BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLX. OCTOBER, 1845. Vol. LVIII.

CONTENTS.

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BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLX. OCTOBER, 1845. Vol. LVIII.

MONTESQUIEU.

Montesquieu is beyond all doubt the founder of the philosophy of history. In many of its most important branches, he has carried it to a degree of perfection which has never since been surpassed. He first looked on human affairs with the eye of philosophic observation; he first sought to discover the lasting causes which influence the fate of mankind; he first traced the general laws which in every age determine the rise or decline of nations. Some of his conclusions were hasty; many of his analogies fanciful; but he first turned the human mind in that direction. It is by repeatedly deviating into error that it can alone be discovered where truth really lies: there is an alchemy in the moral, not less than in the material world, in which a vast amount of genius must be lost before it is discovered that it has taken the wrong direction. But in Montesquieu, besides such occasional and unavoidable aberrations, there is an invaluable treasure of profound views and original thought—of luminous observation and deep reflection—of philosophic observation and just generalization. His fame has been long established; it has become European; his sayings are quoted and repeated from one end of the world to the other; but to the greater part of English readers, his greatness is known rather from the distant echo of continental fame, than from any practical acquaintance with the writings from which it has arisen.

Though Montesquieu, however, is the father of the philosophy of history, it is due to Tacitus and Machiavel to say, that he is not the author of political thought. In the first of these writers is to be found the most profound observations on the working of the human mind, whether in individuals or bodies of men, that ever were formed by human sagacity: in the latter, a series of remarks on Roman history, and the corresponding events in the republics of modern Italy, which, in point of deep political wisdom and penetration, never were surpassed. Lord Bacon, too, had in his Essays put forth may maxims of political truth, with that profound sagacity and unerring wisdom by which his thoughts were so preeminently distinguished. But still these men, great as they were, and much as they added to the materials of the philosophy of history, can hardly be said to have mastered that philosophy itself. It was not their object to do so; it did not belong to the age in which they lived to make any such attempt. They gave incomparable observations upon detached points in human annals, but they did not take a general view of their tendency. They did not consider whence the world had come, or whither it was going. They formed no connected system in regard to the march of human events. They saw clearly the effects of particular measures or systems of government at the time, but they did not reflect on the chain of causes which first raised up, and afterwards undermined it. Aristotle, the most powerful intellect of the ancient world, was of the same calibre as a political observer. He considered only the effects of the various forms of government which he saw established around him. In that survey he was admirable, but he never went beyond it. Bossuet's Universal History is little more than a history of the Jews; he refers every thing to the direct and immediate agency of Providence, irrespective of the freedom of the human will. Montesquieu first fixed his eyes upon the rise, progress, and decay of nations, as worked out by the actions of free agents. The Grandeur et Décadence des Romains is as original as the Principia, and laid the foundation of a science as sublime, and perhaps still more important to man than the laws of the planetary bodies.

Charles Secondat, Baron de la Brede and Montesquieu, was born at the chateau of La Brede, near Bourdeaux, on the 18th January 1689. The estate of La Brede had been long in his family, which was a very ancient one; it had been erected into a barony in favour of Jacob de Secondat, his great-great-grandfather, by Henry IV. The office of President of the Parliament (or Local Court of Justice) of Bourdeaux, had been acquired by his family in consequence of the marriage of his father with the daughter of the first president of that tribunal. From his earliest years young Montesquieu evinced remarkable readiness and vivacity of mind; a circumstance which determined his father to breed him up to the "magistracy," as it was termed in France—a profession midway, as it were, between the career of arms peculiar to the noble, and the labours of the bar confined to persons of plebeian origin, and from which many of the greatest men, and nearly all the distinguished statesmen of France took their rise. Montesquieu entered with the characteristic ardour of his disposition into the studies suited for that destination; and at the age of twenty he had already collected the materials of the Esprit des Loix, and evinced the characteristic turn of his mind for generalization, by an immense digest which he had made of the civil law. But these dry, though important studies, did not exclusively occupy his mind; he carried on, at the same time, a great variety of other pursuits. Like all men of an active and intellectual turn of mind, his recreation was found not in repose, but in change of occupation. Books of voyages and travels were collected, and read with avidity; he devoured rather than read the classical remains of Greece and Rome. "That antiquity," said he, "enchants me, and I am always ready to say with Pliny—You are going to Athens; show respect to the gods."

It was under this feeling of devout gratitude to the master minds of the ancient world, that he made his first essay in literature, which came out in a small work in the form of letters, the object of which was to show, that the idolatry of most Pagans did of itself not merit eternal damnation. Probably there are few good Christians, from Fénélon and Tillotson downwards, who will be of an opposite opinion. Even in that juvenile production are to be found traces of the sound judgment, correct taste, and general thought which characterised his later works. But he was soon thrown into the proper labours of his profession. On the 24th February 1714, he was admitted into the parliament of Bourdeaux as a councillor; and his paternal uncle, who held the president's chair, having died two years after, young Montesquieu was, on the 13th July 1716, appointed to that important office, though only twenty-seven years of age. Probably his being thrown thus early in life into the discharge of onerous and important duties, had an important effect in producing that firmness and maturity of judgment by which his mind was subsequently distinguished. Some years afterwards, he gave a convincing proof of his fitness for the situation, in the vigour with which he remonstrated against the imposition of a fresh tax on wine, which had the effect of procuring its removal at the time, though the necessities of government led to its being reimposed some years after. But his ardent mind was not confined to professional pursuits. He concurred in the formation of an academy of sciences at Bourdeaux, and read some papers in it on natural history; and his attention being in this way turned to physical science, he wrote and published in the journals, a project for a "Physical History of the Earth, Ancient and Modern."

But in no human being was more completely exemplified the famous line—

"The proper study of mankind is man."

Montesquieu's genius was essentially moral and political; it was on man himself, not the material world with which he was surrounded, that his thoughts were fixed. This strong bent soon appeared in his writings. He next read at the academy at Bourdeaux, a "Life of the Duke of Berwick," and an "Essay on the Policy of the Romans in Religion," which was the basis of the immortal work which he afterwards composed on the rise and fall of that extraordinary people. These desultory essays gave no indication of the first considerable work which he published, which was the famous Lettres Persanes. They appeared in 1721, when he was thirty-two years of age. Their success was immediate and prodigious; a certain indication in matters of thought, that they were not destined to durable fame. They fell in with the ideas and passions of the time; they were not before it; thence their early popularity and ultimate oblivion. The work was published anonymously; for the keen but delicate satire on French manners and vices which it contained, might have endangered the author, and as it was he had no small difficulty, when it was known he was the writer, in escaping from its effects. It consists in a series of letters from an imaginary character, Usbeck, a Persian traveller, detailing the vices, manners, and customs of the French metropolis. The ingenuity, sarcasm, and truth, which that once celebrated production contains, must not make us shut our eyes to its glaring defects; the vices of the age, as they mainly contributed to its early popularity, have been the chief cause of its subsequent decline. It contains many passages improperly warm and voluptuous, and some which, under the mask of attacks on the Jesuits, had the appearance, at least, of being levelled at religion itself. No work, at that period, could attract attention in France which was not disfigured by these blemishes. Even the great mind of Montesquieu, in its first essay before the public, did not escape the contagion of the age.

But, erelong, the genius of this profound thinker was devoted to more congenial and worthy objects. In 1726, he sold his office of president of the parliament of Bourdeaux, partly in order to escape from the toils of legal pursuit and judicial business, which, in that mercantile and rising community, was attended with great labour; partly in order to be enabled to travel, and study the institutions and character of different nations—a pursuit of which he was passionately fond, and which, without doubt, had a powerful effect in giving him that vast command of detached facts in political science, and that liberal view of institutions, habits, and manners, differing in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed to form the matrix in which original thought was formed, and new truth communicated by Providence to mankind. In the course of his travels, which lasted several years, he visited successively Austria, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine, Flanders, Holland, and England—in the latter of which he lived two years. During these varied travels, he made notes on all the countries which he visited, which contributed largely to the great stock of political information which he possessed. These notes are still extant; but, unfortunately, not in such a state of maturity as to admit of publication.

On his return to France, which took place in 1732, he retired to his native chateau of La Brede, and commenced in good earnest the great business of his life. The fruit of his studies and reflections appeared in the Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Décadence des Romains, which was published in 1732. Great and original as this work—the most perfect of all his compositions—was, it did not give vent to the whole ideas which filled his capacious mind. Rome, great as it was, was but a single state; it was the comparison with other states, the development of the general principles which run through the jurisprudence and institutions of all nations, which occupied his thoughts. The success which attended his essay on the institutions and progress of a single people, encouraged him to enlarge his views and extend his labours. He came to embrace the whole known world, civilized and uncivilized, in his plan; and after fourteen years of assiduous labours and toil, the immortal "Spirit of Laws" appeared.

The history of Montesquieu's mind, during the progress of this great work, is singularly curious and interesting. At times he wrote to his friends that his great work advanced "à pas de géant;" at others, he was depressed by the slow progress which it made, and overwhelmed by the prodigious mass of materials which required to be worked into its composition. So distrustful was he of its success, even after the vast labour he had employed in its composition, that he sent his manuscript before publication to a friend on whose judgment he could rely—Helvetius. That friend, notwithstanding all his penetration, was so mistaken in his reckoning, that he conceived the most serious disquietude as to the ruin of Montesquieu's reputation by the publication of such a work. Such was his alarm that he did not venture to write to the author on the subject, but gave the manuscript to another critic, Saurin, the author of a work entitled Spartacus, long since extinct, who passed the same judgment upon it. Both concurred in thinking that the reputation of Montesquieu would be entirely ruined by the publication of the new manuscript; the brilliant author of the semi-voluptuous, semi-infidel Lettres Persanes, would sink into a mere Legist, a dull commentator on pandects and statutes, if he published the Esprit des Loix, "That," said Helvetius, "is what afflicts me for him, and for humanity, which he was so well qualified to have served." It was agreed between them that Helvetius should write to Montesquieu to give him an account of their joint opinion, that he should not give the work to the world in its present state. Saurin, with some reason, was afraid that Montesquieu would be hurt at their communication; but Helvetius wrote to him—"Be not uneasy; he is not hurt at our advice; he loves frankness in his friends. He is willing to bear with discussions, but answers only by sallies, and rarely changes his opinions. I have not given him ours from any idea that he would either change his conduct or modify his preconceived ideas, but from a sense of the duty of sincerity cost what it will, with friends. When the light of truth shall have dispelled the illusions of self-love, he will at least not be able to reproach us with having been less indulgent than the public."

Montesquieu, however, was not discouraged. He sent his manuscript to the press with hardly any alteration, and took for his motto, Prolem sine matre creatam;[[1]] in allusion to the originality of his conception, and the total want of any previous model on which it had been formed. The work appeared in the month of July 1748; and its success, so far as the sale went, was prodigious. Before two years had elapsed, it had gone through twenty-two editions, and been translated into most of the European languages. This early success, rare in works of profound and original thought, showed, that though it was in advance of the age, it was but a little in advance; and that it had struck a key which was ready to vibrate in the national mind. Like all distinguished works, if it was much read and admired by some, it was as keenly criticized and cut to pieces by others. Madame de Deffand said it was not the Esprit des Loix he had written, but Esprit sur les Loix. This expression made a great noise; it had a certain degree of truth, just enough, when coupled with epigrammatic brevity, to make the fortune of the sayer. Encouraged by its success, the enemies of original genius, ever ready to assail it, united their forces, and Montesquieu was soon the object of repeated and envenomed attacks. It was said, that to establish certain favourite theories, he availed himself of the testimony of travellers obscure and of doubtful credit; that he leapt too rapidly from particulars to general conclusions; that he ascribed to the influence of climate and physical laws what was in fact the result of moral or political causes; that he had split the same subject into small chapters, so confusedly arranged that there was no order or system in the work; that it was still incomplete, and wanted the master-hand which was to put it together; and that it resembled the detached pieces of a mosaic pavement, each of which is fair or brilliant in itself, but which have no meaning or expression till disposed by the taste and skill of the artist. There was some truth in all these criticisms; it is rare that it is otherwise with the reproaches made against a work of original thought. Envy generally discovers a blot to hit. Malignity is seldom at a loss for some blemish to point out. It is by exaggerating slight defects, and preserving silence on great merits, that literary jealousy ever tries to work out its wretched spite. The wisdom of an author is not to resent or overlook, but in silence to profit by such sallies; converting thus the industry and envy of his enemies into a source of advantage to himself.

Montesquieu, in pursuance of these principles, passed over in silence the malignant attacks of a herd of critics, whose works are now buried in the charnel-house of time, but who strove with all the fury of envy and disappointment to extinguish his rising fame. When pressed by some of his friends to answer some of these attacks, he replied—"It is unnecessary; I am sufficiently avenged on some by the neglect of the public, on others by its indignation." The only instance in which he deviated from this wise resolution was in replying to the attacks of an anonymous critic, who, in a Journal entitled the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques, had represented him as an atheist. In his Lettres Persanes, though he had never assailed the great principles of his religion, he had, in his sallies against the Jesuits, gone far to warrant the belief that he was inclined to do so; and had already done enough in the estimation of the tyrannical and bigoted ecclesiastics who at that period ruled the Church of France, to warrant his being included in the class of infidel writers. But his mind, chastened by years, enlightened by travelling and reflection, had come to cast off these prejudices of his age and country, the necessary result of the Romish tyranny by which it had been oppressed, but unworthy of an intellect of such grasp and candour. In the Protestant countries of Europe, particularly Holland and England, he had seen the working of Christianity detached from the rigid despotism by which the Church of Rome fetters belief, and the well-conceived appliances by which it stimulates imagination, and opens a refuge for frailty. Impressed with the new ideas thus awakened in his mind, he had in his Esprit des Loix pronounced a studious and sincere eulogium on Christianity; recommending it, not only as the most perfect of all systems of religious belief, but as the only secure basis of social order and improvement. It was material to correct the impression, partly just, partly erroneous, which his earlier and more indiscreet writings had produced; and with this view he wrote and published his Defence de l' Esprit des Loix. This little piece is a model of just and candid reasoning, accompanied with a refined and delicate vein of ridicule, which disarmed opposition without giving ground for resentment. He congratulated himself on the fine satire with which he had overthrown his enemies.—"What pleases me in my Defence, is not so much," said he, "to have floored the Ecclesiastics, as to have let them fall so gently." Posterity will find a more valuable charm in this little production; it is, that the author in it has unconsciously painted himself. His contemporaries have recorded, that in reading it they could believe they heard the writer speak; and this proves that his talents in conversation had been equal to those he displayed in writing—a combination very rare in persons of the highest class in literature.

The fame of Montesquieu, great as it was in his own country, was even greater in foreign ones. In Great Britain in particular, the Esprit des Loix early acquired a prodigious reputation. It was read and admired by all persons of thought and education. This was partly the consequence of England being so much in advance of France in the career of liberty—alike in matters civil and ecclesiastical. The new ideas, hardy thoughts, and original conceptions of the great work met with a ready reception, and cordial admiration, in the land of freedom and the Reformation—in the country where meditation had so long been turned to political subjects, contemplation to religious truth. But another cause of lasting influence also contributed to the same effect. Original genius is ever more readily and willingly admired in foreign states than its own: a prophet has no honour in his own country. He interferes too much with existing influences or reputations. To foreigners, he is more remote—more like a dead man. Human vanity is less hurt by his elevation.

The latter years of Montesquieu's life were spent almost entirely in retirement at his paternal chateau of La Brede, varied occasionally by visits to the great world at Paris. He was occupied in agriculture and gardening—tenacious of his seignorial rights, but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry, by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years, or the fountains of happiness which may be opened in the breast itself from the calm serenity of conscious power and great achievement. He conversed much, with the farmers and peasants on his estate, whose houses he frequently entered, and whose convivialities, on occasion of a marriage or a birth, he seldom failed to attend. He often preferred their conversation to that of persons their superiors in rank or information—"for," said he, "they are not learned enough to enter into argument; they only tell you what they know, which frequently you do not know yourself." Though he lived with the great when in Paris, partly from necessity, partly from inclination, yet their society was noways necessary to his happiness. He flew as soon as he could from their brilliant assemblies to the retirement of his estate, where he found with joy, philosophy, books, and repose. Surrounded by the people of the country in their hours of leisure, after having studied man in the intercourse of the world and the history of nations, he studied it in those simple minds which nature alone had taught; and he found something to learn there. He conversed cheerfully with them; like Socrates, he drew out their talents and information; he appeared to take as much pleasure in their conversation as in that of the brilliant circles by which he was courted in the capital; he terminated their disputes by his wisdom, assuaged their sufferings by his beneficence.

In society he was uniformly affable, cheerful, and considerate. His conversation was light, agreeable, and instructive, abounding with anecdotes of the great number of eminent men with whom he had lived. Like his style in writing, it was brief, tranchant, and epigrammatic, full of wit and observation, but without a particle of bitterness or satire. In common with all men of the highest class of intellect, he was totally devoid of envy or jealousy. None more readily applauded genius or merit in others, or was more desirous on all occasions to bring it forward, and give it the due reward. No one recounted anecdotes with more vivacity, a happier effect, or less tedium. He knew that the close of all such narratives contains in general all that is pleasing in them; and therefore he hastened to arrive at it before the patience of his hearers could be exhausted. He had a perfect horror at long stories. He was frequently absent, and remained in society for some time wrapt in thought, without speaking; but never failed, on such occasions, to make amends by some unexpected remark or anecdote, which revived the languishing conversation. His mind was full: no subject could be mentioned on which he was not informed; but he never brought his knowledge ostentatiously forward, and sought rather to draw out those around him, and lead the conversation so as to make others shine, than to do so himself.

He was regular and methodical in his life; and this arose not merely from his character and disposition, but the order he had prescribed to himself in his studies. Though capable of long-continued effort and profound meditation, he never exhausted his strength; he uniformly changed the subject of his labour, or book, to some recreation, before feeling the sensation of fatigue. Temperate in his habits, serene and unruffled in his mind, he enjoyed a much larger share of happiness than falls to the lot of most men. He was fortunately married; had affectionate children, whose kindness and attentions solaced his declining years; and his remarkable prudence and economy not only preserved him from those pecuniary embarrassments so common to men of genius, but enabled him frequently to indulge the benevolence of his disposition by splendid acts of generosity. He frequently said that he had never experienced a chagrin in life which an hour's reading did not dissipate. In his later years, when his eyesight was affected he depended chiefly on listening to reading aloud, which was done alternately by his secretary and one of his daughters. He had every thing which could make life happy; an ample fortune, affectionate family, fame never contested, the consciousness of great powers nobly applied—"I have never through life," said he in his old age, "had a chagrin, still less an hour of ennui. I waken in the morning with a secret pleasure at beholding the light. I gaze upon it with species of ravishment. All the day I am content. In the evening when I retire to rest, I fall into a sort of reverie which prevents the effort of thought, and I pass the night without once waking."

No man ever possessed a higher sense of the dignity of intellectual power, of its great and glorious mission, of its superiority to all the world calls great, and of the consequent jealousy and aversion with which it is sure to be regarded by the depositaries of political authority. He was neglected by them; he knew it, and expected it; it never gave him a moment's chagrin. "He was not insensible," says D'Alembert, "to glory; but he had no desire to win but by deserving it. Never did he attempt to enhance his reputation by the underhand devices and secret machinations by which second-rate men so often strive to sustain their literary fortunes. Worthy of every eloge and of every recompense, he asked nothing, and was noways surprised at being forgot. But he had courage enough in critical circumstances to solicit the protection at court of men of letters persecuted and unfortunate, and he obtained their restoration to favour." What a picture of the first man of his age, living in retirement, asking nothing, noways surprised at being forgot! He knew human nature well who acted thus after writing the Esprit des Loix. Power loves talent as long as it serves itself, when it is useful but manageable; it hates it when it becomes its instructor. Self-love is gratified by the subservience of genius in the first case; it is mortified by its superiority in the last.

But this honoured and happy life was drawing to a close. Shortly after the publication of the Esprit des Loix, the strength of Montesquieu rapidly declined; it seemed as if nature had been exhausted by that great production. "I had intended," said he in his journal, "to give more extent and depth to some parts of the Esprit des Loix, but I have become incapable of it. Reading has weakened my eyes; and it seems as if the little light that still remains to them, is but the dawn of the day when they will close for ever." His anticipations were not long of being carried into effect. In February 1755, he was seized with an inflammatory fever when on a visit at Paris. The utmost care and attention was bestowed on him by a number of friends especially the Duc de Nivernois and the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, two of his oldest friends; but he sunk under the malady at the end of thirteen days. The sweetness of his temper and serenity of his disposition never deserted him during this illness. From the first he was aware of its dangerous nature, but not a groan, a complaint, or a murmur ever escaped his lips. The Jesuits made strenuous endeavours to get possession of him during his last moments; but, though strongly impressed with religions principle, he resisted all their efforts to extract from him a declaration in favour of their peculiar tenets. "I have always respected religion," said he; "the morality of the Gospel is the noblest gift ever bestowed by God on man." The Jesuits strenuously urged him to put into their hands a corrected copy of the Lettres Persanes, in which he had expunged the passages having an irreligious tendency, but he refused to give it to them; but he gave the copy to the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Madame Dupré de St Maur, who were in the apartment, with instructions for its publication, saying, "I will sacrifice every thing to religion, but nothing to the Jesuits." Shortly after he received extreme unction from the hands of the curé of the parish. "Sir," said the priest, "you now feel how great is God." "Yes," he replied, "and how little man." These were his last words. He died on the 10th of February 1755.

Montesquieu left a great number of manuscripts and notes; but they were in so incomplete a state, that a few detached fragments only have been deemed fit for publication. He had written a journal of his travels, and in particular a set of "Notes on England," which would have been of much value had they been worked up to a mature form; but death interrupted him when he was only in the commencement of that great undertaking. He had begun a history of France under Louis XI., which is still extant, though very little progress was made in the work. The introduction, containing a sketch of the state of Europe at that period, is said to equal the most brilliant picture left by his immortal hand. It is written in the terse, epigrammatic style which is so characteristic of its author; and a few striking expressions preserved by those who have had access to the manuscript, will convey an idea of what the work would have been. "He saw only," said he, "in the commencement of his reign, the commencement of vengeance." Terminating a parallel of Louis XI. and Richelieu, which he drew much to the advantage of the latter, he observed, "He made the monarch play the second part in the monarchy, but the first in Europe—he lowered the king, but he raised the Kingdom." These and similar expressions are in Montesquieu's peculiar and nervous style, and they prove that the work would have contained, if completed, many brilliant passages; but they do not warrant the conclusion that the history itself would have been of much value. There is nothing more dangerous to an historian than great powers of epigrammatic expression; it almost inevitably leads to the sacrifice of truth and candour to point and antithesis. It is well for Tacitus that we have not the other side of his story recounted by a writer of equal power, but less party spirit and force of expression. In truth, it is probable the world has not lost much by Montesquieu's numerous unpublished manuscripts having been left in an incomplete state. There is no end to the writing of romances, or the annals of human events, but there is a very early limit to the production of original ideas, even to the greatest intellects; to Plato, Bacon, Newton, Smith, or Montesquieu, they are given only in a limited number. Hence their frequent repetition of the same thoughts, when their writings become voluminous. Montesquieu has done enough; his mission to man has been amply fulfilled.

In common with other men whose thoughts have made a great and wide-spread impression on mankind, the originality and value of Montesquieu's conceptions cannot be rightly appreciated by subsequent ages. That is the consequence of their very originality and importance. They have sunk so deep, and spread so far among mankind, that they have become common and almost trite. Like the expressions of Shakspeare, Gray, or Milton, they have become household words; on reading his works, we are astonished to find how vast a proportion of our habitual thoughts and expressions have sprung from that source. This, however, far from being a reproach to an author, is his highest commendation; it demonstrates at once the impression his thoughts have made on mankind. If we would discover the step a great man has made, we must recur to the authors in the same line who have preceded him, and then the change appears great indeed. The highest praise which can be bestowed on an author of original thought, is to say, that his ideas were unknown to the authors who preceded, trite with those who followed him.

