BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCVII.

SEPTEMBER, 1849.

Vol. LXVI.

CONTENTS.

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BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCVII.

SEPTEMBER, 1849.

Vol. LXVI.

THE SCOTTISH MARRIAGE AND REGISTRATION BILLS.

About two years ago, we found it necessary to draw the attention of our readers to certain alterations which our Whig rulers, or at least a section of them, proposed to make in the existing law of marriage, as applicable to Scotland. We stated our views moderately, not denying that in some points it might be possible to effect a salutary change; but utterly deprecating the enforcement of a bill which was so constructed as to uproot and destroy the ancient consuetudinal law of the kingdom, to strike a heavy and malignant blow at morality and religion, and which, moreover, was regarded by the people of Scotland with feelings of unequivocal disgust. So widely spread was that feeling amongst our countrymen, of every shade of political opinion and form of religious faith, that we believed this ill-advised attempt, once arrested in its progress, would be finally withdrawn. Popularity, it was quite clear, could never be gained from persisting in a measure so unpalatable to the whole community; nor had England, save in the matter of Gretna-green marriages, any visible interest in the question. It is just possible—for self-conceit will sometimes betray men into strange extravagancies—that a few individual legislators had more confidence in the soundness of their own opinions than in that of the opinions of the nation; but, even if we should give them credit for such honest convictions, it still remains a doubtful point how far individual opinions should be allowed to override the national will. There may be parliamentary as well as regal despotism; and we are much mistaken if the people of Scotland are inclined to submit to the former yoke, even at the hands of those who claim honour for their party on the strength of traditionary denunciations of the latter. We think it is pretty clear that no private member of parliament would have attempted to carry through a bill, the provisions of which had been encountered by such general opposition in Scotland. No ministry would have lent its support to such a case of insolent coercion; and we confess we cannot see why the crotchets, or even the convictions, of an official are to be regarded with greater favour. In a matter purely Scottish, it would, indeed, be gross despotism if any British cabinet should employ its power and its interest to overwhelm the voice of Scotland, as fairly enunciated by her representatives. That has not been done, at least to the last unpardonable degree; yet, whilst grateful to Lord John Russell for having, at the last moment, stopped the progress of these bills, we may very fairly complain that earlier and more decided steps were not taken by the premier for suppressing the zeal of his subordinates. Surely he cannot have been kept in ignorance of the discontent which has been excited by the introduction of these bills, three several times, with the ministerial sanction, in both houses of parliament? Had a bill as obnoxious to the feelings of the people of England, as these avowedly are to the Scots, been once abandoned, it never would have appeared again. No minister would have been so blind to his duty, or at all events to his interest, as to have adopted the repudiated bantling; since, by doing so, he would have inevitably caused an opposition which could only terminate in his defeat, and which, probably, might prove fatal to the existence of his cabinet. And yet, in the case of these bills, we have seen three separate attempts deliberately made and renewed—first in the House of Commons, and afterwards in the House of Peers—to thrust upon Scotland measures of which she has emphatically pronounced her dislike. No wonder if, under such circumstances, when remonstrance is disregarded, and the expression of popular opinion either misrepresented or suppressed, men begin to question the prudence of an arrangement which confides the chief conduct of Scottish affairs to a lawyer and judge-expectant, whose functions are so multifarious as to interfere with their regular discharge. No wonder if the desire of the Scottish nation to have a separate and independent secretary of state, altogether unconnected with the legal profession, is finding an audible voice at the council-boards of the larger cities and towns. Of late years it has been made a subject of general and just complaint, that the public business of Scotland is postponed to everything else, huddled over with indecent haste at untimeous hours, and often entirely frustrated for the want of a parliamentary quorum. This arises from no indisposition, on the part of the House of Commons, to do justice to the internal affairs of the northern kingdom, but it is the natural result of the system, which virtually leaves Scotland without an official representative in the cabinet. Every one knows that Sir George Grey is not only an able, but a most conscientious home-secretary; but, in point of fact, he is home-secretary for England alone. It is impossible to expect that, in addition to the enormous labour attendant upon the English home administration, any man can adequately master the details of Scottish business. The fundamental difference which exists in the laws of the two countries would of itself prove an insurmountable barrier to this; and consequently, like his predecessors, Sir George Grey has no personal knowledge either of our wishes or our requirements. He cannot, therefore, take that prominence in a Scottish debate which his position would seem to require; and the duty which ought to be performed by a member of the cabinet is usually intrusted to a subordinate. In this way Scottish public business receives less than its due share of attention, for the generality of members, observing that cabinet ministers take little share in such discussions, naturally enough attribute their silence to a certain degree of indifference, and are careless about their own attendance. All this, which involves not only scandal, but positive inconvenience, would be cured, if a return were made to the older system, and a secretary of state for Scotland numbered in the roll of the cabinet. The want of such an arrangement is positively detrimental to the interests of ministry; for, during the last session, they have assuredly gained but few laurels from their northern legislation. Four or five bills, purporting to be of great public importance, have been withdrawn, and one only, which establishes a new office connected with the Court of Session, has been graced by the royal assent. Among the lapsed bills are those which form the subject of the present paper; but they have not yet lost their vitality. On the contrary, we are led to infer that, in the course of next session, they will again be introduced, in some form or other, before parliament.

This mode of treatment is so unprecedented, that we cannot pass it over in silence. It may not be unconstitutional, according to the letter of the law; but if it be true, as we maintain it to be, that the people of Scotland have already protested against these measures, it does seem rather tyrannical that for the fourth time they should be compelled to organise a resistance, and to make themselves heard through petitions, lest the very absence of these should be held as an intimation of passive acquiescence. This kind of reasoning has actually been resorted to; and a very pregnant instance of it is to be found in the reported speech of the Lord Advocate upon the third reading of the Marriage Bill. "With respect to the dissenters in Scotland, there was not a single petition from them against the bill; therefore they were to be taken as being in favour of it!" This is a notable sequitur. In the first place, it is quite a new doctrine to maintain that because men do not organise meetings, or go out of their way to petition parliament against any measure, they must therefore be held as assenting. In the second place, it is rather a startling thing to find that men are expected to petition in a religious rather than in a social character. If this view be correct, no individual Anabaptist has any right to express his political opinions unless he petitions along with his congregation. No member of the Episcopal Church ought to have a voice in a secular matter unless he goes along with his diocesan. We are almost tempted to ask the question, whether congregations in Scotland are to be regarded as mere political clubs, or as associations for praise and worship? The town-councils of most of the large towns of Scotland have petitioned against the bills—are there no dissenters at any of those boards? One hundred and thirty parishes have separately recorded their detestation of the bills, not one parish has made the smallest demonstration in their favour, yet, according to the logic of the Lord Advocate, those that are silent must be held as acquiescing! It is remarkable, however, that if these bills really tend to confer such inestimable boons upon the people of Scotland, that stubborn race have been singularly reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the benefit. Nay more, it is certainly a most striking fact, that notwithstanding the religious divisions, which are more numerous here than elsewhere, it has been impossible to procure one isolated testimony, by an ecclesiastical body, in direct support of these singularly unfortunate bills. Lord Campbell, in his evidence given before the Committee of the House of Commons—of which more anon—indicates an opinion that the clergy of the Established Church of Scotland have been actuated in their unanimous and decided Opposition to the Marriage Bill by the desire to preserve a monopoly of celebrating formal marriages. If so, how is it that none of the dissenting clergy, in whose favour this monopoly was to be broken up, came forward in support of the measure? But the truth is, as we shall presently show, that no such monopoly exists at all, save in the imagination of the noble lord. By the law of Scotland, there is no distinction in favour of any sect, and clergymen, of whatever denomination they may be, have the right, and are in the daily practice, of celebrating formal marriages.

"I admit," says the Lord Advocate, "that the clergymen of Scotland are generally against this measure; but surely the house will think that, by this time, the third year of the discussion of this bill, these reverend gentlemen ought to have come forward with some substantial grounds for their opposition." We must fairly confess our inability to fathom the meaning of this remark. Two hundred and twenty-five petitions against this bill have emanated from the Established Church—at almost every meeting of presbytery and synod, the matter has been fully and thoroughly discussed—the moral and political objections to its enactment have been over and over again brought forward—yet still, in the eyes of the learned lord, there is a want of "substantial grounds." It is not enough, therefore, to say that a measure is unnecessary, immoral, and impolitic—it is not enough to assign reasons why these opinions are entertained, and to repeat them year after year. Something more must be done, according to this remarkably liberal view, before it becomes the duty of the legislature to give any weight to the general remonstrance—something "substantial" is required, but no intelligible definition has been vouchsafed of that substantiality. Nor does the following sentence by any means tend to sharpen the edge of our apprehension. "If they (the clergy) meant to say that they came here to assert that they had the power or right to supersede the interference of the legislature, they would put forward a right in them much greater than the Church of Rome asserted, because they took their right to interfere in reference to the rules of marriage, on the ground that it was a sacrament, which carried with it a degree of plausibility; and they required no witness to their marriage, or proof of the marriage, beyond that of the parish priest who performed the ceremony." Now, if any kind of meaning whatever is to be extracted from this sentence, it must be taken as an inuendo that the Church of Scotland, in petitioning against the bill, is directly or occultly preferring some ecclesiastical claim to interfere in the celebration of regular public marriages. The Church of Scotland asserts no claim of the kind, nor has it ever been so much as hinted that such a right was inherent in that body. The church does not seek to interfere with the legislature. It neither has, nor claims ecclesiastical dominion or preference in the matter of marriage. As a Christian communion and a Christian church, it has entreated parliament not to pass a measure which, justly or not, it considers as hurtful to the moral character of the people, and in doing so, it has been actuated by no motive save a due regard to its high and holy functions. If such considerations as these are not sufficient to justify the right of petitioning, it is difficult to understand why that right should be exercised at all. Must a pounds-shillings-and-pence interest be established, before the Church of Scotland can be allowed to approach the legislature on such a question? In our mind, the absence of all pecuniary interest, and the utter abnegation of any kind of ecclesiastical monopoly, are the strongest reasons why the opinion of the Church of Scotland, in a matter such as this, should be listened to with reverence and respect.

Having thus disposed of the church, though in a manner, we should think, scarcely satisfactory to himself, and not at all to his auditory, the Lord Advocate summarily remarks of the petitions against the bill, that "as proof to be relied on of a general feeling throughout Scotland, they were worthless and insignificant." It may be useful for intending petitioners to know what sort of demonstration they must be prepared to make, if they wish their remonstrances against any government measure to pass the limits of worthlessness. It is always advantageous to learn what is the last definition of the true vox populi, in order that there be no mistake or misinterpretation of its extent. We turn to the admirable speech of Mr M'Neill, the learned Dean of Faculty, and we find the following analysis of the extent of the lay opposition:—

"An opportunity had been afforded to the counties of Scotland to take the measure into consideration at their annual meetings on the 30th April. They had done so, and, with very few exceptions, had petitioned against this measure; and of those that had not actually petitioned this year, some had petitioned last year; and some had contented themselves this year with reiterating, in resolutions passed at public meetings, their continued dissatisfaction with the measure. The county which he had the honour to represent (Argyleshire) had not sent up a petition; but they had, at a public meeting, passed resolutions, temperately, yet firmly expressed, in reference both to the Marriage and the Registration Bills. No county, he believed, had passed resolutions in favour of this bill. So much for the counties. Next as to the burghs. The burghs comprehended about one-third of the population of Scotland. There was an institution recognised by law called the Convention of Royal Burghs, and which consisted of delegates from all the burghs in Scotland, who assembled once a-year or oftener in Edinburgh, and deliberated on matters affecting their interests. At the convention of 1849, the matter of these bills was taken into consideration. They were disapproved of, and a petition against them was voted unanimously. Thus you had all, or nearly all, the counties petitioning, and you had the assembled delegates from all the burghs petitioning. Then there were separate petitions from the popularly elected town-councils of most of the large towns in Scotland. The town-councils of Edinburgh, of Dundee, of Perth, of Greenock, of Leith, of Inverness, of Stirling, of Kilmarnock, of St Andrews, of Haddington, and many others, had petitioned against this bill. There was also another body of persons, popularly elected to a great extent, and who had a very material interest in the probable effects of this measure, especially with a knowledge of the fearful extent of bastardy in some parts of England—he meant the parochial boards of populous parishes. Petitions against this measure had been presented from the parochial boards of many of the most populous parishes in Scotland—the parochial board of the city parishes of Edinburgh—of the great suburban parish of St Cuthberts—of the city of Glasgow—of the great suburban parish of the Barony—of the parishes of Dundee, Paisley, Greenock, Leith, Port-Glasgow, Campbelton, and several others."

Such is the demonstration which the Lord Advocate of Scotland, without any counter display of opinion to back him, ventures to characterise as worthless and insignificant! Counties, burghs, town-councils, parochial boards, presbyteries, and General Assembly, which also represents the opinion of the universities, all combine to denounce the hated measure; still their remonstrance is to be cast aside as worthless and insignificant, and as in no way representing the feeling of the people of Scotland! A more extraordinary statement, we venture to say, was never made within the walls of the House of Commons; but the premier very properly refused to homologate its extravagance, and withdrew the bill on account, as he expressly said, of the opinion that had been expressed in the house regarding the sentiments of the Scottish people. Indeed, as Lord Aberdeen afterwards remarked, had the bill not been withdrawn, "representative government would become a farce; for the whole kingdom of Scotland was universally against it."

Some of our readers may naturally wonder why so much perseverance should be shown in this reiterated attempt to force an obnoxious bill upon the acceptance of the nation. It is, to say the least of it, an unusual thing to find a professing physician so clamorously and importunately insisting upon his right to practise on the person of a patient, who vehemently denies the existence of any bodily ailment. It is true, that we are accustomed to hear crotchety people crying up the efficacy of their peculiar remedies, and we admit the right even of Paracelsus to dilate upon the value of his drugs. But the case becomes widely different when the empiric requires that, nolens volens, you shall swallow them. Such, however, for the last three sessions, has been the conduct of the promoters of this bill; and as it is now plain beyond all dispute that nobody wanted it, this sudden rage for legislation becomes proportionally wonderful. Hitherto we have rather complained of the apathy than of the over-zeal of our representatives. Sometimes we have grumbled at their want of spirit for not watching more closely over our immediate interests, and in not protesting more loudly against the injustice of that neglect to which Scottish charities, foundations, and institutions are consigned, whilst a very different mode of treatment is adopted by government upon the other side of the Irish Channel. But we have seldom had reason to deprecate an excess of legislative activity, and it therefore becomes matter of curiosity to discover the motives for the present fit.

We must premise that the Scottish Marriage and Registration Bills are indissolubly linked together. The object of the Registration Bill is to secure a perfect record of all births, marriages, and deaths; and no reasonable objection can be taken to this upon the score of principle. It is admitted on all hands that our registers are at present defective—that is, they are not sufficiently minute to satisfy the cravings of the scrupulous statist. To have a perfect record is unquestionably desirable: the main objection to the scheme lies in the expense with which it must be attended. It is not our present purpose to examine the details of this bill, which we have nevertheless perused with much attention. We shall therefore merely remark that it seems to us quite possible to realise the same results with a far less expensive machinery. The present bill would create not only a well-salaried staff of officials in Edinburgh, but registrars in every county and town, whose services would fall to be defrayed by local assessment; and we need hardly say that, under present circumstances, the imposition of any new burden, especially in the shape of direct taxation, would be felt as an especial grievance. There is no prospect of relief from the income and property tax, though Sir Robert Peel gave the country a direct assurance that the measure was merely proposed to supply a temporary deficiency. It is now quite clear that neither the right hon. baronet, nor his successors, will ever attempt to redeem that dishonoured pledge. The poor-rates are increasing in Scotland at a frightful ratio, and are already so high as, in the opinion of many, to constitute an intolerable burden. It is now evident that, in a very short while, the inexpediency of the new system will be submitted to a serious review, or at least that some such attempt will be made. Other burdens are by no means decreasing, whilst the general wealth and prosperity of the country has, within the last three years, received a violent check. It is, therefore, not in the least surprising, if men hesitate to accept the proffered boon of a perfect registry at the price of a new assessment. Isolated cases of inconvenience which have occurred, from the want of such a register, may no doubt be pointed out; but, upon the whole, there is no general grievance, since the means of effective registration are at present open to all who choose to avail themselves of it. The present bill proposes to do nothing more than to substitute imperative for voluntary registration: its provisions are not only costly, but in some respects they are highly penal, and therefore, for a double reason, it is regarded with general dislike. Men do not like to be taxed for the alteration of a privilege which is already sufficiently within their power; and they are jealous of exposing themselves to fines, for omitting to do that which is no duty at all, except it is made so by the force of statute. They do not see any weight or shadow of reason in the argument, that Scotland must necessarily have a registration act, because England has already submitted herself to such a measure. On the contrary, they are not fond of uniformity, because, under that pretext, many inroads have of late years been made upon laws and institutions which hitherto have worked well, and against which, intrinsically, it was impossible to bring any tangible ground of complaint. Nor is it without some reason that they view with jealousy that endless multiplication of offices which the Whigs seem determined to effect. No doubt it is convenient for a political leader to extend the sphere of his patronage; but the public have, at the present time, too many stringent motives for economy, to acquiesce in the creation of a new staff as the indispensable consequence of every ministerial bill. They do not want to be visited by a fresh flight of locusts, whose period of occupation is to be everlasting, whenever it is thought expedient to make some change in the form and not the essence of our institutions. And therefore it is that the Registration, apart altogether from its connexion with the Marriage Bill, has been regarded as a measure not strictly objectionable in principle, but exceedingly ill-timed, inconvenient, and unlikely to produce any results commensurate with the cost which it must entail.

We believe that the above is a fair statement of the public feeling with regard to the Registration Bill; but, notwithstanding all these objections, it might very possibly have been carried had it stood alone. The ministerial phalanx in the House of Commons would probably have regarded the advantages of uniformity as a thorough answer to the arguments which might be adduced on the other side; and English members might naturally have been slow to discover any valid objections to the extension of a system already in full operation within their own domestic bounds. But the promoters of the bill had, at the very outset, to encounter a difficulty of no ordinary weight and magnitude. That difficulty arose from the peculiar position of the law of Scotland with regard to marriage. There could be no mistake about births and death, for these are distinct contingencies; but how to register marriages, which required no legal formality at all, save consent, to render them binding, was indeed a puzzle, which even the wisest of the innovators could not pretend to solve. There stood the law as it had done for ages; not demanding any ceremony to render the deliberate consent of contracting parties binding; shielding the weaker sex against the machinations of fraud, and interposing an effectual barrier to the designs of the unscrupulous seducer. There it stood, so merciful in its provisions that it left open a door to reparation and repentance, and did not render it imperative that the birthright of the child should be irretrievably sacrificed on account of the error of the parents. At the same time, that law drew, or rather established, a wide distinction in point of character between regular and irregular marriages. It had wrought so upon the people that instances of the latter were of comparatively rare occurrence, except, perhaps, upon the Border, which was crossed by English parties, less scrupulous in their feelings of decorum. Irregular marriages were discountenanced by the church, not by the establishment only, but by every religious body; and, to constitute a regular marriage, publication of the banns was required. No complaint had been heard from Scotland against the law; on the contrary, it was considered, both by jurists and by the people, as equitable in its principle, and less liable than that of other nations to abuse in the mode of its operation.

The existence of this law effectually interfered with the establishment of such a system of registration as was contemplated by the reforming Whigs. So long as it stood intact, their efforts in behalf of uniformity, additional taxation, and increased patronage, were hopeless; and no alternative remained save the desperate one of deliberately smiting down the law. It was not difficult for men so purposed and inspired to find out defects in the marriage law, for never yet was law framed by human wisdom in which some defect could not be detected. It was, first of all, urged, that the state of the Scottish law gave undue encouragement to the contract of Gretna-green marriages by fugitive English couples. The answer to that was obvious—Pass a law prohibiting such marriages until, by residence, English parties have obtained a Scottish domicile. That would at once have obviated any such ground of complaint, and such a measure actually was introduced to parliament by Lord Brougham in 1835, but never was carried through. Next, the whole fabric of the law was assailed. The facilities given to the contraction of irregular marriages were denounced as barbarous and disgraceful to any civilised country. Old cases were raked up to show the uncertainty of the law itself, and the difficulty of ascertaining who were and who were not married persons. According to one noble and learned authority, the time of the House of Peers, while sitting in its judicial capacity, was grievously occupied in considering cases which arose out of the anomalous condition of the Scottish law with regard to marriage; and yet, upon referring to an official return, it appeared very plainly that, for the last seventeen or eighteen years, only six cases of declarator of marriage or legitimacy had been brought before that august tribunal, and that of these six, three had no connexion with the subject-matter of the proposed bill! Lord Brougham, who entertains strong opinions on the subject, felt himself compelled to admit, in evidence, that most of the hypothetical abuses which might take place under the existing system, did not, in practice, occur amongst natives and residenters in Scotland. Lord Brougham is to this extent a Malthusian, that he thinks minors ought to be, in some way or other, protected against the danger of an over-hasty marriage. His lordship's sympathies are strongly enlisted in behalf of the youthful aristocracy, more especially of the male sex; and he seems to regard Scotland as an infinitely more dangerous place of residence for a young man of rank and fortune than Paris or Vienna. In the latter places, the morals may be sapped, but personal liberty is preserved; in the former, the heir-expectant is not safe, for at any moment he is liable to be trapped like vermin. The red-haired daughters of the Gael, thinks Lord Brougham, are ever on the watch for the capture of some plump and unsuspecting squire. Penniless lads and younger sons may be insured at a reasonable rate against the occurrence of the matrimonial calamity, but wary indeed must be the eldest son who can escape the perfervidum ingenium Scotarum. This is, no doubt, an amusing picture, and the leading idea might be worked out to great advantage in a novel or a farce; but, unfortunately, it is not drawn from the usual occurrences of life. Isolated cases of hasty marriages may, no doubt, have taken place, but our memory does not supply us with a single instance of a clandestine marriage having been contracted under such circumstances as the above. In Scotland, a stranger may, for the base purposes of seduction, pledge his solemn faith to a woman, and so obtain possession of her person. If he does so, the law most justly interferes to prevent him resiling from his contract, and declares that he is as completely bound by the simple interchange of consenting vows, as though he had solicited and received the more formal benediction of the priest. Will any man gravely maintain that in such a case the tenor of the law is hurtful to morals, or prejudicial to the interests of society? Even if the woman should happen to be of inferior rank in life to the intending seducer, is she on that account to be consigned to shame, and the man permitted to violate his engagement, and escape the consequences of his dastardly fraud? In England, it is notorious to every one, and the daily press teems with instances, that seduction under promise of marriage is a crime of ordinary occurrence. We call it a crime, for though it may not be so branded by statute, seduction under promise of marriage is as foul an act as can well be perpetrated by man. In Scotland, seduction under such circumstances is next to impossible. The Scottish people are not without their vices, but seduction is not one of these; and we firmly believe that the existing law of marriage has operated here as an effectual check to that license which is far too common in England. Would it be wise, then, to remove that check, when no flagrant abuse, no common deviation even from social distinctions, can be urged against it? If seduction does not prevail in Scotland, still less do hasty and unequal marriages. Lord Brougham is constrained to admit that it is most unusual for Scottish heirs, or persons possessed of large estates, or the heirs to high honours, to contract irregular marriages when in a state of minority. The law, in the opinion of Lord Brougham, may be theoretically bad, but its very badness raises a protection against its own mischiefs—it ceases, in fact, to do any harm, because the consequences which it entails are clearly and generally understood. We confess that, according to our apprehension, a law which is theoretically bad, but practically innocuous, is decidedly preferable to one which may satisfy theorists, but which, when we come to apply it, is productive of actual evil. It requires no great stretch of legal ingenuity to point out possible imperfections in the best law that ever was devised by the wit of man. That is precisely what the advocates of the present measure have attempted to do with the established marriage law of Scotland; but when they are asked to specify the practical evils resulting from it, they are utterly driven to the wall, and forced to take refuge under the convenient cover of vague and random generalities.

It is said that, under the operation of the present law, persons in Scotland may be left in doubt whether they are married or not. This is next thing to an entire fallacy, for though there have been instances of women claiming the married status in consequence of a habit-and-repute connexion, without distinct acknowledgment of matrimony, such cases are remarkably rare, and never can occur save under most peculiar circumstances. The distinction between concubinage and matrimony is quite as well established in Scotland as elsewhere. Nothing short of absolute public recognition, so open and avowed that there can be no doubt whatever of the position of the parties, can supply the place of that formal expressed consent which is the proper foundation of matrimony. If the consent once has been given, if the parties have seriously accepted each other for spouses, or if a promise has been given, subsequente copulâ, there is an undoubted marriage, and the parties themselves cannot be ignorant of their mutual relationship. It is, however, quite true that proof may be wanting. It is possible to conceive cases in which the contract cannot be legally established, and in which the actual wife may be defrauded of her conjugal rights. But granting all this, why should the whole character of marriage be changed on account of possible cases of deficient evidence? For if this bill were to pass into law, consent must necessarily cease to be the principal element of marriage. No marriage could be contracted at all unless parties went either before the priest or the registrar; and the fact of the mutual contract would be ignored without the addition of the imposed formality. Upon this point the commentary of Mr M'Neill seems to us peculiarly lucid and quite irresistible in its conclusions.

"The law of Scotland being now as heretofore, that consent, given in the way he had described, makes marriage—that it is, in the language of Archbishop Cranmer, 'beyond all doubt ipsum matrimonium'—the present bill says that henceforth it shall not make marriage, whatever may have followed upon it, unless the consent is given in presence of a clergyman, or by signing the register. It does not say that all marriages must be celebrated in presence of a clergyman; but, professing to recognise the principle that consent, though not given in presence of a clergyman, may constitute marriage, it says that the consent shall be of non-avail whatever may have followed upon it, unless it was given in the particular form of signing the register, and can be there pointed out. No matter how deliberately the consent may have been interchanged, and how completely susceptible of proof. No matter although the parties may have lived all their lives as man and wife—may have so published themselves to the world every day, by acts a thousand times more public than any entry in a register can possibly be—by a course of life more clearly indicating deliberate and continued purpose than a single entry in a register can do. All that shall not avail them or their families; they are to be denied the rights and privileges of legitimacy unless they can point to their names in the journal kept by the registrar. To borrow the language of a high authority, relied upon in support of the bill, 'It may be according to the law of Scotland that it is a complete marriage, and so it may be by the law of God; but if the woman is put to prove that marriage after the birth of children, of that she is or may be without proof.' That which, by the law of Scotland and by the law of God, is a marriage, the people of Scotland wish to be allowed to prove by all the evidence of which it is susceptible. They do not wish that parties should be allowed to escape from such solemn obligations undertaken towards each other, to their offspring, and to society. They are unwilling that any man should be enabled, with the confidence of perfect impunity, to impose upon an unsuspecting community, by wearing a mask of pretended matrimony, behind which is concealed the reality of vice. I do not wonder that the people of Scotland have no liking to this measure. There may occasionally be cases in which the proof of marriage is attended with difficulty; and so there may be with regard to any matter of fact whatever. So there may be in regard to the fact of marriage under the proposed bill, even where the marriage has been celebrated in the most solemn manner in presence of a clergyman. Occasional difficulty of proof is not a satisfactory or adequate reason for so great a change in the law. Certainty is desirable in all transactions, and is especially desirable in regard to marriage; and the means of preserving evidence of such contracts is also desirable; but although these objects are desirable, they should not be prized so highly, or pursued so exclusively, as to endanger other advantages not less valuable."

We think it is impossible for any one to peruse the foregoing extract from the speech of the Dean of Faculty, without being forcibly impressed by the soundness and strength of his argument. He is not contending against registration; he simply demands that through no pedantic desire for uniformity or precision, shall the general principle of the law of Scotland regarding marriage be virtually repealed. We are indeed surprised to find a lawyer of great professional reputation attributing to the established clergy of the Church of Scotland a desire to arrogate to themselves the functions of the Church of Rome, whilst, in the same breath, he asks the legislature to constitute itself into an ecclesiastical court, and to enact new preliminaries, without the observance of which there shall henceforward be no marriage at all. If the old principle of the law is to be abandoned, if consent is no longer to be held as sufficient for the contraction of a marriage, but if some further ceremony or means of publication are thought to be essential, we have no hesitation in saying that we would infinitely prefer the proscription and annulment of all marriages which are not performed in facie ecclesiæ, with the previous proclamation of the banns, to a hybrid measure such as this, which neither declares marriage to be the proper subject of ecclesiastical function, nor permits it to remain a civil contract which may be established and proved by any mode of evidence within the reach of either of the parties. If marriage is not a sacrament, but a civil contract, why take it out of the operation of the common law? Why make it null without the observance of certain civil ceremonies, unless it is intended virtually to confer upon the legislature regulating powers which have been claimed by none of the reformed churches, and which, when arrogated by that of Rome, have been bitterly and universally opposed?

Another objection to our present law of marriage has been frequently urged, and great use has been made of it to prejudice the minds of English members in favour of the proposed alteration. We have already shown that there is in reality no doubt of what constitutes a Scottish marriage; that parties so contracting know very well what they are about, and are fully sensible of the true nature of their obligations. If any doubt should by possibility exist, it can be set at rest by a simple form of process—a form, however, which is never resorted to, unless there has been gross intention to deceive on the one part, or a most unusual degree of imprudence on the other. But it is said that the possible existence of a private marriage may entail the most cruel of all injuries upon innocent parties—that it is easy for a man who has already contracted a private marriage, to present himself in the character of an unfettered suitor, and to enter into a second matrimonial engagement, which may be, at any moment, shamefully terminated by the appearance of the first wife. No ordinary amount of rhetoric has been expended in depicting the terrible consequences of such a state of things; the misery of the deceived wife, and the wrongs of the defrauded children, have, in their turn, been employed as arguments against the existing marriage law of Scotland.

This is a most unfair mode of reasoning. Unless it can be shown, which we maintain it cannot, that the law of Scotland, with regard to matrimony, is so loose that a party may really be married without knowing it, the argument utterly fails. Without distinct matrimonial consent there is no marriage, and no one surely can be ignorant of his own intention and act upon an occasion of that kind. He may try to suppress proofs, but for all that he is married, and if, during the lifetime of the other party, he shall contract a second marriage, he has committed bigamy, and is guilty of a criminal offence. Lord Campbell, in his evidence, admits that the marriage law of Scotland has been perfectly well ascertained upon most points—that there can be no doubt what is, and what is not, a marriage; but that the real difficulty consists in getting at the facts. Armed with this testimony, we may fairly conclude that unintentional bigamy is impossible; but that bigamy, when it takes place, is the deliberate act of a party.

Bigamy is beyond all dispute a crime of a heinous nature. Its consequences are so obviously calamitous, that no power of oratory can make them appear greater than they are; and we should rejoice to see any legislative measure introduced which could render its perpetration impossible. But, unfortunately, the eradication of bigamy, like that of every other crime, is beyond the power of statute. It may perhaps be lessened by decreasing facilities, or by augmenting its punishment, but we cannot see how it is to be prevented altogether by any effort of human ingenuity. But if the marriage law of Scotland is to be assailed upon this ground, it is incumbent upon its opponents to show that it really tends to promote bigamy. If the wrongs so pathetically deplored have a real existence, let us be made aware of that fact, and we shall all of us be ready to lend our assistance towards the remedy. No paltry scruples shall stand in the way of such a reformation, and we shall willingly pay even for registration, if it can be made the means of averting an actual social calamity.

But here again we find, on examination, that we are dealing with a pure hypothesis. We are told of horrible private injuries that may occur under the operation of a law which has been in force for centuries: we ask for instances of those injuries; and, as in the former case, it turns out that they have no existence save in the imagination of the promoters of the new bills. If the present law of Scotland has a tendency to promote bigamy, surely by this time it would have been extremely fruitful in its results. On the contrary, we are told by Lord Campbell that the Scots are a very virtuous people; and certainly, in so far as bigamy is concerned, no one will venture to contradict that opinion. One case, it appears, has occurred, in which a man of high rank, having previously contracted a private marriage under peculiar circumstances, married a second time, and that union was found to be illegal. The case is a notorious one in the books and in the records of society, and it occurred forty years ago. "About forty years ago," said the Dean of Faculty, "a gentleman of high position in society, so far forgot for the time what was worthy of, and due to that position in point of honour, and truth, and observance of the law, as to marry a lady in England, while he had a wife living in Scotland—and so he might have done if he had had a wife living in France or Holland. In short, he committed bigamy. And this one case of bigamy, forty years ago, without even an allegation of any similar case since that time, is brought forward at the present day, as a reason for now altering the law of Scotland in regard to the constitution of marriage." The individual in question lived and died in exile, and the case is never quoted without expressions of deep reprobation. It is the only one of the kind which can be brought forward; and surely it cannot be taken as any ground for altering the established law of the country. But does registration prevent bigamy? Unfortunately it is shown by numerous instances in England that it does not. In that country, registration is already established, but, notwithstanding registration, bigamy is infinitely more prevalent there than in Scotland. It is, indeed, impossible by any means of legislation to prevent imposition, fraud, and crime, if men are determined to commit them. Registration at Manchester will not hinder a heartless villain from committing deliberate bigamy in London. The thing is done every day, and will be done in spite of all the efforts of law-makers. Why, then, make the law of Scotland conformable to that of England, since, under the operation of the latter, the very grievance complained of flourishes fourfold? We pause for a reply, and are likely to pause long before we receive any answer which can be accepted as at all satisfactory.

