his senses and his breath, and dashing his bonnet on the ground. “For which of my many sins was I withheld from cutting that hangdog’s throat the first moment that I set eyes on him! Santiago! Trecientos mil diablos!”

“Compose yourself, Señor Padre,” said I. “At least wait till we see how things look, and till we can judge for ourselves. If the Doctor has been menaced and assaulted, what wonder that he should place himself in security till our return? The business, according to my view of it, is not so serious as you appear to think.”

“Ah!” said the Padre, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, “you are very kind. I totally forgot what I had just told you—that, with the exception of the wine, I had sent off all our stores to Vittoria.—Oh no! I mistake! Three dozen Lamego hams! Beautiful!—delicate! The choicest rarity in these parts! Oh, my Lamego hams! To think that the poor provision for my self-denying, self-mortifying, exemplary brethren should go to feed those hounds of Frenchmen!”

“Never mind,” I replied, still striving to tranquillise his agitated feelings; “should the worst come to the worst, we’ll have them out of that long before they finish your hams. But not to lose time, suppose I just step forward, and try the effects of a parley.”

CHAPTER XVI.

On approaching the house, which had now become a place d’armes, I saw no one stirring. Every shutter was closed. It was a square low building, as old as the Moors, flat-roofed, solidly built of stone. Its little windows were high above the level of the ground. As I drew nigh, I remarked that the large massive door, which usually stood open all day, was, as well as the shutters, closed. Spanish-fashion, I took the liberty of kicking at the said door, in the absence of any such superfluities as bell or knocker. A voice responded over my head, “Quien es?” (Who is it?)

I looked up. At the window above, already indicated by Francisco’s narrative, with an awfully damaged peeper, stood M. le Tisanier. He bowed politely.

“Ah!” said he. “So you have returned from your reconnaissance. Any intelligence of the French column? What sport to-day?”

Not choosing to answer the former of these inquiries, I addressed myself to the latter. “Very poor indeed. Only a brace and a half of birds, and a couple of hares. The Padre, though, has brought home a fox. Dinner ready?”

He. “Your dinner? Oh, yes, that was ready some hours ago. It awaits you at the Alcalde’s—hope you’ll enjoy it. It will merely require warming.”

I. “Shall we not, then, have the pleasure of your company?”

He. “To tell you the truth, I have made up my mind to remain where I am. The villagers, as you perceive, have maltreated me; so the idea occurred to me, my best plan would be to fortify the house.”

I. “In our absence, quite right. But now that the Padre has returned, as well as myself, no further precaution is requisite.”

He. “Pardon me. I take quite a different view of the subject.”

I (a little annoyed). “Explain yourself.”

He. “In case you should receive satisfactory intelligence that my countrymen are approaching in force, and supposing you should in consequence deem it requisite to evacuate this hamlet and fall back on Vittoria, permit me to inquire, would you not feel it your duty to invite me to accompany you as a prisoner?”

I. “Probably.”

He. “Of course you would. Now, that being your duty, I have been led to consider what, under the circumstances, is my duty. And it strikes me, I confess, that in the prospect of a speedy reunion with my countrymen, the most proper thing I can do is—to remain where I am.”

I. “Permit me, however, to suggest, that if you persist in this view, and if we should be induced in consequence to adopt vigorous measures, you may find yourself, on their proving successful, very awkwardly situated among the people of this place. You know their feeling, and I might no longer be able to restrain them.”

He. “Permit me, on the other hand, to suggest, that should I maintain myself in this house till my countrymen arrive, the exploit will cover me with glory, my comrades will rush to congratulate me, and I shall be appreciated throughout the French army. In short, M. le Capitaine, I consider my actual position impregnable; and never in my life did I feel more completely at my ease than I do at this moment. Benevolently anxious to prevent the needless effusion of blood, I tender you my disinterested advice to abstain from any rash attempt; and, by no means unwilling to impart useful information, I beg to state that, while your sick men in the hospital have next to no ammunition, I, on my part, have secured all the powder and shot in the village. The Padre’s store, the Alcalde’s, and—pardon me—your own, are all in my safe keeping.”

Beginning to feel out of temper, I made an appeal. “I thought, Monsieur, in dealing with an officer and a gentleman, I should, at any rate, find security in his plighted word. Remember, you are on your parole.”

“Ah!” he replied with much gravity, “you touch my honour. I cannot permit that. But, Monsieur, I think you scarcely recollect. My parole? Let me see. What was my parole? That I would not escape from this place. Very good. Here I am. If my own countrymen come and fetch me away, that, of course, is quite another affair.”