The great characteristic of Montesquieu's thoughts, is the tracing the operation of general and lasting causes on human affairs. Before his time, the march of political or social events was ascribed by divines to the immediate and direct agency of the Deity guiding human actions, as a general moves an army; by men of the world, to chance, or the mastering influence of individual energy and talent. Bossuet may be considered as the most eminent of the former class. Voltaire brought the doctrines of the latter to their highest perfection. In opposition to both, Montesquieu strenuously asserted the operation of general laws, emanating doubtless originally from the institutions of the Deity, and the adaptation of the human mind to the circumstances in which man is placed in society, but acting at subsequent periods through the instrumentality of free agents, and of permanent and lasting operation in all ages of the world. Machiavel had frequently got sight of this sublime theory in his political writings; and in his Discorsi on Roman History, many of the most profound observations ever made by man on the working of the human mind under free institutions, and of the corresponding effects of similar principles of action in the republics of antiquity, and of those of Italy in modern times, are to be found. But it was Montesquieu who first carried out the doctrine to its full extent, and traced its operation through an infinity of historical events and political institutions. It is to the success with which he has done this, and the combined philosophical depth and grasp of details which his writings exhibit, that his colossal reputation has been owing. He had prodigious acquaintance with individual facts, united to the power of classifying them under their proper heads, and deducing from them their general and common principles. Like the steam-engine, he could, by turns, turn a thread round a spindle, and elevate a seventy-four in the air. He was the Kepler of science; like the immortal German, he had made eighty thousand observations in the social world; but, like him, he could deduce the few laws of national advance or decline from the regular irregularity of their motion.

The expression, Esprit des Loix, selected as the title of Montesquieu's great work, was not happily chosen. What he meant was not the Spirit of Laws, but the causes from which laws have arisen; the "Leges Legum," as Cicero said, to which they were owing, and from which they had sprung. He ascribed very little influence to human institutions in moulding the character or determining the felicity of man. On the contrary, he thought that these institutions were in general an effect, not a cause. He conceived that they arose, in every country, from something peculiar in the race from which the nature descended, or the climate, employments, or mode of earning subsistence to which it was chained in subsequent times by the physical circumstance in which it was placed. A certain type or character was imprinted on every people, either by the ineradicable influence of blood, which descends to the remotest generations, or the not less irremovable effect of external and physical circumstances which attaches to them through all ages. It was this blood and those circumstances which formed the national character, and through it, in the course of generations, moulded the national customs and institutions. Such customs and institutions were those which, having been framed by necessity, or the dictates of expedience, according to the circumstances in which each people were placed, were best adapted to their temper and situation. True wisdom consisted not in altering but following out the spirit of existing laws and customs; and, in his own words—"No nation ever yet rose to lasting greatness but from institutions in conformity to its spirit." No calamities were so great or irremediable as those which arose from disregarding the separate characters stamped on the different races and nations of men by the hand of the Almighty, or seeking to force upon one people or one race the institutions which have arisen among, and are adapted to, another.

Such are the fundamental principles which run through Montesquieu's writings, and to the elucidation of which he devoted the fifteen best years of his life. It will readily be perceived that they are entirely at variance with the whole doctrines of the French philosophers of the latter part of the eighteenth century, and which were practically enforced and carried into effect in their great Revolution. With them institutions were every thing; national character, descent, employment, or physical circumstances, nothing. All mankind would be the same if they only enjoyed the same liberty, laws, and institutions. The differences observable among them were entirely the result of the different governments forced upon men, in various stages of their progress, by the tyranny of kings, the force of conquest, or the machinations of priests. One frame of institutions, one code of laws, one set of government maxims, were adapted for all the world, and if practically acted upon would every where produce the same pure and upright character in the people. Vice and wickedness were the hateful effect of aristocratic pride, kingly lusts, or sacerdotal delusion; the human heart was naturally innocent, and bent only upon virtue; when the debasing influence of these corrupters of men was removed, it would universally resume its natural direction. Hence the maxim of Robespierre—"Le peuple est toujours bon, le magistrat toujours corruptible." Hence the readiness with which the constitution-mongers at Paris set themselves to prepare skeletons of government for all nations, and their universal identity with that originally cast during the fervour of the Revolution for the Great Nation. Hence also, it may be added, their experienced evils, short duration, and universal sweeping away, within a few years, before the accumulated suffering and aroused indignation of mankind.

It was owing to this fundamental variance between the doctrines of Montesquieu and those of the greater part of his contemporaries, and nearly the whole generation which succeeded him, that the comparative obscurity of his fame after his death, and the neglect which his writings for long experienced in France, are to be ascribed. When we contemplate the profound nature of his thoughts, the happy terseness and epigrammatic force of his expressions, and the great early fame which his writings acquired, nothing appears more extraordinary than the subsequent neglect into which, for above half a century after his death, he fell.[[2]] Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Condorcet, Turgot, and the Encyclopédists, were then at the acme of their reputation; and their doctrines as to the natural innocence of man, and the universal moulding of human character by political institutions, not of political institutions by human character, were too much at variance with Montesquieu's deductions and conclusions to admit of their coexisting together. The experience of the Revolution, both abroad and at home, however, erelong spread a doubt among many thinking men, whether these doctrines were in reality as well founded as they were universally represented to be by the philosophers of the preceding age. Napoleon, who was thoroughly convinced of their erroneous nature, had a high admiration for Montesquieu, and frequently quoted his sentiments. But still the opposite set of opinions, diffused over the world with the tricolor flag, maintain their ground with the great majority even of well-informed men, at least in all republican states and constitutional monarchies. The policy of England in encouraging the revolutions of Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and the South American republics, has, for the last thirty years, been mainly founded on the principle, that institutions similar to those of Britain may with safety be transferred to other states, and that it is among them alone that we are to look for durable alliances or cordial support. The wretched fate of all the countries, strangers to the Anglo-Saxon blood, who have been cursed with these alien constitutions, whether in the Spanish or Italian Peninsulas, or the South American states—the jealous spirit and frequent undisguised hostility of America—the total failure of English institutions in Ireland, have had no effect with the great majority of men in this country, in rooting out these fatal errors. More than one generation, it is apparent, must descend to their graves before they are fairly expelled from general thought by experience and suffering. So obstinately do men cling to doctrines, which are flattering to human vanity, in opposition alike to the dictates of wisdom and the lessons of experience; and so true in all ages is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church, that pride is the last sin which can be conquered in the human heart.

One remarkable instance will illustrate the manner in which Montesquieu supported the opposite principles, that institutions are moulded by the character and circumstances of nations, not the moulders of them. It is well known that primogeniture, though neither the law of succession in the Roman empire, nor originally of the nations of Northern Europe, in whom the allodial customs at first generally prevailed, came to be universally introduced with the feudal system, and the thorough establishment of a military aristocracy in every country of Europe. But, strange to say, there are some places where the rule is just the reverse, and the youngest son succeeds to the whole movable estate of the father, as is still the custom of some boroughs in England.[[3]] Montesquieu ascribes, and apparently with reason, these opposite rules of succession to a similar feeling of expedience and necessity in the different circumstances in which the same race of Northmen were placed in different periods of their progress. The succession of the youngest son to the father's estate was the bequest of the patriarchal ages, when the youngest son generally remained last at home with his aged parent, his elder brothers having previously hived off with their herds and flocks. He therefore naturally succeeded to the movables of which he was alone in possession, jointly with his father, at the latter's death.

On the other hand, the descent of the whole landed estate to the eldest son, to the exclusion of his younger brothers and sisters, was naturally suggested by the settlement of a brave and martial race of conquerors in extensive districts gained by their valour, and which could be maintained only in the lands they had won by the sword. To divide the estate in such circumstances of peril, was to expose it to certain destruction; unity of operation in all its forms, one head, one castle, was as indispensable as one general to an army, or one sovereign to a kingdom. The old maxim, "divide et impera," was universally felt to be of fearful application. Empires, duchies, principalities, earldoms, baronies, private estates, could alone be preserved entire, amidst the general hostility with which all were surrounded, by descending to a single occupant. That occupant was naturally the eldest son, the first-born of the family, the first who arrived at man's estate, and the most capable on that account to render the necessary protection to its various members and dependants. Hence the general establishment of the law of primogeniture in all the countries of Europe. And for a similar reason, when the necessity which at first occasioned this general deviation from the feelings of equal affection to offspring was removed by the establishment of regular government, and general security, and the spread of commerce, with the necessity of capital to fit out sons and daughters, had been generally felt, this custom was silently abrogated at least in the commercial and middle classes, and a division of the succession, whether in land or money, into nearly equal parts, very generally took place.

It may readily be inferred from these observations, that the doctrines of Montesquieu, as to the moulding of institutions by external circumstances, and the character of nations, not of the character of nations by institutions and forms of government, is one of the very highest importance, not merely to speculative philosophers, but practical statesmen. In truth, it is the question of questions; the one thing needful to be understood both by the leaders of thought and the rulers of men. Unless correct and rational views are entertained on this subject, internal legislation will be perpetually at fault, external policy in a false direction. Reform will degenerate into revolution, conquest into desolation. The greatest calamities, both social and foreign, recorded in the history of the last half century, have arisen from a neglect of the maxims of Montesquieu, as to the indelible influence of race and external circumstances on human character, and the adoption in their stead of the doctrines of Voltaire and Rousseau, on the paramount influence of political institutions and general education on human felicity. Our policy, both social and foreign, is still mainly founded on the latter basis. If Montesquieu's principles as to no nation ever arriving at durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit and origin, had been generally adopted, the French Revolution, which originated in the Anglo and American mania, and the desire to transplant English institutions into the soil of France, would never have taken place. Had the same views prevailed in the British Cabinet, the iniquitous support of the revolt of the South American colonies in 1821 and 1822, and the insidious encouragement of the ruinous revolutions of Spain and Portugal during the Carlist war, would not have stained the honour of England, and ruined the prospects of the Peninsula. Had they pervaded the British community, the two fatal mistakes of policy in our time, the sudden emancipation of the negro slaves in the West Indies, and the unloosing all the bonds of government in Ireland, by the transplantation of Anglo-Saxon institutions, and the tempered freedom of England, into the midst of the Celtic blood and semi-barbarous passions of Ireland, would never have been committed. The great question at issue, in short, between Montesquieu and the Encyclopédists, as to whether man is moulded by institutions, or institutions by man, is the fundamental question, not only speculative, but practical, of the age; and without correct ideas on which, internal legislation and external policy are equally certain to be precipitated into error, and benevolence itself to become the parent of unbounded calamities.

And yet, if the matter be considered dispassionately, and without the disturbing influence of human pride and democratic ambition, which have obscured the visions of three generations of the ablest men in Europe, it seems extraordinary how any doubt could ever have been entertained on the subject. What are laws and institutions but the work of men, the concentration of the national will in times past, or at the present moment? If so, how could they have arisen but from the will of the people? It is only removing the difficulty a step further back to say, as has so often been done, that they were imposed, not by the will of the nation, but by the power of the tyrants who had oppressed, or the priests who had deluded it. For who were these tyrants or these priests? Not one in twenty thousand to the whole community. If they were empowered and enabled to impose arbitrary or debasing institutions, it must have been because the immense majority devolved to them the task; because, conscious of inability to govern themselves, or wanting the inclination to do so, they willingly resigned themselves to the guidance and direction of others. The Czar at St. Petersburg, the Sultaun at Constantinople, the Emperor at Pekin, reign just as much by the national will, and in a manner just as conformable to the national wish, as the Consuls of Rome, the Committee of Public Salvation at Paris, or the present constitutional Monarchs of France or England. The proof of this is, that when the people are dissatisfied with their administration, or displeased with the sovereign, they have no difficulty in dispatching him. The twisting of a sash round the neck in Russia, the bowstring in Constantinople or Ispahan, are very effectual monitors—fully as much so as a hostile Parliamentary majority in the house of Commons or Chamber of Deputies. In a word, government in every country being conducted by the few over the many by the hundreds over the hundred thousands, it is altogether impossible that the administration or institutions can be, for any length of time, at variance with the general will; because, if it was, it would not be submitted to. It may be, indeed, despotic and tyrannical in the highest degree, but that is no indication that it is contrary to the general will; it is only an indication that the general will is to be slaves—no unusual occurrence among men.

This fundamental principle of Montesquieu as to the perpetual and ineradicable influence of race, climate, and physical circumstances, in forming national character, and moulding national institutions, is unquestionably the true doctrine on the subject, though probably several generations must pass away, and an incalculable amount of suffering be endured by mankind, before it is generally admitted. Coupled with the cardinal point of the Christian faith, the inherent and universal corruption of the human heart, it forms the only foundation of a salutary or durable government. Decisive proof of this may be found in the fact, that the revolutionary party, all the world over, maintain directly the reverse; viz. that free political institutions, and general education, are all in all; and that, if established, the native virtue of the human heart affords a sufficient guarantee for general happiness. Montesquieu's principles lead to the conclusion that all reform and amelioration of existing institutions, to be either durable or beneficial, must be moulded on the old precedents, and deviate as little as may be, and that only from obvious necessity or expedience, from them. They utterly repudiate all transplantation of constitutions, or forcing upon one people the institutions or privileges of another. They point to experience as the great and only sure guide in social or political change, and for the obvious reason, that it alone can tell what has been found to be suitable to the circumstances, and adapted to the character and wants, of the nation among whom it has taken place. It is not that our ancestors were in the least wiser than we are; doubtless they did many foolish things, as we do. It is that time has consigned their foolish things, whether laws or measures, to the grave; and nothing has descended to our time but those institutions which have been found to be beneficial in their tendency. The portions of our present legislation which are suitable to the country, will in like manner descend to posterity, and the folly and absurdity will in a few generations be heard of no more.

It has been already remarked, that the Grandeur et Décadence des Romains is a more complete, and in some respects profound work, than the Esprit des Loix. A few quotations will justify, it is thought, this high eulogium—

"The circumstance of all others which contributed most to the ultimate greatness of Rome, was the long-continued wars in which its people were early involved. The Italian people had no machines for conducting sieges; and in addition to this, as the soldiers every where served without pay, it was impossible to retain them long before a fortified town; thus few of their wars were decisive. They fought for the pillage of a camp, or the booty of the fields, after which victors and vanquished retired alike into their respective cities. It was this circumstance which occasioned the long resistance of the Italian cities, and, at the same time, the obstinacy of the Romans in their endeavours to subjugate them; it was that which gave them victories which did not enervate, and conquests which left them their poverty. Had they rapidly conquered the neighbouring cities, they would have arrived at their decline before the days of Pyrrhus, of the Gauls, and of Hannibal; and, following the destiny of all the nations in the world, they would too quickly have gone through the transition from poverty to riches, and from riches to corruption."—C. 1.

What a subject for reflection is presented in this single paragraph! Rome, without any knowledge of siege equipage, thrown in the midst of the Italian states bristling with strongholds; and slowly learning, during centuries of indecisive, and often calamitous contests, that military art by which she was afterwards to subdue the world! It was in like manner, in the long, bloody, and nearly balanced contests of the Grecian republics with each other, that the discipline was learned which gave Alexander and the Macedonian phalanx the empire of Asia; and in the protracted struggles of the Anglo-Saxons, first with each other in the Heptarchy, and then with the Danes and Normans in defence of their coasts, that the foundation was laid of the energy and perseverance which have given the British race their present eminence and dominion among men.

"It has been often observed," says Montesquieu, "that our armies generally melt away under the fatigue of the soldiers, while those of the Romans never failed to preserve their health by it. The reason is, that their fatigues were continued; whereas our soldiers are destroyed by passing from a life of almost total inactivity to one of vehement exertion—the thing of all others most destructive to health. Not only were the Roman soldiers accustomed, during war, to incessant marching, and fortifying of the camps, but in peace they were daily trained to the same active habits. They were all habituated to the military step, that is, to go twenty miles, and sometimes twenty-four, in five hours. They did this bearing burdens of sixty pounds. They were daily trained to run and leap with their whole equipment on; in their ordinary drills the swords, javelins, and arrows were of a weight double of that used in war, and the exercises were continued."—C. 2.

There can be no doubt that this passage both explains much of the astonishing conquests of the Roman legions, and furnishes ample subject for reflection to a modern observer. The constant employment of these troops in the construction of great public works, as highways, bridges, harbours, or the like, was at once the best security for the health of the soldiers and the circumstance, of all others, which rendered their maintenance tolerable to the people. If we examine the inscriptions found in all parts of the world, where Roman remains are to be met with, we shall find that they were raised by the hands of the legions. It was their persevering and incessant toil which formed the magnificent highways, which, emanating from the Roman Forum, extended to the furthest extremity of the empire. The prodigious labour required for these great undertakings; the vast bridges and viaducts which required to be constructed; the mountains to be levelled; morasses and valleys to be filled up, habituated the legionary soldiers to such an amount of daily labour, that their engaging in the fatigues of a campaign was felt rather as a recreation than a burden. Hence, the dreadful sickness which in modern armies invariably attends the commencement of a campaign, and in general halves its numerical strength before a sword has been drawn, was for the most part unknown, and hence, too, the extraordinary achievements performed by small bodies of these iron veterans. How great the difference in modern times, where the naval and military forces are every where kept up during peace in almost total idleness; and the consequence is, that they are at once an eyesore to the citizens whose substance they consume in what is deemed useless ostentation, and are deprived of half their numerical strength, and more than half their efficiency, on first engaging in the fatigues of real warfare.

No province hails the arrival of a modern division of troops, no seaport longs for the presence of a man-of-war, as the signal for the commencement of great and beneficent pacific undertakings, as was the case in the Roman empire. Of what incalculable use might the British navy be, if even a part of it was employed in transporting the hundred thousand colonists who annually seek in our distant possessions, or in the American States, that profitable market for their industry, which they cannot find amidst our crowded manufactories at home? And this is an instance of the manner in which the reflections of Montesquieu, though made in reference only to the Roman empire, are in truth applicable to all ages and countries; as the parables in the Gospels, though delivered only to the fishermen of Judea, contain the rules of conduct for the human race to the end of the world.

Regarding the comparative causes of corruption in a military and commercial state, Montesquieu makes the following observation. Let him that feels it not applicable to this nation and ourselves, throw the first stone:—

"Carthage having become richer than Rome, was also more corrupted. For this reason, while at Rome public employments were chiefly awarded to ability and virtue, and conferred no advantage, but a greater share of fatigues to be endured, and dangers incurred, every thing which the public had to bestow was sold at Carthage, and every service rendered by individuals was paid by the state. The tyranny of a prince does not bring a despotic state nearer its ruin than indifference to the public good does a republic. The advantage of a free state consists in this, that its revenues are in general better administered; and even where this is not the case, it has at first the advantage of not being governed by court favourites. But, on the other hand, the corrupting power in a democracy, when once brought into action, erelong becomes more dissolving than in a despotism; for instead of paying court merely to the friends and relations of the prince, it becomes necessary to provide for the friends and relations of the multitude who have a share in political power. All is then lost. The laws are eluded in a more dangerous manner than by the violence of a despot; for they are so by the interests of the changing many, not the passions of one, whose position at the head of the state being fixed and unchangeable, gives him a lasting interest in its preservation."—C. 4.

How many reflections does this passage, written in France above a century ago, awaken in the breast of a British citizen at this time!—"Si monumentum quæris, circumspice!" So true it is, that real political truth belongs to no age or locality—"non alia Romæ, alia Athenis;" it is of eternal application, and is destined to receive confirmation from the experience of men, and the lessons of history, to the end of the world.

"Powers," says Montesquieu, "which owe their greatness to commerce, may exist long in mediocrity, but their grandeur can never be of long duration. The reason is, that they rise to greatness by little and little, without any one being aware of their growth, as they have done nothing which attracts attention, awakens alarm, or indicates their power. But when it has risen to that point, that no one can avoid seeing it, all the surrounding nations secretly endeavour to deprive the great commercial state of advantages which they all envy, and which have taken them, as it were, by surprise."—C. 4.

Few persons who contemplate the present state of the British empire, its astonishing rise to greatness in the space of less than a century—the general, it may be said universal jealousy with which it is regarded, and the perilous pinnacle on which it now stands, will deny the justice of this observation. May the remark, as to the short duration of power founded on such a basis, not receive an additional, and even more memorable confirmation in ourselves! But one thing is perfectly clear. This remark indicates the impossibility of conciliating the adjoining and poorer states while our commercial superiority continues, and thus strikes at the very foundation of the reciprocity system, on which our whole commercial policy for the last quarter of a century has been founded. That system proceeds on the principle, that by opening to the adjoining states a fair communication of advantages, it is in the power of a great commercial state, not only to conciliate their good-will, but obtain with them a great and mutually beneficial mercantile intercourse. Montesquieu's observation points to the undying and universal jealousy by its neighbours with which such a power is ever surrounded, and the futility of all attempts, while its superiority exists, to avert their mercantile hostility, or preserve with them any considerable commercial traffic. Which is the better option, let the hedge of hostile tariffs with which, after boundless concessions to purchase commercial good-will, we are surrounded in every direction, give the answer.

On the comparative value of infantry and cavalry in war, Montesquieu, though no professional soldier, makes the following observation, on which those who are so, would do well to ponder:—

"The Carthaginian cavalry was superior to that of the Romans, for two reasons. One was, that the Numidian and Spanish horses were better than those of Italy; the other, that the Roman cavalry was ill armed; for Polybius tells us, that it was not till they had carried on war in Greece, that they changed their manner of equipping that limb of military strength. In the first Punic war, Regulus was beat as soon as the Carthaginians made choice of plains for combat, where their cavalry could act to advantage; in the second, Hannibal owed to the Numidian horse his principal victories. It was not till whole corps of them began to go over to the Romans in Italy, that the latter began to breathe. Scipio having conquered Spain, and contracted an alliance with Masinissa, deprived the Carthaginians of that advantage. He did more, he gained it for himself. It was the Numidian cavalry which gained the battle of Zama, and terminated the war in favour of the Romans."—C. 4.

It is impossible to read the admirable account of Hannibal's campaign in the last volume of Arnold's History of Rome, without perceiving that this observation, as to the decisive effect of the Numidian cavalry upon the fortunes of the war, in first giving victory to the Carthaginians when they were entirely on their side, and gradually, and at length decisively restoring it to that of the Romans, when they were won over to their eagles, is entirely well-founded. Napoleon was of the same opinion, and has repeatedly expressed it in various parts of his works. "Give me," said that great man, "the French infantry and the Mameluke horse, and I will conquer the world." It was his constant affirmation that cavalry, equally brave and skillfully led, should always, other things being equal, overthrow infantry; and that the contrary opinion which generally prevails, was owing to horse, considered as the sole strength of war during the feudal ages, having been unduly decried since the invention of fire-arms. All the world knows the immense use he made of his heavy cavalry in all his campaigns; how often, in circumstances the most critical, it chained victory to his standards; how nearly it re-established his affairs, and replaced the imperial crown upon his head on the field of Waterloo. How striking a proof of human sagacity that the philosophic sage, in the early part of the seventeenth century, should have divined a truth which the researches of the historian and the exploits of the conqueror were to confirm in the middle of the eighteenth!

"Those who are governed by a king," says Montesquieu, "are less tormented by envy and jealousy, than those who live under an hereditary aristocracy. The prince is so far distant from his subjects, that he is rarely seen by them; he is so far above them that nothing in his situation can mortify his self-love. But the nobles who govern in an aristocracy are under the eyes of all, and they are not so elevated, but that odious comparisons are made without ceasing. Thus in all ages we have seen the people detest their senators, though they frequently love their king. Republics, where birth confers no title to power, are in that respect in a better situation than aristocracies; for the people feel less jealousy of an authority which they give to whom they please, and take from whom they incline."—C. 8.

How many confirmations of this remark have the history of France during the Revolution, and of England during the Reform mania afforded! And this affords an illustration of a truth, which, the more history is studied, will be rendered more apparent, viz., that the principles which lie at the bottom of the greatest changes in the political world, and produce the most devastating evils to society, are in reality the same which we see acting every day around us in common life. In the jealousies of the tea-table, the animosities of the market-place, the envy of trade, we may see the passions working, which, infused into a whole people, tear society in pieces. It is only supposing the same malevolent or selfish desires working in every breast, directed against one object, and rendered irresistible from that very multiplication, and we have the envy of the coterie transformed into the fury of revolution. Whoever will closely observe the working of that mainspring of human actions—selfishness—on the society, whether in a village, a city, a country, or a metropolis in which he resides, will have no difficulty in discerning the real but secret, and therefore unobserved spring of the greatest changes that ever occur in the political and social world. Voltaire said the factions at Geneva were storms in a teacup; if any man will study the motion of water in a teacup, he will be at no loss to understand the hurricanes of the Atlantic.