Under the Scottish law, it is admitted that there is far less seduction, and far less bigamy, than under the English law, which is here propounded as the model. And having come to this conclusion—which is not ours only, but that of the witnesses examined in favour of the bill, all evidence against it having been refused—what need have we of saying anything further? Surely there is enough on the merits of the question to explain and justify the unanimous opposition which has been given to the Marriage Bill by men of every shade of opinion throughout Scotland, without exposing them to the imputation either of obstinacy or caprice: indeed we are distinctly of opinion that the promoters of the bill have laid themselves palpably open to the very charges which they rashly bring against their opponents.

We cannot, however, take leave of the subject, without making a few remarks upon the evidence of a noble and learned lord, who was kind enough to take charge of this bill during its passage through the upper house. Lord Campbell is not a Scottish peer, nor, strictly speaking, a Scottish lawyer, though he is in the habit of attending pretty regularly at the hearing of Scottish appeals. But he is of Scottish extraction; he has sat in the House of Commons as member for Edinburgh, and he ought therefore to be tolerably well conversant with the state of the law. Now we presume it will be generally admitted, that any person who undertakes to show that an amendment of the law is necessary, ought, in the first place, to be perfectly cognisant of the state of the law as it exists. That amount of knowledge we hold to be indispensably necessary for a reformer, since he must needs establish the superiority of his novel scheme, by contrasting its advantages with the deficiencies of the prevalent system. But in reading over the evidence of Lord Campbell, as given before the Committee of the House of Commons, a very painful suspicion must arise in every mind, that the learned peer is anything but conversant with the Scottish marriage law: nay, that upon many important particulars he utterly misunderstands its nature. Take for example the following sentence:—

"With regard to this bill which has been introduced, I am very much surprised and mortified to find the grounds upon which it has been opposed; for it has been opposed on the ground that it introduces clandestine marriages into Scotland. I think, with deference to those who may have a contrary opinion, that its direct tendency, as well as its object, is to prevent clandestine marriages. I may likewise observe, that I am very sorry—being the son of a clergyman of the Church of Scotland—to find that it is opposed, and I believe very violently opposed, by the clergy of the Established Church of Scotland. I think that they proceed upon false grounds; and I am afraid, although I would say nothing at all disrespectful of a body for whom I feel nothing but respect and affection, that they are a little influenced by the notion, that a marriage by a clergyman who is not of the Established Church, is hereafter to be put upon the same footing with a marriage celebrated by a clergyman of the Established Church: but I should be glad if they would consider, that they are placed nearly in the same situation as the clergy of the Church of England, who, without the smallest scruple or repining, have submitted to it, because a marriage before a Baptist minister, or before a Unitarian minister, is just as valid now as if celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and I should trust that, upon consideration, they would be of opinion that their dignity is not at all compromised, and that their opposition to it may subside."

We can conceive the amazement with which a minister of the Established Church, could he have been present at the deliberations of the select committee, must have listened to the reasons so calmly assigned for his opposition, and that of his brethren, to the progress of the present bill! Never for a moment could it have crossed his mind, that a marriage celebrated by him was of more value in the eye of the law than that which had received the benediction of a dissenter; and yet here was a distinct assumption that he was in possession of some privilege, of which, up to that hour, he had been entirely ignorant. "At present," continued Lord Campbell, "a marriage by a dissenting clergyman, I rather think, is not strictly regular!" Here a hint was interposed from the chair to the following effect:—"He cannot marry without banns; he is subject to punishment if he marries without banns?" But the hint, though dexterously given, fell dead on the ear of the ex-chancellor of Ireland. He proceeded deliberately to lay down the law,—"There are statutes forbidding marriages unless by clergymen of the Established Church."

This is, to say the least of it, a singular instance of delusion. No such statutes are in force; they have long been repealed; and every clergyman is free to perform the ceremony of marriage, whatever be his denomination, provided he receives a certificate of the regular proclamation of the banns. So that Lord Campbell, if he again girds himself to the task, must be prepared to account on some more intelligible grounds for the opposition which his father's brethren have uniformly given to this bill. But, to do him justice, Lord Campbell does not stand alone in error with regard to the present requirements for the celebration of a regular marriage. Unless there is a grievous error in the reported debate before us, the Lord Advocate of Scotland is not quite so conversant with statute law as might be expected from a gentleman of his undoubted eminence. Whilst advocating a system which is to entail the inevitable payment of a fee to the registrar, he at the same time considers the fee which is presently exigible for proclaiming the banns a grievance. "He was astonished to hear the honourable baronet opposite (Sir George Clerk) state that it was the first time he had heard it considered a grievance, that persons could not marry without proclamation of banns in the parish church, by the payment of a large fee to the precentor or other officer of the church. That had always been considered a very great grievance by the dissenting body throughout Scotland, so far as he understood. The members of the Episcopal communion were, however, saved from that grievance, because they were in possession of an act of parliament, which provided that the proclamation of banns made in their own chapel was sufficient to authorise a clergyman to solemnise the marriage." We should like very much indeed to know what act of parliament gives any such dispensation from parochial proclamation to the Episcopalians. Certain we are that the statute 10 Anne, cap. 7, confers no such privilege; for though it allows proclamation of banns to be made in an Episcopal chapel, it at the same time enjoins, under a penalty, that proclamation shall also be made "in the churches to which they belong as parishioners by virtue of their residence;" and accordingly, in practice, no Episcopalian marriage is ever celebrated without previous proclamation of the banns in the parish church. We do not attribute much importance to this error, though it is calculated to mislead those who are not conversant with the law and practice of Scotland. We were rather impressed, on reading the debate, with the circumstance, that the old system of proclaiming by banns in the parish church was denounced, and we therefore directed our attention the more closely to the provisions of the bill, in order to discover the exact nature of the new method by which it was to be superseded. The bill is singularly ill-drawn and worded; but we comprehend it sufficiently to see that, had it passed into law, regular marriages could have been contracted under its sanction without any difficulty, and with no publicity at all.

The bill declares that henceforward marriage shall be contracted in Scotland in one of the following modes, and not otherwise:—1st, By solemnisation in presence of a clergyman; or, 2d, by registration, the parties proposing so to marry appearing "in presence of the registrar, and there and then signing, before witnesses, the entry of their marriage in the register."

It is evident, however, that without some precaution for publicity, the registrar's office would be as much a temple of Hymen as the blacksmith's forge at Gretna-green, and accordingly, previous to registration—that is, legal marriage—residence for fourteen days was required; and, besides that, a written notice to the registrar, with the names and designations of the parties, seven days previous to the fated entry. A copy of such notice was to be affixed upon the door of the parish church for one Sunday, and this was to be the whole of the publication. Notwithstanding this, if the registrar chose to take the risk of a penalty, and allow the parties to sign the register without their having proved their residence or given notice of their intention, the marriage was, nevertheless, to be valid and effectual.

Worse regulations, we are bound to say, never were invented. Why select the church door? Why post up the names amidst lists of candidates for registration, notices of roups, and advertisements of the sale of cattle? Is not the present mode of announcing the names within the church more decent than the other, and likely to attract greater notice? But the whole thing is a juggle. The bill gives ample facility for evasion, should that be contemplated; for it is easy to divine that, with the whole proof in his own hand, and no check whatever placed upon him, no registrar would be hard-hearted enough to refuse dispensing with the preliminaries in any case where the amorous couple were ready and willing to remunerate him for the risk of his complaisance.

So much for marriage by registration, which, instead of throwing any obstacle in the way of ill-advised or hasty unions, would, in effect, have a direct tendency to increase them. But the case is absolutely worse when we approach the other form of marriage, which was to supersede that solemnity which is at present in every case preceded by the formal proclamation of banns. The provisions of the bill were as follows:—

No clergymen could solemnise a marriage, unless,

1st. Both or one parties should have been resident for fourteen days within the parish in which the marriage was to take place; or,

2d. In some other parish in Scotland: the certificate in both cases to be granted by the Registrar; or,

3d. Unless both or one of the parties had been for a fortnight a member or members of the congregation resorting to the church or chapel in which the clergyman solemnising the marriage usually officiates; or,

4th. Unless they had similarly attended some other place of worship; the same to be certified by the minister of such congregation; or,

5th. Unless they could produce the registrar's certificate of a week's notice; or

6th. Unless they had been regularly proclaimed by banns.

Such is the species of hotch-potch, which it was seriously proposed to substitute, instead of the present clear, simple, cheap, and decent mode of celebrating regular marriages; and it is not at all surprising that hardly one native of Scotland could be found to raise his voice in favour of such an enormity. So far from publicity being obtained or increased, it would have afforded the most ample facilities for the celebration of marriage without the slightest warning given to the friends of either party. In reality, this pretended mode of marriage in facie ecclesiæ, would have been far more objectionable than the simple method of registration; for, in the latter case, the registrar, if he did his duty, was bound to give some kind of notice; in the former, none whatever was required by the clergyman. What is a member of a congregation? Abounding as Scotland is in sects, we apprehend that any one who pays for a sitting in any place of worship is entitled to that denomination. For ten shillings, or five shillings, or half-a-crown, a seat may be readily purchased in some place of worship; and if any one held that seat for a fortnight, he was to be entitled, according to this bill, to ask the officiating minister to marry him, without any further process whatever. If it should, however, be held, that no one is a member of a congregation unless he is in full communion, all difficulty could have been got over, by resorting to the fourth method. The member of the Established Church had simply to ask from his minister a certificate of his membership, and, armed with that, he might be legally married anywhere, and by any kind of clergyman, without the slightest notice to the public! We confess that, when we arrived at this portion of the provisions of the bill, we could scarcely credit the testimony of our eyesight. We have heard it proclaimed, over and over again, by those who supported the measure, that its principal aim was to put an end to hasty and ill-advised marriages; and on perusing the evidence, we found Lord Brougham most clamorous against the facilities given by the present law of Scotland for tying the nuptial knot, without due warning afforded to parents, more especially when young noblemen were concerned. We look to the remedy, and we find that, without the assistance of the registrar, marriages might, under the provisions of this bill, have been contracted before a clergyman, at a minute's notice, without any banns at all, and no formality, beyond payment of seat-rent for a single fortnight in any chapel, or a certificate to the same effect! A proposal more preposterous than this—more irreconcilable with decency—more injurious to the interests of society and of religion, it is really impossible to conceive; and if the language which has been used regarding it throughout Scotland has been generally temperate, we apprehend that the temperance has been entirely owing to a somewhat inaccurate estimate of the full extent of its provisions. It is, in our judgment, emphatically a bad bill; and we trust that after this, its third defeat, it will never again be permitted to appear in either house of parliament. Our representatives have done no more than their duty in giving it their most strenuous opposition; and, though a few individuals may mourn over the frustrated hopes, occasioned by the ruthless blight of a crop of expected offices, they can look for no sympathy from the people. We can assure Lord John Russell, that he never acted more wisely than in refusing to force through the final stages such unpalatable bills as these; and we hope that, in future, he will give the Scottish people credit for understanding their own affairs, and not suffer their deliberate and expressed opinion to be treated with undeserved contempt, simply because it may be possible, by "making a house," to swamp the suffrages of their representatives.

THE CAXTONS.—PART XVI.

CHAPTER XCV.

The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yourselves, my good audience; chat each with his neighbour. Dear madam in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look about you. Treat Tom and pretty Sal to some of those fine oranges, O thou happy-looking mother in the two-shilling gallery! Yes, brave 'prentice boys, in the tier above, the cat-call by all means! And you, "most potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs," in the front row of the pit—practised critics and steady old play-goers—who shake your heads at new actors and play-wrights, and, true to the creed of your youth, (for the which all honour to you!) firmly believe that we are shorter by the head than those giants our grandfathers—laugh or scold as you will, while the drop-scene still shuts out the stage. It is just that you should all amuse yourselves in your own way, O spectators! for the interval is long. All the actors have to change their dresses; all the scene-shifters are at work, sliding the "sides" of a new world into their grooves; and, in high disdain of all unity of time as of place, you will see in the playbills that there is a great demand on your belief. You are called upon to suppose that we are older by five years than when you last saw us "fret our hour upon the stage." Five years! the author tells us especially to humour the belief by letting the drop-scene linger longer than usual between the lamps and the stage.

Play up, O ye fiddles and kettle-drums! the time is elapsed. Stop that cat-call, young gentleman!—heads down in the pit there! Now the flourish is over—the scene draws up:—look before.

A bright, clear, transparent atmosphere—bright as that of the East, but vigorous and bracing as the air of the North; a broad and fair river, rolling through wide grassy plains; yonder, far in the distance, stretch away vast forests of evergreen, and gentle slopes break the line of the cloudless horizon; see the pastures, Arcadian with sheep in hundreds and thousands—Thyrsis and Menalcas would have had hard labour to count them, and small time, I fear, for singing songs about Daphne. But, alas! Daphnes are rare; no nymphs with garlands and crooks trip over those pastures.

Turn your eyes to the right, nearer the river; just parted by a low fence from the thirty acres or so that are farmed for amusement or convenience, not for profit—that comes from the sheep,—you catch a glimpse of a garden. Look not so scornfully at the primitive horticulture; such gardens are rare in the Bush. I doubt if the stately King of the Peak ever more rejoiced in the famous conservatory, through which you may drive in your carriage, than do the sons of the Bush in the herbs and blossoms which taste and breathe of the old fatherland. Go on, and behold the palace of the patriarchs—it is of wood, I grant you, but the house we build with our own hands is always a palace. Did you ever build one when you were a boy? And the lords of that palace are lords of the land, almost as far as you can see, and of those numberless flocks; and, better still, of a health which an antediluvian might have envied, and of nerves so seasoned with horse-breaking, cattle-driving, fighting with wild blacks—chases from them and after them, for life and for death—that if any passion vex the breast of those kings of the Bushland, fear at least is erased from the list.

See, here and there through the landscape, rude huts like the masters'—wild spirits and fierce dwell within. But they are tamed into order by plenty and hope; by the hand open but firm, by the eye keen but just.

Now, out from those woods, over those green rolling plains, harum-scarum, helter-skelter, long hair flying wild, and all bearded as a Turk or a pard, comes a rider you recognise. The rider dismounts, and another old acquaintance turns from a shepherd, with whom he has been conversing on matters that never plagued Thyrsis and Menalcas, whose sheep seem to have been innocent of foot-rot and scab, and accosts the horseman.

Pisistratus.—My dear Guy, where on earth have you been?

Guy (producing a book from his pocket with great triumph.)—There! Dr Johnson's Lives of the Poets. I could not get the squatter to let me have Kenilworth, though I offered him three sheep for it. Dull old fellow, that Dr Johnson, I suspect; so much the better, the book will last all the longer. And here's a Sydney paper too, only two months old! (Guy takes a short pipe or dodeen from his hat, in the band of which it had been stuck, fills and lights it.)

Pisistratus.—You must have ridden thirty miles at the least. To think of your turning book-hunter, Guy!

Guy Bolding, (philosophically.)—Ay, one don't know the worth of a thing till one has lost it. No sneers at me, old fellow; you, too, declared that you were bothered out of your life by those books, till you found how long the evenings were without them. Then, the first new book we got—an old volume of the Spectator!—such fun!

Pisistratus.—Very true. The brown cow has calved in your absence. Do you know, Guy, I think we shall have no scab in the fold this year? If so, there will be a rare sum to lay by! Things look up with us now, Guy.

Guy Bolding.—Yes; very different from the first two years. You drew a long face then. How wise you were, to insist on our learning experience at another man's station before we hazarded our own capital! But, by Jove! those sheep, at first, were enough to plague a man out of his wits! What with the wild dogs, just as the sheep had been washed and ready to shear; then that cursed scabby sheep of Joe Timmes's, that we caught rubbing his sides so complacently against our unsuspecting poor ewes. I wonder we did not run away. But "Patientia fit,"—what is that line in Horace? Never mind now. "It is a long lane that has no turning" does just as well as anything in Horace, and Virgil to boot. I say, has not Vivian been here?

Pisistratus.—No; but he will be sure to come to-day.

Guy Bolding.—He has much the best berth of it. Horse-breeding and cattle-feeding; galloping after those wild devils; lost in a forest of horns; beasts lowing, scampering, goring, tearing off like mad buffaloes; horses galloping up hill, down hill, over rocks, stones, and timber; whips cracking, men shouting—your neck all but broken; a great bull making at you full rush. Such fun! Sheep are dull things to look at after a bull-hunt and a cattle-feast.

Pisistratus.—Every man to his taste in the Bush. One may make one's money more easily and safely, with more adventure and sport, in the bucolic department. But one makes larger profit and quicker fortune, with good luck and good care, in the pastoral—and our object, I take it, is to get back to England as soon as we can.

Guy Bolding.—Humph! I should be content to live and die in the Bush—nothing like it, if women were not so scarce. To think of the redundant spinster population at home, and not a spinster here to be seen within thirty miles, save Bet Goggins, indeed—and she has only one eye! But to return to Vivian—why should it be our object, more than his, to get back to England as soon as we can?

Pisistratus.—Not more, certainly. But you saw that an excitement more stirring than that we find in the sheep had become necessary to him. You know he was growing dull and dejected; the cattle station was to be sold a bargain. And then the Durham bulls, and the Yorkshire horses, which Mr Trevanion sent you and me out as presents, were so tempting, I thought we might fairly add one speculation to another; and since one of us must superintend the bucolics, and two of us were required for the pastorals, I think Vivian was the best of us three to intrust with the first; and, certainly, it has succeeded as yet.

Guy.—Why, yes, Vivian is quite in his element—always in action, and always in command. Let him be first in everything, and there is not a finer fellow, nor a better tempered—present company excepted. Hark! the dogs, the crack of the whip; there he is. And now, I suppose, we may go to dinner.

Enter Vivian.

His frame has grown more athletic; his eye, more steadfast and less restless, looks you full in the face. His smile is more open; but there is a melancholy in his expression, almost approaching to gloom. His dress is the same as that of Pisistratus and Guy—white vest and trowsers; loose neckcloth, rather gay in colour; broad cabbage-leaf hat; his mustache and beard are trimmed with more care than ours. He has a large whip in his hand, and a gun slung across his shoulders. Greetings are exchanged; mutual inquiries as to cattle and sheep, and the last horses despatched to the Indian market. Guy shows the Lives of the Poets; Vivian asks if it is possible to get the Life of Clive, or Napoleon, or a copy of Plutarch. Guy shakes his head—says, if a Robinson Crusoe will do as well, he has seen one in a very tattered state, but in too great request to be had a bargain.

The party turn into the hut. Miserable animals are bachelors in all countries; but most miserable in Bushland. A man does not know what a helpmate of the soft sex is in the Old World, where women seem a matter of course. But in the Bush, a wife is literally bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh—your better half, your ministering angel, your Eve of the Eden—in short, all that poets have sung, or young orators say at public dinners, when called upon to give the toast of "The Ladies." Alas! we are three bachelors, but we are better off than bachelors often are in the Bush. For the wife of the shepherd I took from Cumberland does me and Bolding the honour to live in our hut, and make things tidy and comfortable. She has had a couple of children since we have been in the Bush; a wing has been added to the hut for that increase of family. The children, I daresay, one might have thought a sad nuisance in England; but I declare that, surrounded as one is by great bearded men, from sunrise to sunset, there is something humanising, musical, and Christian-like, in the very squall of the baby. There it goes—bless it! As for my other companions from Cumberland, Miles Square, the most aspiring of all, has long left me, and is superintendent to a great sheep-owner some two hundred miles off. The Will-o'-the-Wisp is consigned to the cattle station, where he is Vivian's head man, finding time now and then to indulge his old poaching propensities at the expense of parrots, black cockatoos, pigeons, and kangaroos. The shepherd remains with us, and does not seem, honest fellow, to care to better himself; he has a feeling of clanship, which keeps down the ambition common in Australia. And his wife—such a treasure! I assure you, the sight of her smooth, smiling woman's face, when we return home at nightfall, and the very flow of her gown, as she turns the "dampers"[1] in the ashes, and fills the teapot, have in them something holy and angelical. How lucky our Cumberland swain is not jealous! Not that there is any cause, enviable dog though he be; but where Desdemonas are so scarce, if you could but guess how green-eyed their Othellos generally are! Excellent husbands, it is true—none better; but you had better think twice before you attempt to play the Cassio in Bushland! There, however, she is, dear creature!—rattling among knives and forks, smoothing the tablecloth, setting on the salt-beef, and that rare luxury of pickles, (the last pot in our store), and the produce of our garden and poultry-yard, which few Bushmen can boast of—and the dampers, and a pot of tea to each banqueter; no wine, beer, nor spirits—those are only for shearing-time. We have just said grace, (a fashion retained from the holy mother country), when, bless my soul! what a clatter without, what a tramping of feet, what a barking of dogs! Some guests have arrived. They are always welcome in Bushland! Perhaps a cattle-buyer in search of Vivian; perhaps that cursed squatter, whose sheep are always migrating to ours. Never mind, a hearty welcome to all—friend or foe. The door opens; one, two, three, strangers. More plates and knives; draw your stools; just in time. First eat, then—what news?

Just as the strangers sit down, a voice is heard at the door—

"You will take particular care of this horse, young man: walk him about a little; wash his back with salt and water. Just unbuckle the saddle-bags; give them to me. Oh! safe enough, I daresay—but papers of consequence. The prosperity of the colony depends on these papers. What would become of you all if any accident happened to them, I shudder to think."

And here, attired in a twill shooting-jacket, budding with gilt buttons, impressed with a well-remembered device; a cabbage-leaf hat shading a face rarely seen in the Bush—a face smooth as razor could make it: neat, trim, respectable-looking as ever—his arm full of saddle-bags, and his nostrils gently distended, inhaling the steam of the banquet, walks in—Uncle Jack.

Pisistratus, (leaping up.)—Is it possible! You, in Australia—you in the Bush!

Uncle Jack, not recognising Pisistratus in the tall, bearded man who is making a plunge at him, recedes in alarm, exclaiming—"Who are you?—never saw you before, sir! I suppose you'll say next that I owe you something!"

Pisistratus.—Uncle Jack!

Uncle Jack, (dropping his saddle-bags.)—Nephew!—Heaven be praised. Come to my arms!

They embrace; mutual introductions to the company—Mr Vivian, Mr Bolding, on the one side—Major MacBlarney, Mr Bullion, Mr Emanuel Speck on the other. Major MacBlarney is a fine portly man, with a slight Dublin brogue, who squeezes your hand as he would a sponge. Mr Bullion—reserved and haughty—wears green spectacles, and gives you a forefinger. Mr Emanuel Speck—unusually smart for the Bush, with a blue satin stock, and one of those blouses common in Germany, with elaborate hems, and pockets enough for Briareus to have put all his hands into at once—is thin, civil, and stoops—bows, smiles, and sits down to dinner again, with the air of a man accustomed to attend to the main chance.

Uncle Jack, (his mouth full of beef.)—Famous beef!—breed it yourself, eh? Slow work that cattle-feeding! (Empties the rest of the pickle-jar into his plate.) Must learn to go ahead in the new world—railway times these! We can put him up to a thing or two—eh, Bullion? (Whispering me,)—Great capitalist that Bullion! LOOK AT HIM!

Mr Bullion, (gravely.)—A thing or two! If he has capital—you have said it, Mr Tibbets. (Looks round for the pickles—the green spectacles remain fixed upon Uncle Jack's plate.)

Uncle Jack.—All that this colony wants is a few men like us, with capital and spirit. Instead of paying paupers to emigrate, they should pay rich men to come—eh, Speck?

While Uncle Jack turns to Mr Speck, Mr Bullion fixes his fork in a pickled onion in Jack's plate, and transfers it to his own—observing, not as incidentally to the onion, but to truth in general—"A man, gentlemen, in this country, has only to keep his eyes on the look-out, and seize on the first advantage!—resources are incalculable!"

Uncle Jack, returning to the plate and missing the onion, forestalls Mr Speck in seizing the last potato—observing also, and in the same philosophical and generalising spirit as Mr Bullion—"The great thing in this country is to be always beforehand: discovery and invention, promptitude and decision!—that's your go. 'Pon my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the natives here!—'that's your go!' shocking! What would your poor father say? How is he—good Austin? Well?—that's right: and my dear sister? Ah, that damnable Peck!—still harping on the Anti-Capitalist, eh? But I'll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, charge your glasses—a bumper-toast"——

Mr Speck, (in an affected tone.)—I respond to the sentiment in a flowing cap. Glasses are not forthcoming.

Uncle Jack.—A bumper-toast to the health of the future millionnaire, whom I present to you in my nephew and sole heir—Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. Yes, gentlemen, I here publicly announce to you that this gentleman will be the inheritor of all my wealth—freehold, leasehold, agricultural, and mineral; and when I am in the cold grave—(takes out his pocket-handkerchief)—and nothing remains of poor John Tibbets, look upon that gentleman, and say, "John Tibbets lives again!"

Mr Speck, (chauntingly.)—

"Let the bumper toast go round."

Guy Bolding.—Hip, hip, hurrah!—three times three! What fun!

Order is restored; dinner-things are cleared; each gentleman lights his pipe.

Vivian.—What news from England?

Mr Bullion.—As to the funds, sir?

Mr Speck.—I suppose you mean, rather, as to the railways: great fortunes will be made there, sir; but still I think that our speculations here will$mdash;

Vivian.—I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir; but I thought, in the last papers, that there seemed something hostile in the temper of the French. No chance of a war?

Major MacBlarney.—Is it the wars you'd be after, young gintleman? If me interest at the Horse Guards can avail you, bedad! you'd make a proud man of Major MacBlarney.

Mr Bullion, (authoritatively.)—No, sir, we won't have a war: the capitalists of Europe and Australia won't have it. The Rothschilds, and a few others that shall be nameless, have only got to do this, sir—(Mr Bullion buttons up his pockets)—and we'll do it too; and then what becomes of your war, sir? (Mr Bullion snaps his pipe in the vehemence with which he brings his hand on the table, turns round the green spectacles, and takes up Mr Speck's pipe, which that gentlemen had laid aside in an unguarded moment.)

Vivian.—But the campaign in India?

Major MacBlarney.—Oh!—and if its the Ingees you'd$mdash;

Bullion, (refilling Speck's pipe from Guy Bolding's exclusive tobacco-pouch, and interrupting the Major.)—India—that's another matter: I don't object to that! War there—rather good for the money market than otherwise!

Vivian.—What news there, then?

Bullion.—Don't know—haven't got India stock.

Mr Speck.—Nor I either. The day for India is over: this is our India now. (Misses his tobacco-pipe; sees it in Bullion's mouth, and stares aghast!—NB.—The pipe is not a clay dodeen, but a small meerschaum—irreplaceable in Bushland.)

Pisistratus.—Well, uncle, but I am at a loss to understand what new scheme you have in hand. Something benevolent, I am sure—something for your fellow-creatures—for philanthropy and mankind?

Mr Bullion, (starting.)—Why, young man, are you as green as all that?

Pisistratus.—I, sir—no—Heaven forbid! But my—(Uncle Jack holds up his forefinger imploringly, and spills his tea over the pantaloons of his nephew!)

Pisistratus, wroth at the effect of the tea, and therefore obdurate to the sign of the forefinger, continues rapidly, "But my uncle is!—some grand national-imperial-colonial-anti-monopoly"—

Uncle Jack.—Pooh! Pooh! What a droll boy it is!

Mr Bullion, (solemnly.)—With these notions, which not even in jest should be fathered on my respectable and intelligent friend here—(Uncle Jack bows)—I am afraid you will never get on in the world, Mr Caxton. I don't think our speculations will suit you! It is growing late, gentlemen: we must push on.

Uncle Jack, (jumping up.)—And I have so much to say to the dear boy. Excuse us: you know the feelings of an uncle! (Takes my arm, and leads me out of the hut.)

Uncle Jack, (as soon as we are in the air.)—You'll ruin us—you, me, and your father and mother. Yes! What do you think I work and slave myself for but for you and yours?—Ruin us all, I say, if you talk in that way before Bullion! His heart is as hard as the Bank of England's—and quite right he is, too. Fellow-creatures!—stuff! I have renounced that delusion—the generous follies of my youth! I begin at last to live for myself—that is, for self and relatives! I shall succeed this time, you'll see!

Pisistratus.—Indeed, uncle, I hope so sincerely; and to do you justice, there is always something very clever in your ideas—only they don't—

Uncle Jack, (interrupting me with a groan.)—The fortunes that other men have gained by my ideas!— shocking to think of! What!—and shall I be reproached if I live no longer for such a set of thieving, greedy, ungrateful knaves? No—no! Number one shall be my maxim; and I'll make you a Crœsus, my boy—I will.

Pisistratus, after grateful acknowledgments for all prospective benefits, inquires how long Jack has been in Australia; what brought him into the colony; and what are his present views. Learns, to his astonishment, that Uncle Jack has been four years in the colony; that he sailed the year after Pisistratus—induced, he says, by that illustrious example, and by some mysterious agency or commission, which he will not explain, emanating either from the Colonial Office, or an Emigration Company. Uncle Jack has been thriving wonderfully since he abandoned his fellow-creatures. His first speculation, on arriving at the colony, was in buying some houses in Sydney, which (by those fluctuations in prices common to the extremes of the colonial mind—which is one while skipping up the rainbow with Hope, and at another plunging into Acherontian abysses with Despair) he bought excessively cheap, and sold excessively dear. But his grand experiment has been in connexion with the infant settlement of Adelaide, of which he considers himself one of the first founders; and as, in the rush of emigration which poured to that favoured establishment in the earlier years of its existence,—rolling on its tide all manner of credulous and inexperienced adventurers,—vast sums were lost, so, of those sums, certain fragments and pickings were easily griped and gathered up by a man of Uncle Jack's readiness and dexterity. Uncle Jack had contrived to procure excellent letters of introduction to the colonial grandees: he got into close connexion with some of the principal parties seeking to establish a monopoly of land, (which has since been in great measure effected by raising the price, and excluding the small fry of petty capitalists;) and effectually imposed on them, as a man with a vast knowledge of public business—in the confidence of great men at home—considerable influence with the English press, &c., &c. And no discredit to their discernment, for Jack, when he pleased, had a way with him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he contrived to associate himself and his earnings with men really of large capital, and long practical experience in the best mode by which that capital might be employed. He was thus admitted into a partnership (so far as his means, went) with Mr Bullion, who was one of the largest sheep-owners and landholders in the colony, though, having many other nests to feather, that gentleman resided in state at Sydney, and left his runs and stations to the care of overseers and superintendents. But land-jobbing was Jack's special delight; and an ingenious German having lately declared that the neighbourhood of Adelaide betrayed the existence of those mineral treasures which have since been brought to day, Mr Tibbets had persuaded Bullion and the other gentlemen now accompanying him, to undertake the land journey from Sidney to Adelaide, privily and quietly, to ascertain the truth of the German's report, which was at present very little believed. If the ground failed of mines, Uncle Jack's account convinced his associates that mines quite as profitable might be found in the pockets of the raw adventurers, who were ready to buy one year at the dearest market, and driven to sell the next at the cheapest.

"But," concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a poke in the ribs, "I've had to do with mines before now, and know what they are. I'll let nobody but you into my pet scheme: you shall go shares if you like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid,—if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed; but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The thing is to get that money. Do you take?"

Pisistratus.—Not at all!

Uncle Jack, (majestically.)—A Great Grog and Store Depôt! The miners want grog and stores, come to your depôt; you take their money; Q.E.D! Shares—eh, you dog? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves.

Pisistratus, (vehemently.)—Not for all the mines of Potosi.

Uncle Jack, (good humouredly.)—Well, it shan't be the worse for you. I shan't alter my will, in spite of your want of confidence. Your young friend,—that Mr Vivian, I think you call him—intelligent-looking fellow, sharper than the other, I guess,—would he like a share?

Pisistratus.—In the grog depôt? You had better ask him!

Uncle Jack.—What! you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush! Too good. Ha, ha!—they're calling to me—we must be off.

Pisistratus.—I will ride with you a few miles. What say you, Vivian? and you, Guy?—

As the whole party now joined us.