I was sick of this long conversation, and a little sulky. “Monsieur,” said I, “you seem to reckon on the arrival of your countrymen. Doubtless the movement on their part will bring some of mine. Should you hold out till they arrive, which, however, is far from certain, depend upon it you will not again obtain your parole; you will be treated as a common prisoner.”

“Never mind,” said he; “I must take the rough with the smooth. As far as my own military experience goes, the French are quite as quick in their movements as the English; and you yourself have taught me to believe” (he bows very low indeed) “that the conduct of British officers to a French officer who happens to find himself in their power, will never be other than that of a gentleman. By the by, I have a little request to make. Should you send for assistance to Vittoria, pray let it be such a force that I may capitulate without disgrace,—not less than a corps d’armée, I beg. As to artillery, a siege-train, if you please. I could not possibly surrender to field guns.”

I felt excessively disgusted, and was about to withdraw. Yet, recollecting that, with all his gasconade, M. le Tisanier had certainly manifested a sort of good feeling, by preparing our dinner in the midst of his arrangements for defence, I paused.

“I am sorry our stock of game is so small to-day,” said I. “Will you do me the favour to accept of it?”

“No,” said he, with an air of decision; “I could not. Excuse me. A thousand thanks.”

“Come, come,” said I; “bent as you are on resistance, at least let us carry on this war without mutual animosity. Oblige me by accepting of the hares and partridges for your private use.”

“It is out of the question,” he answered firmly. “Honour forbids my compliance. Nevertheless,” he added, after a pause, as if struck by some new idea, “to prove that I am not above receiving an obligation, I will accept—the fox.”

Accept the fox? Though not exactly understanding this, I returned to where I had left the produce of the day’s sport in the keeping of the Padre and Francisco. The Padre was gone; so, making free to lift the fox from Francisco’s shoulders, I went back to the place of conference, and handed it up to M. le Tisanier, who reappeared at his window. He received the gift without explanation, but with a profusion of bows as well as many polite acknowledgments. Fortunate for him were his limber indications of gratitude; for, just as he made his first bow on receiving the slaughtered fox, the crack of a musket from an opposite hovel was accompanied by the whiz of a bullet, which passed just over his head, and, had he remained upright, would have doubtless passed through it.

“Good,” said he; “another bullet added to our store of ammunition, and one charge less in the Padre’s pouch. That was his musket.”

“Now,” said I, “be persuaded. Go in at once. The Padre will not make a second miss.”

“It will take at least two minutes,” he replied, “ere the Padre can fire again. Monsieur,” he continued, with earnestness and emotion, “I have yet a request. Having resolved to assume my present attitude of defensive hostilities, not so much for my own sake, as to save my captive countrymen, to whom even your influence might not always prove an adequate protection in this execrable village, I think you can guess the parties who are now the chief objects of my solicitude. On the whole, I judged it their safest course that they should continue in the hospital rather than join me here. As Spaniards, should they find their present position untenable, they can at any rate escape. But, as you know my secret, may I still depend on your good offices? May I venture to hope that, in any case of exigency, you will render all the assistance in your power to one whose life I prize, as much as—as much as I disregard my own?” There spoke the Gascon.

“Depend upon me,” I replied. “Now withdraw from the window without further parley.”

He backed into the house with another bow, and reclosed the shutter. As he disappeared he smiled; nor could I altogether preserve my gravity.

Certainly the Padre’s ideas touching the laws of war were a little primitive. In fact, his firing while the conference was in progress, looked almost like violating a flag of truce.

“Well, Señor Padre,” said I, on entering the cottage whence the shot had proceeded, “how do you intend to regain possession of your house?”

The Padre looked dumfounded. “I rather depended on your experience,” he replied. “Were I in the house, I would undertake to hold it against fifty Frenchmen. But, as we must now be the assailants, and as that is a line of warfare less in my way, I look chiefly to your own more extensive acquaintance with sap, mining, intrenchments, and approaches.”

“No, no,” I answered. “You have thought fit to commence operations, so you must go through with them.”

“Señor Capitan,” said the Padre, “I am already sufficiently punished by having missed that shot. Do not aggravate my penalty by——.” Enter a messenger in haste.

It was Francisco, not only in haste, but in a high state of exasperation. His look I will not attempt to delineate. The face of a well-conducted, taciturn, sober-minded Spaniard, when distorted by passion, must be seen, not described; and, if seen, will not soon be forgotten.

“The enemy,” he cried, “defies us! He has hoisted his standard!”

We looked towards the house. An ensign of some sort he had raised, sure enough; of what kind we could not immediately distinguish, but the fact was palpable. From the flat roof there rose a slender pole, and at its summit hung suspended and swinging in the wind a something—what?—the fox’s brush.

CHAPTER XVII.