On the division of the Roman people into centuries and tribes, which was the cardinal point of their constitution, Montesquieu makes the following important observation:—

"Servius Tullius was the author of the famous division of the people into centuries, which Livy and Dionysius Halicarnassus have so well described. He distributed an hundred and ninety-three centuries into six classes, and put the whole lower people into the last century, which singly formed the sixth class. It is easy to see that that arrangement virtually excluded the lower classes from the suffrage, not de jure, but de facto. Subsequently it was agreed, that except in some particular cases they should, in voting, follow the division into tribes. There were thirty-five of these tribes who gave each their vote: four were from the city, thirty-one from the country. The principal citizens, being all rural proprietors, were naturally classed in the country tribes: the lower people were all massed together in the four urban ones. This circumstance was regarded, and with reason, as the salvation of the republic. Appius Claudius had distributed the lower people among the whole tribes, but Fabius classed then again in the four urban ones, and thence acquired the surname of 'Maximus.' The Censors very five years took a survey of the citizens, and distributed the people in the tribes to which they legally belonged; so that the ambitious could not render themselves masters of their suffrages, nor the people abuse their own power."—C. 8.

The Romans had good reason for styling Fabius "Maximus," who discovered this way of preventing the lower classes, by their number, from acquiring an overwhelming superiority in the government of the state. He achieved as great a good for his country by so doing, as by baffling Hannibal after the battle of Cannæ. But for that circumstance the Roman constitution would have become, after the change of Appius Claudius, a mere prototype of the American democracy; a government constantly swayed by a numerical majority of the lowest class of citizens. There can be no doubt that the matter at issue, in this question, is the most material which can engage the attention of political philosophers and statesmen in a free country, and that, on its determination, its ultimate fate is entirely dependant. So great is the number of the working-classes in every old and opulent community, compared to those who possess the advantages of property and superior education, that nothing is more certain than that, if the elective franchise be widely diffused, and no mode of classifying the votes, as at Rome, has been discovered, the sway of a numerical majority of incompetent electors will, erelong, become irresistible. Certain ruin then awaits the state. It was that which ruined Athens in ancient, which has destroyed Poland in modern times, and is fast undermining the foundations of the social union in America. The Roman method of giving every citizen a vote, but classifying them in such a way that the paramount influence of a mere numerical majority was prevented, and the practical direction of affairs was thrown into the hands of the better class of citizens, though not free from objection, is the most perfect method of combining universal suffrage in the citizens, with the real direction of affairs by those fitted to conduct them, which the wit of man has ever divined.

In truth, it deserves consideration by those who think on human affairs, and the probable form of government which may be expected to prevail in future among men, whether universal suffrage is the real evil to be dreaded; and whether equality of suffrage is not the real poison which destroys society. Abstractly considered, there is much justice in the plea so constantly advanced by the working-classes, that being members of the community, and contributing to its support or opulence by their labour, they are entitled to a certain voice in the direction of its affairs. If no one has a voice at all but the sovereign, as in a despotism, or no one except a few magnates, as in an aristocracy, the humbler classes cannot complain at least of inconsistency, whatever they may of injustice, if they are excluded. But if a vast body of electors, as in Great Britain, are admitted, and still the great bulk of the working-classes are excluded, it is not easy to see on what principle the exclusion of some can be rendered consistent with the admission of others. It deserves consideration whether the true principle would not be to give every able-bodied working man, major and not receiving parochial relief, a vote, but a vote of much less weight than his superiors in intelligence, property, or station. This might be done either as the Romans did, by making the votes be taken by centuries, and classing all the votes of the poorer electors in a limited number of centuries, or giving each man a personal vote, and giving the holders of property, in addition, more votes for their property; as one for every pound of direct taxes paid. Louis XVI. proposed a plan of this sort to Turgot before the Revolution; but that minister, deeply embued with the principles of democracy, rejected it; and Neckar, following out his views, practically established universal suffrage. Possibly the plan, if adopted and honestly carried into execution, might have prevented the whole calamities of the Revolution.

Of the dangers of such a multiplication of votes, without any restriction, Roman history affords a memorable example.

"Rome," says Montesquieu, "had conquered the world with the aid of the Italian cities, and, in return, she had communicated to them a great variety of privileges. At first they cared little for these advantages; but when the rights of Roman citizenship was that of universal empire, when no one was any thing in the world if he was not a Roman citizen, and with that little he was every thing, the Italian people resolved to perish or acquire that envied distinction. Being unable to attain this object by prayers and remonstrances, they had recourse to arms: the whole allies on the Eastern coast of the Peninsula revolted, those on the Western side were about to follow their example. Rome, obliged to combat as it were the hands by which it had conquered the world, was lost; it was about to be reduced to its walls, when it extricated itself from the difficulty by extending the privilege to the allies who had remained faithful, and shortly after to the whole.

"From that moment Rome ceased to be a city of which the people had the same spirit, the same interest, the same love of freedom, the same reverence for the Senate. The people of Italy having become citizens, every town brought thither its dispositions, its separate interests, its dependence on some neighbouring protector. The city, torn with divisions, formed no longer a whole; and as the vast majority of the citizens were so only by a species of fiction, had neither the same magistrates, the same walls, the same temples, the same gods, nor the same places of sepulture, Rome was no longer seen with the same eyes; the undivided love of country was gone; Rome was no more. The inhabitants of whole provinces and cities were brought up to the capital to give their suffrages, or compel others to give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those divisions always existed, and ever must exist in a free community. It was solely the greatness of the republic which was the cause of the evil, by changing popular tumults into civil wars. Faction was unavoidable in Rome; its warriors, so fierce, so proud, so terrible abroad, would not be moderate at home. To expect in a free state men at once bold in war, and timid in peace, is to look for an impossibility. It may be assumed as a fixed principle, that wherever you see every one tranquil in a state which bears the name of a republic, liberty there has been long since extinct."—C. 9.

The representative system has saved Great Britain and America from these terrible popular comitia, in which, as Montesquieu has truly said, the mobs of the people became the convulsions of an empire; and which tore in pieces Poland in modern, as it had done Rome in ancient times. But does not the real evil exist, despite this liberation from the actual tumult, in the representative government of a great empire, as much as in the stormy comitia of an overgrown republic? It is not the mere strife in the streets, and shedding of blood in civil warfare, bad as it is, and truly as the "bellum plusquam civile" exceeds all others in horror, which is the only evil. The separation of interests, the disregard of common objects in the struggle for individual elevation, the tyranny of one class by another class, is the thing which really dissolves the national bonds in every wide-spread and free community. We see this source of discord operating with as much force in the divided representation of great popular states, as in the bloody contests of the Roman forum or the plain of Volo in Poland. The nullification of South Carolina, the obnoxious tariff of America, the fierce demands for the repeal of the union in Ireland, the sacrifice of agricultural and producing, to commercial and monied interests in Great Britain, prove that these evils are in full operation among ourselves, as well as our descendants on the other side of the Atlantic. There is a confusion of tongues, and separation of mankind from the undue amalgamation of interests, as well as individuals. Providence has a sure way to punish the selfishness and presumption of men who seek to build up a Babel of human construction; and that is to leave them to the consequences of their own extravagance.

The style of Montesquieu may be judged from the extracts, few and imperfect as they are, given in the preceding pages. It is not vehement, eloquent, or forcible; but condensed, nervous, and epigrammatic. No writer has furnished to succeeding times so many brilliant passages to quote; but there are many who can be read en suite with more satisfaction. This is not unfrequently the case with writers on philosophical subjects of the highest class of intellect; and it arises from the variety and originality of their ideas. The mind of the reader is fatigued by following out the multitude of thoughts which their works engender. At the close of every paragraph almost, you involuntarily close the book, to reflect on the subjects of meditation which it has presented. The same peculiarity may be remarked in the annals of Tacitus, the essays of Bacon, the poetry of Milton, the Inferno of Dante, the Discorsi of Machiavel. In the habit of expansion which has arisen in more recent times from the multiplication of books, the profits made by writing, and the necessity of satisfying the craving of a voracious public for something new, is to be found the cause of the remarkable difference in the modes of composition which has since become prevalent. When men write for the monthly or quarterly press, there is no time to be condensed or profound. What has been gained, however, in animation and fervour, has too often been lost in thought; and it may be doubted whether, among the many writers of the present day, whether in Great Britain or the Continent, there is one whose works, a century hence, will be deemed to contain as much of original and valuable ideas as even the preceding sketch, imperfect as it is, has presented in Montesquieu.

A REMINISCENCE OF BOYHOOD.

By Delta.

I.

DE BURTIN ON PICTURES.

The writings of enthusiasts, however dry the subjects upon which they employ their pens, have always some power of fascination. Many a one who has never hooked a fish, has found delight in Isaac Walton. He is still the pleasant companion by river and brooklet, and the cause why,

"He that has fishing loved should fish the more,
And he should fish who never fish'd before."

But then the subject is the loveliest of arts, Painting—embracing as it does the beautiful, the great, and the pathetic, whatever charms the eye and moves the heart—we are sensible of more than common pleasure, and become soothed into dreams and visions of our own, even by the gentle garrulity of a connoisseur. Is there any one who pretends to acquaintance with literature, however uninitiated he may be in the mysteries of the arts, who has not read the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and who has not wished, after reading them, to be enabled to say, "anche io son pittore?" When we are told of picture galleries with their thousand works of art, and are warmed by the descriptions, feeble though they must be, of many of them, we seem to be suddenly led by a lamp of more magical power than Aladdin's; for what was his gallery of fruit-trees bearing, precious stones, to a gallery rich in pictures, the still brighter fruits of genius, presenting endless variety, each one almost a world in itself, and all, enticing the imagination into regions unbounded, of charm and loveliness, suggested, though not made visible, but to the mind's eye? We remember in our school days giving Virgil credit for much tact in endeavouring to make a gentleman of Æneas, and succeeding too for a while in raising the more than equivocal character of his hero, by placing him in the picture-gallery of the Queen of Carthage, and giving him leisure to contemplate and to criticise, and poetically to describe to his silent and spiritless lounger-friend many noble and many touching works. In this passage we also obtain the great Latin poet's opinion of the ameliorating effect of "collections." The hero of the Æneid knew immediately he was among an amiable people. The picture-gallery was the "nova res oblata" which "timorem leniit"—

"Hic primum Æneas sperare salutem
Ausus, et afflictis melius confidere rebus;
Namque"——

It is singular that all the courts of Europe have, for more than two centuries, been earnestly engaged in forming public galleries, a national benefit and honour which England had neglected with her great wealth, and with opportunities singularly favourable, until within a few years; and even now we are making but very slow progress, and works of art of the olden and golden time are becoming more rare, and immensely rising in value. Had we, as a nation, collected even fifty years ago—speaking of the transactions as a money speculation, in which view, according to the taste of the day, we must look at every thing—our purchases would now have been worth treble the first cost in money. The unhappy fate of Charles I. was most adverse to the arts here. It not only scattered the collection made by him, but, by the triumph of Puritanism, plunged the country first into a dislike of, and, for long subsequent periods, into an indifference for art. We even doubt if this gross feeling has altogether subsided. We do not yet take a national pride in works of genius, unless they immediately bear upon the art of living. No country is so rich as ours in private, and none so poor in public collections. And if we progress so slowly in our National Gallery, we can scarcely wonder that public institutions of the kind have not been dreamed of in the provinces. We sincerely hope that the movement Mr Ewart is making will be crowned with success, and that in time "collections" in our cities and towns will be the result.

The Musée of Paris, in 1844, contained upwards of fifteen hundred pictures. According to the catalogue compiled in 1781, the Imperial Gallery of Vienna then contained twelve hundred and thirty-four. According to the catalogue of 1839, the Dresden gallery contained eighteen hundred and fifty-seven. At Munich, the present king has erected a spacious building, into which he has draughted a selection, from among several thousands, of about fifteen hundred. And what have we done to improve the national taste? And strange, indeed, does it appear, that whenever such a subject is brought before the public mind in Parliament, it is solely with a view to the connexion of art with manufactures. There must be in the nature of things a certain connexion; but unnecessarily to bind them in union is to bind then unnaturally, and to put the shackles upon the higher, which cannot bear them without degradation. We hail with great pleasure every publication whose object is to promote a love for the fine arts; and more particularly those which show a due reverence for the old masters; for, however unwilling we may be to limit the power of genius, no one who has any pretensions to taste, and is of a cultivated mind, will deny that, if their works are not perfection, they are at least in a right direction. The novelties which more modern art has sought will pass away, we are persuaded, as not founded upon true principles, and we shall best advance by properly appreciating what has been done before us. We will not here enter into the subject of the décadence of art, nor its causes. We believe that if adequate national and provincial galleries were formed, more especially at our universities, the improved public taste would create a demand which this country would not lack genius to supply. We are not in the exact condition of Italy at the sudden rise of art there. The public, in the days of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo, had nothing, or but little to unlearn; the previous aim had fortunately not been very multifarious; the sentiment of art was right, and the direction true. It remained only to enlarge the sphere; the principles were in being; they required but confirmation. Grace and power naturally arose; for there was no counteracting education, nothing positively bad altogether to lay aside, though there was something to correct. Now with us, on the contrary, art has run into very strange vagaries; the enlargement of the boundaries has been unlimited, but it has been in regions far below the Parnassian Mount. We have talked of the High Ideal, and practised and encouraged ad infinitum the Low Natural, and too often have descended to the worse, the Low Unnatural; so that, upon the whole, we have to unlearn very much before we can be said to be in the rudiments of Real Art. Let us suppose one born with every natural endowment, with imagination, and a power of imitation. The mind, after all, is fed with realities; there is in it also process of digestion, which converts the real into the imaginative. Now, in early years, how rare it is that the naturally endowed artist is not ill fed—unhealthy diet of the mind entices him every where. If in the country, he is sparingly fed—sees little or nothing of Art, little perhaps beyond the Sign of an Inn—and is scarcely, from other sources of education, taught to look with the mind's eye, through the undignified appearance, to the actual dignity even of the nature he sees:—if he has lived in the city, the Print shops are inevitable lures to cheat him by little and little out of his natural taste, if there be one; for at first it can be but a mere germ. The works of greatness, of goodness, will be the last things that he will see; for seldom indeed will they be presented to his sight. For the pure, the sweet, the graceful, the dignified, he will have thrust before his eyes gaudy, tawdry caricature and grimace; and, worse still, perhaps wholly vulgar obscenities. Were he in his boyhood given a present in the pictorial line, it would be of an Opera-dancer or a race-course, or an abomination of London low life. What "slang" is to the ear, so would it be to the eye; and such is in nine cases out of ten the first education of those aspirants in art, who, ere they have unlearned any thing, set up for themselves—and abuse the old masters. Generally speaking, they are brought up in an anti-ideal school; the powers, therefore, that nature has given them, are not only uncultivated, but led astray; and similar education and similar tastes in the public, find them a market for very low, very worthless commodities. We have, in fact, a great deal to unlearn. The first step with us all, is, to unlearn. Could we see nothing bad it would not be so. That which would, at first view, be thought the greatest benefit to art, engraving, has but spread the wider the pestilence of false taste. It is from all this the earlier and greater painters were free. The evil, however, having once so spread, is not to be easily corrected. Bad taste has claimed a perpetuity of copyright. Good taste must proceed from an opposite source, and work in spite of the bad. It must come from publications, just criticisms, lives of painters,[[4]] familiar treatises on the principles of art; and more especially from national and other public galleries, to direct attention, and indeed to create a demand for those other auxiliary works. People will seek to understand and feel that which is continually put before them. Could they never see any but fine productions, they would soon have a relish for them that now is impossible; but by little and little, the sight of what is good will create a liking, and the liking will soon reach an adoration, and the unlearning process is imperceptibly going on. Corrupted as our eyes now are, we would venture to assert, that were you to offer, either in prints or originals, to boys of fourth and fifth forms at our public schools, in one hand a vile and gaudy horse and jockey, and in the other a pure and lovely picture by Raffaelle, the former would be taken. Here is a lamentable neglect in education; the ear must suffer the probing and the torture of metres and verse-making, but the eye is left unguarded, unprotected, to shift for itself, or to yield to the fascinations the first pander of evil chooses to offer. The school-boy might be improved at the universities; but there, too, is the same neglect. In our time, it was a rare thing to see a "man's" room without many engravings; and that sufficiently shows how much a school of art is wanted in those places, and what a hold they would have upon youth. But we cannot say much for the taste of the productions, that generally we will not say graced the walls. We had hoped that the Taylor bequest would have established at Oxford, not only a picture gallery, but a professorship of Painting and Sculpture. A large Building has been erected; and we have heard of an intention to remove to it some rubbish called pictures. If that threat be accomplished, we shall despair of seeing them removed to give place to better things. The majority will be satisfied with seeing walls covered, and look no further. We have heard likewise that some very valuable pictures have been offered upon very favourable terms to the university. If there be amongst any an intention of forming a gallery, we would urge them to use their best endeavours to make as soon as may be a beginning. For every succeeding year not only increases the difficulty in obtaining the concurrence of influential persons, but the annually rising value of pictures makes delay an imprudence. Besides, if a beginning were once made—were it once shown that the universities are in earnest—valuable bequests might greatly promote the great object. And this is an advantage that admits not of being put off to the morrow.

We have digressed from our purpose, which was to acknowledge the pleasure we have received from the pages of M. de Burtin's work; or we should rather say, from Mr White's translation. We have been some years acquainted with the original work in French. Its value in its present form is not lessened by the number of years that have passed between the original French edition and the translation; for general remarks on art are of all times, and there is much in the particular information the volume contains, such as lists of prices, and some other matters, from which useful comparisons may be now made.

The author very modestly, in his introduction, professes not to write "for artists nor accomplished connoisseurs;" yet to such, we believe, the volume, in its compressed form, will be of most value. He has the honesty to confess that he has learned his connoisseurship at some cost—that he has been victimized into a knowledge of art. And as this is generally the case with most collectors in the beginning, and not unfrequently in the end too, he thinks he may be of some use to others in showing "how to judge pictures well"—"what is a good picture;" and not of the least value, how to use it when you have it. His qualification as teacher cannot be denied; for he has not only collected, but travelled much, visited all the important collections, and by comparing picture with picture, and style with style, he has been enabled to speak with accuracy upon the distinguishing marks of schools and masters. A universal admiration, a love that will embrace all schools and all styles, is of very rare attainment, and perhaps hardly to be desired; for every man of any strength, of any fixed tone of character, must necessarily have a bias. And besides, one man naturally receives more powerfully impressions through form, another through colour. It is not inconsistent that a perfect connoisseur should be equally affected by both; but the mind is not allowed the same latitude with regard to subject; the passion will ever be for that which is congenial; whatever is foreign to it will receive but a cold and passing admiration. We should collect from the whole contents of this volume, that the author was never an enthusiastic admirer of what is termed high Italian art. He seldom dwells upon "the sublime and beautiful." Gifted rather with a complacent acquiescence in what is great, than stirred by it to any heat of rapture, it is probable that at least the sphere of his pleasures was enlarged; and his nice sense of the beauty, touch, and colour, rendered pictures, of subjects of little interest, more pleasing to him, than they could be to the connoisseur of more exclusive taste. His predilection is, however, for Colour; and we agree with him, "that without the science of colouring, that so difficult science, about which the exclusive partisans of ideal beauty trouble themselves so little, their antiques and their ideal perfection may produce designs, but never can pictures."

Two definitions are laid down, which, as frequent reference is made to them, we copy. Definition of painting—"The art of applying colours, without relief, upon a plain surface, so as to imitate any object in the manner in which it is seen, or may be conceived visible in nature." "A good picture" he defines to be, "a good choice of subject well represented." If we knew precisely what is here meant by "nature," a word used by all writers on art in very various senses, and commonly very vaguely, we might not find fault with the definition; but genius, which has

"Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new,"

is not too strictly to be limited to the actualities of external nature. It is the nature of the mind, under certain impulses and impressions, to exaggerate, to combine from memory, not from sight, even to the verge of the impossible; for even this extravagance is the product of human passion, which by its nature disdains common boundaries; and this, in painting, is especially the province of Colour, which may be said to be the poetical language of art, and admits differences of the same kind as exist between common speech and poetical and figurative diction.

The painter as well as poet may colour somewhat highly,

"And breathe a browner horror o'er the woods."

Critics too often write of art as if it had only to do with what actually exists; whereas it is given to it as to poetry "to make," to create—all that is required is a certain connexion with the real, sometimes exceedingly slight, which shall be sufficiently delusive for present purpose. The agile mind can pass over a deep and formidable chasm upon a slender thread; and when over, is too much occupied in the new region to turn back and measure the means of passage. We suspect our author's view of nature is too limited.

Upon "a good choice of subject" are some good remarks. Disgusting subjects are justly condemned. "It is evident that an animal, flayed or embowelled, entrails, meat raw or mangled, blood, excrements, death's-heads, carcasses, and similar objects, if they strike upon the view too much, will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces, hideous or monstrous deformities, whether moral or physical, will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural, barbarous, and cruel, to shake violently the soul, and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror, create an agitation too frightful for it to resist, much less to be pleased with. Subjects of so bad a choice, (which Horace severely prohibits from being introduced upon the scene,) do little honour to the painter. They become even more insupportable in proportion as they approach nearer to reality by the perfection of their execution." The translator thinks his "author has stated this too broadly;" and instances, as pictures of this kind to be admired for their truth, The Lesson of Anatomy, by Rembrandt; Prometheus Devoured by the Vulture, by Salvator Rosa; Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del Piombo. Of the two first subjects, we think they are to be condemned, if, in the Prometheus, the enduring mind of Prometheus be not the subject. But surely the grand picture of Piombo, though it is all awful, has in it nothing disgusting, or that comes within the condemned list. The question to be asked in all these cases is, what is the object, as well as what is the subject. Is it to teach, to improve, to soften the mind by human love and sympathy, or to excite it to a just and hopeful indignation, for therein is a source of pleasure? The rule of tragedy should be applicable here. Undoubtedly, we receive pleasure from tragic representations. Isolated, barbarism, cruelty would be intolerably disgusting. But in every good tragedy, there are always good and lovely characters with whom we can sympathise. We are bettered by thus uniting ourselves with what is lovely; and are content to take at second-hand, and thus feel only in a safe degree, the distresses to which, as human nature ourselves, we are liable. In pictured representation, however, we have to guard against the too vivid, and at the same time too permanent, as being a fixed expression, which, by the art and power of language, we are not allowed to dwell upon too exclusively; and relief is offered in change and diversity. There are some very judicious remarks upon disgusting subjects in "An Essay on the Choice of Subjects in Painting," read, we believe, some years ago, by Mr Duncan, at the Institution at Bath. We remember an account in the Essay of a very ridiculous burlesque (it is not intended so to be) of some of the horrific legends of the Italian schools. The picture was exhibited in the chapel of Johanna Southcote, at Newington Butts, near London. St Johanna was represented in a sky-blue dress, leading the devil with a long chain, like a dancing-bear, surrounded by adoring angels. Is not this doubtful? "I add, that, excepting man, that King of Nature, whose head presents to a painter the subject that is most interesting for character, grace, dignity, and expression of the whole mind, of which it is the mirror, no animal, dead or alive, affords, in any one part of its frame, whatever care may be taken in the execution, more than a subject for a study, or will by any means form what can be called a picture." This surely is not quite true. There is a very fine picture of a lioness, dimly seen at the mouth of her den, in grim repose, that is very grand. One colour pervades the whole—there is nothing forced; but the very colour is of the stealthiness of the animal's nature; it is so dim, that the animal is not strikingly discoverable, but grows out upon the sight, and we feel the sense of danger with the knowledge of security. And surely this is the sublime of art. Had the author seen some of the noble animals, gifted with noble characters by nature, and by the hand of our Landseer, he would have hesitated ere he pronounced thus strongly.