Guy prefers basking in the sun, and reading the Lives of the Poets. Vivian assents; we accompany the party till sunset. Major MacBlarney prodigalises his offers of service in every conceivable department of life, and winds up with an assurance that, if we want anything in those departments connected with engineering—such as mining, mapping, surveying, &c.—he will serve us, bedad, for nothing, or next to it. We suspect Major MacBlarney to be a civil engineer, suffering under the innocent hallucination that he has been in the army.

Mr Specks lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that Mr Bullion is monstrous rich, and has made his fortune from small beginnings, by never letting a good thing go. I think of Uncle Jack's pickled onion, and Mr Speck's meerschaum, and perceive, with respectful admiration, that Mr Bullion acts uniformly on one grand system. Ten minutes afterwards, Mr Bullion observes, in a tone equally confidential, that Mr Speck, though so smiling and civil, is as sharp as a needle; and that if I want any shares in the new speculation, or indeed in any other, I had better come at once to Bullion, who would not deceive me for my weight in gold. "Not," added Bullion, "that I have anything to say against Speck. He is well enough to do in the world—a warm man, sir; and when a man is really warm, I am the last person to think of his little faults, and turn on him the cold shoulder."

"Adieu!" said Uncle Jack, once more pulling out his pocket-handkerchief; "my love to all at home." And, sinking his voice into a whisper, "If ever you think better of the grog and store depôt, nephew, you'll find an uncle's heart in this bosom!"

CHAPTER XCVI.

It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia! How impossible to describe its beauty! Heaven seems, in that new world, so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and particular, as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the moon like a large silvery sun;—the least object on which it shines so distinct and so still.[2] Now and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens its charms. Hark! the low cry of a night-bird, from yonder glen amidst the small gray gleaming rocks. Hark! as night deepens, the bark of the distant watch-dog, or the low strange howl of his more savage species, from which he defends the fold. Hark! the echo catches the sound, and flings it sportively from hill to hill—farther, and farther, and farther down, till all again is hushed, and the flowers hang noiseless over your head, as you ride through a grove of the giant gum-trees. Now the air is literally charged with the odours, and the sense of fragrance grows almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace, and escape again into the open plains, and the full moonlight, and through the slender tea-trees catch the gleam of the river, and, in the exquisite fineness of the atmosphere, hear the soothing sound of its murmur.

Pisistratus.—And this land has become the heritage of our people! Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the scheme of the All-beneficent Father disentangling itself clear through the troubled history of mankind. How mysteriously, while Europe rears its populations, and fulfils its civilising mission, these realms have been concealed from its eyes—divulged to us just as civilisation needs the solution to its problems; a vent for feverish energies, baffled in the crowd; offering bread to the famished, hope to the desperate; in very truth enabling the "New World to redress the balance of the Old." Here, what a Latium for the wandering spirits,

"On various seas by various tempests toss'd."

Here, the actual Æneid passes before our eyes. From the huts of the exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, who cannot see in the future,

"A race from whence new Alban sires shall come,
And the long glories of a future Rome"?

Vivian, (mournfully.)—Is it from the outcasts of the workhouse, the prison, and the transport-ship, that a second Rome is to arise?

Pisistratus.—There is something in this new soil—in the labour it calls forth, in the hope it inspires, in the sense of property, which I take to be the core of social morals—that expedites the work of redemption with marvellous rapidity. Take them altogether, whatever their origin, or whatever brought them hither, they are a fine, manly, frank-hearted race, these colonists now!—rude, not mean, especially in the Bush—and, I suspect, will ultimately become as gallant and honest a population as that now springing up in South Australia, from which convicts are excluded—and happily excluded—for the distinction will sharpen emulation. As to the rest, and in direct answer to your question, I fancy even the emancipist part of our population every whit as respectable as the mongrel robbers under Romulus.

VIVIAN.—But were they not soldiers?—I mean the first Romans?

Pisistratus.—My dear cousin, we are in advance of those grim outcasts, if we can get lands, houses, and wives, (though the last is difficult, and it is well that we have no white Sabines in the neighbourhood!) without that same soldiering which was the necessity of their existence.

Vivian, (after a pause.)—I have written to my father, and to yours more fully—stating in the one letter my wish, in the other trying to explain the feelings from which it springs.

Pisistratus.—Are the letters gone?

Vivian.—Yes.

Pisistratus.—And you would not show them to me!

Vivian.—Do not speak so reproachfully. I promised your father to pour out my whole heart to him, whenever it was troubled and at strife. I promise you now that I will go by his advice.

PISISTRATUS, (disconsolately.)—What is there in this military life for which you yearn that can yield you more food for healthful excitement and stirring adventure than your present pursuits afford?

Vivian.—Distinction! You do not see the difference between us. You have but a fortune to make, I have a name to redeem; you look calmly on the future, I have a dark blot to erase from the past.

Pisistratus, (soothingly.)—It is erased. Five years of no weak bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast industry, conduct so blameless, that even Guy (whom I look upon as the incarnation of blunt English honesty) half doubts whether you are 'cute enough for "a station"—a character already so high, that I long for the hour when you will again take your father's spotless name, and give me the pride to own our kinship to the world; all this surely redeems the errors arising from an uneducated childhood and a wandering youth.

Vivian, (leaning over his horse, and putting his hand on my shoulder.)—"My dear friend, what do I owe you?" Then recovering his emotion, and pushing on at a quicker pace, while he continues to speak, "But can you not see that, just in proportion as my comprehension of right would become clear and strong, so my conscience would become also more sensitive and reproachful; and the better I understand my gallant father, the more I must desire to be as he would have had his son. Do you think it would content him, could he see me branding cattle and bargaining with bullock-drivers? Was it not the strongest wish of his heart that I should adopt his own career? Have I not heard you say that he would have had you too a soldier, but for your mother? I have no mother! If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, by this ignoble calling, would they give my father half the pleasure that he would feel at seeing my name honourably mentioned in a despatch? No, no! you have banished the gipsy blood, and now the soldier's breaks out! Oh for one glorious day in which I may clear my way into fair repute, as our fathers before us!—when tears of proud joy may flow from those eyes that have wept such hot drops at my shame! When she, too, in her high station, beside that sleek lord, may say, 'His heart was not so vile, after all!' Don't argue with me—it is in vain! Pray, rather, that I may have leave to work out my own way; for I tell you that, if condemned to stay here, I may not murmur aloud—I may go through this round of low duties as the brute turns the wheel of a mill: but my heart will prey on itself, and you shall soon write on my gravestone the epitaph of the poor poet you told us of, whose true disease was the thirst of glory—'Here lies one whose name was written in water.'"

I had no answer; that contagious ambition made my own veins run more warmly, and my own heart beat with a louder tumult. Amidst the pastoral scenes, and under the tranquil moonlight, of the New, the Old World, even in me, rude Bushman, claimed for a while its son. But as we rode on, the air, so inexpressibly buoyant, yet soothing as an anodyne, restored me to peaceful Nature. Now the flocks, in their snowy clusters, were seen sleeping under the stars; hark, the welcome of the watch-dogs; see the light gleaming far from the chink of the door! And, pausing, I said aloud, "No, there is more glory in laying these rough foundations of a mighty state, though no trumpets resound with your victory—though no laurels shall shadow your tomb—than in forcing the onward progress of your race over burning cities and hecatombs of men!" I looked round for Vivian's answer; but, ere I spoke, he had spurred from my side, and I saw the wild dogs slinking back from the hoofs of his horse, as he rode at speed, on the sward, through the moonlight.

CHAPTER XCVII.

The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies to Vivian's letters came at last: I foreboded too well their purport. I knew that my father could not set himself in opposition to the deliberate and cherished desire of a man who had now arrived at the full strength of his understanding, and must be left at liberty to make his own election of the paths of life. Long after that date, I saw Vivian's letter to my father; and even his conversation had scarcely prepared me for the pathos of that confession of a mind remarkable alike for its strength and its weakness. If born in the age, or submitted to the influences, of religious enthusiasm, here was a nature that, awaking from sin, could not have been contented with the sober duties of mediocre goodness—that would have plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism—wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched barefoot on the infidel, with the sackcloth for armour—the cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemption took a more mundane direction, but with something that seemed almost spiritual in its fervour. And this enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound melancholy! Deny it a vent, and it might sicken into lethargy, or fret itself into madness—give it the vent, and it might vivify and fertilise as it swept along.

My father's reply to this letter was what might be expected. It gently reinforced the old lessons in the distinctions between aspirations towards the perfecting ourselves—aspirations that are never in vain—and the morbid passion for applause from others, which shifts conscience from our own bosoms to the confused Babel of the crowd, and calls it "fame." But my father, in his counsels, did not seek to oppose a mind so obstinately bent upon a single course—he sought rather to guide and strengthen it in the way it should go. The seas of human life are wide. Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but it must first look to the condition of the ship, and the nature of the merchandise to exchange. Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish can bring back the gold of Ophir; but shall it therefore rot in the harbour? No; give its sails to the wind!

But I had expected that Roland's letter to his son would have been full of joy and exultation—joy there was none in it, yet exultation there might be—though serious, grave, and subdued. In the proud assent that the old soldier gave to his son's wish, in his entire comprehension of motives so akin to his own nature—there was yet a visible sorrow; it seemed even as if he constrained himself to the assent he gave. Not till I had read it again and again, could I divine Roland's feelings while he wrote. At this distance of time, I comprehend them well. Had he sent from his side, into noble warfare, some boy fresh to life, new to sin, with an enthusiasm pure and single-hearted as his own young chivalrous ardour—then, with all a soldier's joy, he had yielded a cheerful tribute to the hosts of England; but here he recognised, though perhaps dimly, not the frank military fervour, but the stern desire of expiation—and in that thought he admitted forebodings that would have been otherwise rejected—so that, at the close of the letter, it seemed not the fiery war-seasoned Roland that wrote, but rather some timid, anxious mother. Warnings and entreaties, and cautions not to be rash, and assurances that the best soldiers were ever the most prudent—were these the counsels of the fierce veteran, who, at the head of the forlorn hope, had mounted the wall at ——, his sword between his teeth!

But, whatever his presentiments, Roland had yielded at once to his son's prayer—hastened to London at the receipt of his letter—obtained a commission in a regiment now in active service in India; and that commission was made out in his son's name. The commission, with an order to join the regiment as soon as possible, accompanied the letter.

And Vivian, pointing to the name addressed to him, said, "Now, indeed, I may resume this name, and, next to Heaven, will I hold it sacred! It shall guide me to glory in life, or my father shall read it, without shame, on my tomb!" I see him before me, as he stood then—his form erect, his dark eyes solemn in their light, a serenity in his smile, a grandeur on his brow, that I had never marked till then! Was that the same man I had recoiled from as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as the audacious traitor, or wept over as the cowering outcast? How little the nobleness of aspect depends on symmetry of feature, or the mere proportions of form! What dignity robes the man who is filled with a lofty thought!

CHAPTER XCVIII.

He is gone! he has left a void in my existence. I had grown to love him so well; I had been so proud when men praised him. My love was a sort of self-love—I had looked upon him in part as the work of my own hands. I am a long time ere I can settle back, with good heart, to my pastoral life. Before my cousin went, we cast up our gains, and settled our shares. When he resigned the allowance which Roland had made him, his father secretly gave to me, for his use, a sum equal to that which I and Guy Bolding brought into the common stock. Roland had raised the sum upon mortgage; and, while the interest was a trivial deduction from his income, compared to the former allowance, the capital was much more useful to his son than a mere yearly payment could have been. Thus, between us, we had a considerable sum for Australian settlers—£4500. For the first two years we made nothing; indeed, great part of the first year was spent in learning our art, at the station of an old settler. But, at the end of the third year, our flocks having then become very considerable, we cleared a return beyond my most sanguine expectations. And when my cousin left, just in the sixth year of exile, our shares amounted to £4000 each, exclusive of the value of the two stations. My cousin had, at first, wished that I should forward his share to his father, but he soon saw that Roland would never take it; and it was finally agreed that it should rest in my hands, for me to manage for him, send him out interest at five per cent, and devote the surplus profits to the increase of his capital. I had now, therefore, the control of £12,000, and we might consider ourselves very respectable capitalists. I kept on the cattle station, by the aid of the Will-o'-the-Wisp, for about two years after Vivian's departure, (we had then had it altogether for five.) At the end of that time, I sold it and the stock to great advantage. And the sheep—for the "brand" of which I had a high reputation—having wonderfully prospered in the meanwhile, I thought we might safely extend our speculations into new ventures. Glad, too, of a change of scene, I left Bolding in charge of the flocks, and bent my course to Adelaide, for the fame of that new settlement had already disturbed the peace of the Bush. I found Uncle Jack residing near Adelaide, in a very handsome villa, with all the signs and appurtenances of colonial opulence; and report, perhaps, did not exaggerate the gains he had made:—so many strings to his bow—and each arrow, this time, seemed to have gone straight to the white of the butts! I now thought I had acquired knowledge and caution sufficient to avail myself of Uncle Jack's ideas, without ruining myself by following them out in his company; and I saw a kind of retributive justice in making his brain minister to the fortunes which his ideality and constructiveness, according to Squills, had served so notably to impoverish. I must here gratefully acknowledge, that I owed much to this irregular genius. The investigation of the supposed mines had proved unsatisfactory to Mr Bullion; and they were not fairly discovered till a few years after. But Jack had convinced himself of their existence, and purchased, on his own account, "for an old song," some barren land, which he was persuaded would prove to him a Golconda, one day or other, under the euphonious title (which, indeed, it ultimately established) of the "Tibbet's Wheal." The suspension of the mines, however, fortunately suspended the existence of the Grog and Store Depôt, and Uncle Jack was now assisting in the foundation of Port Philip. Profiting by his advice, I adventured in that new settlement some timid and wary purchases, which I resold to considerable advantage. Meanwhile, I must not omit to state briefly what, since my departure from England, had been the ministerial career of Trevanion.

That refining fastidiousness,—that scrupulosity of political conscience, which had characterised him as an independent member, and often served, in the opinion, both of friend and of foe, to give the attribute of general impracticability to a mind that, in all details, was so essentially and laboriously practical—might perhaps have founded Trevanion's reputation as a minister, if he could have been a minister without colleagues—if, standing alone, and from the necessary height, he could have placed, clear and single, before the world, his exquisite honesty of purpose, and the width of a statesmanship marvellously accomplished and comprehensive. But Trevanion could not amalgamate with others, nor subscribe to the discipline of a cabinet in which he was not the chief, especially in a policy which must have been thoroughly abhorrent to such a nature—a policy that, of late years, has distinguished not one faction alone, but has seemed so forced upon the more eminent political leaders, on either side, that they who take the more charitable view of things may, perhaps, hold it to arise from the necessity of the age, fostered by the temper of the public—I mean the policy of Expediency. Certainly not in this book will I introduce the angry elements of party politics; and how should I know much about them? All that I have to say is, that, right or wrong, such a policy must have been at war, every moment, with each principle of Trevanion's statesmanship, and fretted each fibre of his moral constitution. The aristocratic combinations which his alliance with the Castleton interest had brought to his aid, served perhaps to fortify his position in the cabinet; yet aristocratic combinations were of small avail against what seemed the atmospherical epidemic of the age. I could see how his situation had preyed on his mind, when I read a paragraph in the newspapers, "that it was reported, on good authority, that Mr Trevanion had tendered his resignation, but had been prevailed upon to withdraw it, as his retirement at that moment would break up the government." Some months afterwards came another paragraph, to the effect "that Mr Trevanion was taken suddenly ill, and that it was feared his illness was of a nature to preclude his resuming his official labours." Then parliament broke up. Before it met again, Mr Trevanion was gazetted as Earl of Ulverstone, a title that had been once in his family—and had left the administration, unable to encounter the fatigues of office. To an ordinary man, the elevation to an earldom, passing over the lesser honours in the peerage, would have seemed no mean close to a political career; but I felt what profound despair of striving against circumstance for utility—what entanglements with his colleagues, whom he could neither conscientiously support, nor, according to his high old-fashioned notions of party honour and etiquette, energetically oppose—had driven him to abandon that stormy scene in which his existence had been passed. The House of Lords, to that active intellect, was as the retirement of some warrior of old into the cloisters of a convent. The gazette that chronicled the Earldom of Ulverstone was the proclamation that Albert Trevanion lived no more for the world of public men. And, indeed, from that date his career vanished out of sight. Trevanion died—the Earl of Ulverstone made no sign.

I had hitherto written but twice to Lady Ellinor during my exile—once upon the marriage of Fanny with Lord Castleton, which took place about six months after I sailed from England, and again, when thanking her husband for some rare animals, equine, pastoral, and bovine, which he had sent as presents to Bolding and myself. I wrote again after Trevanion's elevation to the peerage, and received in due time a reply, confirming all my impressions—for it was full of bitterness and gall, accusations of the world, fears for the country: Richelieu himself could not have taken a gloomier view of things, when his levees were deserted, and his power seemed annihilated before the "Day of Dupes." Only one gleam of comfort appeared to visit Lady Ulverstone's breast, and thence to settle prospectively over the future of the world—a second son had been born to Lord Castleton; to that son the earldom of Ulverstone, and the estates held in right of its countess, would descend! Never was there a child of such promise! Not Virgil himself, when he called on the Sicilian Muses to celebrate the advent of a son to Pollio, ever sounded a loftier strain. Here was one, now perchance engaged on words of two syllables, called—

"By labouring nature to sustain
The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main,
See to their base restored, earth, sea, and air,
And joyful ages from behind in crowding ranks appear!"

Happy dream which Heaven sends to grandparents! rebaptism of Hope in the font whose drops sprinkle the grandchild!

Time flies on; affairs continue to prosper. I am just leaving the bank at Adelaide with a satisfied air, when I am stopped in the street by bowing acquaintances, who never shook me by the hand before. They shake me by the hand now, and cry—"I wish you joy, sir. That brave fellow, your namesake, is of course your near relation."

"What do you mean?"

"Have not you seen the papers? Here they are."

"Gallant conduct of Ensign de Caxton—promoted to a lieutenancy on the field"—I wipe my eyes, and cry—"Thank Heaven—it is my cousin!" Then new hand-shakings, new groups gather round. I feel taller by the head than I was before! We grumbling English, always quarrelling with each other—the world not wide enough to hold us; and yet, when in the far land some bold deed is done by a countryman, how we feel that we are brothers! how our hearts warm to each other! What a letter I wrote home I and how joyously I went back to the Bush! The Will-o'-the Wisp has attained to a cattle station of his own. I go fifty miles out of my way to tell him the news and give him the newspaper; for he knows now that his old master, Vivian, is a Cumberland man—a Caxton. Poor Will-o'-the Wisp! The tea that night tasted uncommonly like whisky-punch! Father Mathew forgive us!—but if you had been a Cumberland man, and heard the Will-o'-the Wisp roaring out, "Blue bonnets over the Borders," I think your tea, too, would not have come out of the caddy!

CHAPTER XCIX.

A great change has occurred in our household. Guy's father is dead—his latter years cheered by the accounts of his son's steadiness and prosperity, and by the touching proofs thereof which Guy has exhibited. For he insisted on repaying to his father the old college debts, and the advance of the £1500, begging that the money might go towards his sister's portion. Now, after the old gentleman's death, the sister resolved to come out and live with her dear brother Guy. Another wing is built to the hut. Ambitious plans for a new stone house, to be commenced the following year, are entertained; and Guy has brought back from Adelaide not only a sister, but, to my utter astonishment, a wife, in the shape of a fair friend, by whom the sister was accompanied. The young lady did quite right to come to Australia if she wanted to be married. She was very pretty, and all the beaux in Adelaide were round her in a moment. Guy was in love the first day—in a rage with thirty rivals the next—in despair the third—put the question the fourth—and before the fifteenth was a married man, hastening back with a treasure, of which he fancied all the world was conspiring to rob him. His sister was quite as pretty as her friend, and she too had offers enough the moment she landed—only she was romantic and fastidious, and I fancy Guy told her that "I was just made for her."

However, charming though she be—with pretty blue eyes, and her brother's frank smile—I am not enchanted. I fancy she lost all chance of my heart by stepping across the yard in a pair of silk shoes. If I were to live in the Bush, give me a wife as a companion who can ride well, leap over a ditch, walk beside me when I go forth, gun in hand, for a shot at the kangaroos. But I dare not go on with the list of a Bush husband's requisites. This change, however, serves, for various reasons, to quicken my desire of return. Ten years have now elapsed, and I have already obtained a much larger fortune than I had calculated to make. Sorely to Guy's honest grief, I therefore wound up our affairs, and dissolved partnership; for he had decided to pass his life in the colony—and, with his pretty wife, who has grown very fond of him, I don't wonder at it. Guy takes my share of the station and stock off my hands; and, all accounts squared between us, I bid farewell to the Bush. Despite all the motives that drew my heart homeward, it was not without participation in the sorrow of my old companions, that I took leave of those I might never see again on this side the grave. The meanest man in my employ had grown a friend; and when those hard hands grasped mine, and from many a breast that once had waged fierce war with the world came the soft blessing to the Homeward-bound—with a tender thought for the Old England, that had been but a harsh step-mother to them—I felt a choking sensation, which I suspect is little known to the friendships of Mayfair and St James's. I was forced to get off, with a few broken words, when I had meant to part with a long speech: perhaps the broken words pleased the audience better. Spurring away, I gained a little eminence and looked back. There, were the poor faithful fellows gathered in a ring, watching me—their hats off—their hands shading their eyes from the sun. And Guy had thrown himself on the ground, and I heard his loud sobs distinctly. His wife was leaning over his shoulder, trying to soothe: forgive him, fair helpmate, you will be all in the world to him—to-morrow! And the blue-eyed sister, where was she? Had she no tears for the rough friend who laughed at the silk shoes, and taught her how to hold the reins, and never fear that the old pony would run away with her? What matter?—if the tears were shed, they were hidden tears. No shame in them, fair Ellen—since then, thou hast wept happy tears over thy first-born—those tears have long ago washed away all bitterness in the innocent memories of a girl's first fancy.

CHAPTER C.
(DATED FROM ADELAIDE.)

Imagine my wonder—Uncle Jack has just been with me, and—but hear the dialogue.

Uncle Jack.—So you are positively going back to that smoky, fusty, old England, just when you are on your high road to a plumb. A plumb, sir, at least! They all say there is not a more rising young man in the colony. I think Bullion would take you into partnership. What are you in such a hurry for?

Pisistratus.—To see my father, and mother, and Uncle Roland, and——(was about to name some one else, but stops.)

You see, my dear uncle, I came out solely with the idea of repairing my father's losses, in that unfortunate speculation of The Capitalist.

Uncle Jack (coughs and ejaculates)—That villain Peck!

Pisistratus.—And to have a few thousands to invest in poor Roland's acres. The object is achieved: why should I stay?

Uncle Jack.—A few paltry thousands, when in twenty years more, at the farthest, you would wallow in gold!

Pisistratus.—A man learns in the Bush how happy life can be with plenty of employment, and very little money. I shall practise that lesson in England.

Uncle Jack.—Your mind's made up?

Pisistratus.—And my place in the chip taken.

Uncle Jack.—Then there's no more to be said. (Hums, haws, and examines his nails—filbert nails, not a speck on them.) Then suddenly, and jerking up his head. "That 'Capitalist!' it has been on my conscience, nephew, ever since; and, somehow or other, since I have abandoned the cause of my fellow-creatures, I think I have cared more for my relations."

Pisistratus, (smiling, as he remembers his father's shrewd predictions thereon.)—Naturally, my dear uncle: any child who has thrown a stone into a pond knows that a circle disappears as it widens.

Uncle Jack.—Very true—I shall make a note of that, applicable to my next speech, in defence of what they call the "land monopoly." Thank you—stone—circle! (Jots down notes in his pocket-book.) But, to return to the point: I am well off now—I have neither wife nor child; and I feel that I ought to bear my share in your father's loss: it was our joint speculation. And your father, good dear Austin, paid my debts into the bargain. And how cheering the punch was that night, when your mother wanted to scold poor Jack! And the £300 Austin lent me when I left him: nephew, that was the remaking of me—the acorn of the oak I have transplanted. So here they are, (added Uncle Jack with a heroical effort—and he extracted from the pocket-book, bills for a sum between three and four thousand pounds.) There, it is done—and I shall sleep better for it! (With that Uncle Jack got up, and bolted out of the room.)

Ought I to take the money? Why, I think yes!—it is but fair. Jack must be really rich, and can well spare the money; besides, if he wants it again, I know my father will let him have it. And, indeed, Jack caused the loss of the whole sum lost on The Capitalist, &c.; and this is not quite the half of what my father paid away. But is it not fine in Uncle Jack! Well, my father was quite right in his milder estimate of Jack's scalene conformation, and it is hard to judge of a man when he is needy and down in the world. When one grafts one's ideas on one's neighbour's money, they are certainly not so grand as when they spring from one's own.

Uncle Jack, (popping his head into the room.)—And you see, you can double that money if you will just leave it in my hands for a couple of years,—you have no notion what I shall make of the Tibbet's Wheal! Did I tell you?—the German was quite right,—I have been offered already seven times the sum which I gave for the land. But I am now looking out for a Company: let me put you down for shares to the amount at least of those trumpery bills. Cent per cent,—I guarantee cent per cent! (And Uncle Jack stretches out those famous smooth hands of his, with a tremulous motion of the ten eloquent fingers.)

Pisistratus.—Ah, my dear uncle, if you repent——

Uncle Jack.—Repent! when I offer you cent per cent, on my personal guarantee!

Pisistratus, (carefully putting the bills into his breast coat-pocket.) Then, if you don't repent, my dear uncle, allow me to shake you by the hand, and say that I will not consent to lessen my esteem and admiration for the high principle which prompts this restitution, by confounding it with trading associations of loans, interests, and copper mines. And, you see, since this sum is paid to my father, I have no right to invest it without his permission.

Uncle Jack, (with emotion.)—"Esteem, admiration, high principle!"—these are pleasant words, from you, nephew.—(Then shaking his head and smiling.) You sly dog! you are quite right: get the bills cashed at once. And hark ye, sir, just keep out of my way, will you?—and don't let me coax you out of a farthing! (Uncle Jack slams the door, and rushes out. Pisistratus draws the bills warily from his pocket, half-suspecting they must already have turned into withered leaves, like fairy money; slowly convinces himself that the bills are good bills, and by lively gestures testifies his delight and astonishment.) Scene Changes.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY—CHATEAUBRIAND'S MEMOIRS.[3]

Autobiography, when skilfully and judiciously done, is one of the most delightful species of composition of which literature can boast. There is a strong desire in every intelligent and well-informed mind to be made acquainted with the private thoughts, and secret motives of action, of those who have filled the world with their renown. We long to learn their early history, to be made acquainted with their first aspirations—to learn how they became so great as they afterwards turned out. Perhaps literature has sustained no greater loss than that of the memoirs which Hannibal wrote of his life and campaigns. From the few fragments of his sayings which Roman admiration or terror has preserved, his reach of thought and statesmanlike sagacity would appear to have been equal to his military talents. Cæsar's Commentaries have always been admired; but there is some doubts whether they really were written by the dictator; and, supposing they were, they relate almost entirely to military movements and public events, without giving much insight into private character. It is that which we desire in autobiography: we hope to find in it a window by which we may look into a great man's mind. Plutarch's Lives owe their vast and enduring popularity to the insight into private character which the innumerable anecdotes he has collected, of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity, afford.

Gibbon's autobiography is the most perfect account of an eminent man's life, from his own hand, which exists in any language. Independent of the interest which naturally belongs to it as the record of the studies, and the picture of the growth of the mind of the greatest historian of modern times, it possesses a peculiar charm from the simplicity with which it is written, and the judgment it displays, conspicuous alike in what is revealed and what is withheld in the narrative. It steers the middle channel so difficult to find, so invaluable when found, between ridiculous vanity on the one side, and affected modesty on the other. We see, from many passages in it, that the author was fully aware of the vast contribution he had made to literature, and the firm basis on which he had built his colossal fame. But he had good sense enough to see, that those great qualities were never so likely to impress the reader as when only cautiously alluded to by the author. He knew that vanity and ostentation never fall to make the character in which they predominate ridiculous—if excessive, contemptible; and that, although the world would thankfully receive all the details, how minute soever, connected with his immortal work, they would not take off his hands any symptom of his own entertaining the opinion of it which all others have formed. It is the consummate judgment with which Gibbon has given enough of the details connected with the preparation of his works to be interesting, and not enough to be ridiculous, which constitutes the great charm, and has occasioned the marked success, of his autobiography. There are few passages in the English language so popular as the well-known ones in which he has recounted the first conception, and final completion of his history, which, as models of the kind, as well as passages of exquisite beauty, we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of transcribing, the more especially as they will set off, by way of contrast, the faults in some parallel passages attempted by Chateaubriand and Lamartine.

"At the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot—where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell—was at once present to my eyes; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. It was at Rome, on the 15th October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing this Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work."—(Life, p. 198, 8vo edition.)

Again, the well-known description of the conclusion of his labours:—

"I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion; and that, whatever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious."—(Life, p. 255, 8vo edition.)

Hume's account of his own life is a model of perspicuity, modesty, and good sense; but it is so brief that it scarcely can be called a biography. It is not fifty pages long. The wary Scotch author was well aware how vanity in such compositions defeats its own object: he had too much good sense to let it appear in his pages. Perhaps, however, the existence of such a feeling in the recesses of his breast may be detected in the prominent manner in which he brings forward the discouragement he experienced when the first volume of his history was published, and the extremely limited sale it met with for some time after its first appearance. He knew well how these humble beginnings would be contrasted with its subsequent triumphant success. Amidst his many great and good qualities, there is none for which Sir Walter Scott was more admirable than the unaffected simplicity and good sense of his character, which led him to continue through life utterly unspotted by vanity, and unchanged by an amount of adulation from the most fascinating quarters, which would probably have turned the head of any other man. Among the many causes of regret which the world has for the catastrophes which overshadowed his latter years, it is not the least that it prevented the completion of that autobiography with which Mr Lockhart has commenced his Life. His simplicity of character, and the vast number of eminent men with whom he was intimate, as well as the merit of that fragment itself, leave no room for doubt that he would have made a most charming memoir, if he had lived to complete it. This observation does not detract in the slightest degree from the credit justly due to Mr Lockhart, for his admirable Life of his illustrious father-in-law: on the contrary, it forms its highest encomium. The charm of that work is mainly owing to its being so embued with the spirit of the subject, that it may almost be regarded as an autobiography.

Continental writers of note have, more than English ones, fallen into that error which is of all others the most fatal in autobiography—inordinate vanity. At the head of all the delinquents of this class we must place Rousseau, whose celebrated Confessions contain a revelation of folly so extreme, vanity so excessive, and baseness so disgraceful, that it would pass for incredible if not proved by the book itself, which is to be found in every library. Not content with affirming, when past fifty, that there was no woman of fashion of whom he might not have made the conquest if he chose to set about it,[4] he thought fit to entertain the world with all the private details of his life, which the greater prudence of his most indiscreet biographers would have consigned to oblivion. No one who wishes to discredit the Genevese philosopher, need seek in the works of others for the grounds of doing so. Enough is to be found in his own to consign him to eternal execration and contempt. He has told us equally in detail, and with the same air of infantine simplicity, how he committed a theft when in service as a lackey, and permitted an innocent girl, his fellow-servant, to bear the penalty of it; how he alternately drank the wine in his master's cellars, and made love to his wife; how he corrupted one female benefactress who had sheltered him in extremity of want, and afterwards made a boast of her disgrace; and abandoned a male benefactor who fell down in a fit of apoplexy on the streets of Lyons, and left him lying on the pavement, deserted by the only friend whom he had in the world. The author of so many eloquent declamations against mothers neglecting their children, on his own admission, when in easy circumstances, and impelled by no necessity, consigned five of his natural children to a foundling hospital, with such precautions against their being known that he never did or could hear of them again! Such was his vanity, that he thought the world would gladly feed on the crumbs of this sort which fell from the table of the man rich in genius. His grand theory was that the human mind is born innocent, with dispositions only to good, and that all the evils of society arise from the follies of education or the oppression of government. Judging from the picture he has presented of himself, albeit debased by no education but what he himself had afforded, we should say his disposition was more corrupt than has even been imagined by the most dark-minded and bigoted Calvinist that ever existed.

