BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLIII. MARCH, 1845. VOL. LVII.

CONTENTS.

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BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCLIII. MARCH, 1845. VOL. LVII.

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.

Introductory Notice.

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work—in 1822, as a separate volume—appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen: and the condition of human life, which yokes so vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, in this year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of vast physical agencies—steam in all its applications, light getting under harness as a slave for man,[1] powers from heaven descending upon education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction—the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded, (a thing not to be expected,) or, which is happily more probable, can be met by counter-forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely human, left to itself the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal hurry, upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests, is likely to defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word dissipation, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer his life with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. Or, if not true in that rigour of expression, to this formula undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must approximate.

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind.

But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the other hand, it is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at least, and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium, which indeed seems to possess a specific power in that direction; not merely for exalting the colours of dream-scenery, but for deepening its shadows; and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful realities.

The Opium Confessions were written with some slight secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a reader acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated, viz. the revelation of dreaming, to have put this question:—

"But how came you to dream more splendidly than others?"

The answer would have been:—"Because (præmissis præmittendis) I took excessive quantities of opium."

Secondly, suppose him to say, "But how came you to take opium in this excess?"

The answer to that would be, "Because some early events in my life had left a weakness in one organ which required (or seemed to require) that stimulant."

Then, because the opium dreams could not always have been understood without a knowledge of these events, it became necessary to relate them. Now, these two questions and answers exhibit the law of the work, i.e. the principle which determined its form, but precisely in the inverse or regressive order. The work itself opened with the narration of my early adventures. These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium as a resource for healing their consequences; and the opium as naturally led to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts, what stood last in the succession of development, stood first in the order of my purposes.

At the close of this little work, the reader was instructed to believe—and truly instructed—that I had mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is, that twice I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodigious, in the second of these cases, than in the first. But one error I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium—so trying to the fortitude under any circumstances—that enormity of exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one sine quâ non for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank—twice I rose again. A third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned, (the oversight as to exercise,) partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps he will moralize whether I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission) not at all.

During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years, new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time, these were neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms were moving forward for ever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably increasing, I endeavoured, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks, before I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress which hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my retreat, and hung with funeral crape.

As applicable to this tremendous situation, (the situation of one escaping by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the distance, who finds suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling round upon the same maelstrom,) I have since remembered a striking incident in a modern novel. A lady abbess of a convent, herself suspected of Protestant leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all effectual power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she knows to be innocent) accused of an offence leading to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be immured alive if she is found guilty; and there is no chance that she will not—for the evidence against her is strong—unless something were made known that cannot be made known; and the judges are hostile. All follows in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses depose; the evidence is without effectual contradiction; the conviction is declared; the judgment is delivered; nothing remains but to see execution done. At this crisis the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interposition, considers with herself that, according to the regular forms, there will be one single night open during which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her own separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she will use, at any hazard to herself, for the salvation of her friend. At midnight, when all is hushed in the convent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under her professional habit. As this will open every door in every corridor,—already, by anticipation, she feels the luxury of holding her emancipated friend within her arms. Suddenly she has reached the door; she descries a dusky object; she raises her lamp; and, ranged within the recess of the entrance, she beholds the funeral banner of the Holy Office, and the black robes of its inexorable officials.

I apprehend that, in a situation such as this, supposing it a real one, the lady abbess would not start, would not show any marks externally of consternation or horror. The case was beyond that. The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost! silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was silent for days.

It is the record of this third, or final stage of opium, as one differing in something more than degree from the others, that I am now undertaking. But a scruple arises as to the true interpretation of these final symptoms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no particular purpose of mine, and why it was no particular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters. Still, as some few persons may use the record in that way, it becomes a matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely, that, even with the same excesses, other opium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself. Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he has. For no man ever yet resembled another man so far, as not to differ from him in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what I point to are not peculiarities of temperament or of organization, so much as peculiar circumstances and incidents through which my own separate experience had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter the whole economy of my mind. Great convulsions, from whatever cause, from conscience, from fear, from grief, from struggles of the will, sometimes, in passing away themselves, do not carry off the changes which they have worked. All the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, nor could report. But one which affected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's ear; because, though relating to a man's proper self, it is a self so far removed from his present self as to wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is privileged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. An adult sympathizes with himself in childhood because he is the same, and because (being the same) yet he is not the same. He acknowledges the deep, mysterious identity between himself, as adult and as infant, for the ground of his sympathy; and yet, with this general agreement, and necessity of agreement, he feels the differences between his two selves as the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities, as they arise to light in his young forerunner, which now perhaps he does not share; he looks indulgently upon errors of the understanding, or limitations of view which now he has long survived; and sometimes, also, he honours in the infant that rectitude of will which, under some temptations, he may since have felt it so difficult to maintain.

The particular case to which I refer in my own childhood, was one of intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, more severe than many people at any age are called upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands to my latter opium experiences, is this:—Those vast clouds of gloomy grandeur which overhung my dreams at all stages of opium, but which grew into the darkest of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the human face, which latterly towered into a curse—were they not partly derived from this childish experience? It is certain that, from the essential solitude in which my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from the exaltation of this by the resistance of an intellect too prematurely developed, it resulted that the terrific grief which I passed through, drove a shaft for me into the worlds of death and darkness which never again closed, and through which it might be said that I ascended and descended at will, according to the temper of my spirits. Some of the phenomena developed in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat the experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at that time sown.

The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account of a "passage" in childhood, to this record of a dreadful visitation from opium excess, are—1st, That, in colouring, it harmonizes with that record, and, therefore, is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly, That possibly it was in part the origin of some features in that record, and so far is related to it in logic; 3dly, That, the final assault of opium being of a nature to challenge the attention of medical men, it is important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can gather about the roots of such a malady. Was it opium, or was it opium in combination with something else, that raised these storms?

Some cynical reader will object—that for this last purpose it would have been sufficient to state the fact, without rehearsing in extenso the particulars of that case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness (for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have more discernment; and he will perceive that it is not for the mere facts that the case is reported, but because these facts move through a wilderness of natural thoughts or feelings; some in the child who suffers; some in the man who reports; but all so far interesting as they relate to solemn objects. Meantime, the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself an energetic tourist, who protests every where that he comes only to see the lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant indorser of a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet this man adjures every landlord, "by the virtue of his oath," to tell him, and as he hopes for peace in this world to tell him truly, which is the nearest road to Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions—the Westmoreland postilions always fly down hills at full stretch without locking—but nevertheless, in the full career of their fiery race, our picturesque man lets down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postilions, at the risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring them to reveal whether they are taking the shortest road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon the road; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he demands of me (as one whom he believes to be a scholar and a man of honour) whether there is not, in the possibility of things, a shorter cut to Keswick. Now, the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, two postilions, and myself, is this—"Most excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply to see their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after the most beautiful road, rather than the shortest? Because, if abstract shortness, if τὸ brevity is your object, then the shortest of all possible tours would seem, with submission—never to have left London." On the same principle, I tell my critic that the whole course of this narrative resembles, and was meant to resemble, a caduceus wreathed about with meandering ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject of the opium answers to the dry withered pole, which shoots all the rings of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some dexterity of its own; whereas, in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round the sullen cylinder by mere luxuriance of theirs. Just as in Cheapside, if you look right and left, the streets so narrow, that lead off at right angles, seem quarried and blasted out of some Babylonian brick kiln; bored, not raised artificially by the builder's hand. But, if you enquire of the worthy men who live in that neighbourhood, you will find it unanimously deposed—that not the streets were quarried out of the bricks, but, on the contrary, (most ridiculous as it seems,) that the bricks have supervened upon the streets.

The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but those cursed bricks came to imprison the streets. So, also, the ugly pole—hop pole, vine pole, espalier, no matter what—is there only for support. Not the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers. Upon the same analogy view me, as one (in the words of a true and most impassioned poet[2]) "viridantem floribus hastas"—making verdant, and gay with the life of flowers, murderous spears and halberts—things that express death in their origin, (being made from dead substances that once had lived in forests,) things that express ruin in their use. The true object in my "Opium Confessions" is not the naked physiological theme—on the contrary, that is the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert—but those wandering musical variations upon the theme—those parasitical thoughts, feelings, digressions, which climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid stock; ramble away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuriance; but at the same time, by the eternal interest attached to the subjects of these digressions, no matter what were the execution, spread a glory over incidents that for themselves would be—less than nothing.

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. Part I.

The Affliction of Childhood.

It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity, that any indirect traits of vanity should even seem to creep into records of profound passion; and yet, on the other hand, it is so impossible, without an unnatural restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance as did really surround my childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to tell him from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in what order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it would happen that, merely by moving truly and faithfully through the circumstances of this early experience, I could hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher rank than did really belong to my family. My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland, where it means a man who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense severely exclusive—viz. he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other—which last circumstance it is important to mention, because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's condescending distinction[3]—as one to be despised, certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He, this imperfectly despicable man, died at an early age, and very soon after the incidents here recorded, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburthened estate producing exactly £1600 a-year. Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative, if narrative it can be called, he had an income still larger, from the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life, but above all with such life in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent English family of that class—opulent, though not rich in a mercantile estimate—the domestic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations. Whether as to the establishment of servants, or as to the provision made for the comfort of all its members, such a household not uncommonly eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer classes of our nobility, though the most splendid in Europe—a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly affecting the domestic economy of merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the general scale of outward signs by which we measure the relations of rank. The equation, so to speak, between one order of society and another, which usually travels in the natural line of their comparative expenditure, is here interrupted and defeated, so that one rank would be collected from the name of the occupation, and another rank, much higher, from the splendour of the domestic ménage. I warn the reader, therefore, (or rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer from any casual gleam of luxury or elegance a corresponding elevation of rank.

We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the very happiest tier in the scaffolding of society for all good influences. The prayer of Agar—"Give me neither poverty nor riches"—was realized for us. That blessing had we, being neither too high nor too low; high enough we were to see models of good manners; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of wealth, extra means of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet—that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of the emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as chiefly worthy to be commemorated—that I lived in the country; that I lived in solitude; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, not by horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful children of a pure, holy, and magnificent church.

The earliest incidents in my life which affected me so deeply as to be rememberable at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed my second year, viz. a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favourite nurse, which is interesting for a reason to be noticed hereafter; and secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the re-appearance, very early in spring, of some crocuses. This I mention as inexplicable, for such annual resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of a higher change, and therefore in connexion with the idea of death; but of death I could, at that time, have had no experience whatever.

This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters—eldest of three then living, and also elder than myself—were summoned to an early death. The first who died was Jane—about a year older than myself. She was three and a half, I two and a half, plus or minus some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There was another death in the house about the same time, viz. of a maternal grandmother; but as she had in a manner come to us for the express purpose of dying in her daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery party knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a favourite bird, viz. a kingfisher who had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death [though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than unintelligible] there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now a whisper arose in the family, that a woman-servant, who by accident was drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened within two days of her death—so that the occasion of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her sufferings—naturally there was a sense of awe diffused through the family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possibly it was exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face—not through anger; and as to vindictive thoughts, how could these lodge in a powerless infant? The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife. Though born in a large town, I had passed the whole of my childhood, except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and shut up for ever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, or outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living. Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have changed greatly; for so representative are some acts, that one single case of the class is sufficient to throw open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused of this cruelty, took it at all to heart, even after the event, which so immediately succeeded, had reflected upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other hand, I knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a mere semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under similar circumstances, inflicted the grief of self-reproach through the remainder of life. A boy, interesting in his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, was attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaint of the trachea—not precisely croup, but like it. He was three years old, and had been ill perhaps for four days; but at intervals had been in high spirits, and capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming through dark clouds, had continued even on the fourth day; and from nine to eleven o'clock at night, he had showed more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant, hearing of his illness, had called to see him; and her mode of talking with him had excited all the joyousness of his nature. About midnight his mother, fancying that his feet felt cold, was muffling them up in flannels; and, as he seemed to resist her a little, she struck lightly on the sole of one foot as a mode of admonishing him to be quiet. He did not repeat his motion; and in less than a minute his mother had him in her arms with his face looking upwards. "What is the meaning," she exclaimed, in sudden affright, "of this strange repose settling upon his features?" She called loudly to a servant in another room; but before the servant could reach her, the child had drawn two inspirations—deep, yet gentle—and had died in his mother's arms. Upon this the poor afflicted lady made the discovery that those struggles, which she had supposed to be expressions of resistance to herself, were the struggles of departing life. It followed, or seemed to follow, that with these final struggles had blended an expression, on her part, of displeasure. Doubtless the child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother could never look back to the incident without self-reproach. And seven years after, when her own death happened, no progress had been made in reconciling her thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have viewed as any offence.

So passed away from earth one out of those sisters that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but, perhaps, she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again—crocuses and roses; why not little Jane?

Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur—thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonishment of science[4]—thou next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; and the night which, for me, gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire, that didst go before me to guide and to quicken—pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my young heart—in what scales should I weigh thee? Was the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence, or the blight which followed thy departure? Can a man weigh off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness of hurricane? Or, if he could, how is it that, when a memorable love has been followed by a memorable bereavement, even suppose that God would replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience, and offer to cancel the woe, but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe should also be obliterated—vehemently would every man shrink from the exchange! In the Paradise Lost, this strong instinct of man—to prefer the heavenly, mixed and polluted with the earthly, to a level experience offering neither one nor the other—is divinely commemorated. What worlds of pathos are in that speech of Adam's—"If God should make another Eve," &c.—that is, if God should replace him in his primitive state, and should condescend to bring again a second Eve, one that would listen to no temptation—still that original partner of his earliest solitude—

"Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be form'd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet"—

even now, when she appeared in league with an eternity of woe, and ministering to his ruin, could not be displaced for him by any better or happier Eve. "Loss of thee!" he exclaims in this anguish of trial—

"Loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art; and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe."[5]

But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation so strong, to my sister? Could a child, little above six years of age, place any special value upon her intellectual forwardness? Serene and capacious as her mind appeared to me upon after review, was that a charm for stealing away the heart of an infant? Oh, no! I think of it now with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was but dimly perceived. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee—having that capacious heart overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness, and stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty—

"Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."

That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me which shone so steadily in thee; and never but to thee only, never again since thy departure, durst I utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was the shiest of children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held me back at all stages of life, from exposing the least ray of feelings which I was not encouraged wholly to reveal.

It would be painful, and it is needless, to pursue the course of that sickness which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my recollection at this moment) was just as much above eight years as I above six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of judgment, and the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening, or so people fancied, that the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain-complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a labouring man, the father of an old female servant. The sun had set when she returned in the company of this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations after a fervent day. From that time she sickened. Happily a child in such circumstances feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people whose natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is their natural function to profess it, knowing them only as ex-officio privileged to make war upon pain and sickness—I never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved indeed that my sister should lie in bed: I grieved still more sometimes to hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than a night of trouble on which the dawn would soon arise. Oh! moment of darkness and delirium, when a nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister must die. Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "cannot be remembered."[6] Itself, as a remembrable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Mere anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recal the circumstances of that time, when my agony was at its height, and hers in another sense was approaching. Enough to say—that all was soon over; and the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation.

On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings that take the name of "sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house was large; there were two staircases; and by one of these I knew that about noon, when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon when I reached the chamber door; it was locked; but the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved; and the back was now turned. Nothing met my eyes but one large window wide open, through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down torrents of splendour. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of life.

Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and revolutionary for my own mind, and one which (if any earthly remembrance) will survive for me in the hour of death,—to remind some readers, and to inform others, that in the original Opium Confessions I endeavoured to explain the reason[7] why death, cæteris paribus, is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so far at least as it is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season. The reason, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory is around us, the darkness is within us. And, the two coming into collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. But in my case there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting it, often I have been struck with the important truth—that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with myself sate by the firelight round the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted, would often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her simple powers, would endeavour to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by fire-light, suited our evening state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man,—man and yet not man, real above all things and yet shadowy above all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine, slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences (as it happens) express themselves in the great varieties of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria—those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples plucking the ears of corn—that must be summer; but, above all, the very name of Palm Sunday, (a festival in the English church,) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was that? That was the day of peace which masqued another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. "Palms!"—what were they? That was an equivocal word: palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life: palms, as a product of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice: it was not merely by the peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest below all rest, and of ascending glory,—that I had been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) of the earth? That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. Yes; but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the omphalos of mortality. Yet how? there on the contrary it was, as we infants understood, that mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but for that very reason there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was indeed that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but for that reason there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abyss: the lesser star could not rise, before the greater would submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also through intricate relations to Scriptural scenery and events.

Out of this digression, which was almost necessary for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, I return to the bedchamber of my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure, there the angel face: and, as people usually fancy, it as said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead indeed, the serene and noble forehead, that might be the same; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it as not. I stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow—the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life I have happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances, viz. when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day.

Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Æolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I in spirit rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; I slept—for how long I cannot say; slowly I recovered my self-possession, and found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed.

Oh[8] flight of the solitary child to the solitary God—flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!—how rich wert thou in truth for after years. Rapture of grief, that, being too mighty for a child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born sleep, and within that sleep didst conceal a dream, whose meanings in after years, when slowly I deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me a new light; and even by the grief of a child, as I will show you reader hereafter, were confounded the falsehoods of philosophers.[9]

In the Opium Confessions I touched a little upon the extraordinary power connected with opium (after long use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space also it amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power of opium chiefly spends its operation. Time becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to such immeasurable and vanishing termini, that it seems ridiculous to compute the sense of it on waking by expressions commensurate to human life. As in starry fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit, or of Jupiter's, so in valuing the virtual time lived during some dreams, the measurement by generations is ridiculous—by millennia is ridiculous: by æons, I should say, if æons were more determinate, would be also ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in my life, the very inverse phenomenon occurred. But why speak of it in connexion with opium? Could a child of six years old have been under that influence? No, but simply because it so exactly reversed the operation of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding into a vast one, upon this occasion a long one had contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe that a very long one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed. For I believed that, if any body should detect me, means would be taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty thing with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for ever; thus tainted with fear was the farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and perfect grief.

Oh, Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew![10] fable or not a fable, thou when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe, thou when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee, couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled brain than I when passing for ever from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart: and, confining myself to that stage of life, I may say—the worm that could not die. For if, when standing upon the threshold of manhood, I had ceased to feel its perpetual gnawings, that was because a vast expansion of intellect, it was because new hopes, new necessities, and the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me into a new creature. Man is doubtless one by some subtle nexus that we cannot perceive, extending from the newborn infant to the superannuated dotard: but as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not one; the unity of man in this respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs. Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one half of their origin, animal and earthy by the other half. These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which is altogether holy, like that between two children, will revisit undoubtedly by glimpses the silence and the darkness of old age: and I repeat my belief—that, unless bodily torment should forbid it, that final experience in my sister's bedroom, or some other in which her innocence was concerned, will rise again for me to illuminate the hour of death.

On the day following this which I have recorded, came a body of medical men to examine the brain, and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. Such is the sanctity of death, and especially of death alighting on an innocent child, that even gossiping people do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently, I knew nothing of the purpose which drew together these surgeons, nor suspected any thing of the cruel changes which might have been wrought in my sister's head. Long after this I saw a similar case; I surveyed the corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy, eighteen years old, who had died of the same complaint) one hour after the surgeons had laid the skull in ruins; but the dishonours of this scrutiny were hidden by bandages, and had not disturbed the repose of the countenance. So it might have been here; but, if it were not so, then I was happy in being spared the shock, from having that marble image of peace, icy and rigid as it was, unsettled by disfiguring images. Some hours after the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the room, but the door was now locked—the key was taken away—and I was shut out for ever.

Then came the funeral. I, as a point of decorum, was carried thither. I was put into a carriage with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They were kind to me; but naturally they talked of things disconnected with the occasion, and their conversation was a torment. At the church, I was told to hold a white handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had he of masques or mockeries, whose heart died within him at every word that was uttered? During that part of the service which passed within the church, I made an effort to attend, but I sank back continually into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some fugitive strains from the sublime chapter of St Paul, which in England is always read at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our present illustrious Laureate. When I heard those dreadful words—for dreadful they were to me—"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;" such was the recoil of my feelings, that I could even have shrieked out a protesting—"Oh, no, no!" if I had not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion. In after years, reflecting upon this revolt of my feelings, which, being the voice of nature in a child, must be as true as any mere opinion of a child might probably be false, I saw at once the unsoundness of a passage in The Excursion. The book is not here, but the substance I remember perfectly. Mr Wordsworth argues, that if it were not for the unsteady faith which people fix upon the beatific condition after death of those whom they deplore, nobody could be found so selfish, as even secretly to wish for the restoration to earth of a beloved object. A mother, for instance, could never dream of yearning for her child, and secretly calling it back by her silent aspirations from the arms of God, if she were but reconciled to the belief that really it was in those arms. But this I utterly deny. To take my own case, when I heard those dreadful words of St Paul applied to my sister—viz. that she should be raised a spiritual body—nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any other feeling than that of agonizing love, caused the rebellion of my heart against them. I knew already that she was to come again in beauty and power. I did not now learn this for the first time. And that thought, doubtless, made my sorrow sublimer; but also it made it deeper. For here lay the sting of it, viz. in the fatal words—"We shall be changed." How was the unity of my interest in her to be preserved, if she were to be altered, and no longer to reflect in her sweet countenance the traces that were sculptured on my heart? Let a magician ask any woman whether she will permit him to improve her child, to raise it even from deformity to perfect beauty, if that must be done at the cost of its identity, and there is no loving mother but would reject his proposal with horror. Or, to take a case that has actually happened, if a mother were robbed of her child at two years old by gipsies, and the same child were restored to her at twenty, a fine young man, but divided by a sleep as it were of death from all remembrances that could restore the broken links of their once-tender connexion, would she not feel her grief unhealed, and her heart defrauded? Undoubtedly she would. All of us ask not of God for a better thing than that we have lost; we ask for the same, even with its faults and its frailties. It is true that the sorrowing person will also be changed eventually, but that must be by death. And a prospect so remote as that, and so alien from our present nature, cannot console us in an affliction which is not remote but present—which is not spiritual but human.