The choice of a subject is considered as belonging solely to invention, irrespective of composition or disposition. "The honour of inventing truly belongs to him whose imagination creates all, or almost all, of new." A distinction is made between composition and design: indeed, according to our author, there are three parts of invention—composition, disposition, and design. There is a repetition of the charge of disproportion in objects, brought against Raffaelle, to which we do not implicitly bow. He is considered as having "committed two striking faults against nature and lineal perspective, in his famous picture of the Transfiguration, by the ridiculous smallness of his Mount Tabor, and by the disproportionable size of the Christ and of the two Prophets." But we question if the mind, in that state of feeling in which it beholds a miraculous and altogether overwhelming subject, is not necessarily in a condition to overstep the actual rules of nature, and to receive a type of things for the reality, admitting the small to stand for the great. Were it conscious of very exact formal truth, the power of the subject would be reduced. Actual perspective would have, in Raffaelle's case, ruined the picture. There was that boldness of genius which Shakspeare, when the nature of the subject required it, adopted, which made the one, leap over time, and the other, space and proportion.

Under the head "disposition of the subject," there is a somewhat unsatisfactory sentence. "It contributes to the 'goodness' of the picture," "if it avoid uniformity and positions that are too symmetrical; if it distribute the light well; if by means of it the groups pyramid and unite well; and if it give value to all the parts of the picture by means of each other, in such a manner as that the result shall be a satisfactory whole." There is much here that is true; but there is something false. And that which is false in it, has often strangely misled artists in their arrangement and grouping. There are some subjects of a perfectly symmetrical character; however rare they may be, there are some. Raffaelle, in his cartoon of delivering the keys to Peter, paints, as nearly as may be, all the apostles' heads in one line. Is not the character of Gothic architecture symmetrical? Painters of architectural subjects very commonly overlook this, and by perspective difference destroy this orderly character. Few make the centre the point of sight; which is, however, the proper one for representation, as it alone shows the exact conformity and order, the idea of which it was the purpose of the architect to present, and which constitutes the beauty. The "pyramid" rule is manifestly absurd, and seldom has even a tolerably good effect. It was the quackery of a day.[[5]] The good masters did not work upon it. It is, in fact, a little truth taken out of a greater, and misapplied—a part of that circular character of composition, as it were a principle of reflection, by which lines close in upon or recede from each other. We have, in a former paper in this Magazine, treated of this principle—to dwell on it now would take us far from our purpose. As to the ability of all persons to judge of the naturalness of a picture, the translator doubts the correctness of the affirmative opinion of his author. He remarks, that "it requires considerable practice and experience to enable one to judge how much art can do; what is the exact medium between feebleness and exaggeration, which constitutes the all-surpassing quality of truth, of which he declares himself a partisan; and in what manner one painter differs from or excels another in the representation of it." It may also be observed, that people in general have uncultivated eyes, and see not the whole beauties of any one object; they are commonly quite ignorant of ideal and sentimental beauty, almost wholly arising out of the power of art—the representing the imagination. It is when such persons are called upon to see nature in a picture, that they show how imperfect their sight has been. Seeing the representation in a frame, they know it to be a work of art, and generally object to shadow; whereas, could they see the picture placed at an open window or some deceiving position, they would be deceived. Many, knowing the intention is to deceive them, are ready armed with objections, which, however, they make because they have sought them, not because they have felt them. What we term local colour, is termed by M. de Burtin proper colour; local colour he considers as the colour made variable by space, by locality, air, light, and surrounding bodies. The distinction may be useful; but proper colour will itself be difficult to discover, for we never can see it entirely separated from some foreign influence. In a picture it would be perhaps best to consider that the proper colour which would be proper to the half-tone, whether modified by aerial perspective or not. He considers that proper colour is not shown mostly in objects in the foreground, for there the light which destroys it is most powerful; light destroys proper colour, and substitutes its own. "It is the perfect understanding of this interesting principle, which renders the works of Rubens, and of his best scholars, so superior for their magic truth of colour. It is this which explains why they make the colour of the blood to appear through the fine and transparent skin of their Flemings, particularly of the women, only in proportion as the effect of the light is lost in the retiring parts; and why the red prevails more in these parts in general, which are illuminated only by a reflected light too feeble to change the natural colour. The latter may often be even strengthened by the colour of the object from which the reflected light proceeds, which happens when one flesh part is reflected upon another, as may be remarked more particularly towards the extremities."

The following quotation is well worth considering—the observation it contains is new. "As to the influence of light upon the local colours, one of the plainest proofs of it is, that the colour of objects seen in broad day, diminishes in force the more that the sun enlightens the distant plain on which they are placed. This observation, and many other analogous ones, convince me that the light in a picture in general exerts a greater influence upon the local colours than even the air, although those who have written upon the art seem to attribute the local colours exclusively to the interposition of the air and the vapours with which it is charged. The above remark, though useful to all painters, becomes the more indispensable to those who have to do with landscape, seeing that without attention to it, the aerial perspective would render useless, by a false and mannered representation, the just proportions and the exact contours dictated by linear perspective. Another remark, not less interesting, is, that the colour of cast shadows depends, beyond every thing, on that of the light, and consequently on the state of the atmosphere and the time of the day, as well as the season of the year." Hence is it that the brown shadows of art, which are adopted for the sake of warm, are, in good painters such as Vandyke, always blended with the silvery grey.

"Of the general tone of colour."—This part of the subject is treated rather with regard to strict observation of nature, than its poetical applicability to art. For surely there is a distinction; there should be a tone of colour belonging to the subject, irrespective of the actual colour of place or time of day, properly belonging to the action represented. It is well observed, that the argentine or silvery tone so much admired and sought after by amateurs, "is nothing but the faithful imitation of the tone assumed by nature in countries where the rays of the sun are not too perpendicular, every time that the air is in that state of transparency required to temper to the necessary degree the too brilliant blue of a pure sky, and itself to receive and transmit this desirable silvery tone which delights the spectator." By this it would appear that our artists' dreams of countries, alio sub sole, are not likely to bring beauty of colour to their pictures—that the fables of Eastern skies are, with regard to art, fables; and though there is now always an attempt, and that by no mean powers, to drag the spectators at our exhibitions under the very chariot of the sun, "sub curru nimium propinqui solis," real beauty of colour will be found much nearer home.

We are somewhat surprised by, as it would appear from the general observations of De Burtin, an accidental truth which he has not elsewhere followed to its consequences. "If pictures offend against nature, and become cold by the employment of cold colours upon them, such as black, white, blue, and green, either pure or bluish, and by the omission of the glazings which the tone of the light requires, or if they become so from the natural coldness of night and of snow, not remedied by art, the painter ought to correct the fault in the manner I have previously hinted at." In the following remark, we can see the great defect in the colouring of Murillo's pictures, especially in his backgrounds, who appears always to have painted on a wet and dingy day. "But nothing can correct the cold of a sky concealed by the kind of clouds last mentioned, or rendered totally invisible by mist." He rescues the clear-obscure from the meaning commonly attached to it as light and shade. "In the literal sense, this word means nothing but the obscure which is at the same time clear." It should rather be defined to be light in shadow; but it will be difficult to establish any other sense for it than the disposition of the light and shade in a picture. The inventor of it, for practical use, was Leonardo da Vinci. Of this chiaroscuro he says: "It is this, in fine, against which so many renowned Italian masters have sinned, but in which the immortal Correggio is so eminently distinguished, and which proves how they err who have named Titian the prince of colourists. For how much soever he may possess in a supreme degree very many other parts of colouring, he has so misunderstood this one in his general harmony, that his grounds are rarely in agreement with the rest of his picture, and are often all black. His Venus, in the Dresden gallery, and his Ecce Homo, in that of Vienna, two of his most renowned pictures but especially the latter, present striking proofs, among very many others, of the correctness of my opinion on this great colourist."

Those who object, as some venture to do, to Titian's colour, especially in his backgrounds, we believe overlook his intention, and are not aware how much what they consider defects affect the whole. Objections have been made to the background of the Peter Martyr, without considering how appropriate the colouring is to the subject. There are some just observations on the necessity of transparency, which should not be confined to shadows and demi-tints, "which cannot do without it." It has been said that Titian and Correggio glazed over every part of the picture, thereby giving even the lights a sort of transparency. Of harmony of colour, he says, "Under the pencil of an intelligent artist, local colours, even the least agreeable, and those which have the least affinity among themselves, may become very agreeable to the eye, and contribute powerfully to the harmony of the picture through the interposition of some other colour, as in music discordant tones are happily united by means of intermediate ones." The translator appends to this a note in which he quotes from Mengs, that "The three primary colours being red, blue, and yellow, when any one of them is prominently used, it should be accompanied by one which unites the other two. Thus, if pure red be used, it should be accompanied by green, which is a compound of blue and yellow. This compound colour is called the contrasting colour, and is always used sparingly. But the harmonizing colour is said to be the compound made by any one colour itself, along with the next adjoining to it on either side of the spectrum. Thus red will be harmonized by purple, the colour produced by compounding it with blue on the one side of it, and it will also be harmonized by orange, which is the colour produced by compounding it with the yellow, next to it on the other side of the spectrum." In treating "of the effect" of a picture, although the author with a kind of reluctance admits, or "will not condemn absolutely" factitious effects, he has no predilection for them, and blames for the extravagant use of them Carravagio and others of the Italian schools. Unquestionably they afford a power which should be used with judgment, then most applicable when the supernatural of the subject overpowers the familiarity of more natural effects. Of the "empasto," so much spoken of by connoisseurs, he is an admirer. He directs that the "colours which compose the empasto" should be perfectly well ground, and the ground perfectly smoothed. Yet this was not always the case in the empasto of Paul Veronese, whose empasto was often of a broken and mortary surface; and it would appear, from an examination of such parts of his pictures, as if he had purposely used water with his oil-paint, which would have the effect of slightly separating the particles, and thereby giving brilliancy from the broken surface of refracting particles. This seems to have escaped the notice of M. de Burtin in this place. It has been said of Michael Angelo, that he never painted more than one picture in oil. Like the relics of saints, that one has wonderfully multiplied. Our author speaks of one in his own possession, which is certainly not described as according to the manner we should expect on that great master. "A truly unique picture, by the great Michael Angelo Buonarroti, in my possession, proves to what an astonishing degree art can imitate gold, silver, and stones, without using the originals, by the magic illusion with which the rare genius has painted them as ornaments. They look as if relieved on the armour of the two cavaliers, insomuch that one would believe them to be truly the work of an actual chisel." He admires the smooth empasto; and among the painters who practised it, laudably mentions Vander Werff. But he blames others less known for carrying it out to an extreme finish. To our taste, the smooth empasto of Vander Werff is most displeasing; rendering flesh ivory, and, in that master, ivory without its true and pleasing colour. This branch of the subject ends with remarks on touch, which completes the list of the parts that contribute "to make a good picture." The manner of a painter is in nothing so distinguished as in his touch. There must, then, be great variety in the touch of painters. To be a judge of masters, it is necessary, as the first step to connoisseurship, to be acquainted with this executive part of their art. "Since it is correct to say that without a good touch there cannot be a good picture, one may say likewise, that he is not a good master who has not a good touch, and who does not know how to avoid using it too much." It is a mark of a defective mind, when the painter is too much pleased with the dexterity of his hand. Many however, require this hint; their pictures are so overlaid with touch, that the autographs supersede the subject.

The incipient connoisseur will do well to read the chapter in this volume which will tell him "how to judge pictures well." It will tell him even in what position to see a picture. He disapproves of the use of the mirror, in which the picture is reflected as giving a softness and harmony not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio, "in order to learn the effect of the colours, of the masses, and of the work as a whole," he recommends it to the painter. He expects, however, from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain, when it is expected to reach such a point that "all schools, all masters, all manners, and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him." We fear that an amateur who could reach this indifference, would be rather a general admirer than a good lover. The amateur thus advanced, "will soon be able to weigh impartially the grounds of the dispute between the partisans of ideal beauty on the one hand, and the beauty which exists in nature on the other." But here is a mistake in initio; for is not the Ideal, too, Nature? We should have rather expected a disquisition to elucidate this point; but our author prefers passing away from the real question to indulge in a little severity on the admirers of the Ideal, which Ideal we are persuaded he never understood; for he considers evidently that the "ideal beauties," with the "magic truth" of the Dutch school in execution, would be perfection. He would view a work painted under this union as perfection. To us it would, we feel quite sure, be an intolerable performance. For this little bit of bad taste he is called to account by his translator. The author's taste was, after all, we suspect, rather incomplete; rather the product of an educated eye than of a mind educated to embrace the Ideal. The fact is, the Ideal in practice must be the reach of a something which the eye, however educated, does not altogether find in external nature; but which, from the data of external nature, the mind creates, partly by combination, and partly from a power of its own invention altogether. The external senses in educated man are obedient to this inventive direction of the mind, and at length receive their greater, perhaps often only, pleasures from it. It is easy to imagine how the more evident and real beauties of the inferior schools, for we do not hesitate to speak of the Italian as the higher, more easily captivate, especially, the incipient lovers of art. They begin by collecting the Dutch; but as they advance in taste and knowledge, and acquire the legitimate feeling for art, they are sure to end with the Italian. The uninitiated may wonder to be told there is any difficulty in judging "whether a picture is in good preservation or not." Yet here is a chapter to teach this "useful knowledge." The "perils that flesh is heir to," are nothing if compared to the perils that environ the similitudes of flesh. "Nos nostraque morti debemur." Men and pictures suffer from the doctors as well as from time. Pictures, too, are often in the "hand of the spoiler," and are subject, with their owners, to a not very dissimilar quackery of potion and lotion, undergo as many purifications, nor do they escape the knife and scarification; are laid upon their backs, rubbed and scrubbed, skinned, and oftentimes reduced to the very ribs and dead colouring of what they were. It is surprising how great a number of pictures are ruined by the cleaners. We are sorry to read this account of Correggio's celebrated Notte. "Even when they do not destroy the picture entirely, they, at all events, leave the most injurious traces behind, depriving it of its transparency and harmony, and much of the effect, rendering it hard, cold, and weak. Of this the admirable 'Night' of Correggio at Dresden presents a very sad example."

We look upon the audacious man who dares to repaint upon an old picture unnecessarily, and by wholesale, as guilty of a crime. It is the murder of another man's offspring, and of his name and fame at the same time. We have heard of a man half a century ago going about the country to paint new wigs upon the Vandykes. We would have such a perpetrator bastinadoed on the soles of his feet. "I was present," says our author, "at Amsterdam during a dispute between one who had just sold a landscape for several thousand florins, and the agent who had made the purchase on commission. The latter required an important change to be made towards the centre of the picture, which he contended would be very much improved thereby. It was in vain that the seller, with whom I agreed in opinion upon the point, persisted in refusing to repaint a work in such good preservation, and by so great a master; for the broker closed his lips by protesting, that unless the demand were complied with, he was instructed to throw up the bargain." We look with equal horror on buyer and seller. Would not the latter have sold his father, mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins? It has been said that, in compliment to William III., many of the portraits of the ancestors of the courtiers of the day were re-painted with aquiline noses. M. de Burtin very justly observes, that the new touches on old pictures do not preserve their tone, but he does not give the true reason. He seems to entertain no notion that pictures were painted with any other vehicle than common oil; and, in a short discussion upon Van Eyck's discovery, he only shows that he takes up what others have said, and never himself could have read what the monk Theophilus really wrote; for, like M. Merimée, he supposes the monk to say what he never did say. It is only surprising that, in his numerous cleanings, he did not discover the difference between the old paint of one date and of another, and how they require different solvents. There is a chapter upon "the manner of knowing and appreciating copies," from which the beginner, in collecting, may take some useful hints. He repeats the well-known anecdote of the copy from Raffaelle by Andrea del Sarto, which Julio Romano, who had worked upon the picture, believed to be the original, though assured beforehand by Vasari that it was a copy. With regard to Rubens, by far the greater number of pictures said to be by him, are by the hands of his scholars, to whom he gave the design and outline merely, sometimes touching up the pictures with his own hand. This has been a common and a justifiable practice with great painters, both ancient and modern, or it would have been impossible for any one pair of hands to have done the works which bear the names of some well-employed painters. The few pictures entirely by the hand of Rubens confirm the suspicion as to others, by their superiority. Contemporary copies he considers in a very different light from more modern, because the modern being from the old after they had deepened, deepen still more, and in a few years scarcely resemble in tone the originals. It is from such copies that an ill name has been given to all copies. We have very little feeling for amateurs in their annoyances and embarrassments, who discover that they have only purchased a copy; for they did not judge according to the merits of the picture, but the name under which it was admitted.

The sixth chapter, upon "The manner of analysing and describing pictures," furnishes some good hints to catalogue-makers and auctioneers. The examples are ingeniously worded, and with no little precision. The number given is but a selection from about 240 pages. Whoever will try his hand at a descriptive catalogue, will find it not so easy a task as he imagined. We should have perhaps entertained a higher opinion of the author's judgment, though not a higher of his descriptive power, supposing it to have been exercised as a disciple of the noted Mr Puff, who took a double first in those arts, had the translator kindly omitted an outline of a picture by Poelemburg—The Adoration of the Shepherds. It is certainly well described in generality and detail; but never was any thing more like Mr Puff's style than the following:—"Poelemburg has here surpassed himself by the exactness of the design, and the fine form of the figures. He has carried to the highest degree their gracious and simple expression. The picture is not less distinguished for the attractive effect of light well distributed, for harmony and the clear obscure, for the agreeable and sweet tone of the proper colours, and for that truth," &c. &c. &c.—but alas! the outline! "Look on this picture and on this." It may have been a pretty picture, though the subject is much above Poelemburg; but—shall we pronounce it?—the design is wretched—we cannot help it, and would spare it if we could. Strange are the blunders made in descriptive catalogues. An instance is given—an amusing specimen from a well-established manufactory. "The famous picture of Raffaelle, painted for the church of St John at Bologna, representing St Cecilia holding a musical instrument in her hands, with others at her feet, affords an example of the errors alluded to. She listens with rapt attention to a choir of angels borne on the clouds, and singing. On her right hand are St Paul and St John the Evangelist, strongly characterized; the one by his sword, the other by his eagle, and both by the airs of the heads. On her left are St Magdalene with her cup, and St Augustine with his cross and pontifical garments." Hitherto all the world had been agreed upon the justness of the description; but the author of the Manual of the French Museum, printed in 1803, judged it proper to make one of his own, of which behold the title and the substance—The Martyrdom of St Cecilia.

"Raffaelle would not represent the martyrdom of a young virgin like the execution of a malefactor. Here Cecilia advances towards the place where the palm of martyrdom awaits her. Her feet only still belong to this earth. Her upraised eyes tell that her thoughts are already in heaven. The man who bears the sword is not an executioner whose stern ferocity augments that of the spectacle. Here the headsman has an air of compassion. Behind the saint walks a priest who assists her. His physiognomy is common, but sweet. He applauds the tranquil resignation of the victim, who seems already to hear the celestial concert that is going on above. The angels celebrate her coming before hand! One of the companions of Cecilia points them out to her with his finger, and seems to do so as an encouragement to her. A young man follows the saint. His action is too expressive to suppose it that of a parent or convert." This is indeed a very fine specimen, both for what is said and what is unsaid—the surmise is perfectly French, and the pitying tender familiarity of Cecilia, for commiseration's sake robbed of her saintship, would be enough to melt an auction-room to tears, were the picture to be sold and thus described.

The very best auction description of a picture we remember ever to have heard, was one most fluently given, and with a most winning and gentlemanly manner, by Mr Christie, the father of the present justly appreciated Mr Christie, as true and honourable as unerring in his judgment of pictures. It was many years ago. The picture to be sold was the celebrated one of the three goddesses, The Judgment of Paris, a large picture. Now the difficulty of the case lay in this, that it was well known that there were three pictures of the subject, all claiming to be originals. This was well known and talked about. There were in fact three pictures of the judgment of Paris. After minutely and most ably describing the picture, Mr Christie came to this delicate acknowledgment. He admitted there were three; the great painter, delighted with his subject, enamoured of the beauties he had created, had, as it were, thrice thrown himself at the feet of each goddess. The three pictures were an offering and homage to each. None could determine which was best. The subject was the Judgment of Paris—it was an enviable opportunity for a happy purchaser "to throw the golden apple." We do not pretend to give, with any exactness, the eloquent wording of this address; nor can we describe the perfect grace with which it was delivered. Every one in the room seemed to know that he was listening to a scholar and a gentleman, and felt a confidence. But to return to De Burtin. The chapter on "the general schools of painting," contains both useful information and judicious remarks. He mentions the embarrassment the amateur must feel, seeing that authors are not agreed among themselves in the number and classification of schools. Some reckon three, some five, some eight, some extend the number to twelve. Lanzi even makes fourteen of the Italian schools alone. "In order that the school of a particular city or country may take its place among the general schools, it is necessary, in my opinion, that it shall have produced a great many masters celebrated for their merit, and that these shall have in their style and manner something common to them all, which particularly characterizes them, and which is sufficiently remarkable to distinguish their school from all others. Upon this principle, I reckon eight schools in all; and these are, the Florentine or Tuscan, the Roman, the Lombard, the Venetian, the Flemish, the Dutch, the French, and the German. If it were sufficient to have given to the world artists renowned for their merit, the Spanish might likewise claim a place among the general schools, were it only from having possessed a Morales, a Velasquez, and a Murillo. Naples, too, might enjoy the same privilege, from the names of Spagnoletto, Calabrese, Salvator Rosa, and Luca Giordano. Genoa, likewise, from Castiglione, Strozzi, Castelli, and Cambiasi. But the want of a general distinctive character prevents their being ranked under the general schools, and the masters are, for the most part, placed separately in that one or other of the acknowledged schools to which their manner approaches most nearly, or to which their master belonged." The distinguishing marks of the schools are ably laid down. The author confesses that he feels a difficulty in generalizing the characteristics of the Florentine school. He adopts the somewhat exaggerated (as he allows) account of M. Levesque. His characteristics are—fine movement, a certain sombre austerity, an expression of vigour, which excludes perhaps that of grace, a character of design, the grandeur of which is in some sort gigantic. They may be reproached with a kind of exaggeration; but it cannot be denied that there is in this exaggeration an ideal majesty, which elevates human nature above the weak and perishing nature of reality. The Tuscan artists, satisfied with commanding admiration, seem to disdain seeking to please. The description of the Roman school we conceive to be not so fortunate. Its excellence is attributed to the antique, distinguished "by great beauty in the forms, a composition elegant, although often singular, and by expressions ideal rather than natural, of which a part is often sacrificed to the preservation of beauty." If we receive as models of these two most celebrated schools, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, and Raffaelle, (though it should be observed, if we look to the actual genius of these great men, we must not forget the early age at which Raffaelle died,) such distinction as this may be drawn. That the Florentine school had for its object the personal, the absolute bodily power and dignity of man, and such strong intellect and energy as would be considered in necessary agreement with that perfect condition of the human form. That there is therefore, in their vigorous delineations, a great and simple, and, as it were, gigantic rudeness very perceptible. On the contrary, in the Roman, the subordination of the person to the cultivated mind is decidedly marked. It is the delineation of man further off from his ruder state, showing in aspect, and even in bodily movements, the mental cultivation. The one school is of an Antediluvian, the other of a Christian race. Hence, in the latter, under the prerogative of love, grace and a nicer beauty are assumed; and a delicacy and purity arising from minds educated to bear, to forbear, chastened by trial, endowed with a new greatness not inconsistent with gentleness. Yet was simplicity strongly marked in the Roman school; nor do we think the blame thrown upon their colouring justly thrown, as it was most consistent with the characteristic dignified simplicity; nor do we agree with those who think it inharmonious in itself. Baroccio is praised, in that he added somewhat of the colouring of Correggio to the study of the antique and the works of Raffaelle; but it is more than doubtful if the innovation upon the Roman simplicity be not a deterioration of the school. The colouring, the chief characteristic of the Venetian school, represents mankind in a still further onward (we use not the word advanced, because it may be misunderstood) state, in the state of more convention, of manners, and of luxury. Hence even most refined subjects of the Venetian are, with regard to purity, and moral and intellectual beauty, in a grade of inferiority to the Roman and Florentine. They are of the age of a civil government rather than of a religious influence. The countenances indicate the business of the world; the more varied costume, the more rich covering of the figures, with less of the nude, are marks of merchandise and traffic. This is perceptible, and possibly somewhat to the disparagement of the full display of the subject, in the grand picture of Del Piombo, the Raising of Lazarus, though perhaps that picture, bearing such evidence of the design if not the hand of Michael Angelo, may by some not be admitted as belonging to the Venetian school. We mean not to say that the Venetian school did not advance the art by the new power of colour, the invention of that school; it opened the way to a new class of subjects, which still admitted much of the grand and the pathetic. It certainly did more; it showed that there was a grand and a pathetic in colour alone, a principle of art which, though first shown, and not in its perfect degree by the Venetians, has never yet been carried out as a principle. We hear much of its beauty, its harmony, in a limited sense of its power, but seldom of its sentiment.