Alfieri was probably as vain in reality as Rousseau; but he knew better how to conceal it. He had not the folly of supposing that he could entertain women by the boastful detail of his conquests over them. He judged wisely, and more like a man who had met with bonnes fortunes, that he would attain more effectually the object of interesting their feelings, by painting their conquests over him. He has done this so fully, so sincerely, and with such eloquence, that he has made one of the most powerful pieces of biography in any language. Its charm consists in the picture he has drawn, with equal truth and art, of a man of the most impetuous and ardent temperament, alternately impelled by the strongest passions which can agitate the breast—love and ambition. Born of a noble family, inheriting a great fortune, he exhibited an uncommon combination of patrician tastes and feelings with republican principles and aspirations. He was a democrat because he knew the great by whom he was surrounded, and did not know the humble who were removed to a distance. He said this himself, after witnessing at Paris the horrors of the 10th August.—"Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne connais pas les petits." He drew the vices of the former from observation, he painted the virtues of the latter from imagination. Hence the absurdity and unnatural character of many of his dramas, which, to the inhabitant of our free country, who is familiar with the real working of popular institutions, renders them, despite their genius, quite ridiculous. But, in the delineation of what passed in his own breast, he is open to no such reproach. His picture of his own feelings is as forcible and dramatic as that of any he has drawn in his tragedies; and it is far more truthful, for it is taken from nature, not an imaginary world of his own creation, having little resemblance to that we see around us. His character and life were singularly calculated to make such a narrative interesting, for never was one more completely tossed about by vehement passions, and abounding with melodramatic incidents. Alternately dreaming over the most passionate attachments, and labouring of his own accord at Dante fourteen hours a-day; at one time making love to an English nobleman's wife, and fighting him in the Park, at another driving through France with fourteen blood horses in harness; now stealing from the Pretender his queen, now striving to emulate Sophocles in the energy of his picture of the passions, he was himself a living example of the intensity of those feelings which he has so powerfully portrayed in his dramas. It is this variety, joined to the simplicity and candour of the confessions, which constitutes the charm of this very remarkable autobiography. It could have been written by no one but himself; for an ordinary biographer would only have described the incidents of his life, none else could have painted the vehement passions, the ardent aspirations, from which they sprang.

From the sketches of Goethe's life which have been preserved, it is evident that, though probably not less vain than the French philosopher or the Italian poet, his vanity took a different direction from either of theirs. He was neither vain of his turpitudes, like Rousseau, nor of his passions, like Alfieri. His self-love was of a more domestic kind; it partook more of the home-scenes of the Fatherland. No one will question the depth of Goethe's knowledge of the heart, or the sagacity of the light which his genius has thrown on the most profound feelings of human nature. But his private life partook of the domestic affections and unobtrusive rest in which it was passed, exempt alike from the grinding poverty which too often impelled the Genevese watchmaker's son into disgraceful actions, or the vehement passions which drove the Italian nobleman into brilliant crimes. Hence his biography exhibits an extraordinary mixture of lofty feelings with puerile simplicity, of depth of views with childishness, of divine philosophy with homely inclinations. Amidst all his enthusiasm and effusions of sentiment, he was as much under the influence as any man of creature comforts; and never hesitated to leave the most lofty efforts of the muse, to participate in the substantial advantages of rich preserves or sweet cakes. This singular mixture arose in a great measure from the habits of his life, and the limited circle by which, during the greater part of it, he was surrounded. Living with a few friends in the quiet seclusion of a small German town, the object of almost superstitious admiration to a few females by whom he was surrounded, he became at once a little god of his own and their idolatry, and warmly inclined, like monks all over the world, to the innocent but not very elevating pleasures of breakfast and dinner. Mahomet said that he experienced more difficulty in persuading his four wives of his divine mission, than all the rest of the world besides; and this, says Gibbon, was not surprising, for they knew best his weaknesses as a man. Goethe thought, on the same principle, his fame was secure, when he was worshipped as a god by his female coterie. He had the highest opinion of his own powers, and of the lofty mission on which he was sent to mankind; but his self-love was less offensive than that of Rousseau, because it was more unobtrusive. It was allied rather to pride than vanity—and though pride may often be hateful, it is never contemptible.

From the Life of Lord Byron which Moore has published, it may be inferred that the latter acted wisely in consigning the original manuscript of the noble poet's autobiography to the flames. Assuming that a considerable part of that biography is taken from what the noble bard had left of himself, it is evident that a more complete detail of his feelings and motives of action would have done anything rather than have added to his reputation. In fact, Moore's Life has done more than anything else to lower it. The poetical biographer had thought and sung so much of the passions, that he had forgot in what light they are viewed by the generality of men; he was so deeply imbued with the spirit of his hero, that he had come to regard his errors and vices as not the least interesting part of his life. That they may be so to that class of readers, unhappily too extensive, who are engaged in similar pursuits, is probably true; but how small a portion do these constitute of the human race, and how weak and inaudible is their applause when compared to the voice of ages! What has become of the innumerable licentious works whose existence in antiquity has become known from the specimens disinterred in the ruins of Herculaneum? Is there one of them which has taken its place beside the Lives of Plutarch? Whatever is fetid, however much prized at the moment, is speedily sunk in the waves of time. Nothing permanently floats down its stream but what is buoyant from its elevating tendency.

Boswell's Life of Johnson is so replete with the sayings and thoughts of the intellectual giant, whom it was so much his object to elevate, even above his natural Patagonian stature, that it may be regarded as a sort of autobiography, dictated by the sage in his moments of abandon to his devout worshipper. It is hardly going too far to say that it is the most popular book in the English language. Johnson's reputation now mainly rests on that biography. No one now reads the Rambler or the Idler—few the Lives of the Poets, interesting as they are, and admirable as are the criticisms on our greatest authors which they contain. But Boswell's Life of Johnson is in everybody's hands; you will hear the pithy sayings, the admirable reflections, the sagacious remarks it contains, from one end of the world to the other. The secret of this astonishing success is to be found in the caustic tone, sententious brevity, and sterling good sense of Johnson, and the inimitable accuracy, faithful memory, and almost infantine simplicity of his biographer. From the unbounded admiration with which he was inspired for the sage, and the faithful memory with which he was gifted, he was enabled to commit to paper, almost as they were delivered, those admirable sayings which have ever since been the delight and admiration of the world. We almost live with the members of the Literary Club; we hear their divers sentiments, and can almost conceive their tones of voice. We see the gigantic form of the sage towering above his intellectual compeers. Burke said that Johnson was greater in conversation than writing, and greater in Boswell than either; and it is easy to conceive that this must have been the case. The Life contains all the admirable sayings, verbatim as they were delivered, and without the asperity of tone and manner which formed so great a blot in the original deliverer. Johnson's sayings were of a kind which were susceptible of being accurately transferred, and with full effect, to paper, because they were almost all reflections on morals, men, or manners, which are of universal application, and come home to the senses of mankind in every age. In this respect they were much more likely to produce an impression in biography than the conversation of Sir Walter Scott, which, however charming to those who heard it, consisted chiefly of anecdotes and stories, great part of the charm of which consisted in the mode of telling and expression of the countenance, which, of course, could not be transferred to paper.

But it is not every eminent man who is so fortunate as to find a biographer like Boswell, who, totally forgetful of self, recorded for posterity with inimitable fidelity all the sayings of his hero. Nor is it many men who would bear so faithful and searching an exposure. Johnson, like every other man, had his failings; but they were those of prejudice or manner, rather than morals or conduct. We wish we could say that every other eminent literary man was equally immaculate, or that an entire disclosure of character would in every case reveal no more weaknesses or failings than have been brought to light by Boswell's faithful chronicle. We know that every one is liable to err, and that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. But being aware of all this, we were not prepared for the immense mass of weaknesses, follies, and errors, which have been brought to light by the indiscreet zeal of biographers, in the character of many of our ablest literary, poetical, and philosophical characters. Certainly, if we look at the details of their private lives, these men of literary celebrity have had little title to set up as the instructors, or to call themselves the benefactors of mankind. From the days of Milton, whose divine genius was so deeply tarnished by the asperity of his feelings, and the unpardonable license in controversy which he permitted to his tongue, to those of Lord Byron, who scandalised his country and the world by the undisguised profligacy of his private life, the biography of literary men, with a few brilliant exceptions,—in the foremost of which we must place Sir Walter Scott—consists in great part of a series of follies, weaknesses, or faults, which it would be well for their memory could they be buried in oblivion. We will not say that the labours of their biographers have been the Massacre of the Innocents, for truly there were very few innocents to massacre; but we will say that they have, in general, done more to degrade those they intended to elevate, than the envenomed hostility of their worst enemies. We forbear to mention names, which might give pain to many respectable persons still alive. The persons alluded to, and the truth of the observation, will be at once understood and admitted by every person acquainted with the literary history of France and England during the last century.

Vanity and jealousy—vanity of themselves, jealousy of others—are the great failings which have hitherto tarnished the character and disfigured the biography of literary men. We fear it is destined to continue the same to the end of the world. The qualities which contribute to their greatness, which occasion their usefulness, which insure their fame, are closely allied to failings which too often disfigure their private lives, and form a blot on their memory, when indiscreetly revealed in biography, either by themselves or others. Genius is almost invariably united to susceptibility; and this temperament is unhappily too apt to run into irritability. No one can read D'Israeli's essay on The Literary Character, the most admirable of his many admirable works, without being convinced of that. Celebrity of any sort is the natural parent of vanity, and this weakness is in a peculiar manner fostered in poets and romance writers, because their writings interest so warmly the fair, who form the great dispensers of general fame, and convey it in the most flattering form to the author. It would perhaps be unjust to women to say that poets and novelists share in their weaknesses; but it is certain that their disposition is, in general, essentially feminine, and that, as they attract the admiration of the other sex more strongly than any other class of writers, so they are liable in a peculiar degree to the failings, as well as distinguished by the excellencies, by which their female admirers are characterised. We may regret that it is so: we may lament that we cannot find poets and romancers, who to the genius of Byron, or the fancy of Moore, unite the sturdy sense of Johnson, or the simplicity of character of Scott; but it is to be feared such a combination is as rare, and as little to be looked for in general life, as the union of the strength of the war-horse to the fleetness of the racer, or the courage of the mastiff to the delicacy of the greyhound. Adam Smith long ago pointed out the distinction between those who serve and those who amuse mankind; and the difference, it is to be feared, exists not merely between the philosopher and the opera-dancer, but between the instructors of men in every department of thought, and those whose genius is devoted rather to the pleasing of the eye, the melting of the feelings, or the kindling of the imagination. Yet this observation is only generally, not universally, true; and Sir Joshua Reynolds remains a memorable proof that it is possible for an artist to unite the highest genius and most imaginative power of mind to the wisdom of a philosopher, the liberality of a gentleman, the benevolence of a Christian, and the simplicity of a child.

We are not at all surprised at the intoxication which seizes the literary men and artists whose genius procures for them the favour or admiration of women. Everybody knows it is the most fascinating and transporting flattery which the mind of man can receive. But we confess we are surprised, and that too not a little, at the want of sense which so frequently makes men even of the highest abilities mar the influence of their own genius, and detract from the well-earned celebrity of their own productions, by the indiscreet display of this vanity, which the applause they have met with has produced in their minds. These gentlemen are charmed with the incense they have received, and of course desirous to augment it, and extend the circle from which it is to be drawn. Well, that is their object; let us consider what means they take to gain it. These consist too often in the most undisguised display of vanity in their conduct, manner, and conversation. Is this the way likely to augment the admiration which they enjoy so much, and are so solicitous to extend? Are they not clear-sighted enough to see, that, holding this to be their aim, considering female admiration as the object of their aspirations, they cannot in any way so effectually mar their desires as by permitting the vanity, which the portion of it they have already received has produced, to appear in their manner or conversation? Are they so little versed in the female heart, as not to know that as self-love acts, if not in a stronger at least in a more conspicuous way in them than in the other sex, so there is nothing which repels them so effectually as any display of that vanity in men which they are all conscious of in themselves, and nothing attracts them so powerfully as that self-forgetfulness, which, estimable in all, is in a peculiar manner graceful and admirable when it is met with in those whom none others can forget? Such a quality is not properly modesty—that is the retiring disposition of those who have not yet won distinction. No man who has done so is ignorant of it, as no woman of beauty is insensible to her charms. It is more nearly allied to good sense, and its invariable concomitant—a due regard for the feelings of others. It not unfrequently exists, in the highest degree, in those who have the strongest inward consciousness of the services they have rendered to mankind. No man was more unassuming than Kepler, but he wrote in reference to his great discoveries, and the neglect they at first met with, "I may well be a century without a reader, since God Almighty has been six thousand years without such an observer as me." Yet is this universally felt to have been no unworthy effusion of vanity, but a noble expression of great services rendered by one of his most gifted creatures to the glory of the Almighty. Such men as Kepler are proud, but not vain, and proud men do not bring their feelings so prominently or frequently forward as vain ones; for pride rests on the consciousness of superiority, and needs no external support; vanity arises from a secret sense of weakness, and thirsts for a perpetual solace from the applause of others.

It is in the French writers that this inordinate weakness of literary men is most conspicuous, and in them it exists to such an extent as, on this side of the Channel, to be altogether ridiculous. Every Frenchman thinks his life worth recording. It was long ago said that the number of unpublished memoirs which exist in France, on the war of the League, would, if put together, form a large library. If those relating to the war of the Revolution were accumulated, we have no doubt they would fill the Bibliothèque du Roi. The number already published exceeds almost the dimensions of any private collection of books. The composition and style of these memoirs is for the most part as curious, and characteristic of French character, as their number is descriptive of their ruling passion. In the age of the religious wars, every writer of memoirs seems to have placed himself in the first rank, Henry IV. in the second; in that of the Revolution, the greater part of the autobiographies scarcely disguise the opinion, that, if the first place must be reluctantly conceded to Napoleon Buonaparte, the second must, beyond all question, be assigned to themselves. The Abbé de Pradt expressed the feeling almost every one entertained of himself in France, not the sentiment of an individual man, when he said, "There was one who overturned Napoleon, and that man was me." Most persons in this country will exclaim, that this statement is overcharged, and that it is incredible that vanity should so generally pervade the writers of a whole nation. If they will take the trouble to read Lamartine's Confidences and Raphael, containing the events of his youth, or his Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, recently published, they will find ample confirmation of these remarks; nor are they less conspicuously illustrated by the more elaborate Mémoires d'Outre Tombe of Chateaubriand, the name of which is prefixed to this essay.

One thing is very remarkable, and forcibly illustrates the marked difference, in this respect, between the character of the French and the English nation. In France all memoirs assume the form of autobiographies: and so general is the thirst for that species of composition that, where a man of any note has not compiled his own life, his papers are put into the hands of some skilful bookmaker, who speedily dresses them up, in the form of an attractive autobiography. This was done with the papers of Brissot, Robespierre, Marshal Ney, Fouché, and a great many others, all of which appeared with the name of their authors, and richly stored with these private papers, though it was morally certain that they could not by possibility have written their own lives. In England nothing of the kind is attempted. Scarcely any of the eminent men in the last age have left their own memoirs; and the papers of the most remarkable of them have been published without any attempt at biography. Thus we have the Wellington Papers, the Marlborough Papers, the Nelson Papers, the Castlereagh Papers, published without any autobiography, and only a slight sketch, though in all these cases very ably done, of the author's life by their editor. The lives of the other eminent men of the last age have been given by others, not themselves: as that of Pitt, by Tomline and Gifford; that of Fox, by Trotter; that of Sheridan, by Moore; that of Lord Eldon, by Twiss; that of Lord Sidmouth, by Pellew. There is more here than an accidental diversity: there is a difference arising from a difference of national character. The Englishmen devoted their lives to the public service, and bestowed not a thought on its illustration by themselves; the French mainly thought of themselves when acting in the public service, and considered it mainly as a means of elevation and self-laudation to themselves.

In justice to the literary men of France, however, it must be stated that, of late years at least, they have been exposed to an amount of temptation, and of food for their self-love, much exceeding anything previously seen among men, and which may go far to account for the extraordinary vanity which they have everywhere evinced. In England, literary distinction is neither the only nor the greatest passport to celebrity. Aristocratic influences remain, and still possess the deepest hold of the public mind: statesmen exist, whose daily speeches in parliament render their names as household words. Fashion exercises an extraordinary and almost inexplicable sway, especially over the fairest part of creation. How celebrated soever an author may be, he will in London soon be brought to his proper level, and a right appreciation of his situation. He will see himself at once eclipsed by an old nobleman, whose name is fraught with historic glory; by a young marquis, who is an object of solicitude to the mothers and daughters in the room; by a parliamentary orator, who is beginning to acquire distinction in the senate house. We hold this state of things to be eminently favourable to the right character of literary men; for it saves them from trials before which, it is all but certain, both their good sense and their virtue would succumb. But in Paris this salutary check upon individual vanity and presumption is almost entirely awanting. The territorial aristocracy is confiscated and destroyed; titles of honour are abolished; historic names are almost forgotten in the ceaseless whirl of present events; parliamentary orators are in general unpopular, for they are for the most part on the side of power. Nothing remains but the government of mind. The intellectual aristocracy is all in all.

It makes and unmakes kings alternately; produces and stops revolutions, at one time calls a new race to the throne, at another consigns them with disgrace to foreign lands. Cabinets are formed out of the editors of newspapers, intermingled with a few bankers, whom the public convulsions have not yet rendered insolvent; prime ministers are to be found only among successful authors. Thiers, the editor of the National and the historian of the Revolution; Guizot, the profound professor of history; Villemain, the eloquent annalist of French literature; Lamartine, the popular traveller, poet, and historian, have been the alternate prime ministers of France since the revolution of 1830. Even the great name of Napoleon cannot save his nephew from the irksomeness of bending to the same necessity. He named Thiers his prime minister at the time of the Boulogne misadventure, he is caressing him now in the salons of the Elysée Bourbon. Successful authors thus in France are surrounded with a halo, and exposed to influences, of which in this country we cannot form a conception. They unite in their persons the fame of Mr Fox and the lustre of Sir Walter Scott: often the political power of Mr Pitt with the celebrity of Lord Byron. Whether such a concentration is favourable either to their present utility or lasting fame, and whether the best school to train authors to be the instructors of the world is to be found in that which exposes them to the combined influence of its greatest temptations, are questions on which it is not necessary now to enter, but on which posterity will probably have no difficulty in coming to a conclusion.

But while we fully admit that these extraordinary circumstances, unparalleled in the past history of the world, go far to extenuate the blame which must be thrown on the French writers for their extraordinary vanity, they will not entirely exculpate them. Ordinary men may well be carried away by such adventitious and flattering marks of their power; but we cannot accept such an excuse from the first men of the age—men of the clearest intellect, and the greatest acquisitions—whose genius is to charm, whose wisdom is to instruct the world through every succeeding age. If the teachers of men are not to be above the follies and weaknesses which are general and ridiculous in those of inferior capacity, where are we to look for such an exemption? It is a poor excuse for the overweening vanity of a Byron, a Goethe, a Lamartine, or a Chateaubriand, that a similar weakness is to be found in a Madame Grisi or a Mademoiselle Cerito, in the first cantatrice or most admired ballerina of the day. We all know that the professors of these charming arts are too often intoxicated by the applause which they meet with; we excuse or overlook this weakness from respect due to their genius and their sex. But we know, at the same time, that there are some exceptions to the general frailty; and in one enchanting performer, our admiration for talents of the very highest order is enhanced by respect for the simplicity of character and generosity of disposition with which they are accompanied. We might desiderate in the men who aspire to direct the thoughts of the world, and have received from nature talents equal to the task, the unaffected singleness of heart, and sterling good sense, which we admire, not less than her admirable powers, in Mademoiselle Jenny Lind.

The faults, or rather frailties, we have alluded to, are in an especial manner conspicuous in two of the most remarkable writers of France of the present century—Lamartine and Chateaubriand. There is some excuse for the vanity of these illustrious men. They have both acquired an enduring fame—their names are known all over the world, and will continue to be so while the French language is spoken on the earth; and they have both, by their literary talents, been elevated to positions far beyond the rank in society to which they were born, and which might well make an ordinary head reel from the giddy precipices with which it is surrounded. Chateaubriand powerfully aided in crushing Napoleon in 1814, when Europe in arms surrounded Paris: with still more honourable constancy he resisted him in 1804, when, in the plenitude of his power, he executed the Duke d'Enghien. He became ambassador to London for the Restoration—minister of foreign affairs, and representative of France at the Congress of Verona. He it was who projected and carried into execution the French invasion of the Peninsula in 1823, the only successful expedition of the Restoration. Lamartine's career, if briefer, has been still more dazzling. He aided largely in the movement which overthrew Louis Philippe; by the force of his genius he obtained the mastery of the movement, "struggled with democracy when it was strongest, and ruled it when it was wildest;" and had the glory, by his single courage and energy, of saving the character of the revolution from bloodshed, and coercing the Red Republicans in the very tumult of their victory. He has since fallen from power, less from any known delinquencies imputed to him, than from the inherent fickleness of the French people, and the impossibility of their submitting, for any length of time, to the lead of a single individual. The autobiography of two such men cannot be other than interesting and instructive in the highest degree; and if we see in them much which we in England cannot altogether understand, and which we are accustomed to stigmatise with the emphatic epithet "French," there is much also in them which candour must respect, and an equitable spirit admire.

The great thing which characterises these memoirs, and is sufficient to redeem a multitude of vanities and frailties, is the elevated and chivalrous spirit in which they are composed. In this respect they are a relic, we fear, of the olden time; a remnant of those ancient days which Mr Burke has so eloquently described in his portrait of Marie Antoinette. That is the spirit which pervades the breasts of these illustrious men; and therefore it is that we respect them, and forgive or forget many weaknesses which would otherwise be insupportable in their autobiographies. It is a spirit, however, more akin to a former era than the present; to the age which produced the crusades, more than that which gave birth to railways; to the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, rather than those which raised a monument to Mr Hudson. We are by no means convinced, however, that it is not the more likely to be enduring in the future ages of the world; at least we are sure it will be so, if the sanguine anticipations everywhere formed, by the apostles of the movement of the future improvement of the species, are destined in any degree to be realised.

Although, however, the hearts of Chateaubriand and Lamartine are stamped with the impress of chivalry, and the principal charm of their writings is owing to its generous spirit, yet we should err greatly if we imagined that they have not shared in the influences of the age in which they lived, and become largely imbued with the more popular and equalising notions which have sprung up in Europe during the last century. They could not have attained the political power which they have both wielded if they had not done so; for no man, be his genius what it may, will ever acquire a practical lead among men unless his opinions coincide in the main with those of the majority by whom he is surrounded. Chateaubriand's earliest work, written in London in 1793—the Essai Historique—is, in truth, rather of a republican and sceptical tendency; and it was not till he had travelled in America, and inhaled a nobler spirit amid the solitudes of nature, that the better parts of his nature regained their ascendency, and his fame was established on an imperishable foundation by the publication of Atala et René, and the Génie du Christianisme. Throughout his whole career, the influence of his early liberal principles remained conspicuous: albeit a royalist, he was the steady supporter of the freedom of the press and the extension of the elective suffrage; and he kept aloof from the government of Louis Philippe less from aversion to the semi-revolutionary spirit in which it was cradled, than from an honourable fidelity to misfortune and horror at the selfish corrupt multitude by which it was soon surrounded. Lamartine's republican principles are universally known: albeit descended of a noble family, and largely imbued with feudal feelings, he aided in the revolt which overturned the throne of Louis Philippe in February 1848, and acquired lasting renown by the courage with which he combated the sanguinary spirit of the Red Republicans, when minister of foreign affairs. Both are chivalrous in heart and feeling, rather than opinions; and they thus exhibit curious and instructive instances of the fusions of the moving principle of the olden time with the ideas of the present, and of the manner in which the true spirit of nobility, forgetfulness of self, can accommodate itself to the varying circumstances of society, and float, from its buoyant tendency, on the surface of the most fetid stream of subsequent selfishness.

In two works recently published by Lamartine, Les Confidences and Raphael, certain passages in his autobiography are given. The first recounts the reminiscences of his infancy and childhood; the second, a love-story in his twentieth year. Both are distinguished by the peculiarities, in respect of excellences and defects, which appear in his other writings. On the one hand we have an ardent imagination, great beauty of language, a generous heart—the true spirit of poetry—and uncommon pictorial powers. On the other, an almost entire ignorance of human nature, extraordinary vanity, and that susceptibility of mind which is more nearly allied to the feminine, than the masculine character. Not but that Lamartine possesses great energy and courage: his conduct, during the revolution of 1848, demonstrates that he possesses these qualities in a very high degree; but that the ardour of his feelings leads him to act and think like women, from their impulse rather than the sober dictates of reason. He is a devout optimist, and firm believer in the innocence of human nature, and indefinite perfectibility of mankind, under the influence of republican institutions. Like all other fanatics, he is wholly inaccessible to the force of reason, and altogether beyond the reach of facts, how strong or convincing soever. Accordingly, he remains to this hour entirely convinced of the perfectibility of mankind, although he has recounted, with equal truth and force, that it was almost entirely owing to his own courage and energy that the revolution was prevented, in its very outset, from degenerating into bloodshed and massacre; and a thorough believer in the ultimate sway of pacific institutions, although he owns that, despite all his zeal and eloquence, the whole provisional government, with himself at its head, would on the 16th April have been guillotined or thrown into the Seine, but for the determination and fidelity of three battalions of the Garde Mobile, whom Changarnier volunteered to arrange in all the windows and avenues of the Hotel de Ville, when assailed by a column of thirty thousand furious revolutionists.

Chateaubriand is more a man of the world than Lamartine. He has passed through a life of greater vicissitudes, and been much more frequently brought into contact with men in all ranks and gradations of society. He is not less chivalrous than Lamartine, but more practical; his style is less pictorial but more statesmanlike. The French of all shades of political opinion agree in placing him at the head of the writers of the last age. This high position, however, is owing rather to the detached passages than the general tenor of his writings, for their average style is hardly equal to such an encomium. He is not less vain than Lamartine, and still more egotistical—a defect which, as already noticed, he shares with nearly all the writers of autobiography in France, but which appears peculiarly extraordinary and lamentable in man of such talents and acquirements. His life abounded with strange and romantic adventures, and its vicissitudes would have furnished a rich field for biography even to a writer of less imaginative powers.

He was born on the 4th September 1768—the same year with Napoleon—at an old melancholy chateau on the coast of Brittany, washed by the waves of the Atlantic ocean. His mother, like those of almost all other eminent men recorded in history, was a very remarkable woman, gifted with a prodigious memory and an ardent imagination—qualities which she transmitted in a very high degree to her son. His family was very ancient, going back to the year 1000; but, till illustrated by Francois René, who has rendered it immortal, the Chateaubriands lived in unobtrusive privacy on their paternal acres. After receiving the rudiments of education at home, he was sent at the age of seventeen into the army; but the Revolution having soon after broken out, and his regiment revolted, he quitted the service and came to Paris, where he witnessed the horrors of the storming of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and the massacre in the prisons on 2d. September. Many of his nearest relations—in particular his sister-in-law, Madame de Chateaubriand, and sister, Madame Rozambo—were executed along with Malesherbes, shortly before the fall of Robespierre. Obliged now to fly to England, he lived for some years in London in extreme poverty, supporting himself by his pen. It was there he wrote his earliest and least creditable work, the Essai Historique. Tired of such an obscure and monotonous life, however, he set out for America, with the Quixotic design of discovering by land journey the North-west passage. He failed in that attempt, for which, indeed, he had no adequate means; but he dined with Washington, and in the solitudes of the Far West imbibed many of the noblest ideas, and found the subjects of several of the finest descriptions, which have since adorned his works. Finding that there was nothing to be done in the way of discovery in America, he returned to England. Afterwards he went to Paris, and there composed his greatest works, Atala et René and the Génie du Christianisme, which soon acquired a colossal reputation, and raised the author to the highest pinnacle of literary fame.

Napoleon, whose piercing eye discerned talent wherever it was to be found, now selected him for the public service in the diplomatic line. He gives the following interesting account of the first and only interview he had with that extraordinary man, in the saloon of his brother Lucien:—

"I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered; his appearance struck me with an agreeable surprise. I had never previously seen him but at a distance. His smile was sweet and encouraging; his eye beautiful, especially from the way in which it was overshadowed by the eyebrows. He had no charlatanism in his looks, nothing affected or theatrical in his manner. The Génie du Christianisme, which at that time was making a great deal of noise, had produced its effect on Napoleon. A vivid imagination animated his cold policy; he would not have been what he was if the Muse had not been there; reason in him worked out the ideas of a poet. All great men are composed of two natures—for they must be at once capable of inspiration and action,—the one conceives, the other executes.

"Buonaparte saw me, and knew me I know not how. When he moved towards me, it was not known whom he sought. The crowd opened; every one hoped the First Consul would stop to converse with him; his air showed that he was irritated at these mistakes. I retired behind those around me; Buonaparte suddenly raised his voice, and called out, "Monsieur de Chateaubriand." I then remained alone in front; for the crowd instantly retired, and re-formed in a circle around us. Buonaparte addressed me with simplicity, without questions, preamble, or compliments. He began speaking about Egypt and the Arabs, as if I had been his intimate friend, and he had only resumed a conversation already commenced betwixt us. 'I was always struck,' said he, 'when I saw the Scheiks fall on their knees in the desert, turn towards the east, and touch the sand with their foreheads. What is that unknown thing which they adore in the east?' Speedily then passing to another idea, he said, 'Christianity! the Idealogues wished to reduce it to a system of astronomy! Suppose it were so, do they suppose they would render Christianity little? Were Christianity only an allegory of the movement of the spheres, the geometry of the stars, the esprits forts would have little to say: despite themselves, they have left sufficient grandeur to l'Infame.'[5]

"Buonaparte immediately withdrew. Like Job in the night, I felt as if a spirit had passed before me; the hairs of my flesh stood up. I did not know its countenance; but I heard its voice like a little whisper.

"My days have been an uninterrupted succession of visions. Hell and heaven continually have opened under my feet, or over my head, without my having had time to sound their depths, or withstand their dazzling. I have met once, and once only, on the shores of the two worlds, the man of the last age, and the man of the new—Washington and Napoleon—I conversed a few moments with each—both sent me back to solitude—the first by a kind wish, the second by an execrable crime.

"I remarked that, in moving through the crowd, Buonaparte cast on me looks more steady and penetrating than he had done before he addressed me. I followed him with my eyes.

'Who is that great man who cares not
For conflagrations?'"[6]—(Vol. iv. 118-121.)

This passage conveys a just idea of Chateaubriand's Memoirs: his elevation of mind, his ardent imagination, his deplorable vanity. In justice to so eminent a man, however, we transcribe a passage in which the nobleness of his character appears in its true lustre, untarnished by the weaknesses which so often disfigure the character of men of genius. We allude to his courageous throwing down the gauntlet to Napoleon, on occasion of the murder of the Duke d'Enghien:—

"Two days before the fatal 20th March, I dressed myself, before taking leave of Buonaparte, on my way to the Valais, to which I had received a diplomatic mission; I had not seen him since the time when he had spoken to me at the Tuileries. The gallery where the reception was going on was full; he was accompanied by Murat and his aide-de-camp. When he approached me, I was struck with an alteration in his countenance: his cheeks were fallen in, of a livid hue; his eyes stern; his colour pale; his air sombre and terrible. The attraction which had formerly drawn me towards him was at an end; instead of awaiting, I fled his approach. He cast a look towards me, as if he sought to recognise me, moved a few steps towards me, turned, and disappeared. Returned to the Hôtel de France, I said to several of my friends, 'Something strange, which I do not know, must have happened: Buonaparte could not have changed to such a degree unless he had been ill.' Two days after, at eleven in the forenoon, I heard a man cry in the streets—'Sentence of the military commission convoked at Vincennes, which has condemned to the pain of Death Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2d August 1772 at Chantilly.' That cry fell on me like a clap of thunder: it changed my life as it changed that of Napoleon. I returned home, and said to Madame de Chateaubriand—'The Duke d'Enghien has just been shot.' I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation—Madame de Chateaubriand made no opposition: she had a great deal of courage. She was fully aware of my danger: the trial of Moreau and Georges Cadoudal was going on: the lion had tasted blood: it was not the moment to irritate him."—(Vol. iv. 228-229.)

After this honourable step, which happily passed without leading to Chateaubriand's being shot, he travelled to the East, where he visited Greece, Constantinople, the Holy Land, and Egypt, and collected the materials which have formed two of his most celebrated works, L'Itinéraire à Jerusalem, and Les Martyrs. He returned to France, but did not appear in public life till the Allies conquered Paris in 1814, where he composed with extraordinary rapidity his famous pamphlet entitled Buonaparte and the Bourbons, which had so powerful an effect in bringing about the Restoration. The royalists were now in power, and Chateaubriand was too important a man to be overlooked. In 1821 he was sent as ambassador to London, the scene of his former penury and suffering; in 1823 he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in that capacity projected, and successfully carried through, the expedition to Spain which reseated Ferdinand on the throne of his ancestors; and he was afterwards the plenipotentiary of France at the congress of Verona in 1824. He was too liberal a man to be employed by the administration of Charles X., but be exhibited an honourable constancy to misfortune on occasion of the Revolution of 1830. He was offered the portfolio of Foreign Affairs if he would abstain from opposition; but he refused the proposal, made a last noble and eloquent speech in favour of his dethroned sovereign in the Chamber of Peers; and, withdrawing into privacy, lived in retirement, engaged in literary pursuits, and in the composition or revising of his numerous publications, till his death, which occurred in June 1848.