Francisco spoke truly. It was defiance, and no mistake. To hang out a fox’s tail! Not only defiance, but mockery—rank insult! I had suggested to M. le Tisanier, in our recent parley, the possible arrival of an English force. But this was a contingency to be now as much deprecated on my part as on his. To be caught by my countrymen laying siege to my own prisoner ensconced in my own billet, the housetop surmounted by a banner which whimsically spoke the language of challenge and derision combined,—why, on returning to headquarters, I should never hear the end of it. M. le Tisanier might think it a very good joke; but I very soon settled it in my own mind that either by storm or by regular approach I must reduce him and his garrison in the least possible time. So nothing remained but to let slip the dogs of war—i. e., to open the campaign.

From inquiries instituted on my suggestion by the Padre, it was at once ascertained that the village possessed next to nothing in the shape of ammunition and matériel for carrying on the siege. M. le Tisanier had indeed very correctly stated that the bulk was in his own safe keeping. Burning the house would not exactly have suited the Padre, even had it been built of combustible materials, or had I myself entertained any such truculent designs.

Without interruption on the part of the enemy, I reconnoitred the building on all sides. It stood in its strength, completely detached from all other tenements, without garden, trees, fences, or anything else affording cover for our approaches. Close by, indeed, there stood a small shed which served as a wood-house, solidly built of stone. But this also was entirely detached from the main building; and its door, opening sideways, was completely commanded from the roof and windows of the house itself.

Having posted some of the villagers to watch in the surrounding cottages, with directions to report if they noticed any movement in the house, but not to show themselves, the Padre and I, not in the best of humours, were about to withdraw to our dinner at the Alcalde’s. At that moment, with some surprise, I noticed Sergeant Pegden coming down the village from the hospital.

Sergeant Pegden was a Dover man. On my visit to the hospital the day before, I had left him, tardily convalescent, in bed. His conduct in the regiment had been always good, and had gained his actual rank as a noncommissioned officer. Like many other fine fellows, he had knocked up in the Vittoria campaign; and, after going into hospital, he had appeared to be labouring under a total prostration of physical powers, almost amounting to atrophy. He there was kept as comfortable as circumstances permitted, and had perfect rest. But even with all the benefit of M. le Tisanier’s culinary skill, he had made but poor progress; in fact, his frame appeared too far exhausted to recruit, except very gradually indeed, by either rest or nourishment.

The Sergeant’s step, as he now approached, was shaky, almost tottering. His countenance, emaciated while he remained in bed, now looked deathlike. He had turned out neat and tidy after a fashion, though his clothing was worn and faded. He reached us, and we exchanged salutes.

“Why, Pegden,” said I, “what brings you down here?”

“Please—sir,” he feebly replied, “I hope you’ll excuse me; but we heard what has happened, so I thought I had better come down. Would have been here a good bit sooner, sir, only if I hadn’t not had some stitching to do first.”

“What other men,” I asked, “are able to turn out?”

“Please, sir,” replied he, “that’s what they wished me to speak to you about. There’s five of them as says they can come down whenever you please, sir, only if they had a few buttons, and some needles and thread.”

“Which five are they?” said I.

“There’s the Lancashire man, sir,” he answered, “and there’s Sandwich Sam, and Cockney, and the Parson, them four. And there’s Teakettle Tom, he says he thinks he could come, only he hasn’t not got no breeches.”

“Very good,” said I; “go into the house, and take some refreshment, while we see what the village can supply. To-morrow morning you can bring the men down.”

The Padre having instituted an inquiry in the village to meet the requisition for military stores, we sat down to dinner. All the articles required were soon forthcoming; so, having allowed the Sergeant a little time for rest and refreshment, I directed Francisco to take the things, and to go back with the Sergeant to the convent.

Dinner concluded, we were leaving the house, when I was surprised to find Sergeant Pegden seated in the porch.

“Why, Sergeant,” said I, “will you take anything more to eat or to drink? I fear you have overtaxed your strength.”

“Nothing more, thank’e, sir,” said the Sergeant. “Much obliged to you for all favours. Only please, sir, I’m waiting for that Sandwich Sam. I brought him down with me from the hospital; only when we got into the village he hung behind, because he said he wasn’t regimental.”

“Well,” said I, “bring him down in the morning with the rest, as tidy as you can turn them out. When you get back to the hospital, you will probably find he is there before you. By the by, Pegden, I suppose you know all about those two Spaniards up there.”

The Sergeant sniggered. “Yes, sir,” said he; “we all knows pretty well about them.” The smirk on the Sergeant’s cadaverous visage reminded one of a death’s-head illumined by a flash of lightning. In fact, it might be truly said that the Sergeant “grinned horribly a ghastly smile.”

“Well then,” I added, “tell the men I depend on their good behaviour. There must be no annoyance, no interference of any kind.”