The remarks of M. de Burtin upon the Peter Martyr of Titian are very strange. He must have been much deceived when he saw this wonderful picture, either by its position or the state of his own vision. We saw the picture out of its frame, and down against the wall, and saw no factitious unnatural effect, nor any black and white. "This picture," he says, "so full of merit in other respects, presents a striking example of the factitious and unnatural effect produced by the extraordinary opposition of black and white. I am well aware that gay and brilliant colouring would not be appropriate to a cruel action; but a measure is to be observed in every thing, and I cannot be convinced that there could occur, in broad day, and in the open air, a scene in which all was obscure and black except the figures." Obscurity and blackness in Titian's Peter Martyr! Our author has attached the school of Bologne to that of Lombardy, as others have done, in consideration that the Caracci in forming their school greatly studied Correggio. Yet undoubtedly Correggio stands quite apart from the Caracci. The Bologna was in fact a "Composite" school. If the Venetian school was indicative of business, of the activities of society as a mass, the Lombard school, as first distinguished by Correggio, assumed more homely grace, it was domestic, of the hearth—the cherished love, the sweet familiar grace. This was its characteristic; it bore a kind of garden luxuriance and richer embellishment of colour, not the embellishment of civic pomp as seen in the Venetian, but a coloured richness as of the fruit and flower of a new Eden. The Holy Families of Correggio are in fragrant repose. The earth pays the homage of her profusion, and, as conscious of the presence of him that shall remove her curse, puts on her gorgeous apparel. The next descent from this grade of art would be to the pastoral. M. de Burtin objects to the airs of the heads, "graceful and smiling felt not to be altogether appropriate when the action is sad or violent." We can imagine that he alludes to the picture of the Martyrdom of St Placidus and Flavia at Parma. The smiling saint receiving the sword in her bosom, as a boon in thankfulness or that coming bliss which is already hers in vision, is perhaps as touching as any expression ever painted by Correggio. Did our author miss the meaning of that devotional and more than hopeful smile? This picture, like some others of Correggio, is very grey, and has probably had much of its glazing removed. In M. de Burtin's notice of the Flemish school, we entirely pass over the discussion respecting Van Eyck and his discovery; enough has been said upon that subject. The partiality of our author for Rubens is very perceptible. The characteristics of the Flemish school are confined to Historical painting, and even in that class there is scarcely more than one example, Rubens. Between Rubens and Vandyke there is certainly affinity beyond that of colouring, though in colouring to a limited degree. Between Rubens and Teniers there is surely a gap of many classes. If there be any characteristic mark common to both, it must lie in the silvery lightness of colouring, distinctness and freedom of touch, as if both had used the same vehicle, and in the same manner, allowance being made for the size and subjects of their pictures. We are not disposed to detract from the reputation of Rubens as a colourist; no painter perhaps better understood theoretically and practically the science of the harmony of colours, and their application to natural representation. But he was entirely careless as to sentiment of colouring. Action even to its utmost superiority was his forte, and for this one expression his colouring, by its vivid power and contrasts, was certainly very admirable.

The Dutch school is so blended with the Flemish, separating from both Rubens and Vandyke, and their immediate scholars, that it is difficult to speak of them as distinct schools. Fascinating as they undoubtedly are, they utterly abandon the power to teach for the art of pleasing. They are not for the public; have little to do with events of any great interest. There is a manifest descent from the high pretensions of art; the aim is to gratify the mere love of exact imitation, and to interest by portraiture of manners. "If, then," says our author, "truth of imitation is the first business of works of art; if, without that, no picture is in a situation to please; if all that is visible over the whole face of nature be included in the domain of painting, how is it that among the exclusive partisans of historical subjects, there are persons so blind as not to see that the marvellous productions of this school, and of the Flemish, have filled with admirable success the immense gaps which their vaunted Italian schools have left in different parts of art?"

The very first sentence of this passage is of very undefined sense; we can guess at what is meant by the sneer upon the "vaunted Italian schools." There are not only immense gaps, but great gulfs, over which there is no legitimate passage. If these schools have "done so much honour to the art of painting," as M. de Burtin asserts that they have, it has rather been in their perpetuating it as a practical art, than by adding to its dignity or importance. If, however, it be allowable to separate Rubens from the Flemish school, we may with still greater propriety set apart by himself that extraordinary man Rembrandt, who, if any, had some insight of the sentiment of colour.

Very little compliment is paid to the French school by De Burtin. He considers that it has no characteristic but that of the imitation of all schools. It should be observed in justice to more modern French painters, that this was written in 1808. The very opposite opinions of M. Levesque against, and Lairesse in favour of Simon Vouet, the founder of the school, are quoted. The opinions of neither will weigh much with modern critics, even though it were certain that those ascribed to Lairesse were his. Neither Claude nor Nicolas Poussin are allowed to belong to the French school. We presume De Burtin had but little taste for landscape, for he does not mention, we believe, in this whole work, Gaspar Poussin—nor does he dwell much upon Claude. It is extraordinary that in mentioning the one, he should take no notice of his great contemporary.

And here we may observe, that writers on art have ever been neglectful in the extreme with regard to this part of art—we should add, this delightful part, and so capable of sentiment. They take a vast jump from the high Italian Historic (of Figures) to the low Flemish and Dutch, not even in those latter schools discriminating the better portion of the landscape from the lower.

There is wanting a new classification, one not so much of schools, nor of styles per se, as of subjects—in which the School of Landscape would require an ample treatment. It is a school which, by the neglect of critics, has been allowed to descend to its lowest depth; yet is it one which is daily becoming more the public taste—a taste, nevertheless, which has as yet given to it but little of its former elevation, which it had entirely lost before it reached us through the deterioration of the Dutch and Flemish schools.

The German school, the first in antiquity, was extinguished with its masters. It was founded by Albert Durer, whose genius was acknowledged and admired by Raffaelle himself. The modern German school was not in existence at the date of this publication in 1808.

An entire chapter is given upon "the causes of the characteristics which distinguish the different schools from each other." There is, however, nothing new said upon this subject. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the following passage: "So much did the liberty which the Dutch had just recovered from the Spaniards, by unheard-of efforts, become fatal among them to the same class of art, the foundations of which they sapped by their resolution to banish their priests, and to substitute a religion that suffers neither pictures nor statues of saints in their churches. From that time all the views of their painters were necessarily turned to the other classes of art, more susceptible of a small form, and therefore more suitable to the private houses of the Dutch, which, though neat and commodious, are not sufficiently large for pictures of great size." If the dignity of art is to be recovered, it will be by national galleries, and we might yet perhaps hope, by re-opening our churches for the admission of scriptural pictures.

The chapter upon the division of pictures into classes, is by no means satisfactory. It is admitted by the translator to be incomplete. At its conclusion is a quotation from Pliny, which, as it is intended to justify De Burtin's taste for the low Flemish and Dutch schools, does not indicate a very high taste in either Pliny or himself. Pliny says of Pyreicus, that "few artists deserve to be preferred to him. That he painted, in small, barbers' and shoemakers' stalls, asses, bears, and such things." He further adds, that his works obtained larger prices than other artists of nobler subjects obtained, and that he was not degraded by choosing such low subjects. We beg pardon of Pliny, but we would not give three farthings for his pictorial judgment. Indeed, had not Lucian given us some most vivid descriptions of some of the ancient pictures, we should have had no very high opinion of them. For the well-known anecdotes speak only in favour of mechanical excellence. Our author, in his chapter on the art of describing pictures, might have taken Lucian for his model with great propriety. There is in this chapter on division into classes, much nonsense about beauty, Ideal and Physical. De Burtin thinks we have not any instinctive feeling for physical beauty as of moral beauty; that a fixed proportion of parts neither in men nor animals, any more than in architecture, is the foundation of beauty—which is perfectly ridiculous, and not worth an argument. Ideal beauty he here treats with great contempt, and points out two truths on this matter demonstrated by comparative anatomy; "the one of which is, that the beauty of the antique heads depends chiefly on the facial line in them, making an angle of 100 degrees with the horizontal line; the other is, that it is certain that such a head is never found in nature."

In the tenth chapter he treats of "the causes of the superiority of the pictures of the 16th and 17th centuries over those of the past century." He looks upon Rome and the Antique as the chief cause, and that artists go there before they have established principles of art. It is not, he asserts, in difference of colours; for "Giorgione and Titian neither made this themselves, nor brought them from afar, but bought then uniformly in the shops at Venice." He appears to entertain no suspicion of loss or deterioration of vehicle; on the contrary, thinks some artists have been very successful in copies, here rather contradicting his former remarks upon the difference between old copies and new; but, above all, he attributes this décadence of art to the neglect of colour. That, however, is evidently only one part of the art. We are almost induced to smile either at his flattery or his simplicity in naming certain exceptions of modern times, whose names will be little known to, and those known not much in the admiration of, the English collector, "all of whom have carried their art to a very high degree of perfection." In his chapter on the "different manners of the masters," it is observable how little he has to say of the Italian schools; almost all the subsequent remarks in the volume are confined to the Flemish and Dutch. He greatly praises Dietrici for his manner, which to us is not pleasing, and which we should term an imitating flippancy. He tells an anecdote of Titian, which, if it rest upon any good authority, tends to prove that Titian's medium must have been one which admitted the mixture of water with oil. Of Titian he says, that at the end of his life "he used to daub his best works anew with red paint, because he thought the colour too feeble. But happily his pupils had the address to prevent the fatal effects of his foolishness, by making up his colours with water only, or with an oil that was not of a drying nature." With colours ground, Titian could not have mixed his pencil in oil alone and unmixed—and he would himself have immediately discovered the cheat, for it would have dried as distemper dead, and crumbled away under his hand. He might have so painted, if oil and water had been combined, and the vehicle rendered saponaceous, which it probably was. Many artists have been led, he observes, to change the manner from good to bad. We have a remarkable instance in our Gainsborough, whose latter scratchy, slovenly manner is most displeasing; nor had he at any time an imagination to justify it, or rather to qualify it by the power of his compositions.

It is strange that he attributes slovenliness of manner to Rembrandt, "from Avarice." Documents have recently been produced showing that Rembrandt's goods were seized for payment of no very large debt. But is not M. de Burtin altogether mistaken in this manner of Rembrandt? Any of his pictures that show this slovenliness, are, we should suspect, in those parts merely sketched in—a method agreeable to his practice, which was to work upon and upon, glazing, and heaping colour—a method which required, in the first instance, a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution, Pall-Mall—dead game, wonderfully painted, and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was, as we might term it, daubed in in a very slovenly manner, and with a greenish colour, evidently for the sake of that colour as an underground. Under the head "Historical" in this chapter, it is strange to find but seven names, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Lairesse, Poelemburg, Albert Durer, and Hans Holbein. Even with some of these names it is too much honour to place Lairesse and Poelemburg.

In reference to the lower classes of subjects, we think justice is hardly done to Jan Steen, of whom, considering him even as a colourist, more should have been said, than that he "is distinguished by the drollery of his subjects, and by the most true and ingeniously simple expression of the feelings of common life." All this might be said of many others; the characteristic of Jan Steen is still wanting. So we think as to Philip Wouverman; no notice is taken of his too great softness, the evident fault of his manner. Nor are we satisfied with the description of Backhuysen. It should have been noticed in what he is distinguished from Vandervelde. His defect in composition is so striking, as frequently to show a want of perspective in design, and often he has no principal object in his picture. His vessels are either too large or too small for the scene; and his execution was likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a quotation from Diderot, that "he cannot be manner'd, either in design or colouring, who imitates nature scrupulously, and that mannerism comes of the master of the academy, of the school, and of the Antique," which we very much doubt, for the mannerism is often in the mind, the peculiar, the autographic character of the painter, which he stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz, and a Claude or Poussin, put down before the same scene, how different would be their pictures, how different the vision in the eye of the three! A Claude would see the distances, a Gaspar Poussin the middle distances and flowing lines, and Wynantz the docks and thistles. The chapter "on the signatures of the Masters," will be found useful to collectors. He says that where there is a false signature it is removed by spirits of wine, and that is the proof that it is false. He does not draw the inference, that as spirits of wine destroy the one vehicle and not the other, the old and original, they must differ.

Another chapter is devoted to "The famous balance composed by De Piles for estimating the different degrees of merit in the principal historical painters." This famous balance is a piece of critical coxcombry with which we never could have tolerable patience. It is an absurd assumption of superiority in the critic over all the masters that ever were; as if he alone were able to conceive perfection, to which no painter has ever been able to advance; that perfection on which the critic, or rather De Piles, had his eye, is Number 20; that no Painter has approached it nearer than nineteen. It commences with a falsehood in supposition, that the critic is above the Painter, or Art, or the only one really cognisant of it. The fact being quite the reverse, for we know nothing that we have not been absolutely taught by genius. It is genius that precedes; it is the maker, the worker, the inventor, who alone sees the step beyond. Did the critic see this step he would cease to be the critic, and become the maker. He would become the genius. In the arts, whether of poetry, painting, or music, we know nothing but what practical genius tells us, shows us, teaches us; seldom is it, indeed, that the scholar critic comprehends fully the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the masters, and to set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon it, and to bid his master reach it if he can, is the puerile play of an infantine intellect, or very conceited mind! And so we give M. De Piles, and all his followers, a slap in the face, and bid them go packing with Number 20. We will not condescend to pull to pieces this fantastic scheme, which is in its distinctions, and weighings and calculations, appreciations and depreciations, as false as it must necessarily be, arising from a mind capable of laying down any such scheme at all. The chapter on prices, and the lists contained, will be consulted with advantage by collectors. It contains valuable documents, showing the fluctuations of public taste. There is much useful information upon cleaning pictures, and on varnishes. Something has been recently said to bring into practice again the varnishing with white of egg. M. de Burtin is decidedly against the practice. "As to the varnishes of water, isinglass, and white of egg, every prudent amateur will attack them the instant that he discovers such dangerous enemies, and will use every effort to free his pictures from them." We think him utterly mistaken in the following passage. "In operating upon a work of art, whether to clean it or to raise the varnish, it ought to be remembered, that the colours grow hard only by the lapse of time." If so, surely a hundred years would be time enough to harden—but the chemical tests which touch the hard paint, if it be hard, of a century old, will not be applicable to those of still older date, and of better time. He had shown this unconsciously in what he had said of spirits of wine. We have taken some pains in the pages of Maga to disabuse the public with regard to the imaginary benefit of painting in varnish—a most pernicious practice; and that it is so, we have elsewhere given both proof and authorities. We are glad to find our author on our side. "Besides, no one at the present day (1808) is ignorant of their absurd method of painting in varnish, which corrupts the colours, and prevents them ever attaining the requisite hardness." There is much useful matter upon varnishing, which it will be well that collectors and keepers of public galleries should read with attention. We do not say follow, but read; for it is indeed a very serious matter to recommend a varnish, seeing how many pictures are totally ruined by bad applications. We have been told that drying oil mixed with mastic varnish has been, though not very recently, used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject, believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without much reflection. A new varnish has appeared, "Bentley's." We believe it is copal, but rendered removable as mastic. It is certainly very brilliant, not, or but slightly, subject to chill, and is more permanent, as well as almost colourless. De Burtin not only denounces the use of oil in varnishes, but speaks of a more disgusting practice, common in Italy, of rubbing pictures "with fat, oil, or lard, or other animal grease.... So destructive a practice comes in process of time to rot the picture, so that it will not hold together." We should scarcely have thought it worth while to notice this, had we not seen pictures so treated in this country. Behold a specimen of folly and hazardous experiment:—"At that time, I frequented the Dresden gallery every morning, and got from M. Riedal all the details of his practice. He informed me that, amongst others, the chief works of Correggio, Raffaelle, Titian, and Procaccini, after having undergone his preparatory operations, had got a coat of his 'oil of flowers,' which he would repeat, until every part became 'perfectly bright.' And on my remarking, that in the admirable 'Venus' of Titian, the carnations alone were bright, and all the rest flat, he told me with perfect coolness, that 'having only as yet given it three coats of his oil, that it was not astonishing, but that he would put it all in unison by multiplying the coats.'" The man should have been suffocated in his "oil of flowers," preserved in them, and hung up in the gallery in terrorem. Could ghosts walk and punish, we would not have been in his skin, though perfumed with his preservative oil of flowers, under the visitations of the ghosts of Correggio, Raffaelle, Titian, and Procaccini. "Such," adds M. de Burtin, "was his threat at the very moment that I felt overpowered with chagrin, to see the superb carnations of Titian acquiring a yellowish, sad, and monotonous tone, through the coats that he had already given to it."

We have noticed, at considerable length, this work, and have been led on by the interest of the subject. The perusal of this translation will repay the connoisseur, and we think the artist. The former, in this country, will be surprised to find names of artists, whose works will not be found in our collections, at least with their titles. The artist will find some useful information, and will always find his flame of enthusiasm fed by reading works upon the subject of art, though they should be very inferior to the present useful volume. We recommend it as not unamusing to all who wish to think upon art, and to acquire the now almost necessary accomplishment of a taste for pictures.

MANNER AND MATTER.

A Tale.

Chapter I.

Along the dusty highway, and underneath a July sun, a man about fifty, tending somewhat to the corpulent, and dressed in heavy parsonic black, might have been seen treading slowly—treading with all that quiet caution which one uses who, conscious of fat, trusts his person to the influence of a summer sky. Mr Simpson, such was the name of this worthy pedestrian, passed under the denomination of a mathematical tutor, though it was now some time since he had been known to have any pupil. He was now bent from the village of ——— to the country-seat of Sir John Steventon, which lay in its neighbourhood. He had received the unusual honour of an invitation to dinner at the great man's house, and it was evidently necessary that he should present himself, both his visage and his toilet, in a state of as much composure as possible. The dust upon his very shining boot, this a touch from his pocket-handkerchief, before entering the house, could remove, and so far all traces of the road would be obliterated; but should this wicked perspiration once fairly break its bounds, he well knew that nothing but the lapse of time, and the fall of night, would recover him from this palpable disorder. Therefore it was that he walked with wonderful placidity, making no one movement of body or mind that was not absolutely necessary to the task of progression, and holding himself up, so to speak, within his habiliments as if he and they, though unavoidably companions on the same journey, were by no means intimate or willing associates. There was a narrow strip of shade from the hedge that ran beside the road, and although the shadow still left the nobler half of his person exposed to the rays of the sun, he kept carefully within such shelter as it afforded. If he encountered any one, he stood still and examined the foliage of the hedge. To dispute the path in any other manner, with the merest urchin he might meet, was out of the question. It would have caused excitement. Moreover he was a meek man, and in all doubtful points yielded to the claim of others. Grocery-boys and barrow-women always had the wall of him. Our traveller proceeded so tranquilly, that a sparrow boldly hopped down upon the ground before him; he was so resolved to enter into conflict with no living creature, that he paused till it had hopped off again.

Mr Simpson's toilet, though it had been that day a subject of great anxiety with him, presented, we fear, to the eyes of the world nothing remarkable. A careless observer, if questioned on the apparition he had met with, would have replied very briefly, that it was the figure of an old pedant dressed in a suit of rusty black. Suit of rusty black! And so he would dismiss the aggregate of all that was choice, reserved, and precious in the wardrobe of Mr Simpson. Rusty black, indeed! Why, that dress coat, which had been set apart for years for high and solemn occasions, had contracted a fresh dignity and importance from every solemnity with which it had been associated. And those respectable nether-garments, had they not always been dismissed from service the moment he re-entered his own dusty apartment? Had they not been religiously preserved from all abrasion of the surface, whether from cane-bottomed chair, or that under portion of the library table which, to students who cross their legs, is found to be so peculiarly pernicious to the nap of cloth? What could have made them worse for wear? Would a thoughtless world confound the influence of the all-embracing atmosphere, with the wear and tear proper to cloth habiliments? And then his linen—would a careless public refuse to take notice that not a single button was missing from the shirt, which, in general, had but one solitary button remaining—just one at the neck, probably fastened by his own hand? Above all, was it not noticeable that he was not to-day under the necessity of hiding one hand behind him under the lappets of his coat, and slipping the other down his half-open umbrella, to conceal the dilapidated gloves, but could display both hands with perfect candour to public scrutiny? Were all these singular merits to pass unacknowledged, to be seen by no one, or seen only by himself?

It was an excellent wish of Burns'—

"Oh, would some power the giftie gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us!"

But it would be a still more convenient thing if some power would give the rest of the world the faculty of seeing us as we see ourselves. It would produce a most comfortable state of public opinion; and on no subject would it operate more favourably than on that of dress. Could we spread over beholders the same happy delusion that rests on ourselves, what a magical change would take place in the external appearance of society! Mr Simpson is not the only person who might complain that the world will not regard his several articles of attire from the same point of view as himself. We know a very charming lady, who, when she examines her kid gloves, doubles her little fist, and then pronounces—they will do—forgetful that she is not in the habit of doubling her pretty fist in the face of every one that she speaks to—and that, therefore, others will not take exactly the same point of view as herself.

Notwithstanding the heat of the sun, our mathematician contrived to deliver himself in a tolerable state of preservation at the mansion of Sir John Steventon. We pass over the ceremony of dinner, and draw up the curtain just at that time when the ladies and gentlemen have re-assembled in the drawing-room.

We look round the well-dressed circle, and it is some time before we can discover our worthy friend. At length, after a minute research, we find him standing alone in the remotest corner of the room. He is apparently engaged in examining the bust of the proprietor of the mansion, which stands there upon its marble pedestal. He has almost turned his back upon the company. Any one, from his attitude, might take him for a connoisseur, perhaps an artist, absorbed in his critical survey. But so far is he from being at the present moment drawn away by his admiration of the fine arts, that we question whether he even sees the bust that is standing upright, face to face, before him. He has got into that corner, and knows not how to move from it. He knows not where else to put himself, or what else to be looking at. The scene in which he finds himself has, from the solitude of his later years, become strange and embarrassing. The longer he stands there, the more impossible does it seem for him to get away, or even to turn round and face the company. The position of the valorous Schmelzle, who having read upon a board the notice "that spring guns were set upon the premises," trembled as much to retreat as to advance, to move a foot backwards or forwards, or in any direction, but stood gazing at the formidable announcement, was scarcely more painful than that of Simpson. Although probably not a single person in the room was taking the least notice of his movements, he felt that every eye was upon him. The colour was mounting in his cheek. Every moment his situation was becoming more intolerable. We are afraid that he would soon have committed something very absurd—have broken from his moorings with a shout—or dispelled the sort of nightmare that was stifling him by some violent gesture, perhaps by dealing a blow at that bust which stood there so placidly before him, just as the poor youth did at the British Museum, who threw a stone at the Portland vase, to prove that he also was a man, and had volition, and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately, however, Sir John Steventon himself came to the rescue.

"Well, Mr Simpson," said the baronet pointing to the bust, "do you trace a resemblance?"

Mr Simpson was so overjoyed to have at length some one at hand to whom he might speak, or seem to be speaking, and so connect himself with the society around him, that to the simple question he made not one only, but several answers, and very dissimilar ones too. In the same breath he found it a likeness, yet not very like, and ended with asking for whom it was intended.

Sir John Steventon smiled, and after one or two indifferent observations, led Mr Simpson apart into a little study or sanctum of his own, which communicated with the drawing-room. It will be naturally concluded that there existed some peculiar reason for the invitation passed on our humble mathematician, who was not altogether the person, under ordinary circumstances, to find himself a guest at rich men's tables. The following conversation will explain this departure from the usual course of things, and the respectable conventions of society.

"You were some years," said Sir John, "a tutor in the family of the late Mr Scott?"