Such a life of such a man cannot be other than interesting, for it unites the greatest possible range and variety of events with the reflections of a mind of great power, ardent imagination, and extensive erudition. His autobiography, or Mémoires d'Outre Tombe, as it is called, was accordingly looked for with great interest, which has not been sensibly diminished by the revolution of 1848, which has brought a new set of political actors on the stage. Four volumes only have hitherto been published, but the rest may speedily be looked for, now that the military government of Prince Louis Napoleon has terminated that of anarchy in France. The three first volumes certainly disappointed us: chiefly from the perpetual and offensive vanity which they exhibited, and the number of details, many of them of a puerile or trifling character, which they contained. The fourth volume, however, from which the preceding extracts have been taken, exhibits Chateaubriand, in many places, in his original vigour; and if the succeeding ones are of the same stamp, we propose to return to them.

THE GREEN HAND.
A "SHORT" YARN. PART IV.

"You must surely be tired by this time, ma'am, of this long-winded yarn of mine?" said the commander of the Gloucester to the elder of his fair listeners, next evening they met with the evident expectation of hearing further; "but after all, this must be dull work for you at present, so I daresay you are amused with anything by way of a change."

——Well, one morning when Westwood and I went on deck, it was a stark staring calm; as dead as a mill-pond, save for the long winding heave that seemed to come miles up out of the stale blue water, and get tired with the journey—from the horizon to us in one lazy coil, and on every side, just serving to jerk the wheel a spoke back and forward, with nobody at it. The very bits of pumpkin-paring and fat which the cook had thrown overboard the night before, lay still alongside, with an oily track oozing round about them from the 'slush,'[7]—the sails hanging from the yards, up and down, like clothes on a screen—and when you looked over the side away from the sun, you saw your own face, like a fellow's that had been long drowned, peering back at you as it were round the keel—in fact, there you scarce knew where the water was. Somehow or other the ship kept sheering round, by little and little, till, although one had chosen a shady spot, all of a sudden the blazing sun came right into his eyes; or the single streak of white cloud laying behind you, to starboard, a while after stuck itself before your face from the very opposite quarter—you fancying, too, you had your eye the whole time on the same bit of water. Being lost in a wood or a fog was nothing to it, especially with the sun at noon drawn up right overhead, so that you couldn't look aloft, and staring down into the sea out of a pool of bright light; "like one tremendously keen little eye," as some of the passengers said, "examining a big blind one." "Why," put in one of the "writers," "I fear he wants to take the mote out of his brother's eye,—this vessel, that is to say!" "Hang it, I hope not!" said Winterton, rather alarmed. "He promises well to do it, then," said another young civilian, "but I wish he'd take the beam out of his own, first—ha, Smythe?" However, few men have the spirit to laugh at little in a calm near the Line, so Smythe gave no more than a sickly grin, while Westwood looked the clergyman very properly.

Both passengers and crew, all of us that could swim, gave wistful looks now and then alongside at the water, hot as it seemed, for a bathe; just floating up, as it were, with the mere huge size of it, under a dazzle of light, and so blue and smooth you could'nt see a hair's breadth below; while, a bit off, the face of it, and the very air, appeared to dance and quiver like little streams of glass. However, all thoughts of bathing were put out of your head when you saw the black three-cornered affair, with a rake aft, somewhat like the end of a scythe, that went steering slowly round us; then cruising hither and thither, till its infernal horn was as dry as the deck; and at times driving straight off, as if it ran in a groove through the level surface, when back again it came from the other side, creeping lazily towards us, till it sank with a light tip, and a circle or two on the blue water. The hook and chain were hanging up and down over the taffrail, with the piece of rank pork looking green in the shadow near the rudder, where you read the white figures of her draught as plain as in dock; but the shark, a fifteen-feet customer, if he was an inch, was too knowing to have touched it. "Pity he's gone, Collins," said Ford to me, after we had watched him at last out of sight; "wasn't there any plan of catching him, I wonder! Now we shall have a bathe though, at any rate." "Gone?" said I, "he won't leave us in a hurry, if we don't leave him!" "Poh, man!" said Ford, "I tell you he's tired out and gone away!" Five minutes after, Ford was leaning over the quarter, and wiping his face, while he fanned himself with his straw-hat, which fell out of his hand into the water. He had got over into the mizen-chains to throw a line round it, when he gave a loud shriek, and jumped in-board again. Two or three fathoms of green came up from the keel, balancing on a pair of broad fins under Ford's hat, and a big round snout touched it; then a dozen feet of white belly gleamed in the water, the hat gave a gulp as it was drawn down, and a few small air-bells rose to the top. "He prefers some flavours to others you see, Ford," said I. "'Tis the second hat I've seen you lose: I hope your head won't be in the third; but you mariners, you see——," however Ford had bolted to his cabin. On turning round I perceived Miss Hyde with the General's lady under the awning on the other side, where the old lady leant against a cushion, with her hands crossed, and her bonnet-strings loose—though a strapping raw-boned Irishwoman she was—and kept Miss Hyde's maid fanning her from behind with a large feather punkah. The old lady had started at Ford's cry, and gave a look round at me, half fierce and half order-wise, as if she expected to know what was the matter at once. "Only my friend lost his hat, ma'am," said I, stepping forward. "These cadets are so taygious, my dear!" said she to the young lady, falling back again without the least other notice of me. "They plague the life of me, but the brigadier can't drill them as he would if this were a troop-ship—I wish he could, for the sake of the profession!—now, my dear, dho kape out of the s-hun!" However I stuck where I was, fancying I caught the slightest bit of an arch twinkle in the corner of the young lady's eye, though she didn't look at me. "Keep going, can't ye!" said the old lady crossly to the maid. "No, ma'am, indeed!" said the girl, glancing over to her young mistress, "I'm ready to drop!" "Send up papa's kitmagar, then, Wilkins," said Miss Hyde; and the girl went off toward the gallery stair, muttering she "hoped she didn't come—here to be—made a black Indian slave of—at least to an old"—the remainder being lost in the stair. As I leant on the rail-netting, behind the old lady, I happened to tread on her fat pug-dog's tail, whereupon the ugly brute made its teeth meet without farther notice in the small of my leg, after which it gave a yelp, and ran beneath the chairs. "What's that, Die?" exclaimed its mistress: "good hivens! is that same griffin here yet, my dear! Hadn't he ayven the spirit to take a hint?—I say, was it you hurt Dianny, young man?" "Oh, dear! no, ma'am, not for the world!" said I, looking at my trousers, hard as the thing was to stand, but thinking to smooth her over, though I was'nt quite up to the old Irishwoman, it turned out. "Ha! ha! so she bit you?" said she, with a flash of her hawk's-eye, and leaning back again coolly: "If he'd only kicked poor Die for it under my chair, now, I'd have forgiven him; but he hadn't ayven the heart at the time to drop her a curse,—and I thinking all the while, too, by the luke of his eye, he was from the county Clare! My heart warms to the county Clare always, because, although I'm not Irish myself, you know, I'd once a schoolfellow was born in it—without counting all my relations! Oh, the smooth spalpeen!" continued she, harder than before, glancing at me as I looked all abroad from one to the other;—"listen, niver you let that fellow spake to you, my dear! he's too——." But here I walked quietly off, to put the poop's length betwixt me and the talking old vixen, cursing her and her dog both, quite enough to have pleased her Irish fancy.

On the quarterdeck, the Judge and the General seemed to enjoy the heat and quiet, sitting with their feet up before the round-house, and smoking their long red-twisted hookahs, while they watched the wreaths of smoke go whirling straight up from the bowls to the awning, and listened to the faint bubble of it through the water in the bottles, just dropping a word now and then to each other. A tall thin "native" servant, with long sooty hair hanging from his snow-white turban, stood behind the Judge's chair, bolt upright, with his arms folded, and twice as solemn as Sir Charles himself: you saw a stern-window shining far abaft, through one of the round-house doors, and the fat old fellow of a consumah[8] busy laying the cloth for tiffin, while the sole breath of air there was came out of there-away.

Suddenly eight bells struck, and every one seemed glad of something new; the Judge's consumah came out salaaming to say tiffin was ready; the cuddy passengers went below for wine-and-water and biscuit; and the men were at dinner. There being nothing to take care of on deck, and the heat of course getting greater, not a soul staid up but myself; but I preferred at the moment lighting a cheroot, and going up aft to see clear of the awnings. The cockatoo had been left on the poop-rail, with his silver chain hitched round one of the mizen back-stays, where it shifted from one leg to the other, hooked itself up the back-stay as far as it could go, then hurried down again, and mused a bit, as wise as Solomon,—then screamed out at the top of its voice—"Tip—tip—pr-r-retty cacka—tip-poo—cok-ka—whee-yew-ew-ew!" finishing by a whistle of triumph fit to have split one's ears, or brought a gale of wind—though not on account of skill in its books, at any rate. Again it took to swinging, quietly head-down, at a furious rate, and then slewed upright to plume its feathers, and shake the pink tuft on its head. No sooner had I got up the stair, however, than, to my perfect delight, I saw Violet Hyde was still sitting aft, and the old Irishwoman gone; so I stepped to the taffrail at once, and, for something to be about, I hauled tip the shark-hook from astern. The moment I caught her eye, the young lady smiled—by way of making up, no doubt, for the old one. "How very lonely it is!" said she, rising and looking out; "the ship almost seems deserted, except by us!" "By Jove! I almost wish it were," thought I. "A dead calm, madam," I said, "and likely to hold—the under-swell's gone quite down, and a haze growing." "Are we sure ever to leave this spot then?" asked she, with a slight look of anxiety. "Never fear it, ma'am," said I; "as soon as the haze melts again, we're near a breeze I assure you—only, by the length of the calm and the heat together, not to speak of our being so far to east'ard, I'm afraid we mayn't get rid of it without a gale at the end to match." "Indeed?" said Miss Hyde. The fact was, Westwood and I had been keeping a log, and calculated just now we were somewhere to south-eastward of Ascension; whereas, by the captain and mate's reckoning, she was much farther to west. "I never thought the sea could appear so awful," said she, as if to herself—"much more than in a storm." "Why, madam," said I, "you haven't exactly seen one this voyage—one needs to be close-hauled off the Cape for that." Somehow or other, in speaking to her, by this time I forgot entirely about keeping up the sham cadet, and slipped into my own way again; so all at once I felt her two dark-blue eyes looking at me, curiously. "How!—why," exclaimed she suddenly, and then laughing, "you seem to know all about it!—why, you speak—have you been studying sea affairs so thoroughly, sir, with your friend, who—but I do think, now, one can scarcely trust to what you have said?" "Well—why—well," said I, fiddling with the shark-hook, "I don't know how it is, but I feel as if I must have been at sea some time or other before;—you wouldn't suppose it, ma'am, but whenever I fix my eyes on a particular rope, I seem almost to know the name of it!" "And its use, too?" asked she, merrily. "I shouldn't wonder!" said I; "perhaps I was born at sea, you know, ma'am?" and I gave a side-look to notice how she took it. "Ah! perhaps!" said Miss Hyde, laughing; "but do you know one sometimes fancies these things; and now I think of it, sir, I even imagined for a moment I had seen yourself before!" "Oh," said I, "that couldn't be the case; I'm sure, for my part, I should recollect clear enough if I'd seen—a—a lady anywhere! I think you said something of the kind, ma'am, that night of the last squall—about the water and the clouds, ma'am, you remember?" The young lady looked away, though a notion seemed to flash through her mind. "Yes," said she, "that terrible rain—you were——" "Washed into the lee-scuppers," said I, indifferently, for I didn't want her to suspect it was I that had kissed her hand in the dark as I carried her in. "I hope Sir Charles and yourself got in safe, madam?" However, she was watching the water alongside, and suddenly she exclaimed—"Dear! what a pretty little fish!" "By heavens!" said I, seeing the creature with its sharp nose and blue bars, as it glanced about near the surface, and then swam in below the ship's bilge again, "that's one of the old villain's pilots—he's lying right across our keel! I wish I could catch that shark!" The pork was of no use for such an old sea-lawyer, and I cast a wistful eye on the Irishwoman's fat pug-dog stretched asleep on her shawl by the bulwark; she was far gone in the family way, and, thought I, "he'd take that in a trice!" I even laid out some marline from a stern-locker, and noticed how neatly one could pass the hook under her belly round to the tail, and seize her so snugly on, muzzled and all; but it was no go, with the devil to pay afterwards. All of a sudden I heard somebody hawking and spitting above the awning forward, near where the cockatoo kept still trying to master his own name. "The Yankee, for a thousand!" thought I, "is Daniel trying to walk along the spanker-boom!" Next, someone sung out, "Hal-loo-oo-oo!" as if there was a tomahawk over him, ready to split his brain. Miss Hyde looked alarmed, when the Scotch mate, as I thought, roared, "Shiver my tops'ls!" then it was a sailor hailing gruffly, "Bloody Capting Brown—bloody Capting Brown, damn your—Capting Brown!" "Somebody drunk aloft!" thought I, walking forward to see; when a funny little black head peeped round the awning, with a yellow nose as sharp as a marlinspike, and red spectacles, seemingly, round its keen little eyes; then, with a flutter and a hop, the steward's pet Mina-bird came down, and lighted just under the cockatoo. "Ha!" said I, laughing, "it's only Parson Barnacle!" as the men called him—a sooty little creature scarce bigger than a blackbird, with a white spot on each wing, and a curious pair of natural glasses on his head, which they kept in the forecastle and taught all sorts of "jaw," till they swore he could have put the ship about, took kindly to tar, and hunted the cockroaches like a cat. No doubt he was glad to meet his countryman the cockatoo, but Tippoo stuck up his crest, swelled his chops, and looked dreadfully frightened; while the Mina-bird[9] cocked his head on one side, gave a knowing wink as it were, though all the time as grave with his spectacles as a real parson. "How's her head?" croaked he, in a voice like a quarter-master's, "blowing hard!" "Damn Capting Brown!" and hopped nearer to the poor cockatoo, who could stand it no longer, but hooked himself up the backstay as fast as possible, out of sight, the chain running with him: and just as I swung myself clear of the awning to run aloft for a catch of it, out flew Parson Barnacle to the end of the crojack-yard, while the cockatoo gave a flap that loosed the kitmagar's lubberly hitch, and sent him down with his wings spread on the water. At another time it wouldn't have cost me a thought to go head-foremost after him, when I heard his young mistress exclaiming, "Oh, poor dear Tippoo will be drowned!" but recollecting our hungry green friend on the other side, I jumped down for the end of a rope to slip myself quietly alongside with. However, at the very moment, Tom the man-o'-war's man happening to come up from the fore-hatchway to throw something overboard, and seeing Miss Hyde's cockatoo, off went his shoes and jacket at once, and I heard the splash as he struck the water. I had scarce time to think, either, before I saw Mick O'Hooney's red head shoot up on deck, and heard him sing out, "Man overboard, be the powers, boys! Folly my lader! Hurroo!" and over he sprang. "Here's dip," said another, and in half a minute every man that could swim was floundering in the smooth water alongside, or his head showing as it came up,—pitching the cockatoo to each other, and all ready to enjoy their bathe; though, for my part, I made but one spring to the ship's starboard quarter, to use the only chance of saving the thoughtless fellows from a bloody fate to some of them. I knew the shark would be cautious at first, on such a sudden to-do, and I had marked his whereabouts while the men were all well toward the bows; and "hang it!" thought I, seeing the old woman's fat pug in my way, "Dianny, or die-all; I bear no malice, but you must go for it, my beauty!" As quick as thought, I made one turn of marline round her nose, took off the pork, and lashed her fast on to the hook all standing, in spite of her squeaks; then twisted the lady's shawl round the chain for a blind to it, and flung the whole right over the larboard quarter, where I guessed the old fellow would be slewing round astern to have a lookout before he went fairly in chase. I watched the line sink slowly with the weight over the gunwale for half a minute, afraid to let him see my head, and trembling for fear I should hear a cry from one of the men; when jerk went the rope clear of a belaying-pin as he ran off with his bait. I took a quick turn to hook him smartly in the throat, and then eased off again till the "cleets" brought him up with a "surge" fit to have parted the line, had it not been good new three-inch rope—though, as it was, the big Indiaman would soon have sheered stern-round to the force of it, if he'd only pulled fair. The young lady stood noticing what I did, first in a perplexed sort of way, and then with no small surprise, especially when the shark gave every now and then a fiercer tug, as he took a sweep astern: by this time, however, everybody was on deck in a crowd, the passengers all in a flurry, and half of the men scrambling up from alongside to tail on to the line, and run him out of water. So away they went with it full speed towards the bows, as soon as the ladies were out of the way—dragging two or three cadets back foremost, head over heels, down the poop stair—till, in spite of his tugging, the shark's round snout showed over the taffrail, with the mouth wide open under his chin, as it were, and one row of teeth laid flat behind another, like a comb-maker's shop. A running bowline passed round his handsome waist, then another pull, and over he came on the poop, floundering fourteen feet long, and flourishing his tail for room, till the carpenter chopped it across, in a lucky moment, with his axe.

All hands gathered round the shark to see him cut up, which was as good as a play to them, becalmed as we were; when, to my no small dismay, I heard Mrs Brigadier Brady's loud voice asking where her dog was; and the Brigadier himself, who seemed more afraid of his wife than anybody else, kept poking about with his red-faced English butler to find the animal. "For godsake," said he, in a half whisper, twenty times over, "haven't ye seen Mrs Brady's dog, any of ye?—she'll rout the ship inside out for it, captain, if we don't soon ase her mind!" However, I knew only Miss Hyde was aware who caught the shark, and as she didn't appear to have told, why of course I kept all fast, myself. "Here's a 'baccy-box!" sung out the big old boatswain, standing astride over the tail, while the cook and his black mate ripped away from the tail up. "Hand over, if ye please, sir," said 'ugly' Harry, it's mine's, Mr Burton!" Harry gave it a wipe on his knee, and coolly bit a quid off the end of his lost pigtail. The next thing was Ford's hat, which no one claimed, so black Sambo clapped it on his woolly head. "What's that you've got there now, Sambo?" said the boatswain, "out with it, my lad!" "Golly!" chuckled the nigger, rolling the whites of his eyes and grinning like mad; "oh sar, misser Barton! dis 'ere shark riglar navligator! I 'clare to you, sar, um got chr'ometer aboard! Oh gum! berry much t'ink dis you own lost silber tickler, misser Barton!" "Bless me, so it is, my lad!" said the boatswain, as the black handed him a silver watch as big as a turnip, and he looked at the cook, who was busy fumbling with his knife. "Sorry as you was taxed with it, doctor!"[10] said he, doubtfully,—"well I'm blowed, though!—it only goes an hour and a-half,—and here it's a-ticking yet!" Here a burst of laughter went round, and somebody sung out, "Maybe the ould pawn-broking Judas of a shark winded it up, hisself, jist to mark the time o' his 'goin' off the hooks'!" "I say, doctor!" hailed another, "too bloody bad, an't it though, to cut up yer uncle?" "Ha! ha! ha!" cried the cadets and writers, looking at the Scotch surgeon, "d'ye hear that, doctor? I wouldn't stand it! They say you ain't particular in Edinbro', though! Some rum mistakes happened there, eh, doctor?" The Scotchman got into a passion at this, being the worst cut they could give any fellow from a country where they were famous for kindred and body-snatching at once—but all of a sudden there was a "Hulloo! Shiver my taw'sels! What's this? Let's see!" and the whole poopful of us were shoving together, and jumping on each other's shoulders to have a look. "Well, we-ell!" said the old boatswain, as he peered curiously into the mess of shark's bowels—"I'll be d——d!" "The likes o' that now!" croaked the old sailmaker, lifting up his two hands, "tan't lucky, Mr Burton!" "My eye! them's not young sharks, anyhow!" said one of the men. "What's t'ou think they be, mun," said the north-country Chips, "but litter o' yoong blind poops? an' here's t' ou'd un, see, as deed's mutton! Dang him, but some un's got an' baited t' hook wi't, there's nou't else in 's guts!" The whole poop was one roar of laughing, when Mrs Brady's pug was found delivered of four pups, inside the shark, since she went overboard, and two of 'em alive; the news ran fore and aft in a moment. "Took short she's been, Jack!" said one. "Beats the profit Joney!" "I say, 'mate, them whelps is born twice over. Blessed if my Sal at home, now, wouldn't give a year's 'lotment for one on 'em!" "Poor devil!" said one of the writers, "she must have been sadly in want of a lying-in hospital!" "Look out, all hands of ye!" cried some one, "there's the old girl herself coming on deck! sharp's the word!" And away we scuttled right and left, some aloft, and some down one poop-ladder, as Mrs Brady, with the Brigadier and his butler after her, came fuming up the other. The black made one spring over the quarter as soon as he saw her; but the Irish topman, Mick, slipped his foot amongst the shark's blood, and rolled on his back, while the old bo'sun made stand in the thick of it behind. "Saze the villains, I charge ye, Brigadier!" screamed Mrs Brady, though he and his manservant only kept dodging the boatswain round a sort of a quagmire of blood and grease, while the old vixen caught Mick by his red hair and whiskers. "Where's my dog, ye murdering spalpeen?" said she, panting for breath, "what have ye done with my Dianny, ye monsther? Spake, or I'll——" "Be the holy elaven thousand, yer ladyship!" said Mick, "an' it's lost did ye think she wor! isn't there five of 'em back! Whisper! yer ladyship's riv'rence,—she's laid in, poor craythure, an'——" "Oh! you Irish thief!" roared Mrs Brady, hitting him a slap as he tried to rise, that sent him down again, "is it that you'd say to——" "No, thin'," sung out Mick, rubbing his ear, and guarding with one arm,—"rest her sowl! but I'm innycint! Av that'll plase, mim, och an' I'll swear she died a vargin ——" Tug came both Mrs Brady's hands through his hair, while the butler caught a kick in the stomach from Mick's foot. "Murther!" gasped the poor fellow, "sure an' I dun' know she was ayven a faym'le; bad luck t'ye, 'mates, give uz a hand. Och, an' is this the road ye thrate a counthryman, mim?" "Me your countryman! ye bogtrottin' wretch ye!" screamed the old fury, her brogue getting worse the more she heated,—"take that!—don't rise, if ye dare!" "Faix thin, yer ladyship darlin'," said O'Hooney, grinning in spite of his hard usage, "I tould a lie,—och, lave some o' me hair!—murther intirely! I'm——" All the time none of us could stir for sheer laughing, but seeing poor Mick like to fare hard with the old vixen, who was near as big as himself, and as strong as a horse, I whispered to the men to run round and let go the poop awning—so down it came, with a few buckets of water in it, over the five of them; and you just saw Mrs Brady's sharp elbow through the canvass, lifted for the next slap, when we had her all fast, struggling like a cat in a bag, while O'Hooney and the boatswain crept out below. "D——d breeze that we've had!" said the bo'sun, shaking himself on the forecastle. "Couldn't ye've bowsed over on the old jade's pitticuts, Mick?" said one of his shipmates, "and capsized her all standing?" "Sorra fut you'd stir, yourself, 'mate," said he, wiping his face, "wid such a shay grinnydeer! she'd manhandle ye as asy's twurl a mop!"

After all this you may suppose one didn't weary even of the calm. As soon as the decks were clear, most of us took tea on the poop, for fear of meeting the Brigadier's lady below, every one holding his cup ready for a start. Rollock the planter, who had slept and swung in his cot half the day, was like to split his sides when he heard the story: by the way, I believe both the little pups lived and throve on goats' milk, and the men called one of them 'Young Jonah,' though he had so much of the terrier that the old lady disowned him. It was quite dark, and cool for a night near the Line, though not a ripple stirred, and I staid after the rest to smoke a cigar, stopping every now and then near the aftermost bull's-eye, that shone through the deck, and thinking of Lota. "By Jove!" thought I, "she hasn't said a word of it. Think of having a secret, almost, with her!" After all, though, I felt well enough I might as soon hope for the Emperor of China's daughter as for such a creature, unless something wonderfully strange fell out: deucedly in love as I was, I wasn't puppy enough to fancy I'd ever succeed by mere talk; "but here's for a bold heart and a weather-eye!" I thought; "and if these can do it, I will!" said I aloud, when some one clapped me on the shoulder. "Well, Tom, are you there?" said I, thinking it was Westwood. "Why," answered old Rollock, laughing, "not so far wrong, my boy,—but as it's thirty years since any one called me so, I thought you were, for a moment!—meditating, eh?" "Only a cigar before bed-time—will you have one, sir?" "Ah—well," said the planter, "I'll take a light, at least—queer life this, eh? Shouldn't know this was water, now—more like train-oil! Looks junglish a little under the stars yonder." "Nothing but the haze come down," said I; "'tis clear enough aloft, though,—look out for squalls ere long!" "As your friend Ford would have it,"—said Rollock; "but how a lad of your spirit can manage to stand this so well, I can't think!" "Deyvilish dull, sir!" said I, with a lazy drawl, "but can't be helped, you know." Come, come, now, don't mend it by copying poor Winterton," chuckled Rollock; "you're no fool, Collins, so don't pretend to be. I say though, Collins my boy," continued he, rather gravely, "there is one really soft piece I begin to notice in you lately—I fear you're falling in love with that girl!" "I, sir!" said I; "dear me! what makes you—" "My dear boy," went on the kind-hearted old fellow, "I take an interest in you; no lad of your stuff practises all this tomfoolery without something under it, and I see you've some serious meaning or other. Did you know her before?" "Oh—why—not exactly," I dropped out, taken rather short. "I see, I see!" he went on; "but I tell you what, Collins, a cadet can do nothing madder than marry at first landing; she had better be a cold-hearted flirt, after all—though, God knows, no man can say what that does but one that's—felt it! I—I mean I knew—a young fellow that went out as ambitious as you can be, and he$mdash;" Here the planter's voice shook a little, and he stopped, puffing at his cheroot till the short end of it just lighted up his hook nose and part of his big white whiskers in the dark, only you saw his eye glistening too. "Devil take it!" thought I, "who'd have expected the old boy to be so sharp, though." "Well but, Collins," said he at last, "just you enter heart and soul into your profession; I'd stake my life you'll rise, who knows how far—get your captain's pay even, then you may think of it—that is, if she—" "Why," said I, "d'ye suppose the Judge would—" "Judge!" exclaimed Mr Rollock, "when—worse and worse! weren't we talking of pretty little Kate Fortescue? My dear boy, you don't intend to say you mean Miss Hyde! I left that to your first officer, as they call him!—why, that young girl will be the beauty of Calcutta." At this I fancied some one else gave a whistle near us. "Of course, sir," said I, raising my voice, "you didn't suppose me such a fool." In fact, Miss Fortescue, had never entered my head at all. "Something strange about you, Collins!" I said the planter, a little shortly; "you puzzle me, I must say." As we turned to go below, I heard somebody walk down the poop-ladder, and then the mate's voice sting out from the binnacle to "strike eight bells!"

The calm was as dead as ever next morning, and, if possible, hotter than before—not a rope changed aloft, nor a cloth in the sails moved; but it was pretty hazy round us, which made the water a sort of pale old-bottle blue, that sickened you to look at; and a long dipping and drawling heave gradually got up as if there were blankets on it; the ship, of course, shifting round and round again slowly, like a dog going to lie down, and the helm getting every now and then a sudden jolt. Near noon it cleared up with a blaze of light, as it were; the sole difference at first being, that what looked like melting lead before, now turned into so many huge bright sheets of tin, every bend of it as good as flashing up thousands of needles in your eyes. A good deal surprised we were, however, shortly after, to find there was a sail in sight, another square-rigged vessel, seemingly standing up on the horizon six or seven miles off. Being end on to us at the time, though every glass in the ship was brought to bear on her, 'twas hard to say what she was; then she and we went bobbing and going up and down with a long round heave between us, slowly enough, but always at cross purposes, like two fellows see-sawing on a plank over a dyke. When she was up, we were down, and we just caught sight of her royal, no bigger than a gull on the water; yerk went our rudder, and next time she seemed to have vanished out of the glasses altogether, till we walked round to the other side, and made her out again under the awning on the opposite beam. At length she lifted broad to us for a moment or two, showing a long pale sort of hull with a red streak, apparently without ports, and brig-rigged, though the space betwixt her two masts was curious for that kind of craft. "Wonderful light-sparred for her size that brig, sir," said the third officer, dropping his glass. "Ay, so she is, Mr Small," replied Captain Williamson: "what would you call her, then? You've as good knowledge of craft as any man, Mr Small, I think." "Why," said the old mate, screwing his eye harder for a long look, "I'd say she's—not a cruiser, Captin Williamson—no, nor a Greenock Indyman—nor a—" "Oh!" said Finch, "some African timberer or other, I daresay, Small." "Well, Mr Finch," said the third mate, handing him the glass, "mayhap you'll just say yourself, sir." "No, no, Mr Small," said the captain; "I'd trust to you as soon as any man, sir, in a matter of the kind." "Why, the hull of her's wonderful Yankee-like, sir," said Small again; "I'm thinking they've been and squared her out of a schooner—and a d——d bad job of it, sir! Bless us! what a lean-headed pair o'taups'ls, too,—as high as our fore one, sir." Suddenly the old mate gave his thigh a slap, and laid down his glass on the capstan: "Lord, sir!" said he, "that's the thing; she's nothing more nor less but a John Crapeau, Captain Williamson!" "I daresay you're right, Mr Small," said the skipper, taking the glass; "just so,—ay, ay,—I thought it myself!" "Pity old Nap's boxed up yonder then, sir," said the first officer, rubbing his hands and pointing to eastward, where he thought St Helena was: "why, sir, we should have the peppering of the Frenchman; I don't suppose we'd need to care though she were twice the size—and what's more, we want fresh water before seeing the Cape, sir!" "Well," said the old skipper, laughing, "that is the worst of it, Finch! As for spirit, you've as much as any man, Mr Finch, and I do think we'd know how to take the weather-hand of him—eh?" "I'll be bound we should!" said Finch, laughing too. As for the Frenchman, both Westwood and I had made him out by his rig at once, thanks to man-o'-war practice; but we smiled to each other at the notion of making a prize of Monsieur, under Finch's management, with not a gun that could have been used for half a day, and everything else at sixes and sevens.

In a little while it was proposed amongst the cadets, hot as the calm was, to make a party to go and see the French vessel. Ford of course was at the head of it. Winterton thought they would no doubt have plenty of champagne on board, and some others, who could row, wanted to try their hands. Accordingly the captain's gig was got ready, a sort of awning rigged over it, and two or three of them got in; when one, who was Miss Fortescue's cousin, persuaded her to join, if Mr Rollock would come. Then the Brigadier, being rather a goodhumoured man, said he should like to face the French once more, and Daniel Snout shoved himself in without asking by your leave. One of the men was sent to take charge; and as there was room still, I was just going to jump in too, for the amusement of it, when Mrs Brady hurried to the taffrail with her parasol up, and said, if the Brigadier went, she should go as well,—in fact, the old woman's jealousy of her rib was always laughably plain. "Hang it! then," thought I, "catch me putting myself in the same boat with her! the same ship is enough, in all conscience!" So away they were lowered off the davits, and began pulling in tolerable style for the brig, a couple of hours' good work for such hands at mid-day, smooth water as it was. "Now, gentlemen," said the first officer briskly, as we looked after, them dipping over the long bright blue heave—"now, gentlemen, and ladies also, if they please, we'll have another party as soon as the men get their dinner—give these gentlemen a full hour's law, we'll overhaul them. See the larboard quarter-boat clear, Jacobs." It was just the least possible hazy again behind the brig in the distance, and as the Judge stood talking to his daughter on the poop, I heard her say, "Is the other vessel not coming nearer already, papa? See how much more distinct its sails are this moment—there!—one almost observes the white canvass!" "Pooh, Lota child!" answered Sir Charles, "that cannot be—'tis perfectly calm, don't you know?" In fact, however, Lota showed a sailor's eye for air, and I was noticing it myself; but it was only the air made it look so. "All! now," exclaimed she again, "'tis as distant as ever! That must have been the light:" besides, the brig had been lifting on a wide swell. "I beg pardon, Sir Charles," said the mate, coming up and taking off his cap, "but might I use the freedom—perhaps yourself and Miss Hyde would like to visit the French brig?" The Judge looked at his daughter as much as to ask if she would like it. "Oh yes! so much!" exclaimed she, her bright eyes sparkling, "shall we? No, the deuce! Not I!" said Sir Charles: "I shall take my siesta. Quite safe, sir—eh?" "Oh, quite safe, Sir Charles!" said Finch, "a dead calm, sir—I'll take the utmost care you may be sure, Sir Charles—as safe as the deck, sir!" "Oh, very well," replied the Judge, and he walked down to see after his tiffin. The young lady was going down the quarter-gallery stair, when I caught my opportunity to say—"I hope you'll excuse it, Miss Hyde, ma'am—but I do trust you'll not risk going in the boat so far, just now!" Half a minute after I spoke, she turned round, and looked at me with a curious sort of expression in her charming face, which I couldn't make out,—whether it was mischievous, whether it was pettish, or whether 'twas inquisitive. "Dear me!" said she, "why—do you—" "The weather might change," I said, looking round about, "and I shouldn't wonder if it did—or a swell might get up—or—" "I must say, Mr—Mr Collins," said she, laughing slightly, "you are very gloomy in anticipating—almost timorous, I declare! I wonder how you came to be so weather-wise! But why did you not advise—poor Mrs Brady, now?" I couldn't see her face as she spoke, but the tone of the last words made me feel I'd have given worlds to look round and see what it was like at the moment. "Perhaps, ma'am," said I, "you may remember the rain?" "Well, we shall see, sir!" replied she, glancing up with a bright sparkle in her eye for an instant, but only toward the end of the spanker-boom, as it were; and then tripping down the stair.