I had by this time mentally arranged my plan of operations for the next day. So, after posting a relief of sentinels, I lay down in my clothes, occasionally going my rounds till daybreak, to keep the watchmen wide awake, and secure a good look-out. What I chiefly apprehended was an attempt of the garrison to escape in the night.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Early in the morning, Sergeant Pegden brought down his party; one short, however, of the number announced by him the evening before. The absent man was Sam, the same who had been already reported missing. In fact, I learnt from the Sergeant that Sam had been out all night, and had not returned to the convent at all. This was a serious reduction of our available force.

Sandwich Sam, alias “Shrimps,” had, previous to his enlistment, enjoyed the benefit of a somewhat amphibious education. By profession a hoyman, but also smart as a smuggler, he had occasionally condescended to fill up a leisure hour with the lively amusement of shrimping. Though certainly not the steadiest man in the regiment, Sam, who was a very handy fellow, and an old campaigner, when sober knew his duty, and maintained, on the whole, the character of a smart soldier.

Under other circumstances, I should have given directions for looking him up. But the sick Sergeant, and his party of convalescents, had, in their zeal for his majesty’s service, come down without their breakfast. I therefore felt it my more immediate duty, as the best preparation for the exploits of the day, to supply them with that needful meal. My brave army had turned out anything but stout in health and smart in equipment; but they all showed full of pluck, well under command, and ready for anything.

Having extemporised a breakfast for the men, the Padre and I sat down to our own. Touching the important operations of the day, we were proceeding with our arrangements when an interruption took place, in the shape of a little disturbance outside. Sergeant Pegden was speaking to some one in the street, and speaking loud, in a voice of authority and angry expostulation.

“Come now, you; be quiet. Fall in, and behave like a man.”

A voice responded: “File up your rusty old keys! Lock up your chastises! and go to dinner with the poor!”

“Better take care, Sam,” growled Teakettle Tom in a low voice. “The Captain’s in there, a-having his breakfast.”

“Oh, is he?” replied Sam, “then I’ll give him a song:—

‘My fairther, he’s a preacher,

A wherry honest man;

My mother, she’s a washy-wom’;

And I’m a true Brit-tan,

With my whack fol lol,’” &c.

I send Francisco to call in Sergeant Pegden. Enter the Sergeant.

“Why, Pegden,” said I, “what’s all this about?”

“Very sorry, sir,” replied the Sergeant; “but I’m afraid Sandwich Sam is a little overtaken.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “Where could he get it?”

“Please, sir, I don’t know,” said the Sergeant. “But he seems to have got too much of it, and he has some with him now.”

“Bring him in,” said I.

Glorious, but a little stupid, Sam was brought in. His hand grasped the neck of a half-emptied bottle. Under his arm was another bottle, corked and full.

“I see what’s the matter,” said the Padre. “The man has found his way into the store-closet, and got at the wine which was brought here yesterday. Francisco, how could you be so negligent? Step into the back-room, and see whether he has left us any.”

Francisco went as directed, and promptly returned. “Not a bottle is missing,” said he.

“Señor Capitan,” said the Padre, “this is an enigma. With the exception of my stock, there is no bottled wine in the village.”

“To make sure, suppose we try it,” said I.

“No need of that,” answered the Padre. “The villagers keep their wine in skins. The Alcalde keeps his in a barrel. Within a circuit of three or four leagues, my cellar, since our convent here was plundered, is the only depôt of bottled wine. My reason for keeping a stock you will readily understand. My poor self-denying fraternity, when they do drink wine, prefer it from the bottle, not from the wood.”

“Why then, according to that,” said I, “this drunken fellow must, since last night, have found his way into the cellar of the house which we are presently to attack and carry by storm.”

“I can only repeat what I have said already,” replied the Padre. “It is an enigma.”

“Where have you been, Sam?” I asked. “What have you been about?”

“About?” hiccupped Sam. “What have you been about? I am the lad as can (hiccup) show the British (hiccup) army how to walk into (hiccup) the hinnimy’s persition, and (hiccup)—Oh, my dear Sergeant Pegden, I vos so wherry dry (hiccup)—knocked off the heads of half-a-dozen (hiccup)—and didn’t not drink owny hate on ’em (hiccup.) Hooray! Death or glo——(hiccup, hiccup).” Here Sam became so much worse, that I felt it advisable to order his immediate removal from the apartment.

It was no bad way of assailing the hostile fortress, if we could effect a lodgment in its lowest storeys. Assuming that Sam had been there before us, the first question was how he entered; but this he was too far gone to tell us.

CHAPTER XIX.