Lastly came the magnificent service which the English church performs at the side of the grave. There is exposed once again and for the last time, the coffin. All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the day of departure from earth—records how useless! and dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacristan stands ready with his shovel of earth and stones. The priest's voice is heard once more—earth to earth, and the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the coffin; ashes to ashes, and again the killing sound is heard; dust to dust, and the farewell volley announces that the grave—the coffin—the face are sealed up for ever and ever.

Oh, grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is, that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And ten years afterwards, I used to reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing the case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might perhaps shrink basely from the duty. It is true, that no such case had ever actually occurred, so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime which might have been, was in my eyes the crime which had been. Now, however, all was changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service of love—yes, slough it as completely, as ever serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced boldly, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not have troubled me in any office of tenderness to my sister's memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there was chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon me. Laugh at me, as one or two people did! I valued not their laughter. And when I was told insultingly to cease "my girlish tears", that word "girlish" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo to the one eternal thought of my heart—that a girl was the sweetest thing I, in my short life, had known—that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from which, in this world, I was to drink no more.

Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep feelings agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are nursed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling; and all three, love, grief, religion, are haunters of solitary places. Love, grief, the passion of reverie, or the mystery of devotion—what were these without solitude? All day long, when it was not impossible for me to do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house, or in the neighbouring fields. The awful stillness occasionally of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of grey or misty afternoons—these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods or the desert air I gazed as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. I tormented the blue depths with obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes and searching them for ever after one angelic face that might perhaps have permission to reveal itself for a moment. The faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, aided by a slight defect in my eyes, grew upon me at this time. And I recal at the present moment one instance of that sort, which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I was always taken to church: it was a church on the old and natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long Litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of "all sick persons and young children," and that he would "show his pity upon all prisoners and captives"—I wept in secret, and raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination mingling with the earthly emblazonries of what is grandest in man. There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces. There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass was uncoloured, white fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky; were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and shaped itself into a vision of beds with white lawny curtains; and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious reason, could not suddenly release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, his arms descended from the heavens, that he and his young children whom in Judea, once and for ever, he had blessed, though they must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These visions needed not that any sound should speak to me, or music mould my feelings. The hint from the Litany, the fragment from the clouds, those and the storied windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes in anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of the choir—when it rose high in arches, as might seem, surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unity—sometimes I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds which so recently I had looked up to as mementos of prostrate sorrow, and even as ministers of sorrow in its creations; yes, sometimes under the transfigurations of music I felt[11] of grief itself as a fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes of grief.

I point so often to the feelings, the ideas, or the ceremonies of religion, because there never yet was profound grief nor profound philosophy which did not inosculate at many points with profound religion. But I request the reader to understand, that of all things I was not, and could not have been, a child trained to talk of religion, least of all to talk of it controversially or polemically. Dreadful is the picture, which in books we sometimes find, of children discussing the doctrines of Christianity, and even teaching their seniors the boundaries and distinctions between doctrine and doctrine. And it has often struck me with amazement, that the two things which God made most beautiful among his works, viz. infancy and pure religion, should, by the folly of man, (in yoking them together on erroneous principles,) neutralize each other's beauty, or even form a combination positively hateful The religion becomes nonsense, and the child becomes a hypocrite. The religion is transfigured into cant, and the innocent child into a dissembling liar.[12]

God, be assured, takes care for the religion of children wheresoever his Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national church established, to which a child sees his friends resorting; wheresoever he beholds all whom he honours periodically prostrate before those illimitable heavens which fill to overflowing his young adoring heart; wheresoever he sees the sleep of death falling at intervals upon men and women whom he knows, depth as confounding to the plummet of his mind as those heavens ascend beyond his power to pursue—there take you no thought for the religion of a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be arrayed, or for the ravens how they shall feed their young.

God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal by the truths and services of a national church, God holds "communion undisturbed" with children. Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone—all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude through which already he has passed, and of another solitude deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude—prefiguration of another.

Oh, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of his being—in his birth, which has been—in his life, which is—in his death, which shall be—mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art to be;—thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the principles of all things, solitude for a child is the Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude in life of millions upon millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs, have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood, bringing before it at intervals the final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convince you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was nothing, but for a Christian child it has become the power of God and the mystery of God. Oh, mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to be—thou, kindling under the torch of Christian revelations, art now transfigured for ever, and hast passed from a blank negation into a secret hieroglyphic from God, shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dimmest of his truths!

MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT."[13]

An "Englishwoman in Egypt," thanks to the Mediterranean steamers and the overland route to India, is no longer so unusual or astounding a spectacle as it would appear to have been five-and-twenty years ago, when that dilettante traveller, Monsieur le Comte de Forbin, made a precipitate retreat from Thebes in consequence of the shock sustained by his nerves, from encountering among the ruins "une femme-de-chambre Anglaise, en petit spencer couleur de rose," in the person of the Countess of Belmore's lady's-maid; though the Quarterly Reviewers, who in those days had no mercy for a French misstatement, even in the colour of a soubrette's dress, triumphantly declared the offending garment to have been "a pale-blue pelisse;" and proceeded to demolish the hapless Count accordingly—(Quarterly Review, Vol. xxiii. p. 92.) Since the period of this rencontre, the ill-omened blue eyes,[14] as well as blue pelisses, of our countrywomen, have been seen with sufficient frequency on the banks of the Nile to render the one, it is to be hoped, no longer an object of alarm to the natives, nor the latter to errant members of the Institute: but a narrative of the impressions produced on a cultivated female mind by a residence among the modern inhabitants of the land of the pyramids, was still a desideratum. The "Notes" (published in 1840 in the Asiatic Journal) of the late lamented Emma Roberts, than whom no one would have been better qualified to fill up the void, though replete with interest and information, are merely those of a traveller hastening through the country on her way to India; and, except the fugitive sketches of Mrs Dawson Damer, we cannot call to mind a single one among all the lady-tourists, with whose tours and voyages the press has lately teemed, who has touched on this hitherto unbroken ground. In such a dearth of information, we may deem ourselves doubly fortunate in finding the task undertaken by a lady possessing such peculiar advantages as must have been enjoyed by the sister of the well-known Orientalist, to whose pen we are indebted for perhaps the most comprehensive and accurate account ever published of the habits and manners of any nation, and under whose immediate superintendence, as we are informed, the work before us was prepared.

The title of the "Englishwoman in Cairo," would perhaps have more appropriately designated the character of Mrs Poole's volumes than that which she has adopted; since her opportunities of personal observation, after her arrival in the capital from Alexandria, were bounded by the environs of the city, her excursions from which do not appear to have extended further than the pyramids. A considerable portion of the first volume is occupied by an abstract of Egyptian history from the time of the Arab conquest, an account of the foundation of Cairo, an agricultural and general calendar for each month of the year, and various matters connected with the physical features, statistics, &c., of the country. These dissertations form a sort of supplement to the work of her brother, from whose MS. notes they are avowedly taken; being introduced (as Mrs Poole, with much naïveté, confesses) "in the hope of obtaining a more favourable reception for her letters, for the sake of the more solid matter with which they are interspersed;" but though they certainly convey much valuable additional information to the readers of the "Modern Egyptians," they are scarcely "germane to the matter," as interpolations in the work of a lady. The authoress can very well afford to rest her claim to popularity on her own merits; and we prefer to follow her, in her own peculiar sphere, into those mysterious recesses of an Oriental establishment, whither no male footstep can ever penetrate. Mrs Poole is probably the first English lady who has been admitted, not merely as a passing visitor, but as a privileged friend, into the hareems of those of the highest rank in the Egyptian capital. We find her threading the narrow and crowded thoroughfares of Cairo, borne aloft on the "high ass,"[15] (the usual mode of conveyance for morning calls;) and are introduced to the wives and daughters of the viceroy, and even (in the hareem of Habeeb Effendi) to ladies of the imperial house of Othman, in the ease and disinvoltura of their domestic circles, amid that atmosphere of dolce far niente and graceful etiquette, in which the hours of an Oriental princess appear to be habitually passed. With the exception of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's piquant sketches of the Turkish hareems and their inmates, and the singular narrative of her personal experience of life in an Indian zenana, by Mrs Meer Hassan Ali,[16] we know no female writer who has enjoyed such opportunities for the delineation of the scenes of domestic privacy of the East, and who has so well availed herself of them, as the sister of Mansoor Effendi, in the pages before us.

The narrative opens with the landing of the authoress and her companions at Alexandria in July 1842; but that city, with its double harbour, its quays crowded with a motley assemblage of every nation and language in Europe and the Levant, and the monuments of antiquity in its environs, has been too often described to present too much opportunity for novelty of remark. Passing over, therefore, the details given of these well-known objects, we find the party, after a rapid passage along the Mahmoodiyeh canal in an iron track-boat, drawn by four horses, and a vexatious delay of two days at the junction of the canal and the river, (during which the want of musquitto-curtains gave them an ample foretaste of the quantity and quality of the insect plagues of Egypt,) fairly embarked on the broad stream of the Nile. The voyage to Cairo was performed in a kanjeh, or passage-boat of the kind usual on the river—a long, narrow craft, with two masts, bearing large triangular sails; and Mrs Poole, in common with most travellers arriving for the first time in the East, was greatly impressed by the simple devotion with which the Reyyis (or Arab captain) and his crew commended themselves, on setting sail, to the protection of Providence, by reciting altogether, in a low voice, the short prayer of the Fathah, or opening chapter of the Koran. "The sight of the Muslim engaged in his devotions is, I think, most interesting; the attitudes are particularly striking and impressive; and the solemn demeanour of the worshipper, who, even in the busy market-place, appears wholly abstracted from the world, is very remarkable. The practice of praying in a public place is so general in the East, and attracts so little notice from Muslims, that we must not regard it as the result of hypocrisy or ostentation."

As the kanjeh lay to at night to avoid danger from sand-banks, the travellers were three days in reaching Cairo; and found little to interest them in the contemplation of the banks of the Nile, which at this season are destitute of the brilliant verdure which clothes them for some time after the inundation. On arriving at Boulak, the authoress for the first time shrouded herself in the cumbrous folds of a Turkish riding-dress, "an overwhelming covering of black silk, extending, in my idea, in every direction;" and mounted on a donkey, she followed her janissary guide through the dilapidated suburb, "and at length we fairly entered Cairo.... The first impression on entering this celebrated city is, that it has the appearance of having been deserted for perhaps a century, and suddenly re-peopled by persons, unable, from poverty or some other cause, to repair it, and clear away its antiquated cobwebs.... I wrote to you that the streets of Alexandria were narrow; they are wide compared to those of Cairo. The meshreebeyehs, or projecting windows, facing each other above the ground floor, literally touch in some instances, and in many, the opposite windows are within reach.... After passing through several of the streets, into which it appeared as though the dwellings had turned out nearly all their inhabitants, we arrived at an agreeable house in the midst of gardens, in which we are to take up our temporary residence."

The plan of these gardens, however, intersected by parallel walks, with gutters on each side to convey water into the intermediate squares, was so much at variance with Mrs Poole's English notions of horticulture, that she was almost tempted to conclude, "that a garden in Egypt was not worth cultivation—so much for national prejudice!" As it was indispensable for the health of the children that their residence should be fixed in the outskirts of the city, some delay was experienced in finding a permanent abode; but at the end of a month they considered themselves fortunate in engaging a house "infinitely beyond the usual run," in the most healthy and cheerful quarter, for which the rent demanded by the landlady, (who bore the picturesque name of Lalah-Zar, or Bed of Tulips,) was only L.12 per annum. The arrangement of the apartments was nearly as described by Mr Lane in his account of the private houses in Cairo—(Modern Egyptians, i. p. 11:) on the ground-floor a court, open to the sky, round which were the rooms appropriated to the male inhabitants, while a gallery, running round the first floor, conducted to the hareem, consisting of two principal apartments, and "three small marble paved rooms, forming en suite an antechamber, a reclining chamber, and a bath. Above are four rooms, the principal one opening to a delightful terrace, considerably above most of the surrounding houses, and on this we enjoy our breakfast and supper under the clearest sky in the world." But scarcely had the establishment been removed into this new residence, when it became evident that something was not right. The two maid-servants, Amineh and Zeyneb, disappeared one after the other without giving warning—strange noises were heard, which were at first ascribed to the wedding rejoicings of a neighbour, but an explanation was at last elicited from the doorkeeper. The house was haunted by an 'Efreet, (ghost or evil spirit,) in consequence of the murder of a poor tradesman and two slave girls by the previous owner, who had bequeathed it to Lalah-Zar, with reversion (perhaps in hope of expiating his crimes) to a mosque. One of the victims had perished in the bath, and like Praed's[17] Abbess of St Ursula, who

"From evensong to matins,
In gallery and scullery,
And kitchen and refectory,
Still tramp'd it in her pattens,"

the angry spirit stalked at night, apparently in heavy clogs like those worn in the bath, knocking at the doors, and uttering unearthly sounds, which allowed no sleep to the inmates. In vain had poor Lalah-Zar endeavoured to appease this unwelcome intruder, which had driven tenant after tenant from the house, by distributing bread to the poor at the tomb of the late owner; the annoyance continued undiminished—pieces of charcoal were left at the doors, equivalent to the imprecation, "May your faces be blackened!" and no female servant would remain in the house, it being universally believed that the touch of an 'Efreet renders a woman a demoniac. The Ramadan (during which it is held that all 'Efreets are chained up,) brought a temporary respite; and they flattered themselves that they had succeeded in barring out the intruder; but with the conclusion of the fast the disturbances were resumed with increased violence. At length a new doorkeeper, worn out with want of sleep, obtained permission to fire at the phantom, which he said he saw every night in the gallery, alleging that 'Efreets were always destroyed by the discharge of fire-arms. At midnight the house was startled by the report of a pistol, which it afterwards appeared had been loaded, contrary to orders, with a brace of bullets: the voice of the doorkeeper was heard crying, "There he lies, the accursed;" and sounds and cries were heard, which convinced them all that somebody had been shot. "It passed me in the gallery," said the doorkeeper, "when I thus addressed it, 'Shall we quit this house, or will you do so?' 'You shall quit it,' he answered; and he threw dust into my right eye: this proved it was a devil. It stopped in that corner, and I observed it attentively. It was tall, and perfectly white. Before it moved again I discharged the pistol, and the accursed was struck down before me, and here are the remains." So saying, he picked up a small burnt mass, resembling more the sole of a shoe than any thing else, but perforated by fire in several places, and literally burnt to a cinder. This he asserted (agreeably with a popular opinion) was always the relic when a devil was destroyed.

The mystery remained unexplained, though we fear that most sober Franks (in spite of the corroboration afforded to the doorkeeper's theory by the high authority of the Thousand and One Nights[18]) will be tempted to share Mrs Poole's scepticism as to the remains of a devil assuming the shape of the calcined sole of an old shoe: but after an interval of peace, they were eventually compelled, by a renewal of the attack, to abandon the haunted house—and those who succeeded them fared even worse. Six families were driven out in as many weeks—their windows broken, and their china demolished by invisible hands, not only by night, but in broad day—"and now," says Mrs Poole, "I have done with this subject. I have said much upon it; but I must be held excusable, as ''tis passing strange.'"

The annoyance of this spectral warfare, which continued many months, had not prevented Mrs Poole (in spite of the desagrémens of flies, "black thick-legged spiders," and handmaidens, "who scarcely ever wash themselves except when they go to the bath, which is once in about ten days or a fortnight") from becoming gradually at home in her Egyptian residence, and tolerably familiarized with the language and manners of the country. She had even adopted the native manner of eating; and had habituated herself to wear the Turkish dress with such ease, as to witness unsuspected the splendid procession of the Mahmal,[19] or emblem of royalty, which precedes the march of the pilgrim caravan to Mekka—an occasion on which the boys of Cairo enjoy a kind of saturnalia, and are privileged to maltreat any Christian or Jew who may be detected near the route. Under the guidance of an elderly Muslim friend of her brother, she had also entered the principal mosques of Cairo, including that of the Hasaneyn (the grandsons of the prophet, Hasan and Hoseyn) and the Zamé-el-Azhar, the two most sacred edifices of Cairo. But the Azhar (splendid mosque) is not only the cathedral mosque of the Egyptian capital, but the principal, and perhaps in the present day the only Moslem university. In the riwaks, or apartments appropriated to students from different countries, chiefly poor scholars supported by the funds of the mosque, "after passing successively among natives of different divisions of Egypt, we find ourselves in the company of people of Mekkeh and El-Medeeneh; then in the midst of Syrians; in another minute among Muslims of Central Africa; next among Magharbeh, (or natives of Northern Africa west of Egypt;) then with European and Asiatic Turks; and quitting these, we are introduced to Persians, and Muslims of India; we may almost fancy ourselves transported through their respective countries. No sight in Cairo interested me more than the interior of the Azhar; and the many and great obstacles which present themselves when a Christian, and more especially a Christian lady, desires to obtain admission into this celebrated mosque, make me proud of having enjoyed the privilege of walking leisurely through its extensive porticoes, and observing its heterogeneous students engaged in listening to the lectures of their professors."

A far different locale from the cloisters of the Azhar, into which Mrs Poole was, perhaps, induced to penetrate by the example of Mrs Dawson Damer, was the maristan, or madhouse, perhaps the oldest public establishment of the kind in the world, as it was attached by the Baharite Sultan Kalaoon to the mosque which he founded in 1284. "Our ears were assailed by the most discordant yells as soon as we entered the passage leading to the cells," where the lunatics were chained like wild beasts, the men in one court and the women in another. Each was confined in a separate cell with a small grated window, and with nothing but the bare floor to rest upon—while many, especially of the women, had not an article of clothing—yet they appeared to be sufficiently supplied with food, and mildly treated by their guardians; "and I think this gentleness of manner in the keepers was not assumed for the time, for the lunatics did not appear to fear them."—"I was ill prepared for the sight of such misery, and was leaving the court, when I heard a voice exclaiming in a melancholy tone of supplication, 'Stay, O my mistress; give me five paras for tobacco before you go.' I turned, and the entreaty was repeated by a very nice-looking old woman, who was very grateful when I assured her that she should have what she required; and the woman who was the superintendent gave her the trifle for me." This establishment was then, however, on the point of being broken up, as the patients were to be removed to another hospital, where they would be placed under the care of the pasha's French surgeon-general, Clot Bey.

"The Turkish is the only European language," says Mr Urquhart in his eloquent but fanciful work, the Spirit of the East, "which possesses, in the word harem, a synonyme for home, but it implies a great deal more.... To picture a Turkish woman, I would beg the reader, if possible, to fancy to himself a women without vanity or affectation, perfectly simple and natural, and preserving the manners and the type of her childhood in the full blossom and fructification of her passions and her charms." This is indeed the language of an enthusiast, in whose eyes all is light which comes from the East; but the winning grace and gentle courtesy of the Turco-Egyptian ladies of rank, as portrayed in Mrs Poole's interesting sketches of the domestic life of the hareems which she visited, go far to justify the character given of them by their eulogist. For her introduction to these, the exclusive circles of Cairo, as well as for the more than friendly reception which she there met with, Mrs Poole professes herself indebted "to the kindness of Mrs Sieder, the lady of our excellent resident missionary, who has gained the confidence of the most distinguished hareems," aided in no small degree, we have reason to believe, by the general estimation in which her brother was held among his Muslim acquaintance. In this novel species of social intercourse, Mrs Poole showed much tact, wearing the Turkish dress, which is admirably adapted to the climate, in her visits to ladies of the middle class, as well as at home; "but in visiting those who are considered the noble of the land, I resume, under my Eastern riding-costume, my English dress. In the Turkish dress, the manner of my salutation must have been more submissive than I should have liked; while, as an Englishwoman, I am entertained by the most distinguished, not only as an equal, but, generally, as a superior." Thus, at the hareem of Habeeb Effendi, the ex-governor of Cairo, she was received at the door of the first apartment, on dismounting from the "high ass" on which all visits of ceremony must be paid, by the eldest daughter of the house, who herself disencumbered her of her riding-dress—an office left to slaves in families of rank, except in the case of a visitor of high distinction—and was then placed by her on the divan at the right hand of her mother, the first cousin of the late Sultan Mahmood. The second daughter appeared soon after, and Mrs Poole proceeds to describe her dress. "She wore on her head a dark handkerchief twisted round a tarboosh, (red cap,) with a very splendid sprig of diamonds attached to the right side, and extending partly over her forehead. It was composed of very large brilliants, disposed in the form of three lutes in the centre, from each of which a branch extended, forming an oval shape at least five inches in length. High on the left side of her head, she wore a knot or slide of diamonds, through which was drawn a bunch of ringlets, which, from their position, appeared to be artificial; her tarboosh had the usual blue silk tassel, but divided and hanging on either side. Her long vest and trousers were of a dark-flowered India fabric; she wore round her waist a large and rich Cashmere shawl; and her neck was decorated with many strings of very large pearls, confined at intervals with gold beads. She was in one respect strangely disfigured—her eyebrows being painted with kohl, and united by the black pigment in a very broad and unbecoming manner. Many women of all classes here assume this disguise. Some apply the kohl to the eyebrows as well as the eyes, with great delicacy; but this lady had her eyebrows so remarkable, that her other features were deprived of their natural expression and effect."