I kept watching the gig pull slowly toward the brig in the distance, and the cutter making ready on our quarter, till the men were in, with Jacobs amongst them; where they sat waiting in no small glee for the mate and his party, who came up a few minutes after: and I was just beginning to hope that Violet Hyde had taken my advice, when she and another young lady came out of the round-house, dressed for the trip, and the captain gallantly handed them in. "My compliments to the French skipper, Mr Finch," said the captain, laughing, "and if he an't better engaged, happy to see him to dinner at two bells[11] in the dog-watch, we'll make it!" "Ay, ay, sir," said Finch. "Now then!-all ready?" "Smythe's coming yet," said a "writer." "We can't wait any longer for him," replied the mate; "ease away the falls, handsomely, on deck!" "Stop," said I, "I'll go, then!" "Too late, young gentleman," answered the mate, sharply, "you'll cant us gunnel up, sir!—lower away, there!" However, I caught hold of a rope and let myself down the side, time enough to jump lightly into her stern-sheets the moment they touched the water. The officer stared at me as he took the yokelines to steer, but he said nothing, and the boat shoved off; while Miss Hyde's blue eyes only opened out, as it were, for an instant, at seeing me drop in so unceremoniously; and her companion laughed. "I shouldn't have supposed you so nimble, Mr Collins!" said the writer, looking at me through his eye-glass. "Oh," said I, "Ford and I have practised climbing a good deal lately." "Ha! ha!" said the civilian, "shouldn't be surprised, now, if your friend were to take the navigation out of Mr Finch's hands, some day!" "Bless me, yes, sir!" said Finch, with a guffaw, as he sat handling the lines carelessly, and smiling to the ladies, with his cap over one ear; "to be sure—ha! ha! ha!—it's certain, Mr Beveridge! Wouldn't you take the helm here, sir?" to me. "Oh, thank you, no, sir!" replied I, modestly, "I'm not quite so far yet—but we've got a loan of Hamilton Moore and Falconer's Dictionary from the midshipmen, and mean to—" "No doubt you'll teach us a trick or two yet!" said Finch, with a sneer. "Now, for instance," said I coolly, "aloft yonder, you've got the throat halliards jammed in the block with a gasket, and the mizen-topsail cluelines rove wrong-side of it, which Hamilton Moore distinctly—" "Hang the lubber that did it, so they are!" exclaimed the mate, looking through the spy-glass we had with us. "Now you've your jibs hauled down, sir," continued I, "and if a squall came on abeam, no doubt they'd wish to shorten sail from aft, and keep her away—however, she would broach-to at once, as Hamilton Moore shows must—" "You and Hamilton Moore be ——; no fear of a squall just now, at any rate, ladies," said he. "Stretch out, men—let's head upon Mr Ford and his gig, yet!" Terribly hot it was close to the water, and so stifling that you scarce could breathe, while the long glassy swell was far higher than one thought it from the ship's deck; however, we had an awning hoisted, and it refreshed one a little both to hear the water and feel it below again, as the cutter went sliding and rippling over it to long slow strokes of the oars; her crew being all man-o'-war's-men, that knew how to pull together and take it easy. The young ladies kept gazing rather anxiously at the big old Seringapatam, as she rose and dropped heavily on the calm, amused though they were at first by a sight of their late home turning "gable" on to us, with her three masts in one, and a white straw hat or two watching us from her taffrail; whereas, ahead, they only now and then caught a glimpse of the brig's upper canvass, over a hot, hazy, sullen-looking sweep of water as deep-blue as indigo—with six hairy brown breasts bending before them to the oars, and as many pair of queer, rollicking, fishy sort of eyes fixed steadily on their bonnets, in a shame-faced, down-hill kind of way, like fellows that couldn't help it. In fact, I noticed a curious grin now and then on every one of the men's faces, and a look to each other, when they caught sight of myself, sitting behind the mate as he paid off his high-flying speeches; Jacobs, again, regarding me all the while out of the whites of his eyes, as it were, in a wooden, unknowing fashion, fit to have made a cat laugh—seeing he never missed his mark for one moment, and drew back his head at every pull with the air of a drunk man keeping sight of his waistcoat buttons. By the time we were half-way, the swell began to get considerable, and the mate stepped up abaft to look for the gig. "Can't see the boat yet," said he; "give way there, my lads—stretch out and bend your backs! there's the brig!" "Hal-lo!" exclaimed he again, "she's clued up royals and to'gallants'ls! By heavens! there go her tops'ls down too! Going to bend new sails, though, I daresay, for it looks clear enough there." "The ship's run up a flag aft, sir," said Jacobs. "The—so she has," said Finch, turning round; "recall signal! What's wrong? Sorry we can't dine aboard the French vessel this time, ladies!" said he—"extremely so—and the griffins there after all, too. I hope you won't be disappointed in any great measure, Miss Hyde—but if you wished it now, Miss, I'd even keep on, and—" The young lady coloured a little at this, and turned to her companion just as I remembered her doing from the dragoon in the ball-room. "Do you not think, Miss Wyndham," said she, "we ought not to wish any officer of the ship should get reproved, perhaps, on our account?" "Oh dear no," said Miss Wyndham; "indeed, Mr Finch, you had better go back, if the captain orders you." "Hold on there with your larboard oars, you lubbers!" sang out Finch, biting his lip, and round we went pulling for the Indiaman again; but by this time the swell was becoming so heavy as to make it hard work, and it was soon rarely we could see her at all; for nothing gets up so fast as a swell, sometimes, near the Line; neither one way nor the other, but right up and down, without a breath of wind, in huge smooth hills of water, darker than lead, not a speck of foam, and the sky hot and clear. 'Twas almost as if a weight had been lifted from off the long heaving calm, and the whole round of it were going up dark into the sky, in one weltering jumble, the more strange that it was quiet: sweep up it took the boat, and the bright wet oar-blades spread feathering out for another stroke to steady her, let alone making way; though that was nothing to the look of the Indiaman when we got near. She was rolling her big black hull round in it as helpless as a cask; now one side, then the other, dipping gunwale to in the round swell that came heaping up level with her very rail, and went sheeting out bright through the bulwarks again the masts jumping, clamps and boom-irons creaking on the yards, and every sail on her shaking, as her lower yardarms took it by turns to aim at the water—you heard all the noise of it, the plunge of her flat broadside, the plash from her scuppers, the jolts of her rudder, and voices on board; and wet you may swear she was from stem to stern. "Comfortable!" thought I; "we've come home too soon of a washing-day, and may wait at the door, I fear!" "Oh dear," exclaimed the three griffins, "how are we to get in!" and the young ladies looked pale at the sight. The mate steered for her larboard quarter without saying a word, but I saw he lost coolness and got nervous—not at all the man for a hard pinch: seemingly, he meant to dash alongside and hook on. "If you do, sir," said I, "you'll be smashed to staves;" and all at once the ship appeared almost over our heads, while the boat took a send in. I looked to Jacobs and the men, and they gave one long stroke off, that seemed next heave to put a quarter of a mile between us. "D——d close shave that," said the bowman. "Begs pardon, sir," said Jacobs, touching his hat, with his eyes still fixed past the mate, upon me; "hasn't we better keep steadying off, sir, till such time as the swell—" "Hold your jaw, sirrah," growled Finch, as he looked ahead still more flurried; "there's a squall coming yonder, gentlemen, and if we don't get quick aboard, we may lose the ship in it! Pull round, d'ye hear there." Sure enough, when we lifted, there was the French brig clear out against a sulky patch of dark-gray sky, growing in as it were far off behind the uneven swell, till it began to pale; the Indiaman's topsails gave a loud flap out, too, one after the other, and fell to the mast again. Suddenly I caught the glance of Violet Hyde's eyes watching me seriously as I sat overhauling the Indiaman for a notion of what to do, and I fancied the charming girl had somehow got nearer to me during the last minute or two, whether she knew it or not: at any rate the thought of protecting such a creature made all my blood tingle. "Never fear, ma'am," said I, in a half whisper; when Finch's eye met mine, and he threw me a malicious look, sufficient to show what a devil the fellow would be if ever he had occasion; however, he gave the sign for the men to stretch out again, and high time it was, as the Indiaman's maintopsail made another loud clap like a musket-shot. Still he was holding right for her quarter—the roll the ship had on her was fearful, and it was perfect madness to try it; but few merchant mates have chanced to be boating in a Line swell, I daresay: when just as we came head on for her starboard counter, I took the boat's tiller a sudden shove with my foot, as if by accident, that sent us sheering in close under her stern. The bowman prized his boat-hook into the rudder-chains, where the big hull swung round us on both sides like an immense wheel round its barrel, every stern-window with a face watching us—though one stroke of the loose rudder would have stove us to bits, and the swell was each moment like to make the men let go, as it hove us up almost near enough to have caught a hand from the lower-deck. "For godsake steady your wheel," said I; "hard a-port!" while the mate was singing out for a line. "Now, up you go," said I to Jacobs in the hubbub, "look sharp, and send us down a whip and basket from the boom-end, as we did once in the Pandora, you know!" Up the rope went Jacobs like a cat, hand over hand; and five minutes after, down came the "basket" over our heads into the boat, made out of a studding-sail and three capstan-bars, like a big grocer's scale dangling from the spanker-boom. The mate proposed to go up first with Miss Hyde, but she hung back in favour of her companion; so away aloft went Miss Wyndham and he, swinging across the Indiaman's stern as she rolled again, with a gantline to steady them in—Finch holding on to the whip by one hand, and the other round the young lady, while my blood crept at the thought how it might have been Lota herself! As soon as it came down again, she looked for a moment from me to Jacobs, when Captain Williamson himself shouted over the taffrail, "Sharp, sharp there! the squall's coming down! she'll be up in the wind! let's get the helm free!" and directly after I found myself swinging twenty feet over the water with Violet Hyde, as the ship heeled to a puff that filled the spanker, and rose again on a huge swell, gathering steerage way, while every bolt of canvass in her flapped in again at once like thunder. I felt her shudder and cling to me—there was one half minute we swung fairly clear of the stern, they stopped hoisting,—and I almost thought I'd have wished that same half minute half a day; but a minute after she was in the Judge's arms on the poop; the men had contrived to get the cadets on board, too, and the boat was dragging astern, with the line veered out, and her crew still in it baling her out.

I fixed my eyes at once, breathless as we of the boat-party were, on the weather-signs and the other vessel, which everybody on the poop was looking at, as soon as we were safe, and our friends in the gig had to be thought of. The short top-swell was beginning to soften in long regular seas, with just air enough aloft to give our light sails a purchase on it, and put an end to the infernal clatter; but the vapour had gathered quicker than you could well fancy behind the brig in the distance, so that she looked already a couple of miles nearer, rising up two or three times on as many huge swells that shone like blue glass, while she steadied herself like a tightrope dancer on the top of them, by a studding-sail set high from each side. On the far horizon beyond her, you'd have thought there was a deep black ditch sunk along under the thickening blue haze, as it stretched out past her to both hands, till actually the solid breast of it seemed to shove the brig bodily forward over the oily-like water, every spar and rope distinct; then the fog lifted below as if the teeth of a saw came spitting through it, and we saw her bearing down toward us—cloud, water, and all, as it were—with a white heap of foam at her bows. "Brace up sharp, Mr Finch!" said the old skipper hastily, "and stand over to meet her. Confound this! we must have these people out of that brig in a trice! we shall soon have a touch of the Horse Latitudes, or my name's not Richard Williamson—ay, and bid good-bye to 'em, too, I think!"

For a quarter of an hour or so, accordingly, we kept forging slowly ahead, while the brig continued to near us. No one spoke, almost—you heard the lazy swash of the water round our fore-chains, and the stillness aboard had a gloomy enough effect, as one noticed the top of the haze creep up into round vapoury heads upon the sky, and felt it darkening aloft besides. We were scarce three quarters of a mile apart, and could see her sharp black bows drip over the bright sheathing, as she rolled easily on the swell, when the Indiaman suddenly lost way again, sheered head round, and slap went all her sails from the royals down, as if she had fired a broadside. Almost the next moment, a long, low growl ran muttering and rumbling far away round the horizon, from the clouds and back to them again, as if they had been some huge monster or other on the watch, with its broad grim muzzle shooting quietly over us as it lay; the brig dipped her gilt figurehead abeam of us, and then showed her long red streak; the swell sinking fast, and the whole sea, far and wide coming out from the sky as dark and round as the mahogany drum-head of the capstan.

"Bless me, Small," said the Captain, "but I hope they've not knocked a hole in my gig—ay, there they are, I think, looking over the brig's quarter; but don't seem to have a boat to swim! Get the cutter hauled alongside, Mr Stebbing," continued he to the fourth mate, "and go aboard for them at once—confounded bothering, this! Mind get my gig safe, sir, if you please—can you parley-voo, though, Mr Stebbing?" "Not a word, sir," said the young mate, a gentlemanly, rather soft fellow, whom the other three all used to snub. "Bless me, can't we muster a bit o' French amongst us?" said the skipper; "catch a monshoor that knows a word of English like any other man—'specially if they've a chance of keeping my gig!" "Well, sir," said I, "I'll be happy to go with the officer, as I can speak French well enough!" "Thank ye, young gentleman, thank ye," said he, "you'll do it as well as any man, I'm sure—only look sharp, if you please, and bring my gig with you!" So down the side we bundled into the cutter, and pulled straight for the brig, which had just hoisted French colours, not old "three-patches," of course, but the new Restoration flag.

I overhauled her well as we got near, and a beautiful long schooner-model she was, with sharp bows, and a fine easy-run hull from stem to stern, but dreadfully dirty and spoilt with top-bulwarks, as if they meant to make her look as clumsy as possible; while the brig-rig of her aloft, with the ropes hanging in bights and hitches, gave her the look of a hedge-parson on a race-horse: at the same time, I counted six closed ports of a side, in her red streak, the exact breadth and colour of itself. Full of men, with a long gun, and schooner-rigged, she could have sailed round the Indiaman in a light breeze, and mauled her to any extent.

They hove us a line out of the gangway at once, the mate got up her side as she rolled gently over, and I followed him: the scene that met our eyes as soon as we reached her deck, however, struck me a good deal on various accounts. We couldn't at first see where Mr Rollock and his party might be, for the shadow of a thick awning after the glare of the water, and the people near the brig's gangway—but I saw two or three dark-faced, very French-like individuals, in broad-brimmed straw hats and white trousers, seemingly passengers; while about twenty Kroomen and Negroes, and as many seamen with unshaven chins, ear-rings, and striped frocks, were in knots before the longboat, turned keel up amidships, careless enough, to all appearance, about us. One of the passengers leant against the mainmast, with his arms folded over his broad chest, and his legs crossed, looking curiously at us as we came up; his dark eyes half closed, the shadow of his hat down to his black mustache, and his shirt-collar open, showing a scar on his hairy breast; one man, whom I marked for the brig's surgeon, beside him; and another waiting for us near the bulwarks—a leathery-faced little fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a sort of cocked hat fore-and-aft on his cropped head. "Moi, Monsieur," said he, slapping his hand on his breast as the mate looked about him, "oui, je suis capitaine, monsieur." "Good-day, sir;" said Stebbing, "we've just come aboard for our passengers—and the gig—sir, if you please." "Certainement, monsieur," said the French skipper, bowing and taking a paper from his pocket, which he handed to the mate, "I comprind, sare—monsieur le capitaine d' la fregatte Anglaise, il nous demande nos—vat you call,—peppares—voilà! I have 'ad le honneur, messieurs, to be already sarch by vun off vos crusoes—pour des esclaves! vous imaginez cela, messieurs!" and here the worthy Frenchman cast up his hands and gave a grin which seemed meant for innocent horror. "Slaifs! chez le brigantin Louis Bourbon, Capitaine Jean Duprez? Non!" said he, talking away like a windmill, "de Marseilles à l'Isle de France, avec les vins choisis——" "You mistake, monsieur," said I, in French; "the ship is an Indiaman, and we have only come for our friends, who are enjoying your wine, I daresay, but we must——" "Comment?" said he, staring, "what, monsieur? have de gotness to——" Here the mustached passenger suddenly raised himself off the mast, and made one stride between us to the bulwarks, where he looked straight out at the Indiaman, his arms still folded, then from us to the French master. He was a noble-looking man, with an eye I never saw the like of in any one else, 'twas so clear, bold, and prompt,—it actually went into you like a sword, and I couldn't help fancying him in the thick of a battle, with thousands of men and miles of smoke. "Duprez," said he, quickly, "je vous le dis encore—debarquez ces miserables!—nous combattrons!" "Then, mon ami," said the surgeon, in a low, cool, determined tone, stepping up and laying a hand on his shoulder, "aussi, nous couperons les ailes de l'Aigle, seulement!—Hush, mon ami, restrain this unfortunate madness of yours!—c'est bien malapropos, à present!" and he whispered something additional, on which the passenger fell back and leant against the main-mast as before. "Ah!" said the French master, shaking his head, and giving his forehead a tap, "le pauvre homme-la! He has had a coup-de-soleil, messieurs, or rather of the moon, you perceive, from sleeping in its rays! Ma foi!" exclaimed he, on my explaining the matter, "c'est pos-sible?—we did suppose your boat intended to visit us, when evidently deterred by the excessive undulation!—My friends, resign yourselves to a misfort—" "Great heavens! Mr Stebbing," said I, "the boat is lost!" "By George! what will the captain say, then!" replied he; however, as soon as I told him the sad truth, poor Stebbing, being a good-hearted fellow, actually put his hands to his face and sobbed. All this time the brig's crew were gabbling and kicking up a confounded noise about something they were at with the spare spars, and in throwing tarpaulins over the hatches; for it was fearfully dark, and going to rain heavy; the slight swell shone and slid up betwixt the two vessels like oil, and the clouds to south-westward had gathered up to a steep black bank, with round coppery heads, like smoke over a town on fire. "Will you go down, messieurs," said the Frenchman, politely, "and taste my vin de—" "No, sir," said I, "we must make haste off, or else—besides, by the way, we couldn't, for you've got all your hatches battened down!" "Diable, so they are!" exclaimed he, "par honneur, gentlemen, I regret the occasion of—ha!" Just before, a glaring brassy sort of touch had seemed to come across the face of the immense cloud; and though every thing, far and wide, was as still as death, save the creaking of the two ships' yards, it made you think of the last trumpet's mouth! But at this moment a dazzling flash leaped zig-zag out of it, running along from one cloud to another, while the huge dark mass, as it were, tore right up, changing and turning its inside out like dust—you saw the sea far away under it, heaving from glassy blue into unnatural-like brown—when crash broke the thunder over our very heads, as if something had fallen out of heaven, then a long bounding roar. The mad French passenger stood up, walked to the bulwarks, and looked out with his hand over his eyes for the next; while the young mate and I tumbled down the brig's side without further to do, and pulled fast for the ship, where we hardly got aboard before there was another wild flash, another tremendous clap, and the rain fell in one clash, more like stone than water, on sea and decks. For half-an-hour we were rolling and soaking in the midst of it, the lightning hissing through the rain, and showing it glitter; while every five minutes came a burst of thunder and then a rattle fit to split one's ears. At length, just as the rain began to slacken, you could see it lift bodily, the standing sheets of it drove right against our canvass and through the awnings,—when we made out the French brig with her jib, topsails, and boom-mainsail full, leaning over as she clove through it before the wind. The squall burst into our wet topsails as loud as the thunder, with a flash almost like the lightning itself, taking us broad abeam; the ship groaned and shook for a minute ere gathering way and falling off, and when she rose and began to go plunging through the black surges, no brig was to be seen: every man on deck let his breath out almost in a cry, scarce feeling as yet but it was equal to losing sight for ever of our late shipmates, or the least hope of them. The passengers, ladies and all, crowded in the companion-hatch in absolute terror, every face aghast, without thinking of the rain and spray: now and then the sulky crest of a bigger wave would be caught sight of beyond the bulwarks, as the sea rose with its green back curling over into white; and you'd have said the shudder ran down into the cabin, at thought of seeing one or other of the lost boat's crew come weltering up from the mist and vanish again. I knew it was of no use, but held on in the weather mizen-rigging, and looked out to westward, against a wild break of light which the setting sun made through the troughs of the sea; once and again I could fancy I saw the boat lift keel up, far off betwixt me and the fierce glimmer. "Oh, do you see them? do you not see it yet!" was passed up to me over and over, from one sharp-pitched voice to another; but all I could answer was to shake my head. At last, one by one, they went below; and after what had happened, I must say I could easily fancy what a chill, dreary-like, awful notion of the sea must have come for the first time on a landsman, not to speak of delicate young girls fresh from home: at sight of the drenched quarterdeck leaning bare down to leeward, the sleet and spray battering bleak against the round-house doors, where I had seen Miss Hyde led sobbing in, with her wet hair about her face; then the ship driving off from where she had lost them, with her three strong lower-masts aslant into the gale, ghastly white and dripping—her soaked sheets of canvass blown gray and stiff into the rigging, and it strained taut as iron; while you saw little of her higher than the tops, as the scud and the dark together closed aloft. Poor Miss Fortescue's mother was in fits below in her berth—the two watches were on the yards aloft, where no eye could see them, struggling hard to furl and reef; so altogether it was a gloomy enough moment. I stayed awhile on deck, wrapped in a peacoat, keeping my feet and hanging on, and thinking how right down in earnest matters could turn of a sudden. I wasn't remarkably thoughtful in these days, I daresay, but there did I keep, straining my eyes into the mist to see I couldn't tell what, and repeating over and over again to myself these few words out of the prayer-book, "In the midst of life we are in death," though scarce knowing what I said.

However, the Indiaman's officers and crew had work enough in managing her at present: after a sunset more like the putting out of him than anything else, with a flaring snuff and a dingy sort of smoke that followed, the wind grew from sou'west into a regular long gale, that drove the tops of the heavy seas into the deadlights astern, rising aft out of the dark like so many capes, with the snow drifting off them over the poop. At midnight, it blew great guns, with a witness; the ship, under storm staysails and close-reefed maintopsail, going twelve knots or more, when, as both the captain and mate reckoned, we were near St Helena on our present course, and to haul on a wind was as much as her spars were worth: her helm was put hard down and we lay to for morning, the ship drifting off bodily to leeward with the water. The night was quite dark, the rain coming in sudden spits out of the wind; you only heard the wet gale sob and hiss through the bare rigging into her storm-canvass, when the look-out men ahead sung out, "Land—land close to starboard!" "Bless me, sir," said the mate to the captain, "it's the Rock —well that we did—" "Hard up! hard up with the helm!" yelled the men again, "it's a ship!" I ran to the weather main-chains and saw a broad black mass, as it were, rising high abeam, and seeming to come out from the black of the night, with a gleam or two in it which they had taken for lights ashore in the island. The Seringapatam's wheel was put up already, but she hung in the gale, doubtful whether to fall off or not; and the moment she did sink into the trough, we should have had a sea over her broadside fit to wash away men, boats, and all—let alone the other ship bearing down at twelve knots. "Show the head of the fore-topmast-staysail!" shouted I with all my strength to the forecastle, and up it went slapping its hanks to the blast—the Indiaman sprang round heeling to her ports on the next sea, main-topsail before the wind, and the staysail down again. Next minute, a large ship, with the foam washing over her cat-heads, and her martingale gear dripping under the huge white bowsprit, came lifting close past us—as black as shadows aloft, save the glimmer of her main-tack to the lanterns aboard—and knot after knot of dim faces above her bulwarks shot by, till you saw her captain standing high in the mizen-chains, with a speaking trumpet. He roared out something or other through it, and the skipper sung out under both his hands, "Ay, ay, sir!" in answer; but it turned out after that nobody knew what it was, unless it might be as I thought, "Where are you going?" The minute following, we saw her quarter-lanterns like two will-o'-the-wisps beyond a wave, and she was gone—a big frigate running under half her canvass, strong though the gale blew.

"Why, Mr Finch," said Captain Williamson, as soon as we had time to draw breath, "who was that, bid show the fo'topmast-stays'l—'twan't you?" "No," said the mate, "I'd like to know who had the hanged impudence to give orders here without—" "Well now, Finch," continued the old skipper, "I'm not sure but that was our only chance at the moment, sir; and if 'twas one of the men, why I'd pass it over, or even give him an extra glass of grog in a quiet way!" No one could say who it was, however; and, for my part, the sight of the frigate made me still more cautious than before of letting out what Westwood and I were: in fact, I couldn't help feeling rather uneasy, and I was glad to hear the superstitious old sailmaker whispering about how he feared there was no luck to be looked for, when "drowned men and ghostesses began to work the ship!" The first streak of dawn was hardly seen, when a sail could be made out in it, far on our lee bow, which the officers supposed to be the frigate; Westwood and I, however, were of opinion it was the French brig, although by sunrise we lost sight of her again. Every one in the cuddy talked of our unfortunate friends, and their melancholy fate; even Ford and Winterton were missed, while old Mr Rollock had been the life of the passengers. But there was naturally still more felt for the poor girl Fortescue; it made all of us gloomy for a day or two; though the fresh breeze, and the Indiaman's fast motion, after our wearisome spell of a calm, did a great deal to bring things round again. Westwood was greatly taken up with my account of the brig and her people, both of us agreeing there was somewhat suspicious about her, though I thought she was probably neither more nor less than a slaver, and he had a notion she was after something deeper: what that might be, 'twas hard to conceive, as they didn't appear like pirates. One thing, however, we did conclude from the matter, that the brig couldn't have been at all inclined for visitors; and, in fact, there was little doubt but she would actually refuse letting the boat aboard, if they reached her; so in all likelihood our unhappy friends had been swamped on that very account just as the squall came on. When this idea got about the ship, of course you may suppose neither passengers nor crew to have felt particularly amiable towards the French vessel; and if we had met her again, with any good occasion for it, all hands were much inclined to give her a right-down thrashing, if not to make prize of her as a bad character.

"Well, Tom," said I to Westwood one day, "I wish these good folks mayn't be disappointed, but I do suspect this blessed mate of ours will turn out to have run us into some fine mess or other with his navigation! Did you notice how blue the sky looked this morning, over to eastward, compared with what it did just now where the sun set?" "No," said Westwood, "not particularly; but what of that?" "Why, in the Iris," replied I, "we used always to reckon that a sign, hereabouts, of our being near the land! Just you see, now, to-morrow morning, if the dawn hasn't a hazy yellow look in it before the breeze fails; in which case, 'tis the African coast to a certainty! Pity these 'Hyson Mundungo' men, as Jack calls them, shouldn't have their eyes about 'em as well as on the log-slate! I daresay, now," continued I, laughing, "you heard the first mate bothering lately about the great variation of the compass here? Well, what do you suppose was the reason of it—but that sly devil of a kitmagar shoving in his block for grinding curry, under the feet of the binnacle, every time he was done using it! I saw him get a kick one morning from the man at the wheel, who chanced to look down and notice him. Good solid iron it is, though painted and polished like marble, and the circumcised rascal unluckily considered the whole binnacle as a sort of second Mecca for security!" "Hang the fellow!" said Westwood, "but I don't see much to laugh at, Ned. Why, if you're right, we shall all be soaked and fried into African fever before reaching the Cape, and we've had misfortunes enough already! Only think of an exquisite creature like Miss——" "Oh," interrupted I, fancying Master Tom began lately to show sufficient admiration for her, "betwixt an old humdrum, and a conceited fool like that, what could you expect? All I say is, my dear parson, stand by for a pinch when it comes."

On going down to tea in the cuddy, we found the party full of spirits, and for the first time there was no mention of their lost fellow-passengers, except amongst a knot of cadets and writers rather elevated by the Madeira after dinner, who were gathered round the reverend Mr Knowles, pretending to talk regretfully of his Yankee friend, Mr Daniel Snout. "Yes, gentlemen," said the missionary, who was a worthy, simple-hearted person, "in spite of some uncouthness—and perhaps limited views, the result of defective education—he was an excellent man, I think!" "Oh certainly, certainly!" said a writer, looking to his friends, "and the one thing needful you spoke of just now, sir, I daresay he had it always in his eye, now?" "Mixed, I fear," replied the missionary, "with some element of worldly feeling—for in America they are apt to make even the soul, as well as religious association, matter of commerce—but Mr Snout, I have reason to be assured, had the true welfare of India at heart—we had much interesting conversation on the subject." "Ah!" said the sharp civilians, "he was fond of getting information, was poor Daniel! Was that why he asked you so many questions about the Hindoo gods, Mr Knowles?" "He already possessed much general knowledge of their strange mythology, himself," answered the missionary, "and I confess I was surprised at it—especially, as he confessed to me, that that gorgeous country, with its many boundless capabilities, should have occupied his thoughts more and more from boyhood, amidst the secular activity of modern life—even as it occurred unto myself!" Here the worthy man took off his large spectacles, gave them a wipe, and put them on again, while he finished his tea. "Before this deplorable dispensation," continued he again, "he was on the point of revealing to me a great scheme at once for the enlightenment, I believe, of that benighted land, and for more lucrative support to those engaged in it. I fear, gentlemen, it was enthusiasm—but I have grounds for thinking that our departed friend has left in this vessel many packages of volumes translated into several dialects of the great Hindu tongue—not omitting, I am convinced, the best of books." "Where!" exclaimed several of the cadets, rather astonished, "well! poor Snout can't have been such a bad fellow, after all!" "All hum!" said the writer, doubtfully, "depend upon it. I should like, now, to have a peep at Jonathan's bales!" "I myself have thought, also," said the missionary, "it would gratify me to look into his apartment—and were it permitted to use one or two of the volumes, I should cheerfully on our arrival in Bom——" "Come along!" said the cadets,—"let's have a look!—shouldn't wonder to see Daniel beside his lion yet, within! or hear 'guess I aint.'" "My young friends," said the missionary, as we all went along the lighted passage, "such levity is unseemly;" and indeed the look of the state-room door, fastened outside as the steward had left it before the gale came on, made the brisk cadets keep quiet till the lashing on it was unfastened—'twas so like breaking in upon a ghost. However, as it chanced, Mr Snout's goods had got loose during her late roll, and heaped down to leeward against the door—so, whenever they turned the handle, a whole bundle of packages came tumbling out of the dark as it burst open, with a shower of small affairs like so many stones after them. "What's all this!" exclaimed the cadets, stooping to look at the articles by the lamp-light, strewed as they were over the deck. The reverend gentleman stooped too, stood straight, wiped his spectacles and fixed them on his nose, then stooped again; at length one long exclamation of surprise broke out of his mouth. They were nothing but little ugly images, done in earthenware, painted and gilt, and exactly the same: the writer dived into a canvass package, and there was a lot of a different kind, somewhat larger and uglier. Every one made free with a bale for himself, shouting out his discoveries to the rest. "I say Smythe, this is Vishnu, it's marked on the corner!" D——n it, Ramsay, here's Brahma!" "Ha! ha! ha! if I havn't got Seeva!" "I say, what's this though?" screamed a young lad, hauling at the biggest bale of all, while the missionary stood stock upright, a perfect picture of bewilderment—"Lo!" being all he could say. "What can 'Lingams' be, eh?" went on the young griffin, reading the mark outside—"'Lingams—extra fine gilt, Staffordshire—70 Rs. per doz.—D. S. to Bombay,'—what may Lingams be?" and he pulled out a sample, meant for an improvement on the shapeless black stones reckoned so sacred by Hindoo ladies that love their lords, as I knew from seeing them one morning near Madras, bringing gifts and bowing to the Lingam, at a pretty little white temple under an old banian-tree. For my part, I had lighted on a gross or so of gentlemen and ladies with three heads and five arms, packed nicely through each other in, cotton, but inside the state-room. At this last prize, however, the poor missionary could stand it no longer; "Oh! oh!" groaned he, clapping his hand to his head, and walking slowly off to his berth; while, as the truth gleamed on the cadets and us, we sat down on the deck amidst the spoil, and roared with laughter like to go into fits, at the unfortunate Yankee's scheme for converting India."[12] "Well—hang me!" said a writer, as soon as he could speak, "but this is a streak beyond the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge!" "Every man his own priest,—ha! ha! ha!" shouted another. "I say, Smythe," sung out a cadet, "just fancy—ha! ha! 'D. Snout and Co'—ho! ho! ho! you know it's too rich to enjoy by ourselves. 'Mythullogy store,' Bombay, near the cathedral!" "Cheap Bramahs, wholesale and retail—eh? families supplied!" "By George! he's a genius lost!" said Smythe, "but the parson needn't have broken with him for that,—I shouldn't wonder, now, if they had joined partnership, but Daniel might have thought of mining all their heads with gunpowder and percussion springs, so that the missionary could have gone round afterwards and blown up heathenism by a touch!" The noise of all this soon brought along the rest of the gentlemen, and few could help laughing. When the thing got wind on deck, however, neither the old skipper nor the men seemed to like it much: what with the notion of the ship's being taken, as it were, by a thousand or two of ugly little imps and Pagan idols, besides bringing up a drowned man's concerns, and 'yawhawing,' as they said, into his very door,—it was thought the best thing to have them all chucked over board next morning.