"I was," responded Mr Simpson, "and prepared his son for Cambridge. Had the young man lived"——

"He would, I am sure," politely interrupted Sir John, "have borne testimony to the value of your instruction. I am, as you may be aware, the executor of Mr Scott. That gentleman was so well satisfied with the exertions you made, and the interest you took in his son, that, on your quitting him, he presented you, I believe, with an annuity of fifty pounds, to be enjoyed during your life. This is, if I may be allowed to say so, the chief source of your income."

"The only one," answered Mr Simpson. "For although I willingly proclaim myself tutor of mathematics, because a title, no matter what, is a protection from the idle curiosity of neighbours; yet, if I may venture to say so, my life is, indeed, devoted to science for the love of science itself, and with the hope of enrolling my name, although the very last and humblest, amongst those who have perfected our knowledge of the mathematics, and extended their application. I have already conceived, and in part executed a work."

Mr Simpson was launching on the full tide of his favourite subject. He thought, as good simple creatures always do, that he could not make a better return for the hospitalities of the rich man, than by pouring out his whole heart before him. Sad mistake which these simple people fall into! The rich man cares nothing for their heart, and is very susceptible to ennui.

"Very good," interrupted Sir John, "very good; but with regard to this annuity. I have not yet looked over the papers relating to it, and I hope, for your sake, I shall find it properly secured."

"I have a deed formally drawn up."

"True, true; and I hope all will be found straightforward in this, and in other affairs of the testator, and that nothing will compel me to call in the assistance or sanction of the Court of Chancery in administering the estate. In that case, although your claim might be ultimately substantiated, yet the payment of your annuity might, for some years, be suspended."

"I pray God not!" exclaimed our man of science with some trepidation. "I have lived so much alone, so entirely amongst my figures and diagrams, that I have not a friend in the world of whom I could borrow sixpence."

"Well, I trust," resumed Sir John, after a short pause, "that there will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child, Mrs Vincent, whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor, while you were domiciled with Mr Scott."

"I did."

"There was a pecuniary transaction between myself and Mr Scott, to which I think you were privy."

"A loan of ten thousand pounds, for which you gave your bond."

"Exactly. I see you are informed of that circumstance. You are not, perhaps, equally well informed that that bond was cancelled; that the debt, in short, was paid. This happened after you had left Mr Scott. But although, as I tell you, this debt no longer exists, yet it might create a great embarrassment to me, and to every person interested in the estate of the testator, if it were known that such a debt ever had existed. Mrs Vincent has just returned from India, expecting a very considerable fortune from her late father. To her, in general terms, the whole property is left. She will be disappointed. There is much less than she anticipates. However, not to make a long story of this matter, all I have to request of you is this, if any one should question you as to the property of your late patron, and especially as to this transaction, be you silent—know nothing. You have ever been a man of books, buried in abstractions, the answer will appear quite natural. This will save you, be assured, from much vexation, disquietude, and grievous interruption to your studies, and I shall rest your debtor for your considerate behaviour. A contrary course will create embarrassment to all parties, and put in jeopardy your own annuity, on which, as you say, you depend for subsistence, and the carrying out of your scientific projects."

As Mr Simpson sat silent during this communication, Sir John continued some time longer in the same strain. He made no doubt that the simple mathematician before him was quite under his influence—was completely in his power. That simple person, however, who lived in obscurity, almost in penury—to society an object of its wisely directed ridicule—was a man of honour. Little had he to do with the world; even its good opinion was scarcely of any importance to him. What to him was the fastidiousness of virtue—to him whom poverty excluded from the refined portion of society, and knowledge and education from the vulgar and illiterate? What could he profit by it? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And yet there was no power on earth could have made this man false to his honour. Partly, perhaps, from his very estrangement from the business of the world, his sense of virtue had retained its fresh and youthful susceptibility. As is the case with all such men, he was slow to attribute villany to others. This it was had kept him silent; he waited to be quite convinced that he understood Sir John. When the truth stood plainly revealed, when it became evident to him that this debt of ten thousand pounds was not paid, and that he was brought there to be bribed or intimidated into a guilty secrecy, his whole soul fired up with indignation.

He had listened, as we say, in silence. When satisfied that he perfectly comprehended Sir John, he rose from his seat, and briefly intimating that he should not leave him long in doubt as to the manner in which he should act, turned, and abruptly left the apartment. Sir John had no time to arrest him, and could only follow, and be a witness to his movements. He re-entered the drawing-room. Where were now all the terrors of that scene? Where the awe which its easy elegant ceremonial inspired? Gone, utterly gone. He had now a duty to fulfil. You would have said it was another man. Had he been the proprietor of the mansion, he could not have entered with a more assured and unembarrassed air. There was a perfect freedom and dignity in his demeanour as he stepped across the room. In the centre of the room, throned, as it were, upon the sofa, sat two ladies, remarkable above all the others, for the finished elegance of their manner, and the splendour of their toilet. The one was Lady Steventon, the other Mrs Vincent. Some minutes ago, not for all the world would he have stood alone upon that piece of carpet in front of this sofa. No courtier, assured of the most smiling reception, could have drawn his chair with more ease to the vacant spot beside Mrs Vincent, than did now Mr Simpson. He immediately entered into conversation on the subject that at the moment engrossed all his thoughts; he reminded her of the confidential intimacy which had subsisted between himself and her late father; proffered his assistance to aid her in the arrangement of her affairs; and, in particular, gave a succinct account of the transaction which Sir John had manifested so great anxiety to conceal.

The manner in which all this was said, so entirely took Sir John Steventon by surprise, that he was unable to interfere with a single word. Mrs Vincent, to whom the information was evidently quite new, concealed the embarrassment she felt in some general expressions of thanks to Mr Simpson. He, when he had fulfilled his object, rose, and making a profound bow to his host and hostess, quitted the house. His demeanour was such, that his host involuntarily returned his salutation with one of marked deference and respect.

Chapter II.

A year had rolled round, and Mrs Vincent was established in all her rights. Sir John Steventon had been disappointed in the fraudulent scheme he had devised; not disappointed, however, as he deemed, in the revenge he had taken on the man who had frustrated it. Payment of Mr Simpson's annuity was resisted, and the poor mathematician was in great straits for those necessaries of life, which, necessary as they may be, are often with a great portion of the human family very fortuitous. Ask not on what legal pretexts Sir John had been successful in inflicting this revenge. Such pretexts are "thick as blackberries." Facilis est descensus—No rich suitor ever sought long for admission into the Court of Chancery, however difficult even he may have found the escape from it. Neither, do we apprehend, is there any remedy for this abuse of law, in the legal reforms usually contemplated by our legislators. The only effective remedy, if we may be here permitted to give a remark, would be this—that the state administer civil justice at its own expense to rich and poor alike—that, as it protects each man's life and limb, so it should protect each man's property, which is the means of life, which is often as essential to him as the limbs by which he moves. This is the only mode of realizing that "equal justice" which at present is the vain boast of every system of jurisprudence, when the suitor has to pay for protection to his property.

Poor Simpson, who had lived for some years on his scanty annuity, and had lived content, for his wants were few, and his mind utterly absorbed in his science, now found himself without the simplest means of subsistence. He had escaped, as he thought, for ever, from the necessity of applying his science to satisfy mere animal wants; he began to think he should be very fortunate if all his science would procure for him the commonest "board and lodging!" When a man has ceased to cultivate his relationship with society, and wishes, after a time, to return to them, he will find that a blank wall has been built up between him and the world. There is not even a door to knock at, let alone the chance of its opening when he knocks. Our mathematician knew not where to look for a pupil, nor for a friend who would recommend him. Some unavailing attempts he made to obtain his rights through litigation; but he soon found, that to the loss of his money he was adding only the loss of all tranquillity of mind. The lawyer he employed neglected (and very naturally) a suit which would have required on his part large advances, the repayment of which was very precarious.

In this predicament he bethought himself of making an appeal to Mrs Vincent, the lady whom he had benefited by his simple and straightforward honesty; not that he held her under any peculiar obligation to him; what he had done was by no means to oblige her; it was strictly a self-obligation; he could not have acted otherwise, let the consequences have been what they might. But he reasoned with himself, that the annuity of which he was deprived would fall into the general residue of the estate, and be in fact paid to her; and as he could not believe that she would wish to profit by the villany of Sir John, he thought there could be nothing derogatory to him, nor exacting upon her, if he proposed to relinquish entirely his legal claim upon the estate, and receive the annuity from her hands. She must surely be desirous, he thought, to fulfil the solemn engagements of her deceased parent. Full of these cogitations, he betook himself to London, where Mrs Vincent had established herself.

The reader must imagine himself introduced into an elegantly furnished drawing-room, in one of the most fashionable quarters of the metropolis. Had we any talent for the description of the miracles of upholstery, it would be a sin to pass over so superb and tasteful a scene without a word. But the little descriptive power we possess must be reserved for the lady who was sitting in the midst of one of those domestic miniature palaces, of which the "interiors" of London could present so great a number. Mrs Vincent had lately become a widow, at the opening of our narrative, and was therefore still dressed in black. But though in black, or rather perhaps on that very account, her attire was peculiarly costly. In black only can magnificence of apparel be perfectly allied with purity of taste. And certainly nothing could harmonize better than the rich satin dress, and the superb scarf of lace which fell over it with such a gorgeous levity. A pope in his highest day of festival might have coveted that lace. Between the black satin and the light folds of the scarf, relieved by the one, and tempered, and sometimes half hidden by the other, played a diamond cross, which might have been the ransom of a Great Mogul. The features of Mrs Vincent were remarkably delicate, and her pale beauty was of that order which especially interests the imagination. She wore her hair plainly parted upon either side, revealing the charming contour of her well-shaped head. A patriarch would have gloried in his age if it gave him the privilege to take that dear head between his hands, and imprint his holy kiss upon the forehead. Her little girl, her sole companion and chief treasure in the world, stood prattling before her; and the beauty of the young mother was tenfold increased by the utter forgetfulness of herself, which she manifested as she bent over her child, absorbed in the beauty of that dear little image which she was never weary of caressing.

Mrs Vincent was even more fascinating in manner than in appearance. She was one of those charming little personages whom every one idolizes, whom men and women alike consent to pet. It was impossible to be in the same room with her half an hour without being perfectly ready to do every thing, reasonable or unreasonable, that she could request of you. The charm of her conversation, or rather of her society, was irresistible; there was a sweet subdued gaiety in her speech, accent, and gestures which made you happy, you knew not why; and though by no means a wit, nor laying the least claim to be a clever person, there was a sprightly music in her tones, and a spontaneous vivacity in her language, which left a far more delightful impression than the most decided wit.

Where shall we find a more beautiful picture than that of a young mother, and that mother a widow, bending over the glossy tresses of her child? Never is woman so attractive, so subduing; never does she so tenderly claim our protection; never is she so completely protected, so unassailable, so predominant. Poor Simpson felt his heart penetrated with the holiest love and veneration when he entered the room.

Nothing could exceed the graceful and benevolent manner in which Mrs Vincent received him. He had been the tried friend of her father, the beloved tutor of her brother; he had lately been of signal service to herself. Mr Simpson was overpowered with his reception. The object of his visit seemed already accomplished. Hardly did it appear necessary to proceed with any verbal statement; surely she knew his position, and this was enough. She had been restored to her rights; she would not, she could not, allow him to suffer by an act which led to that restoration; still less would she consent to reap herself the benefit of an injustice perpetrated upon him.

Some explanation, however, of the object of his visit he found it necessary to make. When he had concluded the brief statement which he thought sufficient, the lady answered in the softest voice in the world—that she was sorry she could not enter upon that subject, as she had promised Sir John Steventon not to interfere between him and Mr Simpson—that Sir John had exacted this promise, and she had given it, as necessary to facilitate the arrangement of her affairs. What could she do, an unprotected woman, with the interests of her child depending upon her? She was bound, therefore, she regretted to say, not to intermeddle in the business. But then Mr Simpson could proceed with his legal remedies. She did not presume to pass an opinion upon the justice of his claim, or to advise him not to prosecute it.

In brief, she had given up the brave and honourable man, who had befriended her at the peril of his fortune, to the revenge of the wealthy, unscrupulous baronet, who had intended to defraud her. It was so agreeable to be on amicable terms with her father's executor.

Our mathematician doubted his ears. Yet so it was. And it was all repeated to him in the blandest manner in the world. She seemed to think that a duty to any one else but her child was out of the question. We believe that many interesting and beautiful mothers have the same idea.

Mr Simpson gasped for breath. Some quite general remark was the only one that rose to his lip. "You are angels—to look upon," he half-murmured to himself.

It was not in his disposition to play the petitioner, and still less to give vent to feelings of indignation, which would be thought to have their origin only in his own personal injuries. It was still surprise that was predominant in him, as at length he exclaimed—"But surely, madam, you do not understand this matter. This annuity was honestly won by long services rendered to your father, and to his son. Instead of receiving other payments, I had preferred to be finally remunerated in this form—it was my desire to obtain what in my humble ideas was an independence, that I might devote my life to science. Well, this annuity, it is my all—it stands between me and absolute penury—it is the plank on which I sail over the waters of life. I have, too, an object for my existence, which this alone renders possible. I have studies to pursue, discoveries to make. This sum of money is more than my life, it is my license to study and to think."

"Oh, but, Mr Simpson," interrupted the lady with a smile, "I understand nothing of mathematics."

Mr Simpson checked himself. No, she did not understand him. What was his love of science or his hope of fame to her? What to her was any one of the pains and pleasures that constituted his existence?

"Besides," added the lady, "you are a bachelor, Mr Simpson. You have no children. It can matter little"——

A grim smile played upon the features of the mathematician. He was probably about to prove to her, that as children are destined to become men, the interests of a man may not be an unworthy subject of anxiety. However important a person a child may be, a man is something more. But at this moment a servant entered, and announced Sir John Steventon!

On perceiving Mr Simpson, that gentleman was about to retreat, and with a look of something like distrust at Mrs Vincent, he said that he would call again. "Nay, come in!" exclaimed the mathematician with a clear voice. "Come in! The lady has not broken her word, nor by me shall she be petitioned to do so. It is I who will quit this place. You have succeeded, Sir John, in your revenge—you have succeeded, and yet perhaps it is an imperfect success. You shall not rack the heart, though you should starve the body. You think, perhaps, I shall pursue you with objurgation or entreaty. You are mistaken. I leave you to the enjoyment of your triumph, and to the peace which a blunted conscience will, I know, bestow upon you."

Sir John muttered, in reply, that he could not debate matters of business, but must refer him to his solicitor.

"Neither personally," continued Mr Simpson, "nor by your solicitor, will you hear more of me. I shall forget you, Sir John. Whatever sufferings you may inflict, you shall not fill my heart with bitterness. Your memory shall not call forth a single curse from me. Approach. Be friendly to this lady. Be mutually courteous, bland, and affable—what other virtues do you know?"

He strode out of the room. His parting word was no idle boast. Sir John heard of him and of his just claims no more; and the brave-hearted man swept the memory of the villain from his soul. He would not have it there.

The baronet soothed his conscience, if it ever gave him any uneasiness, by the supposition that the aged mathematician had found some pupils—that probably he eked out as comfortable a subsistence as before, and had only exchanged the dreamy pursuit of scientific fame, for the more practical labours of tuition. But no such fortune attended Mr Simpson. He had lived too long out of the world to find either friends or pupils, and the more manifest his poverty, the more hopeless became his applications. Meanwhile, utter destitution stood face to face before him. Did he spend his last coin in the purchase of the mortal dose? Did he leap at night from any of the bridges of the metropolis? He was built of stouter stuff. He collected together his manuscripts, a book or two, which had happily for him been unsaleable, his ink-bottle and an iron pen, and marched straight—to the parish workhouse. There was no refusing his claim here. Poverty and famine were legible in every garment, and on every feature. In that asylum he ended his days, unknown, unsought for.

One of his companions, dressed like himself, in the workhouse costume, who had gathered that he was the sufferer by some act of injustice of a rich oppressor, thought, on one occasion, to console him by the reflection, that his wrongdoer would certainly suffer for it in the next world—in his own energetic language, that he would certainly be d——d.

"Not on my account—not, I hope, on my account," said the mathematician, with the greatest simplicity in the world. "No revenge either here or hereafter. But if civil government deserved the name, it would have given me justice now. Had I been robbed of sixpence on the highway, there would have been hue and cry—the officers of government would not have rested till they had found and punished the culprit. I am robbed of all; and, because I am poor and unfriended—circumstances which make the loss irremediable—the law puts forth no hand to help me. Men will prate about the expense—the burden on the national revenue—as if justice to all were not the very first object of government—as if—but truce to this. My good friend, you see these fragments of snuff that I have collected—could you get them exchanged for me for a little ink?"

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

Part XX.

As my mission was but temporary, and might be attended with personal hazard, I had left Clotilde in England, much to her regret, and travelled with as small a retinue as possible; and in general by unfrequented ways, to avoid the French patroles which were already spread through the neighbourhood of the high-roads. But, at Burgos, the Spanish commandant, on the delivery of my passport, insisted so strongly on the necessity for an escort, placing the wish on a feeling of his personal responsibility, in case of my falling into the enemy's hands, that to save the señor's conscience, or his commission, I consented to take a few troopers, with one of his aides-de-camp, to see me in safety through the Sierra Morena.

The aide-de-camp was a character; a little meagre being, who, after a long life of idleness and half-pay, was suddenly called into service; and now figured in a staff-coat and feather. His first commission had been in the luckless expedition of Count O'Reilly against the Moors; and it had probably served him as a topic, from that time to the moment when he pledged his renown for my safe delivery into the hands of the junta of Castile. He had three leading ideas, which formed the elements of his body and soul,—his exploits in the Moorish campaign; his contempt for the monks; and his value for the talents, courage, and fame of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago, the illustrious appellative of the little aide-de-camp himself. He talked without mercy as we rode along; and gave his opinions with all the easy conviction of an "officer on the staff," and all the freedom of the wilderness. The expedition to Africa had failed solely for want of adopting "the tactics which he would have advised;" and his public services in securing the retreat would have done honour to the Cid, or to Alexander the Great, had not "military jealousy refused to transmit them to the national ear." His opinion of Spanish politics was, that they owed their occasional mistakes solely to the culpable negligence of the war-minister "in overlooking the gallant subalterns of the national army." Spain he regarded as the natural sovereign of Europe; and, of course, of all mankind—its falling occasionally into the background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of her existing dynasty, by the visible deterioration in the royal manufacture of cigars, and, more than either, "by the tardiness of military promotion." This last grievance was the sting. "If justice had been done," exclaimed the new-feathered warrior, rising in his stirrups, and waving his hand, as if he was in the act of cleaving down a Moor, "I should long since have been a general. If I had been a general, the armies of Spain would long since have been on a very different footing. Men of merit would have been placed in their proper positions; the troops would have emulated the exploits of their forefathers in the age of Ferdinand and Isabella; and, instead of receiving a king from France, we should have given her one; while, instead of seeing a French emperor carrying off our princes, as the hawk carries off pigeons, or as a gipsy picks your pocket under pretence of telling your fortune, we should have been garrisoning Paris with our battalions, and sending a viceroy to the Tuileries."

I laughed; but my ill-timed mirth had nearly cost me an "affair of honour" with the little regenerator. His hand was instantly on the hilt of his sword, and every wrinkle on his brown visage was swelling with wrath; when my better genius prevailed, He probably recollected that he was sent as my protector, and that the office would not have been fulfilled according to his instructions, by running me through the midriff. But, with all his pomposity, he had the national good-nature; and when we sat down to our chicken and bottle of Tinto in one of those delicious valleys, he was full of remorse for his burst of patriotic temper.

The day had been a continued blaze of sunshine, the road a burning sand, and the contrast of the spot where we made our halt was tempting. The scene was rich and riant, the evening lovely, and the wine good. I could have reposed there for a month, or a year, or for ever. It would have been enough to make a man turn hermit; and I instinctively gazed round, to look for the convent which "must lie" in so luxurious a site. My companion informed me that I was perfectly right in my conjecture, that spot having been the position of one of the richest brotherhoods of Spain. But its opulence had been unluckily displayed in rather too ostentatious a style in the eyes of a French brigade; who, in consequence, packed up the plate in their baggage, and, in the course of a tumult which followed with the peasantry, burned the building to the ground.

Yet, this misfortune was the source of but slight condolence on the part of my friend. He was perfectly of the new school. "They were Theatines," said he—"as bad as the Jesuits in every thing but hypocrisy—powerful, insolent, bold-faced knaves; and after their robbing me of the inheritance of my old, rich uncle, which one of those crafty padres contrived to make the old devotee give them on his death-bed, I had dry eyes for their ill luck. But, I suppose," added he, "you know their creed?" I acknowledged my ignorance. "Well, you shall hear it. It is incomparably true; though, whether written for them by Moratin or Calderon, I leave to the antiquarians." He then chanted it in the style of the monkish service, and with gesticulations, groans, and upturning of eyes, which strongly gave me the idea that he had employed his leisure, if not relieved his sense of the war-minister's neglect, by exerting his talents as the "Gracioso" of some strolling company. The troopers gathered round us, with that odd mixture of familiarity and respect which belongs to all the lower ranks of Spain; and the performer evidently acquired new spirits from the laughter of his audience, as he dashingly sang his burlesque:—

Cancion.
Los mandamientos de los Teatinos,[[6]].
Mas humanos son que divinos.
Coro.—Tra lara, tra lara.
Primo—Adquirir mucho dinero. Tra lara, &c.
Segundo—Sujetar todo il mondo. Tra lara, &c.
Tercero—Buen capon, buen carnero. Tra lara, &c.
Quarto—Comprar barato, y vender caro. Tra lara, &c.
Quinto—Con el blanco aguar el tinto. Tra lara, &c.
Sexto—Tener siempre el lomo en siesto. Tra lara, &c.
Septimo—Guardase bien del sereno. Tra lara, &c.
Octavo—Obrar la suya, y lo ageno. Tra lara, &c.
Nono—Hazar del penitente esclavo. Tra lara, &c.
Decimo—Mesclarse en cosas d'estado. Tra lara, &c.
Coro.—Estes diez mandamientos se encierran en dos—
Todo para mi, y nada para vos.
Tra lara, tra lara, &c.

The whole performance was received with an applause which awoke the little aide-de-camp's genius to such an extent, that he volunteered to sing some stanzas of his own, immeasurably more poignant. He was in the act of filling a bumper to the "downfall of all monkery on the face of the earth," when the report of a musket was heard, and the bottle was shivered in his hand. The honour of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago was never in greater danger, for he instantly turned much whiter than his own pocket-handkerchief: but the Spaniard is a brave fellow, after all; and seeing that I drew out my pistols, he drew his sword, ordered his troopers to mount, and prepared for battle. But, who can fight against fortune? Our horses, which had been picketed at a few yards' distance in the depth of the shade, were gone. A French battalion of tirailleurs, accidentally coming on our route, had surrounded the grove, and carried off the horses unperceived, while our gallant troopers were chorusing the songster. The sentinel left in charge of them had, of course, given way to the allurements of "sweet nature's kind restorer, balmy sleep," and awoke only to find himself in French hands. Don Ignacio would have fought a legion of fiends; but seven hundred and fifty sharpshooters were a much more unmanageable affair; and on our holding a council of war, (which never fights,) and with a whole circle of bayonets glittering at our breasts, I advised a surrender without loss of time. The troopers were already disarmed, and the Don, appealing to me as evidence that he had done all that could be required by the most punctilious valour, surrendered his sword with the grace of a hero of romance. The Frenchmen enjoyed the entire scene prodigiously, laughed a great deal, drank our healths in our own bottles, and finished by a general request that the Don would indulge them with an encore of the chant which had so tickled their ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied, malgrè, bongrè; and at the conclusion of this feat, the French colonel, resolved not to be outdone in any thing, called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of "chansons," and breaking down in them all, he volunteered, in despair, what he pronounced, "the most popular love-song in all Italy." Probably not a syllable of it was understood by any one present but myself; yet this did not prevent its being applauded to the skies, and pronounced one of the most brilliant specimens of Italian sensibility. It was in Latin, and a fierce attack on the Jesuits, which the young officer, a palpable philosophe, had brought with him from the symposia of the "Ecole Polytechnique:"—

Mortem norunt animare[[7]]
Et tumultus suscitare,
Inter reges, et sedare.
Tanquam sancti adorantur,
Tanquam reges dominantur,
Tanquam fures deprædantur.
Dominantur temporale,
Dominantur spirituale,
Dominantur omnia male.
Hos igitur Jesuitas,
Heluones, hypocritas,
Fuge, si cælestia quæras.
Vita namque Christiana
Abhorret ab hac doctrinâ,
Tanquam fictâ et insanâ.