The same graceful kindness which had marked the reception, was continued throughout the interview. After the usual refreshments of sweetmeats and coffee had been handed round by the slaves, the eldest daughter, throwing her arm round the neck of their guest, (the Oriental equivalent for walking arm-in-arm,) conducted her through the various apartments of the house; and was preparing, on her departure, to re-equip her with her riding-dress, when the younger sister remarked, "You took them off: it is for me to put them on." The friendship thus commenced with the amiable family of Habeeb Effendi continued uninterrupted during Mrs Poole's stay in Egypt; and the honours with which she was received were almost embarrassing—the chief lady, on her second visit, even resigning her own seat, and placing herself below her. The ladies of this hareem were particularly well informed. They had heard of the publication of Mrs Dawson Damer's "Tour," all were very curious to know what had been said of them, expressing much gratification on hearing the terms in which she had described them. Of the eldest daughter,[20] in particular, Mrs Poole speaks in language of the warmest personal regard:—"I have not met with her equal in Eastern female society, in gentleness, sweetness, and good sense; and, withal, she has decidedly a cultivated mind." She made a copy in colours of the portrait of the present Sultan in Mrs Damer's book, "which will doubtless excite great interest in every visiter; and, unless protected by a glass, it will perhaps, in the course of a few weeks, be kissed entirely away, like a miniature portrait of a Turkish grandee of which I was lately told." The political relations of the Porte with England and Russia frequently became the subject of conversation; and on one occasion, when the concession lately exacted from the Porte, of allowing converts to Islam to return unmolested to their original faith—a concession of all others most galling to the Moslem pride—was brought on the tapis, this lady remarked, "with an earnestness of manner which interested me and my friend extremely—'It is but the fulfilment of prophecy! When I was a little child, I was taught that in this year great things would commence, which would require three years for their completion!' Surely she drew a beautiful conclusion," adds Mrs Poole, "and under circumstances of painful feelings to one strictly attached to the laws of her religion." But the allusion appears to have been a belief long current in the East, that a mysterious combination was involved in the number 1260, (the year of the Hejra which has just closed,) portending "the beginning of the end" of Islam, if not of the world; and of which this infringement of Moslem supremacy appeared to be the first manifestation.[21]

The advantages of the English costume were strongly evinced on Mrs Poole's presentation, by her friend Mrs Siedler, to the haughty Nezleh Hanum, the widowed daughter of Mohammed Ali, in her apartments at the Kasr-ed-Dubárah, a palace in the midst of Ibrahim Pasha's plantations on the banks of the Nile, which is the usual residence of the ladies of the Pasha's family. Mrs Dawson Damer has drawn a sufficiently unamiable picture of this princess, whose cruelty to her attendants she represents as emulating that displayed in his public character by her late husband, the Defterdar Mohammed Bey.[22] But nothing but the patte de velours was seen by the English stranger, who, though Nezleh Hanum was severely indisposed at the time of her visit, was, by her express command, shown into her bedroom, and received "with the sweetest smile imaginable;" while the youngest son of the Pasha, Mohammed Ali Bey, a boy nine years old, sat on a cushion at his sister's feet, conversing with the visitor in French; his mother, and other ladies, sitting on Mrs Poole's left hand. The day happened to be the fourth of the festival of the Great Beiram, when it was customary for those ladies who had the privilege of the entrée, to pay their respects to the princess. But to not one of those who presented themselves at this levee, did Nezleh Hanum deign to address a word in acknowledgment of their salutation, as they silently advanced, with downcast eyes, to kiss her hand or the hem of her robe, and then as silently withdrew, without once raising their eyes to her face. "This etiquette, I an informed, is not only observed during her illness, but at all times: and here I felt peculiarly the advantage of being an Englishwoman; for she kept up with me a lively conversation, and really treated me as an equal." On taking leave, a second cup of sherbet was presented—"This is always intended as a distinguishing mark of honour. Several ladies accompanied us to the door; and the treasurer followed me with an embroidered handkerchief from her highness. Do not think me egotistical, because I describe thus minutely my reception; I consider it important in a description of manners, especially as the receiving and paying visits is the everyday business of an Eastern lady."

This was not, however, the first occasion on which Mrs Poole had visited the Kasr-ed-Dubárah, as she had some months previously been present, in company with her invaluable chaperon, Mrs Sieder, at an entertainment there given by the Pasha's hareem; when she had formed the acquaintance of the mother[23] of Mohammed Ali Bey, and of another wife of the Pasha, "both young; the one a dignified and handsome person, and the other especially gentle and very lovely." At the time, she supposed that these were the only wives of his highness; but, on a subsequent visit to the hareem in the citadel, she was introduced to a third, the mother of a son named Haleem Bey—and she shrewdly conjectured that the full number of four was not incomplete. These ladies, with the daughter of Mohammed Ali, the widow of Toosoon, (a deceased son of the Pasha, whose son, Abbas, is the reputed successor to the pashalik,) and Abbas Pasha's fostermother, were the only persons at table, with the exception of the French guests—the widow of Toosoon Pasha, in virtue of her seniority, leading the way to the salle-à-manger, and taking the place of honour at "a very large round silver tray, covered with small silver dishes filled with various creams, jellies, &c., and most tastefully garnished with exquisite flowers; in the centre was a forequarter of lamb, on piláv. The lamb was succeeded by stew; the stew by vegetables; the vegetables by savoury cream, &c.; sweet dishes, most delicately prepared, succeeded these in rapid succession; and each was removed, and its place filled, when perhaps only tasted. Ladies attended close to our divan with fly-whisks; behind them about thirty formed a semicircle of gaily dressed, and in many cases beautiful women and girls; those near the door held large silver trays, on which the black slaves, who stood without, placed the dishes." During the repast, Mrs Poole frequently received morsels from the hand of Toosoon Pasha's widow—one of the highest compliments according to Eastern manners—and, before taking leave, she received an invitation to a grand marriage festival, which was shortly to take place in the hareem. The nuptials were not, however, celebrated during her stay in Egypt, the main difficulty being, as she was informed, the choice of a bridegroom!

Though the costume of the Pasha's ladies did not differ materially from that already described in the hareem of Habeeb Effendi, yet, as the Kasr-ed-Dubárah may be considered as the centre of Cairo fashion, it would be unpardonable to omit some notice of Mrs Poole's observations (somewhat abridged) on this all-important subject. "The Turkish ladies wear the yelek (long vest) considerably longer than their height, forming a graceful train, which, in walking over a mat or carpet, they hold in front over the arm. The chemise is of silk gauze, fine muslin, or a very beautiful thin crape, with glossy stripes, which is made of raw silk in the hareems, and is cream colour: the sleeves are not confined at the wrist. The shintiyan (trousers) are extremely full, and generally of a different material from the yelek; the former being of rich brocade, large-patterned muslin or chintz, or sometimes of plain satin or gros-de-Naples. The yelek, on the contrary, is made of a material with a delicate pattern, generally a small stripe, whether of satin, India silk, or muslin. Ladies of distinction always wear Cashmere shawls round the waist, generally red; and those in Kasr-ed-Dubárah had a narrow edge of gold, with gold cords and tassels at the corners." The tarboosh and diamond ornaments are worn as before described; "but the front hair is cut short, and combed towards the eyebrows, which is extremely unbecoming even to a beautiful face, except when it curls naturally. The long hair is disposed in numerous small plaits, and looped up on each side over the handkerchief. The hair of the younger ladies and white slaves, in the Turkish hareems, is often worn hanging loosely on the shoulders; but no coiffure is so pretty as that worn by the Arab ladies, whose long hair, hanging down the back, is arranged in many small plaits, often lengthened by silk braid, and generally adorned with hundreds of small gold ornaments, resembling oval spangles, which harmonize better with the Eastern costume than any other fashion."

The hareems of the grandees are generally surrounded by lofty walls, as high or higher than the neighbouring houses; a vigilant bowwab or doorkeeper is stationed at the outer portal; and within this the eunuchs guard the curtains, heavy with golden embroidery, which cover the doorway leading to the interior; and woe to the intruder who should attempt to penetrate beyond the entrance! A closed door is never permitted in the hareem; but etiquette forbids the husband to enter when slippers laid before the doorway denote that his wife is receiving visitors—a method of exclusion which is said to be sometimes kept in operation for many days together. The scale of precedence among the inmates is regulated on a very different system from that of European society. Mr Urquhart has correctly remarked that "the precept, 'Thou shalt leave thy father and mother, and cleave unto thy wife,' has not been transcribed from the Gospel to the Koran: the wife in the East is not the mistress of the household; she is the daughter of her husband's mother," to whom the appellation of hanum, or chief lady belongs of right to the end of her life: and even if the mother be not living, the sisters of the husband take precedence of the wife, who is regarded by them as a younger sister. The first wife, however, where there is more than one, can only lose her pre-eminence of rank by the misfortune of being childless, in which case she gives place to one who has become a mother; but, among the higher classes, each wife has her separate apartments and attendants, and in some cases even inhabits separate mansion—all, however, within the bounding walls of the hareem.

"In the great hareems, the hanum generally has four principal attendants, two of whom are elderly, and act simply as companions; the third is the treasurer, and the fourth is the sub-treasurer. The next in rank are those who hand pipes and coffee, sherbet and sweetmeats; and each of these has her own set of subordinates. Lastly rank the cooks and house slaves, who are mostly negresses." The position of these white slaves, among whom Mrs. Poole "found the most lovely girls in the hareem, many of them fully justifying my preconceived ideas of the celebrated Georgian and Circassian women," may, perhaps, be best understood by a reference to the familiar pages of the Thousand and One Nights; the hareem scenes in which are probably drawn from those of Syria and Egypt at the period when those tales were written. "Though torn from their parents at an early age, they find and acknowledge fathers and mothers in those to whom they are sold; and, excepting in two cases, cheerfulness has appeared to reign among them"—and the authoress was a witness of the deep sympathy felt by the slaves of the wife of a Turkish grandee, who was confined in the state prison by order of the Pasha. The principal employment of these fair prisoners, independent of the preparation of sherbets and other household duties, consists in embroidery, "which is extremely beautiful, as superior as it is unlike to any fancy-work practised in England:—taste of a very remarkable kind is displayed in its execution, similar in many respects to that exhibited in the most elaborate decorations of Arabian architecture." Few, even of the ladies of rank, can read or write their own language—but there are some exceptions—the accomplished family of Habeeb Effendi has already been noticed; and Mrs Poole was acquainted with another instance, in which the daughters had learned, under the tuition of a brother who had been educated in Europe, to read and understand not only the literature of their own country, but the poets of Italy. The surveillance exercised over the young white slaves "can only be compared to that which is established in the convent. A deviation from the strictest rules of modesty is followed by severe punishment, and often by the death of the delinquent ... but if they conduct themselves well, they are frequently married by their masters to persons of high respectability; and the ceremony of the marriage[24] of a slave in the high hareems is conducted with extreme magnificence. Those, however, who from their personal charms have become the favourites of their master, and particularly those who have borne him a child, are seldom or never thus dismissed, and cannot legally be sold: having in this respect the advantage of the wife, who is always liable to be divorced without cause assigned, and at a moment's notice."

In the hareems of the middle and lower classes, the same system of strict seclusion cannot, of course, be maintained as in the case of the "hidden jewels" (as they are called) of the grandees:—the women frequent the public baths, and are allowed to visit their neighbours without restraint; but shopping is generally prohibited, for reasons which may be gathered from the Thousand and One Nights:—and goods for sale are brought to the hareems by female brokers. The system of blindfold marriages is universal; and except among the lowest class, it is scarcely possible that the bridegroom and bride should get a glimpse of each other before their espousals—and the betrothals are generally made at a ridiculously early age. A lady gravely asked Mrs Poole whether one of her boys, thirteen years of age, was married—and she witnessed a marriage procession in which the almost infant bride, taking the whole affair as a good joke, thought proper to walk backwards before the canopy fanning her friends, instead of submitting to be fanned. The natural consequence of these early marriages is, that "among the lower orders some husbands are sad tyrants; they marry such little young creatures, that they are more like children than wives, and their inexperience unjustly provokes their husbands." An original sort of revenge was threatened in her hearing by a man irritated by the abusive language of a little girl, whose tongue was the plague of the neighbourhood—"When I have a little more money, I will marry you, and punish you every day." Mrs Poole indeed expresses her conviction, reluctantly forced upon her, that in the middle and lower classes,[25] both wives and female slaves are often treated with the utmost brutality; and she mentions two instances in her own neighbourhood, in which the death of women of the latter class was caused by the cruelty of their masters. In both these cases, however, the men were Copts—a people of whom (in spite of the efforts of the English Missionary Society to make them something more than nominal Christians) she was assured, by one who knew them well, "that their moral state is far worse than that of the Muslims, and that in the conduct of the latter there is much more Christianity than is exhibited in that of the former."[26] An anecdote, casually introduced, enables us to judge of the education which children receive on this point. On a visit to the wife of the keeper of the tombs of Mohammed Ali's family, a boy just able to walk was brought in, when "the chief lady called for a stick, that puss, who was quietly crossing the carpet, might be beaten for his amusement. I interceded for the cat, when she replied mysteriously, 'I like her very much—I will not hurt her.' Accordingly she raised her arm with considerable effort, and let it fall gently. She next desired one of her slaves to kneel, which the girl did most gracefully, and bent her head with an air of mock submission to receive the kurbáj, and the same farce was repeated. Though neither slave nor cat was a sufferer, the effect must have been equally bad on the mind of the child. Alas! for the slaves and cats when he is big enough to make them feel!"

The children, however, occasionally fare no better than the slaves; and Mr Lane was not seldom obliged, by the screams of the sufferers, to interfere to stop the cruelty practised in his neighbourhood, when "the answer usually returned was of the most civil kind, assuring us, with many salutations, that for our sakes the offender shall be forgiven." On one occasion an old woman, to punish her little grandson for a trifling theft, had employed the services of a professional beater, who had tied the child's legs and arms, and was beating him with a ponderous stick, while his grandmother cried, "again!" and only desisted on a peremptory remonstrance from Mr Lane; yet the same woman disturbed the neighbourhood with her lamentations every alternate Monday for the loss of her son, the little boy's father! It is perhaps hardly fair to cite instances of brutality like this, to which our own police-offices afford abundance of parallels, as examples of the national manners of Egypt; and Mrs Poole does full justice to the spirit of mutual aid which prevails among the poor in all Moslem countries, and teaches them "to bear each other's burdens." The women, especially those of the higher class, are admitted to be the "most affectionate of mothers." They are so possessed, however, by terror of the "evil eye," which they firmly believe may be cast on their children by an admiring word or glance, that the smallest allusion to them is hazardous. Mrs Poole was much amused by the agitation of an Arab lady, in conversation with whom she had congratulated herself that the strength of her eldest boy's constitution had preserved him from the ill effects of the heat. "In an instant she vociferated, 'Bless the Prophet! bless the Prophet!' and coloured deeply." And it was with difficulty that Mrs Poole could calm her, or convince her that the English apprehended no danger from the expression of their satisfaction in the welfare of those they love.

It is not easy for even the most experienced to avoid contretemps of this kind in the East, where even the ordinary observances of life seem to have been arranged on a system diametrically opposite to our own; and some amusing anecdotes are given of the gaucheries unconsciously committed by raw tourists from Europe. At the house of an Egyptian grandee, an European gentleman, on receiving the sherbet after pipes and coffee, which was handed to him first as a stranger, "looked at it for a moment, and then at the gaily-embroidered napkin hung over the arm of the slave who presented it; and following the impulse given, I conclude, by his preconceptions of Eastern habits of cleanliness, dipped his fingers in the sweet beverage, and wiped them on the napkin!" A less pardonable breach of etiquette, as it proceeded not from ignorance but want of good-breeding, was committed by two Franks, who, arranged in a motley mixture of European and Oriental costume, made their way into the Pasha's palace at Shubra, and, after rambling from room to room without meeting any one, at length entered the bedroom of the Pasha, who was nearly undressed! "Though taken by surprise, his Turkish coolness did not forsake him; calling for his dragoman, he said, 'Ask those gentlemen where they bought their tarbooshes?' 'At Constantinople.' 'And there,' rejoined the Pasha, 'I suppose they learned their manners. Tell them so.' Judging from this retort that their presence was not agreeable, the Franks saluted the viceroy, and withdrew."

As we profess to deal with Mrs Poole solely in her own peculiar province, as a delineator of female manners and female society in Egypt, we shall pass with brief notice her visit to the Pyramids, the account of which contains much valuable information, supplied (as she avows,) from the notes of her brother. The excursion, though at a short distance from Cairo, is not altogether unattended with danger, especially to ladies, from the attacks of the Bedawees; as appears from the remarks of some young men, the sons of a Bedawee sheykh at some distance, who had ridden over, as they admitted, in the hope of seeing the faces of the ladies of the party, and were much disappointed at finding them veiled. They had been much struck by the charms of a beautiful American whom they had seen a few weeks before; and one of then exclaimed, in speaking of her—"But the sword! the sword! if we dared to use it, we would kill that man," alluding to the lady's companion, whether her husband or brother, "and take her for ourselves."—"'Tis well for pretty women travelling in the East, that these lawless Arabs are kept under a degree of subjection by the present government," says Mrs Poole; and the anecdote affords an indication that, when the reins of administration are released by the death of the present Pasha, the overland route to India may not be quite so secure as it is at present.

But there is another, a modern wonder of Cairo, which, of late years, has almost equally divided with the Pyramids the attention of Frank travellers. We allude to the sheykh Abdel-Kadir el-Maughrabi, in whose enchanted mirror of ink, poured into the palm of an unsophisticated Arab boy, men from all parts of the earth were compelled to appear before the tent of the Sultan, with its seven mystic flags, and submit to a description of their persons and dress, which would have satisfied the vigilance of the Russian police. The oracular sagacity of the Quarterly Review was unable to solve the mystery; and even Mr Lane, in his Modern Egyptians, hesitates whether to doubt or to believe; but the bubble (as we learn from Mrs Poole) has at last burst; and the two familiar spirits, Turshoon and Turyooshoon, stand revealed in the late Osman Effendi, interpreter to the British consulate. Since the death of this respectable personage, who usually acted as master of the ceremonies at his performances, the good fortune of the sheykh has totally deserted him, as he himself inadvertently admitted to Mr Lane, when he not long since accompanied two English travellers to witness the exhibition, which proved an entire failure; and since that time his attempts have been even more signally unsuccessful. Whatever may have been the means employed, there is no longer any doubt that Osman Effendi, who sat quiet and demure in a corner, without word or sign, was the prime agent in the deception; and with him the reputation of the last representative of Pharaoh's magicians has vanished for ever, like the visions in his own magic mirror.

The series of Mrs Poole's letters closes abruptly in April 1844, with the relation of one of her visits to the friendly harem of Habeeb Effendi; and no intimation is given either of the cause of the second cessation, or whether a second series may be hereafter expected. We hope that this may be the case; for, independent of the interest attaching to the subject, and the difficulty of finding another equally qualified by opportunity and powers of observation to do it justice, the time must inevitably soon be past when it will be possible to depict the habitudes and manners of the Arab population in their integrity. Cairo is at present, with the single exception perhaps of Damascus, the most purely Arab city in the East; but the ruthless reforms of the Pasha, and the constant passage of the Franks on this new high-road to India, will erelong divest it of its distinguishing characteristics, and give it as hybrid an aspect as that of the Frank intruders into the Pasha's chamber. An English hotel has already started up; and Mrs Poole informs us, that "by a proclamation of the Pasha, the houses are to be whitewashed within and without; those who inhabit ruined houses are to repair or sell them; and uninhabited dwellings are to be pulled down, for the purpose of forming squares and gardens; meshreebeyehs (projecting first-floor windows) are forbidden; and mastabahs (the seats in front of shops) are to be removed. Cairo, therefore, will no longer be an Arab city, and will no longer possess those peculiarities which render it so picturesque and attractive. The deep shade in the narrow streets, increased by the projecting windows; the picturesque tradesmen, sitting with one friend or more before his shop, enjoying the space afforded by his mastabah—these will be no more; and while I cannot but acknowledge the great necessity for repairing the city, and removing the ruins which threaten the destruction of passengers, I should have liked these features retained which are essentially characteristic—which help, as it were, to group the people, and which form such admirable accessories to pictures."

PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE—STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM, &c.

The growing demand for information among the agricultural classes, makes the appearance of new books of a really trustworthy kind of greater national value at the present time than at any former period. Besides, as our knowledge is rapidly advancing, good books upon practical agriculture are becoming more difficult to write. They require from their authors a larger acquaintance with the newer branches of elementary science than many practical men can be expected as yet to possess. These considerations induce us to advert for the second time to the work now before us. We drew the attention of our readers to the first volume when it made its appearance; two other volumes completing the work having since been published, we feel ourselves under a kind of obligation to follow the author cursorily through the remainder of his book.

The Book of the Farm might be called The Practical Farmer's Library, since it contains full information upon almost every practical subject upon which the intelligent young farmer is likely to require assistance or advice. The scientific branch alone is not systematically discussed, though here and there useful scientific points are treated of and explained. But this was not to be expected in a really practical work; and the author, upon this branch, very properly refers his readers to the published works of Professor Johnston.[27]

The feature that struck us most in the perusal of the first volume, was the remarkably wide range of minutely practical information which the author possesses and embodies in his book. He describes every practical operation as if he had not only assisted at it on some former occasion, but as if he were actually performing it while he is describing it with his pen. This gives a truthfulness and self-evident accuracy to his descriptions, which are rarely to be met with in agricultural works, and which could not be expected from one who was not really familiar with the points of which he treats. He seems even to enjoy every labour he describes, to enter into the spirit of every operation to be performed—into the heart and fun of the thing as it were. He becomes an actual participator in the fact—a particeps criminis.

No matter whether it is the currying or the skinning of his horse—the shoeing or the riding—taking him to the field or to the tanner, Mr Stephens is equally ready and willing for all. He tells you with the same glee, how to shelter your sheep on the hill side, and how to cut their throats after the most approved fashion; how to lay on fat on your short-horns—what are the marks of their being ripe for the butcher—and how you can kill them in the most Christian way. He pets his sheep-dog and praises him, tells you how kindly you should treat him, what constant encouragement you should give to so faithful a servant, at what age he should be hanged, and how you can make most of his skin. He instructs you to tend your young lambs, he helps you to select a pet from the flock; he goes with you afterwards to the barn, helps you to kill and skin it, teaches you to score and cross it in the most approved style, cuts it up for you like an anatomist, selects the best joint for your own cook; sits down with you afterwards at your own table and carves it, and after he has helped you all to your general satisfaction, he is still connoisseur enough to keep the best bit of all for his own plate.

Besides this living spirit, which pervades all the descriptions of methods and operations, another excellence we have remarked in these volumes is the kind of opinions given upon practical points, in reference to which a difference of sentiment prevails among practical men. They are in general safe opinions—leaning always to the prudent side in cases of doubtful practice. If they appear, therefore, in some cases, not to come up to the notions of those lovers of change, who would improve agriculture as engineers make railroads—without regard to their cost or to the interest of the capital expended—they will appear to all sound men to be so much the better fitted to guide the rising farmers of the present day. These young men must possess more knowledge than their fathers, if they are to continue upon the land; but they will also soon disappear from the land, notwithstanding their knowledge, if a balance of profit at the end of the year be not considered an indispensable element in their system of husbandry.

The book, as we formerly stated, is divided into four parts, embracing in succession the proper operations to be performed in the four seasons, commencing with those of the winter.