It was imperative, however, to determine the question without loss of time, and to determine it without revealing the fact to the garrison, to whom, it was to be presumed, their weak point remained as yet a secret. Under these circumstances, having first directed Francisco to ascertain as far as possible, in the village, what Sam had been about the night before, I promptly commenced a general reconnaissance of the enemy’s position. The affair, which had hitherto been stupid enough, now became a little exciting. I made the circuit of the beleaguered house without interruption from the foe, but also without discovering an entrance.

My attention, however, was at length attracted by the wood-house, which stood by the side of the premises, contiguous, but wholly detached from them. At that end of the shed which was farthest removed from the main building, I noticed, close to the gable-wall, what appeared to be a small heap of rubbish. To this, without betraying my object, I could not make a direct approach; yet it seemed to invite further investigation.

It soon became apparent, on more particularly noting the character of the locality, that, by availing himself of the shelter afforded by one or two neighbouring cottages, a person might approach obliquely, without being noticed from the dwelling itself, right up to the end wall of the wood-house, where the rubbish was lying on the ground. Immediately availing myself of this important discovery, I made my approaches accordingly, and reached the spot.

The heap of rubbish was at once accounted for. A hole had been broken in the wall. The opening was sufficiently large, so I took the liberty of entering, and now found myself in the wood-house, which was decidedly an outwork of the enemy’s position.

Sam had been there before me, and had left his marks in the shape of empty bottles. But, what was still more important to the progress of the siege, I noticed, at the other end of the shed, which was furthest from the perforated wall, and nearest to the house, an excavation in the earthen floor. I looked down, but could not discover its depth. Nothing could be discovered, save darkness visible.

Here then was the shaft by which Sam had walked into the Padre’s best bin; and here too, in all probability, was a ready-made entrance into the enemy’s stronghold. Determining to muster my forces and head an assault without further loss of time, I quitted the outhouse, as I had entered it, without being observed, and returned to the Alcalde’s. The Padre, at my request, followed me into a private room.

“Señor Padre,” said I, “oblige me by describing in general terms the topography of your cellar.”

“Ah, hijo mio,” said the Padre with deep emotion, “I trust you have no idea of carrying on the war in that quarter. Believe me, except the Lamego hams, the cellar contains nothing but wine.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “does your cellar extend under ground in a lateral direction? Has it any subterranean recesses?”

“Nothing, believe me,” replied the Padre in a panic, “with the sole exception of the wine and the hams, and a few trifling articles in silver which I succeeded in rescuing from our plundered convent.”

“If you wish,” I replied, “to be reinstated forthwith in the possession of your cellar, and of your house besides, only have the goodness to explain to me——”

“Oh, spare the cellar!” cried the Padre, frightened out of his wits, “even if a dozen houses—all the houses in the village—are assaulted, sacked, gutted, levelled with the ground, blown up sky-high!”

“What’s the use of talking in that way?” I replied. “Come, Señor Padre, just give me the information I want, and it shall go hard with us but you and I will dine in the house this afternoon. We must take it offhand, and I already discern the road to victory. Only tell me, does the cellar extend, underground, outside the walls of the house? In particular, does it extend in the direction of the adjoining shed?”

The Padre subsided into a brown study. “Why, now you ask the question,” said he, “I think it does. The house is old, built after the fashion of the Moors. There certainly is an underground recess or passage, of some length, going off from the cellar; and, on consideration, I think it must run in the direction of the wood-house—nay, perhaps extend under it. Probably it served originally as a subterranean communication between the outhouse and the house itself.”

The “enigma” was now well-nigh solved. I summoned Francisco, and inquired whether he had succeeded in obtaining from the villagers any intelligence of Sam’s proceedings. All that could be learnt amounted to this, which, however, was quite decisive: that Sam, the night before, when he stole away from Sergeant Pegden, went begging from cottage to cottage, till he had procured the loan of an implement called a “pico,” which, though not identical with an English pickaxe, in some measure resembles it, and is available for the same purposes. Sam, having made this acquisition, was seen no more, till he reappeared in the village next morning, “mucho embriagado” (very drunk).

I also recollected that when, on our first occupation of the village, some little plundering took place, Sam, though he had pleaded exemption from duty as an invalid, and had been brought along on a bullock-car, then also contrived to become considerably elevated; and I now felt convinced that he had made his first acquaintance with the Padre’s cellar on that occasion. The rest was easily explained. An old smuggler, accustomed, in the locality of his former exploits, Kingsdown, Walmer, Richborough, &c., to underground deposits of goods, he had, in his previous visit to the Padre’s bins, at once made himself acquainted with the peculiarities of the position; and now, on his return to the village with the Sergeant, he had promptly embraced this first opportunity of renewing his acquaintance with such an agreeable locality. Hence the requisition for the pickaxe, the hole in the wall, the excavation in the floor. Sam, it was clear, had tapped the Padre’s cellar before he tapped his wine.