The colonel of the tirailleurs was a complete specimen of the revolutionary soldier. He was a dashing figure, with a bronzed face; at least so much of it as I could discover through the most inordinate pair of mustaches ever worn by a warrior. He was ignorant of every thing on earth but his profession, and laughed at the waste of time in poring over books; his travelling-library consisting of but two—the imperial army-list, and the muster-roll of his regiment. His family recollections went no higher than his father, a cobbler in Languedoc. But he was a capital officer, and the very material for a chef-de-bataillon—rough, brave, quick, and as hardy as iron. Half a dozen scars gave evidence of his having shared the glories of France on the Rhine, the Po, and the Danube; and a cross of the Legion of Honour showed that his emperor was a different person from the object of Don Ignacio's cureless wrath, the war-minister who "made a point of neglecting all possible merit below that of a field-marshal."

The Frenchman, with all his, brusquerie, was civil enough to regret my capture, "peculiarly as it laid him under the necessity of taking me far from my route;" his regiment then making forced marches to Andalusia, to join Dupont's division; and for the purpose of secrecy, the strictest orders having been given that the prisoners which they might make in the way should be carried along with them. As I had forwarded my official papers from Galicia to Castile, and was regarded simply as an English tourist, I had no sense of personal hazard; and putting the best complexion which I could upon my misadventure, I rode along with the column over hill and dale, enjoying the various aspects of one of the most varied and picturesque countries in the world. Our marches were rapid, but chiefly by night; thus evading at once the intolerable heat of the Spanish day, and collisions with the people. We bivouacked in the shelter of woods, or in the shade of hills, during the sultry hours; and recommenced our march in the cool of the eve, with short halts, until sunrise. Then we flung ourselves again under the shelter of the trees, and enjoyed those delights of rest and appetite, which are unknown to all but to the marchers and fasters for twelve hours together.

But, on our crossing the Sierra Morena, and taking the direction of Andalusia, the scene was wholly changed. The country was like one vast field of battle. The peasants were every where in arms, villages were seen burning along the horizon, and our constant vigilance was necessary to guard against a surprise. Every soldier who lay down to rest but a few yards from the column, or who attempted to forage in the villages, was sure to be shot or stilettoed; provisions were burned before our faces; and even where we were not actually fired on, the frowns of the population showed sufficiently that the evil day was at hand. At length we reached the range of hills which surround the plain of Cordova; yet only just in time to see the army of Dupont marching out from the city gates, in the direction of Andujar. As I stood beside the colonel, I could observe, by the knitting of his brow, that the movement did not satisfy his military sagacity. "What a quantity of baggage!" he murmured: "how will it be possible to carry such a train through the country, or how to fight, with such an encumbrance embarrassing every step? Unless the Spanish generals are the greatest fools on earth, or unless Dupont has a miracle worked for him, he must either abandon three-fourths of his waggons, or be ruined."

But I was now to have a nearer interest in the expedition. The battalion had no sooner joined the army on its advance, than I was ordered to appear before the chief of the staff. The language of this officer was brief, but expressive.

"You are a spy."

"You are misinformed. I am a gentleman and an Englishman."

"Look here." He produced a copy of my letter to the junta of Castile, which some clerk in the French pay had treacherously transmitted from Madrid. "What answer have you to this?"

I flung the letter on the table.

"What right have you to require an answer? I have not come voluntarily to the quarters of the French army; I am a prisoner; I am not even in a military capacity. You would only act in conformity to the law of nations by giving me my liberty this moment; and I demand that you shall do your duty."

"I shall do it! If you have any arrangements to make, you had better lose no time; for I wait only the general's signature to my report, to have you shot." He turned on his heel. A sergeant with a couple of grenadiers entered, and I was consigned for the night to the provost-marshal. How anxiously I spent that night, I need not say. I was in the hands of violent men, exasperated by the popular resistance, and accustomed to disregard life. I braced myself up to meet my untoward catastrophe, and determined at least not to disgrace my country by helpless solicitation. I wrote a few letters, committed myself to a protection above the passions and vices of man, wrapped my cloak round me, and sank into a sound slumber.

I was aroused by a discharge of cannon, and found the camp in commotion. The Spaniards, under Reding and Castanos, had, as the colonel anticipated, fallen upon our line of march at daybreak, and cut off a large portion of the baggage-train. It had been loaded with the church-plate, and general plunder of Cordova; and the avarice of the French had obviously involved them in formidable difficulty. But, even in the universal tumult, the importance of my seizure was not forgotten; and I was ordered to the rear in charge of a guard. The action now began on all sides; the cannonade rapidly deepening on the flank and centre of the French position, and the musketry already beginning to rattle on various points of the line. From the height on which I stood, the whole scene lay beneath my eye; and nothing could have been better worth the speculation of any man—who was not under sentence of being shot as soon as the struggle was over!

I was aware of the reputation of the French general. He held a high name among the braves of the imperial army for the last ten years, and he had been foremost everywhere. In the desperate Italian campaign against the Austrians and Russians; in the victorious campaign of Austerlitz; in the sanguinary campaign of Eylau—Dupont was one of the most daring of generals of brigade. But his pillage of Cordova had roused the Spanish wrath into fury; and the effort to carry off his plunder made it impossible for him to resist a vigorous attack, even with his twenty thousand veterans. He had indulged himself in Cordova, until the broken armies of the south had found time to rally; and a force of fifty thousand men was now rushing down upon his centre. The hills, as far as the eye could range, were covered with the armed peasantry, moving like dark clouds over their sides, and descending by thousands to the field. The battle now raged furiously in the centre, and the charges of the French cavalry made fearful gaps in the Spanish battalions. At length, the rising of the dust on the right showed that a strong column was approaching, which might decide the day. My heart beat slow as I saw the tricolor floating above its bayonets. It was the advanced guard, with Dupont at its head—a force of three thousand men, which had returned rapidly on its steps, as soon as the sound of the attack had reached it. It was boldly resisted by the Swiss and Walloon brigades of the Spanish line: but the French fire was heavy, its manœuvre was daring, and I began to fear for the fate of the day; when a loud explosion, and a hurried movement at the extreme of the French position, turned my eyes to the left wing. There the Spanish attack had swept every thing before it. Brigade after brigade was giving way, and the country was covered with scattered horsemen, infantry retiring in disorder, and broken and captured guns. The peasantry, too, had joined in the pursuit, and the wing seemed utterly ruined. To retrieve this disorder was now hopeless, for the French general had extended his line to the extraordinary length of ten miles. His baggage-train was his ruin. The whole Spanish line now advanced, shouting, and only halting at intervals to cannonade the enemy. The French returned a feeble fire, and began to retreat. But retreat was now impossible, and they must fight, or be massacred. At this moment I saw an officer, from the spot where Dupont sat on his charger surrounded by his staff, gallop between the two armies. He was met by a Spanish officer. The firing ceased. Dupont had surrendered, with all the troops in Andalusia!

I was now at liberty, and I was received by the Spanish commander-in-chief with the honours due to my mission and my country. After mutual congratulations on this most brilliant day, I expressed my wish to set off for Madrid without delay. An escort of cavalry was ordered for me, and by midnight I had left behind me the slaughter and the triumph, the noblest of Spanish fields, the immortal Baylen!

The night was singularly dark; and as the by-roads of the Peninsula are confessedly among the most original specimens of the road-making art, our attention was chiefly occupied, for the first hour, in finding our way in Indian file. At length, on the country's opening, I rode forward to the head of the troops, and addressed some questions, on our distance from the next town, to the officer. He at once pronounced my name, and my astonishment was not less than his own. In the commandant of the escort I found my gallant, though most wayward, young friend, Mariamne's lover, Lafontaine! His story was brief. In despair of removing her father's reluctance to their marriage, and wholly unable to bring over Mariamne to his own opinion, that she would act the wiser part in taking the chances of the world along with himself, he had resolved to enter the Russian or the Turkish service, or any other in which he had the speediest probability of ending his career by a bullet or a sabre-blow. The accidental rencontre of one of his relations, an officer high in the Spanish service, had led him into the Peninsula; where, as a Royalist, he was warmly received by a people devoted to their kings; and had just received a commission in the cavalry of the guard, when the French war broke out. He felt no scruples in acting as a soldier of Spain; for, with the death of Louis, he had regarded all ties as broken, and he was now a citizen of the world. I ventured to mention the name of Mariamne; and I found that, there at least, the inconstancy charged on his nation had no place. He spoke of her with eloquent tenderness, and it was evident that, with all his despair of ever seeing her again, she still held the first place in his heart. In this wandering, yet by no means painful, interchange of thoughts, we moved on for some hours; when one of the advanced troopers rode back, to tell us that he had heard shots in the distance, and other sounds of struggle. We galloped forward, and from the brow of the next hill saw flames rising from a village in the valley beneath, and a skirmish going on between some marauding troops and the peasantry. Lafontaine instantly ordered an advance; and our whole troop were soon in the centre of the village, busily employed with the pistol and sabre. The French, taken by surprise, made but a slight resistance, and, after a few random shots, ran to a neighbouring wood. But as I was looking round, to congratulate my friend on his success, I saw him, to my infinite alarm, reel in his saddle, and had only time to save him from falling to the ground.

The accommodation of the Ventas and Posadas is habitually wretched, and I demanded whether there was not a house of some hidalgo in the neighbourhood, to which the wounded officer might be carried. One of the last shots of the skirmish had struck him in the arm, and he was now fainting with pain. The house was pointed out, and we carried my unfortunate friend there, in a swoon. Even in that moment of anxiety, and with scarcely more than the first dawn to guide us, I could not help being struck with the cultivated beauty of the avenue through which we passed, and the profusion and variety of the flowers, which now began to breathe their opening incense to the dawn. The house was old, but large and handsome, and the furniture of the apartment into which we were shown, was singularly tasteful and costly. Who the owner was, was scarcely known among the bold fellows who accompanied us; but by their pointings to their foreheads, and their making the sign of the cross at every repetition of my enquiries, I was inclined to think him some escaped lunatic. I shortly, however, received a message from him, to tell me, that so soon as the crowd should be dismissed, he would visit the officer. The apartment was cleared and he came. This was a new wonder for me. It was Mordecai that entered the room. The light was still so imperfect, that for awhile he could not recognise either of us; and when I advanced to take his hand, and addressed him by his name, he started back as if he had trod upon a snake. However, his habitual presence of mind soon enabled him to answer all my enquiries, and, among the first, one for the health and happiness of his daughter. Fearful of the effects of his intelligence, whether good or evil, on the nerves of Lafontaine, who still lay on the sofa, almost invisible in the dusk, I begged to follow him to another room, and there I listened to his whole anxious history since our parting.—Mariamne had suddenly grown discontented with Poland; which to Mordecai himself had become a weary residence, from the ravages of the French war. For some reason, unaccountable to me, said the old man, she set her heart upon Spain, and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much, and was even more attached to her harp and her flowers than ever; yet declared that she had bid farewell to the world. The father wept as he spoke, but his were the tears of sorrow rather than of anguish. They stole quietly down his cheeks, and showed that the stern and haughty spirit was subdued within him. I had not ventured to allude to Lafontaine; but the current of his own thoughts at length led to that forbidden topic. "I am afraid, Mr Marston," said he, "that I have been too harsh with my child. I looked for her alliance with some of the opulent among my own kindred; or I should have rejoiced if your regards had been fixed on her, and hers on you. And in those dreams, I forgot that the affections must choose for themselves. I had no objection to the young Frenchman, but that he was a stranger, and was poor.—Yet are not we ourselves strangers? and if he was poor, was not I rich? But all is over now; and I shall only have to follow my poor Mariamne, where I should have much rather preceded her,—to the grave."

I now requested to see Mariamne. She met me with almost a cry of joy, and with a cheek of sudden crimson; but, when the first flush passed away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed—it was softer and less capricious; her language, even her voice, was subdued; and more than once I saw a tear stealing on her eye. At length, after hearing some slight detail of her wanderings, and her fears that the troubles of Spain might drive her from a country in whose genial climate and flowery fields "she had hoped to end her days;" I incidentally asked—whether, in all her wanderings, she had heard of "my friend, Lafontaine." How impossible is it to deceive the instinct of the female heart! The look which she gave me, the searching glance of her fine eyes, which flashed with all their former lustre, and the sudden quivering of her lip, told me how deeply his image was fixed in her recollection. She saw at once that I had tidings of her lover; and she hung upon the hand which I held out to her, with breathless and beseeching anxiety. After some precautions, I revealed to her the facts—that he was as faithfully devoted to her as ever, and—that he was even under her roof!

I leave the rest of her story to be conjectured. I shall only say, that I saw her made happy; the burden taken off her spirits which had exhausted her frame; her former vivacity restored, her eye sparkling once more; and even the heart of her father cheered, and acknowledging "that there was happiness in the world, if men did not mar it for themselves." The "course of true love" had, at last, "run smooth." I was present at the marriage of Lafontaine. The trials of fortune had been of infinite service to him; they had sobered his eccentricity, taught him the value of a quiet mind, and prepared him for that manlier career which belongs to the husband and the father. I left them, thanking me in all the language of gratitude, promising to visit me in England.

My mission to the junta was speedily and successfully accomplished. Spain, in want of every thing but that which no subsidy could supply, a determination to die in the last intrenchment, was offered arms, ammunition, and the aid of an English army. In her pride, and yet a pride which none could blame, she professed herself able to conquer by her own intrepidity. Later experience showed her, by many a suffering, the value of England as the guide, sustainer, and example of her national strength. But Spain had still the gallant distinction of being the first nation which, as one man, dared to defy the conqueror of all the great military powers of the Continent. The sieges of Saragossa and Gerona will immortalize the courage of the Spanish soldier; the guerilla campaigns will immortalize the courage of the Spanish peasant; and the memorable confession of the French Emperor, that "Spain was his greatest error, and his ultimate ruin," is a testimonial more lasting than the proudest trophy, to the magnanimous warfare of the Peninsula.

This was the Crisis. The spirit of the whole European war now assumed a bolder, loftier, and more triumphant form. A sudden conviction filled the general heart, that the fortunes of the field were about to change. Nations which had, till then, been only emulous in prostration to the universal conqueror, now assumed the port of courage, prepared their arms, and longed to try their cause again in battle. The outcry of Spain, answered by the trumpet of England, pierced to the depths of that dungeon in which the intrigue and the power of France had laboured to inclose the continental nations. The war of the Revolution has already found historians, of eloquence and knowledge worthy of so magnificent an era of human change. But, to me, the chief interest arose from its successive developments of the European mind. The whole period was a continued awakening of faculties, hitherto almost unknown, in the great body of the people. The first burst of the Revolution, like the first use of gunpowder, had only shown the boundless force of a new element of destruction. The Spanish insurrection showed its protecting and preservative power. The tremendous energy which seemed to defy all control, was there seen effecting the highest results of national defence, and giving proof of the irresistible strength provided in the population of every land. What nation of Europe does not possess a million of men for its defence; and what invader could confront a million of men on their own soil? Let this truth be felt, and aggression becomes hopeless, and war ceases to exist among men.

For the first time in the history of war, it was discovered, that the true force of kingdoms had been mistaken—a mistake which had lasted for a thousand years; that armies were but splendid machines; and that, while they might be crushed by the impulse of machines more rapid, stronger, and more skilfully urged, nothing could crush the vigour of defence, while it was supplied by a people.

The levée en masse of France was but the rudest, as it was the earliest, form of the new discovery. There, terror was the moving principle. The conscription was the recruiting-officer. The guillotine was the commander who manœuvred the generals, the troops, and the nation. Yet, the revolutionary armies differed in nothing from the monarchical, but in the superiority of their numbers, and the inferiority of their discipline.

The war of Spain was another, and a nobler advance. It was the war of a nation. In France the war was the conspiracy of a faction. In Spain the loss of the capital only inflamed the hostility of the provinces. In France the loss of the capital would have extinguished the Revolution; as it afterwards extinguished the Empire. I think that I can see the provision for a still bolder and more beneficent advance, even in those powerful developments of national capabilities. It will, perhaps, be left to other nations. Spain and France have a yoke upon their minds, which will disqualify them both from acting the nobler part of guides to Europe. Superstition contains in itself the canker of slavery; perfect freedom is essential to perfect power; and the nation which, from the cradle, prostrates itself to the priest, must retain the early flexure of its spine. The great experiment must be reserved for a nobler public mind; for a people religious without fanaticism, and free without licentiousness; honouring the wisdom of their fathers, without rejecting the wisdom of the living age; aspiring but to the ministration of universal good, and feeling that its opulence, knowledge, and grandeur are only gifts for mankind.

The system of the war was now fully established. All the feelings of England were fixed on the Peninsula, and all the politics of her statesmen and their rivals were alike guided by the course of the conflict. The prediction was gallantly fulfilled—that the French empire would there expose its flank to English intrepidity; that the breaching battery which was to open the way to Paris, would be fixed on the Pyrenees; that the true sign of conquest was the banner of England.

The battle of the Ministry was fought in Spain, and as victoriously as the battle of our army. We saw Opposition gradually throw away its arms, and gradually diminish in the popular view, until its existence was scarcely visible. Successive changes varied the cabinet, but none shook its stability. Successive ministers sank into the grave, but the ministry stood. The spirit of the nation, justly proud of its triumphs, disdained to listen to the whispers of a party, who murmured defeat with victory before their eyes; who conjured up visions of ruin, only to be rebuked by realities of triumph; and to whom the national scorn of pusillanimity, and the national rejoicing in the proudest success, could not unteach the language of despair. Perceval, the overthrower of the Foxite ministry, perished; but the political system of the cabinet remained unchanged. Castlereagh perished—Liverpool perished; but the political system still remained. The successive pilots might give up the helm, but the course of the great vessel continued the same—guided by the same science, and making her way through sunshine, and through storm, to the same point of destination.

The three successive ministers were men of high ability for government, though their character of ability exhibited the most remarkable distinctions. Perceval had been a lawyer, and had risen to the rank of attorney-general. In the House, he carried the acuteness, the logic, and even the manner, of his profession with him. Without pretending to the power of eloquence, he singularly possessed the power of conviction; without effecting changes in the theory of the constitution, he put its truths in a new light; and without a trace of bigotry, he defended, with conscientious vigour, the rights of the national religion. Sustaining a bold struggle at the head of the feeblest minority perhaps ever known in Parliament, he had shown unshaken courage and undismayed principle in the day of the Foxite supremacy. This defence was at length turned into assault, and his opponents were driven from power. His ministry was too brief for his fame. But, when he fell by the hand of a maniac, he left a universal impression on the mind of the empire, that the blow had deprived it of a great ministerial mind.

Lord Castlereagh exhibited a character of a totally different order, yet equally fitted for his time. An Irishman, he had the habitual intrepidity of his countrymen, combined with the indefatigable diligence of England. Nobly connected, and placed high in public life by that connexion, he showed himself capable of sustaining his ministerial rank by personal capacity. Careless of the style of his speeches, he was yet a grave, solid, and fully-informed debater. But it was in the council that his value to the country was most acknowledged. His conception of the rights, the influence, and the services of England, was lofty; and, when the period came for deciding on her rank in the presence of continental diplomacy, he was her chosen, and her successful, representative. His natural place was among the councils of camps, where sovereigns were the soldiers. The "march to Paris" was due to his courage; and the first fall of Napoleon was effected by the ambassador of England.

Lord Liverpool was a man equally fitted for his time. The war had triumphantly closed. But, a period of perturbed feelings and financial necessities followed. It required in the minister a combination of sound sense and practical vigour—of deference for the public feelings, yet respect for the laws—of promptitude in discovering national resources, and yet of firmness in repelling factious change. The head of the cabinet possessed those qualities. Without brilliancy, without eloquence, without accomplished literature; still, no man formed his views with a clearer intelligence; and no man pursued them with more steady determination. Perhaps disdaining the glitter of popularity, no minister, for the last half century, had been so singularly exempt from all the sarcasms of public opinion. The nation relied on his sincerity, honoured his purity of principle, and willingly confided its safety to hands which none believed capable of a stain.

But the characters of those three ministers were striking in a still higher point of view. Their qualities seem to have been expressly constructed to meet the peculiar exigency of their times. Perceval—acute, strict, and with strong religious conceptions—to meet a period, when religious laxity in the cabinet had already enfeebled the defence of the national religion. Castlereagh—stately, bold, and high-toned—to meet a period, when the fate of Europe was to be removed from cabinets to the field, and when he was to carry the will of England among assembled monarchs. Liverpool—calm, rational, and practical; the man of conscience and common sense—for the period, when the great questions of religion had been quieted, the great questions of the war had died with the war, and when the supreme difficulty of government was, to reconcile the pressure of financial exigency with the progress of the people—to invigorate the public frame without inflaming it by dangerous innovation—and to reconstruct the whole commercial constitution, without infringing on those principles which had founded the prosperity of the empire.

At length the consummation came: the French empire fell on the field by the hand of England. All the sovereigns of Europe rushed in to strip the corpse, and each carried back a portion of the spoils. But the conqueror was content with the triumph, and asked no more of glory than the liberation of mankind.

While all was public exultation for this crowning event, fortune had not neglected to reward the gentler virtues of one worthy of its noblest gifts. In my first campaign with the Prussian troops in France, I had intrusted to the care of the old domestic whom I found in the Chateau de Montauban, an escritoire and a picture, belonging to the family of Clotilde. The old man had disappeared; and I took it for granted that he had been plundered, or had died.

But one day, after my return from one of those splendid entertainments with which the Regent welcomed the Allied sovereigns, I found Clotilde deeply agitated. The picture of her relative was before her, and she was gazing at its singularly expressive and lovely countenance with intense interest.

She flew into my arms. "I have longed for your coming," said she, with glowing lips and tearful eyes, "to offer at least one proof of gratitude for years of the truest protection, and the most generous love. Michelle, the husband of my nurse, has arrived; and he tells me, that this escritoire contains the title-deeds of my family. I was resolved that you alone should open it. In the frame of that picture, in a secret drawer, is the key." The spring was touched, the key was found; and in the little chest was discovered, untouched by chance or time, the document entitling my beautiful and high-hearted wife to one of the finest possessions in France. By a singular instance of good fortune, the property had not been alienated, like so many of the estates of the noblesse; and it now lay open to the claims of the original proprietorship. I hastened to Paris. My claim was acknowledged by the returned Bourbon, and Clotilde had the delight of once more sitting under the vine and the fig-tree of her ancestors. The old domestic had made it the business of years to obtain the means of reaching England. But the war had placed obstacles in his way every where, and he devoted himself thenceforth to the guardianship of his precious deposit, as the duty of his life. He was almost pathetic, in his narration of the hazards to which it had been exposed in the perpetual convulsions of the country, and in the rejoicing with which he felt himself at last enabled to place it in the hands of its rightful mistress, the last descendant of the noble house of De Tourville.—But I had still to experience another gift of fortune.

On the evening of my birth-day, Clotilde had given a rustic fête to the children of her tenantry; and all were dancing in front of the chateau, with the gaiety and with the grace which nature seems to have conferred as an especial gift on even the humblest classes of France.

The day was one of the luxury of summer. The landscape before me was a rich extent of plain and hill; the fragrance of the vast gardens of the chateau as rising as the twilight approached; my infants were clustering round my knee; and in that thankfulness of heart, which is not less sincere for its not being expressed in words, I came to the conclusion, that no access of wealth, or of honours, could add to my substantial happiness at that hour.

My reverie was broken by the sound of a calèche driving up the avenue. A courier alighted from it, who brought a letter with a black seal, addressed to me. It was from the family solicitor. My noble brother had died in Madeira; where he had gone in the hopeless attempt to recruit a frame which he had exhausted by a life of excess. In that hour, I gave him the regrets which belonged to the tie of blood. I forgot his selfishness, and forgave his alienation. I thought of him only as the remembered playfellow of my early days; and could say in heart—"Alas, my brother!" The landscape before me at last sank into night; and with feelings darkened like it, yet calm and still, I saw the closing of a day which, painful as was the cause, yet called me to new duties, gave me a stronger hold upon society, and placed me in that position which I fully believe to combine more of the true materials of happiness and honour than any other on earth—that of an opulent English nobleman.