To the greater part of the winter operations, as described and explained by Mr Stephens, we adverted in our former notice: there remains one topic, however, to which, from its great national importance, we must still turn for a little.

Among the various improvements which, in the dead season of the year, the farmer may undertake with profit to himself and advantage to his farm, is that of draining. Of this kind of improvement almost every farm in the country is more or less susceptible. But how should it be done, at what depth, and with what material? As to the depth, the young farmer who wishes to do his work well, will neither imitate nor rely too much on the practice of the district he comes from, or in which his own farm may happen to be situated. If so, he will, in Ayrshire—by the advice of the wise-acres in that county—put in his drains only twenty inches, or two feet, in depth; in Berwickshire he will sink them to three feet; and in Sussex he may be carried along with the rising tide to put none in shallower than four feet. He will not trust, we say, wholly to example. He will say to himself rather, what is the object I have in view, and what implements have I to effect it?

In draining he has one leading, one master object, we may call it, to attend to. He has to deepen his soil, that the roots of his crops may descend further—may draw their food from greater depths, and from a larger body of earth. The more completely he can effect this, the better will his work be done.

How deep will his crops send down their roots? In favourable circumstances his wheat and clover, and even his turnips, will descend to a depth of three feet. His operations, then, would be in some degree perfect, if he could so open, and drain, and doctor his land as to enable and induce the roots of his crops to go down so far as this.

But they will never, or rarely at least, descend lower than the level of the water in the bottom of his drains. He cannot, therefore, hope to make his soil available for the growth of his crops to a greater depth than that to which his drains descend. Three feet then, he will say, appears to be a reasonable depth for a perfect drain.

Again, drained land must be opened beneath by the subsoil plough, or by the fork, if the rains, and roots, and air, are to descend, and the full benefits are to be derived from the drains. With our existing implements—especially with the fork—the soil may be stirred to a depth of twenty-six inches. The top of the drain, therefore, should be at least this depth under the surface; and this, again, brings the whole depth of a perfect drain to within a few inches of three feet as before.

Then as to the material, it seems advisable to use either stones or tiles, according as the one or the other is the cheaper, provided always that the stones are properly broken, and carefully put in. The tide seems now to be running in favour of smaller tiles than have hitherto been generally used in Scotland, and even of pipe-tiles of a very small diameter. Our friend Mr Smith of Deanston has taken out a patent for a pipe-tile, with projecting fingers at the ends, which dovetail into each other, so as to unite the tiles together, and at the same time to keep them in their places. Should these pipes be found generally efficient, the cost of draining will be considerably diminished, while the small space they occupy will afford greater facilities for deepening the soil.

But the economical considerations connected with draining, are as important as the practical methods to be adopted, both to the cultivator of the soil and to the country at large. We shall advert only to one of these.

In what light ought the expenditure of money in draining to be regarded by the practical man?

He ought to consider it only as a mercantile speculation, by which he may or may not make a profit, according to the degree of prudence with which it is undertaken. He has the usufruct of his farm for a certain number of years, with liberty to crop it in a certain way. By this he hopes to make a certain sum of money. But it is capable of improvement by draining, and he has liberty to drain if he likes. "Well," he says to himself, "I make a certain sum by farming my land as it is; I have here fifty pounds of ready money, could I make more profit if I were to lay this money out in draining it?—would it be a good speculation?" He calculates the cost of draining and the probable return of profit, and the result is apparently that he can make more profit by this use of his money than by any other way in which he could employ it. This being the result, the prudent man embarks in this safe speculation. He does not bury his money in his land; he does not give it away to the land to the loss of his family; he only lends it for a season, and for the benefit of his family. He has made his calculations badly, and has only his own arithmetic to blame, if he does not get all his capital back from the land, with a handsome profit in addition, some years before his lease has expired.

Many tenants think the interest of the landlord should enter into their calculations, and some cherish or excite in their own minds ill feelings towards their landlords at the idea of leaving their drains in the land when they quit, and the land itself in better condition than when they entered upon their farms. But this feeling arises altogether from a want of familiarity on their part with the ordinary feelings of mercantile men and the transactions of mercantile business. The farmer's sole aim is to promote his own interest. If that interest is to be promoted by draining, let him do it immediately, and with all his heart; his own profit will not be a whit the less that the landlord comes in for a little profit too when the lease has expired. The builder who takes thirty or forty years' lease of a bit of land in the neighbourhood of London, is not deterred from planting houses upon it, by the reflection that at the end of his lease the houses will become the property of his landlord. Long before that time has expired, he hopes to have his principal and his profit both safe in his pocket. If he does not cherish these hopes, he is either a fool or a rogue.

On one other point connected with draining, we are anxious to quote Mr Stephens' own words. In reply to the question, is your land drained? we have so often received the answer—"Oh, sir, my land is dry, it does not require draining"—that we request the serious attention of such of our readers as are interested in the improvement of land, to the following passage:—

"Land, however, though it does not contain such a superabundance of water as to obstruct arable culture, may nevertheless, by its inherent wetness, prevent or retard the luxuriant growth of useful plants, as much as decidedly wet land. The truth is, that deficiency of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful husbandry, when it really arises from the baleful influence of concealed stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown, not so much in the management of the arable culture of the land, as in neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop, namely, the concealed stagnant water. Indeed, my opinion is—and its conviction has been forced upon me by dint of long and extensive observation of the state of the agricultural soil over a large portion of the country—that this is the true cause of most of the bad farming to be seen, and that not one farm is to be found throughout the kingdom that would not be much the better for draining. Entertaining this opinion, you will not be surprised at my urging upon you to practise draining, or at my lingering at some length on the subject, that I may exhibit to you the various modes of doing it, according to the peculiar circumstances in which your farm may be placed."—(Vol. i. p. 483.)

With the substance of these remarks we entirely agree. We would only not put the point so broadly as to imply, that the want of draining was the only cause of the bad farming we see. We have, however, been over large tracts of Scotland, and we are quite sure that whole counties might be made to yield the double of their present produce by an efficient drainage, and proper subsequent management.

We pass over the very succinct and methodical description of the processes of threshing, winnowing, &c., and can note only one point out of the great mass of very interesting matter Mr Stephens has brought together, in regard to the composition, qualities, and uses of the different kinds of grain. The point to which we shall advert is the composition of oatmeal. Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive, are strong, healthy, and vigorous. The bread, too, is sweet to the taste. It is only disagreeable associations, therefore—connected in our minds with the darkness of the colour—that make us consider it disagreeable or unwholesome. In like manner, our Irish brethren are strong, vigorous, and merry, on their potato diet. Why should we condemn it as the lowest kind of diet, or pity those who are content to live almost wholly upon it? It is true that, from its being the main staff of Irish life, great distress ensues when a failure takes place in the potato crop. But such would be the consequence of a general failure in any kind of crop on which they might happen chiefly to rely. The cure for such seasons of suffering, therefore, is not to be sought so much in bringing about change of diet, as in introducing a better system of husbandry—an improved system of drainage especially—by which a general failure of any crop will be rendered a more rare occurrence. The spread of railroads will soon render it comparatively easy to transport even the bulky potato from one county to another, and thus to prevent the recurrence of famine prices.

But in South Britain the oatmeal of the Scottish peasantry—the national food—is looked upon with as much prejudice, and those who live upon it with as much pity, as the black bread-eaters of Germany and Sweden, or the potato-diggers of Ireland. But the health and strength of the Scottish peasantry, who live entirely upon oatmeal, is proverbial. On this subject, in speaking of the Scottish ploughmen, where the bothy system is practised—that is, where the single men all live together in a room or bothy provided for them, which serves them both for sleeping and cooking—-Mr Stephens has the following characteristic passage:—

"The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way, as brose, as it is called, which is a different sort of pottage to porridge. A pot of water is put on the fire to boil, a task which the men take in turns; a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with which each man provides himself, and put into a wooden bowl, which also is the ploughman's property; and on a hollow being made in the meal, and sprinkled with salt, the boiling water is poured over the meal, and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn spoon, and the allowance of milk poured over it, the brose is ready to be eaten; and as every man makes his own brose, and knows his own appetite, he makes just as much brose as he can consume. The bowl is scraped clean with the spoon, and the spoon licked clean with the tongue, and the dish is then placed in the meal-chest for a similar purpose on the succeeding occasion. The fare is simple, and is as simply made; but it must be wholesome, and capable of supplying the loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for I believe that no class of men can endure more bodily fatigue, for ten hours every day, than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose thrice a-day."—(Vol. ii. p. 384.)

The quantity of oatmeal allowed to the ploughman—as his sole food—is two pecks, or 17½ lbs. in a week, exactly 2½ lbs. a-day—or ¾ lb. for each meal—and yet it often happens that a hard-worked ploughman cannot consume the whole of this allowance. Speaking again of oatmeal porridge, Mr Stephens says, "there are few more wholesome meals than oatmeal porridge, or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought. Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet, verifying the line of Burns,

"'The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food.'"

As southern prejudices have a tendency to make their way northward, and, in the face of old experience at home, are leading many to undervalue the oatmeal, on which we trust our peasantry will long rely as their staple food, it is interesting to find that, on this point, science has at length come to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat—that it contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork—and, therefore, that he who lives upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef—of that which forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it—with three per cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.

But Professor Johnston, in the recent edition of his Elements,[28] tells us, that, from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland, it turns out that oats are far richer in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any part of England—that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that which forms muscle, five to eight of fat, and sixty-five of starch. The account, therefore, between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain—

What do you say to these numbers, Mr Cockney?—You won't pity us, Scotch oatmeal-eaters, any more, we guess. Experience and science are both on our side. What makes your race-horses the best in the world, may be expected to make our peasantry the best too. We offer you, therefore, a fair bet. You shall take ten English ploughmen, and feed them upon two pounds and a-half of wheaten flour a-day, and we shall take as many Scotch ploughmen, and feed them upon the same weight of oatmeal a-day—if they can eat so much, for that is doubtful—and we shall back our men against yours for any sum you like. They shall walk, run, work—or fight you, if you like it—and they shall thrash you to your heart's content. We should like to convince you that Scotch parritch has some real solid metal in it.

We back the oatcake and the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the world. We defy your homemade bread, your baker's bread, your household bread, your leaven bread, and your brown Georges—your fancy bread and your raisin bread—your baps, rolls, scones, muffins, crumpets, and cookies—your bricks, biscuits, bakes, and rusks—your Bath buns and your sally luns—your tea-cakes, and saffron-cakes, and slim-cakes, and plank-cakes, and pan-cakes, and soda-cakes, and currant-cakes, and sponge-cakes, and seed-cakes, and girdle-cakes, and singing-hinnies—your short-bread and your currant-buns—and if there by any other names by which you designate your wheaten abominations, we defy and detest them all. We swear by the oatcake and the porridge, the substantial bannock and the brose—long may Scotland produce them, and Scotchmen live and fight upon them!!

"The first great event in spring on a farm of mixed husbandry," says Mr Stephens, "is the calving of the cows." He then describes the symptoms, the preparations, and the treatment of the cow and the calf, the diseases to which they are respectively liable, and the treatment to which they ought to be subjected, in his usual clear, methodical, and remarkably complete manner. We have been struck with the kind tone which pervades the whole of this chapter, the gentle treatment he prescribes in all cases—indicating at once a practical acquaintance with the details of these operations, and a love also for the quiet and patient animals of which he is treating.

We should have quoted, had the passages not been too long, his description of the different modes adopted, apparently with equal profit, by the veal manufacturers for the London and Glasgow markets respectively. We should like to know the comparative profit of the French mode of feeding calves for the Paris market, on cream and biscuits. In his next edition, we hope Mr Stephens will instruct us upon this point also.

It is one of the merits of this book, and in our estimation a very high one, that method, order, and economy of time and labour are invariably recommended and insisted upon, in every process and at every season. But these points are especially insisted upon in his chapter on the advantages of having field-work always in a forward state. The following extract is long, but it contains such admirable advice, that we insert it for the sake of those who may never see the book itself, or have an opportunity of buying it.

After describing how every favourable day should be taken in preparing the land for wheat, beans, oats, potatoes, turnips, tares, or naked fallow, in their respective order, he continues:—

"And when every one of all these objects has been promoted, and there is found little or nothing to do till the burst of spring-work comes, both horses and men may enjoy a day's rest now and then, without incurring the risk of throwing work back; but before such recreations are indulged in, it should be ascertained that all the implements, great and small, have been repaired for work—the plough-irons all new laid—the harrow-tines new laid and sharpened, and fastened firmly into the bulls of the harrows—the harness all tight and strong—the sacks new patched and mended, that no seed-corn be spilt upon the road—the seed-corn thrashed, measured up, and sacked, and what is last wanted put into the granary—the horses new shod, that no casting or breaking of a single shoe may throw a pair of horses out of work for even one single hour—in short, to have every thing prepared to start for work when the first notice of spring shall be heralded in the sky.

"But suppose the contrary of all this to happen; suppose that the plough-irons and harrow-tines have to be laid and sharpened, when perhaps to-morrow they may be wanted in the field—a stack to be thrashed for seed-corn or for horse's corn in the midst of the sowing of a field—suppose, too, that only a week's work has been lost, in winter, of a single pair of horses, and the consequence is, that six acres of land have to be ploughed when they should be sown, that is, a loss of a whole day of six pair of horses, or of two days of three pair—suppose all these inconveniences to happen in the busy season, and the provoking reflection occurs that the loss incurred now was occasioned by trifling offputs in winter. Compare the value of these trifles with the risk of finding you unprepared for sowing beans or spring-wheat. Suppose, once more, that instead of having turnips in store for the cattle, when the oat-seed is begun in the fields, and that, instead of being able to prosecute that indispensable piece of work without interruption, you are obliged to send away a portion of the draughts to bring in turnips, which must be brought in, and brought in, too, from hand to mouth, it being impossible, in the circumstances, to store them. In short, suppose that the season of incessant labour arrives and finds you unprepared to go along with it,—and what are the consequences? Every creature about you, man, woman, and beast, are then toiled beyond endurance every day, not to keep up work, which is a lightsome task, but to make up work, which is a toilsome task, but which you said you could easily do, when you were idling your time in a season you consider of little value; and, after all, this toil is bestowed in vain to obtain the end you wish, namely, to prepare your crop in due season. You who are inexperienced in the evils of procrastination may fancy this to be an overdrawn picture—even an impossible case; but unfortunately for that supposition, it is drawn from the life. I have seen every incident occur which I have mentioned, both as to work being in a forward and in a backward state."—(Vol. ii. pp. 489, 483.)

This one extract will alone illustrate the opinion we have already expressed, in regard to the soundness and safety of the advice on practical subjects, which our author ventures to give.

We pass over a hundred pages devoted to ploughing and sowing, and the selection of seed. On the last of which points our inclination would lead us to dwell—especially in reference to the steeping of seeds, a subject which at present engages so much attention, and upon which so much nonsense and mercantile puffing has been recently expended. But our limits restrain us.

Whether it is that our own predilections incline us more to those parts of his book, or that Mr Stephens writes these better—with heart and kindliness he certainly does write[29]—we scarcely know, but we certainly like all his chapter upon animals. The lambing of ewes is the subject of chapter fifty-four.

In all lines of life there are the skilful and the unskilful, and the former are always the fewer in number. In reference to shepherds, Mr Stephens says:—

"No better proof need be adduced of the fewness of skilful shepherds, than the loss which every breeder of sheep sustains every year, especially in bad weather. I knew a shepherd who possessed unwearied attention, but was deficient in skill, and being over-anxious, always assisted the ewes in lambing before the proper time; and as he kept the ewes in too high condition, the consequence was, that every year he lost a number of both ewes and lambs; and in one season of bad weather the loss amounted to the large number of twenty-six ewes, and I forget of how many lambs, in a dock of only ten score of ewes. I knew another shepherd who was far from being solicitous about his charge, though certainly not careless of it, yet his skill was so undoubted, that he chiefly depended upon it, and his success was so eminent, that the loss of a ewe or lamb under his charge was matter of surprise. Of these two shepherds—the attentive and the skilful—it would appear that the skilful is the safer, and of course the more valuable, though it must be owned, that it is better to prevent evils by skilful attention, than to cure them by attentive skill; yet it is only by the union of both these qualities that a perfect shepherd can be formed."—(Vol. ii. p. 600.)

Perhaps some of our readers are acquainted with Price on Sheep, a book in which the treatment of the Leicester sheep is especially described. After commenting upon what this author says of the losses experienced in lambing-time by the southern breeders, Mr Stephens pays the following deserved compliment to the intelligent shepherds of Scotland:—

"I would not have noticed these egregious blunders, said by Mr Price to be committed by shepherds in a low country like Romney Marsh, in Kent, so prominently, had not Mr Youatt adopted the sentiments of Mr Price in the very particulars quoted above, in his excellent treatise on the history and diseases of sheep. Were a shepherd of a Leicester flock in Scotland made aware that he was suspected of such ignorance of the nature of sheep, he would be quite ashamed; and so would shepherds even of the hill country, who cannot have so intimate a knowledge of every individual of their flock, usually occupying a wide range of mountain land, as their brethren of the profession tending flocks within much more limited bounds."—(Vol. ii. p. 602.)

Among the more immediate symptoms of lambing, there are two which have struck us as very interesting. We have put them in italics in the following quotation:—

"The more immediate symptoms of lambing are when the ewe stretches herself frequently; separating herself from her companions; exhibiting restlessness by not remaining in one place for any length of time; lying down and rising up again, as if dissatisfied with the place; pawing the ground with a forefoot; bleating as if in quest of a lamb; and appearing fond of the lambs of other ewes."—(Vol. ii. p. 603.)

In regard to pet lambs—such as are brought up by hand because their mothers have died, and it has been impossible to mother then upon other ewes—the following observation shows their innocent simplicity:—

"When the same person feeds the lambs, and this should be the dairymaid, the lambs soon become attached to her, and would follow her every where: but to prevent their bleating, and to make them contented, an apron or a piece of cloth, hung on a stake or bush in the paddock, will keep them together."—(Vol. ii. p. 611.)

After treating of the various risks which ewes and lambs are subject to, the final result for which a skilful shepherd should look, is thus stated:—

"He should not be satisfied with his exertions unless he has preserved one-half the number of ewes with twin-lambs, nor should he congratulate himself if he has lost a single ewe in lambing. I am aware these results cannot always be commanded; but I believe an attentive and skilful shepherd will not be satisfied for all his toil, night and day, for three weeks, if he has not attained these results. The ewes may have lambed twins to greater number than the half, and yet many pairs may have been broken to supply the deficiencies occasioned by the deaths of single lambs. * * * In regard to Cheviots, it is considered a favourable result to rear a lamb for each ewe; and with blackfaced ewes, eighteen lambs out of the score of ewes is perhaps one as favourable. Cheviots yield a few pairs, blackfaced very few. The former sometimes require assistance in lambing, the latter seldom."—(Vol. ii. pp. 614, 615.)

An entire chapter is given to the training and working of the shepherd's dog. Like master like man, says the old adage—like shepherd like dog, says Mr Stephens:—

"The natural temper of the shepherd may be learned from the way in which he works his dog among sheep. When you observe an aged dog making a great noise, bustling about in an impatient manner, running fiercely at a sheep and turning him quickly, biting at his ears and legs, you may conclude, without hesitation, that the shepherd who owns him is a man of hasty temper."—(Vol. ii. p. 625.)

But a well-trained dog has the following qualifications:—

"Dogs, when thus gently and cautiously trained, become very sagacious, and will visit every part of a field where sheep are most apt to stray, and where danger is most to be apprehended to befall them, such as a weak part of a fence, deep ditches, or deep furrows into which sheep may possibly fall and lie awalt or awkward, that is, lie on the broad of their back and unable to get up, and they will assist to raise them up by seizing the wool at one side and pulling the sheep over upon its feet. Experienced dogs will not meddle with ewes having lambs at foot, nor with tups, being quite aware of their disposition to offer resistance. They also know full well when foxes are on the move, and give evident symptoms of uneasiness on their approach to the lambing ground. They also hear footsteps of strange persons and animals at a considerable distance at night, and announce their approach by unequivocal signs of displeasure, short of grumbling and barking, as if aware that those noisy signs would betray their own presence. A shepherd's dog is so incorruptible that he cannot be bribed, and will not permit even a known friend to touch him when entrusted with any piece of duty. * * * It is supposed that the bitch is more acute than the dog, though the dog will bear the greater fatigue. Of the two, I believe, that the quietly disposed shepherd prefers a bitch, and is careful in working her as little as he can when in pup. I may mention, that the shepherd's dog claims exemption from taxation; and I believe that a well-trained one costs at least L.3."—(Vol. ii. pp. 626, 627.)

Nothing is said of the mutual attachment of the shepherd and his dog. Of this attachment we can never help thinking—when the subject of dogs is introduced—since we saw the look of mingled agony and consternation which showed itself on the face of one of our shepherd boys, when a horse had kicked and apparently killed it, and the joy with which he hugged it, while it licked his hands and face as it recovered.

Nothing strikes an American so much on coming to England—kindred though he be, not only in blood and language, but also in customs—nothing at least strikes him more than the beautiful thorn hedges with which our fields are at once divided, sheltered and adorned. And yet how much they are mismanaged—their perfection, usefulness, and durability lessened—by injudicious, in many cases by ignorant and barbarous, treatment! A most useful chapter is devoted to this subject, from which we shall make one or two extracts. First, of switching young hedges:—

"Hedgers have a strong predilection to use the switching-bill. They will, without compunction, switch a young hedge at the end of the first year of its existence. No hedge ought to be touched with a knife until it has attained at least two years; because the great object to be attained by a new hedge is the enlargement of its roots, that they may search about freely for its support; and the only way it has of acquiring large roots is through its branches and leaves, which are the chief means of supporting the healthy functions of plants, or of even preserving them in life. Even beyond the age mentioned above, the pruning-knife should be very sparingly used, until the young hedge has acquired the height sufficient for a fence; and not freely then, but only to remove superfluities of growth, and preserve equality in the size of the plants.

****

Let the plant have peace to grow till it has acquired a considerable degree of natural strength—to acquire which state it will take a longer or shorter time according to the circumstances in which it is placed—acquiring it in the shortest time in deep sandy loam, the most useful of all soils, and taking the longest in poor thin clay on a tilly subsoil—let it, I say, have peace to grow, and let it be afterwards judiciously pruned, and I will give you the assurance of experience, that you will possess an excellent fence and a beautiful hedge in a much shorter time than the usual practice of hedgers will warrant."—(Vol. ii p. 564.)