Taking a circuitous route in order that the enemy might not discover our movements, I brought round the Sergeant and three of the men to the perforated wall. We then passed through the opening, one by one, and got into the wood-house unseen by the garrison. Hurra! we have effected a lodgment in the enemy’s counterscarp—only don’t make a noise.

CHAPTER XX.

The shaft by which Sandwich Sam had dropped into the Padre’s cellar could not be very deep, but we saw no bottom. It struck me that something might be gained by excluding the daylight, which principally entered by the newly-made hole in the gable-end of the shed. Against this hole, therefore, I placed the three soldiers, to keep out as much light as possible; and now the Sergeant and I, on looking down into the shaft, were able to discern a glimmer which, feeble as it was, sufficed to show us that, assisted by others, a person might descend with no great difficulty. I, therefore, descended first; the Sergeant followed; then came the men.

We found ourselves in an arched tunnel constructed of stone, and leading from under the outhouse, with which in former days it had doubtless communicated, right into the cellar, which we entered—cautiously, you may suppose, but without difficulty. Now, M. le Tisanier! Once in the cellar, we no longer had need to grope our way. There was no window, but light came in from various crannies. I listened. There were footsteps above. So! we were under the kitchen. How effect an entrance?

Close to the wall of the cellar, and immediately to the left of the opening by which we had entered from the recess, stood a dilapidated flight of steps, say an old ladder. Doubtless there was a trap-door at its summit. I mounted, and gently pressed against the ceiling above. It gave signs of yielding. The way into the fortress, then, lay open before us. Turning to Sergeant Pegden, I desired him in a whisper to remain with the three soldiers where he was, but to hold them in readiness to come forth on my first summons.

Then, using a little more force, I gradually raised the trap-door, which was kind enough not to creak, and emerged into the kitchen. There stood M. le Tisanier, solus. Profoundly intent on some culinary operation, which with his accustomed sedulity he was conducting at the stove, he awhile remained utterly unconscious of my presence. I let down the trap-door into its frame, and so concealed the manner of my entrance.

From scanty materials he was preparing dinner for the garrison. On a dresser I noticed—1, A very moderate supply of bread for a party of five; 2, Some lard; 3, Certain wild herbs, roots, and champignons, such as he had been accustomed to cull in his rambles; 4, The bones remaining from former meals, specially those of a hare, a goose, and a hind quarter of mutton; 5, The giblets of the said goose, set apart with the head and pluck of the said hare, as if designed for some signal triumph of a scanty cuisine. I coughed. He turned.

Startled at first, he recovered in an instant his usual self-possession and urbanity.

“Ah,” said he, “good morning, M. le Capitaine. I am not at present exactly aware how you found your way in, but I am not the less happy to see you. In entering without noise you have acted wisely. Considering the state of things outside, you could not have adopted a more discreet or a safer mode of presenting yourself before me, with the view of surrendering yourself a prisoner. Good. You will do me the honour of dining with me. Thus will you escape the inconvenience of losing, even for a single day, the benefit of my matchless skill as a culinary amateur.”

“I see you are preparing dinner,” said I, “without having availed yourself of the Padre’s stores.”

“Bah!” he exclaimed; “cookery, in its higher operations, is independent of materials. When there is nothing for dinner, then it is that the true artist develops his professional resources. To tell you the truth, Monsieur, the Padre’s chief store is his cellar, into which he never permitted me to enter. I therefore, with that delicacy which always distinguishes men of elevated sentiments like myself, felt it right, now that I am in military possession, to abstain from purveying in that direction.”

This was all the better for the Padre’s Lamego hams, and also the enterprise by which we had effected a lodgment. For, had M. le Tisanier once made acquaintance with the cellar, he was not the man to have left that way of approach unguarded.

“How is it,” I asked, “that your garrison keeps so bad a look-out? Here am I, come to beat up your quarters, without having received a single challenge.”

“Pooh, pooh,” he replied; “no doubt they let you in on purpose. As you have presented yourself here without showing a flag of truce, of course I must regard you as my prisoner.”

“Excuse me,” said I, “if I take the opposite view. Monsieur, you are my prisoner. Probably you are not aware that my forces have effected a lodgment, and at this moment occupy your position.”

“Is it possible?” he exclaimed seriously, setting down a saucepan.

“Monsieur,” I replied, “I give you my word that the soldiers under my command now occupy these premises in force. And by the same entrance through which they came in, I could, if I pleased, bring in not only my reserve, but all the Spaniards in the village. You know what would be the consequences. Yesterday you expressed a benevolent wish to prevent the needless effusion of blood. Now, therefore, give me credit for being actuated on my part by a similar motive of humanity, in politely soliciting your instant surrender. In case of further resistance on your part, although I can control my own men, I could not answer for the Padre and his people, who are very much exasperated. Therefore determine what you will do; but, remember, your own life, and the lives of your unfortunate and gallant countrymen, depend on your decision.”