My brother, dying childless, had devolved the family estates to me, disburdened of the results of his prodigality; but I had still much to occupy me, in restoring them from the neglect of years. The life of the member of government was now to alternate with the life of the country gentleman; and my transfer to the House of Peers gave me the comparative leisure, essential to the fulfilment of the large and liberal duties which belong to the English landholder. To cheer the country life by rational hospitality; to make friends of those whom nature had made dependents; to sustain those laws which had turned England into a garden; and to protect that "bold peasantry," who ought to be the pride, as they are the strength of their country; to excite the country gentlemen to the scientific study of the noblest of all arts, as it was the first, the cultivation of the soil; to maintain among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes, their powers, and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix in their minds by example, more effectual than precept, a solemn fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:—these were the objects which I proposed to myself, and which the loftiest intellect, or the amplest opulence, might be well employed in attempting to fulfil.

Those objects had been placed before England, from the day when the light of the Reformation broke through the darkness of a thousand years, and her brow was first designed for the diadem. By those she was made the universal protector of Europe, in its day of fugitive princes and falling thrones; and by those alone will be erected round her, if she shall remain true to her allegiance, a wall of fire, in the days of that approaching contest which shall bring the powers of good and evil front to front, in strength and hostility unknown before, and consummate the wars of the world.

Yet with those tranquil and retired pursuits, I still took my share in the activity of public life. I was still minister, and bore my part in the discussions of the legislature. But the great questions which had once sounded in my ear, like the call to battle in the ear of the warrior, had passed away. The minds that "rode in the whirlwind, and ruled the storm," had vanished with the storm. The surge had gone down; and neither the dangers of my earlier day, nor the powers which were summoned to resist them, were to be found in the living generation. Yet, let it not be thought that I regard the mind of England as exhausted, or even as exhaustible. The only distinction between the periods is, that one gave the impulse, and that the other only continues it. When peril comes again, we shall again see the development of power. We might as well doubt the existence of lightning, because the day is serene, the sun shining, and no cloud rolls across the heaven. But when the balance of the elements demands to be restored, we shall again be dazzled by the flash, and awed by the thunder.

But time has taught me additional lessons. I have learned to see a hand, in all its clouds, which guides man and kingdoms with more than human power. In these remembrances, I have spoken but little of religion. It belongs to the chamber more than to the council; and it is less honoured than humiliated by being brought idly before men. But by that light I have been able to see, where subtler minds have been blind. The man may be bewildered by the glare of the torch in his hand, who would have found his way by trusting to the milder lustre of the stars. In the great war of our time, the greatest since the fall of the Roman empire—the war of the French Revolution—I think, that I can trace a divine protection, distinctly given to England as the champion of justice, honour, and religion. I offer but the outline of this view; but to me the proof is demonstrative.—In every instance in which France aimed an especial blow at England, that blow was retorted by an especial retribution; while her assaults on the continental kingdoms were made with triumphant impunity.

I give the examples.—The French expedition to Egypt was formed with the express object of breaking down the influence of England in the East, and ultimately subverting her Indian empire—that expedition was the first which tarnished the military renown of the Republic, cost her a fleet, and lost her an army. Of the army which Napoleon led to Egypt, not a battalion returned to Europe but as the prisoners of England!

The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the invasion of England—the Spanish war broke down the military renown of the Empire, and was pronounced by Napoleon to be the origin of his ruin!

The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of the north—that invasion was punished, by the ruin of the whole veteran army of France!

Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with an arrogant assumption of victory—"Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais." Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict destroyed him; his laurels, his diadem, and his dynasty, were blasted together!

It is not less memorable, that during the entire Revolutionary war, France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one exception—the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But this, too, had its punishment—and one of the most especial and characteristic retribution—Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By a fate unheard of even among fallen princes, the man who had treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a prisoner, was delivered into English hands, was consigned to captivity in an English island, and died the prisoner of England!

I speak of events like these, not in the spirit of superstition, nor in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways of Providence. I record them, in a full consciousness of the immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of the supreme Disposer. But they convey, at least to my own feelings, a confidence, a solemn security, a calm yet ardent conviction, that chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great tide of things, in its rise and fall, has laws, which, if unapproached by the feebleness of human faculties, are not the less true, vast, and imperishable; that if, like the air, the agency of that ruling and boundless authority is invisible, we may yet feel its existence in its effects, rejoice in the acknowledgment of a power which nothing can exhaust, and take to our bosoms the high consolation, that the good of man is the supreme principle of the system.

Men actively employed in public life, are strangely apt to think that there is no progress outside their circle. But, on my return to Mortimer Castle, I found this conception amply confuted. The world had moved as rapidly in those shades, as in the centre of cabinets and courts. Time had done its work, in changing the condition of almost every human being whom I had known in my early days. The brothers and sisters, whom I had left children, were now in the full beauty of their prime; my brothers showy and stirring youths; my sisters fair and gentle girls, just reaching that period of life when the countenance and mind are in their bloom together, and the highborn woman of England is the loveliest perhaps in the world. The extravagance of my elder brother had dilapidated the provision intended for the younger branches of his house. My habits, learned in a sterner school, enabled me to retrieve their fortunes, and I thus secured a new tie to their regards. Justice is essential to all gratitude, and I found them ready to pay the tribute, to the full.

Among my first visits was one to my old friend and tutor, Vincent. I found him still resident on his living; and with spirits, on which time had wrought no change. Years had passed lightly over his head. His eye was as vivid, and his mind as active as ever. He perhaps stooped a little more, and his frame had lost something of that elasticity of step which had so often tried my young nerves in our ramblings over the hills. But he was the same cordial, animated, and high-toned being, in all his feelings, that I had seen him from the first hour. I found him in his garden, arranging, selecting, and enjoying his flower-beds with all the spirit of a horticulturist. But he apologised for what he termed, "its disorder." "For," said he, "I have lost all my gardeners." On my looking doubtful, "All my girls," said he, "are gone; all married; all wedded to one neighbour or another. Such is the way in which I have been left alone." I made my condolences on his solitude, in due form. "Yet I am not quite solitary," added the gay old man, "after all; or my solitude depends upon myself. My girls are all married to our squires, honest fellows, and some of them well enough off in the world. But I made a stipulation, that none of them should marry out of sight from the gazebo on the top of yonder hill; and when I want their company, I have only to hoist a flag. You see that I have not altogether forgotten my days of the sabre and the signal-post; my telegraph works well, and I have them all trooping over here with the regularity of a squadron."

The approach of winter made the castle a scene of increased liveliness. I had always looked with strong distaste on the habit of flying to watering-places at the season when the presence of the leading families of a county is most important to the comforts of the tenantry, and to the intelligent and social intercourse of the higher ranks. I sent a request to Lafontaine and his wife, that they should perform their "covenant," and venture to see "how English life contrived to get through the dulness of its Decembers." My request was countersigned by Clotilde, and this was irresistible. They came, and were received with a joyous welcome. They too had undergone a change. Lafontaine was graver, and was much the better for his gravity. He was now the sincere and kind-hearted being for which nature had intended him. The coxcombry of French early life had disappeared, and left behind it only that general grace and spirit which makes the maturity of a foreign life its most interesting portion. Mariamne was still more advantageously changed. Her wild vivacity was less subdued than transformed into elegance of manner; her features were still handsome, travel had given her knowledge, and her natural talents had been cultivated by the solitary hours, in which but for that cultivation she might have sunk into the grave. She had brought with her, too, another remembrance, and one of that order which produces the most powerful effect upon the whole character of woman. She had brought her first-born, a lovely infant, in which her whole soul seemed to be absorbed, and in which she already discovered more beauties and good qualities than fate or fortune had ever given to human nature. But the centre of our circle, and the admiration and love of all, sat my wife, my generous, noble, pure-spirited Clotilde. Time, too, had wrought its change on her; but it was only to give her deeper claims on the feelings of a heart which could not imagine happiness without her. The heroine had wholly disappeared, and given place to the woman; the character of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune, which adversity had made essential perhaps to her being, had passed away with her day of suffering. She was now soft, mild, tender, and confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which, when exposed to the storm, contract and diminish their form and foliage; but, when sheltered, resume their original luxuriance and loveliness. Clotilde, in the sufferings of the emigration, in the terrors of the Revolution, and in the march through the Vendée, might have perished, but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of the trial. But now, surrounded with all the security of rank, and with opulence for her enjoyment, and with love to cherish her, she displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her affections. Thus surrounded, thus cheered, thus looked up to by beings whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty, all the feeling of patriotism, and all the consciousness, that age will neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved, nor shut up theirs to me. I believe in the possibility of friendship untainted by selfishness, and I am firm in the faith, of love that knows no decline. I look round me, and am serenely happy. I look above me, and am sacredly thankful.

HOW WE GOT UP THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY, AND HOW WE GOT OUT OF IT.

I was confoundedly hard up. My patrimony, never of the largest, had been for the last year on the decrease—a herald would have emblazoned it, "Argent, a money-bag improper, in detriment"—and though the attenuating process was not excessively rapid, it was, nevertheless, proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers, I knew none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. "Augustus," said my poor mother to me, one day while stroking my hyacinthine tresses—"Augustus, my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that you are a gentleman." The maternal maxim sunk deeply into my heart, and I never for a moment have forgotten it.

Notwithstanding this aristocratical resolution, the great practical question, "How am I to live?" began to thrust itself unpleasantly before me. I am one of that unfortunate class who have neither uncles nor aunts. For me, no yellow liverless individual, with characteristic bamboo and pigtail—emblems of half a million—returned to his native shores from Ceylon or remote Penang. For me, no venerable spinster hoarded in the Trongate, permitting herself few luxuries during a long-protracted life, save a lass and a lanthorn, a parrot, and the invariable baudrons of antiquity. No such luck was mine. Had all Glasgow perished by some vast epidemic, I should not have found myself one farthing the richer. There would have been no golden balsam for me in the accumulated woes of Tradestown, Shettleston, and Camlachie. The time has been when—according to Washington Irving and other veracious historians—a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream, with the information that at such and such a bridge, or under such and such a tree, he might find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and straightaway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by—at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly confess I should have liked some better security for its result, than the precedent of the "Heir of Lynn."

It is a great consolation amidst all the evils of life, to know that, however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally, Bob M'Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man—that is, in a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies of the Wealth of Nations. The result was a crude farrago of notions regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring audience at "The Crow;" for Bob was by no means—in the literal acceptation of the word—a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery; and was understood to be the compiler of a statistical work, entitled, A Tour through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland. It had very early occurred to me, who knew as much of political economy as of the bagpipes, that a gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating national wealth, must have some remote ideas of applying his principles profitably on a smaller scale. Accordingly, I gave M'Corkindale an unlimited invitation to my lodgings; and, like a good hearty fellow as he was, he availed himself every evening of the license; for I had laid in a fourteen gallon cask of Oban whisky, and the quality of the malt was undeniable.

These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful stimulus to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain that all the populous towns would be united, and the rich agricultural districts intersected, by the magical bands of iron. The columns of the newspapers teemed every week with the parturition of novel schemes; and the shares were no sooner announced than they were rapidly subscribed for. But what is the use of my saying any thing more about the history of last year? Every one of us remembers it perfectly well. It was a capital year on the whole, and put money into many a pocket. About that time, Bob and I commenced operations. Our available capital, or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise unemployed, whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we never, in a single instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and though we did now and then make a hit by purchase, we more frequently bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the end of six months, we were not twenty pounds richer than before.

"This will never do," said Bob, as he sat one evening in my rooms compounding his second tumbler. "I thought we were living in an enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles; of free-trade are utterly forgotten, or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in the Westermidden Junction; whilst your application and mine, for a thousand each, were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be tolerated? Why should he, with his fifty thousand pounds, receive a slapping premium, whilst our three hundred of available capital remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous, and demands the immediate and serious interference of the legislature."

"It is a bloody shame," said I, fully alive to the manifold advantages of a premium.

"I'll tell you what, Dunshunner," rejoined M'Corkindale, "it's no use going on in this way. We haven't shown half pluck enough. These fellows consider us as snobs, because we don't take the bull by the horns. Now's the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to subscribe for any thing—and we'll start a railway for ourselves."

"Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!"

"Pshaw, man! you don't know what you're talking about—we've a great deal more capital than that. Have not I told you seventy times over, that every thing a man has—his coat, his hat, the tumblers he drinks from, nay, his very corporeal existence—is absolute marketable capital? What do you call that fourteen-gallon cask, I should like to know?"

"A compound of hoops and staves, containing about a quart and a half of spirits—you have effectually accounted for the rest."

"Then it has gone to the fund of profit and loss, that's all. Never let me hear you sport those old theories again. Capital is indestructible, as I am ready to prove to you any day, in half an hour. But let us sit down seriously to business. We are rich enough to pay for the advertisements, and that is all we need care for in the mean time. The public is sure to step in, and bear us out handsomely with the rest."

"But where in the face of the habitable globe shall the railway be? England is out of the question, and I hardly know a spot in the Lowlands that is not occupied already."

"What do you say to a Spanish scheme—the Alcantara Union? Hang me if I know whether Alcantara is in Spain or Portugal; but nobody else does, and the one is quite as good as the other. Or what would you think of the Palermo Railway, with a branch to the sulphur mines?—that would be popular in the North—or the Pyrenees Direct? They would all go to a premium."

"I must confess I should prefer a line at home."

"Well, then, why not try the Highlands? There must be lots of traffic there in the shape of sheep, grouse, and Cockney tourists, not to mention salmon and other et ceteras. Couldn't we tip them a railway somewhere in the west?"

"There's Glenmutchkin, for instance"——

"Capital, my dear fellow! Glorious! By Jove, first-rate!" shouted Bob in an ecstasy of delight. "There's a distillery there, you know, and a fishing village at the foot; at least there used to be six years ago, when I was living with the exciseman. There may be some bother about the population, though. The last laird shipped every mother's son of the original Celts to America; but, after all, that's not of much consequence. I see the whole thing! Unrivalled scenery—stupendous waterfalls—herds of black cattle—spot where Prince Charles Edward met Macgrugar of Glengrugar and his clan! We could not possibly have lighted on a more promising place. Hand us over that sheet of paper, like a good fellow, and a pen. There is no time to be lost, and the sooner we get out the prospectus the better."

"But, Heaven bless you, Bob, there's a great deal to be thought of first. Who are we to get for a provisional committee?"

"That's very true," said Bob musingly. "We must treat them to some respectable names, that is, good sounding ones. I'm afraid there is little chance of our producing a Peer to begin with?"

"None whatever—unless we could invent one, and that's hardly safe—Burke's Peerage has gone through too many editions. Couldn't we try the Dormants?"

"That would be rather dangerous in the teeth of the standing orders. But what do you say to a baronet? There's Sir Polloxfen Tremens. He got himself served the other day to a Nova Scotia baronetcy, with just as much title as you or I have; and he has sported the riband, and dined out on the strength of it ever since. He'll join us at once, for he has not a sixpence to lose."

"Down with him, then," and we headed the Provisional list with the pseudo Orange-tawney.

"Now," said Bob, "it's quite indispensable, as this is a Highland line, that we should put forward a Chief or two. That has always a great effect upon the English, whose feudal notions are rather of the mistiest, and principally derived from Waverley."

"Why not write yourself down as the Laird of M'Corkindale?" said I. "I daresay you would not be negatived by a counter-claim."

"That would hardly do," replied Bob, "as I intend to be Secretary. After all, what's the use of thinking about it? Here goes for an extempore Chief," and the villain wrote down the name of Tavish M'Tavish of Invertavish.

"I say, though," said I, "we must have a real Highlander on the list. If we go on this way, it will become a Justiciary matter."

"You're devilish scrupulous, Gus," said Bob, who, if left to himself, would have stuck in the names of the heathen gods and godesses, or borrowed his directors from the Ossianic chronicles, rather than have delayed the prospectus. "Where the mischief are we to find the men? I can think of no others likely to go the whole hog; can you?"

"I don't know a single Celt in Glasgow except old M'Closkie, the drunken porter at the corner of Jamaica Street."

"He's the very man! I suppose, after the manner of his tribe, he will do any thing for a pint of whisky. But what shall we call him? Jamaica Street, I fear, will hardly do for a designation."

"Call him The M'closkie. It will be sonorous in the ears of the Saxon!"

"Bravo!" and another Chief was added to the roll of the clans.

"Now," said Bob, "we must put you down. Recollect, all the management—that is, the allocation—will be entrusted to you. Augustus—you haven't a middle name I think?—well, then, suppose we interpolate 'Reginald;' it has a smack of the Crusades. Augustus Reginald Dunshunner, Esq. of —— where, in the name of Munchausen?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I never had any land beyond the contents of a flower-pot. Stay—I rather think I have a superiority somewhere about Paisley."

"Just the thing," cried Bob. "It's heritable property, and therefore titular. What's the denomination?"

"St Mirrens."

"Beautiful! Dunshunner of St Mirrens, I give you joy! Had you discovered that a little sooner—and I wonder you did not think of it—we might both of us have had lots of allocations. These are not the times to conceal hereditary distinctions. But now comes the serious work. We must have one or two men of known wealth upon the list. The chaff is nothing without a decoy-bird. Now, can't you help me with a name?"

"In that case," said I, "the game is up, and the whole scheme exploded. I would as soon undertake to evoke the ghost of Crœsus."

"Dunshunner," said Bob very seriously, "to be a man of information, you are possessed of marvellous few resources. I am quite ashamed of you. Now listen to me. I have thought deeply upon this subject, and am quite convinced that with some little trouble we may secure the co-operation of a most wealthy and influential body—one, too, that is generally supposed to have stood aloof from all speculation of the kind, and whose name would be a tower of strength in the monied quarters. I allude," continued Bob, reaching across for the kettle, "to the great Dissenting Interest."

"The what?" cried I aghast.

"The great Dissenting Interest. You can't have failed to observe the row they have lately been making about Sunday travelling and education. Old Sam Sawley, the coffin-maker, is their principal spokesman here; and wherever he goes the rest will follow, like a flock of sheep bounding after a patriarchal ram. I propose, therefore, to wait upon him to-morrow, and request his co-operation in a scheme which is not only to prove profitable, but to make head against the lax principles of the present age. Leave me alone to tickle him. I consider his name, and those of one or two others belonging to the same meeting-house—fellows with bank-stock, and all sorts of tin—as perfectly secure. These dissenters smell a premium from an almost incredible distance. We can fill up the rest of the committee with ciphers, and the whole thing is done.

"But the engineer—we must announce such an officer as a matter of course."

"I never thought of that," said Bob. "Couldn't we hire a fellow from one of the steam-boats?"

"I fear that might get us into trouble: You know there are such things as gradients and sections to be prepared. But there's Watty Solder, the gasfitter, who failed the other day. He's a sort of civil engineer by trade, and will jump at the proposal like a trout at the tail of a May fly."

"Agreed. Now, then, let's fix the number of shares. This is our first experiment, and I think we ought to be moderate. No sound political economist is avaricious. Let us say twelve thousand, at twenty pounds a-piece."

"So be it."

"Well, then, that's arranged. I'll see Sawley and the rest to-morrow; settle with Solder, and then write out the prospectus. You look in upon me in the evening, and we'll revise it together. Now, by your leave, let's have in the Welsh rabbit and another tumbler to drink success and prosperity to the Glenmutchkin railway."

I confess, that when I rose on the morrow, with a slight headache and a tongue indifferently parched, I recalled to memory, not without perturbation of conscience, and some internal qualms, the conversation of the previous evening. I felt relieved, however, after two spoonfuls of carbonate of soda, and a glance at the newspaper, wherein I perceived the announcement of no less than four other schemes equally preposterous with our own. But, after all, what right had I to assume that the Glenmutchkin project would prove an ultimate failure? I had not a scrap of statistical information that might entitle me to form such an opinion. At any rate, Parliament, by substituting the Board of Trade as an initiating body of enquiry, had created a responsible tribunal, and freed us from the chance of obloquy. I saw before me a vision of six months' steady gambling, at manifest advantage, in the shares, before a report could possibly be pronounced, or our proceedings in any way overhauled. Of course I attended that evening punctually at my friend M'Corkindale's. Bob was in high feather; for Sawley no sooner heard of the principles upon which the railway was to be conducted, and his own nomination as a director, than he gave in his adhesion, and promised his unflinching support to the uttermost. The Prospectus ran as follows:—

"The necessity of a direct line of Railway communication through the fertile and populous district known as the Valley of Glenmutchkin, has been long felt and universally acknowledged. Independent of the surpassing grandeur of its mountain scenery, which shall immediately be referred to, and other considerations of even greater importance, Glenmutchkin is known to the capitalist as the most important breeding station in the Highlands of Scotland, and indeed as the great emporium from which the southern markets are supplied. It has been calculated by a most eminent authority, that every acre in the strath is capable of rearing twenty head of cattle; and, as has been ascertained after a careful admeasurement, that there are not less than Two Hundred Thousand improvable acres immediately contiguous to the proposed line of Railway, it may confidently be assumed that the number of cattle to be conveyed along the line will amount to Four Millions annually, which, at the lowest estimate, would yield a revenue larger, in proportion to the capital subscribed, than that of any Railway as yet completed within the United Kingdom. From this estimate the traffic in Sheep and Goats, with which the mountains are literally covered, has been carefully excluded, it having been found quite impossible (from its extent) to compute the actual revenue to be drawn from that most important branch. It may, however, be roughly assumed as from seventeen to nineteen per cent upon the whole, after deduction of the working expenses.

"The population of Glenmutchkin is extremely dense. Its situation on the west coast has afforded it the means of direct communication with America, of which for many years the inhabitants have actively availed themselves. Indeed the amount of exportation of live stock from this part of the Highlands to the Western continent, has more than once attracted the attention of Parliament. The Manufactures are large and comprehensive, and include the most famous distilleries in the world. The Minerals are most abundant, and amongst these may be reckoned quartz, porphyry, felspar, malachite, manganese, and basalt.

"At the foot of the valley, and close to the sea, lies the important village known as the Clachan of Inverstarve. It is supposed by various eminent antiquaries to have been the capital of the Picts, and, amongst the busy inroads of commercial prosperity, it still retains some interesting traces of its former grandeur. There is a large fishing station here, to which vessels from every nation resort, and the demand for foreign produce is daily and steadily increasing.

"As a sporting country Glenmutchkin is unrivalled; but it is by the tourists that its beauties will most greedily be sought. These consist of every combination which plastic nature can afford—cliffs of unusual magnitude and grandeur—waterfalls only second to the sublime cascades of Norway—woods, of which the bark is a remarkably valuable commodity. It need scarcely be added, to rouse the enthusiasm inseparable from this glorious glen, that here, in 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, then in the zenith of his hopes, was joined by the brave Sir Grugar M'Grugar at the head of his devoted clan.

"The Railway will be twelve miles long, and can be completed within six months after the Act of Parliament is obtained. The gradients are easy, and the curves obtuse. There are no viaducts of any importance, and only four tunnels along the whole length of the line. The shortest of those does not exceed a mile and a half.

"In conclusion, the projectors of this Railway beg to state that they have determined, as a principle, to set their face against all Sunday Travelling whatsoever, and to oppose every bill which may hereafter be brought into Parliament, unless it shall contain a clause to that effect. It is also their intention to take up the cause of the poor and neglected Stoker, for whose accommodation, and social, moral, religious, and intellectual improvement a large stock of evangelical tracts will speedily be required. Tenders of these, in quantities of not less than 12,000, may be sent in to the interim secretary. Shares must be applied for within ten days from the present date.
"By order of the Provisional Committee,
"Robt. M'Corkindale, Secretary."

"There!" said Bob, slapping down the prospectus on the table, with the jauntiness of a Cockney vouchsafing a pint of Hermitage to his guests—"What do you think of that? If it doesn't do the business effectually, I shall submit to be called a Dutchman. That last touch about the stoker will bring us in the subscriptions of the old ladies by the score."

"Very masterly, indeed," said I. "But who the deuce is Mhic-Mhac-vich-Induibh?"

"A bona-fide chief, I assure you, though a little reduced: I picked him up upon the Broomielaw. His grandfather had an island somewhere to the west of the Hebrides; but it is not laid down in the maps."