Upon cutting down hedges the following remarks are excellent:—

"Hedges are wofully mismanaged in the cutting in many parts of the country. Without further consideration than saving the expense of a paling to guard a new-cut-down hedge, or in ignorance of the method of making a dead-hedge from the refuse of the old, the stems of an old hedge are often cut over about three and a half feet high, to continue as a fence. The consequence is just what might be anticipated from a knowledge of the habits of the thorn, namely, a thick growth of young twigs where the hedge was cut over, the ultimate effect of which is, a young hedge standing at three and a half feet above the ground upon bare stakes. The wise plan, therefore, to preserve the value of the old hedge is to cut it near the ground, and form a dead-hedge of the part cut off."—(Vol. ii. pp. 569, 570.)

We have seen hedges occasionally dying out by degrees on the road-sides, where the banks were cut close to the roots of the thorn plants. The following acute observation will in some cases, no doubt, account for it:—

"I observe that some farmers remove the hedge-bank behind a thorn-hedge, to make compost of; but such a practice is highly injurious to the hedge, even after it is grown up, by exposing its roots, which chiefly lie under the bank, to cold and frost. If a hedge is cut down whose bank has been treated in this manner, and no means are used to protect the roots when exposed on the removal of the branches, it is possible that a few nights of severe black frost may kill every root that lies nearest the surface. I have no doubt that particular plants of old hedges are killed in this manner, without the cause being suspected by the farmer."—(Vol. ii. p. 576.)

The planting of potatoes, as we should expect in a practical work of this kind, is treated of in considerable detail and with much judgment. Upon seed-potatoes, which have these last two or three years attracted so much attention, we have the following passage:—

"I have no doubt, in my own mind, that were seed-potatoes securely pitted until they were about to be planted,—not over-ripened before they were taken out of the ground,—the sets cut from the crispest tubers and from the waxy end,—the dung fermented by a turning of the dunghill in proper time,—led out to the field, quickly spread, the sets as quickly dropped on it, and the drills quickly split in the manner represented in fig. 411, and described in (2411,) there would be little heard of the failure even in the driest season,—at the same time, the precaution of obtaining seed frequently from an elevated and late district compared to where the seed is to be planted, should not be neglected."—(Vol. iii. pp. 672, 673.)

These recommendations are correct, we believe, and judicious as far as they go; other things, however, are within the powers of the skilful farmer; but, to all, we would especially recommend a more careful construction of their potato-pits. This subject is again treated of in Vol. iii. p. 1121. The raising of seed-potatoes should be made more an object of special care than has hitherto been the case; for we doubt if the cure recently propounded as infallible on the faith of one or two successful experiments—that of leaving the potatoes covered up during winter in the field where they grew—will be in all cases followed by the wished-for results. We hope, however, that many will try it.

Of horses we could have wished to say something had our space permitted; but we can only refer to what is said of the rearing and intelligence of the horse towards the beginning of the second volume, and to the chapter on breaking in young draught horses, in p. 691 of the same volume.

We come now to the third volume, which commences the operations of summer—a season which brings with it new cares, especially to the dairy farmer, and where the turnip husbandry prevails. It is true that, in summer, when all his seeds are in the ground, the farmer has a little leisure during which he may leave his farm, but even then any excursion he makes ought not to be for mere pleasure. A true farmer will have his eyes about him wherever he travels, and will carefully study the merits of the rural customs of every district he goes to. There is much truth in the following remarks:—

"Summer is the only season in which the farmer has liberty to leave home without incurring the blame of neglecting his business, and even then the time which he has to spare is very limited. There is only about a fortnight between finishing the fallow, the turnip and potato culture, and hay-making, and the commencement of harvest, in which the farmer has leisure to travel. This limitation of time is to be regretted, because it is proper that he should take a journey every year, and see how farm operations are conducted in other parts of the kingdom. An excursion of this nature is seldom undertaken by a farmer, who is generally a man capable of observation, without acquiring some hints which may induce the adoption of a practice that seems good, or the rejection of one which is bad. Such a journey exhibits mankind in various aspects, and elevates the mind above local prejudices; and as husbandry is a progressive art, a ramble of a week or two through different parts of the country, cannot fail to enlighten the mind of the most experienced farmer much beyond any thing he can observe by always remaining at home."—(Vol. iii. p. 742.)

In his excellent chapter on the sowing of turnips, he quotes several instances of the successful preparation of land in the autumn—breaking up, harrowing, cross-ploughing, drilling, and dunging—for the turnip crop, and he adds the following opinion:—

"Were such modes of culture adopted in the south of England, I have no doubt certain and abundant crops of turnips would be raised, in spite of droughts and insects; and the slovenly practice of broad-cast culture would then give way to the more scientific mode of the drill system."—(Vol. iii. p. 747.)

In the following passage he notices a curious but generally received fact regarding the effect of different quantities of bones; but we quote chiefly on account of another observation at its close, which may be interesting to our southern readers:—

"I have tried to raise turnips with different quantities of bone-dust, varying from twelve, sixteen, twenty, and twenty-four bushels to the imperial acre, and have found the crop improved up to sixteen bushels; but any quantity beyond that, even to twenty-four bushels, produced no greater effect on the turnips in the same field, and on the same sort of soil, than sixteen bushels. Nay, more than this, my late agricultural preceptor, Mr George Brown, when he farmed Hetton Steads in Northumberland, raised as good crops of turnips as sixteen bushels of bone-dust, with only eight bushels of bone-dust, combined with an indefinite quantity of sifted dry coal-ashes; and yet eight bushels of bone-dust, or an indefinite quantity of coal-ashes applied separately, produced a very poor crop of turnips. It is therefore unnecessary, in so far as the crop of turnips is concerned, to sow more than sixteen bushels of bone-dust alone, or eight bushels with coal-ashes, or perhaps street-manure. Both coal-ashes and street-manure, when proposed to be used with bone-dust, should be kept dry under cover, and sifted free of large lumps. * * *

"The very best mode of using bone-dust in small quantity, both for increasing the fertility of the soil and rearing a good crop, is to sow the seed along with it in drills already manured with farm-yard dung. The bone-dust secures a good and quick braird of the plant, and the dung supports it powerfully afterwards. This plan I would recommend to be pursued, particularly in England, on the land prepared for turnips in autumn; and were it practised, we need not despair of raising heavy crops of turnips, especially Swedes, on the strongest soils, and most certainly they would be obtained after thorough-draining."—(Vol. iii. pp. 748, 751.)

To the drop-drill as a means of husbanding manure, too little attention has hitherto been paid in Scotland. We strongly recommend, therefore, to the attention of the Scottish farmer, the following brief quotation:—

"The saving of manure, in the first instance, by the use of the drop-drill, appears to be considerable, since it has been frequently asserted that ten or twelve bushels of bone-dust per acre, will produce a braird equal, if not superior, to sixteen or eighteen bushels put in by the continuous mode. The subject is, therefore, of great importance, and calls for close observation; for if the drop system is really so important, it cannot be too widely adopted."—Vol. iii. p. 806.

We regret the necessity of passing over the remainder of this chapter on turnips. We merely extract the following mode of preventing the destructive attack of the turnip-fly, because, though the method has been heard of by many, it has been tried by comparatively few. Mr Stephens recommends

"To put the seeds for some time before they are sown amongst flour of sulphur, and sow the sulphur amongst them. The late Mr Airth informed me, that when he farmed the Mains of Dun, Forfarshire, his young turnip crops were often very much affected, and even destroyed, by these insects; but that, after he used the sulphur, he never suffered loss, though his neighbours did who would not use the same precaution, and that for as long as he possessed the farm afterwards, namely, fifteen years."—(Vol. iii. p. 772.)

It is also with regret that we pass over the making of butter and cheese, the chapter upon which we commend to the attention of our dairy farmers. The subjects of hay-making, liming and forming water meadows, we also pass; but we stop a moment at his chapter upon flax and hemp.

The culture of flax is now very much advocated both in Great Britain and Ireland; and we fear very erroneous notions are entertained and propagated regarding both the profit it is likely to yield to the farmer, and the effect it is fitted to produce upon the land. The following passage is not entirely free from objection, but it contains a great deal of truth and much common sense:—

"It has been proposed of late, with a considerable degree of earnestness, to encourage the growth of flax in Britain. The attempt was made some years ago and failed; but in the present instance it is recommended with the view of raising flax-seed for feeding cattle in sufficient quantity to render us independent of foreign oil-cake, of which, no doubt, large quantities are annually imported, but to what extent I have not been able to ascertain. The object of the suggestion is laudable, but the end, I fear, unattainable; for if good seed is raised to make good oil-cake, or compounds with oil, the flax will be coarse, and flax of inferior quality will never pay so well as corn: and it should never be lost sight of, in considering this question, that to raise flax must bring it into competition with white crops, and not green crops, because to raise it as a green crop would be to deteriorate its quality by bringing it into immediate contact with manure; and, on the other hand, if it is raised without manure as a fallow-crop, it must deteriorate the soil materially—no species of crop being more scourging to the soil than flax, not even a crop of turnip-seed. There is, therefore, this dilemma in the matter—the quality of the flax or of the seed must be sacrificed. The seed separately will not pay the expense of culture. Seed is produced from six to twelve bushels per acre. Taking the highest at twelve bushels, that is, one and a half quarter, and taking it also for granted that it all will be fit for sowing, and worth the highest current price of 60s. per quarter, the gross return would only be L.4, 10s. per acre. The flax-crop varies in weight of rough dried fibre, according to season and soil, from three to ten cwt. per acre; and taking the high produce, five cwt. per acre of dressed flax, at the highest price of L.6 per ton, the yield will be L.31, from which have to be deducted the expenses of beetling, scutching, and heckling, and waste and loss of straw for manure, and the profit will not exceed L.8 per acre; but though such a profit would certainly repay the expenses of cultivation, yet it presents the most favourable view that can be taken, even with the sacrifice of the entire loss of seed—the loss, in fact, of the greatest inducement for renewing the culture of the plant. In Ireland the case, I believe, will be the same, though much of the soil of that country, being mossy, is more favourable to the growth of flax than that of England or Scotland; yet even there it will be found impracticable to raise good flax and good seed from the same piece of ground at the same time; and if the seed is not good, the oil-cake will be bad."—(Vol. iii. p. 1046.)

Among the arguments in favour of the extensive culture of flax, now urged by so many, we are sorry to see a scientific one lately put forth by our friend Dr Kane of Dublin, and which has been much vaunted and relied upon by himself, and by those for whose benefit the opinion was propounded. The proposal is, it will be recollected, to carry off the stalk of the flax crop, and to convert the seed into manure. This is the same thing as carrying off the straw of a corn crop, and eating or otherwise converting the grain into manure upon the farm. Every one knows that carrying off the straw will exhaust the land, as will also carrying off the stalk of the lint. But, says Dr Kane, I have analysed the steeped and dressed flax, and find that it contains very little of what the plant peculiarly draws from the soil. This is left for the most part in the pond in which the flax is steeped, or at the mill where the flax is dressed. Therefore, to carry off the flax is not necessarily to exhaust the soil. You have only to collect the shows of the flax mill, and pump out the water from the steeping hole, and apply both to the land, and you restore to it all that the crop has taken off.

Now there is a fallacy in supposing that all that is taken from the land would in this way be restored—one which the advocates of this non-exhausting view are of course not anxious to discover; but, supposing the result and conclusions correct, what are they worth in practice? It is only a little bit of fireside farming. What practical good has come out of it? Put all the steeping water upon the land! Have any of the members of the flax societies tried this? Then let them tell us how it is to be done—what it cost—what was the result and the profit of the application. They use this prescription as an argument to induce men to introduce an exhausting culture, and they take no means to introduce first a general employment of those means by which it is said that the naturally exhausting effect of the culture may be prevented. What our friend Dr Kane has said and done is in perfect good faith; the form which his opinions have assumed upon paper, has arisen solely from the want of a sufficient knowledge of the usages and capabilities of sound and profitable practical husbandry. If we cannot persuade our farmers to collect and apply to the land the liquid manure of their farm-yards, when can we hope to persuade them to empty their flax-ponds for the purpose of watering their fields? Can we ever hope soon to persuade them to preserve and use up the thousands of tons of shows that are now yearly sent down the streams by which our flax mills are set in motion?

We are far from saying that flax or any other crop may not be grown without necessarily exhausting the soil—chemistry, we know, will by-and-by put all this within our power; but we are very much of Mr Stephens' opinion, that our English and Irish flax societies do not as yet clearly see their way to that end, and that unintentionally they will lead many to inflict a permanent injury upon their land, without any adequate compensation to themselves, their landlords, or the country.

We had marked the early cutting of corn in harvest as a subject of general importance to practical men, and that of the smearing of sheep, so interesting especially to our northern agriculturists; and we wished to confirm Mr Stephens' recommendations upon those points by some observations of our own; but we are compelled to leave the chapter which treats upon them to the private consideration of our readers.

We quote the following passage from the chapter on fertilizing the soil by means of manure, as containing much good common sense:—

"Dung is applied at the commencement of every rotation of crops with the fallow green-crops, and with bare fallow; and when applied at any other time, it is near the termination of a long rotation. A rule for the quantity of farm-yard dung to be applied according to the length of the rotation, as given by Dr Coventry, is, that five tons per acre are required every year to sustain the fertility of soil; and, therefore, land which is dunged every four years in a rotation of four courses, should receive with the fallow-crop twenty tons per acre; in a five-course shift, twenty-five tons; in a six-course shift, thirty tons, and so on. These quantities constitute, no doubt, a sufficient manuring to ordinary crops; but it appears to me to be reversing the order of propriety, to give land under the severest shift—a four-course one—the smallest modicum of manure, when it should receive the largest; for there is surely truth in the observation, that land grazed with stock becomes ameliorated in condition—actually increased in fertility. A six-course shift, therefore, having three years of grazing, should require less instead of more manure even at a time than a four-course one on land of similar quality."—(Vol. iii. pp. 1230, 1231.)

The chapter on the points of stock—cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses—would of itself have afforded us materials for an interesting article. Breeding and crossing of stock, both so necessary to be well understood by those who would breed for profit, are also ably discussed by our author; and it is only want of space which prevents us from quoting from this chapter.

But there are some kinds of live cattle which of themselves breed too fast even for Mr Stephens; and these he as anxiously instructs his readers how to exterminate. Among these are rats, in regard to the destruction of which the following passage will interest our readers:—

"Of all the modes I ever witnessed rats being killed, none equalled that of a Yorkshireman, of the name of John Featherston, by means of steel-traps. He had twenty-one small steel-traps, which he kept clean and bright. He soon traced the tracks of rats along the floor to a corner, or on the tops of walls, leading commonly by the corners of apartments to the partition wall, which they surmounted between it and the slates; the very place which I have recommended the filling up, to break off such communications. After he had discovered the different runs of the animals, he made a number of small firm bundles of straw, which he placed against the bottom of a wall where the run was on a floor, and upon its top where the run was to the roof. He used seven traps at one place at a time, and a sufficient number of bundles of straw was used to conceal that number of traps at each place, employing the entire number of traps in three places, at a little distance from each other, and in different apartments. The traps were set, but not allowed to spring at first, and baited with oatmeal, scented with oil of rhodium, and placed in a row, with a little chaff over them, in the run behind the bundles of straw. The traps were baited for two days, the baits being replenished as soon as it was discovered, by inspection, that a bait disappeared. On the third day the traps were baited as before, but the restriction was removed from the spring, and then began the capture. In all the three days, people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the apartments in which the traps were placed, and dogs were entirely excluded. Removing the check from the spring, from one set of traps after another, armed with short stout stick, and furnished with a bag slung from his shoulder, Featherston put himself on the alert, and the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it, removed the bundle of straw, knocked the rat on the head if alive, threw it out of the trap, set it again, replaced the bundle again, put the rat into the bag, and was again on the watch from one place to another. In the course of the third day, from morning to the afternoon, he had collected 385 rats in the bag, and allowing all the traps to have done equal execution, each had caught more than eighteen rats in the course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food, and in three days he earned his food and L.1, 12s. 1d.—such was his expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by this capture; but they received such a thinning, as to be comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business, on the day following the capture, was to clean each trap bright before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other circumstance—that the suspicion of the rats, I suppose, of the danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows in fields, and commits ravages on growing crops, whether of corn or turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland, and assisted at routing them with spade and terrier, but have never heard of their having taken to the fields in Scotland."

Farm book-keeping is a subject too little attended to by our practical men. In our own neighbourhood we know that keeping books is the exception—keeping none is the rule. The smaller farmers know the state of their affairs only by the money they have in their hands at certain seasons of the year. But, as better systems of husbandry spread, this lax method of carrying on business must be discarded. Husbandry is becoming more and more an experimental art. New trials must now be made, year after year, by those who would hope to live and thrive; and it is only those who keep regular accounts of the outlay upon each trial, and the income from it, who can know what methods and manures they ought to adopt, and what to reject from a system of profitable husbandry.

Upon this subject Mr Stephens is entirely of our opinion, and he gives very copious examples of the way in which books ought to be kept.

Such is a hasty sketch of the contents of the book, in so far as the farming part of it is concerned. The way in which the work is illustrated by 608 woodcuts and 33 plates, by eminent artists, is as creditable to the publishers as the matter of the book is to the author.

To the full and accurate descriptions of agricultural implements—to the illustration of which many of these woodcuts and plates are devoted—we feel ourselves wholly unable to do justice. That they are all from the pen and pencil of Mr Slight, will, to those who know him, be a better recommendation than any words of ours.

There is only one other test to which, in criticising the work before us, we are entitled to put it. It contains much useful matter, but is it likely, is it fitted, to answer the end which the author had in view? His object, he says, was to put into the hands of young men desirous of learning practical farming, a manual from which, being upon a farm, they would be able to learn all that was necessary to fit them for the several successive stations to which the industrious son even of a farm-labourer may fairly hope to rise. This we think he has accomplished, and in that graphic and living way which has all along led us into the persuasion that Mr Stephens must himself have "played many parts," and entered into the feeling and spirit of them all.

When he speaks of the shepherd and his dog, and of driving stock to market, he seems to look back with much satisfaction, almost with regret, to the time when he himself served as a drover, and took his cattle to the South over the cold Northumbrian moors. He delights to linger by the way, and tells you where you will still get the best gill on your road, and how it will be safest for you to make the last glass you take into toddy, before you go to bed. We think he must often have taken up his night's quarters at Tommy Robson's on the Reed Water, on his travels by Watling Street to the Stagshaw Bank Fair.

Then he changes the scene for us. He is a ploughman for the time. He tells how he managed his horses, guided his plough, turned over his furrows, mended his harness, and how three times a-day he fed heartily and well upon his oatmeal brose, and was healthy and strong in limb, happy in mind, and free from care. We question if he is heartier or happier now.

Next we find him writing like one who has been promoted to the rank of grieve or farm-steward. He has assumed the tone and look of a man who has responsibility upon his shoulders—who has graver duties to perform, and from whom more is expected. He tells us how he manages his men, apportions their hours of labour, and distributes to each his appropriate quantity and time of work. The scene shifts, and we see him in the market selling his corn. He wants threepence a bushel more, and he will hold out till he gets it. His sample is good, for his land has been well managed, and his grain well cleaned; he knows what his article is worth, as things are going in the market, and he will be an old corn-merchant who takes him in.

Or he has stock to sell, and there he goes into the whisky shop to finish his bargain. You heard him ask ten shillings more than he meant to take? That was because he knew the buyer was a higgler, and would have left him at once had he refused to come down in his price. Now they are gravely discussing the point over the gill-stoup. They are within half-a-crown now. Another gill will close the bargain. It is finished; the buyer is pleased; and our grieve is five shillings richer than if the bargain had been closed briefly and in the open air.

He is not a bad writer for a practical man who enables you, in a book upon farming, to call up successive transactions in a manner so vivid as this.

Next, he wishes to become a farmer on his own account, and he looks about for a farm that will suit him. On this subject he has an excellent chapter in his third volume. He has been faithful to his master, and now he acts honourably towards his equals:—

"Here," he says, "let me mention at the outset, that it is considered amongst farmers a dishonourable act to look at a farm, until you are, in the first place, assured that it is in the market. To do so, until you certainly know that the tenant in possession is to leave it, or at any rate, until it is advertised in the public prints, or otherwise declared to be in the market, whether the possessing tenant wishes to take it again or not, is an unfeeling act, and regarded as equivalent to telling him that you wish to take the farm over his head. Such an act would be as unbecoming as to intrude yourself into a house in town, which you think would suit you, to look at its internal arrangement, before you are aware the possessing tenant is leaving it, by the usual announcement of the ticket."—(Vol. iii. p. 1304).

But having obtained possession of a farm, he enquires, can I now make money for myself—quickly but honourably—in a way that will be at once creditable to myself, beneficial to my landlord, and of advantage to my country?

Two points Mr Stephens insists upon as indispensable to the making of money in this creditable way. The tenant must keep his land clean, and he must farm it high. Those who make most money in each district—their natural prudence being alike—are those who are kindest to the land. Use me well, says the soil every where, and I will use you well in return.

In other parts of his work he rises to the station of a land-steward. He discusses, in a clear and judicious manner, large agricultural questions—he writes with the gravity and thoughtfulness of one whose business it is to superintend and regulate extensive improvements, and to look after the proceedings and modes of farming of a large body of tenantry. This, indeed, we hope and trust will be the case with many of those who carefully read, learn, and inwardly digest the lessons and precepts of his book; for in whatever capacity it may be their lot to minister to the welfare and progress of agriculture, they will find aid and assistance and counsel from the Book of the Farm.

It is, indeed, in very many cases of much importance that a better instructed race of men should be entrusted with the immediate management of the larger estates of the country. We have met with many skilful and intelligent members of this class, many able to understand, and advise, and superintend the most enlightened improvements, and to conduct them to a prosperous and economical issue. But the mass of these men in our island is not up to the knowledge of the time; too many of them are almost entirely ignorant of the most elementary principles of agriculture. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when a landholder is contented to place this delicate management in the hands of his retired butler, or his failing groom, or even of his solicitor or attorney, who has been bred up to a totally different profession? If law and medicine require separate schools and training, so do farming and the management of estates, if they are to be farmed to a profit, or managed with economy and skill.