He. “Have the kindness to put it on their lives only, not on mine. Then I can treat without compromising my sense of honour. By further resistance, you say, their lives would be imperilled. In case of my condescending to accept terms of capitulation, would their lives be safe?”

I. “That I have already arranged with the Padre. He promises, in case of your coming to terms without delay, to be answerable for the personal security of your whole party till you are safe in the hands of the English at Vittoria. He also promises that he will remain in the village as a check on his own countrymen till the transfer takes place.”

He. “It appears then that, by accepting terms, I may now secure that safety for my comrades which I sought by resistance. Very well, M. le Capitaine. In occupying and holding this position, I discharged a duty. In surrendering it, I discharge another.”

I. “Very good. Then all is settled.”

“Excuse me,” said M. le Tisanier, assuming an air of considerable gravity. “There is one little matter which we have not settled yet.”

CHAPTER XXI.

“It will gratify me to meet your wishes,” said I, “in any further arrangement which you may propose.”

He. “M. le Capitaine, you particularly oblige me by saying so; for the business to which I now refer is one which personally affects you and me. In the conference which I had the pleasure of holding with you yesterday afternoon, you alluded to my parole in terms which affected my honour. As I said then, so I say now: I cannot permit that.”

I. “Nothing could be further from my intention. Surely, in merely reminding you of your parole, not saying you had broken it, and in viewing it according to my own interpretation rather than yours, I did nothing at which you can reasonably feel hurt.”

He. “Ha! you explain, but you do not apologise. M. le Capitaine, though punctilious—nay, more than punctilious, chivalrous—I am not implacable. One word of apology would——”

I. “Apology? What do you mean by apology? I tell you I intended no offence; and I have nothing to retract. If I unintentionally wounded your feelings, of course I regret it; but apology is out of the question.”

He. “Precisely. That is just what I expected you to say. Then, M. le Capitaine, there remains but one alternative. We had better decide this little affair at once. (Brings from a corner of the kitchen two swords.) You really must oblige me.” (Crosses the swords in his right hand, bows, and presents the hilts.)

I. “If you insist upon it, of course I must. I never heard of anything so absurd in my life!”

He. “Hold! Let me fasten the kitchen-door. That will prevent interruption on the part of my countrymen, and also of yours.” (He fastens the door.)

I. “The door may serve to exclude your men, but it will not keep out mine. No matter. They have already received orders to keep where they are, till summoned by me.” We crossed our swords.

He. “Hold! Excuse me one moment, just while I take off that boiler.”

Again our swords crossed.

He. “Monsieur, the attack is with you.” (Stamps.) “Commencez donc.” (Stamps twice.) “Not bad, that lunge. Hold! your left shoulder is a little too forward. Withdraw it un petit peu, if you please. Capital, that thrust in quarte! You lunge better in quarte than in tierce. I hope you enjoyed your dinner yesterday? Ah, you threw away that coup. By keeping your point a trifle lower, you might have had me just under the arm. I suppose the Padre was not in the best of humours? You fence a little too wide. Better! Capital! Capital!”

Though acknowledged the best fencer in my regiment, I could make no impression on M. le Tisanier. I therefore bowed, and stood on my guard.

“Ah,” said he, “now the attack is with me.”

The attack of M. le Tisanier was not only brilliant and energetic, but in every respect formidable. With the arm of a Hercules, the eye of a lynx, and the skip of a chimpanzee, he advanced, he retreated, he sidled right and left, he got round me, till we had more than once perambulated the whole circuit of the kitchen, and till I, in meeting him front to front, had repeatedly faced the opposite points of the compass. Any one practised in fence will understand, when I say that, even while I succeeded in parrying every thrust, his attack was evidently gaining upon me; that is, his movements in assault had become a little in advance of mine in guard; and this advantage (most important, though in point of time scarcely appreciable) he gradually went on improving as the attack proceeded. In fact, nothing could be cleaner than his style of operating. Even his wrist, though always in position, moved in a larger area than his point, which played about my sword in a small semicircle, like summer lightning.

At length, seeing an opportunity for which I had long watched, I raised my blade by the same movement with which I parried a thrust in quarte, and, ere he could recover himself, dropped it again so as just to touch his hand. My object was to inflict a slight wound, and disarm him. I was so far successful, that my point reached him, but with no visible consequences. I had made the first hit, but without putting my opponent hors de combat.