'Twas a beautifully fine night, clear aloft, and the moon rising large on our larboard bow, out of a delicate pale sort of haze, as the ship headed south'ard with the breeze; for I marked the haze particularly, as well as the colour of the sky that lay high over it like a deep-blue hollow going away down beyond, and filling up with the light. There was no living below for heat, and the showers of cockroaches that went whirring at the lamps, and marching with their infernal feelers out, straight up your legs; so, fore and aft, the decks were astir with us all. Talk of moonlight on land! but even in the tropics you have to see it pouring right down, as it was then, the whole sky full of it aloft as the moon drew farther up; till it came raining, as it were, in a single sheet from one bend of the horizon to another: the water scarce rippling to the breeze, only heaving in long low swells, that you heard just wash her bends; one track brighter than the rest, shining and glancing like a looking-glass drawn out, for a mile or so across our quarter, and the ship's shadow under her other bow. You saw the men far forward in her head, and clustered in a heap on the bow-sprit-heel, enjoying it mightily, and looking out or straight aloft as if to polish their mahogany faces, and get their bushy whiskers silvered; while the awnings being off the poop, the planks in it came out like so much ivory from the shade of the spanker, which sent down a perfect gush of light on, every one moving past. For the air, again, as all the passengers said, it was balmy; though for my part—perhaps it might be a fancy of mine—but now and then I thought it sniffed a little too much that way, to be altogether pleasant in the circumstances.

Of course, no sooner had I caught sight of Sir Charles Hyde than I looked for his daughter, and at last saw some one talking to a young lady seated near the after-gratings, with her head turned round seaward, whom it didn't require much guessing for me to name. Not having seen her at all since the affair of the boats, I strolled aft, when I was rather surprised to find that her companion was Tom Westwood, and they seemed in the thick of an interesting discourse. The instant I got near, however, they broke it off; the young lady turned her head—and never, I'd swear, was woman's face seen fairer than I thought hers at that moment—when the bright moonlight that had seemed trying to steal round her loose bonnet and peep in, fell straight down at once from her forehead to her chin, appearing, as it were, to dance in under her long eyelashes to meet her eyes; while one mass of her brown hair hung bright in it, and white against the shadow round her cheek, that drew the charming line of her nose and lip as clear as the horizon on the sky! The very moment, in fact, that a bitter thought flashed into my mind—for to my fancy she looked vexed at seeing me, and a colour seemed mounting up to her cheek, even through the fairy sort of glimmer on it. Could Tom Westwood have been acting no more than the clerical near such a creature? and if a fellow like him took it in his head, what chance had I? The next minute, accordingly, she rose off her seat, gave me a slight bow in answer to mine, and walked direct to the gallery stair, where she disappeared.

"We were talking of that unlucky adventure the other day," said Westwood, glancing at me, but rather taken aback, as I thought. "Ay?" said I, carelessly. "Yes," continued he; "Miss Hyde had no idea you and I were particularly acquainted, and seems to think me a respectable clergyman; but I must tell you, Ned, she has rather a suspicious opinion of yourself!" "Oh, indeed!" said I, sullenly. "Fact, Ned," said he; "she even remembers having seen you before, somewhere or other—I hope, my dear fellow, it wasn't on the stage?" "Ha! ha! how amusing!" I said, with the best laugh I could get up. "At any rate, Collins," he went on, "she sees through your feigned way of carrying on, and knows you're neither griffin nor land-lubber, but a sailor; for I fancy this is not the first time the young lady has met with the cloth! What do you suppose she asked me now, quite seriously?" "Oh, I couldn't guess, of course," replied I, almost with a sneer; "pray don't—" "Why, she inquired what could be the design of one concealing his profession so carefully; and actually appearing to be on a secret understanding with some of the sailors! Directly after, she asked whether that brig mightn't really have been a pirate, and taken off the poor general, Miss Fortescue, and the rest?" "Ah," said I, coldly, "and if I might venture to ask, what did you—" "Oh, of course," replied Westwood, laughing, "I could only hide my amusement, and profess doubts, you know, Ned!" "Deuced good joke, Mr Westwood," thought I to myself, "but at least you can't weather on me quite so innocently, my fine fellow! I didn't think it of him, after all! By heaven, I did not!" "By the bye, Collins," exclaimed Westwood in a little, as he kept his eye astern, "there's something away yonder on our lee-quarter that I've been watching for these last ten minutes—what do you think it may be? Look! just in the tail of the moonshine yonder!" What it might be, I cared little enough at the time; but I did give a glance, and saw a little black dot, as it were, rising and falling with the long run of the water, apparently making way before the breeze. "Only a bit of wood, I daresay," remarked I; "but whatever it is, at any rate the drift will take it far to leeward of us, so you needn't mind." Here we heard a steward come up and say to the first officer, who was waiting with the rest to take a lunar observation, that Captain Williamson had turned in unwell, but he wanted to hear when they found the longitude: accordingly, they got their altitude, and went on making, the calculations on deck. "Well, steward," said the mate, after a little humming and hawing, "go down and tell the captain, in the meantime, about five east; but I think it's a good deal over the mark—say I'll be down myself directly."

"A deuced sight below the mark, rather!" said I, walking aft again, where Westwood kept still looking out for the black dot. "You'll see it nearer, now, Ned," said he; "more like a negro's head, or his hand, than a bit of wood—eh?" "Curious!" I said; "it lies well up for our beam, still—'spite of the breeze. Must be a shark's back-fin, I think, making for convoy." In ten minutes longer, the light swell in the distance gave it a lift up fair into the moonshine; it gleamed for a moment, and then seemed to roll across into the blue glimmer of the sea. "By Jove, Collins," said Westwood, gazing eagerly at it, "'tis more like a bottle, to my sight!" We walked back and forward, looking each time over the taffrail, till at length the affair in question could be seen dipping and creeping ahead in the smooth shining wash of the surface, just like to go bobbing across our bows and be missed to windward. "Crossing our hause I do declare!— Hanged if that ain't fore-reaching on us, with a witness!" exclaimed the two of us together: "and a bottle it is!" said Westwood. I slipped down the poop-stair, and along to the forecastle, where I told Jacobs; when two or three of the men went out on the martingale-stays, with the bight of a line and a couple of blocks in it, ready to throw round this said floating oddity, and haul it alongside as it surged past. Shortly after we had it safe in our hands; a square-built old Dutchman it was, tight corked, with a red rag round the neck, and crusted over with salt—almost like one of Vanderdecken's messages home, coming up as it did from the wide glittering sea, of a tropical moonlight night, nine weeks or so after leaving land. The men who had got it seemed afraid of their prize, so Westwood and I had no difficulty in smuggling it away below to our berth, where we both sat down on a locker and looked at one another. "What poor devil hove this overboard, I wonder, now," said he; "I daresay it may have knocked about, God knows how long, since his affair was settled." "Why, for that matter, Westwood," replied I, "I fancy it's much more important to find there's a strong easterly current hereabouts just now!"[13] Here Westwood got a cork-screw, and pulled out the cork with a true parson-like gravity: as we had expected, there was a paper tacked to it, crumpled up and scrawled over in what we could only suppose was blood.

"'No. 20,'" read he,—"what does that mean?" "The twentieth bottle launched, perhaps," said I, and he went on—"'For Godsake, if you find this, keep to the south-west—we are going that way, we think—we've fallen amongst regular Thugs, I fear—just from the folly of these three—(they're looking over my shoulder, though)—we are not ill-treated yet, but kept below and watched—yours in haste—' What this signature is I can't say for the life of me, Ned; no date either!" "Did the fellow think he was writing by post, I wonder," said I, trying to make it out. "By the powers! Westwood, though," and I jumped up, "that bottle might have come from the Pacific, 'tis true—but what if it were old Rollock after all! Thugs, did you say? Why, I shouldn't wonder if the jolly old planter were on the hooks still. That rascally brig!" And accordingly, on trying the scrawl at the end, over and over, we both agreed it was nothing but T. Rollock!

MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF WALES.[14]

We have before us a valuable and interesting work on a portion of the British dominions much visited but little known, and one which is satisfactory, not only from the good feeling and taste it evinces on the part of its author, but also from its setting at rest a question that was lately much agitated, and to which we at the time adverted in our pages for May 1848. Sir Thomas Phillips has taken up the cudgel, or rather the pen, to defend the honour of his beloved country, and has acquitted himself well of the task, partly in combating real opponents, partly in knocking down men of straw. The book, however, comes so far late of its subject as that the interest felt upon it had been gradually subsiding. No very mighty grievance could be alleged by our hot-blooded Cambrian brethren; many hard words and blustering speeches had been uttered throughout the length and breadth of Wales, and a sort of Celtic agitation had been got up by sundry ladies and gentlemen, not much connected with the country. The nation at large, however, had not paid great attention to it; the British lion did not show any indication to lash his sides into foam with his magnanimous tail; the storm in a tea-cup was left to itself: oil had been floating on the face of the troubled waters; and though a few disappointed persons had tried to revive a little excitement, for the sake of "having their names before the public," peace was again reigning throughout Cambria's vales, and her people were following their own simple occupations, unknowing and unknown. Sir Thomas Phillips, however, with a most patriotic motive, determined to fire one shot more against his country's traducers; and thus, while concocting a final reply to the "Blue Books,"—as they are commonly called in the Principality—found himself led on and on, from page to page, and chapter to chapter, until, instead of a pamphlet, he has produced a thick volume of six hundred pages, and has compiled what may be termed a complete apology for Wales.

Our readers will very likely remember that certain Reports on the state of education in Wales, printed by order of the House of Commons, gave immense offence to all who had got ever so little Welsh blood in their veins. We reviewed these very reports, and gave our opinions on Welsh education at considerable length; and therefore we do not open Sir Thomas Phillips' pages with the intention of reverting to that part of the subject, though the author, in compiling it, seems to have had the education of his countrymen principally in view.

We consider, however, that a work written by a gentleman, known for his forensic abilities and literary pursuits, upon a large portion of this island, and purporting to be a complete account of its moral and social condition, must form a suitable topic for review and discussion. Our readers will not repent our introducing it to their notice: we can at once assure them that it will amply repay the trouble—if it be a trouble at all—of perusing it. The style is graceful and yet nervous; the whole tone and colour of the thoughts of the author show the gentleman; while the general compilation and discussion of the facts collected prove Sir Thomas Phillips to have the mind and the abilities of a statesman.[15] Another, and a more important reason, however, why this work will be acceptable to many of our readers, is that it touches upon various questions which, at times like the present, are of vital importance to the welfare, not of Wales only, but of the British empire; and that it proves the existence of feelings in the Principality—mentioned by us on a previous occasion—which ought to be brought before the notice of the public, and commented upon. This is the task which we reserve for ourselves after reviewing more in detail the work of the learned author; for Wales may become a second Ireland in time, if neglected, or it may continue to be a source of permanent strength to the crown, if properly treated and protected. The existence of such a state of things is hinted at in the preface—an uncommonly good one, by the way, and dated, with thorough Cambrian spirit, on St David's Day, if not from the top of Snowdon, yet from the more prosaic and less mountainous locality of the Inner Temple. The author's words are—

"Amongst the mischievous results which the temper and spirit of the reports have provoked in Wales, I regard with discomfort and anxiety a spirit of isolation from England, to which sectarian agencies, actively working through various channels, have largely ministered. In ordinary times this result might be disregarded; but at a period of the world's history when the process of decomposition is active amongst nations, and phrases which appeal to the sympathies of race become readily mischievous, it behoves those very excellent persons, who claim Wales for the Welsh, to consider whether they are prepared to give up England to the English, and to relinquish the advantages which a poor province enjoys by its union with a rich kingdom. For generations, Welshmen have been admitted to an equal rivalry with Englishmen, as well in England as in those colonial possessions of the British crown, which have offered so wide a field for enterprise, and secured such ample rewards to provident industry; and, whether at the bar or in the senate, or in the more stirring feats of war, they have obtained a fair field, and have won honourable distinction. There are offices in the Principality, the duties of which demand a knowledge of the Welsh language, and for them such knowledge should be made a condition of eligibility, in the same manner as a knowledge of English would be required, under analogous circumstances, in England. In the law these offices will be few, and probably confined to the local judges; as it will not be seriously proposed that, in our assize courts, the pleadings of the advocate, and the address of the judge, shall be delivered in the Welsh language; and even in the courts of quarter-sessions, which are composed of local magistrates most of whom were born and reside in the country, but few of those gentlemen could address a jury in their own tongue. A remedy for the inconvenience occasioned by an ignorant or imperfect acquaintance, on the part of the people, with the language employed in courts of justice, must be looked for in that instruction in the English language which is intended to be provided for all, and which is necessary to qualify men to appear as witnesses, or to serve as jurors, in courts wherein the proceedings are conducted in that tongue. The difficulties arising from language are principally felt in the Church: and it seems a truism to affirm, that where Welsh is the ordinary language of public worship, and the common medium of conversation, the language should be known to those who are to teach and exhort the people, and to withstand and convince gainsayers. The nomination of foreign prelates to English sees before the Reformation, occasioned great dissatisfaction in the minds of the English clergy, and tended to alienate them from the papacy; and yet men who are prompt to recognise that grievance, are insensible to the effect produced on the Welsh clergy, by their general exclusion from the higher offices of the Church. The ignorance of Welsh in men promoted to bishoprics in Wales, may be more than compensated for by the possession of other qualifications; and a rigid exclusion from the episcopal office in the Principality of every man who is unacquainted with the language of the people, might be inconvenient, if not injurious, to the best interests of the Church. The selection, however, for the episcopal office of men conversant with the language of the country, when otherwise qualified to bear rule in the Christian ministry, would give a living reality to the episcopate in the Principality, and might materially aid in bringing back the people into the fold of the Church."

The difference of language is here made the principal grievance between the Saxon and Celtic population; and it is certainly one of the principal, though not the main, nor the only, cause of the unpleasantness and unsettledness of feeling that exists in Wales towards England and English people. Where two languages exist, it is impossible but that national distinctions should exist also; and as the traditions of conquest, and the hereditary consciousness of political inferiority, are some of the last sentiments that abandon a vanquished people, so it is probable that the Welsh will remain a distinct people for more centuries to come than we care to count up. We do not know but that, to a certain extent, it may be a source of strength to England that it should be so, though it will undoubtedly be a cause of weakness and division to Wales. Nevertheless, the difficulty is not so great as may be at first sight supposed. In adverting to this part of the subject, Sir Thomas Phillips observes—

"When Edward the First conquered the country, and subjected the natives to English rule, he was deeply sensible of the difficulty which now paralyses education commissioners, and he dealt with it in a manner characteristic of the monarch and the times. Of him Carlyle would say, he was a real man, and no sham; and did not believe in any distracted jargon of universal rose-water in this world still so full of sin. Accordingly, he gathered all the Welsh bards together, and put them to death; and Hume, a philosophic and ordinarily not a cruel historian, says this policy was not absurd. English legislation, between the conquest of the country by Edward the First and its incorporation with England by Henry the Eighth, was characterised by a deliberate and pertinacious endeavour to extirpate the language and subjugate the spirit of the inhabitants. By laws of the Lancastrian princes, (whose usurpation was long resisted by the Welsh people,) 'rhymers, minstrels, and other Welsh vagabonds,' were forbidden to burden the country; the natives were not permitted to have any house of defence, to bear arms, or to exercise any authority; and an Englishman, by the act of marrying a Welsh woman, became ineligible to hold office in his adopted country. By statutes of Henry the Eighth, it was enacted, that law proceedings should be in the English tongue; that all oaths, affidavits, and verdicts, should be given and made in English; and that no Welsh person, 'who did not use the English speech' should hold office within the King's dominions. Even at the Reformation, which secured the sacred volume to Englishmen 'in their own tongue wherein they were born,' the revelation to man of God's will was not given to Welshmen in a language understood by the people. In 1562, however, provision was made for translating the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into the British or Welsh tongue, by an act which declared that the most and greatest part of the Queen's loving subjects in Wales did not understand the English tongue, and therefore were utterly destitute of God's holy Word, and did remain in the like, or rather more, darkness and ignorance than they were in the time of papistry, and required that not only a Welsh, but also an English, Bible and Book of Common Prayer should be laid in every church throughout Wales, there to remain, that such as understood them might read and peruse the same; and that such as understood them not might, by conferring both tongues together, the sooner attain to the knowledge of the English tongue.

"Nearly six centuries have elapsed since the first Edward crossed the lofty mountains of North Wales, which, before him, no King of England had trodden, and in the citadel of Caernarvon received the submission of the Welsh people; and more than three centuries have passed away since the country was incorporated with, and made part of, the realm of England; and although, for so long a period, English laws have been enforced, and the use of the Welsh language discouraged, yet, when the question is now asked, what progress has been made in introducing the English language? the answer maybe given from Part II. of the Reports of the Education Commissioners, page 68. In Cardiganshire, 3000 people out of 68,766 speak English.[16] The result may be yet more strikingly shown by saying that double the number of persons now speak Welsh who spoke that language in the reign of Elizabeth."

It is a mistaken idea to suppose that the Welsh language is hard to be acquired,—the very reverse of this is the fact,: there is probably no spoken language of Europe, not derived from the Latin, which may be so soon or so agreeably acquired as the Welsh. A good knowledge of it, so as to enable the learner to read and write it currently, may be attained certainly within a year by even a moderately diligent student; and the power of conversing in it with ease and fluency is to be gained within the course of perhaps a couple of years. The language is daily studied more and more by persons not connected with the Principality, and acquired by them; nay, what is a remarkable fact, next to the galaxy of the Williamses,[17] the best Welsh scholar of the present day is Dr Meyer, the learned German librarian at Buckingham Palace; while Dr Thirlwall, the present bishop of St David's, has made himself, with only a few years' study, as good a Welsh scholar as he had long before been a German one. We believe that, if the present system of education be steadily carried out, with its consequent developments, in the Principality, the two languages, English and Welsh, will become equally familiar to those who may be born in the second generation from the present day; and that the inhabitants of Wales, becoming thoroughly bilingual—for we do not anticipate that they will abandon their ancient tongue—this apparent obstacle to a more complete amalgamation of interests between the two races will be entirely removed. One thing is certain, that the aptitude of Welsh children to learn English, of the purest dialectic kind, is very remarkable—and that the desire to acquire English is prevalent amongst all the people.

We confess that we should be sorry to see any language impaired, much less forgotten: they constitute some of the great marks which the Almighty has impressed upon the various tribes of his children—not lightly to be neglected nor set aside. They form some of the surest grounds of national strength and permanence; and they are some of those old and venerable things which, as true conservatives, we are by no means desirous to see obliterated or injured. As, however, it is obviously impossible that the whole literature of the Anglo-Saxon race should be translated into Welsh, it is essential to the Cambrians that they should no longer hesitate as to qualifying themselves for reading, in its own tongue, that literature which is exercising so great an influence over a large portion of the globe; and the possession of the two languages will tend to elevate the character, as well as to remove the prejudices, of the people that shall take the trouble to acquire them.

The social condition of Wales is gone into by the author at some length; but he confines his observations principally to the manufacturing and mining population of Glamorgan and the southern counties. Upon this part of the subject he has compiled much valuable information which, though not exactly new, tells well in his work when brought into a focus and reasoned upon. He introduces the subject thus:—

"The social condition of the inhabitants is influenced by the configuration of the country, for the most part abrupt, and broken into hill and valley; the elevation of the upper mountain ranges, which are the loftiest in South Britain, and the large proportion of waste and barren land; the humidity of the climate; the variety and extent of the mineral riches in certain localities; and the great length of the sea-coast, forming numerous bays and havens; and thus there is presented much variety in the occupation, and remarkable contrasts in the means of subsistence and habits of life, of the people. Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and the southern extremity of Breconshire, are the seat of the iron and coal trades. In the western part of Glamorganshire, around Swansea, and in the south-eastern corner of Carmarthenshire, copper ore, imported from Cornwall, as well as from foreign countries, is smelted in large quantities; and the same neighbourhood is the seat of potteries, at which an inexpensive description of earthenware is made. Coal, in limited quantities, and of a particular description, is exported from Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire; and lead ore and quarries of slate are worked in Cardiganshire. In North Wales, considerable masses of people are collected around the copper mines of Anglesey; amidst the slate quarries opened in the lofty mountains of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as well as in some of the sea-ports of those counties; amongst the lead mines of Flintshire, and the coal and iron districts, which extend from the confines of Cheshire, through Flintshire and Denbighshire, to the confines of Merionethshire; and in those parts of Montgomeryshire, on the banks of the Severn, where flannel-weaving prevails. Formerly, the woollen cloths and flannels with which the people clothed themselves were manufactured throughout the country, at small mills or factories placed on the margin of mountain streams, which furnished the power or agency necessary for carrying on the process; but the growth of the large manufacturing establishments in the north of England and Scotland, and the substitution of cotton for wool in various articles of clothing, have uprooted many of the native factories, and reduced to very small dimensions the once important manufacture of homemade cloths and flannels. The larger portion of the industrial population of North Wales, and of the counties of Cardigan, Carmarthen, Radnor, and Pembroke, in South Wales, is engaged in agriculture. It consists, for the most part, of small farmers—a frugal and cautious race of men, employing but few labourers, and cultivating, by means of their own families and a few domestic servants, the lands on which they live.

"In times of mining and manufacturing prosperity, the productions of the agricultural and pastoral districts find ready purchasers, at remunerating prices, at the mining and manufacturing establishments, to which they are conveyed from distant places; and the surplus labour of the agricultural districts finds profitable employment at the mines, factories, and shipping ports, where a heterogeneous population is collected from every part of the kingdom. The wages of labour are, nevertheless, very low, in the agricultural portions both of North and South Wales; and are probably lower in the western counties of South Wales, and in some districts of North Wales, than in any other part of South Britain. The Welsh farmer presents, however, a stronger contrast than even the Welsh labourer to the same class in England. He occupies a small farm, employs an inconsiderable amount of capital, and is but little removed, either in his mode of life, his laborious occupation, his dwelling, or his habits, from the day-labourers by whom he is surrounded; feeding on brown bread, often made of barley, and partaking but seldom of animal food. The agricultural and pastoral population is, for the most part, scattered in lone dwellings, or found in small hamlets, in passes amongst the hills, on the sides of lofty mountains, or the margin of a rugged sea-coast, or on lofty moors, or table-land; and oftentimes this population can be approached only along sheep-tracks or bridle-paths, by which these mountain solitudes are traversed.

"Whilst, however, such is the condition of a wide area of the Principality, there is found in particular districts, of which mention has been already made, a population congregated together in large numbers, which has grown with a rapidity of which there is scarcely another example—not by the gradual increase of births over deaths, but by immigration from other districts, as well of Wales and England, as of Ireland and Scotland also. That immigration is not constant in its operation and regular in its amount, but fluctuating, or abruptly suspended; and in times of adversity, which frequently recur, men, drawn hither by the prospect of high wages, however short-lived such prosperity may prove, migrate in search of employment to other districts, or are removed to their former homes. In the iron and coal districts of South Wales, these colonies are collected at two points—the mountain sides, at which the minerals are raised, and the shipping ports, at which the produce of the mines is exported."

It appears that the total value of shipments from the counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, and Carmarthen, in metals and minerals, during the year 1847 was, in round numbers, as follows:—

The copper specified above is not copper found in Wales, but that which is brought to Swansea, and other ports of Glamorgan and Carmarthen, for the purpose of being smelted, and then reshipped for various parts of the world, principally to France and South America. This trade gives occupation to a large population in those districts, and it forms one of the few branches of British manufactures, in which no very great fluctuations have been experienced during the last few years. It is, indeed, estimated that more than three-fourths of all the copper used on the face of the globe is smelted in the South-Welsh coal-field. But how prosperous soever may have been the condition of the great capitalists and iron-masters in South Wales, it does not appear that, with two or three bright exceptions, they have done much to ameliorate the condition of the people in their employment,—and even, in the present unsettled state of the world, the influence upon their hearts, of the metals they deal in, may be but too evidently seen. We find a most ingenious and important passage in Sir T. Phillips' work upon this subject, full of sound philosophy and excellent feeling. He observes:—

"The wilderness, or mountain waste, has been covered with people; an activity and energy almost superhuman characterise the operations of the district; wealth has been accumulated by the employer; and large wages have been earned by the labourer. Thus far the picture which has been presented is gratifying enough; but the more serious question arises—How have the social and moral relations of the district been influenced by the changes which it has witnessed? May it not be said with truth, that the wealth of the capitalist has ordinarily ministered to the selfish enjoyments of the possessor, whilst the ample wages earned in prosperous times by the labourer have been usually squandered in coarse intemperance, or careless extravagance? Prosperity is succeeded periodically by those seasons of adversity to which manufacturing industry is peculiarly exposed; when the labourer, whose wants grew with increased means, experiences positive suffering at a rate of wages on which he would have lived in comfort, had he not been accustomed to larger earnings. Crowded dwellings, badly-drained habitations, constant incitements to intemperance, and, above all, association with men of lawless and abandoned character, (who so frequently resort to newly-peopled districts,) are also unfavourable elements in the social condition of this people. To those influences may be added, the absence of a middle class, as a connecting link between the employer and the employed; the neglect of such moral supervision on the part of the employers as might influence the character of their workmen; and the want of those institutions for the relief of moral or physical destitution—whether churches, schools, almshouses, or hospitals—which characterise our older communities. Wealth accumulated by the employer is found by the side of destitution and suffering in the labourer—often, no doubt, the result of intemperance and improvidence, but not seldom the effect of those calamities against which no forethought can adequately guard; and when no provision is made for the relief of physical or moral suffering, by a dedication to God's service, for the relief of His creatures, of any portion of that wealth, to the accumulation of which by the capitalist the labourer has contributed, it will be manifest that the social and political institutions of our land are exposed to trials of no ordinary severity in these new communities.

"We live in times of great mental and moral activity. In the year which has now reached its close, changes have been accomplished, far more extensive and important than are usually witnessed by an entire generation of the sons of men; and around and about us opinions may be discerned, which involve, not merely the machinery of government, but the very framework of society: and these opinions are not confined to the closets of the studious, but pervade the workshop and the market, and interest the men who fill our crowded thoroughfares. In former ages, as well as in other conditions than the manufacturing in our own times, social inequalities may have presented themselves, or may still exist, great as those which characterise, in our own age, the seats of manufacturing labour; and the lord and vassal of the feudal system may have exhibited, and the squire and the peasant of some of our agricultural districts may still present, as wide a disparity of condition, as exists at this day between the master manufacturer and the operative; but the antagonism of interests, whether real or apparent, between the manufacturer and the operative, is altogether unlike that simple disparity of condition which may have perplexed former serfdom, or may excite wonder in the agricultural mind of our own age. To the eyes and the contemplations of the serf, as of the peasant, the lord or the squire was the possessor of wide and fertile lands, which he had inherited from other times, and which neither serf nor peasant had produced, but which both believed would minister to their necessities, whether in sickness or in poverty, because neither the castle-gate nor the hall-door had ever been closed against their tales of suffering and woe. Neither the ancient serf, nor the modern peasant, witnessed that rapid accumulation of wealth, which is so peculiarly the product of our manufacturing system, and saw not, as the operative does, fortunes built up from day to day, which he regards as the creation of his sweat and labour—and at once the result and the evidence of a polity which fosters capital more than industry, and regards not the poverty with which labour is so often associated. Different ages and conditions produce different maxims. The modern manufacturer is not a worse (he may be, and often is, a better) man than the ancient baron, but he has been brought up in a different philosophy. By him, the operative is well-nigh regarded as a machine, from whom certain economical results may be obtained—who is free to make his own bargains, and whose moral condition is a problem to be solved by himself, because, for that condition, no duty attaches to his employer, who has contracted with him none other than an economical relation. Yet, is there not danger that, in pursuing with logical precision, and with the confidence of demonstrated truths, the doctrines of political economy, we may forget duties far higher than any which that science can teach—duties which man owes to his fellow, and which are alike independent of capital and labour? It is no doubt true, that men who earn large wages, whilst blessed with health and strength, and in full employment, ought to make provision for sickness, old age, or want of work; but suppose that duty neglected, even then the obligation attaches to the employer to care for those of his own household. In old communities, too, the proportion must ever be large of those who, in prosperity, can barely provide for their bodily wants, and, in adversity, experience the bitterness of actual want in some of its sharpest visitations. To the humble-minded Christian, who has been accustomed to consider the gifts of God, whether bodily strength, or mental power, or wealth, or rank and influential station, as talents intrusted to him, as God's steward, for the good of his fellow-creatures—afflicting, indeed, is the spectacle of wealth, rapidly accumulated by the agency of labour, employed only for self-aggrandisement, with no fitting acknowledgment, by its possessor, of the claims of his fellow-men.

"In our new and neglected communities, Chartism is found in its worst manifestations—not as an adhesion to political dogmas, but as an indication of that class-antagonism which proclaims the rejection of our common Christianity, by denying the brotherhood of Christians. This antagonism originated, as great social evils ever do, in the neglect of duty by the master, or ruling class. They first practically denied the obligation imposed on every man who undertakes to govern or to guide others, whether as master or ruler, to care for, to counsel, to instruct, and, when necessary, to control those who have contracted with him the dependent relation of servant or subject; and from that neglect of duty has sprung up, and been nourished in the subject, or dependent class, impatience of restraint, discontent with their condition, a jealousy, often amounting to hatred, of the classes above them, and a desire, first to destroy to the base, and then to reconstruct on different principles, the political and social systems under which they live. Thus will it ever be, as thus it ever has been, throughout the world's history; and the violation or neglect of duty, whether by nations or individuals, in its own direct and immediate consequences, works out the appropriate national or individual punishment; and those who sow the wind, will surely reap the whirlwind—it may be, not in their own persons, but in the visitation of their children's children."

Notwithstanding the lamentable prevalence of diseased political and moral feeling among a certain portion of the inhabitants of South Wales, it is certain that the primitive simplicity of character by which the Welsh nation is still distinguished, tends in a great degree to keep them from the commission of those crimes which attract the serious notice of the law. In most of the counties of Wales, the business on the crown side at the assizes is generally light, sometimes only nominal; and the general condition of the public mind may be fairly judged of from the following table of criminal returns for 1846:—

"The comparative rarity of crime in the eleven Welsh counties is represented by 1 offence to 3000 of the population; and the absence of serious crimes by the small number of transportations, namely, 25, or 1 in 30,000; and still more remarkably, by the large proportion of the offenders whose punishment did not exceed a year's imprisonment, namely, 223 out of 250, leaving 27 as the number of all the criminals convicted in a year, in eleven counties, whose punishment exceeded a year's imprisonment."

The accusation that was brought forward in the unfortunate Blue Books against the chastity of the Welsh women, and which was the real cause of the hubbub made about them, we dismiss from our consideration. It arose from a misapprehension of the degree of criminality implied by the prevalence of an ancient custom, which exists not in Wales only, but we rather think amongst the peasants of the whole of Europe, and certainly as widely in England as in Wales. Whether existing in other nations or not, the Welsh press, (generally conducted by Englishmen, be it observed,) and the pseudo-patriots of Wales, a noisy empty-headed class, made a great stir about it, and declaimed violently: they did not, however, adduce a single solid argument in disproof of the accusation. There is one fact alone which is quite sufficient to explain the accusation and to remove the stain: bastardy is not less common than in England, but prostitution is almost unknown; the common people do not consider that to be a crime before marriage, which after it they look upon as a heinous enormity. Such is their code of national morals: whether right or wrong, they abide by it pretty consistently; and they appear to have done so from time immemorial. They mean no harm by it, and they look upon it as venial: this is the state of the national feeling, and it settles the question.