But the purpose of our book does not end with the mere practical man. It professes, and is fitted, to instruct the proprietor too. How much have the landlords yet to learn? Which of them has ever, at school or college, had an opportunity of obtaining any instruction in regard to what was to be the occupation and support of his after life! Some do indeed, when they settle on their estates, apply themselves, by reading and otherwise, to make up their deficiencies, and to fit themselves for the new and useful sphere in which they are called to move. But in broad England, how few are the landlords who know the principles on which their land ought to be cultivated—who feel an enlightened interest in the prosperity and real advancement of agriculture—who understand how to set a useful, and prudent, and enlightened example to their tenantry! If knowledge such as that contained in the book before us require to be diffused among the humble walks of agricultural life, it is no less necessary, we are assured, among those who frequent its highest places.

But a spirit not only of improvement, but of eager searching after knowledge, has sprung up among the entire agricultural body. From our own experience we say this; for we have seen with delight the eager eyes of listening audiences, for whole hours, fixed upon a single speaker, who was attempting zealously and simply, to instruct them. And it is those of the agricultural body who already know most, among whom this eagerness is observed to be most intense. They have tasted of the value of the new lights which recent science especially has thrown upon agricultural practice, and they are eager for the acquisition of more.

We are proud to say, that the first decided proof of this desire for higher knowledge has been manifested among the farmers and proprietors of Scotland. The Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland is their work. Through this association they have professedly attached chemistry and geology and physiology to the car of practical agriculture; and under the guidance of these sciences, the art of culture will not long lag behind her sister arts, for which these sciences have already done so much. We have before us a list of the members of this patriotic association. In this list we find the names of nearly every man in Scotland who is at all known to agricultural fame. If there be a few whose names we miss, the reason probably is, that they hardly yet know much of its existence; for it has only just finished its first year of active life. The new list of another year will contain the names of all who are really alive to the wants and capabilities of our national agriculture.

We are sincerely desirous for the credit and advancement of Scottish agriculture. We are, therefore, anxious that no means should be left untried to keep up the perhaps artificially high character which the natural intelligence and shrewdness of the Scottish nation has gained for the practical farmers of the country. Granting, what we have ourselves seen, that there is much good farming and well-farmed land to the north of the Tweed, we cannot deny there is also much neglected land and much unskilful tillage. Though much has been improved in this end of the island, there is far more still almost in a state of nature. Hitherto the high-roads of the country have gone through such pleasant places as lie between the Pease bridge and Edinburgh; but the railroads now projected will lay open the waste and neglected tracts of country to southern eyes, and the agricultural reputation of Scotland may suffer a rude shock in English estimation. We are not the less good patriots while we agree with Mr Stephens, that there is a greater breadth of skilfully farmed land in England than in Scotland, and that the germ of all, or nearly all, our improvements, has been drawn from the South. Give England her due, and Scotland has still much to be proud of in picking up a germ here and a germ there, and unfolding and developing these germs under her own colder sky, and, almost against nature, conquering for herself fruitful fields and a high agricultural reputation.

But England and Ireland having awoke to new exertions in improving their soil, we in the North must open our eyes too. We must, if possible, keep the name we have acquired. If our practice is faulty, let us amend it—if our science is defective, let us enlarge it. "Science with practice," is the well-conceived motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; such a motto, we hope, all Scottish farmers will adopt. Let them conjoin the science of the books of Johnston with the practice of that of Stephens, and they may still hope, as a body, to occupy the foremost rank among the agriculturists of Europe.

STANZAS.

LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE.[30]

In a late number of this Magazine we took occasion, under a different title, to notice the two first volumes of this highly interesting work. We have seen how Lord Malmesbury conducted himself, in his diplomatic capacity, at the different courts of Europe under the ancien régime. It is difficult for the men of this generation—whose historic era, traditionary or remembered, commences with the outbreak of the French Revolution—to realize in imagination the exhausted, broken, and unhealthy state of Europe during the middle, and towards the end, of the last century. Balance of power there was none. The leading continental states, when not in actual arms, looked upon each other with eyes of the most bitter jealousy. When they did combine, it was for some unholy purpose, such as the partition of Poland; and no sooner had they brought down their quarry, than, like the Lanzknechts of old—to use no more brutal simile—they began to bandy words and blows for their relative proportions of the spoil. Good faith was a thing unknown either to prince or to minister. To trick an ally was considered almost as meritorious a deed as to undermine or defeat an enemy. In short it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to point out any period when public morality was at so low and pitiable an ebb.

In some respects the older continental states—leaving France, for the present, out of the question—were less to blame than the newer powers, who were then struggling forward with the keenness of fresh competitors, and claiming a recognition of importance which had never been accorded them before. In the first class we would rank Austria, Holland, and Sweden; in the second, Russia and Prussia. The Muscovite, unequalled in extent of territorial possession—exhibiting much of barbaric splendour with but little of real civilization—sought to extend his unwieldy power still further, and to gain a position within the heart of Europe by extending his conquests towards the west. Prussia, circumscribed in territory, organized herself as a military state. To this one end all other considerations were, in the first instance, sacrificed; but when it was attained, she withdrew the mask, and exhibited herself in her real character—the most unscrupulous of neighbours, the most fickle and perfidious of allies. Environed with small and defenceless states, she never lost an opportunity of aggrandizing herself at their expense, no matter what amount of mutual treaties had intervened. Even defeat she could turn to her account, by purchasing peace with an enemy upon such terms as surrendered half of a neighbouring territory to the invader, and secured the remainder to herself. Even when her interest called upon her to unite with other European powers against a common foe, she refused to act upon her own resources, and, unless subsidized, remained sullen and inactive at home. In this situation was the Continent at the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The success of the Republican arms in France during the year 1793, of which the capture of Toulon was the crowning point, naturally created in the minds of the British ministry the liveliest apprehension and alarm. England alone, of all the European states, was in a sound and healthy condition. Her finances were unimpaired, her resources large, her credit almost unbounded. William Pitt, the greatest minister whom this country has ever known, was then at the helm of public affairs. The nation—though some individuals had not escaped the taint—was opposed to the principles of the French Republic, and disgusted with its attendant atrocities. Our insular position, and our acknowledged supremacy of the seas, were sufficient safeguards against a direct attack; but the immediate danger lay with the Continent. Amidst all the strife of faction and democracy, France was progressing towards conquest. Rumour told of armies—undisciplined, perhaps, and ill-appointed, but officered by men of undoubted talent, and inspired by an enthusiasm which carried all before them—crowding towards the eastern frontier of France, and hanging there like a thundercloud, portentous of coming devastation. What was there to meet this tide of threatened invasion? Nothing save a heptarchy of tottering states, weak in themselves, without concert, and without coalition—discontent amongst the lower orders, dissatisfaction with the things that had been, and an evident leaning towards the things that might be—the new doctrines and the new revelation. For it is well to remark, that whatever any state might have gained by treachery or violence, did demoralize, but certainly did not better the social condition of the people. The wind had set in from the west, and was carrying across Europe, even to the boundary of the Borysthenes, sparks and flakes of fire from the great conflagration of France. There was no lack of fuel to maintain an extended combustion, and those whose duty it was to quench it, were unprepared or unwilling for the task.

The result of the operations of the allied forces upon and within the frontier of France, is well known. After some success, the sole consequence of which was to increase the jealousy which already subsisted between the Austrian and the Prussian, the Republican army succeeded in driving back the enemy, and establishing themselves upon the Rhine. It was at this moment, when the danger was at its height, and all Germany, besides Holland and the Netherlands, was exposed to the terrors of invasion, that Frederick William of Prussia, actuated by a policy at once base and suicidal, announced his intention of withdrawing his troops from the ranks of the confederacy, in total violation of the defensive treaty of 1787. It is somewhat difficult now, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, to get at the real grounds of this disgraceful proceeding. The principal alleged cause was the exhausted state of the Prussian treasury, which, it was said, rendered it absolutely impracticable for the king to maintain in the field, without subsidy, the contingent of troops which he had solemnly bound himself to furnish for the general defence of the Continent. It nowhere appears that any exertion was made to recruit the Prussian finances. By the partition of Poland, that State had acquired the accession of a large and most valuable territory, worth something surely by way of mortgage, or if not, at least a ready magazine of supplies. But all this availed nothing. Prussia professed herself ready to take whatever subsidy England, or any other power, might furnish towards the maintenance of her troops—otherwise they were not to reckon longer upon her co-operation and support. This proposition was made broadly, shamelessly, and without any diplomatic circumlocution. "Jacobi, Prussian minister, (at London,) gave in a kind of memorial, expressive of his Prussian Majesty's intention not to grant the succours we had asked for, and declining all general interference in the war, without being largely paid." So much for defensive treaties!

At this crisis, the British ministry—fully impressed with the paramount importance of isolating, in so far as might be, the republican contagion within the confines of France, and preventing it from spreading further—requested Lord Malmesbury, as the fittest and most experienced diplomatist whose services they could command, to proceed on a special mission to the court of Berlin, and attempt by every means in his power to recall the king from his false and unnatural position. So great seemed the necessity of accommodation, that England was inclined to accede, perhaps too much, to the demands of her ally, rather than allow the war upon which so much depended to be so meanly and pitifully abandoned. The following extract from Lord Grenville's instructions will show the spirit which actuated our ministry. "If the alleged distress of the king of Prussia's treasury is wholly feigned, it will in that case be evident, that the determination of the king of Prussia is taken rather to break his alliance with the maritime powers, and to risk the dangers which may result from the final establishment of the Jacobin principles in France, than to contribute to the indemnification which Austria has in view. In that case, all attempts at other arrangements must be useless, and nothing will remain to be done, except to insist on the succours being furnished; and, in case of non-compliance with that demand, to prepare the declaration necessary to be given in for the purpose of annulling the defensive treaty. If, on the other hand, the pecuniary difficulties which are stated have a real existence, the disposition to co-operate further in the war may still exist; and, in that case, some advantage might be derived from the adoption of such arrangements as might enable his majesty to contribute towards removing those difficulties, and securing the king of Prussia's co-operation in the war, but without departing from the just claims resulting from the existing treaty." The reciprocal feelings of Austria and Prussia are thus significantly noticed in another part of the same document. "With respect to Austria, I must observe to your lordship, that the utmost jealousy prevails between the two courts of Vienna and Berlin; that the former has certainly been deceived by the extent given to the late acquisitions of Prussia in Poland; and that the latter is unquestionably desirous of checking, at least by indirect means, the plans of indemnity which the emperor is now pursuing towards France." With Holland and Austria, Lord Malmesbury was ordered, in all his negotiations with the Prussian court, to keep himself in intimate concert; in fact, it seems to have been expected, that if these powers went cordially along with England, Prussia durst not adopt a step which would have exposed her to summary chastisement. It might have been well if such a threat had been intimated directly; but England had not yet learned to appreciate her own unbounded resources, and to rely with confidence upon herself. Afterwards, as at Copenhagen and elsewhere, she adopted the true method of dealing with a false ally, or a suspected neutral. At the beginning of the war, she transacted with other states on the belief that they were actuated by the same honourable feelings as herself—that they regarded treaties as inviolable—that they were ready, for the general good, to sacrifice something of private interest. It is needless to say how often and how cruelly she was deceived!

Before setting out on his mission, Lord Malmesbury had a personal interview with George III., and received from him, verbally, some private instructions, which are most worthy of preservation. Far too little justice has been done to the manly intellect of that king. Stubborn he may have been, and wedded to opinions which, in this age at least, may not be favourably regarded by the million; but this, at least, we can fearlessly say—that every thought, every sentiment, every action of his life, bore the impress of a high and noble mind—that he was an Englishman in the best sense of the word, bold, and resolute, and sincere; and those who value the free and just constitution of this country and its greatness, have cause to bless Providence that so faithful a sovereign occupied the throne during a period of anarchy which threatened to revolutionize the world, to uproot the Christian faith, and to engulf Europe, perhaps irrevocably, in the horrors of a Reign of Terror. How clear and king-like is the following language! "A few clear words are better, perhaps, than long instructions. I believe that the king of Prussia is an honest man at the bottom, although a weak one. You must first represent to him, that if he allows his moral character the same latitude in his explanation of the force of treaties, as he has allowed it in other still more sacred ties," (referring to his marriage,) "all good faith is at an end, and no engagement can be binding. You must then state to him how much his honour is engaged in joining in this business, in not giving up a cause in which he had begun so nobly. Then you should apply to his interest, that the event of the war must either fail or succeed; that if he withdrew himself from the number of coalesced powers, in either case he would suffer from leaving them. In the first case, (the fate of the war,) he perhaps would be the first to feel the consequences of suffering this Tartarian horde to overrun Europe. In the second, if we succeed, he certainly might be sure, that not having contributed his share to the success would put him, in respect to the other powers, in a situation of consideration and want of consequence, and that he would not be consulted or referred to in the general system of Europe, when that became a matter of discussion. That if you fail in referring him to these three great points, his integrity, his honour, and his interest, it will be certain nothing can be done; and although I have the greatest confidence in your skill and abilities, yet I shall rest assured in that case that no skill nor any ability would be equal to success."

Thus instructed and accredited, Lord Malmesbury set off for Berlin by way of Holland. He found the Dutch in considerable anxiety at the state of the campaign, and ready to co-operate with England in any measure for maintaining the alliance intact. At Frankfort, the monetary market of Germany, he ascertained that the amount of treasure still left in the Prussian treasury was estimated at forty-one or forty-two millions of dollars; so that the plea of poverty advanced upon the part of the king was evidently false. Immediately on his arrival at Berlin, he obtained an interview with Frederick William; and the replies of that king to the remonstrance of the British minister are abundantly curious. He disclaimed all idea of lukewarmness or indifference to the results of the war, was loud in his profession of amity to Great Britain, but wound up with the anticipated excuse—"You will, I am sure, believe me when I tell you, on the faith of an honest man, (and for being one, I hope the king your master will give me credit,) I have not in my treasury enough to pay the expenses of a third campaign. Those I have incurred since my accession are not unknown to you. You also know that the late king strained the resources to their highest pitch; that I cannot raise a new tax on my subjects; that to attempt it would drive them to the worst consequences; and that the nature of the Prussian monarchy is such that it cannot bear a loan. In short, that without my allies come to my assistance, and afford me pecuniary support, I shall be compelled to stop short in the war.

"I have not exhausted my treasure in idle and useless expenses; it has been employed in forwarding measures which related to the general interests of Europe, as well as to the particular ones of Prussia. It cannot be those of England to see me degraded and sunk; and this certainly, joined to my high notion of your national character, leaves me without apprehension as to the consequences of the declaration I make, which I repeat to be the sole and real cause of my apparent backwardness in continuing the war."

It is now clear, far beyond cavil or doubt, that this sovereign's estimate of the national character of the English, was much akin to Major Dalgetty's appreciation of the Dutch—"They are the best paymasters in Europe." Dalgetty, however, had one merit which we fear that history must deny to the King of Prussia. He gave his service for his employer's money, and was scrupulously true to his articles. Frederick William, on the contrary, was bent upon receiving a subsidy, whilst, at the same time, he or his ministers were attempting to negotiate a private treaty with France. These facts come out most glaringly in the Malmesbury papers. The envoy seems to have felt all along that he was treading on the most slippery ground, that no reliance could be placed upon the faith or integrity of the court with which he now had to deal; and yet circumstances were of so pressing a nature, that he dared not, while the smallest chance of success remained, abandon the progress of the negotiation. The sentiments of the King of Prussia with regard to his nearest neighbour, may be understood from the following entry in Lord Malmesbury's diary:—"Dec. 28, 1793. Supper at Prince-Royal's. King told me of bad news from Wurmser's army—that he had lost two battalions and twenty-one pieces of cannon. He seemed rather pleased with this bad news; but admitted that it would do harm by raising the spirits of the Jacobins." In a note appended to this passage, it is added, that "this feeling of hatred towards Austria was shared by every minister at Berlin, and every officer in the Prussian army, and rendered all our efforts to combine effectually the two nations against the French unavailing."

The prospects of the Allies became daily more gloomy. Wurmser, the Austrian general, was driven back, the blockade of Landau raised, and this moment was selected by the Prussian king and his ministers to force a subsidy under the significant threat of an entire withdrawal of his army, which for the present remained in a state of suspicious inactivity. Russia at this juncture came forward to interfere. The Prince de Nassau, a spurious dignitary and favourite of Catharine, arrived at Berlin with a communication for Frederick William, urging him in the strongest manner to act in concert with his allies, and representing very forcibly that the partition of Poland, and the engagements he contracted for his share, obliged him to continue the war, and that his own declarations and manifestoes from the first, by his own confession, made him a principal in it. Notwithstanding this good advice, the Empress cautiously abstained on hinting at pecuniary succours, being probably aware that a Russian subsidy would answer his majesty's purpose as well as one from England. Early in the year 1794, the Duke of Brunswick resigned the command of the Prussian forces. He was succeeded by Marshal Möllendorff—a soldier of some reputation, but old, testy, and pragmatical.

After much time wasted in preliminaries, and continued threats on the part of Prussia to withdraw immediately from the alliance unless subsidies were forthcoming, Lord Malmesbury was empowered to make the following proposals: Two millions sterling were to be given to the King of Prussia to bring 100,000 men into the field. Of this sum England was to furnish two-fifths, or £800,000; Austria and Holland, each one-fifth; and the remainder was to be considered as an advance from Prussia, to be reimbursed by France at the restoration of peace. Munificent as this proposal may appear—and it really was so when the relative situation of the parties is considered—it did not at first sight appear large enough to satisfy the craving appetite of Frederick William, who, in a private interview with Lord Malmesbury, had the assurance to demand for the proposed succours no less a sum than twenty millions of dollars, without reckoning the "bread and forage!" The firm conduct and resolute tone of Lord Malmesbury, seem at last to have convinced the rapacious monarch that in grasping at too much he might lose all; and, after a great deal of shabby negotiation and bargaining, a settlement was nearly effected on the original terms. Austria, however, positively declined to become bound for any part of the subsidy—we doubt not for sufficient reasons. Holland, in more alarm, was willing to contribute her share; but so many impediments were thrown in the way of a settlement by the machinations of the French party at Berlin, that Lord Malmesbury found it indispensable to quit that court and conclude the negotiation at the Hague. He was accompanied thither by the Prussian minister, Haugwiz—a man whose character for honesty must be left to the verdict of posterity—and on the nineteenth April 1794, a treaty was concluded between Prussia, Holland, and England, by which the former power was bound to furnish an army of 62,000 men, under a Prussian commander-in-chief, to be subsidized by the other states, and to serve against their common enemies. The maritime powers agreed to pay his Prussian majesty £50,000 per month to the end of the year, £300,000 to put the army in motion, and £100,000 on its return home. All conquests made were to be at the disposal of the maritime powers.

Thus did Prussia, vaunting herself to be peculiarly the military power of Europe, sell the services of her army for hire, with as little reservation as ever did the mercenary troops of Switzerland or Brabant. The very idea of such an individual transaction carries with it something degrading; as a state-bargain, it is humiliation. One quality only can be brought forward to redeem the sellers of their national armies from contempt, and that is the most scrupulous fidelity to the cause of the parties from whom they have accepted their hire. There is no treachery so base as the desertion of a paid ally.

Immediately after the treaty was signed, Lord Malmesbury was recalled to London "for information." The advantage which was taken in the absence of this clear-sighted and able diplomatist, may be gathered from subsequent events. We doubt however, whether, had he remained on the spot, he could have counteracted the evils, which appear to us more the result of a preconceived intention to betray, than the sudden consequence of a plot, or the predominance of a new hostile party in the court or cabinet of Berlin. On the 27th of May, the first instalment of the subsidy, £300,000, was remitted from the British Treasury. About the same time, Lord Malmesbury returned to Holland, and renewed his entreaty, through Haugwiz, that the Prussian army might be put in motion. This was positively refused, until advice was received of the payment of the subsidy at Berlin. Frederick William had removed to Poland to look after his ill-gotten possessions. His minister, Haugwiz, very shortly retired to Berlin, and never returned. Möllendorff, in command of the army, peremptorily refused, in the face of the treaty, and of the apparent commands of his master, to leave the Rhine, and take up his position in the Low Countries—in short, he would obey no orders, and did all in his power to thwart and counteract the Austrian. Meanwhile, the French advanced in irresistible power. On the 26th of June they were victorious at Fleury—a battle which established the reputation of General Jourdain, and settled the fate of the Netherlands. In Flanders, Moreau defeated Clairfait, and took Ypres. General Walmoden evacuated Bruges. The Duke of York was obliged to abandon Tournay and Oudenarde to their fate, and retired upon Antwerp on the 3d of July.

This was a period of great anxiety to Lord Malmesbury; for although there are many occasions wherein even the ablest diplomatist must fail, more especially when there is a total absence of good faith on the other side, yet the crisis was so alarming as to impress him with the sense of more than usual responsibility. The following extract from his diary will show his opinion of the Prussians:—"June 26. To Keyserlautern, Prussian headquarters—repetition of the same language—great, but shabby art and cunning—ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion. The marshal proposes a memorial to us, which we decline receiving, and he dispatches his first aide-de-camp, Meyerinck, to the King of Prussia, with his account of what we had said. (N.B.—It appears that these were exaggerated, and calculated to do mischief, and embroil the negotiation.") Shortly afterwards, he writes thus to the Duke of Portland:—"I must thank you on a separate sheet for your few confidential lines. If we listened only to our feelings, it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. But your opinion and that of Mr Pitt, is one of sound political wisdom, and I am well pleased it has prevailed. We must consider it as an alliance with the Algerines, whom it is no disgrace to pay, or any impeachment of good sense to be cheated by."

The ministry of Great Britain, however, found it necessary to come to an immediate and explicit understanding with the Prussians, who, though utterly useless and inactive, continued with the utmost punctuality to draw the monthly subsidy. A good opportunity was afforded by the conduct of the Prussian minister at London, who, with unparalleled effrontery, took upon himself to complain of the manner in which the late treaty had been executed with reference to the disposition of the forces. Lord Grenville's reply was decided. If the treaty had not hitherto been punctually executed, it was notorious to all Europe, that the failure had not been on the part of England. The British resident at Berlin was further desired to intimate, "that the continuance of the liberal subsidy granted by his majesty will depend solely on the faithful execution of the engagement taken by Marshal Möllendorff, and on the efficient service of the Prussian army under his command." This announcement led to a conference between Baron Hardenberg on the part of Prussia, and Lord Malmesbury and Baron Kinckel as representing Great Britain and Holland. Hardenberg began with the usual assurances of the continued good wishes and intentions of his king, who, he said, had been deceived by a cabal, but who would, so soon as the Polish war was over, return to Berlin, and then every thing would go well. He further proposed that Lord Malmesbury should return to Berlin, and resume his negotiations there.