He sprang backwards with an angry growl, and for a few moments seemed to be collecting his forces. Foreseeing the impetuosity of his renewed assault, I prepared to give him a suitable reception; but, at the instant when about to commence a repetition of his favours, he moved a little to the right. This movement compelled on my part a corresponding change of position, to effect which I slightly shifted my left foot. My foot struck against something on the floor. I stumbled. Though just on the point of springing forward, M. le Tisanier, who through this mishap had me completely at his mercy, with a most winning bow immediately dropped his point.

The cause of my tripping is easily explained. Sergeant Pegden, either from having discovered, down in the cellar, that war had commenced over his head, or from some other motive, was beginning to raise the trap-door. I tripped against the edge. Stamping it down with my left heel, as a sign for the sergeant to keep quiet, but not so as to attract the notice of M. le Tisanier, who remained unconscious that my forces were in such immediate proximity, I again put myself on guard, saying, “My best acknowledgments are due for your forbearance. Whenever you wish to proceed, I am ready.”

“A thousand thanks,” said M. le Tisanier, with a renewal of supple and profound inflections. “I am satisfied.”

“Very well,” said I, extending my hand. “All things besides, then, can be easily arranged.”

We tackled after the English fashion, and shook hands—an operation the more sedulously sought on my part, from visible symptoms of preparation, on the part of M. le Tisanier, for what in those days so frequently terminated French duels—a hug.

The shake accomplished, I noticed something on my hand. It was blood.

“Is this yours, or mine?” I asked.

“Did I not tell you that I was satisfied?” said he. “My honour is satisfied. Whether I am whipped through the body, or scratched on the knuckle, what does it signify?”

CHAPTER XXII., AND LAST.

From the inferior regions now rose the voice of Sergeant Pegden. “Please, sir, I beg your pardon; but it’s immediate.”

“What’s immediate?” I asked.

“Please, sir,” he replied, “it’s an orderly come from Vittoria; and brought a letter for you, sir, directed ‘immediate’ on the back of it, sir.”

“Will you permit me?” I asked M. le Tisanier, raising the trap-door.

“Why, this is perfectly incredible,” said he. “Above, and all around, I was prepared. It never entered my thoughts that I could be assailed from the shades below.”

When I had raised the trap-door, there appeared—not Sergeant Pegden, but—the head of his halbert, and three glistening bayonets, fixed to the muzzles of three firelocks.

“Ground arms!” I cried. “Sergeant Pegden, show yourself.”

The muskets promptly subsided into the darkness from which they had emerged, and, with a letter in his hand, the Sergeant slowly rose.

While, partly amused, partly surprised, M. le Tisanier gazed on the wasted form and pallid visage of the Sergeant, who ascended like a spectre from the grave, I took the letter and opened it.

It was an order to adopt immediate measures for the removal of my invalids to the convalescent station at Vittoria, and then to rejoin forthwith my regiment on the frontiers of France, taking with me, to be exchanged for Sir Charles Popham of the —— light infantry, my prisoner, Le Vicomte d’Y, lieutenant of the —— Voltigeurs.

I. “M. le Vicomte, I am your most obedient, humble servant.”

He. “M. le Capitaine, accept the assurances of my high consideration.”

I. “M. le Vicomte, I have intelligence which no doubt will gratify you. It will be my pleasing duty to attend you to the frontiers, there to be exchanged.”

He (with nonchalance). “For an Englishman? or for a Spaniard?”

I. “Happily, you are considered my prisoner, not a prisoner of the Spaniards. You will be exchanged for an English officer of the same military rank.”

He. “Very good” (with much dignity). “That is quite satisfactory to my sense of honour. Were it for a Spaniard, I hardly know whether I could condescend to accept of the exchange. By the by, since it is as your prisoner that I am to proceed to the frontiers, I think it best, for reasons which you will doubtless appreciate, that so long as we are together I should fully maintain that character. M. le Capitaine, I offer you my sword.”

I. “M. le Vicomte, you have taught me that you can use your sword not only with courage and address, but with magnanimity. Wear it.”

The arrangements for our departure were soon completed. My sick men were conveyed to Vittoria. With them went Sergeant Pegden in charge, and the four French soldiers as prisoners to the English. Then, taking an affectionate leave of the Padre, we joined a party of British dragoons, who had been out on a reconnaissance towards Pampeluna, and with them pursued our route towards the frontiers.

The first day’s march took us across undulating ground, the road alternately dipping into valleys, and topping the intermediate elevations. As the Vicomte and I jogged on side by side, I noticed that, on our reaching the summit of each successive eminence, he cast a furtive but anxious look backwards, as if watching for some party in the rear. I also looked back, and perceived that we were followed by a couple of mules, which bore on their backs two wounded Spaniards.

ש.

THE WONDROUS AGE.