We now turn to the chapters that refer to the religious condition of the country, which is treated of by the author at full length, though our own comments must be necessarily brief. He gives a luminous account of the rise and progress of modern dissent in Wales; from which, however, we give the highly improbable statement, that the actual number of members of dissenting congregations, of all denominations in Wales, amounted to only 166,606 in 1846, with 1890 ministers. We should rather say that, whatever the gross population of the country may be at the present moment, there is not more than one person out of ten, who have arrived at years of discretion, belonging altogether to the church; and we infer the fulness of dissenting chapels, not only from the crowds that we have seen thronging them, on all occasions, but also from the thinness of the congregations at church. For the Welsh are eminently an enthusiastic, and we might almost say, a religious people: they are decidedly a congregational people; and as for staying at home on days of public worship, no such idea ever yet entered a true Welshman's head. We think that the author must have been misinformed on this head, and that the numbers should rather be the other way—100,000 out of 900,000 being a very fair proportion for the members of the church.

For all this there are good and legitimate reasons to be found, not only in what is adduced in this work on the church establishment, but also in the current experience of every man of common observation throughout the Principality. The wonder is, not that dissent should have attained its present height, but that the church should have continued to exist at all, amidst so many abuses, so much ignorance, so much neglect, and such extraordinary apathy—until of late days—on the part of her rulers. The actual condition of the church in Wales may be summed up in a few words—it is that of the church in Ireland: only those who differ from it are Protestants instead of Roman Catholics. Let us quote Sir Thomas Phillips again:—

"We have now passed in review various influences by which the church in Wales has been weakened. We have seen the religious edifices erected by the piety of other times, and with the sustentation of which the lands of the country have been charged, greatly neglected, whilst the lay officers, on whom the duty of maintaining those buildings in decent condition was imposed, are sometimes not appointed, or, if appointed, make light or naught of their duties: we have seen ecclesiastical officers, specially charged with the oversight of the churches, not required to exercise functions which have been revived by recent legislative enactments: we have found a clergy, with scanty incomes, and a want of decent residences, ministering in a peculiar language, with which the gentry have most commonly an imperfect and often no acquaintance—even where it is the language of public worship—influences which lower the moral and intellectual standard of the clergy, by introducing into holy orders too large a proportion of men, whose early occupations, habits, and feelings, do not ordinarily conduce to maintain the highest standard of conduct, and who (instead of forming, as in England, a minority of the whole body, and being elevated in tone, morally and mentally, by association with minds of higher culture) compose the large majority of the clergy of the Principality. It cannot, then, be matter of surprise, if amongst those men some should be found who (not being received on a footing of equality into the houses of the gentry, over whom they exercise but little influence) again resume the habits from which they were temporarily rescued by an education itself imperfect, and, selecting for daily companionship uneducated men, are either driven for social converse to the village alehouse, or become familiarised with ideas and practices unsuited to the character, injurious to the position, and destructive to the influence of the Christian pastor. Nor could we wonder, if even the religious opinions and well-meant activity of the more zealous among persons thus circumstanced, were to borrow their tone and colour from the more popular influences by which they are surrounded, rather than from the profounder and more disciplined theology of the church of which they are ministers. We have found the ecclesiastical rulers of this clergy and chief pastors of the people, as well as many other holders of valuable church preferment, to consist often of strangers to the country, ignorant alike of the language and character of the inhabitants, by many of whom they are regarded with distrust and dislike; unable to instruct the flock committed to their charge, or to teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, or to preach the word, or to withstand and convince gainsayers, in the language familiar to the common people of the land. Finally, we have seen the church, whilst she compassed sea and land to gain one proselyte from the heathendom without, allow a more deplorable heathendom to spring into life within her own borders; and the term baptised heathens, instead of being a contradiction in terms, has become the true appellation of thousands of men and women in this island of Christian profession and Christian action. Nevertheless the Welsh are not an irreligious people; and whilst the religious fabrics of dissent are reared up by the poor dwellers of their mountain valleys, in every corner in which a few Christian men are congregated, and these buildings are thronged by earnest-minded worshippers, assembled for religious services in the only places, it may be, there dedicated to God's glory, the feeling must be ever present, 'Surely these men and women might have been kept within the fold of the church.' A supposed excitability in the Cambro-Briton, a love for extemporaneous worship, and an impatience of formal services, have been represented as intractable elements in the character of this people. Even if such elements exist, it does not follow that they might not have received a wholesome direction; while, unfortunately, their action now finds excuse in the neglect and provocation which alone render them dangerous. The church in Wales has been presented in her least engaging aspect; her offices have been reduced to the baldest and lowest standard; and whilst no sufficient efforts have been employed to make the beauty of our liturgical services appreciated by the people, neither has any general attempt been made to enlist, in the performance of public worship, their profound and characteristic enjoyment of psalmody, by accustoming them to chant or sing the hymns of the church."

All the abuses of ecclesiastical property seem to have flourished in the land of Wales, as in a nook where there was no chance of their being ever brought to light;—more than one-half of the income of the church, for parochial purposes, totally alienated; the bishops and other dignitaries totally asleep, and exercising no spiritual supervision; pluralities and non-residence prevailing to a great extent; the character of the clergy degraded; the gentry and aristocracy of the land starving the church, and giving it a formal, not a real support;—how can any spiritual system flourish under such an accumulation of evils? The true spirit of the church being dead, a reaction on the part of the people inevitably took place; and it is hardly going too far to say, that had it not been for the efforts of dissenters, "progressing by antagonism," Christianity would by this time have fallen into desuetude within the Principality.

It is a very thorny subject to touch upon, in the present excitable state of the world, and therefore we refrain; but we would earnestly solicit the attention of our readers to the pages of Sir Thomas Phillips,—himself one of the very few orthodox churchmen still left in Wales,—for a proof of what we have asserted; and should they still doubt, let them try an excursion among the wilds of the northern, or the vales of the southern division of the country, and they will become full converts to our opinion. Things, however, in this respect are mending—the church has at length stirred, abuses are becoming corrected, the ecclesiastical commissioners have done justice in several cases—and in none more signally than in the extraordinary epitome of all possible abuses, shown by the chapter of Brecon—abuses existing long before the Reformation, but increased, like many others, tenfold since that period. The church has never yet had fair play in the country, for she has never yet done herself—much less her people—justice; so that what she is capable of effecting among the Cambrian mountains cannot yet be predicated. We fondly think, at times, that all these evils might be abolished; but this is not the place for such a lengthy topic: we have adverted to the state of things as they have hitherto existed in the Principality, chiefly with the view of showing their influence upon the peculiar political and ethnical condition of the people, which it is our main object to discuss. We will content ourselves with observing, that Sir Thomas Phillips' remarks on this subject, and on the connexion of the state with the education of the country, are characterised by sound religious feeling, and a true conservative interpretation of the political condition of the empire.

On a calm view of the general condition of Wales, we are of opinion that the inhabitants, the mass of the nation, are as well off, in proportion to the means of the country itself, to the moderate quantity of capital collected in the Principality, and the number of resident gentry—which is not very great—as might have been fairly expected; and that it is no true argument against the national capabilities of the Welsh, that they are not more nearly on a level with the inhabitants of some parts of England. The Welsh inhabit a peculiar land, where fog and rain, and snow and wind, are more prevalent than fine working weather in more favoured spots of this island. A considerable part of their land is still unreclaimed and uncultivated—their country does not serve as a place of passage for foreigners. Visitors, indeed, come among them; but, with the exception of the annual flocks of summer tourists, and the passengers for Ireland on the northern line of railroad, they are left to themselves without much foreign admixture during a great portion of each year. The mass of the gentry are neither rich nor generous: there are some large and liberal proprietors, but the body of the gentry do not exert themselves as much as might be expected for the benefit of their dependants; and hence the Welsh agriculturist lacks both example and encouragement. That the cultivation of the land, therefore, should be somewhat in arrear, that the mineral riches of the country should be but partially taken advantage of, and that extensive manufactures should rarely exist amongst the Welsh, ought not to form any just causes of surprise: these things will in course of time be remedied of themselves. The main evil that the Welsh have to contend against is one that belongs to their blood as a Celtic nation; and which, while that blood remains as much unmixed as at present, there is no chance of eradicating. We allude to that which has distinguished all Celtic tribes wherever found, and at whatever period of their history—we mean their national indolence and want of perseverance—the absence of that indomitable energy and spirit of improvement which has raised the Anglo-Saxon race, crossed as it has been with so many other tribes, to such a mighty position in the dominion of the world.

This absence of energy is evident upon the very face of things, and lies at the bottom of whatever slowness of improvement is complained of in Wales. It is the same pest that infests Ireland, only it exists in a minor degree; it is that which did so much harm to the Scottish Highlands at one period of their history; and it is a component cause of many anomalies in the French character, though in this case it is nearly bred out. One of the most striking evidences and effects of it is the dirt and untidiness which is so striking and offensive a peculiarity of Welsh villages and towns—that shabby, neglected state of the houses, streets, and gardens, which forms such a painful contrast the moment you step across the border into the Principality. In this the Welsh do not go to the extremes of the Irish: they are preserved from that depth of degradation by some other and better points of their character; but they approach very closely to the want of cleanliness observable in France—and the look of a Welsh and a French village, nay, the very smell of the two places, is nearly identical. A Welsh peasant, amidst his own mountains, if he can get a shilling a-day, will prefer starving upon that to labouring for another twelvepence. A farmer with £50 a-year rent has no ambition to become one of £200; the shopkeeper goes on in the small-ware line all his life, and dies a pedlar rather than a tradesman. There are brilliant and extraordinary exceptions to all this, we are well aware; nay, there are differences in this respect between the various counties,—and generally the southern parts of Wales are as much in advance of the northern, in point of industry, as they are in point of intellect and agricultural wealth. It is the general characteristic of this nation—and it evidences itself, sometimes most disagreeably, in the want of punctuality, and too often of straightforward dealing, which all who have any commercial or industrial communications—with the lower and middle classes of the Welsh have inevitably experienced. It is the vice of all Celtic nations, and is not to be eradicated except by a cross in the blood. Joined with all this, there is a mean and petty spirit of deceit and concealment too often shown even in the middle classes; and there is also the old Celtic vice of feud and clanship, which tends to divide the nation, and to impede its advancement in civilisation. Thus the old feud between North and South Wales still subsists, rife as ever; the northern man, prejudiced, ignorant, and indolent, comes forth from his mountains and looks down with contempt on the dweller in the southern vales, his superior in all the arts and pursuits of civilised life. Even a difference of colloquial dialects causes a national enmity; and the rough Cymro of Gwynedd still derides the softer man from Gwent and Morganwg. All these minor vices and follies tend to impair the national character—and they are evidences of a spirit which requires alteration, if the condition of the people is to be permanently elevated. On the other hand, the Welsh have many excellent qualifications which tend to counteract their innate weaknesses, and afford promise of much future good: their intellectual acuteness, their natural kindliness of heart, their constitutional poetry and religious enthusiasm, their indomitable love of country—which they share with all mountain tribes—all these good qualities form a counterbalance to their failings, and tend to rectify their national course. Take a Welshman out of Wales, place him in London or Liverpool, send him to the East Indies or to North America, and he becomes a banker of fabulous wealth, a merchant of illimitable resources, a great captain of his country's hosts, or an eminent traveller and philosopher; but leave him in his native valley, and he walks about with his hands in his pockets, angles for trout, and goes to chapel with hopeless pertinacity. Such was the Highlander once; but his shrewd good sense has got the better of his indolence, and he has come out of his fastnesses, conquering and to conquer. Not such, but far, far worse is the Irishman; and such will he be till he loses his national existence. St Andrew is a better saint than St David, and St David than St Patrick; but they all had the same faults once, and it is only by external circumstances that any amelioration has been produced.

It is a fact of ethnology, that while a tribe of men, kept to itself and free from foreign admixture, preserves its natural good qualities in undiminished excellence through numerous ages, all its natural vices become increased in intensity and vitality by the same circumstances of isolation. Look at the miserable Irish, always standing in their own light; look at the Spaniards, keeping to themselves, and stifling all their noble qualities by the permanence of their national vices; look at the tribes of Asia, doomed to perpetual subjection while they remain unmixed in blood. Had the Saxons remained with uncrossed blood, they had still been stolid, heavy, dreaming, impracticable Germans, though they had peopled the plains of England; but, when mixed with the Celts and the Danes, they formed the Lowland Scots, the most industrious and canniest chields in the wide world: fused with the Dane and Norman, and subsequently mixed with all people, they became Englishmen—rerum Domini—like the Romans of old. It may be mortifying enough to national pride, but the fact is, nevertheless, patent and certain, that extensive admixture of blood commonly benefits a nation more than all its geographical advantages.

It is our intimate conviction of the truth of this fact, so clearly deducible from the page of universal history, and especially from the border history of England and Wales, that shows us, inter alia, how false and absurd is the pretended patriotism of a small party among the gentry and clergy of Wales who have lately raised the cry of "Wales for the Welsh!" and who would, if they could, get up a sort of agitation for a repeal of the Norman conquest! There are sundry persons in Wales who, principally for local and party purposes, are trying to keep the Welsh still more distinct from the English than they now are,—who try to revive the old animosities between Celt and Saxon,—who pretend that Englishmen have no right even to settle in Wales,—and who, instead of promoting a knowledge of the English language, declaim in favour of the exclusive maintenance of the Welsh. These persons, actuated by a desire to bring themselves forward into temporary notoriety, profess, at the same time, by an extraordinary contradiction, to be of the high Conservative party, and amuse themselves by thwarting the Whigs, and abusing the Dissenters, to the utmost of their power. They are mainly supported—not by the Welsh of the middle classes, who have their separate hobby to ride, and who distrust the former too much to co-operate with them—but by English settlers in Wales, and on its borders, who, in order to make for themselves an interest in the country, pander to the prejudices of a few ambitious twaddlers, and get up public meetings, at which more nonsense is talked than any people can be supposed gullible enough to swallow. This spirit exists in the extreme northern portion of Wales, in Flintshire, Denbighshire, and Caernarvonshire; and on the south-eastern border of the country, in Monmouthshire, more than in any other district. It is doomed to be transient, because it is opposed, not less to the wishes and the good sense of the mass of the people, than to the views and policy of the nobles and leading gentry of the Principality. One or two radical M.P.s, a few disappointed clergymen, who fancy that their chance of preferment lies in abusing England, and a few amateur students of Welsh literature, who think that they shall thereby rise to literary eminence, constitute the clique, which will talk and strut for its day, and then die away into its primitive insignificance. But, by the side of this unimportant faction, there does exist, amongst the working classes and the lower portion of the middle orders, a spirit of radicalism, chartism, or republicanism,—for they are in reality synonymous terms,—which is doing much damage to the Principality, and which it lies easily within the power of the upper classes to extinguish,—not by force, but by kindness and by example.

It has been one of the consequence of dissent in Wales—not intended, we believe, by the majority of the ministers, but following inevitably from the organisation of their congregations,—that a democratic spirit of self-government should have arisen among the people, and have interwoven itself with their habits of thought and their associations of daily life. The middle and lower classes, separated from the upper by a difference of language, and alienated from the church by its inefficiency and neglect, have thrown themselves into the system of dissent,—that is, of self-adopted religious opinions, meditated upon, sustained, and expounded in their own native tongue, with all the enthusiasm that marks the Celtic character. The gulf between the nobles and gentry of Wales on the one side, and the middle and lower classes on the other, was already sufficiently wide, without any new principle of disunion being introduced; but now the church has become emphatically the church of the upper classes alone,—the chapel is the chapel of the lower orders—and the country is divided thereby into two hostile and bitterly opposed parties. On the one hand are all the aristocratic and hierarchic traditions of the nation; on the other is the democratic self-governing spirit, opposed to the former as much as light is to darkness, and adopted with the greater readiness, because it is linked to the religious feelings and practices of the vast majority of the whole people. Dissent and democratic opinions have now become the traditions of the lower orders in Wales; and every thing that belongs to the church or the higher orders of the country, is repulsive to the feelings of the people, because they hold them identical with oppression and superstition. The traditions of the conquest were quite strong enough,—the Welshman hated the Englishman thoroughly enough already; but now that he finds his superiors all speaking the English tongue, all members of the English church, he clings the more fondly and more obstinately to his own self-formed, self-chosen, system of worship and government, and the work of reunion and reconciliation is made almost impossible. In the midst of all this, the church in Wales is itself divided into high and low, into genteel and vulgar; the dignitaries hold to the abuses of the system,—and some, less burdened with common sense than the rest, gabble about "Wales and the Welsh," as if any fresh fuel were wanted to feed the fire already burning beneath the surface of society!

Even at the present moment, chartism is active in Wales: Mormonites and Latter-day Saints still preach and go forth from the Principality to the United States, (fortunately for this country;) and unprincipled itinerant lecturers on socialism, chartism, and infidelity, are now going their circuits in Wales, and obtaining numerous audiences.[18]

Most of the leading gentry and nobility of Wales are, strange to say, dabblers in Whiggism and amateur radicalism; many of the M.P.s are to be found on the wrong side in the most disgraceful divisions: the corporations of the country are of an unsatisfactory character, and disaffection prevails extensively in many of the chief towns. We believe that a great deal of all this has arisen from the folly, the neglect, the bad example, and the non-residence of the natural leaders of the Principality. Welsh landlords, like Irish—though not so bad as the latter—are uncommonly unwilling to loosen their purse-strings, except for their own immediate pleasures. Scores of parishes have no other representative of the upper classes in them than a half-educated and poorly paid resident clergyman: agents and lawyers ride it roughly and graspingly over the land; the people have few or no natural leaders within reach; they pay their rents, but they get little back from them, to be spent in their humble villages. Their only, and their best friend, as they imagine, is their preacher—one of themselves, elected by themselves, deposable by themselves. They come in contact with a sharp lawyer, a drunken journalist, a Chartist lecturer, a Latter-day Saint—can the result be wondered at?

As long as the patriotism of the Welsh gentry and clergy consists, as it now, too often, does, in frothy words, and an absence of deeds—in the accepting of English money and in abusing England—in playing the Aristocrat at home, and the Whig-radical-liberal in public—so long will disaffection continue in the Principality, and the social condition of the people remain unimproved. The only thing that preserves Wales from rapidly verging to the condition of Ireland, is the absence of large towns with their contaminating influences, and the purely agricultural character of the greatest portion of the people. But even the mountaineer and the man of the plain may be corrupted at last, and he may degenerate into the wretched cottier—the poor slave, not of a proud lord, but of a profligate republic. It is from this lowest depth that we would wish to see him rescued; for in the peasantry the ultimate hope of the country is involved quite as much as in the upper classes; and until the latter set the example, by actually putting their shoulders to the wheel, throwing aside their political tamperings with the worst faction that divides the state, and especially by encouraging the introduction of English settlers into all corners of the country,—we shall not see the social and moral condition of Wales such as it should be. Let the nobles and gentry spend their incomes in the country, not out of it; let them live even amid their mountains, and mix with their people; let them improve the towns by introducing English tradesmen as much as possible; let them try to get up a spirit of industry, perseverance, and cleanliness throughout the land;—so shall they discomfit the Chartists, and convert the democrats into good subjects. Let the clergy reform the discipline of the Welsh church; let them alter the financial inequalities and abuses that prevail in it, to an almost incredible extent; and let them, by their doctrines and practice, emulate the good qualities of their professional opponents;—so shall they empty the meeting-houses, and thaw the coldness of Independentism or Methodism into the warmth of union and affectionate co-operation. Let every Welshman, while he maintains intact and undiminished the real honour of his country, join with his Saxon neighbour, imitating his good qualities, correcting his evil ones by his own good example; and let their children, mingling in blood, obliterate the national distinctions that now are mischievously sought to be revived;—so shall the union of Wales with England remain unrepealed, and the common honour of the two countries, distinct yet conjoined, be promoted by their common weal.

THE STRAYED REVELLER.[19]

The other evening, on returning home from the pleasant hospitalities of the Royal Mid-Lothian Yeomanry, our heart cheered with claret, and our intellect refreshed by the patriotic eloquence of M'Whirter, we found upon our table a volume of suspicious thinness, the title of which for a moment inspired us with a feeling of dismay. Fate has assigned to us a female relative of advanced years and a curious disposition, whose affection is constantly manifested by a regard for our private morals. Belonging to the Supra-lapsarian persuasion, she never loses an opportunity of inculcating her own peculiar tenets: many a tract has been put into our hands as an antidote against social backslidings; and no sooner did that ominous phrase, The Strayed Reveller, meet our eye, than we conjectured that the old lady had somehow fathomed the nature of our previous engagement, and, in our absence, deposited the volume as a special warning against indulgence in military banquets. On opening it, however, we discovered that it was verse; and the first distich which met our eye was to the following effect:—

"O Vizier, thou art old, I young,
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning; and a heat
Is in my skin, which angers me."

This frank confession altered the current of our thought, and we straightway set down the poet as some young roysterer, who had indulged rather too copiously in strong potations, and who was now celebrating in lyrics his various erratic adventures before reaching home. But a little more attention speedily convinced us that jollity was about the last imputation which could possibly be urged against our new acquaintance.

One of the most painful features of our recent poetical literature, is the marked absence of anything like heartiness, happiness, or hope. We do not want to see young gentlemen aping the liveliness of Anacreon, indulging in praises of the rosy god, or frisking with supernatural agility; but we should much prefer even such an unnecessary exuberance of spirits, to the dreary melancholy which is but too apparent in their songs. Read their lugubrious ditties, and you would think that life had utterly lost all charm for them before they have crossed its threshold. The cause of such overwhelming despondency it is in vain to discover; for none of them have the pluck, like Byron, to commit imaginary crimes, or to represent themselves as racked with remorse for murders which they never perpetrated. If one of them would broadly accuse himself of having run his man through the vitals—of having, in an experimental fit, plucked up a rail, and so caused a terrific accident on the South-Western—or of having done some other deed of reasonable turpitude and atrocity, we could understand what the fellow meant by his excessively unmirthful monologues. But we are not indulged with any full-flavoured fictions of the kind. On the contrary, our bards affect the purity and innocence of the dove. They shrink from naughty phrases with instinctive horror—have an idea that the mildest kind of flirtation involves a deviation from virtue; and, in their most savage moments of wrath, none of them would injure a fly. How, then, can we account for that unhappy mist which floats between them and the azure heaven, so heavily as to cloud the whole tenor of their existence? What makes them maunder so incessantly about gloom, and graves, and misery? Why confine themselves everlastingly to apple-blossoms, whereof the product in autumn will not amount to a single Ribston pippin? What has society done to them, or what can they possibly have done to society, that the future tenor of their span must be one of unmitigated woe? We rather suspect that most of the poets would be puzzled to give satisfactory answers to such queries. They might, indeed, reply, that misery is the heritage of genius; but that, we apprehend, would be arguing upon false premises; for we can discover very little genius to vindicate the existence of so vast a quantity of woe.

We hope, for the sake of human nature, that the whole thing is a humbug; nay, we have not the least doubt of it; for the experience of a good many years has convinced us, that a young poet in print is a very different person from the actual existing bard. The former has nerves of gossamer, and states that he is suckled with dew; the latter is generally a fellow of his inches, and has no insuperable objection to gin and water. In the one capacity, he feebly implores an early death; in the other, he shouts for broiled kidneys long after midnight, when he ought to be snoring on his truckle. Of a morning, the Strayed Reveller inspires you with ideas of dyspepsia—towards evening, your estimate of his character decidedly improves. Only fancy what sort of a companion the author of the following lines must be:—

"TO FAUSTA.

Joy comes and goes: life ebbs and flows,
Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours: these dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smiled and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?"

It is impossible to account for tastes; but we fairly confess, that if we thought the above lines were an accurate reflex of the ordinary mood of the author, we should infinitely prefer supping in company with the nearest sexton. However, we have no suspicion of the kind. An early intimacy with the writings of Shelley, who in his own person was no impostor, is enough to account for the composition of these singularly dolorous verses, without supposing that they are any symptom whatever of the diseased idiosyncrasy of the author.

If we have selected this poet as the type of a class now unfortunately too common, it is rather for the purpose of remonstrating with him on the abuse of his natural gifts, than from any desire to hold him up to ridicule. We know not whether he may be a stripling or a grown-up man. If the latter, we fear that he is incorrigible, and that the modicum of talent which he certainly possesses is already so perverted, by excessive imitation, as to afford little ground for hope that he can ever purify himself from a bad style of writing, and a worse habit of thought. But if, as we rather incline to believe, he is still a young man, we by no means despair of his reformation, and it is with that view alone that we have selected his volume for criticism. For although there is hardly a page of it which is not studded with faults apparent to the most common censor, there are nevertheless, here and there, passages of some promise and beauty; and one poem, though it be tainted by imitation, is deserving of considerable praise. It is the glitter of the golden ore, though obscured by much that is worthless, which has attracted our notice; and we hope, that by subjecting his poems to a strict examination, we may do the author a real service.

It is not to be expected that the first essay of a young poet should be faultless. Most youths addicted to versification, are from an early age sedulous students of poetry. They select a model through certain affinities of sympathy, and, having done so, they become copyists for a time. We are far from objecting to such a practice; indeed, we consider it inevitable; for the tendency to imitate pervades every branch of art, and poetry is no exception. We distrust originality in a mere boy, because he is not yet capable of the strong impressions, or of the extended and subtile views, from which originality ought to spring. His power of creating music is still undeveloped, but the tendency to imitate music which he has heard, and can even appreciate, is strong. Most immature lyrics indicate pretty clearly the favourite study of their authors. Sometimes they read like a weak version of the choric songs of Euripides: sometimes the versification smacks of the school of Pope, and not unfrequently it betrays an undue intimacy with the writings of Barry Cornwall. Nor is the resemblance always confined to the form; for ever and anon we stumble upon a sentiment or expression, so very marked and idiosyncratic as to leave no doubt whatever of its paternity.

The same remarks apply to prose composition. Distinctions of style occupy but a small share of academical attention; and that most important rhetorical exercise, the analysis of the Period, has fallen into general disregard. Rules for composition certainly exist, but they are seldom made the subject of prelection; and consequently bad models find their way into the hands, and too often pervert the taste, of the rising generation. The cramped, ungrammatical style of Carlyle, and the vague pomposity of Emerson, are copied by numerous pupils; the value of words has risen immensely in the literary market, whilst that of ideas has declined; in order to arrive at the meaning of an author of the new school, we are forced to crack a sentence as hard and angular as a hickory-nut, and, after all our pains, we are usually rewarded with no better kernel than a maggot.

The Strayed Reveller is rather a curious compound of imitation. He claims to be a classical scholar of no mean acquirements, and a good deal of his inspiration is traceable to the Greek dramatists. In certain of his poems he tries to think like Sophocles, and has so far succeeded as to have constructed certain choric passages, which might be taken by an unlettered person for translations from the antique. The language, though hard, is rather stately; and many of the individual images are by no means destitute of grace. The epithets which he employs bear the stamp of the Greek coinage; but, upon the whole, we must pronounce these specimens failures. The images are not bound together or grouped artistically, and the rhythm which the author has selected is, to an English ear, utterly destitute of melody. It is strange that people cannot be brought to understand that the genius and capabilities of one language differ essentially from those of another: and that the measures of antiquity are altogether unsuitable for modern verse. It is no doubt possible, by a Procrustean operation, to force words into almost any kind of mould; a chorus may be constructed, which, so far as scanning goes, might satisfy the requirements of a pedagogue, but the result of the experiment will inevitably show that melody has been sacrified in the attempt. Now melody is a charm without which poetry is of little worth; we are not quite sure whether it would not be more correct to say, that without melody poetry has no existence. Our author does not seem to have the slightest idea of this, and accordingly he treats us to such passages as the following:—

"No, no, old men, Creon I curse not.
I weep, Thebans,
One than Creon crueller far,
For he, he, at least by slaying her,
August laws doth mightily vindicate:
But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless,
Ah me! honourest more than thy lover,
O Antigone,
A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse."

"Nor was the love untrue
Which the Dawn-Goddess bore
To that fair youth she erst,
Leaving the salt-sea beds
And coming flush'd over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw:
Saw and snatch'd, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus, gleam rock-hemm'd;
The Hunter of the Tanagrœan Field.
But him, in his sweet prime,
By severance immature,
By Artemis' soft shafts,
She, though a goddess born,
Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.
Such end o'ertook that love,
For she desired to make
Immortal mortal man,
And blend his happy life,
Far from the gods, with hers:
To him postponing an eternal law."

We are sincerely sorry to find the lessons of a good classical education applied to so pitiable a use; for if, out of courtesy, the above should be denominated verses, they are nevertheless as far removed from poetry as the Indus is from the pole. It is one thing to know the classics, and another to write classically. Indeed, if this be classical writing, it would furnish the best argument ever yet advanced against the study of the works of antiquity. Mr Tennyson, to whom, as we shall presently have occasion to observe, this author is indebted for another phase of his inspiration, has handled classical subjects with fine taste and singular delicacy; and his "Ulysses" and "Œnone" show how beautifully the Hellenic idea may be wrought out in mellifluous English verse. But Tennyson knows his craft too well to adopt either the Greek phraseology or the Greek rhythm. Even in the choric hymns which he has once or twice attempted, he has spurned halt and ungainly metres, and given full freedom and scope to the cadence of his mother tongue. These antique scraps of the Reveller are farther open to a still more serious objection, which indeed is applicable to most of his poetry. We read them, marking every here and there some image of considerable beauty; but, when we have laid down the book, we are unable for the life of us to tell what it is all about. The poem from which the volume takes its name is a confused kind of chaunt about Circe, Ulysses, and the Gods, from which no exercise of ingenuity can extract the vestige of a meaning. It has pictures which, were they introduced for any conceivable purpose, might fairly deserve some admiration; but, thrust in as they are, without method or reason, they utterly lose their effect, and only serve to augment our dissatisfaction at the perversion of a taste which, with so much culture, should have been capable of better things.

The adoption of the Greek choric metres, in some of the poems, appears to us the more inexplicable, because in others, when he descends from his classic altitudes, our author shows that he is by no means insensible to the power of melody. True, he wants that peculiar characteristic of a good poet—a melody of his own; for no poet is master of his craft unless his music is self-inspired: but, in default of that gift, he not unfrequently borrows a few notes or a tune from some of his contemporaries, and exhibits a fair command and mastery of his instrument. Here, for example, are a few stanzas, the origin of which nobody can mistake. They are an exact echo of the lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:—

"Are the accents of your luring
More melodious than of yore?
Are those frail forms more enduring
Than the charms Ulysses bore?
That we sought you with rejoicings,
Till at evening we descry,
At a pause of siren voicings,
These vext branches and this howling sky?

Oh! your pardon. The uncouthness
Of that primal age is gone,
And the kind of dazzling smoothness
Screens not now a heart of stone.
Love has flushed those cruel faces;
And your slackened arms forego
The delight of fierce embraces;
And those whitening bone-mounds do not grow.

'Come,' you say; 'the large appearance
Of man's labour is but vain;
And we plead as firm adherence
Due to pleasure as to pain.'
Pointing to some world-worn creatures,
'Come,' you murmur with a sigh:
'Ah! we own diviner features,
Loftier bearing, and a prouder eye.'"

High and commanding genius is able to win our attention even in its most eccentric moods. Such genius belongs to Mrs Browning in a very remarkable degree, and on that account we readily forgive her for some forced rhyming, intricate diction, and even occasional obscurity of thought. But what shall we say of the man who seeks to reproduce her marvellous effects by copying her blemishes? Read the above lines, and you will find that, in so far as sound and mannerism go, they are an exact transcript from Mrs Browning. Apply your intellect to the discovery of their meaning, and you will rise from the task thoroughly convinced of its hopelessness. The poem in which they occur is entitled The New Sirens, but it might with equal felicity and point have been called The New Harpies, or The Lay of the Hurdy-Gurdy. It seems to us a mere experiment, for the purpose of showing that words placed together in certain juxtaposition, without any regard to their significance or propriety, can be made to produce a peculiar phonetic effect. The phenomenon is by no means a new one—it occurs whenever the manufacture of nonsense-verses is attempted; and it needed not the staining of innocent wire-wove to convince us of its practicability. Read the following stanza—divorce the sound from the sense, and then tell us what you can make of it:—

"With a sad majestic motion—
With a stately slow surprise—
From their earthward-bound devotion
Lifting up your languid eyes:
Would you freeze my louder boldness,
Humbly smiling as you go?
One faint frown of distant coldness
Flitting fast across each marble brow?"

What say you, Parson Sir Hugh Evans? "The tevil with his tam; what phrase is this—freeze my louder boldness? Why, it is affectations."