"This was said to Kinckel and me with a clear and evident view to prevail on us to renew the subsidy treaty, as the term of its expiration draws near, and as the court of Berlin is uneasy at our negotiations at Vienna, and apprehensive of the event of an attack on Warsaw. It was too thinly veiled not to be seen through. I therefore answered, that I was fearful the evil was done; that if the king and his ministers had acted up to the sentiments M. Hardenberg now mentioned, or even if I saw a sincere disposition of doing it now, by Möllendorff's army really acting, it certainly would be good grounds to hope, but that this was not the case.

"Hardenberg employed every argument, and every trick, within the narrow compass of his means, to persuade me they were earnestly anxious to unite with us, and disposed to rectify their past behaviour; but I remained firm, and absolutely declined giving in to a belief of it.

"This led him to say that we could not do without the Prussians, and that we must continue the subsidy; that, therefore, it was wisest and best to do it in the manner the most useful and conciliatory. I replied, that without deciding on this strong question of necessity, I could not but observe that, by stating it as an argument, he brought his court on a level with the lowest German prince, and supposed it to be actuated by principles like those of the dey of Algiers; and that, if necessity was to decide the measure, it required no negotiation, it would do itself, and I felt myself by no means in a rank to conduct such a business."

On the 1st of October, instructions arrived from England to suspend the subsidy; and on the 25th of the same month, Baron Hardenberg, on the part of Prussia, declared the treaty at an end, which was followed by a direct order from the king to withdraw his army altogether. On the 2d of November, Lord Malmesbury received his recall.

We have been induced to dwell somewhat minutely upon this singular negotiation, because its details have never yet been placed with sufficient clearness before the public. We are now, for the first time, admitted, through the medium of the Malmesbury papers, to a sight of the hidden machinery, by means of which the colossal panorama of Europe was made so ominously to revolve. Much is there, too, of importance, and useful for the future, in the portraitures of national bad faith and individual worthlessness which appear throughout the whole transaction. Prussia was fortunate in her subsequent miseries. These, and these alone, have made the pen of the historian, and the tongue of the orator, slow to denounce the enormous measure of her perfidy. Throughout the whole of this negotiation, on the result of which the destinies of Europe for a quarter of a century were doomed to depend, there is not one single bright spot of candour or of honesty to relieve the darkness of the picture. In comparison with such treachery, Pennsylvanian repudiation is venial. The subsidy, out of which England was swindled, was for the most part applied to the further subjugation of Poland—the troops, for which she had contracted and paid, were used as an impediment to, and not in furtherance of, her designs. The language employed by the Prussian minister, Hardenberg, at his last interview with Lord Malmesbury, was that of a sturdy freebooter, who, far from seeking to conceal his real character, takes glory in his shame, and demands a compulsory tribute for what he is pleased to denominate protection. It may be said that Prussia afterwards redeemed her error. We cannot see it. To the last she remained a gripping, faithless, avaricious power; and could she have coexisted equal with France, there is not a shadow of a doubt that she would have surpassed that country in her appetite for acquiring plunder. In 1806, under a different monarch, she made peace with Napoleon on the condition of acquiring Hanover, the hereditary dominions of the occupant of the British throne. It was only when the fact became evident that she was utterly mistrusted throughout Europe; that no state, even the most insignificant, could place any reliance upon her assurances; when, through her own conduct, France made no scruple of using her as a contemptible tool, and her old allies regarded her with looks of menace—that Prussia made a virtue of necessity by attempting to restore her independence. Even then her repentance was incomplete. Lord Morpeth, when sent, before the disastrous battle of Jena, on a special mission to the Prussian headquarters, found Frederick William III. so distracted between the option of a British subsidy on the one hand, and the cession of Hanover on the other, that, with the genuine feelings of an Englishman and a man of honour, he could scarce restrain his indignation in the presence of the vacillating king. In our mind, the videttes of Pichegru's army had a truer estimate than our own cabinet of the value of such an alliance, when they thus expressed themselves at the outposts:—"Englishmen, go home: you have no business here; you are too honest to be leagued with the Austrians and Prussians. They will soon leave you in the lurch; and as to the Hessians, the Landgrave will turn them all over to us to-morrow, if the Convention offers him a ducat a-day more than you now pay him!" Yet Austria is not chargeable with deceit—who will dare hereafter to say the like for Prussia?

Lord Malmesbury did not return immediately to England. At Hanover he received another mark of the confidence of his royal master, in a commission to demand the Princess Caroline of Brunswick in marriage for the Prince of Wales. This mission was conferred upon him directly by the king, and no discretionary power was given to offer information or advice either to the court or the government. It does not appear that the subject was ever mentioned to Lord Malmesbury before his credentials arrived; certain it is that he had no communication with the person most deeply interested in the alliance, and therefore no means of ascertaining his wishes or his motives. The Prince of Wales had never seen his cousin. Probably, beyond the false impression conveyed by a portrait, he knew nothing of her; for the little court of Brunswick was rarely visited by the English, and the military occupations of the Duke kept him almost constantly from home. It must ever be matter of deep regret that more prudence was not employed in the conduct of this unhappy business. Royal marriages are at best precarious; for there is too often a larger ingredient of policy than of affection in the alliance. This one needed not to have been a matter of policy. Neither the illustrious bridegroom, nor the kingdoms over which he was afterwards to rule, could derive any advantage from a more intimate connexion with the diminutive state of Brunswick. It is, therefore, almost incomprehensible that no precautions were taken, and no investigations made, before the prince was finally committed. Surely some one might have been found worthy to play the part of a Buckingham to the successor of Charles—some intimate of the prince, who, acquainted with his tastes and inclinations, might have visited Brunswick as a stranger, and, without betraying the actual nature of his mission, might have acquired a sufficient knowledge of the manners and character of the princess to frame an adequate report. Common prudence should have suggested this; but there is too much reason to fear that the match was the result of motives little creditable to other members of the royal family of England, and was not expected by them to secure the ultimate happiness of either party. This, at least, was the opinion of Lord Malmesbury, a shrewd observer, and well versed in the domestic politics of St James's. He says—"She (the princess) talks about the Duke of Clarence, whom she prefers to the Duke of York, and it struck me to-day, for the first time, that he originally put her into the prince's head; and that with a view to plague the Duke and Duchess of York, whom he hates, and whom the prince no longer likes, well knowing that the Princess Caroline and Duchess of York dislike each other; and that this match would be particularly unpleasant to her and the duke." Again, "Princess Caroline asks about the Duke of Clarence—says she believes he was the person who first mentioned her to the prince.—N.B. My own private ideas and feelings on this remark."

Endowed by nature with a good heart and some quickness of apprehension, this princess was as uneligible a personage as could possibly have been selected for so high a dignity as that of consort to the future king of Great Britain. Her education had been wretchedly neglected. She was vain, giddy, and imprudent; addicted to the society of persons infinitely beneath her rank, whom she treated with unbecoming familiarity; totally ignorant of the world and its usages, and withal something of a bavarde. She stood in awe of her father, who was an austere person, and, it is said, treated his children habitually with much severity. For her mother she had no respect, and did not scruple, when she could find an opportunity—which occurred but too often—to turn her into ridicule. Her conversation was that of a thorough gossip—her manners those of a flirt. She was disposed to be liberal, not from generosity, but from absolute carelessness—a fault which she extended to her person. Lord Malmesbury's first impressions of her are by far the most favourable; and yet it will be seen from these, that mediocrity was the utmost limit of her charms. "The Princess Caroline much embarrassed on my first being presented to her—pretty face—not expressive of softness—her figure not graceful—fine eyes—good hand—tolerable teeth, but going—fair hair and light eyebrows—good bust—short, with what the French call des épaules impertinentes." Her personal habits may be gathered from the following passages of the Diary:—

"Argument with the Princess about her toilette. She piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point; I, however, desire Madame Busche to explain to her that the Prince is very delicate, and that he expects a long and very careful toilette de properté, of which she has no idea; on the contrary, she neglects it sadly, and is offensive from this neglect. Madame Busche executes her commission well, and the Princess comes out the next day well washed all over."

"Princess Caroline had a tooth drawn—she sends it down to me by a page—nasty and indelicate."

"I had two conversations with the Princess Caroline; one on the toilette, on cleanliness, and on delicacy of speaking. On these points I endeavoured, as far as was possible for a man, to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress, as well as to what was hid as to what was seen. (I knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, and these never well washed, or changed often enough.) I observed that a long toilette was necessary, and gave her no credit for boasting that hers was a short one. What I could not say myself on this point, I got said through women; through Madame Busche, and afterwards through Mrs Harcourt. It is remarkable how amazingly on this point her education has been neglected, and how much her mother, though an Englishwoman, was inattentive to it."

Such were the personal habits of the future Queen of England, who, in this normal virtue, fell infinitely beneath the level of a daughter of a British tradesman. It is plain that Lord Malmesbury has left much unsaid; but enough there is to show that, in every way, she was unfitted to be the wife of the most fastidious prince in Europe. In point of morals, the examples afforded her at the court of Brunswick were of the worst possible description. Conjugal fidelity seems to have been a virtue totally unknown to the German sovereigns. The following, according to Lord Malmesbury, were the existing liaisons of Frederick William of Prussia. "The female in actual possession of favour is of no higher degree than a servant-maid. She is known by the name of Mickie, or Mary Doz, and her principal merit is youth and a warm constitution. She has acquired a certain degree of ascendancy, and is supported by some of the inferior class of favourites; but as she is considered as holding her office only during pleasure, she is not courted, though far from neglected, by the persons of a higher rank. The two candidates for a more substantial degree of favour are Mdlle. Vienk and Mdlle. Bethman." Of the Emperor Leopold we are told the following anecdote:—"Kinckel said that Bishopswerder told him, that Lord Elgin, when in Italy, would have succeeded in making a triple alliance for the purpose of general peace and tranquillity, when he was with the Emperor Leopold at Florence, if he had not run too much after Madame Lamberti, (Leopold's mistress,) and by that means displeased and soured him." The father of the Princess was not one whit better than his royal brethren. His mistress, Mdlle. de Hertzfeldt, lived at court, and was on intimate terms with the rest of the family. She appears to have been a clever woman, and well acquainted with the character of the Princess. Lord Malmesbury, who had known her formerly, made no scruple of applying to her for information. "In the evening with Mdlle. de Hertzfeldt—old Berlin acquaintance, now Duke's mistress—much altered, but still clever and agreeable—full of lamentations and fears—says the Duke has been cruelly used—abuses the king of Prussia—she always thought him a bête, and not a bonne bête—talks of the Illuminés and their sects—her apartment elegantly furnished, and she herself with all the appareil of her situation. She was at first rather ashamed to see me, but soon got over it." Her advice regarding the future treatment of the Princess is so interesting that we give it entire.

"Je vous conjure, faites que le prince fasse mener, au commencement, une vie retirée à la Princesse. Elle a toujours été très genée et très observée, et il le falloit ainsi. Si elle se trouve tout à coup dans le monde sans restriction aucune, elle ne marchera pas à pas égaux. Elle n'a pas le cœur depravé—elle n'a jamais rien fait de mauvais, mais la parole en elle devance toujours la pensée; elle se livre à ceux a qui elle parle sans reserve, et de là il s'ensuit (même dans cette petite cour) qu'on lui prête des sens et des intentions que ne lui ont jamais appartenus. Que ne sera-t-il pas en Angleterre—où elle sera entourée de femmes adroites et intriguantes, auxquelles elle se livrera á corps perdu, (si le Prince permet qu'elle mène la vie dissipée de Londres,) et qui placeront dans sa bouche tels propos qu'elles voudront, puisqu'elle parlera elle-même sans savoir ce qu'elle dit. De plus, elle a beaucoup de vanité, et quoique pas sans esprit, avec peu de fond—la tête lui tournera si on la caresse et la flatte trop, si le Prince la gâte; et il est tout aussi essentiel qu'elle le craigne que qu'elle l'aime. Il faut absolument qu'il la tienne serrée, qu'il se fasse respecter, sans quoi, elle s'égarera. Je sais que vous ne me comprometterez pas—je vous parle comme à mon vieux ami. Je suis attachée cœur et âme au Duc. Je me suis dévouée a lui, je me suis perdue pour lui. C'est le bien de sa famille que je veux. Il sera le plus malheureux des hommes si cette fille ne reussit pas mieux que son aînée. Je vous repète, elle n'a jamais rien fait de mauvais, mais elle est sans jugement, et on l'a jugée à l'avenant. Je crains la Reine. La Duchesse ici, qui passe sa vie à penser tout haut, ou à ne jamais penser de tout, n'aime pas la Reine, et elle en a trop parlé à sa fille. Cependant, son bonheur depend d'être bien avec elle, et, pour Dieu, repetez lui toujours cette maxime, que vous avez déjà plus d'une fois recommandée."

The education of the Princess had been most lamentably neglected.

"Letter from the Prince—well satisfied, and approves of what I have done—positively refuses to let Mademoiselle Rosenzweit come over. She was to be a sort of reader. King writes on the subject to the Duchess; both she and the Duke press it. I insist upon it, and it is settled that she is not to accompany the Princess. Duke takes me aside, and says that the only reason why he wished her to be with the Princess was, that his daughter writes very ill, and spells ill, and he was desirous that this should not appear. Affected to be indifferent about this refusal, but at bottom hurt and angry. Suspects the Queen, whom he and the duchess hate."

Perhaps no ambassador, ever sent upon such a mission, was placed in more embarrassing circumstances than Lord Malmesbury. He was entreated on all sides to undertake a kind of tutelage of the Princess; to prepare her mind for the future life she must lead; to warn her of her faults, and school her as to the behaviour which became a Princess of Wales. It was quite plain that even her own relatives, and those who regarded her most partially, had little expectation that the marriage would prove auspicious or happy; and that their doubts arose, not from any rumours of the bridegroom's instability, but from their knowledge of the character of the bride. To act the part of Mentor, under such circumstances, required much delicacy and tact, both of which qualities Lord Malmesbury possessed in an eminent degree. More, however, was requisite in order to make them effectual. It was impossible, in a hurried and limited period, to repair the fatal effects of years of indolence and neglect. Lord Malmesbury could merely warn, but the task of improvement was hopeless. What he did, however, was well done. From his courteous manners, and kindly tone of conversation, he speedily became a great favourite with the Princess, and sometimes—as we have already seen—used his personal influence with success. Yet this familiar intercourse, while it certainly heightened his estimation of her good qualities, impressed Lord Malmesbury with the thorough conviction that the Princess was in no way qualified to maintain her future rank. She made him her confidant in certain passages of her history, which it would have been far wiser to have concealed:—"Dinner and concert at court; Princess out of humour; very nonsensical confidence about Prince of Orange; cannot be committed to writing; must recollect it, as well as my answer and advice." And again—"After dinner, long and serious conversation with the Princess on her manner of calling women by their plain name; of saying 'ma chère,' 'mon cœur,' &c.; and of tutoying when talking to them in German; she takes it right; prepare her for a still more serious conversation on the subject of hereditary Prince of Orange."

We must state, in justice to the Princess, that all the lectures of Lord Malmesbury—and they were neither few nor trifling—were taken by her in extreme good part. Indeed, his lordship appears at one time to have been apprehensive that he was gaining too much influence over his future mistress, and that caution was necessary on his side.

"The Princess Caroline asked me, with an apology, as for une question indiscrette, whether I was to be her Lord Chamberlain? On my saying I knew nothing of it, she was very gracious, and expressed a strong wish it should be; and added, that she feared it would not be good enough for me, and that I would decline it. I told her any situation which placed me near her would be flattering to me, but that these situations were sought for by many persons who had better claims than myself; and that, besides, I never solicited any thing, and could not expect that such an office would be offered to me without my asking for it. She again (and apparently in earnest) expressed her wish that it should be, and said it would be of infinite use to her to have a person near her she was used to, and whom she had confidence in."

On another occasion, when the Princess renewed her desire, Lord Malmesbury is more significant—

"She again urges me to accept a place about her court at my return. I avoid an explicit answer, but earnestly entreat her not to solicit any thing on my behalf; I had the Duke of Suffolk and Queen Margaret in my thoughts!"

When Lord Malmesbury's years and grave functions are considered, the touch of vanity, which in this latter paragraph peers through his diplomatic caution, is somewhat amusing.

An anonymous letter, which arrived from England, led to the following conversations:—"At dinner I found the Duchess and Princess alarmed, agitated, and uneasy at an anonymous letter from England, abusing the Prince, and warning them, in the most exaggerated terms, against Lady ----, who is represented as the worst and most dangerous of profligate women. The Duchess, with her usual indiscretion, had shown this letter to the Princess, and mentioned it to every body. I was quite angry with her, and could not avoid expressing my concern, first, at paying any attention to an anonymous letter, and secondly, at being so very imprudent as to bruit forth its contents. The Duke, on being acquainted with it, thought as I did, but was more uneasy than he ought. Mademoiselle Hertzfeldt again talks to me as before about the Princess Caroline. "Il faut la gouverner par la peur, par la terreur même. Elle s'émancipera si on n'y prend pas garde—mais si on la veille soigneusement et sevèrement, elle se conduira bien." The King of England, in a letter to the Duchess, says—"Qu'il espère que sa nièce n'aura pas trop de vivacité, et qu'elle menera une vie sédentaire et retirée." These words shock Princess Caroline, to whom the Duchess very foolishly reads the letter.

"Princess Caroline shows me the anonymous letter about Lady ——, evidently written by some disappointed milliner or angry servant-maid, and deserving no attention: I am surprised the Duke afforded it any. Aimed at Lady ——; its object to frighten the Princess with the idea that she would lead her into an affair of gallantry, and be ready to be convenient on such an occasion. This did not frighten the Princess, although it did the Duke and Duchess; and on my perceiving this, I told her Lady —— would be more cautious than to risk such an audacious measure; and that, besides, it was death to presume to approach a Princess of Wales, and no man would be daring enough to think of it. She asked me whether I was in earnest. I said such was our law; that any body who presumed to love her, was guilty of high treason, and punished with death, if she was weak enough to listen to him; so also would she. This startled her."

The following is Lord Malmesbury's own summary of her character, sketched at a favourable moment:—

"If her education had been what it ought, she might have turned out excellent; but it was that very nonsensical one that most women receive—one of privation, injunction, and menace; to believe no man, and never to express what they feel, or say what they think, for all men are inclined to entrap them, and all feelings are improper; this vitiates or abrutis all women—few escape." (Surely this censure is too sweeping.) "On summing up Princess Caroline's character to-day, it came out to my mind to be, that she has quick parts, without a sound or distinguishing understanding; that she has a ready conception, but no judgment; caught by the first impression; led by the first impulse; hurried away by appearances or enjouement; loving to talk, and prone to make missish friendships that last twenty-four hours. Some natural, but no acquired morality, and no strong innate notions of its value and necessity; warm feelings, and nothing to counteract them; great good humour, and much good nature—no appearance of caprice—rather quick and vive, but not a grain of rancour. From her habits, from the life she was allowed and even compelled to live, forced to dissemble; fond of gossiping, and this strengthened greatly by the example of her good mother, who is all curiosity and inquisitiveness, and who has no notion of not gratifying this desire at any price. In short, the Princess, in the hands of a steady and sensible man, would probably turn out well, but when it is likely she will meet with faults perfectly analogous to her own, she will fail. She has no governing powers, though her mind is physically strong. She has her father's courage, but it is to her (as to him) of no avail. He wants mental decision: she, character and tact."

This mission of Lord Malmesbury extended over a period of nearly five months. An abortive attempt was made to conduct the Princess to England by the way of Holland; but the inroads of the French into that country rendered the expedition highly dangerous. In fact, by this time the fate of Holland was sealed. One of the severest winters ever known had opened a natural and universal bridge to the invaders over the most effective barriers of the country. All was flight, terror, and confusion. The envoy returned with his royal charge to Hanover, there to await intelligence of the arrival of the British fleet at Stade, as the passage by the Elbe alone seemed practicable. During this anxious period, Lord Malmesbury received several letters from the Prince of Wales, which are given in his correspondence. These are well worthy of attention. Although a strict grammarian might find fault with their construction, there is no appearance of any thing like indifference on the part of the Prince. On the contrary, he seems to have awaited with extreme anxiety the arrival of his consort, and to have been much vexed and annoyed by the delay which intervened. The following is an extract from his first letter, dated 23d November 1794, and written shortly after Lord Malmesbury's arrival at Brunswick:—

"I have desired Captain Hislop to give you an ample and thorough account of the steps I have taken towards the expediting every thing on this side of the water, as well as with my brother the Duke of York, to whom I have written also by Hislop; and as to what is now necessary to forward the completing every thing at Brunswick, I must leave that to you, hoping that you will make every exertion possible to put the Princess in possession of her own home as near the 20th of the ensuing month as possible; for every thing that can create delay at the present moment is bad on every account, but particularly to the public, whose expectations have now been raised for some months, and would be quite outrageous were it possible for them to perceive any impediment arising to what they have had their attention drawn to for so long a time; besides the suspense, and the naturally unpleasant feelings attendant upon suspense, which I myself must be subject to, and the very honourable, fair, and handsome manner in which the Duke and Duchess have both conducted themselves to me in this transaction; their having also, in their last letters, both to the King and me, said that the Princess was ready to set off instantly. In short, all these reasons make it necessary for me, my dear lord, to desire you to press your departure from Brunswick at as short a date as possible from the receipt of this letter."

In another communication of a later date, (21st February 1795,) the Prince thus expressed himself:—

The accounts you are so good as to give me of the temper and resignation with which the Princess is so good as to bear with the interruptions in her journey, is more than I fancy any one would venture to say of me from hence, as, I assure you, all the mismanagements, procrastinations, and difficulties that I have met with in the conduct of that business on this side of the water, have totally put patience (a virtue, you well know, that our family in general are not much endowed with) out of the question.

"I hope you will make this plan," (that of the embarkation and landing,) "acceptable to the Princess as well as the Duchess, as you must be well acquainted with my impatience; and I beg you will assure them both, that there is no sort of respect, state, and attention that shall not be shown to the Princess the moment she sets her foot on our dear little island. I am convinced you will heartily concur with me in my anxious endeavours, through this, or even any other means, to bring your voyage to as expeditious and happy a termination as possible. I write to the Duchess of Brunswick by the same courier, which letters you will have the goodness to deliver into her hands yourself. I cannot help once more reiterating my thanks to you, my dear lord, for your judgment and caution through all these late occurrences."

On the 28th of March the embarkation was effected, and, after a prosperous but foggy passage, the royal squadron entered the Thames. It was destined, however, by management or mismanagement—for we know not which to call it—that the jealousy of the Princess should be awakened from the very first hour she landed in Great Britain. The lady, regarding whom the anonymous letter above referred to was written, and whose liaison with the Prince of Wales was the subject of public scandal, had been selected as one of the Ladies of Honour to meet the Princess on her arrival. This was neither more nor less than a premeditated insult, and Caroline must have felt it as such. We can exempt no one from the censure attachable to such a proceeding. Even if it can be supposed that the general rumour was unjust with regard to the nature of that connexion, its mere publicity should have prevented the Prince from subjecting his bride to such society, at least at so early a period. But we apprehend that no such palliative can be urged. Under these circumstances, it was the clear duty of the King to have interfered, and, in his double capacity of uncle and father-in-law, to have prevented this affront from being offered to the unprotected Princess. Altogether, it was a scandalous arrangement, and Lord Malmesbury felt it as such. The following extract speaks volumes as to the feelings entertained by the haughty favourite towards the wife:—

"Sunday, April 5.—At eight the Princess got into the royal yacht (Augusta)—pleasant and prosperous sail to Greenwich, where we arrive at twelve o'clock. The King's coaches not yet arrived, owing, as I have since heard, to Lady —— not being ready. She, Mrs Aston, and Lord Claremont, came to meet the Princess. We waited at least an hour for the carriages, and were very attentively, but awkwardly, received by Sir W. Pattison, governor of the hospital, and his two sisters. Lady —— very much dissatisfied with the Princess's mode of dress, though Mrs Harcourt had taken great pains about it, and expressed herself in a way which induced me to speak rather sharply to her. She also said, she could not sit backwards in a coach, and hoped she might be allowed to sit forwards. This, (though Mrs Harcourt was servile enough to admit as a reason,) as it was strictly forbidden by the King,"—[it does seem, therefore, that some such difficulty had been apprehended, and the probable conduct of Lady —— discussed!]—"I most decidedly opposed, and told Lady ——, that, as she must have known that riding backward in a coach disagreed with her, she ought never to have accepted the situation of a lady of the bedchamber, who never ought to sit forward, and that, if she really was likely to be sick, I would put Mrs Aston into the coach with the Princess, and have, by that means, the pleasure of Lady ——'s company in the carriage allotted to me and Lord Claremont. This of course settled the business; she and Mrs Harcourt sat backward, and the Princess sat by herself forward. There was very little crowd, and still less applause, on the road to London, where we arrived, and were set down at St James's (the Duke of Cumberland's apartments, Cleveland Row) about half-past two."

The long-expected, and probably dreaded interview was now to take place. We may search the whole annals of marriage in vain for such another.

"Immediately notified the arrival to the King and Prince of Wales; the last came immediately. I, according to the established etiquette, introduced (no one else being in the room) the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly, in consequence of my saying to her that it was the right mode of proceeding, attempted to kneel to him. He raised her, (gracefully enough,) and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and, calling me to him, said—'Harris, I am not well; pray, get me a glass of brandy!'

"I said, 'Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?' upon which he, much out of humour, said with an oath—

"'No; I will go directly to the Queen,' and away he went.

"The Princess, left during this short moment alone, was in a state of astonishment; and, on my joining her, said—'Mon Dieu! est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le trouve très gros et nullement aussi beau que son portrait.'

"I said his Royal Highness was naturally a good deal affected and flurried at this first interview, but she certainly would find him different at dinner. She was disposed to further criticisms on this occasion, which would have embarrassed me very much to answer, if luckily the King had not ordered me to attend him."

Little comment is required upon such a scene. In charity, we shall suppose that the Prince at the first glance was grievously disappointed with the personal appearance of his bride—that he had formed some exaggerated estimate of her charms, and that the reaction was so strong as to create instantaneous antipathy. A more favourable hypothesis we cannot form; any other must resolve itself into preconcerted insult. Still, this is no justification for conduct which was at once mean and unmanly. There she stood—the daughter of a sovereign prince—his own near kinswoman, whose hand he had voluntarily solicited—young, and not devoid of some personal beauty. Other defects he had not time to observe, and surely, on such an occasion as this, they were not conspicuously prominent. Could any man, with a spark of chivalrous feeling within him, have permitted himself to manifest such tokens of disgust in the presence of a woman, who was to all intents and purposes his wife, and whom he then for the first time beheld? Some there were, wearing before him the princely plume of Wales, who would rather have forfeited that honour than offered insult to a female and a stranger—but the spirit of the Henrys and the Edwards was not there. An interview of a minute's duration—brandy—and an oath! Rare prospects for the felicity and continuance of the future Hymen!—Let us follow Lord Malmesbury through the subsequent scenes.

"The drawing-room was just over. His Majesty's conversation turned wholly on Prussian and French politics, and the only question about the Princess was—'Is she good-humoured?'

"I said, and very truly, 'That in very trying moments I had never seen her otherwise.'

"The King said, 'I am glad of it;' and it was manifest, from his silence, he had seen the Queen since she had seen the Prince, and that the Prince had made a very unfavourable report of the Princess to her. At dinner, at which all those who attended the Princess from Greenwich assisted, and the honours of which were done by Lord Stopford as Vice-Chamberlain, I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour. It was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse, vulgar hints about Lady ——, who was present, and, though mute, le diable n'en perdait rien. The Prince was evidently disgusted, and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when left to herself, the Princess had not the talent to remove; but, by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm, increased it till it became positive hatred.

"From this time, though I dined frequently during the first three weeks at Carlton House, nothing material occurred; but the sum of what I saw there led me to draw the inferences I have just expressed. After one of those dinners, where the Prince of Orange was present, and at which the Princess had behaved very lightly and even improperly, the Prince took me into his closet, and asked me how I liked this sort of manners. I could not conceal my disapprobation of them, and took this opportunity of repeating to him the substance of what the Duke of Brunswick had so often said to me, that it was expedient de la tenir serrée, that she had been brought up very strictly, and if she was not strictly kept, would, from high spirits and little thought, certainly emancipate too much. To this the Prince said—'I see it but too plainly; but why, Harris, did you not tell me so before, or write it to me from Brunswick?'

"I replied that I did not consider what the Duke (a severe father himself towards his children) said, of sufficient consequence; that it affected neither the Princess's moral character nor conduct, and was intended solely as a communication which I conceived it only proper to notice to his Royal Highness at a proper occasion, at such a one as now had offered; and that I humbly hoped his Royal Highness would not consider it as casting any real slur or aspersion on the Princess; that as to not writing to his Royal Highness from Brunswick, I begged him to recollect I was not sent on a discretionary commission, but with the most positive commands to ask the Princess Caroline in marriage, and nothing more; that to this sole point, respecting the marriage and no other, these commands went; any reflections or remarks that I had presumed to make, would (whether in praise of, or injurious to her Royal Highness) have been a direct and positive deviation from those his Majesty's commands. They were as limited as they were imperative. That still, had I discovered notorious or glaring defects, or such as were of a nature to render the union unseemly, I should have felt it as a bounden duty to have stated them, but it must have been directly to the King, and to no one else. To this the Prince appeared to acquiesce; but I saw it did not please, and left a rankle in his mind."

We have heard some blame attributed to Lord Malmesbury, in certain quarters, for not having communicated to the Prince his own impressions of the bride. We are inclined to think this censure undeserved, and to look upon his own defence, stated above, as perfectly satisfactory. Even if he had considered it his duty to make any such representation—which it was not—he must have done it at great personal peril. The whole odium—if the marriage had been broken off—would have been attributed to him. Had it gone forward, the coldness of the Prince would inevitably have been set down as the effect of his interference. If he had been trusted with a discretionary commission, much more would have been left in his power; but the marriage was, in point of fact, quite concluded when he received orders to repair to Brunswick. With regard to the Princess, he acted throughout as a sincere and judicious friend in warning and in counselling her. He drew no glittering or extravagant pictures to lead her imagination astray. He prepared her to find the Court of London rather a place of ordeal, beset with many snares and difficulties, than the site of luxury, ease, and indulgence. He did his best to tutor her on the delicate topics of deportment, manners, and conversation; and if he failed, it was only because his counsel was required too late. It is said that the Prince never forgave Lord Malmesbury for his share in this negotiation. If the fact be so, the Prince was both unjust and ungenerous; for it is questionable if there was one, among the other servants of the Crown, who could have discharged so arduous a duty with half the discretion of this accomplished and wise diplomatist. It should be remembered too, by those who have adopted a different view, that Lord Malmesbury had little opportunity, at the first, to investigate the character and habits of the Princess. He was in daily expectation of his recall, and his time, as his diary shows, was greatly occupied with the stirring public events of Europe. Except himself, there was no experienced English statesman on the Continent qualified to give advice at a period when communication with home was hopeless. He therefore became, as it were, the adviser-general to our ambassadors, our army, and the friendly states of Holland and of Austria. He was the only man capable of unravelling and detecting the tortuous policy of Prussia, and almost every moment of his time was engrossed by these stupendous labours. It was only upon the journey home—broken and protracted as it was—that he had the full opportunity of ascertaining, by the use of his own faculties, the faults and imperfections of the Princess, and surely it was then by far too late to interfere.

Lord Malmesbury was present at the nuptials. There was little gaiety on the occasion—none certainly in the heart of one—if not both—of the principal actors in the scene.

"I should have said that the marriage ceremony took place late on the evening of Wednesday, the 8th April, at St James's Chapel-Royal. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (Moore.) The usual etiquette observed—we had assembled in the Queen's apartment; from thence to the usual drawing-rooms, (very dark.) The procession, preceded by the heralds and great officers of the court, (amongst whom I was ordered to attend,) walked to the Chapel—very crowded. Prince of Wales gave his hat, with a rich diamond button and loop, to Lord Harcourt to hold, and made him a present of it. After the marriage, we returned to the Queen's apartment. The King told me to wear the Windsor uniform, and have the entrées. The Prince very civil and gracious; but I thought I could perceive he was not quite sincere, and certainly unhappy; and as a proof of it, he had manifestly had recourse to wine or spirits." Lord Malmesbury remarks in conclusion—"It is impossible to conceive or foresee any comfort from this connexion, in which I lament very much having taken any share, purely passive as it was."

Such is the secret history of the commencement of this ill-starred union, which was destined at a future, and even more perilous period, to form one of the most dangerous points of discord between the crown and people of these realms. At the lapse of half a century, the appearance of these documents is valuable, for they throw light upon many passages which otherwise could only have been dimly conjectured. Since then, society in the higher circles has undergone considerable reformation. More amalgamation and friendly intercourse is yearly taking place among the different courts of Europe; and we hail those reunions with joy, as the best securities not only of the private happiness of those whose welfare must always be important to their people, but of the general peace and federal prosperity of the world.

The topics upon which we have dwelt in this article, are so interesting, that we have occupied our space without exhausting one half of these valuable volumes. They contain, besides, Lord Malmesbury's negotiations with the French Directory at Paris in 1796, and at Lille in 1797, with much of the private history of Mr Pitt during the period of the Addington Administration. We may perhaps, on a future occasion, recur to these; at present we shall conclude by heartily recommending this work to the perusal of every one who desires to become thoroughly acquainted with the diplomatic relations of the times.

GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES.

The Viceroy and the Aristocracy, or Mexico in 1812.

Part the Second.

The two great colonizing nations of Europe, England and Spain, have displayed a striking difference in their mode of treating the countries which discovery or conquest has at various periods placed under their rule. The constant aim of England has been to civilize the aborigines, and elevate their moral character; to teach them the arts of life, and to attach them to their rulers by the impartial administration of justice. The prosperous state of British India, and the ease with which that vast empire is governed and controlled by an insignificant number of Europeans, prove the wisdom of the liberal and humane policy applied by Great Britain to her Indian subjects.

The colonial system uniformly pursued by Spain has been widely and fatally different. The establishment of her transatlantic colonies was accomplished by the indiscriminate slaughter and plunder of the unoffending natives. Disguise it as he may, cruelty is a distinguishing characteristic of the Spaniard; and this moral phenomenon in the character of a people, certainly not destitute of noble and chivalrous attributes, may probably be traced, partly to the large admixture of Arabian blood in the Spanish population, and partly to the long enduring and paramount authority of a priesthood remarkable for its intolerant spirit, and for its savage abuse of unlimited power. This propensity to deeds of cruelty and oppression was nourished during the long contest with the Moors. Abundant evidence of it may also be found in Spain's European wars, and especially during the long and noble struggle of the brave Netherlanders against the reckless and blood-thirsty soldiery of the Duke of Alva. But the crowning atrocities of Spain were perpetrated in her American possessions, and more particularly in Mexico, the richest and most important of them all.

Assuming that the whole of Spanish America was a gift to the king of Spain from God's vicegerent on earth, the Roman pontiff, and under the plea that it was their especial duty to establish his creed, the Spaniards did not hesitate to accomplish this end by the most lawless and cruel means. Their unbounded greed of gold led to further oppressions on their part, and sufferings on that of the Indians; and even the arbitrary, and for the most part unjust, enactments of the Consejo de las Indias, a council established for the government of Spain's colonial possessions, were outheroded and overstepped by the cruel and mercenary individuals to whom their enforcement was entrusted.

Fearing the eventual day of retribution, every cunning device was practised to keep down the numbers of the unfortunate natives, and to retard the growth of their intelligence. By a royal decree, not a town or village could be founded, nor even a farm-house built, except in the vicinity of a garrison, convent, or mission. The Spaniards wanted dollars, not men, and could they have worked the rich mines of Guanaxato, Monte Real, and elsewhere, with bullocks instead of Indians, would gladly have seen the whole native population of Mexico exterminated. But when the storm, which for a time had been averted, at length burst forth, they gave a loose to their hatred of the unfortunate Mexicans. The rebellion, premature in its outbreak, and crushed in its first great effort, was carried on under various leaders, and with varying success, until it terminated in the final downfall of the Spanish rule. The massacres and cruelties perpetrated during the eleven intervening years, were beyond conception horrible; far exceeding in extent and atrocity any thing recorded in European history. The fearful night of St Bartholomew, the tortures of the Inquisition, the persecutions in the Cevennes, and later, the horrors of the French Revolution, sink into insignificance, when compared with such wholesale massacres as those of Guanaxato and Guadalajara, and with the sweeping destruction wrought by the Spaniards throughout Mexico.

"Such and such towns and villages have disappeared from the face of the earth," was no uncommon phrase in the reports and despatches of the Spanish commanders—a phrase fully borne out by facts. Prisoners, of both sexes and all ages, were murdered in cold blood, whole districts laid waste with fire and sword, until not a human being or habitation was to be seen, where previously a flourishing and numerous population existed. In a despatch of the royalist general Morillo, dated Bagota, June 1816, he stated that, in order to cut at the root of the rebellion, he had declared all persons rebels who knew how to read and write, and that such were, on detection, immediately to be put to death. Accordingly, six hundred of the most notable persons in Bagota, both men and women, guiltless of all other crimes but education, were strangled, and their bodies suspended naked from gibbets. Nothing but the weariness of the executioner and his aids, put an end to this horrid butchery.

We cannot better illustrate the state of things above referred to, than by laying before the reader some farther extracts from The Viceroy and the Aristocracy. For this purpose we will select the early portion of the second volume, previously connecting it by some brief details with the two chapters given in our last Number.

The five-and-twenty young noblemen who witnessed the treasonable dramatic performance described in the second chapter of the book before us, are sentenced, as a punishment for their offence, to serve in the army under Calleja, the captain-general of Mexico. This is announced to their parents, who are all Creoles of the highest rank, at a drawing-room held by the viceroy Vanegas, where we are introduced to a certain Count San Jago, who, as well on account of his wealth and influence, as by his high qualities and superior intelligence, ranks first amongst the Mexican nobility, and enjoys great consideration at the viceregal court. His nephew, Don Manuel, and his adopted son, the Conde Carlos, were among the spectators of the pasquinade in which King Ferdinand's private pastimes had been so cuttingly caricatured, and they are included in the sentence passed on all those who have thus offended. This sentence excites great indignation amongst the Mexican nobility, who see in it a gross violation of their fueros or privileges. There is no option, however, but obedience. The Count San Jago, who ardently desires the freedom of his country, and even maintains a secret understanding with some of the rebel chiefs, rejoices in the punishment awarded, deeming that the introduction of these young men into the army may pave the way to Creole ascendancy. The immediate expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico is not desired by him, or by the majority of the Creoles, as it would throw the chief power into the hands of the Indians and castes, who are totally unfitted to wield it. The count procures a captain's commission for Carlos, and would willingly do the same for his nephew; but Don Manuel, although a Creole by birth, is a Spaniard in heart, despises his own countrymen, and resolves to proceed to Spain and take part in the struggle against the French. An attachment has existed between him and the Countess Elvira, sister of Carlos; but this has recently been succeeded, on the side of Manuel, by a violent passion he has conceived for the viceroy's sister-in-law, Donna Isabella, a haughty beauty, who only encourages the young Creole so far as it accords with the views of Vanegas, some of whose designs would be promoted by the absence from Mexico of the Count San Jago's nephew and heir. Blinded by his passion, Manuel obeys the impulse artfully given to him by Donna Isabella, resists the remonstrances of his uncle and the tears of Elvira, and insists upon proceeding to Spain, which his imagination paints as the fountain-head of chivalry and heroism. Count San Jago sees through his motives, but does not choose to constrain his inclination; and Manuel sets out, with a train of attendants befitting his rank, for the sea-coast, where he is to embark for the mother country. His adventures upon the road form a striking episode, to a certain extent independent of the rest of the book, and with which we will continue our extracts.

Chapter the Eighteenth.

About a day's journey from the capital, rises that mighty chain of mountains called the Sierra Madre, which, after connecting the volcanoes of Mexico with those of Puebla, takes an inland and northerly direction, hiding within its bowels, near Monte Real and Guanaxato, that boundless mineral wealth which excites so strongly the wonder of the naturalist. The most important mountains of Mexico are portions of this chain, which gives to that country a character so original, so wildly picturesque and truly sublime, yet so cheerful and smiling, that the eye of the beholder ranges with alternate rapture and surprise from point to point of the immense landscape, vainly endeavouring to comprehend in one frame the wonderfully-contrasted materials of the picture before him.

The flanks of these mountain ridges are thickly clothed with lofty oak and pine, while the dwarf oak and the mimosa cover the shoulders; and their rocky summits, bare of all vegetable life, are composed of granite and porphyry. Terrific craters yawn on every side of these sombre dark-brown masses, which appear to be still teeming with those tremendous revolutions, that have given to this country its remarkable configuration. Luxuriant crops of wheat and maize cover the mountain slopes; the lower levels delight the eye with the endless variety and brilliant colours of their exotic plants; while, still lower, the tough agave darts forth its sharp and giant leaves, like so many sword-blades, and the plains are intersected by vast barrancas,[31] exhibiting that wonderful opulence of tropical fertility, which is ever at work in their deep and shady hollows. From these ascend the roar of rushing streams, invisible to the eye, but mighty in their influence; every slope they wash yielding a prodigality of vegetable ornament, which the most glowing fancy would find it difficult to paint. The flowering shrubs are linked together and covered by numberless creepers, studded with brilliant blossoms, forming continuous garlands of flowers, which climb on the roots to the crown, and conceal thousands of conzontlis, cardinal birds, and madrugadores, within their shady recesses.

It was a bright and sunny afternoon. The snowy regions of the mighty Orizava,[32] and of the mightier Popocatepetl, hitherto resplendent as burnished silver, now began to exhibit flickering tints of rose-colour, which, deepening on their eastern sides into golden-yellow and bronze, reflected every moment some fresh variety of hue. The shadows of Mount Malinche and his brethren began to stretch over towards Tlascala. Deep silence prevailed throughout the entire district, broken only by the scream of the ring eagle, or the hollow howl of the coyote.[33]

On one of the mountain ridges stretching eastward from San Martin, and over which Cortes first penetrated into the valley of Tenochtitlan, two men had stationed themselves, with their backs to a mass of porphyry rock, that rose, like a fragment of some mighty castle, above a yawning barranca of prodigious depth. The lank, straight hair, and red-black complexion of these men, indicated them to be Zambos. Their dress consisted of sheepskins, fastened round their shoulders by thongs of hide, and of some ragged under garments of a coarse black woollen stuff; their heads were covered by the broad-brimmed straw hats universally worn by the Indians and castes; machetes, or long knives, were stuck in their girdles, and heavy clubs lay on the ground at their feet. To judge from their countenances, neither of the men were in a particularly good humour. Whilst one of them stood upright, and seemed to be acting as a vedette, the other lay stretched upon the turf in a sort of sullen half slumber, until his companion, weary of his watch, threw himself down in his turn; whereupon the other arose, muttering and grumbling, to take his share of duty. For some time not a word was exchanged between the two sentries.

"Maldita cosa!" at last exclaimed the Zambo who was on his legs. "By the holy Virgin of Guadalupe, if this lasts another week, if we are to be thus tracked and hunted like caguars, may the devil seize me but I"——

"I?"—interrogated his companion.

"Will say adios to you; and Mexico's freedom may take care of itself."

"Wish you a pleasant journey, Señor," replied the other yawning. "Do you see yonder birds? They are waiting for you."

And he pointed to a flight of zepilots, or Mexican ravens, with sharp claws and hooked beaks, which had just then alighted on the cliffs above their heads.

"Caramba! Calleja would soon settle your business. A dangle at a rope's end, with the hangman on your shoulders, and that before you could light a cigar, or empty a glass of pulque."

"Tonterias, nonsense!" replied the grumbler. "My ahuitzote[34] is not yet come."

"It may not be far off though. You might fall into the hands of Señor Bustamente, from whom, if I remember right, you borrowed ten of his best mules, and in your haste forgot to take off their burdens."